Nothing About Us Without Us by David Perlmutter Book Tour and Giveaway :)
Nothing
About Us Without Us:
The
Adventures of the Cartoon Republican Army
by
David Perlmutter
Genre:
Fantasy
Anybody
who loves animated cartoons should be interested in knowing the truth
about them. Which is that they have lives after the camera stops
filming, and pretty interesting ones at that. This book will give you
the truth about who they are and what they feel, direct from their
lips. Particularly about how the leaders of the world want them out
of the way, for good....
Contrary to popular
belief, the word “alien” does not apply exclusively to beings
from outer space. The truth is, it originally applied to anyone who
was somewhat “foreign” to the normative standards of a nation, be
it in dress, speech, language, social customs, behavior, or any of a
million other biased and narrowly structured devices designed to
separate the people who “mattered” from those who supposedly did
“not” matter. And that doesn’t mean just those who assume human
form. There’s a whole race of beings, who you know rather
pedantically as “cartoon characters”, who have been
“entertaining” you for over a century, and they’ve been treated
like crap and manipulated by people to make money and careers of
their own for nearly that long. That especially applies to the
uniquely gifted and talented beings of television animation, the
exclusive population and racist target of that rotten Orthicon
enterprise. Well, not anymore, pal! After we got back from Orthicon,
that interplanetary hellhole we got exiled to by a totally and
completely unsympathetic U.S. government, we formed the Cartoon
Republican Army to get control of their own rights and affairs. Hey,
it worked for the Irish, didn’t it?
David Perlmutter is a freelance writer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is the author of America Toons In: A History of Television Animation (McFarland and Co.), The Singular Adventures Of Jefferson Ball (Amazon Kindle/Smashwords), The Pups (Booklocker.com), Certain Private Conversations and Other Stories (Aurora Publishing), Honey and Salt (Scarlet Leaf Publishing), Orthicon; or, the History of a Bad Idea (Linkville Press, forthcoming), The Encyclopedia of American Animated Television Shows (Rowman and Littlefield) and Nothing About Us Without Us (Amazon Kindle Direct Prime). His short stories can be read on Curious Fictions at Curious Fictions/David Perlmutter. He can be reached on Facebook at David Perlmutter-Writer, Twitter at @DKPLJW1, and Tumblr at The Musings of David Perlmutter (yesdavidperlmutterfan).
What
is something unique/quirky about you?
I
have Asperger’s Syndrome. I was diagnosed at a very young age. I
wouldn’t classify it as a disability, but as a mild mental
disorder, since I am still capable of doing most things other people
can. I may do them in a slightly different way, but they still get
done.
What
are some of your pet peeves?
Loud
noises that are not music, people using their cell phones and
ignoring other people in public, and people saying and doing things
that are wrong while believing incorrectly that are right.
Where
were you born/grew up at?
Winnipeg,
Manitoba, Canada. I haven’t lived anywhere else in my life, which I
suspect is rarer than it used to be. Originally I lived in the West
End on Sherbrook Street, then moved to Somerville Avenue in Fort
Garry, then lived 28 (!) years on Montrose Street in River Heights,
and now live with my parents in a condo on Victor Lewis Drive in
Lindenwoods.
If
you knew you'd die tomorrow, how would you spend your last day?
Quietly,
at home, waiting for the end to come, preferably in my sleep.
Who
is your hero and why?
Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. He was one of the most thoughtful and
compassionate men who ever lived, and one of history’s greatest
orators. In a terrible and violent time in American history, he
seemed to be the sole voice of reason, especially looking at him now.
If he had not been assassinated, I suspect his influence on the world
would be even greater than it is now, and we would all be living in
better circumstances because of that..
What
kind of world ruler would you be?
Benevolent,
fair, just and kind. The best ones in all of history had those
qualities.
What
are you passionate about these days?
What
I’ve always been passionate about: animation, music, literature,
movies and TV. Particularly in trying to show how others how
important they are through my own non-fiction and fiction writing,
because some people still don’t get that about any of them.
What
do you do to unwind and relax?
Listen
to the radio (chiefly the CBC) and music, mostly.
Describe
yourself in 5 words or less!
Eager
to please.
When
did you first consider yourself a writer?
I
always knew writing was going to play a role in something I did
professionally, but it wasn’t really until I sold my first story in
2009 that I knew it could be a career for me, even just a part-time
one.
Do
you have a favorite movie?
Yes.
