The three of us at Rotten Leaves have been close to Richard for the past few years of our lives, trading words, stories and critiques. Our latest bonding experience came from watching a horror movie in a Denver hotel room, scared out of our wits. Manly. Very manly.

So when the word dropped that Richard’s baby would be published, Nik Korpon, Christopher Dwyer and I  were beyond thrilled. We watched the book grow over several months, reading multiple drafts, and it seemed only logical that we would scream our love for this novel as loud as we could.

So here it is, a three-way (not the dirty one) review of Richard Thomas’s debut novel.

Each fragment of the review focuses on each editor’s most favorite part(s) of the book, and we hope that the whole will make you order the novel as fast as humanly possible. You’ll regret it if you don’t. Trust a bunch of internet strangers on this.

Christopher Dwyer:

I was part of the initial writing workshop where Richard birthed the idea for TRANSUBSTANTIATE, so I have an interesting take on the novel that will differ from a first-time reader. It’s almost akin to watching one of your favorite bands in the studio for seven months, catching every cymbal crash, every broken vocal, every bit of guitar that gives you goosebumps. I knew what his approach was and I knew his weekly progress. But that’s not going to skew my opinion of the book, because as soon as he told me it was going to be published, I was equal parts thrilled and “Dude, I knew it was going to happen.”

My relationship with TRANSUBSTANTIATE began in late 2007, and I’ll be honest: I thought Richard was getting in a bit over his head. I know he won’t be angry with me with saying that because he’s like an older brother to me. I saw the amalgamation of voices, of styles, of themes that ordinarily couldn’t be connected in novel form…and I knew Richard had the attitude and the talent to pull it off.

Background out of the way, the thing that caught me the most about TRANSUBSTANTIATE was the way it felt like a mix of a vivid dream and tasteful nightmare. The population control experiment, the swagger of sexual prowess, the ultraviolence, the ethereal sweat dripping from every page…it all clicked for me. I remember telling Richard at some point last year that I wanted to see him write something linear, something a bit more straightforward. Even though I know he’s doing that with his next novel, what I didn’t tell him was that he mastered the multiple first-person point-of-view scheme with TRANSUBSTANTIATE. No one author is going to do it better and no other author should ever try.

And I think that’s what stands out about this novel. It’s not just well-written and beautiful. It’s the ambition behind the style, the scope; it’s the way Richard blends sci-fi with noir with thrills with horror with a cherry-tip drop of literary goodness…it would have been a fabulous story on its own, let alone with seven characters telling the story.

Nik Korpon:

One of the things that really struck me, probably about halfway through, was this seamless melding of multiple genres while still retaining what sycophants would say is a literary voice, meaning it’s a very well-written novel while still having the constant clicking of impending doom in the background. The whole Literary with a capital L versus genre argument seems to be getting more attention recently. Personally, I’ve always thought it ridiculous because, as TRANSUBSTANTIATE shows, you can have an exciting story while maintaining an acute attention to connotation, assonance, and sentence construction. The two categories are not mutually exclusive and with books like this, like Brian Evenson’s work, like Stephen Graham Jones’ work, coming out more frequently, I think that line of demarcation is thankfully becoming blurry.

One of my favorite parts of reading excellent fiction is the tiny details, the ones that give a glimpse at the man behind the curtain (or keyboard, in this case.) TRANSUBSTANTIATE has several of these. Besides the obvious drool-inducing Mustang, the minutiae of the letters give a number of tiny narrative threads to follow, countless background stories for the reader to mull. The Assigned letters are a perfect example of these.

In the same way that the details give you alternate threads, several word flourishes lend a much more dramatic, more epic feeling. Even phrases so small as ‘and so it goes’ send the cymbals crashing and trombones caterwauling in some sub-cranial John Williams score.

These few examples only skirt on the surface of the novel. The joy of it is reading and rereading, finding the gems I’d missed before. The reader half of my brain loves the textured feel of the narrative and prose. The writer half damns Richard for forcing me to up my game.

Axel Taiari:

“They say Jimmy made it out. But the postcards we get don’t seem real. Wish you were here and all that. Wherever here is. New York City, really? So I play along and wait for my break.”

