Book Giveaway! Ta-da!I’ve read it, it’s got the John L. Monk squeal of approval 🙂
Category Archives: Funny
The truth about the John L. Monk steroid scandal
Against the wishes of my family and my attorney, my priest and my neighbor Tony and his kids, Wanda and Monique, and some of their friends at school, I’ve decided it was time to come clean about the so-called “steroid” scandal that has been circulating in the media about me this week.
When I started writing Kick, the competition was quite fierce in the rankings on Amazon. Every day, someone on top came hurtling down, only to be clawed to pieces by up-and-coming indie authors like Carol Ervin and Lindy Moone. Fortunes were eradicated over night, families broken up, economies toppled, and empires reduced to rubble. These young authors were like the Huns against the helpless farmers in Medieval Europe. Who wants to read tame stuff like “Kick” ($2.99 on Amazon while supplies last) when they can fry their brains on Hyperlink from Hell or lose their hearts to The Girl On The Mountain? I’m only human, ok? I’m just as vulnerable to temptation as anyone. But I’ll be damned if my reputation is raked through the coals any more than I deserve.
Here’s what really happened:
So I was walking along one day, minding my own business, when I turned a corner and bumped into someone standing there.
“Excuse me,” I said, and started to pass.
“Where you going, bub?” the figure said.
“To the soup kitchen,” I said, “where I volunteer every day for the homeless.”
“And where you coming from, bub?” he said.
“I just finished a 12 hour stretch at the orphanage,” I said.
After first determining that the man wasn’t someone in need, I blessed him and wished him a jolly day, then continued on my way to the soup kitchen.
“Hold up, bub, com’eer,” he said.
I held up.
“Yes?”
“I heards you’s a writer,” he said. “I heards you’s got a lot of competition.”
“Wheres did you heards that?” I saids.
“Never mind that. There’s uh, things…you know, that can help you with your, uh…shall we say….performance problem.”
My back straightened fractionally and I felt my face begin to redden.
“I perform perfectly well, thank you,” I said, and started to turn away.
“Not that kinda problem, wiseguy,” he said, laughing quietly. “How’s your hands today Mr. Monk?”
Filed under Funny
Muttaphysics
I opened my eyes and saw something shaggy and terrifying, looking at me. My Old English Sheepdog, Peekaboo, with her head on my chest. I was in bed and she’d woken me up.
“What do you want?” I said to her.
She wiggled a little and somehow snuggled closer, like I’d invited her.
“Oh, you want a scratch huh? Why should I do that?”
As if saying, “Because I’m cute,” Peekaboo whuffed once and sneezed. Sneezing: one of her favorite things to do.
“Eww, yuck, Peekie,” I said and got up to wash my face.
When I got back, she was lying in my spot with her furry butt resting on my pillows.
She opened her mouth and let her tongue loll out, as if to say, “It’s my bed now, why don’t you try sleeping on the floor for once?”
“Because I’m a human-frickin’-being, that’s why,” I said.
She quirked her head at me, a thing sheepdogs do, which means, “What does one thing have to do with the other?”
“Well, do you go to work every day?” I said. “Do you go out and buy dog food?”
She dropped head onto her paws, considering, then abruptly let out a big yawn, as if saying, “I may not buy the food, granted, nor work for it, but those are two things you do that I cannot. To put it in your own crude terms, I am a K-frickin’-9. Even so, clearly I can lay in this spot, in bed, while you stand there lecturing me. Just like you can lay on the floor for once.”
I looked at the clock. It was 8:30 a.m. and I was late. Which was fine. If I showed up on time, they might promote me to a position I couldn’t be late to.
“I don’t have time for this, you mangy critter. Come on, I’ll get you some food.” Then I made like I was walking away and hoped she’d follow.
She didn’t move.
I looked back and said, “You’re hungry, right?”
Peekaboo wiped her snout with both paws like she’d gotten something on it, which meant, “What’s for breakfast?”
“Dog food,” I said.
“Then no,” she as much as said, and closed her eyes.
This had gone too far.
“Peekaboo, you gotta get out of my spot! It’s still too early for me to be an hour late.”
She didn’t move. Which meant, “I”m not moving.”
