Well, it seems that Dan Bloom is a real person, and this–maybe–is a photo of him:

Ben…

Tis me. Danny Dan Daniel Bloom. Just don’t call me Ishmael.

Thanks for posting this above, and sorry for the mis-spelled and typo-ridden emails. Some of them were Atomic Typos, ever heard of that term for proofreading? Look it up: atomic typo. I even have a blog devoted to it.

NOW to get serious. I was really really serious, and was talking about this book: “Angel the Fence” by Holocaust survivor Herman Rosenblat. Due to be published in USA in early February 2009, and also in Oz by HarperCollins Australia and in the UK by HarperCollins Thorsons Element.

The book is most likely a fraud, not a hoax per se, but a fraud. I really don’t know the exact details, but I do believe someone is behind this old man, 80 now, manipulating him for reasons unknown. OPRAH has invited him on her show twice. There are emails all over the world about this man’s love for his wife and how it all came to be. Google: “Herman Rosenblat” and you will see.

In a recent blog post, a noted Holocaust historian who believes the book is a fraud noted, just TODAY: “It is fairly certain that this is a
hoax. Historians are working on it. The facts will emerge shortly, and
for those who care about truth, it will not be a nice situation.”

Here is the book cover, and here is his website.

Book website:
http://angelatthefence.com/

BOOK COVER
http://www.amazon.com/Angel-Fence-True-Story-Survived/dp/042522581X

The book is not yet published. But the hype has been building for 10 years! Pub date is Feb. 3, 2009. But the publishers MIGHT have to recalll the book before it even gets released. See my news article below.

The only thing, Ben, is that I am afraid this another BEAH book waiting to implode, once the media see what the historians looking into this faux memoir present their findings to the New York Times. Or to me! I am freelance journo, too, not a 4:30 am phone freak!

I found your blog because I was researching how the BEAH book was covered in the Australian press, and I thought Shelley Gare did a fantastic job reporting the story. So I was looking to you to give me some feedback, that’s all, and you did, in your own sort of writerly way.

I am not a bad chap. Bit of a goofball, yes.

See pics and life here:
http://danbloom888.blogspot.com

I’m going to be honest, Dan, the immediate problem with your story is that you don’t know the exact details, and you simply believe that an eighty year old man has been manipulated. Old folk getting manipulated happens all the time, sadly, and they get ripped out of savings, medications, and sometimes crockery. Quite often they don’t end up on Oprah, but I must admit, I haven’t watched that show for a long time. I’m really a fan of fat Oprah, not thin, hang with movie stars and give away cars to upper middle class white people Oprah. A Holocaust survivor story about love sounds like the kind of thing her crowd would get off on, so you’re probably right. Still, I think if you’re going to go running round with this stuff, you might need some concrete details.

Slightly more pressing is, why give a shit? If some historian says it’ll turn out to be a fake, and they’ll do that soon enough, then let them do it. It’s already appearing on Snopes. I’m sure there’s more. It’s hardly like you’re leading the way in blowing the lid off something hidden and amazing with the media attention that seems given to them. I mean, five secs in google gave me their faces:

So, what’s your personal stake in this?

I’m half tempted to call you out as a viral marketing tool, a way to seed interest in a book that’s likely to bore the shit out of me, but maybe that’s just me making this interesting.

You also wrote this:

“Dan, you’re slightly cracked, mate. There is perhaps a reason why mainstream media outlets don’t want to touch you, and why you’re here, talking to a nobody like me.”

LOL. I am a nobody, too!

“But I do like giving cracked dudes a bit of a voice, so if you leave details on what this literary fake is in the comments, then I’ll post it here for everyone to see.”

ABOVE DONE DEAL.

“Don’t email me and ask to chat privately, cause it isn’t going to happen, and at any rate, there’s really nothing I can do for you outside using this blog post if it’s true or not.”

CAN WE CHAT OFFLINE NOW? JUST ONE WRITER WANTING TO CHAT WITH ANOTHER WRITER. BY THE WAY…I am 60, maybe that explains it! SMILE. 60 going on 19. Slightly cracked? No, deeply, madly, utterly cracked. Story of me life. Now why would ANYONE ever think I am SPAM? This happens to me all the time, Ben. I send polite emails to complete strangers and they think I am SPAM. What’s up with that?

