The Marvellous Mr. Marble

Those of you who obsessively follow my fledgling writing career (which should really be all of you) will probably remember that I got a short story accepted for publication a few weeks ago. Good news, everyone - you can finally stop checking your calendars and wringing your weary hands, because my story is officially published and available for your reading pleasure. 

How you're feeling right now.

The story is called "The Marvellous Mr. Marble", and I originally wrote it for a creative writing class assignment in my fourth year of university. At the time, I had just read an article about the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa - for those of you with an irrational fear of hyperlinks, a random workman spotted the painting at the Louvre, thought to himself 'hmmm, that looks like a nice painting' - or whatever the equivalent phrase is in French - slipped it into into his cloak and walked out with it, at which point he managed to successfully evade police for two full years. I wanted to fit this into a story somehow, so I ended up writing a 4,000 word comedy story about a middle-aged man who lies about stealing the Mona Lisa to impress his old classmates at a high school reunion.

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Two New Cracked Articles!

Earlier this week, I was scrolling through my Facebook feed like a good little mindless millennial, when I stumbled across an article that was a list of unsolved murders. Being the sort of person who likes reading about unsolved murders, I clicked on it, and immediately congratulated myself on already knowing all about the first murder on the list. In fact, the further I read, the more familiar the article seemed.

Then I scrolled to the top and realize I'd written the damn thing.

The haunting images of dead-eyed statues, however, were chosen by somebody else.

As it turns out, I submitted an article about creepy unsolved murders back in May, and it got combined with two other excellent articles on creepy unsolved murders, and turned into a two-part creepy murder extravaganza for your Halloween viewing pleasure. Only a handful of the entries are actually mine, but all of them should have you sleeping with the lights on and railing at the unfeeling God that could allow these atrocities to go unpunished. 

You can read Part One right here, and you can read Part Two right here. Or you could go up to the top of the page and find them under the "Cracked Articles" tab. I can't tell you how to live your life. 

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Update on Cracked Stuff

If you're reading this, there's about a 50/50 chance that you found my website via Cracked.com. 

You either found me on here, or you're probably my mom. Hi, mom.

For those of you who are new to "the Internet" or "humour", Cracked.com is one of the internet's largest humour sites, specializing in list articles like "The 5 Weirdest Disappearances No One Can Explain" or "The 7 Most Horrifying Twist Endings (Happened in Real Life)". There are thousands of articles on there, but those two are definitely the best. 

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Cracked Article #4

As most of my regular readers/devoted followers/binocular-wielding stalkers already know, I write for Cracked.com from time to time. This is one of those times.

Brace yourselves, it's a weird article this time.

Article #4 is called 'The 5 Weirdest Disappearances No One Can Explain', and you can get to it by clicking that link. If you like taking extra, unnecessary steps to do everything, for reasons known only to you and your therapist, you can find the full list of my Cracked articles at the top of my webpage. It's under "Cracked articles". Because I excel at labeling.

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My Third Cracked Article

As most of my faithful blog followers already know, I write for Cracked.com.

These guys.

If you've stumbled randomly upon my blog while traversing the abyss of the internet, and my finicky website is currently functioning as intended, you can find my previous two articles somewhere near the top of this page, under "Cracked articles".

My third article will have something to do with touching reunions that went horribly awry. I can't actually tell you what it will be called or when it will be posted until the day it's actually strung up for the world to gaze upon, because I have only slightly more control over that than the janitor who cleans the Cracked offices at night, but you can rest assured that I'll let you know when it's available.

Or you could just keep refreshing the Cracked homepage now. Your choice. 

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10 Words You Need to Add to Your Vocabulary

Tens of thousands of years ago, when mankind first decided to take this 'walking on two legs' thing out for a spin, we quickly realized that we needed to find a more effective way to communicate than the poop-flinging and hair-pulling tactics we'd been employing up until that point. So we created language. And although the world's oldest language still sounds like the anguished cries of people trapped in the godforsaken desert wasteland they call their home, in most parts of the world, language is constantly changing. And no language likes to change more than English.

English is the poorly-tended fondue of human languages. Sure, at some point it was pure and had its own distinct flavor, but then all sorts of different people came along and dropped chunks of things in it, and goddamn Gerald tripped over the cord and unplugged it and it congealed a little, and now no one really knows what the hell it tastes like. The influx of new words like 'blog' and 'jeggings' and 'guyliner' has been accompanied by the gradual loss of other equally great words, and it's time that we started to bring some of those words back.

