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ECKLEBURG BOOK CLUB | Post-High School Reality Quest by Meg Eden

Buffy is playing a game. However, the game is her life, and there are no instructions or cheat codes on how to win.

After graduating high school, a voice called “the text parser” emerges in Buffy’s head, narrating her life as a classic text adventure game. Buffy figures this is just a manifestation of her shy, awkward, nerdy nature—until the voice doesn’t go away, and instead begins to dominate her thoughts, telling her how to live her life. Though Buffy tries to beat the game, crash it, and even restart it, it becomes clear that this game is not something she can simply “shut off” or beat without the text parser’s help.

While the text parser tries to give Buffy advice on how “to win the game,” Buffy decides to pursue her own game-plan: start over, make new friends, and win her long-time crush Tristan’s heart. But even when Buffy gets the guy of her dreams, the game doesn’t stop. In fact, it gets worse than she could’ve ever imagined: her crumbling group of friends fall apart, her roommate turns against her, and Buffy finds herself trying to survive in a game built off her greatest nightmares.

What People Are Saying about Post-High School Reality Quest

This may be one of the most wildly original YA entries for 2017 – the only book I can think to compare it to (for sheer originality, outrageous & clever humor, and sly irreverence) is THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY (it’s that good – it’s worthy of the comparison). Our MC, Buffy, finds herself navigating post-high school life & love while stuck inside a text-adventure video game. I am not a gamer, but you don’t have to be to quickly catch on to the format (with saved lives/do-overs, etc.) – and to rapidly become hooked and thoroughly strapped into this roller-coaster of a novel. I found myself laughing out loud many, many times while reading this (while shaking my head in awe “Meg Eden did NOT just pull that off…”). READ THIS BOOK. #TeamNarwhal
-Laurie Forest, Author of The Black Witch

There’s so much emotion in these pages and, amazingly, none of it overwhelms the reader. Pain is countered by joy, grief with understanding, the loss of innocence with the mixed gift of knowledge. Meg Eden has written a novel that’s both captivating and funny, one that follows a beautifully-flawed young woman and her friends as they try to understand the complexities of a confusing age. But POST HIGH SCHOOL REALITY QUEST is more than a lovely and unsentimental coming-of-age story; it’s the kind of book that’s destined to stand out in your memory, one you quietly, lovingly, think about long after it’s finished.
-E.A. Aymar, Author of You’re As Good As Dead

You pick up this book.

> Read book.

You start reading the book. It’s about a girl who, upon high school graduation, starts having her life dictated by a text parser, making life into a text adventure game. It’s strange and disorienting and so incredibly cool. The girl can’t seem to figure out life, which you get because most of the time, neither can you.

>Keep reading.

As if you had a choice about that. Of course you keep reading. You can’t stop reading. You need to know whether she’s actually respawning when she dies or whether she’s schizophrenic like the book’s doctors think or whether she has an overactive imagination like yours. You need to know whether she’ll win over her crush and why he has a gun under his bed and if she’ll ever be happy with any choices she makes and whether anyone in the book will ever make a good decision or whether they’re all too flawed and hurting and real for that.

>Keep reading.
>Keep reading.
>Keep reading.

Are you sure? It’s not too dark and depressing?

>KEEP READING!

You keep reading. You can’t turn the pages fast enough. You need to know what happens. You read read read until the end, and then you stare into the void, thinking about life and choices and regrets and no going back and how you just want to hug every terrible, flawed character in the book.

>Rate five stars.

You rate the book five stars. Obviously.

-Anna Priemaza, author of “Kat and Meg Conquer the World “

Publisher’s Information

 

  • PUBLISHER: California Coldblood / Rare Bird Lit
  • ISBN: 978-1945572234
  • DIMENSIONS: 5.5 x 8.5 inches
  • PAGES: 320]
  • PRICE: $10.63
  • RELEASE DATE: 06/13/2017
  • PURCHASE HERE

 

Recommended Works by Meg Eden

Favorite Eckleburg Work: http://eckleburg.org/works/books/issues/no-18/eckleburg-no-18-paperback/

A Psalm for Lost Girls by Katie Bayerl

Tess da Costa is a saint—a hand-to-god, miracle-producing saint. At least that’s what the people in her hometown of New Avon, Massachusetts, seem to believe. And when Tess suddenly and tragically passes away, her small city begins feverishly petitioning the Pope to make Tess’s sainthood official. Tess’s mother is ecstatic over the fervor, while her sister Callie, the one who knew Tess best, is disgusted—overcome with the feeling that her sister is being stolen from her all over again.