SMILE.

Your post gave me a good laff, and cheers, mate…

Danny on island Taiwan, same time zone as you Down Under…

if you really want to see how CRACKED I am, Ben, see my polar cities for Australia and NZ work here:

http://pcillu101.blogspot

and my lawsuit for US$1 billion against all world leaders for global warming here, from Reuters:

http://northwardho.blogspot.com

PS — I know what you are going to say now: “Dan, get a life!”

I did get a life. And look where it got me!

See my take on BLOOMSDAY and James Joyce here:

http://bloomsinthenews.blogspot.com

Over and out. Oh, I said that already, didn’t I?

You then sent me a picture of a typewriter, the blurb and publisher weekly review of Black Sheep, a google alert about the book you’re talking about, an article about author fakes, and also introduced yourself to my mate, John, over on his blog.

Which is why we won’t be talking offline.

What I’m saying is there’s a way to do things, and a way not to do things. You’ve crossed that line into the way you don’t do things. When I log into my email and there’s eight emails from you, that’s too much. Probably communicating on my blog with you like this is a little too much validation for your bit of crazy, but I like to give people a bit of rope. Yours kind’ve ran out, though, so I’d appreciate if you didn’t continue emailing me, left my friends alone, and have a good time while you’re in Thailand.

I’m sure you mean well, but this just isn’t my thing.

There was a series of messages left on my blogs, and emailed to me, on Saturday, and I thought I would share them today:

Ben
fascinating posts on the Beah story and the Chaon replies and the reporter’s misquots.the book i want to talk to you offline email about is going to be a huge bestseller in USa and OZ in 2009, huge huge huge, but it is very likely faked…..i have tried to tell some reproters in the USA about this, but they all say NOT interested. Not interested until the story breaks , that is. HAHA….lazy bums….they don’t want to break it…and when I write polite letters to the publisher, editor and agent of the book, NO REPLIES at all, not even eff off, they just ignore my polite emails trying to warn them they might be over their heads on this one…..What to dO? that is my quandry? Be quiet and let it pass? Or, like a true truth seeker, seek out the truth? (he says with a smile)

He also being a writer too and loving the publishing industry for what it is and isn;t

email me do

The above is, perhaps, the only email where detail is given. I’m half torn on if it’s an amazing bit of spam, or not, since it came off this post, where I talked about the supposed Beah fake. But of course, this was not the only one. There was this:

ben

i am reeserach a new hoax book, not pubbed yet in NYC, but soon, and i need your help in chatting with you. can you email me at danbloom At gmail DOT com

thanks

Danny
Tufts 1971

this story is even MORE amazing than the BEAH story…and when the hoax is revealed it will make world headlines. trust me…do email me sir

And this:

ben

i am reeserach a new hoax book, not pubbed yet in NYC, but soon, and i need your help in chatting with you. can you email me at danbloom At gmail DOT com

thanks

Danny
Tufts 1971

this story is even MORE amazing than the BEAH story…and when the hoax is revealed it will make world headlines. trust me…do email me sir

Yes, I did get it twice. I got it a third time, actually, but I’ll spare you the repeat, because there was this, which had a slight alteration:

not sure if you wnt to do this Ben, are you in Australia, not sure, but this book i told yuou about it will come to Oz too….it is about a Holocaust memoir that is very likely embellished beyond belief…..email me yes

ben

i am reeserach a new hoax book, not pubbed yet in NYC, but soon, and i need your help in chatting with you. can you email me at danbloom At gmail DOT com

thanks

Danny
Tufts 1971

this story is even MORE amazing than the BEAH story…and when the hoax is revealed it will make world headlines. trust me…do email me sir

After those I also got emails, a pair of them, one that said:

> ben
>
> i am reeserach a new hoax book, not pubbed yet in NYC, but soon, and i
> need your help in chatting with you. can you email me at danbloom At
> gmail DOT com
>
> thanks
>
> Danny
> Tufts 1971
>
> this story is even MORE amazing than the BEAH story…and when the
> hoax is revealed it will make world headlines. trust me…do email me
> sir
>

And another that sent me the link to the New York Times piece on the fraud around the Margaret B. Jones book, Love and Consequences.

