The “Wretched” Black Listed

My novel, at the time of writing this piece, has been black listed by Barnes and Noble. They have given me no explanation to their hasty decision to remove my book from their website after being previously approved.

As a young writer, imagine how excited I was to see my book being offered on Barnes and Noble. I told everyone to check it out. I screamed it from the roof tops until my neighbors called the police (the bastards).

It was on the site for one day.

One.

My publisher and I both believe it was because of the controversial cover, which pokes fun at the Satanic Bible. Besides a small, purple dildo in the far left hand corner, there isn’t anything that vile about the cover – nothing worthy of being black listed from their website. I saw a book being sold there called “Not your Phocking Motivational Coach,”by Jenna Jameson showing a man sticking his face in his teacher’s ass.

Let me repeat that in case you missed it – a man sticking his head in his teacher’s ass!

My book is not okay, but that is perfectly fine to be sold in their stores. And there are other examples.

The novel “Snuff” by Chuck Palahniuk has a sex doll’s mouth on the cover and follows a woman experiencing her first gang bang (its a good book). They sell Hentai books like this one and a book called the “Haunted Vagina,” but my book about redemption and forgiveness is too vile, too disgusting to be sold on their precious platform.

When they have a book called, “Big Dicked Woman Meets the Man with a Vagina,” they lose all fucking creditably.

So please continue to support my novel over on Amazon. At least they got balls.

And so it goes.

A Real Big Blog In the Butt

The hardest thing about keeping a blog is the creation of content on a regular basis. There is a real pressure there to write, write, write.

Write what?

This is the hard part – trying to think of something interesting to say, something to inspire a click or a read or a visit from some random stranger on the endless byways of the internet between YouTube clips and pornography.

Truth be told, I have no fucking idea.

My last blog talking about bullying seemed to strike a cord with people, so is that what I should focus on – my miserable, fucked up life at the end of some piece of shit’s boot?

Not tonight.

Instead, I will inform you all of my new SCI-FI, YA novel I’m working on called Threshold and how this damn thing is slowly killing me. I’m over 50,000 words in and a big, fat ugly wall known as Writer’s Block decided to settle itself between me and my creative self.

Slowly, very slowly, I’ve been working through it – chiseling through the bedrock like
Andy Dufresne did his cell wall in Shawshank Redemption. I’ve crawled through the shit, just like him, and appear to be on the way out of the tunnel – I see before me the light of the story’s conclusion, and now push forward with renewed vigor.

The end draws nigh.

I’m shooting for 80 to 85,000 words and believe I can get there soon if the story continues to flow better.

I want to finish the book, this first draft, within the next month or two. After that, I will start shopping around for an agent and from there, make my millions of dollars.

And so it goes.

A Lesson Learned

I just wanted to share a story, a walk down memory lane if your nasty.

Imagine if you will a young man, with shoulder length, brown hair and glasses the sizes of small planets. Oh, the frames were pink (another story for another day). I was new to my school, having just moved from Texas to Indiana.

This was sixth grade.

This was 1991 (I think), my memory isn’t so good. Too much booze and crack.

Anyway.

I was excited to be back in Indiana, my family is originally from Lafayette, so I thought the move would be good.

It wasn’t.

You see, kids back in my elementary school had gotten to know me pretty well as the quiet kid who liked drawing monsters and writing horror stories. I was the kid who checked out tons of books on vampires, zombies, and all sorts of mythological beasties. I’m not sure if they liked me back then, but I didn’t feel out of place or judged.

Indiana was different.

I remember sitting in my first class and working on a short horror story. I didn’t think much of it, just doing my thing when suddenly the girl in front of  me, a girl I thought was kind of cute, turned around and looked at me.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Writing a story,” I answered.

“About what?”

“A monster that wakes up from a long slumber and starts eating a bunch of people.”

“Are you a Satanist?”

“No.”

“You’re a Satanist.”

The next thing I knew, this girl (whose name will remain hidden to protect the judgmental cunt) started telling everyone around her that I worshipped Satan. By the end of the day, I had gone from the quiet new kid, to the new kid who worshipped the Devil. It destroyed me and forever damaged my reputation at school. It didn’t help me get dates either, if you can imagine. This was in Greenwood, the school was Greenwood Middle School.

It recently got tore down.

I didn’t give a fuck.

I got tore down, it’s only poetic justice for that fucker to be torn down too.

And so it goes.

The Cover: An Origin Story

                The Wretched is my new novel, published by Burning Bulb Publications – and it debuted just under a week ago. And it has sold millions of copies.

                Okay, maybe not millions – but at least a few dozen! Yeah, that sounds about right – a few dozen copies in both its electronic and paperback format. As a babe in the literary world, I know the Wretched has a long mountain to climb if its going to be a success for both myself and my publisher, who is probably wondering if taking a chance on this particular novel was a good idea or not.

                And so it goes.

                I say it was a wonderful idea, brilliant – one they will not live to regret.

                They are saying, “Well, let us wait and see.”

                The reason I’m writing this blog is to give a little background about the cover. It was designed by a good friend of mine, an incredibly awesome artist, named Charles Shane Stanley. If you like it and want him to work on your novel or art project, check him out, because the dude is brilliant. Anyway, when my novel was accepted by my publisher, they sent me a mockup cover for the Wretched. It was okay, but it didn’t really capture the tone of the book, so I reached out to my friend Shane. And like the insane wizard he no doubt is, he created the cover perfectly.

                I wanted to do make a parody of the Satanic Bible. On the cover, you have the Satanic pentagram, famous for showing the inverted five-pointed star with the goat head in the middle, surrounded by rings and a few runes. My idea was to replace the runes with everyday, mundane items like a beer, coffee, hot dogs, donut, and my personal favorite – a purple dildo.

When my wife saw the dick, she asked me, “Is that a dick?”

                “No. It’s a dildo.”

                “Why do you have a dildo?”

                “Why do you have a dildo?” I asked.

                “I don’t have one.”

                “But if you did it’d probably be purple, right?”

                “I can’t show that to my friends now.”

                “Show them later then,” I said.

                There is no real reason to have it there except I think its hilarious. And for my readers, I wanted them to know right off the back that this book, though it deals with serious themes, is first and foremost a comedy. Be it a black one.

                And since the novel follows the redemption of Lucifer, I wanted the symbol of the goat to be dead on the cover of the book, because its symbolic of the central characters metamorphosis from his old, archaic image to something different. And the only way to do that is to kill what he was and what he used to represent on his path to enlightenment and possibly forgiveness.

                So there is a method to my madness and a reason for the cover to be the way it is. I love it. I think it encapsulates everything about the book absolutely perfectly!

                So that’s a  bit on the cover.

                In a nutshell.

                Thanks for reading.

Here is a link to my book, the WRETCHED.

Welcome

My name is Jason Guinn and my book, THE WRETCHED, just came out. You can purchase it over at Amazon – link will be posted below.

In the coming days, I will try and write blogs that focus on writing, Geek culture, and other random stuff I find interesting.

This post will be shorter than future ones, but I just wanted to say Hi.

So, hi.

This is my book. You can get it on Amazon by searching Jason Guinn or The Wretched. Read it, before the forces of darkness consume thee.