Let's start with these ten.

1. Lugubrious 

[loo-goo-bree-us]

adj. excessively mournful or dismal

Wow, Google images. That's, uh... that's technically accurate, but a little dark.

Over the past few years, the entire range of human sadness has come to be incorporated by the phrase "this sucks". Whether your friend has just spilled their coffee, or had their entire family tragically killed in a five-car pileup involving a logging truck and a cattle car, "that sucks" is a go-to response. But no more. From now on, when true misery rears its ugly head, English speakers everywhere should fall to their knees and stare up into the light of the unforgiving sky, screaming 'curse this lugubrious turn of events!' as their voice rings through the empty, Godless heavens.

Also, lugubrious is super fun to say, and instantly lightens the mood. Win-win.

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Danielle Steel Takes the Greatest Author Photos of All Time

Let's talk about Danielle Steel.

This lady, right here.

For those of you who aren't rich, 50-something women, Danielle Steel is the bestselling author of approximately four thousand books about wealthy families blackmailing each other and going to jail over money. Everything she has ever written has turned into a bestseller, her books have been translated into virtually every remaining language on Earth, and she spends so much time perched on talk show couches that she has Oprah Winfrey on speed dial. She's the bestselling author currently breathing air, the fourth bestselling author in human history, and her real-life biography sounds more like a work of fiction than anything she's ever written. Fans praise her for her style, her stories, and her ability to put out new novels at a pace that suggests she's actually a team of enslaved writers living underneath Danielle Steel's kitchen floor. 

But what we should really be praising her for are her author photos. 

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My First Cracked Article! (I'm a Real Writer Now!)

A few weeks ago, I made a pretty exciting announcement on this blog - I had just had an article accepted by the massive online humor giant Cracked.com. Weeks later, after the editors have had time to polish it and come to terms with their decision to accept it, it's finally live on the site!

All you have to do is CLICK HERE to check it out. If you're curious, the topic is "5 Historical Figures More Terrifying Than Any Horror Villain".

What did this guy do? You're going to have the read the article to find out.

Thanks to everyone for their messages of congratulations! If you have any questions about writing for Cracked, or what the whole process looks like from my side, you could probably just find out by going to their website. Or you could ask me about it in the comments! Happy reading!

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My First Publication!

For the past year, if you clicked the "Publications" tab of my page, you'd see a trite little message that went something like:

I'm flattered that you think I'm good enough to be published, but I'm afraid I don't have anything to put here just yet. 

Well, I'm pleased to announce that, as of today, that message is no more. After much nagging from my regular readers to check out this whole 'Write For Cracked" thing, I've finally had an article accepted by Cracked.com!

Boo yeah.

I don't have a lot of details for you at the moment - I don't know when, exactly, the article will be published, and I don't know what title they will choose to publish it under. What I do know is that it's about historic figures who did things right out of horror movies, and that you should start frantically refreshing Cracked sometime around Halloween. 

Thanks to everyone who told me to send in an article! I'll post a link to it when it goes live.

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My Week at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Part 1

As I've mentioned a few times before on this blog, last spring I won my first writing award. The prize was a full scholarship to the September Writing with Style workshop at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Those of you who know how to work a calendar may have noticed that we're already halfway through September, and, sadly, my time at the Banff Centre is already at an end.

Since I wasn't allowed to stuff all you into my suitcase and drag you onto the Greyhound to Banff with me, I will be detailing my literary-tastic week here, in painstaking detail. Starting with:

Saturday

Those of you who find me fascinating enough to check up on each and every week will know that I spent most of the first Saturday sitting on a Greyhound bus. If you were to hop in a car and drive directly from my street to the front doors of the Banff Centre, it'd be almost exactly a four-hour journey, but thanks to Greyhound's unceasing dedication to late departures and random detours down rural cowpaths, the journey by bus takes a total of eight hours. Using the Edmonton Greyhound station means you even get to take a field trip into the most economically and socially bankrupt cesspit of Edmonton, where you can spend the hour before your departure trying to figure out which patrons of the station A&W are travelers, and which ones are prostitutes taking Uncle Burger breaks. (HINT: none of those people are travelers. Hope you wiped that seat off with bleach.)