The fervor for Tess’s sainthood only grows when Ana Langone, a local girl who’s been missing for six months, is found alive at the foot of one of Tess’s shrines. It’s the final straw for Callie. With the help of Tess’s secret boyfriend Danny, Callie’s determined to prove that Tess was something far more important than a saint; she was her sister, her best friend and a girl in love with a boy. But Callie’s investigation uncovers much more than she bargained for—a hidden diary, old family secrets, and even the disturbing truth behind Ana’s kidnapping. Told in alternating perspectives, A Psalm for Lost Girls is at once funny, creepy and soulful—an impressive debut from a rising literary star. READ MORE

Pull Me Under by Kelly Luce by https://www.amazon.com/Pull-Me-Under-Kelly-Luce/dp/0374238588/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1488145118&sr=8-1&keywords=pull+me+under

Kelly Luce’s Pull Me Under tells the story of Rio Silvestri, who, when she was twelve years old, fatally stabbed a school bully. Rio, born Chizuru Akitani, is the Japanese American daughter of the revered violinist Hiro Akitani–a Living National Treasure in Japan and a man Rio hasn’t spoken to since she left her home country for the United States (and a new identity) after her violent crime. Her father’s death, along with a mysterious package that arrives on her doorstep in Boulder, Colorado, spurs her to return to Japan for the first time in twenty years. There she is forced to confront her past in ways she never imagined, pushing herself, her relationships with her husband and daughter, and her own sense of who she is to the brink.

The novel’s illuminating and palpably atmospheric descriptions of Japan and its culture, as well its elegantly dynamic structure, call to mind both Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being and David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars. Pull Me Under is gripping, psychologically complex fiction–at the heart of which is an affecting exploration of home, self-acceptance, and the limits of forgiveness. READ MORE

Discussion Questions for Post-High School Reality Quest

1. How do you think the second person structure works in this novel? How would it be different if it was told from first or third person?

2. What do you take from the ending? What is Buffy “beginning to understand”? Has Buffy changed, and if so, how?

3. What do you think the text parser is (real? imagined?) and how do you feel about the text parser’s role in Buffy’s story?

About Meg Eden

Meg Eden’s work has been published in various magazines, including Rattle, Drunken Boat, Poet Lore, RHINO and Gargoyle. She teaches at the University of Maryland. She has four poetry chapbooks, and her novel “Post-High School Reality Quest” is forthcoming June 2017 from California Coldblood, an imprint of Rare Bird Books. Find her online at www.megedenbooks.com or on Twitter at @ConfusedNarwhal.

Do You Have a Book Launching? Submit Your Book to The Eckleburg Book Club…

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Buffy is playing a game. However, the game is her life, and there are no instructions or cheat codes on how to win.

After graduating high school, a voice called “the text parser” emerges in Buffy’s head, narrating her life as a classic text adventure game. Buffy figures this is just a manifestation of her shy, awkward, nerdy nature—until the voice doesn’t go away, and instead begins to dominate her thoughts, telling her how to live her life. Though Buffy tries to beat the game, crash it, and even restart it, it becomes clear that this game is not something she can simply “shut off” or beat without the text parser’s help.

While the text parser tries to give Buffy advice on how “to win the game,” Buffy decides to pursue her own game-plan: start over, make new friends, and win her long-time crush Tristan’s heart. But even when Buffy gets the guy of her dreams, the game doesn’t stop. In fact, it gets worse than she could’ve ever imagined: her crumbling group of friends fall apart, her roommate turns against her, and Buffy finds herself trying to survive in a game built off her greatest nightmares.

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ECKLEBURG BOOK CLUB | FUNHOUSE by Robert Vaughan

Funhouse is a collection of brilliantly slippery pieces of flash fiction and longer form prose from the author of Addicts & Basements, and Rift (with Kathy Fish), among others. Robert Vaughan is unrivaled in his ability to suprise, stimulate and explore. A magician with a typewriter. He returns here with stories to hypnotize in the tunnel of love, beguile in the hall of wonders, spin you around on the tilt o’ whirl.

What People Are Saying about FUNHOUSE

In Robert Vaughan’s FUNHOUSE, the many mirrors there do not undulate, do not distort, but rather reflect our deeper, fully recognizable selves. With a keen, wise, and stunningly original amalgam of poetry and prose, Vaughan shows us, not only life’s fractures, but its mendings.

