The Billionth Monkey is being used to teach Folklore and Literature

I am over the moon to learn that Professor Dan Compora is using The Billionth Monkey in his Folklore and Literature class at the University of Toledo.

To introduce the urban legend portion of the course, students spend two weeks discussing The Billionth Monkey, each of them researching and presenting in detail one of the urban legends in the book. Apparently they're having a lot more fun discovering urban legends through my novel than they have in the past using standard texts.

I couldn't be more thrilled and honored.*

Plus, this news comes just in time for the Halloween campus murders!

* Well, except for maybe a Hollywood blockbuster starring John Oliver, Ryan Kwanten and Stoya.

"Subverting Readers' Expectations through a Fictional Tarot Reading" posted online

I've recorded and posted my 2017 PCA/ACA talk and slideshow, "Subverting Readers' Expectations through a Fictional Tarot Reading in The Billionth Monkey," as I'm unlikely to reprise it elsewhere. It includes a reading from Chapter 1, plus a discussion of how I use the Tarot reading in this scene as a form of misdirection.

CONTAINS SPOILERS after the reading.

Apologies for occasional audio glitches around the slide transitions, due to how PowerPoint records audio.

Shakespeare and Marlowe acknowledged as collaborators on "Henry VI"

The long-suspected collaboration between William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe on Henry VI will be made official in the New Oxford Shakespeare. Scholars estimate that 2/5 of the Bard's plays involved a collaborator to some degree or another. Heck, there has even been serious speculation that Shakespeare collaborated on Hamlet Special Edition with some obscure Polish author.

For more on Shakespeare, Marlowe and the New Oxford Shakespeare, see here.*

For more on Hamlet Special Edition, see Wikibard and Stanley's Marvelous Comics.

* The author has taken perverse pleasure in not using the Oxford comma in this sentence.

The latest review of "The Billionth Monkey" offers high praise indeed!

I'm very honored to have a glowing review of The Billionth Monkey from fellow author Robert Dean Lurie. Better than Good Omens? *blush*

I am hugely enjoying this debut novel by Richard Kaczynski. His writing has been compared to Douglas Adams and Neil Gaiman, but I will take that one step further: I think this is better than Gaiman and Pratchett's Good Omens. I have read Kaczynski's nonfiction with avid interest for years, but The Billionth Monkey demonstrates that he is a born novelist. More please!

Thanks so much, Robert! More fiction is on the way (along with more nonfiction).

Robert is the author of No Certainty Attached: Steve Kilbey and The Church and the eBook We Can Be Heroes: The Radical Individualism of David Bowie. He also produced and performed on the tribute album The Dark Side of Hall and Oates. 

To order The Billionth Monkey in paperback, ebook, or limited hardcover editions, see the right-hand sidebar.

May the Fourth Be With You!

This Star Wars Day, check out Hamlet Special Edition, a six-page mini-comic by William Shakespeare, Greg LaRocque, Robert Randle, Aaron Tatum, Rus Wooton, and Richard Kaczynski. You can see it online for free at http://www.stanleysmarvelouscomics.com/-hamlet-special-edition-preview.

 

"The Billionth Monkey" ebook on sale this weekend for Shakespeare 400

Celebrate ‪Shakespeare400‬ (the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's death) with The Billionth Monkey--including the Hamlet Special Edition mini-comic by William Shakespeare, Greg LaRocque, Robert Randle, Aaron Tatum, and Rus Wooton--on sale this weekend for 99¢ in Kindle, iBook, and Nook formats.

"The Billionth Monkey" ebook on sale this weekend

Spare a tree + feed a writer: The Billionth Monkey ebook is only 99¢ this Earth Day weekend! Available in Kindle, iBook, and Nook formats.