Chariot of champions.

So after spending the better part of my day clutching my messenger bag to my chest and praying that whoever sat next to me would have minimal facial sores, the bus finally turned up into the mountains and dropped me off in Banff, before continuing on its way to Vancouver. This was it. I was on my own, with three pieces of luggage, half a novel manuscript, and absolutely no idea where to go.

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The 10 Fanciest Mustaches in Literature

This week, I'm that special combination of overheated and busy that leads to short blog posts. 

But at least there are ten fine-ass mustaches to stare at. 

10. Charles Dickens

You might say that I had some 'Great Expectations' for this writer's mustache.

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Let's Talk About Bad Book Reviews

I read a lot of writers' blogs.

I'm watching you.

Now, all the blogs I follow are filled with wonderful, original, witty insights about life and writing and publishing and love and hiding bodies in the woods in the middle of the night, but there are a few topics that tend to come up again and again on writers' blogs.

One of those topics is bad book reviews.

Summed up in this photo.

For the non-writers or new writers in my audience, let me summarize the debate real quick: Most authors who want to earn enough money from their books to afford a life that doesn't involve eating canned dog food under a bridge have to sell their books online. Now, with so many books screaming for attention on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo (which we're pretending is a real book retailer, so its feelings don't get hurt), you need a way to show consumers that your book is not a piece of 400-ply toilet paper. The way you do that is through book reviews. If your epic fantasy opus has tons and tons of glowing reviews, readers who stumble on your book are more likely to buy it so they can see what everyone is raving about. On the flipside, if a prospective reader stumbles on your book and finds nothing but people expressing their sympathies for the trees that had to die to print your epic fantasy turd/novel, chances are, they aren't going to spend their hard-earned money on your book. 

Book reviews affect sales. For fledgling authors, they can make or break your writing career. Obviously, this leads to some problems. 

Mr. Tickles was devastated to find a one-star review of his Amish BDSM dragon fantasy novel.

Different writers cope with bad reviews in different ways. 

Lately, it seems like many of them are not coping well. 

If you ever get bored enough to start following writing news, you'll notice that every few weeks, someone posts an article wherein an author refers to her bad reviews as 'bullying'. It's not just indie authors who are crying foul at poor reviews, either - big names like Anne Rice are getting in on the action. The author will claim that the bad reviews are unfair and undeserved. She will stomp her feet and claim that no one who worked so hard to write a book should ever be slapped with a one-star review. She will cry that she's being picked on, or singled out to be the sole recipient of a string of lousy reviews. If she's really on a roll, she'll even claim that these terrible reviews are being purposely written to ruin her sales; she might even decide that a rival author is behind the attack, talking fans into leaving terrible reviews to thin out the competition. 

Pictured: your greatest author rival, dreaming up that brilliant scheme.

To that end, I'm noticing some authors coming forward with solutions for the bad review crisis. Some of them post templates and criterion for reviews, to make sure that any bad reviews are fully justified. Some authors have specifically requested that readers send negative reviews to them as private messages, and avoid posting them publicly. Many authors will even personally reply to all negative reviews, disputing the reviewer's claims and arguing for a better review. If you spend enough time creeping through forums for writers and authors, you'll eventually stumble across debates about how best to deal with bad reviews, and debates about whether or not any of those bad-review-busting tactics are justified.

Here's my input: they're not. All of these attempts to 'deal with' bad reviews are complete horseshit, for three very good reasons:

1. Publishing is a business.

Your book is your baby. I know. I've written one, with another on the way. It's hard to take criticism on something you've worked so damn hard on, especially if the person giving the critique isn't an experienced writer themselves. And when your book is still in its unpublished infancy, yes, your feelings as an author should be considered. You are an artist looking for help to improve your work - anyone who gives relentlessly vicious criticism of a writer's unpublished work is just being cruel. A good beta reader can be harsh, but they should also be encouraging, offering suggestions for how the author can improve - even if that suggestion amounts to "learn to stop murdering the English language and get back to me". There is a big difference between giving much-needed honest feedback and being cruel for the sake of tearing the writer down. Writers are people with feelings, and it takes a lot of courage to let other people criticize your work.

Eat your book and write a new one. Just trust me, it'll help.

Consideration for your feelings stops the moment your book is published.

