AN ALL NEW ARRANGEMENT of words from the English language, Never Hug a Nun will be held together with a good-smelling glue binding. Written in a style reminiscent of the fine print on a box of Chiclets, this debut novel is easy to digest and contains numbered pages and chapter markings so readers can tell where they are.
Departing from routine of so many novels being “too good to put down,” Never Hug a Nun can be put down as fast as three bags of groceries you just carried in with a full bladder. It’s nourishing pages will refresh readers and prepare them to face life, the way a boy of ten is prepared to dash upstairs when Mom asks for help unloading the dishwasher.
Leafing through the completed manuscript, we find a typical passage showing how the youth of yesterday, uncorrupted by video games and gadgets, learned to make their own fun in a wholesome, constructive way:
“So, they wandered up to the tracks. They stole tomatoes from the gardens along the tracks and threw them at Bi-State buses. It was a moment of perfect happiness to watch the tomatoes leave their fingertips, arch off the bridge, and goosh against the bus windows splattering red pulp and seeds down the side. If they were lucky, the bus would stop and the passengers would climb out and chase them. But most of the time, the buses just kept going.”
It was obviously a more moral time, but also a time of when boys knew how to sit still in class and study:
“He looked back at the girl. Ebby was sitting in the desk next to his, writing her name on a piece of paper – in cursive. Wow. He and the other first-graders only knew how to print. But it was not her penmanship that made him shiver as if he had just swallowed cough syrup. Maybe it was her black hair streaked with light brown, her smart eyes intent on her cursive letters, her no-good-for-sports stick arms, her plaid jumper and green socks in brown tassel shoes. Despite the way he always felt like burping around other girls, his mind ran away with her to the golf course. He was with her on the fairway by the railroad tracks, holding her fingertips, dancing with her in big wide circles. It was the new thing and it was breathtaking.”
AS READERS WILL RECALL, there was no more powerful feeling than the new thing — that unprecedented jolt when a warehouse full of never-before-used endorphins dumped into the bloodstream of a boy or girl on a spring day.
The book also contains some sentences that early reviewers have hinted rise almost to the level of literature:
“Gross, what stinks?” he blurted out.
There may be some other examples, but that’s for the reader to discover.
Now that the book is completely edited and spel-checked, it’s gone to the printer and nothing can stop the presses, except for an unpaid printing deposit. We hope you enjoy fine literature in your home and will give Never Hug a Nun a try. It’s the kind of book that people will talk about at cocktail parties, and then they’ll laugh and you’ll get a full view of their dental work.
Blank Slate Press is proud to release Never Hug a Nun, a feral cat of a book that has been scratching at the back door all summer, eager to run along the fence line looking for slow mice or strangers who might stoop over and understand it and love it.
If you know anyone like that, please contact the authorities.
Sincerely,
Kevin Killeen
P.S. The book is due out in late November, and can be wadded up to fit in most Christmas stockings. To find out more and reserve your copy, please click here.
