When Pigs Fly gets its butt kicked

Here is the latest review (ForeWord Clarion Review) of When Pigs Fly, and it's hardly kind. The writer's main point is that he hates my humor. Even his compliment about my storytelling is framed as a slap in the face. Mainly, though, Diet Cola is pissed off. He worked so hard to be an asshole in that story, and all the reviewer can focus on is what he drinks.

The review came through iUniverse, and they offered me the option to kill it. I told them heck no. Let it run.

When Pigs Fly
Bob Sanchez
iUniverse
290 pages
Softcover $17.95
978-1-9352-7866-5
Two Stars (out of Five)

“George Ashe sat in the passenger seat, inside the ceramic urn still protected by the FedEx box,” Bob Sanchez writes in a line that is typical of the humor in his latest novel. When Pigs Fly tells the story of Mack Durgin, a former police officer from Massachusetts, who has settled into retirement in Arizona only to be sucked into the biggest crime caper he’s ever seen.

Sanchez’s plot sounds original, but the novel reads like a watered down version of a Coen brothers’ script. First, there’s the compelling protagonist who wants nothing more than to settle down and enjoy some peace and quiet. Of course that can’t happen, because a box arrives with his friend’s ashes contained in an urn inside, and Mack knows that he has to fulfill a promise. The fulfillment of that promise becomes a harrowing task that involves over-the-top, one-dimensional characters like “Diet Cola”—an ex-con with a craving for calorie-free soft drinks—and an Elvis impersonator who is actually named Elvis.

Mack sets out to spread George Ashe’s ashes over the Grand Canyon. Along the way, he’s pursued by a variety of oddball characters who want to get their hands on another item contained inside the urn. This twist provides the hook that propels the tale forward.

Sanchez’s humor falls flat from the beginning because the novel seems to be trying too hard to be something that it isn’t. The characters are clichés that readers will have a hard time taking seriously. There are bad one-liners (“We’re not in Kansas anymore Dodo”) and downright shameless gags such as an Elvis impersonator getting stabbed in the eye with a tampon. Additionally, Sanchez contradicts himself often by making a point, then immediately overruling himself, as in this line: “Too bad tires were so hard to shoplift, or Ace could pick up some nice radials Stealing tires was always possible but it was tough getting them installed.” Statements like these lead readers to question the tale as a whole.

The real shame, however, is that Sanchez is actually a good storyteller when he puts his mind to it. The narrative flows well and actually captivates at times, but sadly, his writing skills are overshadowed by silly character names and lackluster dialogue.

Even in the craziest of crime capers, readers must be able to identify with the characters and believe that, as strange as the story is, it could actually happen. When Pigs Fly does not succeed in this.

Liam Brennan

Turkey Day in the Southwest

A short Thanksgiving essay of mine has just appeared in the newsletter of The California Writers's Club (West Valley Branch), thanks to their editor, Kathy Highcove. You'll need to scroll down to page 11 of the PDF, where I am honored to have space next to Alice Folkart's essay. Here it is:

Turkey Day in the Southwest

By Bob Sanchez

Kathy Highcove recently asked me to write about food for your Thanksgiving issue, and she could have picked no one more qualified. Indeed I have consumed food my entire life, and for virtually every reason one can imagine: hunger, consolation, gluttony, boredom, celebration, love, parental threats, desire to please, and the time of day, to name but a few.

Thanksgiving gives us one more reason to tie on the bib. It’s that wonderful day when we give thanks for football and our God-given freedom to overeat. In 1950s New England, we’d go to a high-school football game that Thursday morning and return home to the aroma of the baked turkey and mince pie that Mom was just pulling out of the oven. She’d make the piecrust with lard and the gravy with bird grease. Clogged arteries were a thing of the future—the near future, as it turned out.

When we sat down at the table, Dad led us in a swift and perfunctory Bless us oh Lord for all those delights we really took for granted. Critical questions followed: White meat or dark? (Always white for me.) More stuffing? (Yes, please.) Cranberries? (Yes, please.) Lakes of gravy filled the craters in the mashed potatoes, while salt and pepper rained over all. At one such meal I politely asked my brother’s girlfriend to “please piss the butter,” causing everyone but Mom and me to get up from the table, choking with laughter. Mom glowered and said nothing.

