Justin Schultz is The Flying Chair, a freelance artist living in Jackson, MS. We enlisted Justin’s talents to help promote our Chuck Palahniuk event. He is also responsible for all of the artwork on our blog: The Devil (also used for Chuck Palahniuk), Larry the Lemur, the First Editions Club Bookmark and the Lemuria Mermaid.

guts… “Guts” was the first thing I read by Chuck Palahniuk. I was fresh out of college, and had just started working as a production artist at an advertising agency in Jackson. A talented copywriter named Jeff Pedigo had been nice(?) enough to recommend I read the short story “Guts” on one of Chuck’s fan-sites. He did warn me: “this guy makes people faint and/or vomit when he reads this in public.” Even with a mind-blowing warning like that, I was still unprepared for what I was about to read. To be honest, I’m not sure if I should really go into the details of the story (now published in the book – Haunted) but by the time Jeff walked back around to my cube, I must’ve lacked most of my color, except for maybe a faint green tinge. A sly grin rolled across Jeff’s face.

I was somewhat torn. I’ve never been a fan of excessive gore, or even relatively violent themes, but don’t get me wrong, this absolutely was NOT that… but it was… to put it lightly… disturbing. But it definitely wasn’t some sort of cheap “shock value” bullshit either. It was moving. In a good way. In a bad way. In some other way that my brain can’t even understand. I won’t pretend that I read constantly, but I felt like I had gotten enough in, to know that what I had just taken in was something special.

I won’t go much into Palahniuk’s style because I pretty much agree with how the previous Lemuria bloggers described his work (here, here, here and here) but I definitely can dig on his love for the fraying psyche… the slightly (or unmercilessly) damaged minds of people of all backgrounds… and how we have no idea what really goes on in others’ noggins… scary! strange! beautiful! and maybe will make you think about how you treat others.

Because if you treat others poorly, you may end up in hell. Which is the location where his newest book, Damned, takes place. When Zita notified me that Chuck Palahniuk… THE Chuck Palahniuk… was coming to Jackson, I pretty much *explicative a brick. Shortly followed by my begging to puhhh-leeeeease be able to do the event poster (i’m so self-centered)! Once I was given the go-ahead and started Zita’s advanced reader copy of Damned (the benefits of dating a bookstore employee!) – I became immersed in Palahniuk’s perspective of hell.

I was excited to be able to do a poster that was probably going to be much more adult-themed/darker than my typical work (If you’ve ever seen my stuff, I pretty much draw like a seventh-grade girl [I’m a 29-year-old male.]) Upon completion of the book – which by the way, was amazing, hilarious, scary, and makes you think about things you probably don’t want to think about (classic Palahniuk) but end up being all the better person for acknowledging those elements of life/humanity/existence – I struggled with what image(s) I was going to use for the poster. Palahniuk’s characters (and creatures), landscapes and objects/accessories were all described so well – what to use?!!?! dang!

I finally ended up going for the semi-obvious choice of Maddy (the main character, a 13-year-old girl) in a hero-shot during a more action-packed part of the book.

She is donning items like Vlad the Impaler’s jeweled dagger, Hitler’s mustache, the handkerchief of Thug Behram, Caligula’s Testicles and Catherine de Medici’s coronet of pearls… all items that Maddy acquires while attempting to overthrow hell.

I’m a big fan of juxtaposing a slightly darker (sometimes sad) image with a somewhat-classic American (slightly Japanese) cartooning/illustration style. The Damned image/theme went along pretty naturally with that idea (which I felt was pretty neat that it worked out that way.) Anyway, I’m pretty happy with the final product and can’t wait to see Zita’s screen-printed posters! (on big, 18 x 24 red paper!)

The more I hear about this event, the more I can’t wait to go! It is going to be unlike anything most of us have ever experienced… join us!

love,

justin

the-flying-chair.com

JX///RX

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cpcp

Some weeks it is hard for the rest of us at Lemuria to keep up with Emily and Maggie!

Emily has been bringing authors to area schools and the last couple of weeks was one of her busiest times yet.

She brought Loren Long (author/illustrator for the Otis books and illustrator for President Barack Obama’s book), Anna Dewdney (author/illustrator of the Llama Llama books), The Theodore Boone Bus (A actor group for John Grisham’s young adult series) and Ilsa J. Bick (author for a young adult book called Ashes) to the Jackson area.

Some of the schools she visited includes: St. Andrew’s Lower School, Power APAC, Madison Avenue Elementary, Pelahatchie Lower Elementary, First Presbyterian Day School, Madison Ridgeland Academy, Mannsdale Elementary, East Flora Elementary, Ridgeland High School.