At any rate, I’m torn over if I think this is new, smarter bot spam, though the Times piece seems to suggest not; if it’s not then, Dan, you’re slightly cracked, mate. There is perhaps a reason why mainstream media outlets don’t want to touch you, and why you’re here, talking to a nobody like me. But I do like giving cracked dudes a bit of a voice, so if you leave details on what this literary fake is in the comments, then I’ll post it here for everyone to see. Don’t email me and ask to chat privately, cause it isn’t going to happen, and at any rate, there’s really nothing I can do for you outside using this blog post if it’s true or not.

But anyhow, lets here it now.

I’m slowly making my way through Octavia Butler’s novels, still. I had originally planned to write a story which contained a critical review of all her work, but as the story grew in my head, I realised that mash of forms didn’t make a very interesting piece, and so now I’ve shuffled into something else.*

I don’t know how much Butler anyone reading this has read, but feel free to chime in if you got an opinion. I’d be surprised if a lot of Australians do, since she’s not really published here, and a lot of her themes and concerns feel very American, thus giving her a very culturally specific readership. Kindred, perhaps her most well known of books in the States (at least, from what I understand, I might be wrong) is concerned with racial elements that link to American history, and that does tend to limit her audience, I think; in comparison, the racial concerns she explores in Parable of the Sower are more universal, and reach a larger audience, even though it is the less complex of the two books. In Kindred, Butler takes her narrator, and dumps her back in time to rescue a white slave owner who may, or may not, be her great great great grandfather. She is pulled whenever Rufus–the white guy–reaches a point of life threatening danger, and from this device, uses the situation to explore slave conditions.

It’s an early book, but Butler’s deceptively simple language is there, as are the emotions she wishes to convey, which would resonate stronger as she wrote more. What’s good to see, however, is how murky she’s willing to be, even early on in her work. There’s no hero, no villain. It might seem strange to say this, but if you compare to, say Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, which explores different aspects of racial portrayals, you might find it a bit more interesting. In Rushdie’s book, he picks a side to sit on, and he doesn’t have a lot of understanding for the other. Butler, while she does pick a side–slave ownership is never supported–she doesn’t make villains out of her characters, and it is that concept, which sits at the centre of the book, that gives it something that another book with a similar concept might not have. It’s a very admirable thing, that greyness, that ability to write everyone sympathetically, that I think was one of the most interesting about Butler, but others could go differently on it.

Anyhow, I’m currently reading the Wild Seed series, which I had not read before. I’m not exactly sure I’d recommend the first book to anyone, mind you, and I miss that simple honest voice, but it is starting to pick up, which is nice.

* In case you’re curious, the story is still related to Butler’s work. It just doesn’t have the critical piece, and the story has become more complex, and layered, and difficult, which is awesome.

…and that’s that the cover of every romance novel you have seen is now alive, thanks to a man with a sparkling green guitar.

(Thanks to Jhayne)

In the trailers before the new Bond flick, Quantum of Solace, began, there was a promo for the new Tom Cruise film. In it, he might play a German, but he seems not to have any kind of accent going; he does have an eye patch, though, and he is trying to kill Hitler.

Well, I thought, it couldn’t be worse than that.

Two hours later, I emerged, fairly sure I had been wrong in that simple assumption, and unable to tell you why the Quantum of Solace was important to the film.

I like to think I’m an intelligent guy. I get by. But other than the vague suggestion that the Quantum of Solace was a shadowy group of powerful, international figures who enjoyed replacing world leaders without any moral compunction so they can make money, I had no idea what they wanted, what they were doing, or why the guy in charge seemed to want to bank up water in poor countries and then install puppet dictators and make them sign agreements to pay for the Quantum of Solace to sell them water. Perhaps the Quantum of Solace was just about selling water and making everyone feel that the environment was important. Or perhaps the Quantum of Solace didn’t really have much to do with this project. It seems financially unsound: destabilise a country so you can get control of the water board. I mean, destabilising a country is costly, I’m sure. Just as sneaking in with dynamite and blowing up rivers to create a catchment to do this. Also, you know, that sounds as if it would go a little noticed.

Not, y’know, that Bond seemed to care.

