A Beginner's Guide to Dying in India. My debut novel at thenile.com.au. It's been called 'witty and poignant' and 'Part comedy, part tragedy, part henna-drawn thriller peppered with romance and intrigue' but it doesn't have any vampires or wizards so it'll probably never be made into a movie.
What Rhymes with Chaos Novel released in 2007. I liked the title so much I decided to use it for this blog as well. It's available here as a free pdf download. It should be noted that the price is not reflective of the quality.
in which words are scribbled with chalk upon highways and byways where you can go your way and i can go my way.
lost in the austere rapture of cool winter air and the silent song of the stars,
new things are made and old things come undone.
Do you suffer from a debilitating fear of paper cuts?
Were you raised in the lap of luxury in an environment which prevented you from acquiring peasant skills such as 'page turning?'
Well fear no more! A Beginners Guide to Dying in India is now available as an e-book for your kindle or iphone!
Amaze your friends! Confound your grandparents! Impress potential lovers with your knowledge of exotic landscapes and ridiculous uses of metaphor and hyperbole!
Oh hello there 2010, it's lovely to meet you. You know, me and your slightly older sister were very close, but I'm sure we'll get along just fine. I thought I'd kick off my first post for this year my announcing a competition. WHOEVER BRINGS ME THE HEAD OF STEVE FIELDING WILL RECEIVE UNTOLD RICHES. Just kidding. Although that would make me very happy.
This competition is inspired by the recent album I decided to post entitled "Cute Girls on Dates with A Beginner's Guide." You can see it on flickr or the facebook fanpage. I have often pointed out the fact that if you don't enjoy my novel, you can use it for various other purposes (doorstop, kindling, hand to hand combat). I'd like to see how far we can expand on that theme. The aim of this competition is to see who can come up with the most original/hilarious alternate use for A Beginner's Guide to Dying in India.
Maybe you could use it to fight off zombie hordes, or perhaps lace it with some sort of contact based poison and leave it lying around the Family First offices as a subtle weapon. Maybe you could cut it up and design a
wedding dress out of it. (Hey if you can do it with toilet paper I
don't see why you can't use literature.)
Beginner's Guide
wedding "dress" VS toilet paper wedding dress
I'd prefer photos, but as I writer I suppose I'll have to accept written entries as well. Photos can be authentic or photoshopped, but you have to be in them in some capacity.
What's the prize you ask? Well well well, my little lemondrop, you just sit back and listen.
On tuesday I leave for Cambodia. I am going to scour that small south-east Asian nation for THE WEIRDESTS SHIT I CAN FIND and deliver it into the hands of the winner. It might be an antique statue of the deity of awkward conversations, or perhaps some strange asian sex toy, perhaps it might be some kind of rat/dog hybrid (although Australian customs might have a few things to say about that.) Whatever the case, it is going to be fricking weird and fucking hilarious.
That's the immediate payoff, the second part of the prize will be a cameo in my next novel, tentatively titled Adonis' Coma. Now when you are old and grey and your grandkids say:
"Hey Grandma/pa how come you aint done shit with yer life except learn how to open beer bottles with yer eyeball?" you can proudly answer:
"Listen, you little genetically modified sun and smog resistant brats. I was a character in a NOVEL. Sure, it didn't sell so great and the critics said it was the kind of thing that Douglas Adams would have written if he'd been beaten as a child and homeschooled by a foster Mum from Latvia with poor english and a chronic meth addiction, but it was still a NOVEL. Printed on real paper, not this synthetic fireproof Prototree (TM) harvested protopaper you kids use these days. Now shut up and get me my soylant green popsicle, my sunprotection armour and my hoverchair. I want to go down to the store and pick up a new hip. This one's playing up again."
AND on top of all that I will give you a free replacement copy of the book that you have destroyed with your hilarious genius, signed and all. Hell, if you live in Brisbane I'll deliver it in person.
Tell your friends. Tell your frenemies. Tell that girl that you used to IM until she started sending you naked pictures of herself wearing a spiderman mask and it got awkward.
You can get a copy of the book here OR if you want to be a cheap bastard you can just use this image and photoshop it.
send all entries to:
jmdonellan@gmail.com
Good luck. I look forward to reading your entries in some sweaty Cambodian internet cafe with a weird looking guy tapping on the window trying to sell me roasted peanuts and filmed-in-the-cinema pirate DVDs of Avatar.
Well well well, who knew a promo tour could be so much fun huh? I wasn't exactly sure what a writers promo tour would entail, I mean, I assumed that there would be vast quantities of A-grade cocaine, plasma screen TVs thrown out of 5 star hotel windows and fistfights with police, but other than that the details were blurry.
