When I pasted in my story “The Other End” (which, holy smokes, you can read here), my results were:

I might mention that I’ve never read anything by Margaret Mitchell.

Okay, so let’s try something easier. How about “A Metaphor,” which is a clear homage to Raymond Chandler and even begins with a quotation from him…

Hm. Okay. I’ve at least read a lot of Palahniuk, so I’m willing to believe it’s rubbed off on my writing somewhat.

But let’s try pasting in the same story, but this time include the actual epigraph from Chandler — which is, by the way, “When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.”

Ah, there we go. Apparently Raymond Chandler and Chuck Palahniuk are more closely related than I would have thought. Just a few words difference, really.

One more test. I paste in the first few pages of my top secret, heavily guarded, much-rumored-about novel…

Ha! This one’s kind of funny. The book does make what I hope are sly, fancy-pants allusions to Ulysses throughout. However, I don’t think the actual writing style reads anything like Joyce.

So, if this text analyzer can be trusted at all,  it seems I write like a number of famous authors, with a wide variety of styles, some of whom I’ve never actually read.

Or, I’d say, they write like me.

But the main conclusion I can draw from this is: I have spent too much time playing with this thing.

I was trying to remember, and it’s been somewhere between eight and ten years since I last read Big Sur. It’s been a long time since I’ve seriously read Kerouac at all, really, aside from On the Road and some of his poems, though I read Town and the City last year sometime.

It’s satisfying to see how much I still like Kerouac, despite a decade going by since I first grew obsessed. Other writers haven’t had the same longevity with me. See my dwindling interest in Bukowski. See my complete abandonment of interest in Palahniuk. Let’s see how many of these Scandinavian writers I’ve been reading lately will still hold my interest ten years from now…

The reason I mention it is because Amazon isn’t the only one selling it. It is also for sale from some third-party seller. For $25. I repeat, $25.

Keep in mind that this isn’t some rare, out-of-print book. It’s still for sale like any other book on Amazon. It even qualifies for their free shipping deal.

Oh, and it’s $7, which I already thought was kinda steep. In fact, I’ve always given the books out for nothing at readings, and the offer still stands that if you actually want a copy of it (or the newer one, Lemons), let me know and I’ll just mail you one.

So I was a little taken aback by the $25 price tag this sketchy bookseller is putting on it. But then I realized, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the book is worth that much. Maybe this seller read it and recognized the brilliance behind it, the shining literary genius John and I both possess, and are charging what they think it’s truly worth.

So: Thank you, to the people behind the “any-book” seller on Amazon. You are not sketchy or weird or greedy, as I may have once thought. Rather, you are true arbiters of good taste. Your belief in me is inspiring.

• 56 books read, according to my LibraryThing account. Though I can think of at least one that I read but didn’t add to LT, so that number may be a little low.
• 42 gallons of beer brewed. You can find photographic evidence of many of the batches on Flickr.
• 3 poems published. One online in Asinine Poetry, and two in the print edition of Zygote in my Coffee.
• 2 fiction pieces published. One in the Catalonian Review, and one on KeepGoing.org.
• 1 poetry chapbook published. Lemons. Kinda mixed feelings about that one.
• 1 fun reading at the UAG Gallery, back in February.
• 1 insane cat adopted. What a great decision that was.

I hope that was enlightening for you all. Oh, I almost forgot:

• 22 thrilling blog posts.

Okay, now I’m done.

Keepgoing.org just published “The Other End” in their 38th online issue.

It’s a short story about a phone call, with characters named Jacob and Mary, because I apparently get all my character names from the Bible.

Once again, I’m in good company, and you should check out the other stuff in the issue too. After you’ve poured over my shining work of brilliance, of course.

Happy new year.

The Catalonian Review, a pretty neat online lit journal, just posted a flash-fiction piece of mine in their newest edition.

You should go read it. It’s called “A Metaphor,” and opens with a quotation I love from Raymond Chandler, master of the detective novel.

You might like it. At the very least, it’s short.

You should probably buy it. It’s still only six bucks, shipping included.

As an added bonus, I was happy to see a couple of pieces in this issue from this great writer Alan Catlin. I’ve heard Alan read at various open-mics over the years, and really like his stuff.

So go buy it.

And check back here later in the month. It looks like I’ve got some fiction pieces getting published sometime soon.

By “everyone,” I guess I mean the book blogs I read.

Despite all the hype though, or maybe because of it, I didn’t really dig it too much. I don’t think this was just me being a literary fiction snob, either. I’ve been reading a decent amount of mysteries and crime fiction lately, but this one strained my tolerance for cheesiness at times.

For one, the dialogue read pretty stilted to me, though I guess you could blame that on the translator. I’m also thinking of the Lisbeth Salander character, a twenty-something punk girl who can hack into anyone’s computer she chooses (don’t get me started on how computer hackers are treated like magicians in books like this), and of course falls in love with the hero, a middle-aged journalist who never does one unlikable thing throughout the whole kinda-too-long novel.

Mainly, though, I’m thinking about the coffee. I don’t know if it’s a cultural thing, or just a quirk of Larsson’s writing, but everyone is drinking coffee in this novel. All the time. Either drinking coffee, or putting on water for coffee, or talking about putting on water for coffee. I’m willing to bet that, on average, the word “coffee” shows up every five pages. Somebody get a Kindle and verify that for me.

And as a coffee fan myself, I’m trying to figure out how they were all preparing the coffee. French press? Moka pot? Drip? Sometimes the coffee seems to appear instantly, and sometimes a person “puts on the water” and then takes a shower while waiting.

And what variety of coffee? When two characters sit down and have a beer together, Larsson specifies that they’re drinking pilseners. But does Mikael Blomkvist enjoy Colombian coffee, or Ethiopian?

Yeah, sure, there was a disappearance of a young girl, and a series of murders, blah blah blah, but this was the mystery that kept me up at night. The coffee.

I haven’t actually received my copy yet, but here’s the link to order your own. It’s just $6, shipping included. Buy it!

This is apparently a special flipbook edition, one side being Zygote in my Coffee #7, featuring yours truly and a bunch of other writers, and the other side being a chapbook by somebody named Ross Vassilev.

Sounds like it might be cool, eh? You should probably buy it.

I’m the official “Albany Literary Scene Examiner” (as they say, that and $2 will buy me a cup of coffee). I’ve been posting short articles and notices about upcoming readings and events in the area, and other news like that.

If you live in the Albany area and want to find out about all things literary in the region, you might find it useful. If you like clicking on sponsored ads, then you’ll definitely like it.