Thus begins TRANSUBTANTIATE, and after that very first paragraph, the novel never slows down, never hints at even being able to. Richard’s prose catapults the reader through the story at breakneck speed while painting a mosaic of characters all trying to escape their personal Armageddon.

Official statements would have the novel fall under the category of a “neo-noir thriller” with “a slow reveal of plot”, I personally would call it a genre-bending Dark Towerishly LOST-infused car chase through a crowded street with the wheels on fire and a swarm of black choppers swooping in close, ready to blow everything up to Hell at any second. While heavy metal plays somewhere in the background.

And this is by far my favorite about TRANSUBSTANTIATE: while other authors could easily struggle with unleashing multiple points of view at such pace, Richard manages to make it all fit together, make sense, build characters, craft a vivid world, each new chapter giving you an additional piece of the puzzle, changing the whole picture, again and again, until the epilogue where everything falls into place and the reader is allowed to breathe once more.

But before that final showdown, you can expect a mental tilt-a-whirl, where a rogue computer quotes Charles Dickens, the stench of sex rises from the words, bullets fly, bones shatter, blood flows, dialogue cracks you up before slamming you down, and last but not least, love, too, yeah, it’s all in there, right on the pages for you to enjoy.

There. Now, what are you waiting for? A proper rating system? It goes something like this. 10 Rotten Stars out of a maximum 5.

Perhaps you need more reviews/blurbs? Yeah, enjoy.

“Transubstantiate is, is — it’s a visual: that 2001 baby opening its eyes in the monolith, but the monolith is shrouded in this story of loss and hope and identity, and encoded in the cadence of that story, if you listen close, is the genetic map with which to draw this impossible celestial infant, opening its eyes on the page, looking right into you.”

—Stephen Graham Jones
All The Beautiful Sinners, Bleed Into Me: A Book of Stories, Ledfeather, The Ones That Got Away

“Transubstantiate is an intricately-woven dystopian thriller, with every thread pulled tight. This is a solid debut from Richard Thomas.”
—Craig Clevenger
The Contortionist’s Handbook, Dermaphoria

“Richard Thomas’s Transubstantiate constructs a collection of voices that reveals a disturbing futuristic vision of terror and beauty. The novel’s island paradise, its imprisoned inhabitants, and the digital presence that works to control them, merge with ancient forces of rite and belief to create a surreal and devastating collage. This is a work that captures a world we almost know, its realities enough to raise an uneasy sense of potentiality.”
—Karen Brown
Pins and Needles, The Best American Short Stories 2008 (contributor)

“Told through various shadowy narrators, Transubstantiate is a trippy, intriguing novel that forecasts dystopia for our near-future. Thomas successfully blends several genres here—noir, literary fiction, sci-fi—all with abrasive, haunting language.”
—Joey Goebel
Torture the Artist, The Anomalies, Commonwealth

If you need more information, extracts and various goodies, here are all the relevant links.

Official TRANSUBTANTIATE website: http://www.transubstantiate.net

Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=272117108527&ref=ts

Richard’s website: http://whatdoesnotkillme.com/

Review at Bitten By Books: http://bittenbybooks.com/?p=26303

On the good news side – there may be something wonderful in store for Rotten Leaves.

It sounds like “sprint”, especially if you remove the first letter.

But more on that either in August or September. In the meantime, ya’ll have a fantastic summer, filled with sun and drinks and good fiction.

Thanks to obscure voodoo rites, various sacrifices, energy drinks, late nights and the hard work of editors Christopher Dwyer and Nik Korpon, our second issue is now live. This time around, we’ve got more unknowns, more published authors, more fiction, more poetry. Simply, more.

On the fiction side, we have: Renee Beauregard, Edward J. Rathke, J. David Bell, Gerald Vincent, Drew Mc Coy, Ben Langhinrichs, Pablo D’Stair, Neil Coghlan, Cassandra Mortimer, Chris Reed.

On the poetry side, Edward J. Rathke (again!), Jessica L. J. Smith, and Ian Hunter.