Let Emily know if you are interested in an author visit to your school. E-mail her, stop by the store, or give her a call.

emily@lemuriabooks.com or 601/800.366.7619

So while Emily was bringing something different to the school kids, Maggie was doing her own thing.

Bookselling stops included: a packed house at Millsaps Arts & Lecture to listen to Bronson Green talk about the making of the movie, The Help; A social worker convention, Vision in Action; the Duncan Gray Center; the Jackson Touchdown Club for Swing Your Sword by Mike Leach.

Today Maggie is selling books at Jackson’s Friends of the Library as they start a new membership drive. Tomorrow, she’ll start a new relationship with Millsaps Friday Forum.

If you are interested in having Maggie sell books at a special event or group meeting, let her know! Email Maggie, stop by the store, or give her a call.

maggie@lemuriabooks.com or 601/800.366.7619

JX///RX

Set in current day Miami, this new cutting edge novel Birds of Paradise examines a family slowly and devastatingly coming unglued, for the most part due to the catastrophic disappearance of their run-away daughter who emerges off and on over a five year period only to beg for money, which her frantic mother is very willing to give her in order to have a chance to see her lost teenaged girl. Besides the mother and daughter in this dysfunctional modern day family,  the other two members, the father and the son, also have their own problems, which, of course, are made worse by the disappearance of Felice.

Though the tumultuous plot does merit attention from time to time, the characters and their motivations primarily drive this novel’s force.

Take Felice, who has lived “on the streets” of Miami, which in this case really means the beaches, along with numerous other disturbed teenagers who sometimes find refuge from the heat in an abandoned old house which is rumored to have been the death spot of an old woman a few years earlier. Questions as to how Felice manages to buy food and other necessary items for a meager existence immediately occur to the reader who has already been told of Felice’s ferocious natural beauty.

It soon becomes clear that national modeling talent scouts have discovered Felice, as well the local tattoo parlors, all who pay her handsomely for a photo shoot. Not only on  a couple of occasions, does the reader learn that total strangers regularly ask Felice, “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Elizabeth Taylor?”

Of course, the reader, after meeting her economically secure family who lives in a very comfortable house, wonders why in the world a 13 year old beautiful girl with all advantages, would choose to leave her home, her parents, and her lifestyle. Eventually Felice discloses the  fact that her premeditated removal from her home and a normal existence involves a self induced punishment propelled by something involving a best girlfriend who had a flowered past.

The reader is left with this question almost until the very end of the novel.  As a love relationship evolves, Felice, a now edgy self-reliant 17 year old, uses her skateboard to evade the suitor’s advances, knowing all along that Emerson, whose father named him after Ralph Waldo, marches to a better beat than the other homeless kids. He even seems to want a normal future, and that begins to appeal to Felice.

The distraught mother, Avis, whom Felice’s disappearance  affects the most, of course, throws  herself into magnificent pastry creations for which she is known in all of the culinary circles of Miami, having established a successful restaurant catering business early in her adulthood, even before Felice and her brother, Stanley, were born. An interesting sub plot involves a very rowdy talking bird who lives next door, whose owner is a mystical immigrant woman who works a “spell” to entice Felice to return home. This “aside” serves to show the reader the utter desperation of Avis who will try almost anything to get Felice to come home.

Even as Felice had started to become a moody pre-teen, her mother tried to win her over with yummy concoctions hoping that she would become interested in the art of pastry making. Alas, this ploy does not work on Felice, but it does on her older brother who withdraws from teenage boy activities more and more to stay home and work with his mother in the kitchen, even more so once his sister disappears. Needless to say, the runaway Felice and her absence has colored the very existence of each member of this distraught family. Eventually, Stanley plants vegetables and herbs in the back yard and becomes interested in organic gardening, a few years later turning that interest into opening an organically focused grocery store, much to his attorney father’s dismay.

The father, Brian, after all, as a successful, but nevertheless unfulfilled attorney, wanted his son to go to college and chose a traditional career, certainly not one where he had to scrounge for customers, and therefore money. As the author lets the reader in on Brian’s world as a high powered Miami real estate lawyer, it becomes clear that every single member of this family is coming unglued at the seams.

The ending, which encompasses the last fifty pages or so, is one of the best that I have read in some time. Every action moves toward a point of completion, fulfillment, and resolution for the reader as the characters grow and become more stable human beings. Not all problems are totally resolved, but there is hope and growth exhibited in each character. For interest and suspense, I suppose, the author does not have the runaway daughter doing exactly what her parents want her to do, but there is communication and heart felt involvement. For a contemporary look  into a teenager’s world, this novel hits the nail on the head with its cutting edge language and plot.