Melbourne, just so you know, I have a big crush on you. I mean, I'm in a committed relationship with Brisbane, but I do like sneaking down and visiting you on a no strings basis. Thanks for providing a capacity crowd for the launch event too. Oh and that cougar hitting on me was a nice bonus too. If I had been single, a few years older, and not rendered almost unconscious by the potency of her discount perfume I may have taken the bait.
I also got to make with the tourist styles and visit the penguins on Phillip Island, they ban the use of cameras, but here is a dramatised re-enactment:
We also met the King of the Penguins (aka head of the board of trustees for the penguin protection society) who regaled us with delightful tales of the various gruesome murders that have occurred in the small community of Phillip island. Apparently a man he used to have dinner with carved an 'A' in the chest of his adulterous wife and dumped her in the ocean. What a heart-warming story, I'm surprised they haven't made a telemovie about it.
I also saw Red Symons in a couple of bookstores. Unfortunately he wasn't dressed like this:
On the plane from Melbourne to Sydney I had the distinct pleasure of sitting next to a female body building champ from New York. She had arms the size of telegraph poles, and would not shut up about her newly acquired puppy. I wasn't about to tell her to pipe down so I could grab some shut eye though, she would have crushed me more easily than bad reviews crush my fragile eggshell ego.
I'm also very fond of Sydney, but there's a lot of bad memories for me here too. I lived in Sydney for a couple of months in 2003 and I was hanging out with a bad crowd. By which I mean actors. Seriously people, if you can at all avoid it, never date a TV actor. (Seriously Jovita Lee Shaw, I don't care if you did have a recurring role on Mcleod's daughters, if you spent all your money on champagne and fancy lingerie don't come crying to me about being broke when rent day comes round.)
I dropped into the Dymocks on George st and was proud to see my book located so close on the shelves to Nick Cave's new novel. However, I decided it looked a lot better in front of some other book that had been shortlisted for a major literary award. I think the staff moved it back though, the bastards.
By strange coincidence, internationally best selling author Matthew Reilly was there signing copies of his new book, THE FIVE GREATEST WARRIORS. This is the sequel to THE SEVEN ANCIENT WONDERS and THE SIX SACRED STONES. No doubt it will be followed by THE FOUR IMPERTINENT HOOLIGANS or something similar. I got him to sign MY novel instead of his. He proudly proclaimed it "the greatest book I've never read."
Of course, I did have to buy one of his books in order to get his attention. I got that signed too. It's listed on ebay here.
The launch event at Sydney was another capacity crowd, this time held at the NSW writers centre, which is ironically located on the grounds of an abandoned lunatic asylum. It's quite pretty though, I could certainly think of worse places to suffer from severe delusional paranoia.
THE END.
PS a big thankyou to all the authors I toured with. You can check out their brilliant and original work at the Interactive Publications website.
December 14, 2009
Here's an article I wrote for news unlimited called "6.5 writing tips." If you too, would like to slave away in front of the dull blue glow of your laptop for several years in order to produce some black marks on flat dead trees, then check it out:
I hope they don't ask me about fashion tips, all I'm going to be able to give them is a list of my favourite op shops and their respective odours. Can someone remind me which decade's fashion is back in vogue again? Is it the 1980s or the 1560s?
Just to update; my ebay ad has had 100 views in 24 hours and so far I've been offered a vacuum cleaner, tapes, and a degree in the performing arts. Members of the conservative community might well argue that these items are all of equivalent economic value. If you have something that took you three years to make or attain, whether it be a replica of the millennium falcon made from paddle pop sticks or the rights to your patent for a biochemical weapon that makes everyone sound exactly like Fran Drescher then go ahead and place a bid.
It's
been a busy week. I've been flat out organising the interstate tour and
doing radio interviews (you know it's going to be quality airtime when
the guy out of the front of the station greets you with a joint in his
hand). My novel was finally released in Australia this week, and man,
Oprah will just NOT GET OFF MY CASE. Seriously. Yesterday she rang me
up and she was all like:
“Oh my god I loved your boooook!"
You
know, with that rising voice thing she does. Let me tell you, it might
be endearing to watch on your telebox but it is PAINFUL to listen to in
your ear. So I was like,
"Listen Oprah, I'm actually on the last level of
Street fighter IV. Can you txt me later?"
“When can I get you on my show? I was going to have the Olsen twins on in January but their agent just called and said they'll be in rehab or prison or terrorist training camp or some crap. You free then?”
"Yeah Listen O-town I'm actually going to be in Cambodia writing the next book in January."
“Well can I at least get a review to tweet to my peeps?"
