Thong the Barbarian Meets the Cycle Sluts of Saturn is now available exclusively at the Fat Sam ebook store.
If you have only just arrived at this party, some backstory: Thong is the novelette Michael Reaves and I wrote as a send-up of three of SF&F's best known writers: R.E. Howard, E.E. "Doc" Smith, and H.P. Lovecraft. If you don't know who they are, the central joke won't be as much fun, although such knowledge isn't necessary to enjoy the tale–at least that's what we think.
In this short book, we take aim at sword and sorcery stories, ala Conan; space opera, like The Lensmen; and wet horror, i.e., Cthulhu and the Old Ones. We wrote the piece using as florid and purple a prose as we could pull off, flaunting the rules of good writing wherever we thought we could get away with it. You risk adverb poisoning at every turn, and if there's a cliche we missed, it was an accident. The barbarian hero and his aptly-named sword; big-busted beautiful sisters in their brass bras; impossible and really silly science; slimy tentacles–they are all in there. And then some.
The constructions as to how somebody said something are among my favorite said-bookisms and swifties. It's not "The Eye of Argon," but it's in that realm, and worse, done on purpose.
In one of those freak happenstances, the book, which didn't sell all that well because it was short-run hardback and spendy back in the day, became, because of its scarcity, a collector's item. Of the three versions printed, the plain-vanilla one goes for three hundred and some bucks, if you can find somebody who'll sell it, and the blue- and red-leather bound versions? Never seen one for sale on the collector's market at all.
Now, however, you can enjoy the adventures of Thong, Sandol, Tula, Pluvia, and Lug-Wrenchoth for a mere $3.99. Included are the original foreword and afterword Reaves and I did, along with a short, an updated preface, and what got the most votes as the cheesiest cover design, with Alan Bard Newcomer's CGI art.
Dan offers it in a format that will fit pretty much any e-device upon which you can read such things, Kindle, Nook, iPad or iPod, phones, laptops, and so forth and so on. You should run buy a copy right now. Tell all your friends to run buy a copy right now. But if get it, don't drink anything while you read it unless you want to be cleaning it off your screen, trust me ...