Author Diana Abu-Jaber will be reading at Lemuria from Birds of Paradise this afternoon at 5:00. This is a reading to be attended!  -Nan

Everyone has heard about John Wayne Gacy.  He’s the guy who killed thirty three young boys in the mid and late seventies in “Chicagoland”  and then buried them in the crawl space beneath his house.  Oh, and he was also a professional clown for hire named Pogo.

I’ve read a couple of books about Gacy before but this one definitely stands in a class all its own.  As a matter of fact, this is by far the best written and most entertaining true crime book I’ve ever read (and I’ve read a lot of them).  What makes this book stand out is that unlike most serial killer/true crime books this one isn’t written by a journalist, psychologist, family member of the accused or the accused himself.  Defending a Monster was written by Sam Amirante, the lawyer whose task it was to defend Gacy against the state of Illinois in what would become one of the most notorious trials of all time.  I’d never thought about it before but who better to relay such a story than the defendant’s lawyer?  Genius.

“‘Sam, could you do me a favor?’

A telephone call, seven short words, a simple-enough request.  That’s how it all began.

I knew the guy on the other end of the line.  Everyone on the Northwest Side did.  He was a political wannabe, one of those guys that was always around, talking about all the big shots he knew, hoping that the importance of others would rub off on him, a nice-enough guy – maybe a little pushy, a bit of a blowhard, telling tall tales, but still, a nice-enough guy.”

With this book you get a whole different type of story than with most like it.  It’s not all just dates and facts and confessions.  This is conversations, letters and notes that an accused serial killer would only share with his lawyer.  The insight and observations are incredible.

“‘This boy,’ he said, gently tapping the picture with his fingertip, ‘This boy is dead.  He’s dead.  This isn’t the boy from the drugstore…but this boy is dead.  He is in a river.’

Time switched to slow motion.  I looked at Stevens and then back at the pathetic, broken lump of a man in front of me.  I guess I had some suspicions; if I was honest, they were there, nagging questions put there by Sullivan and other, the mayor.  They were all so sure.  But until that moment, I wanted to believe my client.  I wanted him to tell me that he had driven Rob to the Greyhound station or that Rob was staying with Rossi or Cram and that Gacy had given him a job and that Rob wanted to leave home.  Something.  Something else.

The gravity of his statement was beginning to register.  I looked at Stevens again, puzzled, then back at Gacy.  I was shaking my head.  Something wasn’t right.  ‘What the fuck are you talking about, John?  That is Robby Piest, the Piest kid, the kid from the drugstore, the kid that everyone has been looking for.  That’s him.’

Gacy looked at me.  His sagging, dead, watery eyes pierced me.

‘So…many,’ he softly murmured, barely a whisper.”

This book isn’t for just anyone out there but if you are indeed a fan of the true crime genre I promise you’ll not be sorry you picked up this book.

by Zita

Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life by Thich Nhat Hanh

by Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. Lilian Cheung

Harper One (2010)

To savor is defined as “to taste with quality.” This book is not just about what to eat; it also teaches us how to eat. Anyone can become more mindful in nourishing our bodies. Savor is not just about learning to maintain a healthy weight and diet. It’s about appreciating what we eat and drink in a more fulfilling way through a more mindful lifestyle. This helps us to connect more deeply with ourselves. Mindful eating practiced along with a regular exercise program eases stress which can increase our awareness, the choices we have and our happiness. Helping ourselves in a mindful way also instills the awareness that helps us to contribute to our local community constructively.

Mind and body are not separate and mindfulness of this does not happen by itself. You need to have the desire to practice it. A holistic understanding of our feelings, mental formations and our body help us to understand our consciousness. All the observations come together when practiced positively which increases awareness. Over time we developed more skill at enjoying what is pleasant and understanding the unpleasant which help us mediate anxiety. By observing our anxiety levels and understanding the causes, we stop the internal knots from becoming  tight, choking the more present experience.

Savor lays out the guide posts for beauty, eating, moving, and living–simple methods for improving our relationships at work and home, while improving our physical and mental health. I’ve read many Thich Nhat Hanh books with pleasure and received benefit from them. Savor is a very practical and immediately adaptable if you are interested in self-improvement. If you want to see and be with your world more clearly, reading Savor might help you defrost your windshield.

Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh will be at Magnolia Village in Batesville September 28 – October 2. Here is the link for more information: http://www.magnoliavillage.org/