And the Winner for Bad Sex is...

"David Guterson has won the 19th annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award, for Ed King (Bloomsbury). The prize was presented to a representative of his publishers by Barbara Windsor, star of the Carry On films and Eastenders.

Alexander Waugh and Barbara Windsor (© Alan Davidson/The Picture Library Ltd)

David Guterson lives in America and was unable to accept the prize in person. 'Oedipus practically invented bad sex, so I'm not in the least bit surprised,' he said in response to his fifth novel winning the award. His bestselling debut, Snow Falling on Cedars, won the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.


Ed King is a re-imagining of the Oedipus myth in the second half of the twentieth century. The winning scene is introduced in the book as 'the part where a mother has sex with her son'. The judges were swayed by the following paragraphs:

These sorts of gyrations and five-sense choreographies, with variations on Ed's main themes, played out episodically between 10 p.m. and 10 a.m., when Diane said, "Let's shower."

In the shower, Ed stood with his hands at the back of his head, like someone just arrested, while she abused him with a bar of soap. After a while he shut his eyes, and Diane, wielding her fingernails now and staring at his face, helped him out with two practiced hands, one squeezing the family jewels, the other vigorous with the soap-and-warm-water treatment. It didn't take long for the beautiful and perfect Ed King to ejaculate for the fifth time in twelve hours, while looking like Roman public-bath statuary. Then they rinsed, dried, dressed, and went to an expensive restaurant for lunch.

Guterson narrowly edged out strong competition from Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 ('A freshly made ear and a freshly made vagina look very much alike, Tengo thought'), Chris Adrian's The Great Night (featuring an 'impossibly stiff, impossibly eloquent cock' that 'poked her now from the front and now from the back and now from the side'), and Lee Child's The Affair ('Then it was time. We started tenderly. Long and slow, long and slow. Deep and easy. She flushed and gasped. So did I. Long and slow').


The shortlist also included:

• On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry
• The Final Testament of the Holy Bible by James Frey
• Parallel Stories by Péter Nádas
• 11.22.63 by Stephen King
• The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M Auel
• Dead Europe by Christos Tsiolkas
• Outside the Ordinary World by Dori Ostermiller
• Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy

Last year the prize was won by Rowan Somerville for The Shape of Her published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson..."


The Original article may be found below


http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/badsex2011.php

The Walking Dead - My new obsession.

Okay, Let me begin this premise by stating I love most paranormal shows.  There are a few of those that take place in Space that I've not be able to get into. 

I was recently watching Nightline, right before Halloween and they were saying it was the year of the Zombie and they referenced a show on AMC called "The Walking Dead".  And I thought "Who would watch a show about Zombies?"  In saying this I was trying to wrap my head around how you could have an ongoing show, it seemed very unlikely you could sustain this week after week.

So one day I googled it, okay it was probably at three in the morning when I didn't want to sleep.  Anyway AMCTV.com had put up Season 2, Episode 1.  So I thought what the heck - I'll watch it.  I was 10 minutes into it when I began to believe in a Zombie apocolypse and rushed upstairs to wake DH (Dear Husband) and force him to watch it with me because I was scared.

I was never one of those people who liked being scared.  I don't like slasher movies or movies with alot of gore, but I do love a good mystery.

Anyway DH diligently watched with me and at the end he said, "I kind of like it."

Me too.  So much so I became one of those people who goes to Walmart in their pajamas - but that's another post.

I ran out and bought the first season of The Walking Dead because I found the premise so entrancing and I'm wondering how are these people going to get out of this.

A few notes about the show: 

The main character is Rick Grimes who wakes up from a coma to go searching for his family.  The show is based on a comic series which I'm suspecting is why it got a second season. The zombies are slow moving zombies - not like the ones from "Resident Evil" or "Zo

1) It is bloody
2) People and animals are disemboweled.
3) There is swearing -quiet a bit at times

Minus the F-Bomb being thrown around.  I don't find the gore to be any worse than something you'd see on CSI or any other crime show.  Except well the walking dead are eating.

Silly Saturday: "Lessons from Crochet" (or "The Fable of the Old Woman and the Crocheted Dolls")

A man and woman had been married for more than 60 years.

They had shared everything. They had talked about everything. They had kept no secrets from each other except that the little old woman had a shoe box in the top of her closet that she had cautioned her husband never to open or ask her about.

For all of these years, he had never thought about the box, but one day the little old woman got very sick and the doctor said she would not recover.

In trying to sort out their affairs, the little old man took down the shoe box and took it to his wife's bedside. She agreed that it was time that he should know what was in the box.

When he opened it, he found two crocheted dolls and a stack of money totaling $95,000. He asked her about the contents.

"When we were to be married," she said, "my grandmother told me the secret of a happy marriage was to never argue. She told me that if I ever got angry with you, I should just keep quiet and crochet a doll."

The little old man was so moved; he had to fight back tears. Only two precious dolls were in the box. He thought she had only been angry with him twice in all those years of living and loving.

He almost burst with happiness. "Honey," he said, "that explains the dolls, but what about all of this money? Where did it come from?"

"Oh," she said, "that's what I made from selling the dolls."

A Prayer...

Dear Lord, I pray for Wisdom to understand my man;
Love to forgive him;
And Patience for his moods;
Because Lord, if I pray for Strength,
I'll beat the daylights out of him, because I don't know how to crochet.

13 Reasons to Come to the EWW Holiday Party!

Happy Thursday! In honor of today, I figured I would do a list of 13 reasons why you should come to the third annual EWW Holiday Party. It's a not-to-be-missed event, sure to finish off the year in style!

1. It's the Third Annual Evanston Writers Workshop Holiday Party! You've seen the rest, now come to the best! We are the one and only, doing battle for writers since 2007!

2. You can party with all your writer friends, who don't look at you funny when you want to discuss past participles in public.

3. It's a Murder Mystery! You've heard about them, and now you get to come to one! Put on your Sherlock Holmes hat and follow those clues!

4. Debbie and I will cry if you don't come.

5. No, really. :)

6. You'll be able to have an old war story about the party when it's all said and done!

7. You get to find out what's in the goody bags!

8. We'll have some really good food for everyone!

9. We'll even do an awards ceremony for all EWW folks who come. Come find out what award YOU will be given! (Best Punster, Best Mustache, Best Puzzler...)

10. For all you NaNoWriters out there, come and de-stress after the full month of writing your a** off!

11. Generate fodder for your next superstar story. Even better if you write creative non-fiction - after all, truth is stranger than fiction!

12. You can say, "I was there!"

13. And the best reason of all for coming to the holiday party? TO HAVE A GREAT TIME, EWW-STYLE!!!

Register today!