An unpublished manuscript is purely a work of art - the only benefit the author gets from it is personal satisfaction and self-expression. A published book is still a work of art... but it's also a product. If you want people to give you some of the money they earned from their hard lives of llama-rearing and drug-muling, just for the privilege of reading your book, then you have lost the right to silence your critics.

Searching for this image definitely put me on some kind of watch list.

Book reviews on websites like Amazon and Goodreads serve one main purpose: they help prospective readers decide whether or not they want to read your book. That's it. On a site like Amazon that deals with a wide variety of eclectic and balls-out-insane household goods, a book review isn't much different from a review for a toaster, or a 1000-pack of Jesus wafers. It lets customers know whether or not their money would be well-spent on that product. Sure, it also provides feedback for an author about her skills, and lets her know what sort of things she should work on for the next book, but that's just a side perk. I once wrote a detailed review of a William Faulkner novel, but unless I go dig him up and read my review to his remains, he isn't going to hear my advice, much less use it for a future novel. The only people who benefit from my review are the people who are contemplating purchasing an 80-year-old novel about people building a coffin for a sick old lady.

Turns out, Faulkner and his mustache don't give a fuck what I think.

Book reviews are a big part of the business, and if you expect to make money from your craft, you need to suck it up and deal with the not-so-flattering comments. No one steps up to defend J.K Rowling or Cormac McCarthy or Neil Gaiman's feelings when a negative review is posted. They're expected to deal with it; they're professional authors, and it's part of the job. If you're exchanging your written work for money, that makes you a professional author too, and the same rules apply. If you want to go from "pizza-faced thirteen year old writing shockingly depraved Calvin and Hobbes erotic fanfiction in the basement" to "poised, dignified master of the written word", you need to hold yourself to the same standards that big-name authors do. Hiding, intercepting or otherwise silencing your critics is censorship. It's dishonest. You are trying to trick readers out of their money by deceiving them into believing that your book is getting only positive reception. The review system doesn't work if your prospective readers are being sheltered from some of your honest reviews. And filtering out those bad reviews can reflect especially poorly on you, because...

2. It steals the spotlight from your book. 

If you are a published author, one of your biggest goals is getting people to read your book. You want people to buy it. You want people to discuss it. You want people to blog about it and Tweet about it and mention it on whatever other online invasions of privacy are passing for social networks these days. Yes, many authors have hopped on the bandwagon of blogging, tweeting and photographing the mundane details of their fast-paced and action-packed lives, but they have one goal in mind: to direct you to their website, so that you might discover, purchase, and read their books.

Above: every author ever.

Oscar Wilde was an interesting, eccentric character, but if it wasn't for his writing, he'd be just another forgotten dead Irishman who spent time in a hard labour camp for being gay. Stephen King fought and prevailed in an incredible battle against addiction, but the world would never know about it if he hadn't sold approximately 17 billion books. Rudyard Kipling isn't "old white racist dude who happened to have wrote a book or something", he's "renowned author of The Jungle Book, and also maybe sorta racist". Your books come first, and all the other neat shit you've done comes afterwards. 

Maintaining such a glorious mustache is the real White Man's Burden.

But when authors pour all of their time and energy into fighting back against bad reviews, they cease to be 'Writersaurus Rex, author of Alien Biker Babes in Space', and instead become 'Writersaurus Rex, that guy who complains about bad book reviews all the time'. 

He's just frustrated from typing with his tiny, ridiculous hands. 

There have been a few writers who've stepped forward in the past few years to complain about their bad reviews, or complain that they're being 'victimized' or 'bullied' by negative reviews. The results are always the same. All of their search engine traffic gets hijacked by news stories about their plight, burying their personal blogs, Amazon pages and Goodreads profiles. Five-star reviews start pouring in from sympathetic readers who want to help the author combat those nasty reviews, and one-star reviews trickle in from trolls who want to get a rise out of the author. Either way, it's all about the author. No one is actually reading the book, or purchasing it, or discussing it, or sharing it, or ripping all the pages out of it to make jaunty paper hats. It's not about the book at all, and when everyone gets bored of the hype, the author is left with a mess of fake reviews and few, if any, new readers. It doesn't get you any further ahead, especially when you consider...

3. Bad reviews are inevitable. 

You can't please everybody.