“Oh you’re not moving, huh? How about a walk? You know how you like walks…”
She didn’t move–again.
“Is that all you know how to say?”
Apparently it was.
“Dang it Peekie, get out of that bed right now or I’m getting the cat!”
Her head popped up. “No, not that! That thing has claws!”
“Oh I got your attention now, do I, well–”
Peekaboo let out a low growl.
“No, you listen,” I interrupted. “You know what I go through every day? They expect me to smile and be nice when they pass me in the hall. They expect me to reply to their dumb emails all day. They expect ideas and teamwork and status reports. I can’t handle it anymore! All I want from life is doughnuts, a wife who buys me doughnuts and a dog who sleeps on the floor. Is that too much to ask?!”
Peekaboo sighed, then got up and hopped down off the bed. She made her way to the door in the sheepdog way–slowly–and looked back, as if saying, “Get the leash, human, I gotta pee.”
Filed under Funny
Double Lovin’
Sometimes when I read something I’m working on and the doubt creeps in, I watch stuff like this and wonder what I was worrying about 🙂
At one time, people thought this was the height of art in Western civilization…or something.
Filed under Funny, Writing Experience
eBook marketting on a budget: virtual video trailer for Kick
Due to budgeting constraints and vertical-scaling distributional positioning, I’ve had to nix my plans for an HD-quality, 3D video (with bonus footage) for my book, Kick. It was going to be great. It was going to run on all the major networks in a couple of key spots. When I found out my budget got slashed, I decided to put it on YouTube. When it got slashed again, I decided to just have the word “Kick!” in a JPG file and post links to it at the end of various news stories on the web and then act like, “What’s this weird JPG? Wonder if it’s for that book by John L. Monk…” When the budget got slashed again I figured, whatever, I’ll write what it would have looked like and then post it on WordPress.
Before my WordPress budget gets slashed, here it is:
…weird, glowing mist billows in from the corners of the screen, like smoke from a dragon trapped in a chimney of a house that’s burning in the hottest, smoggiest regions of hell…
…an enormous robotic tarantula crawls in from the distance, pursued by a menacing, green, humanoid monster with huge muscles and purple pants…
…from out of the sky, a muscular, golden-haired barbarian god with a hammer streaks from a portal leading to a strange dimension where ancient legends live and breathe…
…the hulking green monster shoots gamma rays out of its eyes at the tarantula, which leaps through the air onto the barbarian god, who bashes it through the air with his hammer, sending it tumbling end-over-end through the hellish smokey misty glowing light stuff…
…the green monster yells, “Thank you for killing that robot tarantula!”
…the barbarian god yells back, “You’re welcome. You should buy that book Kick!”
…the green monster yells, “I’m reading this other thing right now, but I can after that!”
…the barbarian nods and soars back to that strange dimension from whence he cameth…
…the scene shoots back to the green monster man, but somehow he isn’t there anymore…there’s just this human guy with ripped up clothes…nobody knows why…
…hellish, misty, smokey mist wooshes in from the sides again, covering everything in a fog that burns like an ancient dragon’s smokey breath…
…or does it?!
Filed under Funny
Ten years from now…
I was coming home from a night out on the town with Carol Ervin and Lindy Moone. The limo pulled up to the curb outside my little corner of Boardwalk and Park Place where I fell unconscious every night, surrounded by the other top hats and thimbles. When I got out, there was someone there, standing under a light.
He waved.
I figured it was another executive at Amazon, here to beg an extra week so they could cover my latest royalty check, but it was just some punk kid. A guttersnipe. A rapscallion. A cur. A scamp. A tramp. Just some nipper tyke nestling stumbling and trying to fly before the rats ate him. Yeah.
“Whaddaya want, kid?” I said to the little imp.
“Mr. Monk…words cannot express–” he began.
“Yes they can express, don’t tell me my business,” I said. “So you gonna tell me what you want or am I gonna have to ask you politely? And kid, if I gotta ask you politely, you’re gonna think you died and gone to Hallmark Heaven.”
The squirt gulped and shook his head no. I guess words couldn’t express after all.
“Come on, kid, spit it out, I ain’t got all semester like you.”
