If I could have
looked into the future when I was thirteen, I
would have been amazed to see that any books I wrote would be
published.
Now, of course, I think I should have published a lot more.
But I still know that I'm fortunate to have had several books see print in various
North American and European editions.
Here's a
non-comprehensive list:
Laughin'
Boy
(Hardcover novel/Subterranean Press,
2005.)
America at the end of
the Twentieth Century was a dangerous place. It was a place
conceived in liberty, yet threatened by the forces of oppression and
evil. It was a place where fanatics -- political and
religious, foreign and domestic -- sharpened their swords to attack
an innocent populace whose love of freedom was matched only by its
lack of irony.
It was a sick place in need
of sick heroes.
And so they came:
PORNO GIRL, THE RACIST RANGER . . . and the infamous LAUGHIN'
BOY.
#
Dust jacket art by J.K. Potter.
Available in a Limited edition (750 signed copies) and
a Lettered edition (26 signed leatherbound copies). Contact Subterranean
Press about the Lettered
edition. Subterranean is sold out of the Limited edition, but
copies are available at Clarkesworldbooks and
Amazon.
You can also order it from Edge Books, Realms of Fantasy
Books, Dreamhaven
Books, BookPeople , and
other fine booksellers.
John Clute calls
Laughin' Boy "one of the funniest novels of the
past decade." His Science Fiction Weekly review is at http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue425/excess.html.
Mark Graham -- Rocky Mountain News:
Books
-- says "Readers will
find themselves laughing out loud and cringing in horror, frequently
at the same time . . . "
Paul Di Filippo, in
The Washington
Post Book World, writes that " . . . this funny,
scathing assault on the current booboisie has few
peers."
And in News from The Agony
Column,
Rick Kleffel says " . . . Laughin' Boy may just
be a speculative fiction landmark, a cut-and-paste, post-cable,
post-Internet novel that assimilates the forms and the chaos of the
media-scape and spits them out in a frenzied satire . . .
"
If novels were knives,
Laughin' Boy would be my
sharpest. You can read some excerpts here.
Lunatics
(Hardcover novel,
St. Martin's Press, 1996. Trade paperback edition, Bantam,
1997. Hardcover and softcover editions in Germany and
Poland. Books on Tape edition, 1998.)
Jack's friends learn of
Lily's existence after his arrest by the Austin police for public
indecency. And while they're all convinced he's insane, they
are his friends, and if that involves hijacking him to a
cabin in the woods to keep him out of trouble during the full moon,
they can handle it. But with each passing month Jack's crowd
-- spiky Carolyn and her gorgeous-but-dumb boytoy Artie, sexy single
mom Halle, and less-than-ecstatically-married Stephen and Katy -- is
gradually pulled into Lily's orbit. And once they've fallen
under the influence of the goddess of desire, nothing will be the
same.
Not for Jack, or his
friends, or even Lily herself . . .
#
U.S. hardcover dust
jacket art by Maurice Vellekoop. U.S. trade paperback cover
art by Ronald Finger.
Both the hardcover and trade
paperback U.S. editions of Lunatics are available at Amazon and
Adventures in Crime and
Space .
Signed copies from my
personal stash are available at http://shops.half.ebay.com/barbdenton_W0QQmZbooks.
"Utterly charming . . .
a bodacious bombshell of a book that you can still respect in the
morning . . . Lunatics is like that one perfect
unforgettable song that summons up a summer: breezy,
sunstruck, joyous."
-- Elizabeth Hand in
The Washington Post Book World
"In
Lunatics, the talented Bradley Denton shows yet
another facet of his astonishing range. This romantic romp of
quirky, believable characters that just happen to include a
goddess offers wit, style, and, finally, profound insight into
the nature of love. What more could one ask
for?"
--
Nancy Kress
"Bradley Denton has
become one of those writers for whose work I drop almost everything
and read. . . . Lunatics . . . is
compulsively readable, a contemporary fable with simple eloquence
and undeniable heart."
-- Michael
Bishop
"A big-hearted,
giddily-plotted fantasy . . . presented with grace, charm, and a
genuine affection for humanity, foibles and all."
-- Publishers Weekly
Lunatics is
my book-length mash note to friendship,
love, sex, and Austin, Texas. It came -this- close
to being made into a movie. (Well, - that - close,
anyway.)
Blackburn
(Hardcover novel, St.
Martin's Press, 1993.
Trade paperback edition, Picador, 1995. Hardcover and softcover
editions in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, and
Israel. Bram Stoker Award Finalist. Winner of the Prix Calibre
38 for Best First Crime Novel published in France in
1995.)
Jimmy Blackburn grows up in
the Midwest believing the things that adults tell him. He
questions his teachers and they lie to him. He questions his
parents and his father beats him. He questions the world and
it hurts him.
And so Jimmy Blackburn
becomes a killer.