Feel free to use the cutesy little icons below to repost this on Facebook, Twitter, or wherever else.

Thanks in advance for reading, and stay tuned for more.

-Axel Taiari

http://www.bookworks.org.uk/asp/detail.asp?uid=book_7954A75D-5A9C-4337-8ED2-862F746D131B&sub=new

http://www.bookslut.com/fiction/2009_01_013997.php

http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/random-things-about-maxi-kim/

You can read more about the issue here, too: http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/?p=2769

The editors would also like to legally cover their own asses by saying that they do not condone or support terrorism, in any way, shape or form. We do not write, publish or encourage works that promote terrorism and the mindless killing of civilians.

However, we do support beautiful literature. We’re certainly guilty of that.)

Dear U.S. Department of Homeland Security, I write to you today on an urgent matter. I received news this morning that several hundred copies of my novel One Break, A Thousand Blows (BookWorks 2008) have been effectively destroyed and likely banned in the United States by US customs, to fulfill CBP’s dual mission of “preventing terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States, while also facilitating the flow of legitimate trade and travel.” I do not want to make any final judgments, as I am not aware of all the facts at the moment; I would immensely appreciate clarification and answers on this issue. So far neither U.S. Customs and Border Protection nor the Department of Homeland Security have been of much help.

According to my editor Stewart Home, two weeks ago “an attempt to sell titles in [his] Semina series at the New York Art Book Fare had descended into farce because the books had been impounded by US customs. Book Works told [him] they’d flown from Europe to America to sell the novels, but ended up manning an empty table. The publications have now disappeared and may have been destroyed; from New York any unsold copies should have gone on to a distributor in Los Angeles, but there is still no sign of them on either the east or west coast. . . . Word on the grapevine is that the Semina books were impounded because a US customs official took a look at [Mark Waugh’s novel] Bubble Entendre and decided it was a blue-print for a terrorist attack on the 2012 Olympic Games.”

What was this official’s name? What was his exact reasoning? If this was indeed the case, why was my novel additionally impounded along with Mark Waugh’s book? One Break, A Thousand Blows has its measure of obscenities, pornography and shock – but nowhere does it justify, let alone condone terrorism. If anything I am a literary terrorist. Moreover, why was Jana Leo’s Rape New York impounded? And why were copies of Bridget Penney’s Index impounded? An innocuous title – no? For myself, Penney’s book was the para-literary equivalent of a Richard Serra masterpiece. How could any one, even a government official, see anything terrorizing in it?

Speculations here abound: my Goldsmiths colleague in London thinks the title itself One Break, A Thousand Blows was too connotative of a terrorist plot. That and the fact that the enigmatic cover was colored Communist red with many depictions of wigs (as in disguises). And it probably didn’t help that at the beginning of the book I quoted a phrase from the Bernadette Corporation: “People want to be someone. But the really exciting challenge is to become no one. And where will you find no ones? In nowhere. Where things are exploding.”

A long pause. On second thought (in a parallax way), I can’t really blame US customs for doing what they ultimately did. I can well imagine an average, naive customs official (let’s imagine him to be completely unaware of the avant-garde) coming across the Semina series – totally baffled, and reading something like Bridget Penney’s Index as a highly elaborate coded index on weapons of mass destruction. If all of this seems a bit farfetched, I hate to think what might really be behind the conspiracy; in a word – censorship.

These days I find myself thinking more and more about Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School, considered her most popular and best-selling novel – the story is seemingly about Janey Smith, a ten-year-old American girl who has an incestuous sexual relationship with her father, who is also her boyfriend, brother, money, and amusement. Blood and Guts was banned in Germany, and I can’t help but feel that the authorities in New York effectively banned Jana Leo’s Rape New York for similar Blood and Guts reasons concerning taste and decency. Rape New York is a book about a real case in January 2001 where Leo herself was held hostage and raped during the course of an afternoon in her New York apartment. Perhaps the pulping of Kim, Penney and Waugh was simply collateral damage, incidental to the conservative backlash against Leo.

