So thank you, dear reader, for the wonderful review of Dead Animal People on Amazon.com.

Here is a part of what happy reader, Shana, had to say:

“As you read this book, you truly embrace the characters and their sense of belonging, or lack thereof. Orlando is a boy who, his entire life, takes the blame for his mother’s disregard of reality. As his mom was headed to the hospital to have Orlando, a tragic event occurred that left his mother without any immediate family except the unborn Orlando. From here, the story takes you on a journey through Orlando’s mind and his path to love. It also brings out the depth of his mother’s pain of losing her family, in ways unknown to anyone.

The reader gets to embrace the emotional battles both Orlando and his mom go through while… [full review]

The medicine cabinet mirrored door lay under Betsy Manifold’s bed with strips of black electrical tape holding together the fractured pieces…

She’d tried storing the brown pill bottles in other locations or carrying them in her purse, but soon lost track of them – valium behind a cereal box, amitriptyline under her mattress, doxepin in the car’s glove compartment. However, she never lost track of her pills in the medicine cabinet of her bathroom – it’s logically where they belonged – but it also meant having to see her reflection in the mirrored door, her desperate eyes through a film of soap scum and toothpaste smudges, her hands moving like gangly marionettes through the pill bottles, clawing at the white caps, her tongue clenched in her teeth. Betsy jabbed a plunger handle at the mirror several times, breaking it into a kaleidoscope of triangles.

The pill bottles made sounds. The pop of the white cap. The finger tap. The tumbling of pills – blue tablets, red and white capsules – onto Betsy’s sweaty palm. Those few seconds were part of the ritual, the gagging realness of Betsy’s tenuous unreality. The pain. She tried everything to suppress the sounds of taking pills, and filled the plastic bottles with scraps of toilet paper, coils of yarn, and dabs of skin cream, but eventually decided on thyme – the crushed spice leaves were the ideal size and shape to fill the gaps between the pills – so that when she tipped and tapped the bottle, they rolled out quietly, and had a sweet, pungent odor to them. She’d swallow the pills down with a gulp of water from the running faucet, then blow the scattered thyme into the sink, where the woody spice bits swirled around the gurgling drain, and disappeared into the bowels of the Manifold house with Orlando’s spit and shit, and his mother’s midnight vomit and morning tears.

J.D. Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye

believe

Any author who has self-published a novel has heard all of the negative comments before. After all, we were told from the moment we discovered that we were writers what a terrible decision it was.

“You have to be realistic.”

“What a waste of an education.”

“Good luck supporting yourself.”

“I’ll leave you a good tip when you deliver my pizza.”

What these mostly well-intended people mistakenly think is that being a writer is a choice. It’s not. It’s who you are and as much a part of your identity as your religion, your sexuality, your family, your passions and professions. Sure, at times we can be other things—even other people—than being a writer. But you’re either a writer or you aren’t. It’s a pretty simple equation. If not writing makes you miserable, you’re a writer. That’s all there is to it. We’re word alcoholics, and it’s not an easy way to live.

So, when people who aren’t writers, like most celebrities, are adored by the writing industry and promoted over real writers in the name of profits, those of us in the literary trenches get a little frustrated. Sure, we understand capitalism and how money works, but it just seems like such a shame when being smart, artful, curious and insightful doesn’t appeal to the marketplace as much as being fake, fake, and um, superficial, vapid, and fake.  When did books become television?

When I decided to pit my novel, which took six long years to write, against Kim Kardashian’s book in the Kim vs. Nguyen Book Smack Down, I’d already been beaten up enough by life and the book industry to know mine would never outsell hers in the Amazon rankings. I’m very proud of my book. I am. I think it’s an undiscovered literary treasure, but I do in fact understand reality. I didn’t stand a chance. And then something funny happened.

Sales started going up. And now the gap between Kim Kardashian’s book and mine is closing. FAST. It makes me all warm inside to know that, even for perhaps a brief moment in time, my book may just be—even for a second—reaching more hearts and minds than Kim Kardashian’s book, which targets some part of humanity that I’m not really sure about. So thank you readers and those of you who have purchased my book. I hope you are not disappointed. I think you’ll discover Dead Animal People is worth every penny of your money and moment of your time.

