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Potential Professors Take Note: Ross Bullen shows you HOW TO SUCCEED IN ACADEMIA (WHILE FAILING AT EVERYTHING ELSE)

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[NEW YORK, NY] College is a wonderful place, what with all those crisp autumn afternoons and underlying sense of promise fueled by the invigorating marketplace of ideas and spirit of healthy debate over the Big Ideas. It’s downright addictive for some, and those that are passionate about learning, teaching, and earning less than $15,000 a year may find themselves on the career academic track. It’s a life of tweed blazers and stealing food from unattended cafeteria trays, and it’s all laid out in How to Succeed in Academia (While Failing at Everything Else) (ISBN: 978-1954158382) by Ross Bullen. 

 

How to Succeed in Academia (While Failing at Everything Else) is a satirical guide to every aspect of life in higher ed, whether it’s finishing your dissertation on time (or at least before the heat death of the universe), applying for an academic job (by summoning the ancient Mesopotamian demon Pazuzu), or overcoming imposter syndrome (even if you’re a family of raccoons living in a parka).

 

This humorous guidebook from The Official Dream Dinner Party Podcast host, regular McSweeney’s Internet Tendency contributor, and actual university English professor Ross Bullen delivers laugh-out-loud moments both delightfully absurd and agonizingly true, whether you’re in the classroom, the library, or working a second job at Subway to supplement your meager adjunct professor paycheck.

To request a physical review copy of How to Succeed in Academia (While Failing at Everything Else) (ISBN: 978-1954158382), or to plan an event featuring Ross Bullen, please contact Humorist Books: brian@humoristbooks.com

 

The World Is Frighteningly Hilarious, so Just Tell Those Worried Kiddos to ‘Sleep, Little One’

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[NEW YORK, NY] The world can feel like a big, scary place — because it is — and especially to children — because they’re small, innocent, and don’t know anything. Who shall teach them the ways of life? Their parents, of course, with the aid of helpful, allegorical story collections. Keep those kids safe, sound, and away from the metaphorical hot stoves of existence with Humorist Books’ Sleep, Little One: Bedtime Tales for Tiny Troublemakers (ISBN: 978-1-954158-37-5) by Brian Dunn.

 

With Dunn’s mock-storybook collection, parents can put their children’s fears of the mundane, unknown, dangerous to rest — a little, maybe. Accompanied by classically fantastical and engrossing art from illustrator Lucy Budd, kids will learn all about how to:

 

  • Keep the hungry “Car Wash Kraken” at bay
  • Dodge today’s virulent “Antibiotic-Resistant Cooties” strains
  • Ignore Mommy’s “Magical Bottle Goblins”
  • Meet Daddy’s “Fit, New Workout Pal”

 

And much, much more.

 

“I don’t envy kids today, what with the litany of anxieties they lug around. Behind every valid fear lie scores of terrifying, imagined ones, and using the framework of bedtime stories to explore childhood’s inherent insecurities was as fun as it sounds,” says Dunn, the author of Fringe Elements and frequent contributor to McSweeney’s and Splitsider. “I fully expect reports of night terrors in prepubescent children to spike dramatically.”

[Click here to download a free copy of Sleep Little One]

 

To request a physical review copy of Sleep, Little One: Bedtime Tales for Tiny Troublemakers (ISBN: 978-1-954158-37-5), or to plan an event featuring Brian Dunn or Lucy Budd, please contact Humorist Books: brian@humoristbooks.com

 

 

Spooktacular News! Dim-Bulb Demons Beezle, Buzzle, and Barb Are Back and  ‘Home for Halloween’

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[NEW YORK, NY]  Just when you thought it was safe to Trick or Treat, those inexorable demons, Beezle, Buzzle, and Barb, make their obnoxious return! This Halloween, the demons have been summoned to shock, scare, and create general mayhem throughout the neighborhood. In this latest stand-alone volume, you  become the unwilling accomplice with every turn of the page. So, before you crack open this latest volume, don’t forget to shut your windows and lock your doors. This year, Beezle, Buzzle, and Barb are Home for Halloween (ISBN: 978-1-954158-26-9)

 

In the fourth entry in the “Beezle, Buzzle, and Barb” saga, a collection of children’s storybook-style books that aren’t really for children, a trio of mischief-causing demons return to Earth to wreak minor havoc on Halloween. Like always, they fail to get the job done, and this time wind up having a very happy and super spooky Halloween.

 

A fun, festive, and slightly creepy seasonal book perfect for kids of all ages, Home for Halloween (ISBN: 978-1-954158-26-9) is available in paperback format wherever books are sold, distributed by IngramSpark, and on assorted e-book platforms. To request a review copy, or to set up an event featuring Home for Halloween and Brandon Hicks, please contact Humorist Books: brian@humoristbooks.com


About the Author

 

Brandon Hicks is an award-winning cartoonist, illustrator, and humorist. He’s the author of three other “Beezle, Buzzle, and Barb” tales (from Humorist Books): Curses for Christmas, Seven Easy Steps to Go to Hell, and The History of Human Achievement. 

 

 

 

Dive Into Community Pool, the Funny, Filthy, Wild, and Sweet Second Novel From Acclaimed Author Keith James

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[NEW YORK, NY]  The entire town of Chubbuck, Idaho, loathes Jerry Yatsko. Even his family can’t stand him, including his openly cheating wife and huge dork of a son. Daily visits to the local municipal pool don’t quite bring the family togetherness that Jerry desperately craves, but it does help him stumble on a portal that blurs the lines between reality and dreamland. His actions in one place can change his fate in the other, and Jerry — as well as a young and unpredictable friend — can use this powerful tool to either take revenge on the monsters of Chubbuck or protect the people that he still, somehow, and begrudgingly, deeply loves. 

