The blog is moving!

When I made this blog, I had this delusion that I needed a pen name. I worried about what my mom's friends would think of her when they learned--through my novel getting published, an occurrence I shouldn't have assumed would be on the horizon--that their friend's son had a foul mouth and a very non-evangelical view of homosexuals.
Now, I really don't give a fart (read:fuck) any more.
My new blog is njgilbert.blogspot.com
The new blog will continue to be mostly PG-13 (one F-bomb per movie=one F-bomb per post in the blog-o-sphere, I may skew less than that) and if you want to follow me there I'd appreciate it. If you don't, I still love you, unless you were the person who bought the last package of Haribo Gummy bears from Giant Eagle last week. I'll never love that lucky child of a motherless goat, those golden gummies deserve that at least.
Kisses,
Nate

Name my Book!

I'm not dead, the blog's not dead, but Greg Giraldo--one of the world's funniest--is. I've taken a little break from blogging to really focus on the rougher part of the new novel. While I've been paining over how best to introduce Juan "John" Hernandez, the Mexican-American with long Spanish heritage who is also a Nazi skin head, I've also been hard at work coming up with a really good title for the book.
This is where you guys can help!

The working title is THE DETOUR, but I don't like it because it has a serious weight to it, and I can see the book cover being a forest of bare trees with a forking road like this:

Except it would also be in blue and there'd be a raven taking flight or something, which is not at all the tone of my book.

Here are others I've fooled with:
*A Chris Hansen Detour; a play on the "To Catch a Predator" style introduction of my co-main character, Jolene.
*Pen and Ink Detour
*Her Hair was Purple and Her Gun was Loaded
*A Detour on the way to Comic-Con
*Finnegan Peck and the Anime Girl
I'm open to any other suggestions!

To help, here is a brief explanation of the story:
Finnegan Peck is an aspiring comic book creator working at a coffee shop. On his way home from work, he see's a small sign by the side of the road with an arrow drawn on it. Following that sign he finds a trail of others that lead to an abandoned warehouse. Inside, he meets the girl of his dreams. She's got purple hair, an Anime t-shirt, and a military potty mouth. To him, her only downside is that she also has a gun aimed at his heart.
After escaping that danger, the rest of the story involves Finn running--sometimes away and sometimes towards--a list of odd ball characters including; A Nazi Skinhead with an accent straight out of Fargo, a Police Detective on suspension, an insane ex-girlfriend, a gay Armenian with an Indie band, and the purple haired Anime girl.

Thanks in advance for the help, and send God a shout out for Greg if you're so inclined.

If this doesn't make you smile please leave me alone because you are evil and have no soul.

Enjoy!

And Finnegan's last name shall be...

A few posts ago, I asked for help naming the main character of my new novel. I got many suggestions, one kinda grumpy rant from a person who didn't offer a suggestion after I answered their concerns, and a blow to my ego when I realized that many of my friends are way smarter than me and have words floating around in their head that make my lexicon look like a fifth grader's (although, I don't know if fifth graders would use the word lexicon, and I don't really know if I used it correctly.)
Today, I think I finally found the answer. I was out to lunch with my family when my sister KP--whose blog about parenting a toddler called Kraken and a tiny baby who will not ride in the car without screaming can be found here--mentioned that our waitress went to our high school. I sort of recognized her, but she was a few years ahead of me which means she may as well have gone to a completely different school altogether.

KP told me the waitress's name, my son shouted "Wolverine" over it because he got a Wolverine figure with pop-able claws from McDonald's and it's now his new favorite word over Buzz Lightyear, and I acted like I had heard her to let the conversation roll on.

After lunch, I couldn't stop wondering what the name actually was. I think her first name was Amanda or Ashley, and the last name Feck or Beck or Peck.

Thinking about the last name Peck really got my creative engine running. It's what Val Kilmer calls Warwick Davis in the movie Willow. It's a lot like speck without actually being speck, and Finnegan is basically a common speck through whom the story unfolds. Finnegan Peck, to me, calls forth the mental image of an everyman who faces their life's greatest adventure with stumbling, yet brave, steps. This makes it perfect.

He will be called Finnegan Peck, and he will almost be run down by a Minnesotan Nazi in a rape van while running from a burning building with gas on his shoe and a tear in the crotch of his pants. Let it be so!

*Updated* I just think this is incredible!

UPDATE: Link to the press here
The Concord Free Press is a publisher who gives their books away for free. The authors donate the work for the limited free print run, an artist designs the cover pro-bono, and then people can get them for free. When you see one in a bookstore (mostly found in NY,NJ,MA, and other NE Patriots football places) it has a sticker that says, "100% off" on the cover and "$0.00" on the back.
The books look awesome, and they are by legit writing homies like Gregory Macguire who wrote Wicked.
Here's his book:

You can request a free book on the website--only 100 requests per day--and the only catch is that once you read the book you are supposed to donate money to something somewhere.

That's right, you get a free book and you give a little money to someone who needs it. You don't give the money to the press, although you can, you're supposed to give the money to whatever floats you. Soup kitchen? Sure! Church group that helps teach kids to play instruments? I dunno if that exists, but that will work. Sister who can't pay for her car repair this month? Why wouldn't that be okay?! The book should remind you to be a better you, and then you should pass it on and have someone else do the same thing.

The press makes money from the sale of the books that were featured in past giveaways, like Greg's, and also from website donations. I just think this is so bad ass it hurts. Now, I just have to get published and get a big enough following that they'll print one of my books for free! It's a better goal than my old one, which was to make enough money to buy a big TV and keep my wife from making me get a real people job.

Also, I found this picture today and it is awesome!

I was right, but then I screwed it all up by being very, very wrong.

Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to play a game with adults while my ankle biter was occupied by his Mimi. We played Apples to Apples--a great game, by the way--and two things came from the experience that I had to research at home.

1. I mentioned at one point that Georgia O'Keeffe could fit the category of "dirty" for the purpose of the game because of her "vagina flowers." I thought it was common knowledge that her paintings look like colorful versions of Woman's personal flower. These pictures may plead my case for me.


2.As a separate argument, I mentioned that the Statue of Liberty could be considered shy because she was originally supposed to be naked. I haven't found any evidence of this, and I'm not ashamed to say that I'm completely mad on this point. I think this is one of those daydreams young men have when they spend too much time learning history while their hormones are out of control.

Crying over the holocaust does not a baby make!

This video made me weep. The old man in it survived life at two Nazi death camps (if I remember correctly from NPR last night) and returned with his daughter and grandchildren to dance on the grounds.

At one point he's leading a conga line, and the enormity of the horrors that went on in the spaces around him made me start to cry.
Some people find it offensive that anyone would ever dance where Hitler sent so many to die, but I find it powerful and filled with hope.

At the very end, near the 4 minute mark, he--the survivor--gives his take on the whole deal.