Category: novels i’m putting out there

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THE COUNTER-COMEDIANS (first draft, chapters one and two)

Steven Augustine

These are the first couple of chapters from my new novel… started as a little vacation from the massive novel project I’ve been working on for three years (up to c. page 400 of a single-spaced, narrow-margined, 12pt-font  manuscript). I find that the best way to avoid “writer’s block” is to ride two or three horses at a time, so to speak (in case of a stalled pony, the others can drag it behind them for awhile). This is only very, very faintly auto-biographical (the novel’s own protestations notwithstanding). This book will get funnier and funnier as it goes along, … Continue reading THE COUNTER-COMEDIANS (first draft, chapters one and two)

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THAT PANOPLY OF VOICES (in my head)

Steven Augustine

  Five or six or seven of my creations speak for themselves:   *** “To write at all well is to relinquish one’s casual understanding of the world. One’s self-protecting misconceptions of the world. To write at all well is to yank the veil off it. The process changes the writer, and only a changed writer can change the world for the reader reading him. Writing for a complicated, captive, paying audience of con men, arsonists, robbers, rapists, drug addicts, tax evaders, purse-snatchers, brawlers, burglars, bootleggers and sundry uncouth disturbers of the peace, I developed a complicated knowledge of what … Continue reading THAT PANOPLY OF VOICES (in my head)

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THIS INCREDIBLE SEX COMEDY: EXCERPTS (chapters 28, 29 and 37)

Steven Augustine

  28THE STORY OF PAUL AND JOEL [1986] PART FIVE   Paul finally managed to cross Hennepin Ave again,  walking this time very slowly, away from the sinister calm of the lakes (and it was disturbingly easy to imagine that all of the chanting drivers and flag-waving passengers in all of the honking cars he crossed in front of as he made his way toward the human side of the street were laughing at him). Everything Gold had gone (or come) to Shit, suddenly. There was a vivid unreality to it all. The poems he would one day get out … Continue reading THIS INCREDIBLE SEX COMEDY: EXCERPTS (chapters 28, 29 and 37)

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN from THIS INCREDIBLE SEX COMEDY

Steven Augustine

from the completed novel THIS INCREDIBLE SEX   COMEDY or  the little almanac  of Famous Black Philosophers & Great German Comedians  a novel as poem or symphony or joke —-(download the 231-pg pdf HERE Chapter 17 It boiled down to the bio-binary of dicks and pussies. The meatspace Zeroes and Ones. Haven’t you noticed? The Erection is clearly a One; the Pussy a Zero. The One a meagre figure, the Zero the flipside of Infinity. She was in a fuzzy white jumper that matched the desert-bone-white of her hair and pubic bush (which Paul had asked her to grow a … Continue reading CHAPTER SEVENTEEN from THIS INCREDIBLE SEX COMEDY

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JESUS in VEGAS: an Excerpt*

Steven Augustine

My favorite Allegory in which “Western Culture” is embodied by a schizy serial killer with daddy issues and a trendy identity crisis. Not that any of that is blatantly obvious in the text. Which one is the killer …? (*as found in the collection 3POSTMODERN MURDER MYSTERY NOVELLAS) 2 The Early Days of Television (Part One) The first time Benny saw her was in the produce aisle of the Decatur Blvd Von’s in Vegas and the first thing he said to her was “You look like you come from the stars, sister.” A meteorite-black Nefertiti in white. Who, me? she … Continue reading JESUS in VEGAS: an Excerpt*

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FICTIFICATION and ITS RISKS

Steven Augustine

In my latest completed Novel, THIS INCREDIBLE SEX  COMEDY, the (often far-out) fiction is so closely mixed with solid thru-lines of autobiography that I will probably never be able to retrieve unadulterated versions of those personal memories again. I noticed this effect quite some time ago: if I based a character on a lover, friend, enemy or acquaintance of many years gone, the character became that memory. This can be a dangerous process: memories interlink to confirm one another and one fictified node can spread a malarial weirdness that distorts an entire period of remembered Life. For example: I’ve incorporated so much, from … Continue reading FICTIFICATION and ITS RISKS

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Excerpt from THE BOMB COLLECTOR (a novel)

Steven Augustine

In early 2008 I finished a 41,000-word novel called The Bomb Collector. I wrote it with the goal in mind of writing a book with a secret layer, a secret layer that would remain absolutely detachable from a “normal” reading of the book. That is, one could get quite a lot (I hope) out of the book without needing to uncover its secret. Which is like Life itself, no? You can eat your favorite meals, argue facetiously with your colleagues, go swimming on Sundays and collect door knobs or key-chains quite happily without guessing at any of the twinkling layers … Continue reading Excerpt from THE BOMB COLLECTOR (a novel)

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THE NOVEL EXCERPT: from THE BOMB COLLECTOR

Steven Augustine

  [The Bomb Collector is a Novella featured in THREE POSTMODERN MURDER MYSTERY NOVELLAS] The only thing I like more than packing a suitcase is unpacking a suitcase; the former indicates an adventure to come and the latter an ordeal survived. My pleasure would be magnified in this case by unpacking my suitcases in an absolutely empty flat. Just walls, floor, windows, doors and ceiling. A ritual I was, however, too exhausted to enjoy before getting a little sleep. In the top layer of suitcase number one was a cloth-covered air mattress I’d purchased from a bankrupt Army Surplus store as … Continue reading THE NOVEL EXCERPT: from THE BOMB COLLECTOR

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THE BROTHERLAND MIRACLES: a Novel Excerpt

Steven Augustine

  [a gender-mending, Sye-Fye epic set 15 minutes into the  peril-rich Future] . “Father was busy reading and did not notice that the house was being filled with strange Indians until Mother spoke about it.” -Narcissa Cornwall, 1846 1. Ideological branding aside, most Lesbians she knew and admired had less problem with the penis as a fact than with the word Lesbian, that cardboard word, so dry, so nothing brown, redolent of the 1950s and the suppressed longings of whiskered librarians with scalp-torturingly tight buns streaked with grey. O’Sirus can even smell the book rot. The brambled grey heart of … Continue reading THE BROTHERLAND MIRACLES: a Novel Excerpt