"Seriously, O-face, have you ever tried to beat Zangief on level 7? It's f**king hard. And trying to do so with an overexcited billionaire yammering on is making it a lot harder. Look, I'll write you a goddam review myself. Here tis:"
A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO DYING IN INDIA
BY JM DONELLAN
(REVIEWED BY JM DONELLAN)
Look, I don’t know what the hell I was
thinkingwhen I wrote this. Didn’t I realise that no one reads books unless
they are about vampires or wizards? Perhaps I should have written a book about
a young vampire wizard on a quest to unlock an ancient mystery hidden within a
famous painting whilst pursuing romance with a sexy rockstar who leads a
double life as a crime scene investigator. That’d really get the money men
drooling.
+ +
= best selling piece o' crap ever.
Everyone from the tweenies to gay twenty-somethings to soccer mums
would be trampling over each other to get to their nearest Borders to pick that
shit up. It’d probably even be adapted into a movie directed by an ex-porn star
struggling to gain some credibility.
I mean, look at the vocabulary in
this book. Kaleidoscopic? Prometheal? It’s like I expect people to use a
dictionary, or their BRAINS or something? This book doesn’t mention twitter
even once! Was it written in the middle ages? A Beginner’s Guide to Dying in
India has been called ‘witty and poignant.’ Poignant? When was the last time
you saw an ultra-hip Gen Y scenester type the word poignant into their iphone?
Never. That’s when.
"Does 'poignant' have two umlauts or three?"
My main regret is that this book
took me three years to put together from having the first spark on the rooftop
on a hotel in the Himalayas to telling my publishers to ‘shove it’ when they
wanted me to tweak the final chapter so that it featured a sex scene occurring
in a helicopter as the heroes escaped the exploding casino. It makes me cry to
think of all the things I could have done in that time. I could have learned
jujitsu, how to juggle flaming chainsaws, or how to make a clarinet out of a carrot.
You
know, stuff that would impress girls, instead of sitting in front of a laptop
for weeks on end bathing in my own sweat and trying to think a better metaphor
than ‘more out of place than the pope at a sex convention.’ (Suggestions?) I give this book sixteen
thumbs down. Which is slightly better than the rating I gave the Twilight
series, and slightly worse than the rating I gave for this guy’s moustache:
"It's Movember all year round in my world bitches! PS: you can get the bookhere if you to write your own scathing review, or if you need something to hide your face from that creepy guy that always sits opposite from you on the bus. Yeah, you know the one I'm talking about."
I had an abortion this week. I was halfway through my follow up novel (for adults at least, my kids book is done and dusted) when I made the difficult decision to prematurely end its life. It was entitled Junk Quay: A Modern Ghost Story. Basically it was a story about blues music and quantum mechanics. This guy featured pretty heavily:
So far I haven't had any christian fundamentalists at my door, but I'm
keeping plenty of death metal albums, gay porn and hardmount prints of Piss Christ on hand to ward them off if neccessary. The good news is that this has given me the chance to dive straight into my next book which I was much more excited about anyway. Expect God in a Coma to hit shelves sometime before the end of the world.
Lately I've been accused by many people, my girlfriend among them, of being a self-promotion whore. I justify this by the fact that this is my first art baby. I'm a bit like that annoying friend you have who's just had their first kid and starts working it into every single conversation you have with them by the most implusible segue imaginable:
You: Hey, have you read Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart? I think, for me, it epitomises the pinnacle of African literature and perfectly encapsulates the feeling of fear and confusion that faces a ancient culture dealing with the plague of European colonisation.
Them: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PHOTO OF MY BABY???
You: Uh...yeah I think you should me one last week...
Them: Oh! That was when he was three months and THREE days. This is him at three months and SIX days! Doesn't he look so grown up! Look at the way he's looking at that Caravaggio print on the wall, I think he really has a basic grasp on critiquing and appreciation Baroque era Chiaroscuro painting!
"waaaah! Caravaggio's excessive use of shadows exemplifying chiarsocuro painting displeases me! I'm having a pre-naptime existential crisis!"
In any case, it's only two weeks until the Australian release of A Beginner's Guide to Dying in India and in preparation I've been drinking too much and spending an unhealthy amount of time playing xbox, much like my literary heores George Orwell and Anthony Burgess did before the release of their respective masterpieces.
"I pwned yr droids with my l33t skillz!"
I've been asked if I'll sign copies when it is released. People, seriously, I will lick, bless, baptise and sign in my own blood any copy you want to obtain in exchange for your not very hard earned cash.