In this novel we meet many
of Blackburn's twenty-one victims. They include law enforcers,
writers, adulterers, auto mechanics, and other liars.
Blackburn is
at once riotously funny and searing: a vision of America through the
eyes of the central bogeyman of our culture.
#
Signed hardcover and trade
paperback U.S. editions of Blackburn from my personal stash are
available at http://shops.half.ebay.com/barbdenton_W0QQmZbooks
.
It's also at
Adventures in Crime and
Space and
at Amazon.com: Blackburn : A
Novel (along with a
number of reader reviews).
"A profoundly
unsettling book. . . . Its sense of despair and bitter satire will
recall Miss Lonelyhearts, its voice brings to mind
Jim Thompson's chatty amiable monsters. . . . By turns hilarious,
heartrending, violent and curiously tender, it is like no book
you've read before."
--
James
Sallis in
The Washington Post Book World
"A bracing antidote to
the pop sociologies of mass murder it so deftly skewers. The
boldly abusive mixture of hilarity, despair, and cartoon eschatology
recalls Flannery O'Connor and Miss
Lonelyhearts."
-- Kirkus Reviews
Blackburn is my best-known book, and there are a lot of
reviews and comments about it on the Web. Google it at http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22Bradley+Denton%22+Blackburn&btnG=Search
.
I'm still waiting for
the First Church of Morton to be granted tax-exempt
status.
Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on
Ganymede
(Hardcover novel,
William Morrow, 1991. Leatherbound first edition with
frontispiece by Kent Bash and Introduction by James Gunn,
Easton Press, 1991.
Mass-market paperback edition, Avon Books, 1992. Softcover
editions in the United Kingdom, Italy, and Poland.
Winner of the 1992 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science
Fiction Novel of 1991.)
Oliver
Vale was conceived in the back seat of a car on the day Buddy Holly
died. He was raised to fervently believe in personal freedom,
UFOs, higher consciousness, and rock-and-roll.
Then one day he turns on
the TV to find Buddy Holly on every channel -- broadcasting nonstop
from a moon of Jupiter . . . and telling the world that Oliver Vale
knows the reason why.
Suddenly Oliver is on the
run -- trying to put some serious distance between himself and a
bloodthirsty pursuing mob of religious fanatics, disguised Kansas
aliens, a Doberman pinscher cyborg, a CIA assassin . . . and
desperate couch potatoes who want their soap operas back.
#
U.S. hardcover dust jacket
art by Mark Harrison. U.S. paperback cover art by Tim
O'Brien.
This one
is currently a little hard to find, although that may change in
a year or so. For now, try Amazon
.
"A delightful romp . .
. Bradley Denton is a major writer and, maybe more important,
a funny one."
--
Washington Post Book World
"Aims squarely for the
funny bone and hits it with near-perfect accuracy . . . A
whacked-out paean to the delicious mysteries of rock
music."
--
San Francisco
Examiner-Chronicle
"A popular culture
joyride -- Brad Denton is one of those really fine writers who
can laugh and think at the same time. All this and a great
soundtrack, too."
-- Pat
Cadigan
"I kept reading until
the sun came up, until it felt as if little dirt bikes had been
driving back and forth across the surface of my eyeballs. It
was worth it. What we've got here is a spiritual journey --
but then, real rock 'n' roll is like that."
-- Emma
Bull
Buddy
Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede is my only novel
to have won a science-fiction award -- the John W.
Campbell Memorial Award. Things are looking pretty good for it to
become an independent feature film in 2007.
The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead
Comedians and A Conflagration
Artist
(Two-volume hardcover short-story collection, Wildside Press, 1994.
Trade paperback edition, Wildside Press. Winner of
the 1995 World Fantasy Award for Best
Collection.)
Originally
published
as a signed, limited-edition, two-volume set in three versions -- white
leather, buckram, and buckram w/wooden slipcase -- these books
contain the thirteen best stories from Bradley
Denton's first ten years as a professional writer. Howard
Waldrop and Steve Gould provide book Introductions, and each story
is illustrated by Doug Potter.
The Calvin Coolidge
Home for Dead Comedians includes: Introduction by
Howard Waldrop; "Skidmore," "The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead
Comedians," "The Sin-Eater of the Kaw," "The Hero of the Night," and
"The Territory."
A Conflagration
Artist includes: Introduction by Steven Gould; "In
the Fullness of Time," "Top of the Charts," "Killing Weeds," "The
Music of the Spheres," "The Summer We Saw Diana," "Captain Coyote's
Last Hunt," "The Chaff He Will Burn," and "A Conflagration
Artist."
#
The original signed hardcover
sets of these books are long gone, although some may occasionally
turn up with specialty book dealers. But now both volumes are
available as trade paperbacks from Wildside Press -- and you don't
even have to buy them as a set, although you should. You can
find them at:
http://www.wildsidepress.com/view_category.asp?cat=15
These books won the
World Fantasy Award for Best
Collection at the World Fantasy Convention in Baltimore in 1995.
