Dark Side of the Museum for Preorder

I'm set to publish my 11th novel November 15, but it's available for preorder now. Dark Side of the Museum is a deliciously outrageous look at the inner workings of an unnamed art museum located somewhere west of New York City. I had a lot of fun writing this one and it's full of fun characters and interesting happenings. At least that's the writer's hope. I titled each chapter and those give a peak inside the book:


Edgar Makes a Discovery and Gets Fired.
Agenda: A More Interactive Museum
Edgar Performs a Desecration.
The Symbol That Could Not Be.
Agnes Hebenstreit Makes a Momentous Decision.
The Chinese Consult Makes an Astounding Proposal.
Local Art Critic Is In the Building.
Decision Time for Ambrose
Edgar Makes Another Discover, Two Actually.
Several Plots Thicken.
Go. See. Know.
Decisions, Decision.
Emily Needs to Pee.
The Day of the Cheesecake Competition Arrives.
Theodore Washington Gets Discovered; Ambrose is Told the Scroll is Ready; Edgar Gets Schooled on Nicolai Tesla and Kurt Goden. Whew!
The Director Catches Edith as She Faints.
Ambrose Waits; the Director Gets to Work.
Canities Subita, RFG, Xenoglossia
A Room for Beatrice
Convergence
The Director's First Night in His New Digs
Getting Rid of Robbie
Moving Things Along
Re-entombing Meryre
Tying Up Loose Ends, Sort Of

(A thank you to Kansas City photographer Roy Inman for letting me use his image as cover art.)

Got to Love It When a Reviewer Really Gets it! SPILL: Take That Big Oil!

Great five-star review for SPILL from Valerie on Amazon:

In this clever, hysterical novel, by Randy Attwood, absolutely nothing is sacred. Sometimes political spoof, often a parody on big business, Attwood even takes a swipe at the health/insurance industry. ALWAYS a satire on life, Attwood takes us on a riotous journey that begins with one man, Fred Underwood's, dream for riches. This means running for political office. His scheme gets him far more than he bargained for but it is not the center point of this plot.

His running platform is "we don't trust big oil." This becomes a near mantra, not only to Fred's political career...I love the debate scene... but to a whole new, young generation by sending them the message in the form of a video game--a language they understand--which may sound sad, but I believe they are a stewing pot just waiting to boil. All it will take is the right person sending the volatile message. And that's how our political system was created, isn't it? It's not set in stone. It is a wondrous creation, a huge social experiment.

But this book clearly shows us how deeply broken this system really is and how close to an oligarchy we truly are. One of my favorite quotes in this book is: "If Jefferson were to hear that football teams worth multi-millions of dollars charge ticket prices high enough that a working family can’t attend a game and couldn’t build their own stadiums without the people’s help, he’d puke."

Can we, little men and women, still win? Will we take back our own governmental reins and save ourselves and the world we are so recklessly destroying in the name of, "Big Business?" I think so, if we just take a giant step away from our own tiny comfort zone and make our collective voices heard and scream..."Take that, Big Oil!"

Click here to go to SPILL

Assemblage of Nice Comments about 5 Novels

Some nice raves about several of my works:

Crazy About You

If the folks over at the New York Times Review Of Books are looking for fresh novels by other than established writers or well-connected new ones, they should dust off their keyboards and surf over to Smashwords or Amazon's Kindle Book Store, where they'll find an astonishing new novel by Randy

Then and Now: The Harmony of the Instantaneous All

 ...was hooked from 1st chapter...engrossed in it throughout and read it straight through

SPILL

Filled with intriguing characters, and an amusing subplot involving skateboarding gamers, “Spill” is a comic tour de farce that I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys political satire, generally humorous story-lines, and great writing.

Blow Up the Roses

At the end of the first paragraph I had to decide whether I was brave enough to continue. I wasn't sure I wanted to know what happened next. I did read the whole story and enjoyed Mr. Attwood's characters; a veritable crazy quilt of unlikely neighbors who maintained a strange sort of formality despite the ugly reasons for their interactions.

Rabbletown: Life in these United Christian States of Holy America

I did not expect to be profoundly moved. I did not expect the overwhelming desire to make this book required reading.

Small Press Curiosity Quills Accepts SPILL

Email arrived last week:

Dear Randy,

 I've just joined Curiosity Quills and it was my great pleasure to read SPILL. I found it to be a fascinating and entertaining read. I am pleased to inform you Curiosity Quills would like to offer you a contract for SPILL. To capitalize on the marketing potential, we'll be looking to publish closer to the end of next summer, when the primary season is in full swing for the elections.

 Erika Galpin

SPILL is a political comedy, only comedy I've attempted. I wrote it out of deep frustration. Over many decades of writing fiction, with little publishing success to show for it, I thought: "Look, if you can write something that makes people laugh, you can't deny the writing is successful." SPILL—about a fired English teacher who scams the political system and gets the girl, the money, and a killer skateboard computer game—poured out of me in three months. Never written any novel that quickly. I laughed as I wrote it; many readers have laughed as they read it.

It got me an agent. We came close with traditional publishers. Here's the final rejection from an editor at Ecco, a highly respected imprint with Harper Collins. You make sense of it for me. I can't.

Thanks so much for thinking of me and of Ecco for Randy Attwood’s political satire, SPILL, which I enjoyed digging my teeth into. Fred and Zoe share a kind of chemistry on the page that goads the imagination and leads the reader to be genuinely interested in the outcome of their electoral shenanigans, and Attwood very capably lampoons contemporary aspects of America’s current political situation, like the oil industry, gun regulation, and unemployment. Unfortunately, as compelling as I found this read, in the end it just didn't capture my heart and attention to the degree where I would feel confident taking it on. Attwood has a sure command over language—my overarching issue, though, is that that language seems to be employed towards the end of being current; my instinct tells me SPILL exists less in and of itself and more for the audience it is fashioned to attract, and so I am sadly going to have to pass on this one. Attwood clearly has an accomplishment on his hands, and I wish you and him the best of luck finding a home for this debut elsewhere.

I self-published it in 2011 because editors at other traditional publishers advised my agent to encourage me to do so. It got me into this whole new business of epublishing and saved my creative life. I was really ready to just give up writing. Now I'm back at it. I haven't had huge self-publishing success, but I've got some wonderful reviews from people I don't know for my short stories, novellas and novels that are all over the genre map.

The small press Curiosity Quills picked up the dark suspense work Blow up the Roses." Then they accepted two works I have not self-published: Tortured Truths, released just this week, and Heart Chants, scheduled for Dec. 20. Both are part of a Phillip McGuire mystery/suspense series. And I was proud to be the only author to have two stories published in their recent anthology, PrimeTime.

Now they've acquired SPILL.

I have the contract on my desk to sign. When I do so, it means I have to un-publish SPILL from my self-publishing platforms.

So, if you want an early copy, here's the Amazon Kindle and paperback site.

And a favor. Although we are at least eight months away from SPILL being published by Curiosity Quills, it not too early for me to network and find nationally known political type folks who would read this comedy and, if enjoying it, provide a blurb endorsement. If you have a connection (or if you are such a person!), do please let me know. randyattwood@hotmail.com

Never accept a book you can't burn

Upon reading an article in NYT today that Muslim group is giving away the Koran in Germany with the goal of putting into every household, I thought to myself: I don't want a book in my house that I can't burn. Reminded me, too, of a character in my political comedy SPILL who is running for office and has been accused of burning Bibles, to which he replies: "I have never burned a Bible, although I do think there are far too many of them in the world."