In fact, I’m sure that if someone had caught Bond, in the middle of the film, and tortured him about the Quantum of Solace, the conversation would have gone something like this:

We must torture you, Mr Bond, to know what you know.

Who?

Good lord, James, you can’t be serious? Women are like objects to you, and that film was ages ago, and seriously, didn’t you kill the guy involved there?

Oh.

How’d that work?

Oh.

Um.

Don’t suppose he told you about the Quantum of Solace?

Seriously now, I have a hot poker and your genitals are showing.

What have you been doing for the last hour and and a half?

…

Seriously, again with her?

So, Quantum of Solace?

Oh.

It’s okay. I know how it goes.

Is that what I’m doing here?

I suppose so.

I liked Casino Royale. I thought it was easily the best of the Bond films I’d seen, and while that might seem like a backhanded compliment, I did enjoy it, and I’d missed going to a cinema, so I thought the new one would be at least a safe bet for a Sunday evening.

I was wrong. It’s an awful film, plain and simple. The actors in it are decent, but the whole thing doesn’t make any real sense, and what sense it does make requires you to remember the previous film a lot better than I did. In addition to that, the action scenes are poorly directed, and there’s no real sense of what’s going on the moment Bond isn’t in a vehicle of some sort (though he does have fights in cars, boats and air planes, which I suppose is something). Worse, however, is that there’s no real engagement in any of the politics that seem to be lurking in the background. The greyness of world politics? The poor people Bond walks past in his suit and with his attractive girl? The environment?

No.

But then, I suppose, Bond was never meant to address such concerns.

Over the weekend I was talking, briefly, about William Shatner’s album, Has Been, and most specifically the cover of Pulp’s ‘Common People’.

If you’ve forgotten how awesome it was, here’s a mash-up of good old Spock and Kirk cartoon slash to the song, and if you’ve never heard it, now’s the time to do so. If you think it might suck, it’s alright to think that, but you’re wrong.

The Last Short Story crew have released a list of stories they consider the Year’s Best by Australian authors.

The Last Great House of Isla Tortuga…Peter M. Ball (Dreaming Again)
On the Finding of Photographs of My Former Loves… Peter M. Ball (Fantasy)
As We Know It… Lyn Battersby (Borderlands #10)
The Metawhore’s Tale… Lee Battersby (Canterbury 2100)
Seven Ages of the Protagonist… Deborah Biancotti (Scary Food)
Watertight Lies… Deborah Biancotti (2012)
Oh Russia… Simon Brown (2012)
The Empire… Simon Brown (Dreaming Again)
A Thousand Natural Shocks… Simon Brown (Borderlands #10)
Neverland Blues… Adam Browne (Dreaming Again)
The Glass Girl Looks Back… Stephanie Campisi (Shimmer)
A Pox on All Your Houses… Stephanie Campisi (Dog vs Sandwich)
The Gnomogist’s Tale… Matthew Chrulew (Canterbury 2100)
WinterCrystal Nights… Greg Egan (Interzone #215)
Angel Rising… Dirk Flinthart (Twelfth Planet Publishing)
This is Not My Story… Dirk Flinthart (ASIM #37)
Her Collection of Intimacy… Paul Haines (Black #2)
Creeping in Reptile Flesh… Robert Hood (Creeping in Reptile Flesh)
Unravelling… Robert Hood (Creeping in Reptile Flesh)
The New Deal… Trent Jamieson (Dreaming Again)
Machine Maid… Margo Lanagan (Extraordinary Engines)
The Goosle… Margo Lanagan (Del Ray Book of SF/F)
The Janus’s Tale… Penelope Love (Canterbury 2100)
The Constant Past… Sean McMullen (Dreaming Again)
The Funeral, Ruined… Ben Peek (Paper Cities)
David Bowie… Ben Peek (2012)
I Love You Like Water… Angela Slatter (2012)
The Hummingbird Heart… Angela Slatter (Shimmer)
Palisade… Cat Sparks (Clockwork Phoenix)
Ass-Hat Magic Spider… Scott Westerfeld (The Starry Rift)

Of more interest, however, was Ben Payne’s (benpayne) commentary on the Australian scene earlier:

This year saw, if anything, a further diffusing of Australian short fiction. If the last few years weren’t enough of an indicator, 2008 continued the trend toward anthologies and overseas markets and a further weakening of any regular short story markets on a local scale.