—Robert Scotellaro, author of Measuring the Distance and Bad Motel

Robert Vaughan is a writer we need more now than ever: one filled with overwhelming generosity. His characters are allowed to be ugly, funny, kind. He recognizes the joys of collaboration and boundary pushing, putting art above ego. His stories aren’t static artifacts, they’re fluid: jumping into poems into lyrics and back into stories in the span of mere paragraphs. One of the biggest delights of this collection is that with the turn of the page, we’re always somewhere new.

–Megan Giddings, author of Arcade Seventeen

Arresting and sometimes haunting, this book will make your knees quake. With lush and precise prose, Vaughan invites us into lives that are familiar yet not, and never are we disappointed. It’s rare to be so seduced by such rich language, to be both transported and immersed. FUNHOUSE is simply riveting prose and, in a word, Vaughan is a master.

–Len Kuntz, author of I’m Not Supposed To Be Here and Neither Are You, and The Dark Sunshine

Publisher’s Information

 

  • PUBLISHER: Unknown Books
  • ISBN: 978-0998309019
  • DIMENSIONS: 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches
  • PAGES: 260]
  • PRICE: $15.00
  • RELEASE DATE: 12/26/2016
  • PURCHASE HERE

 

Recommended Works by Robert Vaughan

Favorite Eckleburg Work: http://eckleburg.org/works/fiction/i-guess-i-must-be-having-fun/

Sing the Song by Meredith Alling

A terrific romp of short fiction, Alling’s first collection from Future Tense Books. Delightful, irreverent, and strange, these tales will make a reader want to finish the collection in one sitting. READ MORE

Notes on the Cinematograph by Robert Bresson by Sirens by Joshua Mohr

These random notes are non-fiction flash that enter into the artistic mind and realm of great French Film Director Robert Bresson. A most radiant, innovative stylist and director whose movies contain nothing superfluous and everything is always at stake.

https://www.amazon.com/Notes-Cinematograph-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1681370247/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1487115804&sr=1-1&keywords=notes+on+the+cinematography READ MORE

Discussion Questions for FUNHOUSE

1. Why do you combine genres such as flash fiction and prose poetry in the same collection, FUNHOUSE?

2. There are drawings in Hall of Mirrors, “Another Brick in the Wall, part 4.” Did you do them? If not, who did? What was it like to collaborate?

3. In the fourth section, Ferris Wheel, there are longer, more tradition short stories. Have you published any books of them prior to FUNHOUSE?

About Robert Vaughan

Robert Vaughan teaches workshops in hybrid writing, poetry, fiction, and hike/ write. He has facilitated these at locations like Alverno College, UWM, Red Oak Writing, The Clearing, Synergia Ranch and Mabel Dodge Luhan House. He leads writing roundtables in Milwaukee, WI. He was a finalist for the Gertrude Stein Award for Fiction twice (2013, 2014). He was the head judge for the Bath International Flash Fiction Awards, 2016. His short fiction, ‘A Box’ was selected for Best Small Fictions 2016 (Queen’s Ferry Press). Vaughan is the author of five books: Microtones (Cervena Barva Press); Diptychs + Triptychs + Lipsticks + Dipshits (Deadly Chaps); Addicts & Basements (CCM) and RIFT, a flash collection co-authored with Kathy Fish (Unknown Press). His new book is FUNHOUSE (Unknown Press, December, 2016). He blogs at www.robert-vaughan.com.

Do You Have a Book Launching? Submit Your Book to The Eckleburg Book Club…

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Brilliantly slippery pieces of flash fiction and longer form prose from the author of Addicts & Basements, and Rift (with Kathy Fish), among others. Robert Vaughan is unrivaled in his ability to suprise, stimulate and explore. A magician with a typewriter. He returns here with stories to hypnotize in the tunnel of love, beguile in the hall of wonders, spin you around on the tilt o’ whirl.

 

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ECKLEBURG BOOK CLUB | What She Was Saying by Marjorie Maddox

In these powerful stories, What She Was Saying softens the already thin line between hope and hopelessness, between perseverance and despair, between what can and cannot be said. A finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter and Eludia book awards as well as a semifinalist for Black Lawrence Press Hudson, Eastern Washington University Spokane, and Leapfrog Press book prizes What She Was Saying gives voice to the lives we all need to hear.