We didn’t know the word tryptophan back then, but we felt its effect as the afternoon wore on. Then in the days after Thanksgiving we’d pick away at the turkey’s carcass until there was nothing left of that poor bird but the bones and a plaintive gobble.

Half a century has passed, and now my wife and I live in New Mexico, where the official state question is “Red or green?” referring to one’s preference in chile colors. Our holidays have been drained of most of the fat except what we carry around on our persons, but otherwise we still have turkey on Turkey Day. So when my online friend Miz Highcove said, “Hey Bob, what’s a Hispanic Thanksgiving like?” I was briefly stumped because I’m not Hispanic (long story short: Papa Sanchez was from British Honduras and swore allegiance to King George).

So I delved into research for a few minutes, and it turns out that Southwest holiday fare isn’t much different from what you might expect: mix a bit of chile into the stuffing and go easy on the Pilgrim references, and you’re pretty much there. Several Web sources (and you know how authoritative they are), say that the real first Thanksgiving was celebrated near El Paso—therefore, near me—by a conquistador in 1598. Take that, Plimoth Plantation.

Of course, some original research was necessary, so we went out to eat. A Hispanic waitress told me that on Thanksgiving she likes to serve her family cornbread muffins made with chopped jalapeño, which sounds delicious to me. Finally, a Google search turned up such worthy suggestions as mixing spicy chorizo into the stuffing and combining a sweet and sour chile sauce with a cranberry base. So with a little Googling, you can easily add a Southwestern flair to your Thanksgiving meal.

Just keep an eye on the butter.

Bob Sanchez is an ex-New Englander living in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he’s webmaster of The Internet Review of Books. In the past, he’s been a technical writer and a few other things he’d rather not talk about. You might find his blog interesting and his novels amusing. They are When Pigs Fly and Getting Lucky.

Nothing That Needed Eyes (Flash Fiction)

Here's a short piece I wrote for my writing group's chapbook.

Nothing That Needed Eyes

No good would come from disturbing this old house, I thought, applying my crowbar to an ancient oak plank. Still, there could be money squirreled away somewhere in this mess. Rusty nails creaked and snapped; the board popped up to expose a shallow dirt cellar crawling with centipedes and roaches.

Nellie Westhaver had lived here alone, at first pitied and then ignored by the townsfolk for the shiftless husband who had held lots of odd jobs and fast women until he and some mini-skirted trash named Luann disappeared for good and good riddance, probably on the Greyhound to Boston. He’d left his rattletrap Buick behind, but Nellie didn’t drive.

I’d recently spent ten years’ worth of medium security in Walpole and didn’t have a dime left to my name. Crazy Nellie had been my next-door neighbor, the type who never answers the door, fills every room with newspapers going back to Genesis, and lets you know she’s dead when she starts to smell. The house dated back to Revolutionary times, with its low ceilings and stone fireplaces in every room and not a single wall or doorway plumb or true. Not having many job prospects as an ex-con, I decided to see if the old bat had hidden any cash.

The stench had finally told her fate last week—masked EMTs carried her body out feet first on a stretcher, and police closed and padlocked the door. Already I hear Seven-Eleven wants to buy the lot.

Evidently, someone had made half an effort to tame the terrible odor, but the place still smelled like air freshener overpowered by death. Rot gnawed at the wood while mold spores and silence filled the air. Old Look magazines and Lowell Sun newspapers sat in dusty stacks. A small TV with rabbit ears looked like it hadn’t been used since Lawrence Welk died. At the window, a fly struggled in a spider web as a daddy-longlegs sidled up to suck out its juices. I knew how the fly felt, an inmate at the mercy of a sadistic prison guard.

Home improvement for this house would have to start with a match, but I’d never torch it because I’d be the number one suspect. This was the first place I’d ever broken into, the first place I’d ever been arrested, back in my juvie days when Nellie and Ashton still held backyard cookouts and enjoyed sipping martinis and electrocuting moths with their luminescent bug zappers.

Nellie’s bed smelled about right for her having died in it. I felt in the stained pillows and covers for hidden cash, knowing perfectly well some cop would already have checked all those obvious places and pocketed the prize. Cabinets and closets and dressers turned up the usual jetsam floating in a sea of dust bunnies as Nellie sailed on to her next life.