The year was always going to be dominated by Dreaming Again, the first mass market anthology of short stories we’ve seen for some time. How did it stack up? For my money, the results were mixed. The anthology lacked consistency, but was so large that it still managed to pull out a good number of worthwhile stories despite that. Worth buying, certainly. Whether it managed to hook any new converts to the cause of short fiction in this country is something time will, perhaps, tell. I suspect history will remember it most for the emergence of the promising new authors contained within (although there was some good work from more experienced hands too). As far as the authors contained within, I don’t think it stands as an accurate snapshot of the scene, but then, should we expect it to? Anyway, it’s a good book, when all’s said and done.

Beyond that, stocks looked thin for much of the year. There was a late flurry of books released at Conflux, in Canberra, including the excellent Canterbury 2100, a labour of love project for editor Dirk Flinthart which contained many high quality stories and which will no doubt become a cult classic. Probably the standout, along with Dreaming Again, of the year. Conflux also saw the growing Morrigan Books’ release of Voices, an anthology containing a number of up and coming local authors, as well as Robert Hood, who also released his collection, Creeping in Reptile Flesh, with some fine new work in it. In childrens’ fiction, Trust Me, an anthology of stories, appeared. Also noted without comment is Twelfth Planet’s 2012, a selection of science fiction and fantasy set in 2012, edited by Alisa Krasnostein and myself.

As I mentioned above, the magazine market appeared somewhat depleted, a continuing trend. The best news was that Aurealis managed to produce two issues, one a double, keeping, if not quite to schedule, at least respectably regular. I thought both issues had some excellent stories in, maintaining Aurealis’s place as one of the top markets in the country.

ASIM had a good year last year, and I thought this year they fell away a bit, but still produced some good stories. Once again, they kept to schedule, releasing six issues. Borderlands started the year well, with a strong Issue #10 following on from a weaker Issue #9 in December 07. Regularity again proved troublesome for them, with no further issues appearing as yet. The Australian Horror Association released their first issue of Midnight Echo late in the year. I thought it was promising, without delivering any real standouts, while other readers have been more keen. Certainly worth checking out if you’re a horror fan. And speaking of horror, Brimstone Press released three issues of their ambitious mass-market magazine Black, with a small amount of space allotted to fiction. The second issue in particular contained some strong stories. Brimstone also released another anthology of flash fiction. Noted without comment: my own webzine Dog versus Sandwich published a number of fantasy stories.

Last but not least, Australian authors continue to grow as a presence in international magazines. There have been some particularly impressive inroads made in terms of fantasy and new weird, with authors like Stephanie Campisi, Angela Slatter, Ben Peek, Kaaron Warren, Deb Biancotti, Cat Sparks and others now appearing quite regularly in international magazines. Peter M Ball is a very promising new author who is making a name for himself quickly. And authors such as Margo Lanagan, Garth Nix, Sean McMullen and Greg Egan continue to appear in the top markets with regularity.

Look down the list to some of the (ahem) less impressive international markets, and those in between the two poles, and you’ll see a lot of local authors emerging, and appearing with greater regularity. It’s possible that this explains, to some extent, the decline in local markets. The growing globalisation of the marketplace, especially through the growth of webzines and electronic submissions, means that more and more writers are turning to overseas markets as a first point of call, rather than working their way up through the local small press first. Whether this is a good or bad thing, perhaps only the perspective of time will tell.

It’s an interesting commentary, because, from my point of view at any rate, this has been a very quiet year on the local scene. There seemed to be less publications, just as there seemed to be less people doing things. It’s the way it goes, of course: the ebbs and flows of a tiny scene reliant on the moods of individuals and how much spare cash they’ve got.

However, what seemed to be missing, for me at least, was the spark of something exciting, something new, that I wanted to read. This feeling I have–because it’s not gone yet–is one of a general apathy with a lot of ‘art’ out there, be it a film, music, and piece of fiction. A lot of it just seems tired, rehashed, and uninvolving. I watched less films this year, read less, heard less, and while I don’t expect that to be any kind of empirical evidence that the world seemed to become a tiny dull thing in concern to the emotions that people were putting out in their work, it’s what I felt. But, honestly, the truth in this is that it might have been me, just going through a phase where I kick round, looking for new things and not finding what it is that I exactly want, and that indeed is how it goes at times.

