Oh my God. What can I say about The Bleaklisted Books except that it’s AMAZING? This is one of the most original, laugh-out-loud hilarious books I’ve ever read. Charlie Brown is a cat who likes reading literature and giving comments about it, and bleaklisting several books, like Barry Potterer, Prude and Perjury, The Hungary Olympic Games and more. - Goodreads
Published: November 28th, 2014
My mini-irons,
I urge you to embrace the goose-spell of Animal Farm and you will find sanctuary when our difficult war is over. I will add, of course, that given that conquering the world means a long, long, long, long, long war, I will permit you to read another book every now and again.
Just remember which books are bleak-listed; e.g. Barry Potterer, 100 Years of Silly Tudor, Prude and Perjury, The Hungary Olympic Games, The Chronicles of Nerdia and Of Mike and Ben.
In the meantime, here is a list of books I have vetted and will reconsider for approval if the appro… apprap… proper changes are made. Read this manyule carefully mini-irons.
Your Cat-tain, Charlie Brown
GUEST POST
You Can’t Keep a Good Cat Down
A lot has changed since 2011. Back then myself and my wonderful wife - Mrs B - set out on our respective paths to being self-published. I began with a fantasy novel, Mrs B with a short story collection. We also ran our own blogs and squeezed in what writing time we could between work and looking after our six cats. Yes, you did read that right the first time. We have six cats. We started with two but four more followed. Mrs B is very persuasive, especially when holding a frying pan above your head.
I had never owned cats before, always dogs, so I found this new experience to be quite traumatic. While I was focused on writing fantasy books, I did blog in my spare time and found writing articles about what I had learned from being a cat owner to be both helpful in keeping my writing fresh, but also therapeutic in coping with the everyday horrors of living with these deranged felines. Mrs B also took to writing about our experiences on her own blog.
I never really considered publishing a book about our cats until the number of blogs about them had reached such a substantial quantity that Mrs B suggested it. We’d started with simple posts about what we had observed in the cats general behaviour but after a few months I went one step further. I started to wonder what the cats did when we weren’t home and came up with the concept of 36 Lives - a series of meetings between four of the six cats in which they discuss a variety of subjects from football to TV programmes. The 36 Lives and observation posts, coupled with some new material from myself and Mrs B, made up a joint effort entitled Man vs Cat. It was released in 2012 and enjoyed some positive feedback from readers. Mrs B was delighted, I was somewhat bemused at how endearing people found our six kitties.
Mrs B did talk of a sequel to Man vs Cat but it wasn’t something that appealed to me. I was happy with the cats appearing on our blogs, just something fun for us to dip into when not working on books. I find writing fantasy to be quite an intense project so blogging has always been a welcome break. We started with a new blog - the Diary of Mr Kain - in which one of our felines simply chronicles daily occurrences in the Brown household. After a few months we began a new weekly feature - Charlie’s Bleaklisted Books.
I can’t quite recall how we came up with the Bleaklisted Books but the idea was a simple and fun one. Each week Charlie would take a well-known book and review it. Charlie’s reviews were not intended to be good. In each one he not only spoils the story but offers an alternative take on the story, each one striving to be more absurd than the previous one. Both the Bleaklisted Books and the Diary of Mr Kain were never meant to see the light of day as books but our cats continued to look at us pleadingly and we relented, well, Mrs B did anyway.
We decided to release The Bleaklisted Books - a collection of 25 of Charlie’s book reviews, many previously appearing on our blog but there are also some new ones in there as well. A further instalment - More Bleaklisted Books - will follow next year and after that we already have plans for The Bleaklisted Movies. It’s been unexpected but fun for Mrs B and I to work together on books again while we continue with our solo ventures.
The Bleaklisted Books has already enjoyed some positive feedback from readers and it is heartwarming for us that our cats have connected with people once again. At the same time it leaves us astonished that what originally began as somewhat whimsical endeavours have been as well received as our solo projects. While we both enjoy our own books I’m sure we’ll unite more often to write books where our cats have the starring roles. If the cats don’t demand it of me, then I can assure you the wonderful Mrs B will, and who am I to complain?
About the authors:
Donna is a longtime book lover and sometime book reviewer and has devoured books from an early age. She writes short (or long) stories as and when inspiration hits and is married to fantasy author David M. Brown (Fezariu’s Epiphany, A World Apart). She was also co-contributor to David’s book, Man vs Cat, a humorous look at life with six rambunctious rescue cats.
Donna has lived in many different areas of the UK over the last 30-something years but has remained in Yorkshire for the past decade. She ardently disputes the misnomer that ‘It’s grim up north’. You can find Donna on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Goodreads, or visit her and her husband’s shared blog: B-Lines and Felines.
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David Brown could be considered a fantasy fanatic, especially since he has spent the last 10 years developing a 47,000-year history for his fictional world of Elenchera. When converting his obsession into literary form, David commits himself to a rigorous writing and editing process before his work can meet his approval. Combined with the critical eye of his wife and a BA Hons in History and English, David’s dedication leads him to his goal of inspiring readers through heartfelt stories and characters.
Although David is inspired primarily by fantasy fiction, he also finds his muse in the form of anime, world cinema, history, and biographies. His own books, Fezariu’s Epiphany and A World Apart, combine aspects from worlds both old and new into compelling tales of a world not soon forgotten., David himself certainly does not lack a spirit of adventure; in fact, he left his job in 2007 in order to spend a month travelling. Second only to meeting and marrying his wife, David counts this as one of the most amazing experiences of his life.
Thank you so much for letting us and Charlie guest here today :)
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