I was there, but I didn't have a banquet ticket
-- so I wandered in after the meal and sat at a table in
the back to see who all the winners would be. When they got
to Best Collection and announced that my books had won, I had
to shake off the shock and sprint in order to make it to the podium before the
applause died out.
Howard Waldrop was a
Guest of Honor at that WFC, so he was at the head table right beside
the podium. I think I kissed him.
One Day Closer to Death
(Hardcover
short-story collection, St. Martin's Press, 1998. Russian
edition forthcoming.)
Highlighting this
collection (subtitled "Eight Stabs at Immortality") is a new episode
in the saga of Jimmy Blackburn, the eponymous serial killer of
Denton's third novel. "Blackburn Bakes Cookies" might best be
called the icing on the cake that is Blackburn's story, and it is
appropriately delectable.
In assembling these
stories, Bradley Denton discovered that all of them are concerned
with some aspect of death. It's true. And yet (as they
say), in death there is life: these eight tales brim with
vitality and joie de vivre.
One Day Closer to
Death includes: "The Territory," "Skidmore,"
"Killing Weeds," "Captain Coyote's Last Hunt," "The Calvin Coolidge
Home for Dead Comedians," "We Love Lydia Love," "A Conflagration
Artist," and "Blackburn Bakes Cookies." It also includes a
Foreword and an Afterword, plus the author's Introduction to each
story.
#
One Day Closer to Death can be found at Amazon.com and (signed, from my personal
stash), at http://shops.half.ebay.com/barbdenton_W0QQmZbooks
.
After
Calvin and Conflagration
won the World Fantasy Award, Gordon Van Gelder at St.
Martin's Press thought that a more widely available Bradley Denton story
collection would be a good idea.
So I selected what I
thought were the best six stories from the two award-winning books, added a newer story ("We Love
Lydia Love"), and wrote a brand-new Blackburn novelette ("Blackburn Bakes Cookies") to
anchor the book. ("Blackburn Bakes Cookies" became a finalist for the
International Horror Guild Award. It didn't
win, but the IHG gave the nominees a thumb-sized gargoyle .
. . and mine still rides on the dashboard of my Dodge
Dakota.)
I also wrote a new
Introduction for each story, plus a Foreword and an Afterword for
the book as a whole.
The Afterword took the
form of a Bradley Denton obituary. I left blank spaces for the
stuff I didn't know yet (and still don't).
Wrack & Roll
(Paperback novel,
Warner/Questar, 1986. Softcover and hardbound "library"
editions in the United Kingdom.)
When Franklin Roosevelt
choked to death on a chicken bone in 1933, it signaled the start of
a brave new world -- a world in which America would ally with the
USSR against the threat of the Anglo-Chinese alliance . . . a world
where the death on the Moon of superstar Bitch Alice would spark riots
that would obliterate America's space program and leave the nation
at the mercy of its enemies' nuclear bomb-loaded space
station.
Now, years after the deaths
that forever changed the course of history, Earth's future is about
to be altered again: Bitch Alice's daughter, the Bastard
Child, and her band Blunt Instrument are about to start a tour that
will literally rock the world -- either along the path to sanity, or
over the brink to apocalypse . . .
#
U.S. cover art by
Richard Corben.
Wrack &
Roll is scarce and will become more so. Try http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0445203064?v=glance
" . . . an eccentric
triumph, recommended reading for members of that paradox-ridden
generation where rock'n'roll will never die, but kids have turned
into grownups all the same."
-- Faren Miller, Locus
" . . . terrific
story-telling, impressive imagination, and full-gain narrative
energy. Damn, I liked it. A lot."
--
Edward Bryant, Mile High
Futures
Wrack &
Roll was my first novel. It was written twenty years ago
and published nineteen years ago, in the fall of 1986. I
had just turned twenty-eight, and Barb and I had been married six
years.
Now, in the fall of
2005, Barb and I have been married twenty-five years. She
still looks the same to me (i.e., wonderful) . . . but I
barely recognize Wrack & Roll. Someone else must have
written that book. Someone on Benzedrine. Or someone in
his twenties. It's nothing like what I'm writing
now.
Then again, what
I'm writing now is nothing like what I was writing even two years
ago, let alone twenty. At least, that's what they tell
me.
So Wrack &
Roll stays on the list -- even if it
gives me the same uneasy feeling that Spinal Tap experienced at the grave
of Elvis. (Nigel: "It really puts perspective on things,
though, doesn't it?" David: "Wuh, too much. It's too much
****ing perspective . . . " )
It could be
worse. If Wrack & Roll
were a person rather than a book, I'd currently be paying for it to
go to college -- while exhorting it to learn from my mistakes and
major in something useful like electrical engineering or public
relations. And it would be seeing a therapist twice a month to complain about
what a rotten father I've been.
Thank God Barb and I decided not to
have kids.
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