 

Come on in, the water’s fine in Community Pool (ISBN: 978-1-954158-32-0). It’s a misanthropic and profane comedy that transforms into a powerful, moving sci-fi adventure through space, time, and the human heart.

 

“I wrote this book as a brand new dad, in the middle of the pandemic. My wife, my daughter, and I were living with my mother-in-law. I thought a lot about communities,” author Keith James says. “What is my obligation to the community? What is the community’s obligation to me? If I say, ‘screw this community,’ when would I be wrong and when would I be right?”

 

A novel as emotionally raw as it is laugh out loud and utterly unpredictable, COMMUNITY POOL (ISBN 978-1-954158-32-0) is available in paperback format wherever books are sold, distributed by IngramSpark, and on assorted e-book platforms. To request a review copy, or to set up an event featuring COMMUNITY POOL and Keith James, please contact Humorist Books: brian@humoristbooks.com

 

About the Author

 

Keith James is a writer and performer from San Diego. He has trained and performed at Pack Theater, iO West, and UCB. Community Pool is his second novel, following the acclaimed dark comic fantasy Greg Maxwell’s Inferno (Humorist Books). He also writes and hosts the Gus Biblowitz: Basketball Legend audio series.

 

 

Humorist Books presents WALKER, the hilarious debut novel from Emmy-nominated writer Sam Pasternack

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Walker is walking across America! From Idaho, down through California, across the Southwest, the South, the Carolinas, and up to Washington, D.C., just in time for Inauguration Day. Why? He pretty much has to! As a modern-day and devoted descendent of legendary 19th century long-distance pedestrian Preston Dilettante, the relentlessly sunny Walker Dilettante will gladly traipse across the country to reunite far-flung family members for a photo with their common ancestor’s iconic boot — as a gift to his beloved, dying Grandpappy. Along the way, Walker is accompanied by his social media-savvy cousin, Ria, meets cousins he loves who loathe him back, and accidentally involves himself in a deadly scandal surrounding both the incoming and outgoing presidents. That’s the world of WALKER (ISBN 978-1-954158-29-0).

 

WALKER is a book about America, yokels, Instagram, politics, intrigue, hot air balloons, mysteries, and, most of all, the weirdness of family and the burden of legacy. “It’s like if On The Road was an absurdist epic, filled with homespun Americana dreams, centered around a lovable naïf, seasoned with a touch of Simon Rich,” says Saturday Night Live writer Brian McElhaney. “Reading this was honestly, somehow, more fun than TV.”

 

“WALKER came about when my brother told me about pedestrianism, competitive walking popular in the Civil War era. I’ve always loved learning about sports subcultures that have gone out of style over the years,” says first-time novelist Sam Pasternack. “Once I started imagining the modern-day descendants of the most famous pedestrians, Walker’s story came into focus.” 

 

A novel as wistful, striking, and compelling as it is funny and earnest, WALKER (ISBN 978-1-954158-29-0) is available in paperback, e-book, and audiobook format wherever books are sold. To request a review copy, or to set up an event featuring WALKER please contact Humorist Books: brian@humoristbooks.com

 

About the Author

Sam Pasternack is a Los Angeles-based writer and Emmy-nominated producer for his work on The Drew Barrymore Show. He has written and produced for television shows on CBS, NBC, and truTV.

 

 

 

 

From Humorist Books Comes the Shocking, Twisted, and Alien-Infused Origin Story of the Letter H, in the Vowels of the Earth by Matthew David Brozik

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New York City. 1948. Jeremiah Carp is a mild-mannered, low-level professor pleased with his quiet life of work, gentle pranks, and thinking about marrying his patient partner. All of that just might disappear thanks to Jeremiah’s woeful decision to get involved with some nefarious ad men to help them with a campaign to introduce a new letter — “aitch” — to the English alphabet. 

An ambitious goof worthy of Jeremiah’s considerable talents? Yes. Is he an unwitting pawn in an alien conspiracy that’s been in the planning stages for hundreds of years? Somehow, yes, that’s also true. 

It all plays out like the alphabet song in The Vowels of the Earth (ISBN 978-1954158276) by Matthew David Brozik, a hybrid of literate science-fiction, laugh out loud humor, and old-school academic farce.

“The Vowels of the Earth is the result of my deciding to turn a quirky 750-word humor piece into a full-length novel,” Brozik (The Government Manual for New Superheroes) says. “Originally, the protagonist was old, bitter, and sarcastic. For the novel, I made him young, energetic, and cycloptic. And I added aliens, because that’s the only way the sheer absurdity of the plot would make any sense at all.”

“The Vowels of the Earth is a mystery with jokes, linguistics, aliens, and heart, the four essential components of any good story,” says former senior editor of The Onion Jason Roeder (Griefstrike! The Ultimate Guide to Mourning). “Brims with oddly lovable characters, zingy dialogue and humor, and so many twists that you not only won’t see them coming — you’ll give up and surrender to Brozik’s fevered imagination,” adds Rob Kutner (Conan, The Daily Show).

The Vowels of the Earth (ISBN 978-1954158276) is available in every major ebook format and in paperback.

To arrange an author interview or appearance, and/or to receive a review copy of The Vowels of the Earth contact Brian Boone at Humorist Books.

 

 

About the Author

Matthew David Brozik is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer of fiction and humor that has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Barnes & Noble’s Grin and Tonic, and Mulholland Books’ Popcorn Fiction. He’s the author of the middle-grade novel Odder Space and grown-up books Spelled Wrong and Danger …With a Hard G, named by Splitsider as one of the Best Comedy Books of 2017.