Even this dog is disappointed in you.

Every book gets bad reviews. A Game of Thrones has bad reviews. The Road has bad reviews. The Hobbit has bad reviews. Every book you've ever enjoyed, cried with, laughed at, or set on fire in the backyard has bad reviews. Because ultimately, a review is about how much you personally enjoyed a book. One person may think a character is the greatest achievement of fiction since humans started painting stories on cave walls, and another person may think the same character is a waste of breath and ink. I would personally construct a time machine to go back in time and worship at the altar of Kurt Vonnegut's glorious faux-hippie mustache, but not everyone agrees with me.

People who hate Kurt Vonnegut are stupid and wrong. All sorts of people are stupid and wrong. So, yes, you're going to see book reviews that are unfair, or uneducated, or out-and-out cruel. I have a hipster friend who seems to get off on writing pretentious, pedantic reviews that put down popular books for being 'patriarchal' or 'hegemonic' while praising the obscure, underground, sixteen-copies-run-off-on-Mom's-pri+nter publications she enjoys. To each their own. Some people are dicks, and some people are dickish dicks made of smaller dicks that curl up every night in their hairy dick nests to vomit dicks into the dick mouths of their screeching dick offspring. 

Case in point. 

Here's the thing to keep in mind, though. No one reading that review is inclined to think any less of the book, or of the girl who wrote it. The only person who looks bad is the reviewer herself. Thoughtful, intelligent, well-deserved criticism may make people reconsider buying your books. Pointless name-calling will not. If most of your book reviews are positive, a few people expressing their distaste is not going to 'undo' all of those great reviews; scathing one-star reviews like the one posted above account for just 1% of The Diary of a Young Girl's reviews, and they have yet to make any real impact on its success or popularity. 

And if the majority of your reviews are negative? Your readers just might be onto something - consider editing the next book more carefully. 

Step One: Buy a shitload of red pens. 

Either way, there is a right way and a wrong way to deal with bad reviews. Throwing a hissy fit is the wrong way. Next time you read a bad review and feel yourself coiling into an emotional knot, step away from the computer. Put down your smartphone. Get yourself a hot cup of coffee, dump that shit out, because seriously, who takes comfort from coffee, and go get yourself a whole bunch of wine. Boxed or bottled, your choice. Then you need to curl up with a good book, or a favourite movie, and give yourself a moment to relax. Sleep on it. 

And when you feel better, you fire that computer back up and you get right back to writing. Because fuck those bad reviews. They can't stop you. 

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Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Who's Most Prolific of Them All?

So a little while ago, I came across this article. For those of you who have a pathological fear of hotlinks, the article discusses the fact that the Game of Thrones producers are going to have to start pulling wacky Hodor adventures out of their collective butts to keep the show running, because they are about to run out of book. The show's fifth season will encompass both the fourth and fifth novels - because the fourth book is completely filled with brand new identical white guys to memorize, and the fifth book takes place concurrently - with the sixth novel not expected to come out in time for the filming of season six. This means the writers are going to have to take the few things they've been told about the series ending and magic up ten episodes.

Spoiler Alert: Winter isn't the only thing that's going to come.

Of course, George R R. Martin's notoriously slow writing isn't news; in an interview I sat in on with Lena Headey and Peter Dinklage, the Lannister actors mentioned that the author has been all but banned from the set, because the time he spent there was hindering the already-glacial progress on his books. Just how slow does George Raymond Richard Martin write? Somewhere between 240 and 356 words per day, using a metric that the article's author Walt Hickey calls 'final words written per day'.

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Overanalyzing Divergent: We Need to Talk About Allegiant

I love dystopian teen novels.

Yes. Oh, yes. 

The rest of the world is getting sick of the dystopian fantasy genre by now, but I still wake up every morning eager to read about teen angst, forced caste systems and cartoonishly sinister governments, mostly because I live in a mayonnaise-white suburb with no post-apocalyptic biker gangs to speak of, and the only corrupt authority figures are the officials down at city hall who make us pay by the bag for garbage pickup. The crumbling ruins of a once-great city are a welcome escape. So when I heard about the Divergent trilogy, I disregarded the mixed reviews I'd heard and went out to get my hands on a copy of the books.

