So, 2012. I got married and released my second novel and self-published two e-books and got a few stories published and then had one nominated for a Pushcart. All awesome. I figured after all that I could head back to Jersey for the last week of the year and take some time off from being part of the world.
I should probably do that more often, because the internet straight-up opened the floodgates on reviewing stuff I wrote while I was gone. Let’s dive in.
Exponential Apocalypse was reviewed over at FNORDinc: “It was like Roseanne had unprotected sex with Douglas Adams which culminated in the birth of a child, who was hanging out with Neil Gaiman smoking some pot at a circus before slipping roofies to a recently resurrected Bill Hicks and shagging his brains out.. Which culminated in the birth of a child named Snake Pliskin who will travel to the past to kill Roseanne.”
Meanwhile, EA: Dead Presidents was spotlighted as a favorite at Smash Attack Reads.
But the big deluge was love for Bizarro Press’ Tall Tales for Short Cocks, Vol. 2, featuring my short story “The Ballad of Billy the Squid,” about a octopus-head-having, porno-starring vigilante. The book on the whole seems to be doing well, with a few reviewers singling out my story as a highlight. Check ’em out:
Beauty in Ruins: “The Ballad of Billy the Squid by Eirik Gumeny merges two individually bizarre ideas – a boy with a squid for a head & the fetish oddity of tentacle porn – and fashions them into a story that’s more complex and entertaining than you might expect.”
Scott Emerson: “Like many multi-author collections (especially in the bizarro genre), the results are mixed, but TTaSC2’s hit-to-miss ratio is commendably solid.”
Surreal Grotesque (pg. 95): “Charged with absurdities, anger and off kilter sexuality, this collection of fifteen bizarro short stories had me mumble WTF under my breath as much as it had me smile with enjoyment.”
I think there’s probably a lesson here, something about boiling water and watching pots, but my resolution for 2013 was refusing to learn anything from metaphors. Also, not mixing metaphors. And, as always, to punch a pterodactyl.