Here’s hoping I’m not feeling that way this time next year.

I finally made my way to the end of Seagalogy by Vern.

You might note that by the way I said finally, that the book lost a bit of its shine, and it did, though it remained amusing throughout its whole.

The main idea behind the book is that, “It’s not just the presence of Seagal that makes it a Seagal film.” According to Vern, it’s the politics, the ideologies, the cultural interests, and the ability to throw someone through a window in a bar fight, if possible, that make this true. It’s not a bad theory, and I could kind of get behind it, but Vern, unfortunately, doesn’t have the critical ability to make such an argument work for three hundred pages. Part of it is his structure: He divides his book into chapters that follow each film in chronological order, and the chapters tell you what happened in each, while going off on tangents such as what a bad cop such and such was because of this, and that. Because of this, there’s no real development of that theme–you’re just suppose to see it lurking in the back of the films, the way Vern does. And, in fairness, I can see it lurking in the back, it’s just that I don’t particularly care about wading through reviews of films that, no matter how much Vern wants to make you believe there’s a body of work in place, are just kind of the same old shit.

Ultimately, in fact, after twenty seven film reviews where Vern doesn’t focus on Seagal’s personal life, personal interests, and the background of filming–there is a moment when Vern mentionsa conflict with mobsters, which I thought was interesting, and could be seen as an influence on later films–but because he doesn’t focus on this, and deliberately makes a choice not too, Vern simple reinforces the negative take of Seagal’s films: that they are very similar. That there’s really not that much going for them. That they’re not the work of a kind of action hero auteur, just as Vern’s book is not the work of someone with any real critical capacity.

Still, the book had its moments, so I got no hassle with my time in it. I just wish it had been smarter.

ALMOST WHITE RUSSIAN

2 oz Vodka
1 oz Coffee liqueur
1/2 oz semen
cream or milk
ice cubes

Pour vodka, semen and coffee liqueur over ice cubes and top up the glass with milk or cream.

MAN MADE OYSTERS

Cleaned oyster shells
Chilled fresh semen, the more the better
Ice
Lemon and pepper garnish

First clean the oyster shells in cold water. Do not use soap since the shell easily absorbs the nasty taste of soap. Spoon the chilled, fresh semen into each shell. Serve simply on ice with just a squeeze of fresh lemon and maybe a grind of black pepper.

Chef’s note: A true semen connoisseur might forego the lemon and pepper in favor of the non-adulterated semen flavor.

The author, himself, says, “My name is Paul Photenhauer. My friends call me “Fotie” and you can too. I enjoy food and cooking it - especially when I add a little semen to the dishes I create. No, I’m not joking and no, I’m not some sort of whacky freak. I’m just passionate about everything I do, including cooking with cum. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoy the book and the blog. I would love to hear what you have to say, so be sure to leave a comment or two!”

I think my Xmas shopping is complete now.

Thank you, Nick (My Milkshake Brings All the Boys to the Yard) Kaufmann (nick_kaufmann).

Incredibly cool and beautiful singer Amanda Palmer (of Dresden Dolls fame) has been forced to search for a new record label after Roadrunner refused to promote her latest single, video and album. Why? Because she refused to let them remove shots of her “fat” belly from the video for Leeds United (see above), and is therefore “uncommercial”. This comes from a metal label where, I have it on good authority, “you can count the number of women on the fingers of one hand and most of the people on the label are decidedly chunky hairy dudes”. Amanda’s fans are quiet rightly outraged by this shoddy, sexist behaviour and have begun a Rebellyon, posting pictures of their own bellies on fan forum Shadowbox and sending them to Roadrunner in protest:

This issue is not just about Amanda Palmer’s belly. This issue is about all the bellies of the world: big, small, hairy, stretch-marked, scarred, pregnant; every single belly. The aim is to reclaim the belly, to promote a healthy body image for everyone (not just females) and to protest against the “barbie dolling” of artists by record companies and the media.

Hell yes. If you fancy adding your belly to the growing collection, email Jordan at doritojoe89 [at] gmail [dot] com. I know I’m more than happy to support a woman who appreciates the value of southern comfort.

Link.