What your favorite authors look like NOW?!?!?!

By Steve Weddle

Remember these authors?

Have you ever wondered what some of your favorite authors look like now? You won't believe your eyes.

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens wrote a story about Christmas that later became the 1988 hit Scrooged, starring Billy Murray as the delightful curmudgeon Frank Cross and Robert Goulet as Robert Goulet. 

Recently, Dickens has been rumored to be adapting a screenplay from some of his other boring-ass work. He has also let his beard grow, as seen in recent photographs from the Sears Photo Studio in Palmdale.

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Donna Tartt

Donna Tartt had the great fortune to have been born in the South, but then moved to Vermont. She won a Pulitzer a couple years ago for The Goldfinch, her third novel.

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Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon was a very famous author many years ago, known for declining the William Dean Howells Medal. Pynchon's second novel, The Crying of Lot 49, is his most read, as it is the shortest. His third novel, Gravity's Rainbow, is second only to the Bible in the ratio of bought:read books. (GR is 384:1 and the Bible is 1,387:1).

Recently, Pynchon's novel Inherent Vice was made into a movie, featuring Maya Rudolph as a receptionist. Pynchon himself had a cameo in the movie as "Angry Man."

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Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison wrote Beloved, which was made into a movie of the same name, starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover, before he was too old for this shit. The book won the Pulitzer, and her other work has done pretty darn well, too, She won the Nobel in 1993. In 2012, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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Dave White

Dave White (b. 1979) is a New Jersey novelist, known for his love of pork rolls and the NY Mets. White attended Rutgers University, which discontinued its women's fencing program in 2007.  Ozzie Nelson also attended Rutgers.

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Violent Words, Violent Worlds

Guest Post by CS DeWildt

Holly's note: When I asked Chris DeWildt to write a guest post for DSD this week, I never guessed it might help me solve a dilemma I've been having with my own WIP. But the question he poses: Why do crime fiction writers write what we write?--helped me do just that. One of the reasons I write and read crime fiction is that I believe even good people are capable of doing terrible things under the right (or wrong) circumstances and its a theme I'm compelled to explore again and again in my own work. Thinking about Chris's question helped me nail down the theme of my current WIP. Thanks, Chris!

I'll pass the mic to him now:

So I was on Facebook the other day (I’m always on Facebook) and running my mouth as usual (I’m always running my mouth) and posted a short gem (they’re all gems) about the best piece of writing feedback I ever received from a professor. It was this: “You have talent, but is this how you want to use it?” Now, I was young, and while I was ecstatic to be recognized as having talent (what fledgling writer isn’t?) the second part of her statement, “is this how you want to use it?” confounded me. The story she referred to was a noir piece at its core, probably better described as horror in hindsight, but I thought what I’d written was good, a kind of twisted coming of age tail in which three young children are attacked by a stray dog while walking through their suburban neighborhood. The arc was completed as the last child learns that life isn’t as peachy as we tend to assume it is when we’re young, a lesson everyone learns eventually. Unfortunately for the kids in the story, this lesson came too late to do them any kind of good. I think I worded it something like “it was the moment they separated real-life from Disney for the first time.” I’m sure if I read this piece now I would be mortified and wonder exactly what the professor saw that qualified as “talent,” but the “is this how you want to use it” question stuck with me. What did she mean? Of course it was. I’d written the piece, hadn’t I? I later realized what she was really asking me was why didn’t I write something more akin to the epic poem about famous quarterback Joe Namath she’d written and shared with us, or the dialogue only piece about a flirty young girl working in a call center who took on various personas as she tried to entertain herself through the night shift. What my professor wanted was something more “literary” or to borrow a wonderfully sarcastic line from author Joe Clifford, something about “the symbolism of a rain soaked parking lot. Or a story about Christmas dinner with my grandmother in Japan.” And then, just like that the semester was over and I was never able to answer her question, but I couldn’t dismiss it either. Then, years later, something occurred to me: that the more interesting question, for every author, isn’t what, but why do we choose to write what we do.

I love dark subject matter. I always have. As a kid I loved pouring over the crime section of the newspaper, the violence particularly giving me a thrill. And the more sordid the better: beatings, sexual assaults, abductions, murders; the reports gave me access into worlds I didn’t want to be in, but didn’t want to look away from either. Now it’s no secret to anyone who writes that the things you take in are going to affect the things you put out. But that still doesn’t fully answer the why of it. So I continued to wonder why are we, as dark writers, so drawn to these things? In preparation for this post, I asked many of my writer friends about this, looking for some common theme, a signal in the noise so to speak that would give some kind of insight. I was met with a variety of reasons my brethren and sistren choose to write the violent, dark prose we do. For some it’s simple catharsis. For others, it’s a vicarious wish fulfillment they are too law-abiding to seek out in real life, and on the page, anything goes. Someone told me it was more of a calculated choice, a way to both gain sympathy for characters as victims, or to simply put their protagonist’s feet to the fire and up the ante quickly. And still others reported the old art imitating life adage, and though violence was a horrible thing in the real world, their stories gave them level of control over what is otherwise very unpredictable and no always as satisfying. The surprising thing, or maybe not so surprising since dark genre writers are about the nicest, most supportive people I’ve ever met, is that many of them told me that they often find themselves in a moral dilemma, asking themselves repeatedly if they are doing the story justice with the violence and not just producing an exploitative shocker or perhaps taking the easy path to the readers’ emotions. And it’s this dilemma that to me is the crux of our desire to depict the horrible and hideous, the vile side of humanity. What it provides us is the opportunity to explore our own morality, to examine our own lives and make sense of that real darkness we’re forced to witness.