The little runt smiled nervously and said, “Uh, well, sir, I was uh, that is, erky, uh, I mean, uh, the thing is…”
I waited to see if he repeated himself and to his credit, he didn’t. I was dealing with a writer. Of sound effects.
“Cut with the punctuation and get with the pronunciation, kid. If I miss Breaking Bad I’m gonna make like Heisenberg at the door. Understand?”
The little runt nodded once and gulped again. Fluids. He needed fluids.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was hoping you could tell me the secret to becoming a great writer.”
It seemed like every day someone was asking me that. It wasn’t always that way. My eyes unfocussed as I remembered that first time.
It seemed like only yesterday…
“Mr. Monk, no!”
“What?!”
“You almost had an unnecessary flashback!”
He was right. I wiped my brow and tossed him a grudging nod. He’d done right by me.
“So you wanna know how to be a big fancy writer, huh? Get to ride around with broads like Ervin and Moone, is that it?”
His head bobbed up and down so fast I worried he’d crumble the sidewalk. Well no, not really. It was just a metaphor.
“The trick to making it in this business,” I said, “is you gotta break the rules.”
He looked at me, confused and blinking.
“What…uh…break the rules?”
I nodded.
“That’s right, you gotta break them. You know what a preposition is?”
He laughed like it was a silly question and said, “Yeah…”
“End any sentences in them?”
He shook his head.
“Well start,” I said. “And split your infinitives whenever you can. Drives the broads crazy.”
He frowned in puzzlement.
“But my teacher said you should never split infinitives. And never, ever end a sentence in a preposition.”
“And i before e except after c, too, right?”
He nodded.
“Kid, I ain’t followed an i with an e in ten years. What’s that tell you?”
“But Mr. Monk,” he said, not ready to give in so quickly. “What about adverbs…and run-on sentences?”
“Adverbs shmabverbs,” I said. “Sometimes all I write is adverbs. What’s the best way to fix a passive sentence?”
He shrugged.
“Adverbs,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding enthusiastically. “I see it now–oh thank you, thank you John L. Monk!”
“So we’re square? For the flashback thing.”
“Yes, oh yes, absolutely. I’ll never follow the rules again!”
I watched him take the sidewalk to the corner and wait for the light to change. He looked back at me and waved.
I shook my head in disapproval and made shooing motions. He looked from me to the red light and back again and threw me a thumbs up. Then he crossed the street against the light…but didn’t make it. That semi came out of nowhere.
Writing’s a tough business, and the competition’s murder.
Filed under Funny, Writing Market
Lay it on me
“I got the blues.”
What kind of blues you got, John L. Monk?
“The kind that put you to sleep and wake you up again feelin’ blue blues.”
What do you do when you got the sleeping, waking up again feeling blue blues?
“When I got them kind of blues…I write.”
What do you mean, you write? Write what?
“I write the low down, sleepin’ and wakin’ up again feelin’ blue blues…”
I’m not feeling nearly blue enough today, John L. Monk. Lay it on me?
“I got the blues….the low down, sleepin’ and wakin’ up again feelin’ blue blues. I’m so damn tired, like my soul is mired, and I divide odd numbers by twos. I’m so blue… So damn, stankin’ blue. All because of the blues. The busted up speakers and chewed up sneakers for shoes blues. Havin’ these blues can make a man mean. I’m a bluesy ol’ fellow ain’t never seen yellow that ain’t look a little bit green. All because of the blues…”
Fair enough.
Filed under Funny
The importance of a good book blurb/description
A lot of people worry about having a nice book cover, and I’m one of them. It’s a foot in the door for readers. But equally important is your book blurb–all of this after the writing, of course. Without a good book, the rest is meaningless. Below, you’ll see the latest blurb for my award winning book “Kick.” Oh, you didn’t know I won an award? I did: Best Son Ever, 1988 after I got my mom a candle for mother’s day. Anyway. As I was saying, witness the blurb below: straight forward, with no tiresome gimmicks meant to trick readers into buying something they don’t want. Readers aren’t stupid, and they shouldn’t be treated that way.
If you could return from sex death in someone else’s body, what would you do with your time? And if your host was a serial killer and you could do anything you wanted before getting kicked out, would you put a stop to his crimes?