I pushed the queen-sized bed aside to rummage through the tattered cardboard boxes underneath and found old letters and bills, a broken telephone, stained Melamine plates, nothing even fit for a yard sale. If this house had anything less than ten years old or worth more than five dollars, I’d have been shocked. Frustrated, I kicked a box. There was no point in looking any more—but wait, this was odd. Several floor boards looked lighter and newer than the rest: pine surrounded by oak, galvanized nails bent but not rusted, hammer-head impressions in the soft wood suggesting slapdash carpentry.

Eagerly I pried another board and looked into the darkness. Some godforsaken life form squeaked and scurried away. I turned my flashlight on a pea-green Army blanket, and a thousand miserable bugs scattered in all directions. Only a fool would disturb that filthy piece of trash, but I was a plain and simple fool.

I went to a closet and found a wire coat hanger that I used to fashion a hook. I tried to catch one edge of the blanket, but the hanger slipped out of my hands and out of reach. Disgusted, I lay on the floor and reached down to pull away the blanket.

A sudden visit from the police couldn’t have brought me closer to cardiac arrest. I didn’t care anymore about money.

A pair of skeletons in rotted clothing lay one on top of the other. A hatchet rested inside the skull it had shattered down the middle. Toadstools grew out of both eye sockets—but there was nothing here that needed eyes.

Focus, lad

The last few days have been characterized by my trademarked lack of focus, resulting in much frustration. Yesterday I spent hours trying to create a dynamic HTML menu for the Internet Review of Books's Archive section. It's hard, but it's possible. I have done them before. Does the web site need it? No. Are there more important things to do? Yes.

Then there is the book I promised to review for October that makes me want to beg for mercy. It's 400 pages (300 to go!) of excessive detail on—on—what’s the topic again? My pattern lately has been to pick up the book, read a couple of pages, despair at how many are left to go, then close the book and turn on my Kindle, where James Lee Burke and Tin Roof Blowdown await. But while murder in the bayou is more interesting, it inspires a degree of guilt that I'm getting nothing constructive done. So after a while I'll lift dumbbells or check my email or Google Janelle Moloney because she has the cutest damn smile on West Wing. Recently I interrupted my work to make a list of commitments I should try to get out of in the next year so there'll be more time to write. That list is around somewhere, and I should really stop writing and find it.

One thing worth dropping is Twitter. Yes, it probably has value, but it also sucks up a disproportionate amount of time. My Twitter friend list, or whatever it's called, is up around 750. I'd tweet now and then, always linking to my blog, but who is really paying any attention? The friend invitations would come in, and I'd always click the link to see if they looked legit. If so, we became friends. If not, I deleted the invitation. Each time was an interruption of a couple of minutes in my day, and they added up.

There's more to say, but first I have to check my email.

Email promotion for When Pigs Fly

Being fundamentally a cheapskate, I'd thought to bypass paid advertising for When Pigs Fly and Getting Lucky and see how far I could get with my own online efforts. As it turns out, that hasn't been very far. So Ifinally agreed to spend $349 through iUniverse on an email marketing campaign for When Pigs Fly, which includes sending out a half million emails over a two-week span. Not long ago, I saw that the book's ranking had sunk to 1,880,000. Could it go any lower? It did, down to 2,178,615.

Today iUniverse notified me that the first emails went out yesterday, so I checked my Amazon ranking again. It was 350,579, so something good is happening. Here is the ad:

My life in six words

We did a short writing exercise at Mesilla Valley Writers yesterday, to write our autobiography in six words. Here's my life story:

Long time growing up. Old now.

An advertising experiment

Sunset and pampas grass

reflected in my living-room window

My next big step in publicizing When Pigs Fly will be a large emailing by iUniverse. They'll write and send out 500,000 solicitations to people who have opted to receive them (no spam!) for a small fraction of a penny apiece. The sales percentage is a big unknown, of course, but a 1 percent return would be a handsome success and about one-fortieth of that would cover my costs. If this works well I'll naturally keep advertising and will extend the effort to Getting Lucky as well.

Meanwhile, I will continue the no-cost emailing of press releases in batches of a dozen or so, several times a week. It's labor-intensive to collect the email addresses, but my marketing effort will be mostly on line. As much as I love to travel, I am not especially interested in traveling on a book tour.