We're happy to be hosting Tom Whalen and his The Straw That Broke Book Blitz today!
About the Book:
In his rollicking new novel, THE STRAW THAT BROKE, author Tom Whalen continues his ENCYCLOPEDIA
MOUSE series, a challenging and funny roller-coaster ride through the outer
margins of science-fiction, philosophy, and word play. Readers who reveled in
previous books in the series, such as THE
CAMEL’S BACK (called “the Moby-Dick of mice” by poet and critic R.H.W.
Dillard) and ROITHAMER’S UNIVERSE
(which science-fiction writer Rudy Rucker termed “giddy fun”), are sure to
greet the arrival of THE STRAW THAT BROKE
with anticipation and joy. Lovers of such visionary writers as Kafka, Borges,
Vonnegut, Lewis Carroll, and Douglas Adams (THE
HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE series) also will find a kindred spirit in Tom Whalen,
as will readers of all tastes who are looking for a thrilling literary
adventure.
The main
“character” in THE STRAW THAT BROKE is
the Encyclopedia Mouse, who, according to the author, “is the one creature who
can save the multiverse.” In Whalen’s
synopsis of THE STRAW THAT BROKE,
“Bulwer Zetford’s work-in-progress, The Cosmic Messenger, is about to take a strange turn,
and the multiverse with it, when Roithamer of Relix “beads” once again and
brings swirling into Zetford’s Kaduza M-mon processor the Encyclopedia Mouse …
Tale twines tale as the mouse battles his Doppelgänger in cyberspace,
Heidegger, in his Black Forest hut, and a hyper-crazed Roithamer. Death is
everywhere, but the mouse, birling (if only barely) in his Binding
Nexus Drive, is determined to narrate the
universes away from their demise.”
Whalen
describes his style as “playful, parodic, philosophical, lyrical. I wanted THE STRAW THAT BROKE to be thick with
character and plot and at the same time alive with language.”
“The word
play is part of the novel’s texture, as well as being embedded into the plot
and character of the mouse,” Whalen also explains. “No need for the reader to
pick up all the formal play. It’s enough that this exists on a subliminal
level.”
Whalen’s
ultimate goal, he says, is to have the Encyclopedia Mouse books published in
one volume “and eventually turned into a wide-screen baroque masterwork of
cinema.”
In the
meantime, THE STRAW THAT BROKE is
available in print, ready to delight all readers.
What the critics are saying about the ENCYCLOPEDIA MOUSE series:
“Pollinates post-cyber-punk with headier
poetry than the genre has yet known.”
Andrei Codrescu
Author and NPR commentator
“Storytelling
which is subtly, wickedly funny.”
The New Orleans Times-Picayune
“Tom Whalen is one
of the most gifted and prolific of contemporary American avant-garde writers …
a master of this genre.”
George Garrett
Dictionary of Literary Biography
“Tom Whalen twists
our notions of what is real.”
Christine Spivey
New Orleans Review
172 pages.
Softcover, $13.46;
ISBN: 13-978-0692259436
Publication date: August 1, 2014
Published by Black
Scat Books
Available at amazon.com,
Black Scat Books.
Website: www.tomwhalen.com
About the Author:
Tom Whalen is a novelist, short story writer, poet and critic
who has written for Agni, Asymptote, Bookforum, Brooklyn
Rail, Chicago Review, The Iowa Review, Film Quarterly,
The Literary Review, the Washington Post and other publications.
His books include Dolls, Elongated Figures, The Birth of Death
and Other Comedies: The Novels of Russell H. Greenan, and the novels Roithamer’s
Universe and The President in Her Towers. Whalen currently lives in Stuttgart, Germany, where he
teaches film at the State Academy of Art and Design. See author on You Tube at:
http://youtu.be/DIpaGoH4mJg.
His latest book is the science fiction, The
Straw That Broke.
Visit his website at www.tomwhalen.com.
Giveaway!!!
Tom Whalen is giving away one $25 Amazon Gift Card!
Terms & Conditions:
- By entering the giveaway, you are confirming you are at least 18 years old.
- One winner will be chosen via Rafflecopter.
- This giveaway begins November 3 and ends November 29.
- Winner will be contacted via email on Monday, December 1.
- Winner has 48 hours to reply.
Good luck everyone!