Speccie: Bizarre Books
 

Bazza and Bill back on form. Chris O'Carroll, Jayne Osborn and Marion Shore join them as winners. Robert Schechter close but no cigar

No. 2640: Bizarre books
You are invited to provide the publicity blurb for one of the following implausibly titled but real books: I was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen; How to Write a How to Write Book, or Afterthoughts of a Wormhunter (150 words maximum). Please email entries, where possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 24 March.

It's hard to imagine doing much better than the actual product copy taken from Amazon:PS--
The wormhunter title recently was recognized for its bizarre title:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_471383.html

or

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertain...re/8530144.stm

How To Write A How To Write Book

A stunning achievement. This is the book you wish you had written yourself, but didn't know how.


I was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen

Having survived Japanese interrogators during World War II without disclosing more than his name, rank and serial number, Captain Mitchell thought he was tough enough to withstand anything. But when Louisa May Alcott ties him to a chair and forces him to listen to nauseating tales of Meg and Jo March and other "little women," will he betray his God, his family and his country just to make her stop?


Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter

"He sought them with thimbles, he sought them with care," Lewis Carroll might have put it, but David Crompton will have none of this. "I sought them with gloves," he assures us. "And I'm not being snarky."

let's hear it for the prose writers
 

I think the thing I most regret, aside from buying a KFC takeout – and eating it – was teaching creative writing. I had my Master's & a decent list of publications, but a couple of semesters destroyed my initial belief in what I was doing. Now it's an industry.

Onward –


Now half the nation has discovered the joys and challenges of authorship How to Write books are flavour of the month – or the decade. But how many readers of these books end up baffled by conflicting advice, or lost among the intimidating arcana of 'narrative arcs' and injunctions to 'show don't tell'? There is a history here of cruelly defeated aspirations; but now they can be a thing of the past. Both writers and readers of of How to Write books will welcome this timely breakthrough publication, which sets forth with impeccable clarity the requirements for a How to Write book that will teach How to Write book authors to teach people how to write. It covers all aspects of the How to Write writer's craft, from the choice of word-processing software to the protocols of book-signing at Waterstones. An astounding début that augurs an accomplished future.

Your novels have been compared to Tolstoy and Dickens. People constantly ask you, "How do you do it?" You'd like to explain, but when you try to write your how-to book on writing, the blank page mocks your every effort.

Sound familiar? Now, at long last, comes a guide to guide you in writing your guide to guide others.

Learn all about:

• the power of bulleted lists to drive home a point,
• the use of bold fonts,
• and when, if ever, to combine bold and italic fonts within bulleted list items.

Have you written a single paragraph that says everything that needs to be said? Learn how to expand that paragraph to fill chapter after chapter.

Congratulations on the critical acclaim your novels have garnered. But isn't it time you started to make some real money?

On the button, Roger.


bazza

Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter

After thirty years in Plunkett Pond, Camilla Carp sets off on a whirlwind tour of Hoover Dam, only to find that she misses the plump nightcrawlers she relished in home waters. Eager to get back to her pond, she enlists the aid of a dapper dogfish and a handsome trout, who connive to send her to a fish-stick factory…

Roger, I laughed out loud at your last one, especially the lines,"Have you written a single paragraph that says everything that needs to be said? Learn how to expand that paragraph to fill chapter after chapter."

Susan

You've got a good idea for a Pixar film here!

You nailed that one, Marion.

Thanks for the kind feedback on my "How To" entry. I've sent it off.

Marion's brilliant winner sent me off failing to top her in the worm department. Here's my attempt [NOTE: I've edited this and posted the newer version below]:

"You couldn't find a worm on a rotting corpse," his classmates used to mock him, but this endless teasing only steeled his resolve to become the world's foremost hunter of caterpillars, centipedes, entozoons and maggots. Laboring in obscurity until being named Person of the Year by Time Magazine in 1994, the "Wizard of Worms" was forced to retire in 2003 after being injured in a fluke encounter with a rabid annelid he ultimately managed to slaughter, have stuffed, and mount on the wall above his hearth. Afterthoughts of a Wormhunter tells his story in slithering detail. Bite down on this worm, you're guaranteed to be hooked.

When an infectious book blurb fastens itself onto the back of an unwitting host, (the curiously named but comparatively stolid Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter), you’re along for a whirlwind tour through the juicier parts of human parasitology that doesn’t let up until nothing but a dried-out husk of the larger book remains (spoiler alert - the first axiom of worm hunting ought to be, why bother? first you hunt the worms, then you die; then the worms hunt you). But, no matter, because by this time our plucky little blurb is in your hands, and we’ll bet you’re already itching to get your itching, suppurating digits on the soon-to-be-published sequel, Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter Reader. Already #13 on the WHO’s “Gone Viral” list, look for it soon!
frank

I've edited my previous "worm" blurb:

“You couldn't find a maggot on a rotting corpse," his schoolmates used to mock him when he spoke of his ambitions, but the worm soon turned and he grew up to become history’s foremost hunter of caterpillars, centipedes, and entozoons. Feared and respected throughout the animal kingdom, the mere mention of his name is enough to make any annelid squirm.

The self-proclaimed "Wizard of Worms" was forced to retire in 2003 after losing both his legs in a dramatic scuffle with a wily millipede. “I may have lost two legs,” he boasts, “but the millipede lost six hundred.”

He now spends his time helping fishermen bait hooks. This is his story.

Aw. I miss the "fluke encounter". But we have to kill our darlings, don't we?

In one corner, the indomitable human spirit. In the other, the forces of downsizing, sadism, and autocracy. Your employer's annual report? No, I Was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen!

The corporate catchphrase "Small is beautiful" never seemed so sinister.

Afterthoughts of a Wormhunter is, quite simply, the greatest story nema tode.

I was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen (Oprah's Book Club 64)

Justin Cameron has it all: successful career, beautiful fiancée, luxurious Manhattan apartment. Everything seems perfect—until loud music from a neighbor’s apartment keeps him awake at night. When he bangs on the door, he meets Kacey, the lead singer of the all-girl heavy metal band "The Pygmy Love Queen," --and Justin’s well-ordered existence is turned upside down. The critics have called I was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen "a delightful take on the classic ‘odd couple’ motif” (Boston Globe), “breezy…sexy” (Cosmopolitan), “a witty, engaging comedy of manners; what Jane Austen might have written had she lived among the contemporary thirty-something scene.” (NY Times)

Right on, Marion, and write on! Both of yours are great.
I had a hard time coming up with anything for the pygmy queen. So I took the easy route out...

I was Tortured by the Pygmy Love Queen

Never mind. (-:

Thanks Petra.

But really, I've gotta stop! I spent so much time on this, I feel like I might as well write the whole damn book.