The Misanthrope's Manual

     I know that of late I've been remiss in my responsibilities to the one or two people who actually care what I have to say about politics and social issues. I'm in the middle of collaborating with a British novelist on a thriller and this was the other reason.
     At the beginning of the week, I'd published on Create Space and Kindle a satirical dictionary I'd intermittently written during the 90's. The Misanthrope's Manual weighs in at a tidy 121 pages for the Create Space edition and when it clears in the next day or so, you can order it at cost for $2.31. The Kindle version is priced at $2.99. With about 500 definitions (including some new ones acknowledging the digital age and Occupy Wall Street), that comes out to more or less a half a penny per laugh, which sounds like a helluva deal to me.
     In case you didn't click on the links for yesterday's post (my interview with my friend and co-author Nick Stephenson), a generous sample of the Misanthrope's Manual can be found here. You can also go to the Kindle page and download most of the "A" words onto your Kindle and decide for yourself if a ha' penny a laugh is worth it.
     These really are some of the most vicious and ingenious definitions written in over a century and is well worth your time to at least check out. Here's the blurb I'd written for the product page when it finally goes live:
     Several hundred of the world's most vicious definitions, the most vitriolic in the 102 years since the last edition of THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY published by Ambrose Bierce, updated for a more modern 21st century readership.

     Samples:

     Doom, n- The infinitely patient beneficiary of all human endeavor.
     Success, n- Material gain without material witnesses.
     Harmless, adj- Dead.

     What you're about to hold in your hands are 122 of the most hilariously misanthropic pages written in over a century. Don't say you weren't forewarned.