Wherever the truth lies, we here at the New School for Social Research, San Francisco are all tickled pink by it. And if in the end it turns out that this was all just an elaborate media hoax by Arts Council England (like the recent “bomb threat” publicity stunt at Cooper Union for Slavoj Zizek’s new book) – I don’t think I’ll have any regrets on the way that I approached this topic. As Kathy Acker put it, “I think the best thing in cases of censorship or things like this is to get as much media as possible.”

Yours sincerely, Maxi Kim, Beaubourg 268.

Meanwhile, this will allow me to focus on poetry submissions, and bring a lot of new features and changes to the website. Expect loads of goodness very soon.

-Axel

Our debut issue is now live. Rather than make a long overwritten post, we will let the stories speak for themselves.

We would like to thank the writers who sent us their work. This issue wouldn’t be what it is without their talent. Thanks to all of you, and we’re glad to have you on board.

Now, without further delay: pour yourself some coffee, or tea, or blood, turn off the lights, and enjoy the stories.

And when you’re done, put on your best make-up and costume, and go scare people.

CLICK HERE TO READ OUR FIRST ISSUE

Direct links to each story / poem:

COTTONWOODS – Vincent Louis Carrella

THE SLEEPING ROOM – Erik T. Johnson

ATTENTION DEFICIT – Matthew Dexter

BOY PARTS – Chris Reed

HANGING ON ST. JUDE (An excerpt from the novel CONSTELLATIONS) – Nik Korpon

A SHAPE IN THE NOTHING – Chris Deal

WISTMAN’S JOY – Hereward L. M. Proops

PROUD MUSIC AFTER THE STORM – Kelcey Wells

BRAMBLE MAN – Simon West Bulford

Welcome to Rotten Leaves. A couple months ago, my ink-brother and good friend Axel Taiari (co-editor here at RL) suggested that we start our own literary magazine. Something for the fans of darker fiction. A place where the cold meets the dark meets the fantastic.

So, here we are. Rotten Leaves makes it debut to the world today and the two of us could not be more excited. Axel and I grew up on Stephen King, the Halloween series, and Philip K. Dick. We were raised on a steady diet of horror and noir. We adore the darker side of things, whether it be crime fiction or steampunk.

And now, we’re here to provide a new literary outlet for talented writers, both those who are established and those who haven’t had a piece of work in print. Rotten Leaves will showcase the very best in horror, noir, fantasy and beyond. We’re just as happy running a psychological horror story as we are publishing an underground noir tale of bad guys with drugs and guns.

Right at this very moment, we’re accepting submissions for the site. Axel and I are ramped and ready to read your work. The first issue will launch on everyone’s favorite holiday: Halloween.

Thanks for stopping by,

Christopher

P.S. Although we’re launching on October 31, the first issue of Rotten Leaves will not be a Halloween-themed issue. However, one story with jack o’ lanterns isn’t going to hurt. So, in the spirit of the holiday, we’re going to accept a single Halloween-themed short story for the first issue. If you’re interested in submitting, please note in your email that the story is tailored for the holiday.

Bandwidth doesn’t come cheap – so until the editors randomly stumble upon a big fat pile of money, a very small number of ads (three spots, to be precise) will be used. I am okay with that.

However, what I am not okay with – ads that annoy the readers, or take away from your reading experience.

I’ll get to the point: I made extra sure to pick ads that are pretty unobtrusive. However, should you end up seeing any ad that is either not worksafe, borderline worksafe, makes sounds, moves around too much, threatens you or insults one of your relatives because you are not clicking on it, let me know. Send me an email at comments@rottenleaves.com . Give me a rough description of what it looked like, and the company / product name if possible, and I will make it disappear forever, straight back to the capitalistic Hell from whence it came.

-Axel

EDIT: Banned three pro-scientology ads. Well, well.

Until then, please check out the submissions page and send us your stories/poems.

Also, make sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter, talk to us, spread the word about the magazine, and get ready for a flurry of great stories.

(yes, the Amazon store requires a bit of side-scrolling on some resolutions. Unfortunately, this is not something that is currently easily fixable. Sorry about that, hope it won’t bother you guys too much.)