“[The Greatest Show on Earth] is a hungry tiger, with very sharp claws, immensely powerful jaws, and a nasty temper; make one wrong move and you get your head bitten off... It's too brutally, painfully true. Too upsetting, too worrying, too likely to offend too many influential people.
Any reasonable book editor, reading this, would have turned pale with horror at the thought of what it might do to her career. ” Michael Allen-Grumpy Old Bookman
"Teaming up with Barnum-esque huckster Bill Howard to produce a psychotherapy reality show, she finds a star patient in Meme Lamb, a narcissistic trust-fund brat and failed actress who is never happier than when threatening suicide or scoring crystal meth. Under Carole’s treatment, Meme becomes “ ‘the greatest victim in the universe,’ ” as she elaborates for home viewers a lurid backstory in which she was sexually molested by both her father and the Pope; gave birth at age eight to two infants who were slaughtered at a black mass; and has hundreds of multiple personalities, including those of Anne Frank, Chief Joseph and a Russian whore...Buck has a vigorous comic imagination and a biting wit." Kirkus Reviews
“The novel is comedic, I suppose, but do not underestimate the power of its dark side. And most of all, pay attention; there is a lesson to be learned here that most authors would not take the time (nor have the skill) to deliver. Books like this simply do not get written much anymore (and never published) and it is quite a shame, because upon having finished SHOW, I realized what we are all missing.” PODDY MOUTH
“The Greatest Show On Earth, a self-published comic novel by a young Portland public defender named Daniel Scott Buck, is a real surprise. His writing is snappy and highly competent, and he manages to construct an ambitious, engaging plot (involving reality TV, split personality disorder and a semi-psycho woman named Meme). I like the smarmy sensibility.............”
Levi Asher-LitKicks.com
“Daniel Scott Buck’s The Greatest Show on Earth takes society’s obsession with pop psychology, celebrity culture and reality TV to its illogical, darkly farcical conclusion, offering us lethal satire of Swiftian proportions. Is Daniel Scott Buck the new Juvenal?” ANDREW GALLIX—3:AM Magazine
Chicks dig scars, everyone knows that, right? Meet Severence DeSnappio, a man who creates ‘fake’ injuries for desperate clients. He’ll get you a stab wound, shot gun blast, snowboarding injury - but a bite from a great white shark?
Set in Miami, Chicks Dig scars is a lyrical, Lynchian mix of dream logic and hard boiled detection.
I just finished reading "the Kissing Bug" while it was definitely a little dark and disturbing it was also very humorous – I really enjoyed it. I think you should do a series of children’s books like it.
The Kissing Bug arrived in the mail tonight. It looks fucking beautiful. But I'll have to wait until December to read it. For now it's on the shelf next to a Philip K Dick book. Rock and roll, pilgrim.
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