Art comes from pain, it’s cliché but that doesn’t mean it’s untrue. I could give you a sob story about my own life that would bring some people to tears while causing others to laugh at how easy I’ve had it, relatively speaking. But relative as it may be, my pain is real. My friends’ pain is real. Your pain is real. I can only speak for myself, but I’d be surprised if any writer couldn’t relate at some level, that by digging around a little deeper than they’ve had to go personally, they can see that their trials, their hurts, are universal and in most cases, truly not as bad as they could be. I’ve never had a real artistic philosophy for my writing other than that I make it a point to try to find some kind of beauty inside ugliness, whether it just be some sort of justice being served or just something terrible to the best of my ability, infusing it with the truth it warrants. As a result, I relish my time in the murky depths, and that breath I take when I return to the surface is a reminder of how good everyday life can really be. I’m not claiming any kind of truly novel insight, just my own experience, but if you’re a writer and this idea seems foreign to you, I recommend you give it a try. Challenge yourself to go to places you’d rather not. Challenge yourself to examine the dregs of humanity. And tell me it doesn’t feel great when you get back.

So, Ms. Professor whose name I can’t remember. Your tutelage was valuable and I appreciate the feedback, but to answer your question: Yes. This is exactly how I want to use my talent, and now I can tell you why. So thanks for that.

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CS DeWildt is the author of several works of crime fiction and numerous short stories. His latest book, the rural noir Kill Em with Kindness was released by All Due Respect Books in June 2016. He lives in Arizona. You can find him at csdewildt.com and on Twitter @csdewildt

Summer Crime Travel to Sicily

by Scott Adlerberg

When the summer hits and the weather gets real hot, is there any place you like to visit every year? I mean visit through reading, armchair travel.  Since I don't have the money to fly off to wherever I want, I have to be content, like most people I guess, to do most of my traveling through books. And what better way to visit places than through crime fiction?  Am I in the mood to travel to Cornwall, England?  Great. I can read the excellent Superindent Wycliffe novels of W.J. Burley. Iceland, with its volcanoes and glaciers? Simple. I pick up a Detective Erlendur book by Arnulder Indriason.  I've enjoyed visiting Norway in summer courtesy of Karin Fossum, and Amsterdam in the company of Janwillem van de Wetering's Grijpstra and de Gier is always fun.

Still, the past few years, during July and August, I find myself returning to one place in particular, Sicily, as I make my way through the great Inspector Montalbano series, written by Andrea Camilleri. Ninety years old and still going strong, Camilleri was born in Sicily and knows his complex island inside and out. There have been 19 Montalbano novels translated so far from Italian into English as well as a collection of stories about the inspector, and as of now there are at least 4 more books still to be translated.  It seems, too, that the series will have a definitive end, since Camilleri has said that he's written a novel that will be the final Montalbano story.  It's written and sitting with Camilleri's publisher. But according to the author, it cannot be released till it's clear that he's suffering from Alzheimer's.  Until then, still of sound mind, he'll keep working on new Montalbano stories.

But what about these books makes them ideal for summer reading?  Well, with its history, corruption, and beauty, Sicily never ceases to be a fascinating place, and the Montalbano books primarily take place in the heat and sun, with the sea, of course, never far away.  The novels mix darkness and light beautifully, never shying away from presenting social ills and human evil and the intractable problems that plague Sicily - and Italy as a whole - but sprinkling in a lot of humor, much of it through Montalbano himself.  He's a remarkably likable character, gruff and sardonic, idiosyncratic in his methods, a difficult guy for his superiors to handle.  He's a man with little patience for the idiocies of bureaucracy but who stands by those working for him and shows a great deal of empathy for underdogs. His long developing relationship with his girlfriend, Livia, is also well-done. Both have careers that consume them, and they go through a contemporary couple's ups and downs trying to make their relationship work.  Then there's the food. Montalbano loves to eat (though he keeps himself fit), and the books integrate his love of food into the fabric of the stories.  Reading these books, you just want to be in Sicily, go to Sicily at once, and like Montalbano, be sitting at a table in some tiny restaurant near the sea, in the sun, eating what he's having for lunch and washing it down with cold white wine, preferably bone dry. 