“Blazing Saddles”. I thought it was brilliant the first time I
saw it, and I still think that it’s one of the funniest and most
audacious comedies ever made in Hollywood. Mel Brooks is one of the
few people in the world I can truly say that I idolize, and I have
always tried to follow the example he set for me in that movie with
what I write now.
Which
of your novels can you imagine made into a movie?
Any
of them, but they would have to be animated for them to really work;
in live-action they’d look stilted and fake. But I’d have to
write the scripts, if they’d let me, for them to be truly
authentic.
What
literary pilgrimages have you gone on?
I
can’t really say I have gone on any, yet. It’s hard to do that
when your literary idols all live- or lived- very far away from where
you live. But, before I die, I want to pay tribute to the man who
really turned me on to reading fictional prose in junior high- Jack
London- by visiting his home town, Oakland, California, and seeing if
there are still traces of the impoverished 19th
century world he grew up in and escaped there.
As
a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal?
The
animal I have written about most in my work so far: a dog.
What
can we expect from you in the future?
I
am awaiting the publication of my first novel, “Orthicon”, which
has been locked up in the vaults of the publisher I sold it to a
couple of years ago for a while now, but they assure me it will be
published soon. I also intend to continue writing and publishing new
non-fiction and fiction. Recently, I joined Curious Fictions, and
have started publishing things I can’t sell anywhere else there,
and I hope to put things from my back catalogue up there as well.
Readers interested in my stuff can follow me there, as well as on my
social media accounts (provided).
What
are your top 10 favorite books/authors?
My
top ten writers are, in no particular order: Jack London, Robert
Bloch, Frederik Pohl, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, H.G. Wells,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edmund Wilson, Northrop Frye and G.K.
Chesterton.
What
book do you think everyone should read?
“Patriotic
Gore” by Edmund Wilson. The Civil War as told by the people who
lived through it. You’ll never look at those times and those people
the same way again.
Do
the characters all come to you at the same time or do some of them
come to you as you write?
It
never comes completely at once. Things evolve as I write about them.
That’s why I keep going back to my main stable of characters- to
flesh them out and be able to tell more fully developed stories about
them.
What
kind of research do you do before you begin writing a book?
Extensive.
I spend much more time doing research than writing, to make sure I
get things right.
Do
you see writing as a career?
Yes.
Do
you read yourself and if so what is your favorite genre?
Yes.
Science Fiction, Fiction and Horror. Especially the old masters and
mistresses, who did it so much better than I possibly could.
Do
you prefer to write in silence or with noise? Why?
I
put music on and let it rip. It really stimulates my imagination.
Pen
or type writer or computer?
Usually,
pen first, then computer, to work out and eliminate the kinks so I
don’t have to spend so much type. Occasionally, if I’m pressed
for time, direct to computer.
Tell
us about a favorite character from a book.
Buck,
the protagonist of Jack London’s “The Call Of The Wild”, the
book that made me want to write novels. What he goes through no
self-respecting dog should, but the fact that he survives it all
intact is even more remarkable. It’s a real feat to write a book
without a human being as a protagonist, and London did it so
brilliantly. Besides, he was up in the Klondike for the Gold Rush
himself, so he had absolutely no problem getting the setting and
characters just right.
Advice
they would give new authors?
What
my half-namesake Davy Crockett is said to have had his motto: “Be
sure you’re right, then go ahead.”
What
is your writing Kryptonite?
Trying
to write more than 40,000 words in one piece. Do you know some
publishers won’t even read something you write unless it’s at
least twice that? They need to try bring it back to the basic novel
word count if they want something short, simple and accessible.
Do
you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?
Half
of one, and half the other.
What’s
the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite
sex?
Fearing
that the people of that sex will reject my writing about them just
because you aren’t one of “them”. Which is dumb, because the
best writers can make a character believable regardless of their
gender. But, in my case, there are still a lot of man-haters who
think women are the only ones capable of “really” writing about
women, and there probably always will be.
Do
you believe in writer’s block?
Certainly.
It goes hand in glove with depression, which I have suffered from
many times in my life. You get thinking that you can never come with
anything original because it’s all been done before. But what’s
all been done before, really, is the stereotypes, the false and
imagined expectations of readers, and the recalcitrance of certain
publishers to try anything “new”. If you write something that you
really have faith in, and you can convince yourself (and then a
publisher) that it has some merit, then you really can’t go wrong.
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