Both stores ship anywhere in the world except Sarah Palin's house. Plus
they have heaps of other amazing books like the Bell Jarand Of Mice
and Men that TV characters sometimes mention in a very obvious and
unnatural way when the lazy script writer is trying to make them appear
educated in the space of the few minutes of content between coke
commercials.
If you write a review for me I will be forever in
your debt. Seriously I'll give you a kidney or something. It may not be
MY kidney, but nevertheless...
The
art of writing is by its very nature hermetic. It’s one of the few jobs in the
world where being a depressed, introverted alcoholic may actually be of
assistance. Well, that and claims adjusting perhaps.
+ + x =
this is a summation of everything I learnt in 3 years of studying literature.
In
any case, as much as I love being cloistered away in my literary lair
accompanied byonly the dull blue glow of my laptop, a near infinite supply of
mi goreng and the sounds of the dirty three, I do occasionally need to venture
outside into the great wide world with its billboards, traffic jams, ikea
stores and balloon boy hoaxes.
In the last two years I've busied myself with the chalk project, and the 4C arts collective and I’m working on a new
abandoned building project. In the interrum I decided to assist my
incredible friend, Anna; (the only person I know who is a brilliant
scientist, environmental activist AND artist), with her 350 project.
Anna
stitched up these patches which a few of us then covertly distributed around
Paddington in the dead of night. Okay, it was more like half nine, but
seriously, graffiti artists take note: Paddington at 9.30 on a Monday is like
Rupert Murdoch’s conscience; completely silent.
The genius of using these patches is that they are not only incredibly eye
catching and made from recycled material but they also cause no permanent damage
to property. We really didn’t have to worry about police presence because
although we didn’t exactly write to Campbell can’t-fucking-do-anything-right
Newman for permission, I doubt we would have had too much trouble from the
po-lease even if they had spotted us.
My
debut novel, A Beginner's Guide to Dying in India, was released in America last
week. Although it won't see release here in Australia until next month, I was
obviously fairly excited to be a thrilling 683,960th on amazon.com's sales
ranking. This means that there are exactly 683 959 books that are better
promoted, better written or just better in general than mine. Titles currently outselling my book include: the brilliantly titled The Clique #8: Sealed with a Diss: A Clique Novel (Clique Series),
and Sarah: How a Hockey mum turned the Political Establishment upside down. Interesting side note, the original title for this book was Sarah Palin: the hockey mum who can 'practically see Russia from her house.'
Since my book has been released it's received the glowing personal recommendations of old housematesthe grates and randomly shown up at the top of a list of travel books in Japan.
Amazon.com
describes it as 'Part comedy, part tragedy, part henna-drawn thriller
peppered with romance and intrigue...a spiritual journey across the continents
of the soul.' but there aren't any
vampires, wizards, references to twitter or religious cults being investigated
by dashing yet surprisingly inept cryptologists so I'm obviously out of touch with what the
(mainstream) public wants.
Case
in point: my original blurb for the book. My publisher rejected this on the
grounds that 'It's not nice to insult your audience on the back cover.' Why
not? Plenty of my readers will insult me I'm sure! I felt it deserved seeing
the light of day, if only on the internet, enjoy:
So, you’ve picked up this book from the shelf of a
bookstore or library or friend’s place and you are thinking to yourself: ‘perhaps
this particular novel shall distract me from the dull drudgery of my life?
Perhaps it contains the elements which I find desirous within a piece of
literary fiction?’
As it so happens, this novel contains five of the
following ten subjects, you are free to select which of these you hope it
contains and then peruse its contents to see if you are correct. For those of
you who elect to continue, welcome aboard. It’s going to be a hell of a ride.
To those who are about to return this book to the shelf or hurl it away in
disgust, perhaps you’d be better off with a Jackie Collins novel? You obviously
have terrible taste.
A Beginner’s Guide to Dying in India may contain
traces of:
1 Black humour
2 Philosophical discourse
3 Excessive references to Ricky Ponting
4 Travel
5 The threat of international terrorism!
6 Revenge
7 Car chases
8 Explosions!!!!
9 Politics
10 Love conquering against all odds (followed by
making out in the parking lot)
In addition to being a source of literary
entertainment, A Beginner’s Guide to Dying in India may also be employed as a
highly effective paperweight, moderately effective source of kindling or rather
ineffective weapon in hand to hand combat.
If
you want to buy the book to use for any of the above purposes you can get it
from here:amazon.com and preview it online here: google books
If
you prefer the anachronistically tangible experience of using your legs to
enter a store and talking to a human to make your purchases then you can order
it at any bookstore in Americaville or Canadatown. If
you like the book and want to write a glowing review I would be eternally
grateful. If you hate it please send all scathing literary criticism to my
personal email address: dan.brown@doubledaybooks.com
