What are you reading?
I do hope the answer is nothing.
Because I have a suggestion for you.
I rarely do this, mostly because I have a quite a few author friends and I’d be remiss in mentioning some and not others. Honestly I’d love to say, “Go out and buy them all! Spend all your money on books, books, books!” And so I will. Go buy all the books you want, by whomever you want, in whatever format you want, forever and ever, amen.
But a book came out this week that is a part of a series that has become one of my autobuys. And not just any old autobuy, but keeper-shelf, forever-favorite, I’ll-read-this-again-and-again, damn-but-I-wish-I-wrote-that kind of autobuy. I can’t encourage you strongly enough to go out and buy this one, not only because I think you’ll love it, but because as an author I know how important it is to garner that velocity in the first week of sales. Buy the book this week, and that helps ensure he can keep writing said books.
In this case, said author is Richard Kadrey. He’s writes the outstanding Sandman Slim series, featuring a pissed-off magician exacting revenge on the people who sent him to hell a decade earlier. There are better descriptions than that, but my point is this: this series floored me. This man’s imagination rivals Rowlings if she smoked more, slept less, and had really decided to give Voldamort a good What-For. The latest book – and one I stole time from my deadline this summer to read – is ALOHA FROM HELL. It’s dark, dirty, perverse … and all the more heartening for it. Ultimately, the series is an eyes-wide-open look at humanity, and there’s not a page that doesn’t delight. Go read it. Here’s the ebook link. Here’s another. (Didn’t I make that easy for you?)
Oh, and Kadrey is generous, straight-up, cool, and a kind guy. Just don’t tell him I said so.
This post really got me thinking about writers who do it for me, so I’ll be back within the next day or so to give you my Must Have literary loves. I hope you’ll share a few with me as well.
Edited to add: I just heard via twitter that ALOHA FROM HELL is #1 in the Kindle store, so clearly I’m not the only one who loves this series. What are you waiting for?