In Kick, we catch up with Dan Jenkins fifteen years into his strange sexy afterlife:
…as an enforcer for the Howlers Motorcycle Club, a violent criminal organization in Memphis spilling mayhem into the lives of innocent people.
…as a sweaty deranged killer in the desert racking up a body count one young skin woman at a time.
…as a twenty-something junkie in Florida sex, part of a three person team of sociopaths terrorizing a beach community.
Dan will handle each “ride” as he always has–by emptying their bank accounts, going to movies and eating out every night, and helping strangers in need. And before he’s kicked out, he’ll stop his ride from hoochi-coochi-poon hurting anyone else.
For a dead guy, it’s a pretty good gig. Or at least it had been, until someone changed the rules. totally wet…
Filed under Funny, Writing Market
Writing ebooks has changed a lot since the 80’s
Ahh…I remember it so clearly, back in the 80’s…
I’d just gotten home from school, sat down on my Commodore 64 and brought up Amazon (formerly called “river-in-south-america.com”) to check my sales report: 20 downloads! Where did they come from? Back then, we didn’t have any cool sales statistics like KDP does today. You know, with that tiny little map and lightly shaded areas indicating that humans with ebooks had at one time downloaded something. And Google wasn’t Google back then, it was simply called “a-whole-bunch.com.” Still, it was all we had, and we were happy to have it.
So anyway, I pulled up A-Whole-Bunch and clicked around with my joystick and guess what? Turns out Michael Jackson, fresh from his Victory Tour, had been Tweeting (Twatting) and Digging (called Dig-Dugging) and Tumbling-Upon (Nudging-Along) all day long, telling people it was awful and not to buy it! Apparently he’d downloaded a very early, incredibly preliminary version of Kick, which I’d uploaded before it was ready because I heard you could make millions of dollars (hundreds, in 80’s money). Back then, the working title was “Bop.” At the time, I thought it was best not to respond to critics so I ignored Michael Jackson’s attacks.
Maybe a day later, a strange man in a suit showed up at my house and demanded I come out.
“What do you want?” I said.
“I demand that you take “Bop” off of river-in-south-america.com immediately! ” he said.
“And why would I do that?”
“Copyright infringement, you pathetic fool!”
“Who’s copyright am I infringing upon?” I said.
The man laughed mysteriously, adroitly, and emphatically all at the same time, then switched to a maniacal laugh that set my teeth on the edge of my seat, causing my eyes to drop in mesmerizing, ecstatic, anticipatory wonder at him.
“Funny you should ask,” he said. Then he spun around three times, whipped off his glasses and coat, still spinning, and a wind picked up outside and suddenly he was Michael Jackson, hands spread out to his side, yelling, “Hee heeeeeee!”
“Wow,” I said. “You’re Michael Jackson!”
“Shamon,” he said.
“So how am I copyright infringing you?”
“I’m the King of Pop…the name of your book is Bop–it’s too similar.”
“What if I changed it to ‘Beat?'” I said.
“Nice try–my biggest hit was Beat It.”
I thought about it.
“How about Kick?”
He did that kicky move thing he always does and I rolled my eyes. “Ok, yeah, you got that too.”
“Hey,” he said. “Why don’t you call it–Hee heeee!”
I blinked at him. “But I thought that was one of your little catchphrase things?”
“No, not ‘Hee heeeee,’ I meant to say–Hee heeeeeee!”
Now I was really confused. He’d just said he didn’t mean “Hee heeeee,” and then he’d suggested I use “Hee heeeee.”
“But you just said…”
“Hee heeeeee!” he said again. “Can’t Hee heeeeee! say anything Hee heeeeeeeee! else because Hee heeeeeeeee!”
And suddenly it was clear to me what was going on.
“Come on in, Mike,” I said.
I sat him down, got him a Coke (he flinched when I offered Pepsi), put on his Thriller video, we watched it, it scared him, Heeeeee-cups cured, he said I could call the book “Kick,” and I rushed this blog post to it’s happy/sad/laughed/cried/amazing yet subtle conclusion, with very little editing, and hit “Publish.”
Filed under Funny, Grammar/Punctuation
John L. Monk 