What People Are Saying about What She Was Saying

From the ingenious title to the last story, What She Was Saying is a study of the gap between the covert and the overt. Alienation, isolation, desperation are here writ both small and large; their echo is a humanistic plea for inclusiveness, community, friendship, and simple love and kindness, one to another. Wonderfully crafted, honest, and bold, Marjorie Maddox’s work always brings her readers to new levels of perceptiveness about the big picture as well as minute moments. –Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahab’s Wife and The Fountain of St. James Court, or Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman

This collection reveals a beguiling new voice in contemporary fiction. . . . Maddox s stories open up unexpected, little noticed corners of our world. . . . Some read like fables; some surprise with bold humor. All celebrate the mystery of the familiar, the strangeness of the ordinary, and the humanity of marginal lives. –Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek

These are luscious stories, packed with unflinching honesty and the earthshaking kind of beauty that makes us brave. –Fiona Cheong, author of Scent of the Gods and Shadow Theatre

Publisher’s Information

 

  • PUBLISHER: F
  • ISBN: 978-1942515685
  • DIMENSIONS: 6 x 9
  • PAGES: 180]
  • PRICE: $15.00
  • RELEASE DATE: 03/01/2017
  • PURCHASE HERE

 

Recommended Works by Marjorie Maddox

Favorite Eckleburg Work: https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/3af44d25-aecd-46d6-8241-2dfbb20b6f6b?tx=5YT26731HF185425B&st=Completed&amt=3.00&cc=USD&cm=&item_number=fiction-guess-watson

Windthrow by K. A. Hays

Windthrow: a forestry term for the uprooting or breaking of trees by wind. The voices of K. A. Hays’ third volume of poetry speak out of nature’s violent transformations. At turns self-effacing and empathic, fearful and accepting, these are poems of heat: the heat of new motherhood, of uncertainty, and of grief. Here, the things of a teeming world—” the truck stacked with cut trees,” “the military jet, droning over,” and “the beachgrass, blown / with dusty miller sprout”—are bound for renewal and ruin. In poems spare and strange, Hays looks outward to lay bare the complexities of our emotional lives. READ MORE

The Grass Labyrinth by Charlotte Holmes

Fiction. These linked stories the pain of an artist’s life and of those who share it. A married children’s book illustrator falls in love with a photorealist refugee. Their daughter, a blocked poet, becomes infatuated with a young painter with whom she shares a palpable bond. And this young painter, dumped by his girlfriend and tired of the hustle, envisions settling down with his widowed stepmother in the house where he grew up. Whether in a college town, a Brooklyn loft, or a Carolina coastal cottage, these stories explore, over a 30-year span, how the choices the characters make shape those they love in ways they never anticipate, down through the generations in a surprising portrait of one family’s intimate struggle to find the paths that will carry them to the work they must do, the lives they must lead, and the people they can’t help but love. READ MORE

Discussion Questions for What She Was Saying

1. 1. In what ways does the title, WHAT SHE WAS SAYING, apply to each story in the collection? How is this a book about women’s voices? About silences?

2. 2. Reviewer Kristen Hanna has said of these stories, “Maddox’s exploration of depression, longing, grief, relationships, woundedness, and regret…do what good stories do, they promote empathy and understanding.” Sena Jeter Naslund has added, “…their echo is a humanistic plea for inclusiveness, community, friendship, and simple love and kindness, one to another.” Do you agree or disagree? Why? Is this a book also about hope? About writing?

3. 3. WHAT SHE WAS SAYING is a collection of short shorts, short stories, and creative nonfiction. Discuss why and how the author mixes fiction and creative nonfiction. What is the thin line between these genres? How does blurring these boundaries add to the overall themes of the book? Why do you think the author ordered the pieces the way that she did?

About Marjorie Maddox

Sage Graduate Fellow of Cornell University (MFA) and Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published eleven collections of poetry—including True, False, None of the Above; Local News from Someplace Else; Wives’ Tales; Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation; and Perpendicular As I —the short story collection What She Was Saying (March 2017 Fomite Press), and over 500 stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. Co-editor of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, she also has published four children’s books. For more information, please see www.marjoriemaddox.com

Do You Have a Book Launching? Submit Your Book to The Eckleburg Book Club…

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In these powerful stories, What She Was Saying softens the already thin line between hope and hopelessness, between perseverance and despair, between what can and cannot be said. A finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter and Eludia book awards as well as a semifinalist for Black Lawrence Press Hudson, Eastern Washington University Spokane, and Leapfrog Press book prizes What She Was Saying gives voice to the lives we all need to hear.

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