Perhaps then writers and the writing community will have something to celebrate. Not my book necessarily, but a moment in time, when everything seemed right with the world. For just one second, when one Amazon ranking quietly marked an unheralded revolution, of giving an author a small victory in a life dominated by an unwanted reality. Kim Kardashian, you’re going down.

Latest Amazon Rankings:

Kim Kardashian’s In Her Own Words: #167,788

Marina Nguyen’s Dead Animal People: #209,512

I can’t wait to see Cloud Atlas. Loved the book by David Mitchell.

As this article from The New Yorker states, “If your first instinct is to note how that smooth vessel echoes the creaking, masted ship of the earliest tale, then ‘Cloud Atlas’ could be the film that you desire.”

Yep, they’re talking to me. How about you?

I’ve had enough. As a writer, I feel it’s time to confront the greatest nemesis to our literary culture: Celebrity ciphers who publish books that offer nothing of any substance. Am I jealous they are coveted by publishers, receive hefty advances and loads of marketing resources and public attention? You bet.

But, honestly, I’m also concerned about what is happening to the literary traditions of American and the integrity of our writing and publishing culture. So I’m proposing a challenge to fellow writers, readers and global citizens who love books.

I’ve spent nearly two decades mastering my writing skills and courting my literary muse. That culminated in a novel I’m proud of titled Dead Animal People. It’s pretty damn good, too. However, given the anemic publishing climate where no one is taking any risks at all, I’ve had to self-publish my novel. Right now its Amazon ranking is #719,244.

Kim Kardashian, scorned bride, perfume maven and sex video star, “wrote” a book titled Kim Kardashian: In Her Own Words. Its Amazon ranking is #48,402.

The purpose of this Book Smackdown is to demonstrate that real writing isn’t dead, and that readers still do appreciate books that artful, profound and penetrating. Books are extensions of the human soul, and it’s time to support books that have soul.

So, please consider purchasing a copy of my book until it reaches or surpasses the Amazon ranking for Kim Kardashian: In Her Own Words.

I’ll provide updates on Amazon rankings for both books on Twitter as the competition continues.

Again right now the rankings are:

Dead Animal People: #719,244

Kim Kardashian: In Her Own Words: 48,402

Game on. Spread with word.

her book

my book

The 1-star people are furious that the books costs so much, about $20 for the hardcover version, $18 for the ebook. The 5-star people are irate that the 1-star people are polluting the comment section with complaints about price because that platform is—in theory—reserved for praise and criticisms regarding the books quality as a work of literature. Nevertheless, publishing in a business and the laws of capitalism pervade every aspect of the business, including price points and consumer sentiment.

This fiasco, however, is symbolic of the publishing industry on so many levels because it is being conducted digitally, that very space of cyber ether that brought the publishing industry to its knees. And there is nothing anyone can do about it. But if you’re reading this website you’re probably a writer, and as a professional writer myself, we all know how J.K. should handle this: start writing something else. Anything.

J.K. has done her job as a writer, and regardless of how her book is priced or regarded as an unproven commodity in the serious fiction category, she’s one of us, and we all know how to handle criticism and praise no matter where it comes from: ignore it, and continue being a writer. The book is out there. It, and everything around it, is beyond J.K.’s control.

Write. Write. Write.

We were all born of war on this day.

This is the first paragraph on Chapter 19 of Dead Animal People. Though there is a section of the book that addresses 9/11 directly, I feel this description of Irene McShooley, a protagonist born into the Vietnam War, captures the brutality that war imbues into all who experience it:

She was born of war. Toothless grandmother screams and broken cat legs. Rivers on fire and bloated corpses slumped along muddy banks like animals quietly stalking unsuspecting prey. Lungs stained with gasoline and maggot filled livestock parts flung against fence posts. The screams of rape carved by teeth into dank basement floors and the glowing curls of fire from hooches as spotted pigs screamed like bleeding children in the jungle shadows. Tuyen Luong – Irene – was born into this, and war was in her soul, her being, the way other children are born with a talent for the piano or an allergy to peanuts. Irene was born haunted, and haunted people never belong entirely to themselves. From birth they belong to the past. And without permission from the past, they can never move on.