Please welcome A.B. Bard, author of The Killer Poet's Guide to Immortality.
On the Writer’s Responsibility
So, what’s the responsibility of the writer in the American Empire? Is it to sell more books just to paper his or her nest? I don’t think so. Writers engage in a learned, impassioned and imaginative discussion between the generations that has been going on since before American Idol. We have the gift to move vowels with our words. It is perhaps easier to move people only where they are already comfortable going, or simple to leave them right where we found them. But we at the NYC MTA won’t stop till you’re somewhere you never intended to go. Wake up, mo’fo! The world reeks of hunger, lies, inequality, violence and bad poetry. To write while staying silent about this overriding truth is to lend a hand in the perpetuation of pure, organic, locally-sourced and fair-traded evil.
America has rushed into its Empire phase. Democracy is dead. So is Farrah Fawcett-Majors, but that’s another guest post. Obama is a moderate republican who could no more call for the dismantling of the military-industrial complex or a true separation between Church and State or a truly progressive tax on hobbits than he could call for a day of mandatory simultaneous public readings of HOWL by Allan Ginsberg, who’s dead too. We the People are now the enemy. We are the oppressors, the rapacious exploiters, the Men from Smersch. Although please remember that “the People” in the Constitution has been changed by definition. Corporations are People. E pluribus zippo.
I’m not so naïve as to believe that America is the root of all evil. China is worse, Russia may be even worse, and North Korea is fuckin’ scary. But America is on my watch. Besides, it’s the only nation with 24/7 access to pizza. So as a writer, it is my patriotic duty to zing out my best seditious libel, in the hopes that it will awaken my fellow citizens from their long night of endless daydreams. I hope you cried. I know I would have if I wasn’t busy fighting off this hobbit chewing on my leg.
The Killer Poet’s Guide to Immortality is the riveting tale of a frustrated poet who decides that the best way to get his work read is by pinning it to corpses with a dagger. Alternately profound and hilarious, this novel chronicles in rapid-fire succession AB Bard’s obsessive murder spree, rise to media notoriety, capture, trial, and execution by lethal injection.
Then it presses further, into the future . . .
About A.B. Bard
Reclusive Seattle author AB Bard’s poetry has twice been nominated for the Pushcart. He is the author under a pseudonym of two other hysterical novels, or perhaps historical novels, neither of which is funny. Mr. Bard is not now, nor has he ever been, a member of the Republican Party. Mr. Bard does not Tweet. He was awarded a sheepskin (BAaa) from Reed College Sleeper Cell. His one super power is the ability to repel all conventional measures of literary success. Mr. Bard is lap to a cat, pal to a girl, God to a dog, & dog to the Man.
To find out more, please visit him at http://www.abbard.com
This tour is with Pump Up Your Book book tours.