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21 More of the Strangest Books I've Ever Seen

A few weeks ago, I didn't have the time to write a proper post with actual words, and so I put together a collection of some of the craziest books I ever came across in my three years as a library employee. You lot rewarded me by making it my most popular post ever. This week, I've got far too many exams to write a real post, and since I'm not one to argue with operant conditioning, this week I present to you 21 more of the strangest books I've ever seen.

As you go through this list, keep in mind that these aren't weird little vanity publications cluttering up the dusty corners of Amazon. These are real, actual books that real, actual editors approved and sold to real, actual people.

The first step is to bleach your hair that special shade of 90's blond and steal your dad's old sweater.

 Because you never know when someone will nuke the family ranch.

Just in case the first edition didn't quite cut it for you.

The real joke is that these books made the author more money than you'll ever see.

Apparently there is no audience too small to warrant a book deal.

Finally, a book for the lesbian horse on your Christmas list.

If your poo is telling you things, I think it's time to get the professionals.

If someone walks in on you doing these, just tell them it's a sex thing. Less embarrassing.

The natural sequel to 'The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands'.

Step One: Float away on a giant door while your love interest freezes to death.

I'm not usually a fan of pseudonyms, but sometimes they're a good idea.

This is wrong for entirely different reasons.

The first and only thing I would force my teenage offspring to read.

Alternate title: How to get checked into a rest home at the age of 52.

People have been making origami sperm since ancient times? Really?

That sounds like a challenge.

How creepy this book is depends entirely on who's holding it.

If I ever had children, I would bring a copy of this to all their therapy appointments.

My dog is too dumb to learn 'sit', I can't see this working out.

Welcome to your new life of fucking Elmer's Glue and cantaloupes.

Keep an eye out for the sequel: Being Ashamed of Hair in Funny Places

So to all of my aspiring author friends out there who are struggling to get published: keep at it. Because apparently, they'll publish just about anything. 

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29 of the Strangest Books I've Ever Seen

I spent several years working in a library. I was employed as a general service page, a position which mostly consists of putting books away, hauling books around, and changing the subject when patrons ask you if the library passed its last bed bug inspection.

If you people would stop sleeping with the Catcher in the Rye under your pillow, we wouldn't have this problem.

But when I wasn't sorting books and dancing nervously around the subject of basic hygiene, I spent a lot of time browsing the books that came through the library. Most of them were your average, everyday library materials - novels, kids' books, cookbooks, boatloads of old-lady porn, etc. But every now and then, something special caught my eye, and luckily, I had the good sense to photograph it. Because I don't think anyone would have believed me if I'd told them about these books.

Look, children! Everything you love can get cancer!

So, did he survive after all... or did he get sent to Hell?

There are a lot of important theological questions out there, but this one is the real biggie.

"Yes, boys, it was the chocolate pudding that drove your mother and I to divorce. May the guilt haunt you for the rest of your days."

Don't you hate it when you can't go out and pick your nose with your friends because you've developed polka dots?

No, your sister ruptured the internal organs of an ape.

Jesus, Arthur, you're like 10 years old. No more MTV for you.

Careful, Gramps, if those shorts were any shorter, we'd all see your banana.

Don't forget to take them on regular walks.

Paper bags were not optional.

There are 5,416 known species of mammal. You chose this one.

Rejected title: How to be a Bad Parent Before Your Child is Even Born

For kids who can't sit through Harry Potter without any poop jokes.

"Instead of a title, how about we just throw on some provocative words and call it a day?"

Comes with a free set of nightmares!

Finally, you can figure out what to do with all those elk corpses piled up in your living room!

Every chapter begins and ends with "chloroform".

Physicists, however, are dirty apes, and we should keep them in zoos.

Fun fact! LSD kills elephants immediately! Okay, maybe not so fun.

Who needs medical attention when you can have reassuring children's picture books?

And here I thought they really valued my precious hold time.

If your baby has laser vision, your panic is 100% justified.

It's worth noting that the library I worked at insists on shelving these in with the children's art books.

My guess would be... to not die?

Or maybe this is what dying people want. Afterlife pets.

Domestic violence isn't funny. The fish's apparent joy at shattering a tacky seashell, however, is.

You and every teenage boy on the planet.

Because... even cookies need love?

Nothing says "happy fun bedtime story" like "5 years in prison for aggravated sexual assault".

What other crazy books have you spotted at your local library? Let me know in the comments!

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