Entries from October 2008 ↓

Karen Meisner, an editor at Strange Horizons, blogs:

Ben Parzybok also wrote Couch, an amazing debut novel about three roommates who get evicted and take their couch with them on a journey that becomes a epic quest that becomes one of the most truly weird and original books I’ve read in ages.

Thanks, Karen!

Read the full post

And another mention: Couch is in the famed Elliot Bay Book Co.’s Book notes:

When their apartment is unexpectedly flooded, three roommates must move a couch that exerts its will upon them by becoming lighter or heavier depending on the direction they travel; a couch that is unscathed after being hit by a train; a couch that inspires strange people to offer ridiculous sums to buy it; a couch that proves seaworthy and takes them far into the ocean; a couch that demands to be carried through a Central American jungle with armies of trigger-happy bandits in hot pursuit; a couch that may be as old as the world and powerful enough to either annihilate or redeem it. -C. Sabatini

There are a lot of great books in the Fall 2008 Book Notes.

Entitled: Rwriting on School Propty. 

Photographed at Rigler Elementary School.

Here it is. In case of emergency.

I just found this and bought myself a copy:

Couch as an eBook at Fictionwise

It appears you can get it for as little as $4.98 ($5 of your purchase price gets rebated as credit). I have absolutely no experience with digital-format books, so I’ll be experimenting. But if you want to read Couch and you’re a digital-reader type person. Well, bingo!

I’m going to see if I can’t get it to my ipod touch and read it via eReader. I hope it’s as good as they say!

In the meantime – I’ve been told that the actual book will be shipping from the printer sometime this week. Nifty.

“For those of you who have remained resolute in your belief that things will turn around eventually, I urge you to close your eyes, take shallow rapid breaths, and begin freaking out immediately,” Bush added. “At this point, anyone who isn’t scared to death needs to wake the fuck up—because we’re screwed here.”

The president then picked up the telephone from his desk and hurled it through the Oval Office window.

Sorry everybody if I have something to do with this:

I have had a really lucky, great year – I have to keep reminding myself this as the rest of the world seems bent on spiraling itself into some kind of panicky little hole.

I’ve moved into a new house (with a wormhole in the center of the livingroom floor!), Couch is being published, Walker Tracker is going great, my kids are healthy and I’m happily married.

I hope you’re well and that you’re busy depression-proofing yourself too.

If not? Buy a bottle of red wine,  turn on the music loud and cook the New Brunswick Stew from this book.

Make sure to drink at least 5/8th of the bottle of wine while cooking.

That’s the best cure for the blues I know.

I mean depression-proofing in the emotional sense – but we do a lot of wealth building/depression-proofing here in the financial sense by making massive batches of soups and freezing them. Having stores of your own canned goods and frozen soups is one of the wealthiest feelings I think you can have. All that nourishment is stored away at your own home – not subject to bank runs or abstract financial instruments. It’s harvest time! Put away some of that summer for deep in the winter.