I've read six of the Montalbanos so far and I'm sure this summer I'll read one or two more. Sicily's a place I never get tired of visiting, and the Montalbano books evoke it with grit and a sense of the absurd.  At the same time, no matter how dark the plots get, the books make the point that you should never forget to try to carve out a moment of pleasure for yourself.  These novels satisfy as both crime fiction with depth and utterly pleasurable escapes.

What about for you? Any series of books you like going to in the summer, for armchair travel?

Even in Hope There is Despair

Okay, last night was the season finale of Game of Thrones. If you haven't watched it and care about spoilers, consider yourself warned. Although I won't delve into a recap, I want to touch on one key thing.

We finally learned who Jon Snow's mother is. And with that revelation comes the speculation of who his real father is, and that he is actually a Targaryen.

What does this mean for Danaerys?

I find myself wondering if the intent is for Jon to ultimately be king. And I'm not going to suggest I'm entirely happy about this prospect. Danaerys has demonstrated wisdom and discernment and strong principles in her rise, and she is a worthy ruler.

Will further Jon Snow parental revelations put the two at odds? Or will Danaerys be queen by virtue of marriage to Jon Snow?

I have to admit that, while they both seem very good people in the context of the show, that could be a blow for the advancements women have made in the series. While they've been subjected to rape and slavery and abuse, in recent seasons they've risen to power in a way that suggests female leadership is key to restoring balance and honor to the kingdoms.

For now, there will be ten months or so to speculate on what the future holds for our Targaryens. Meanwhile, my favorite moments of the finale:

5. Danaerys stands alone. She has put leadership over her romantic pursuits, showing she's ready to assume that leadership.
4. Sansa walks away from Littlefinger. Oh, our once-naive Sansa sees how things are, and she isn't about to be fooled or abused by any man again.
3. Lyanna Mormont. Someone on twitter suggested Lyanna team up with Arya to form a buddy cop duo. Hell yes! Her speech was classic.
2. Arya's revenge.
1. Tyrion being named Hand of the Queen.

The assignment of #1 could be debated, but I found it oddly touching that he came full circle to earn this trust from Danaerys. They have a great partnership.

Of course, it could be argued that Cersei's revenge was worthy of a spot at the top. I am sad for Marjorie. I am not sad for Tommen, who departed without a word. But when I consider the implications of Tommen being alive, I see Danaerys' victory as a simple matter. Cersei is a formidable opponent, and I look forward to seeing her eventual demise.

When Facts Get in the Way

By Claire Booth

Sometimes book research leads you to wonderful, interesting things. (See Steve Weddle’s or Renee Asher Pickup’s posts.) And sometimes, it leads you to inescapable, inconvenient facts that force you to rewrite the entire scene.

Take, for instance, an action scene I worked on this week. The bad guy is trying to get away. He leaps into a car, hot-wires it and speeds away. But as I wrote this, something tugged at the back of my brain. Can you do that nowadays?

I have learned not to disregard this internal alarm. It starts off as the gentle ding of an elevator door indicator, but if I ignore it, it’ll rapidly escalate until the red alert from Star Trek is blaring through my skull.

So I reluctantly put the brakes on my scene and went to Google. And was informed that yes, it is practically impossible to physically hot-wire a modern car. It might be feasible to hack into it with a computer, but ripping out different-colored wires and sparking the car into life ain’t gonna happen.

So I had written myself into a corner. The whole thing depended on the bad guy driving away in this car that wasn’t his. And it had to be a specific kind of car – I couldn’t change the make and model so it would be older and hot-wire-able.

I sulked for a few minutes, wondering why my research couldn’t have led me to Betty Grable, too (see again, Steve Weddle). Then I went back to the beginning of the chapter and started over. My internal alarm calmed down, and I figured out another way for my bad guy to drive away in that vehicle.

What pesky facts have tripped you up in your writing? And how much work did it take to fix it?

Stumbling Into a Title

I have a bad relationship with titles.

Of the nine books I’ve written since 2013, exactly two titles came during the writing of the novel itself. THE PHANTOM AUTOMOBILES, Gordon Gardner’s first book, was one. The other is my first western novel, ALWAYS BET ON RED, which I completed this past spring. Interestingly, I already have a nearly certain title for the sequel: DEAD MEN CAN’T CHEAT. For the rest of my stories, I’m title-less.

Which can be a bit of a problem. How can I include future books in my “Also by” list if I don’t have a title? Short answer: I can’t.

Right now, I’m readying two books for publication later this year. One is the second Gordon Gardner book, a direct sequel to THE PHANTOM AUTOMOBILES. The other book is the first to feature Lillian Saxton in the lead role. She’s the character who hired private investigator Benjamin Wade in WADING INTO WAR. I liked her so much that I created a whole series for her, and this first book is my favorite that I’ve written so far.

But what the heck to call it? If you check the excerpt I have on my website, you’ll see that I refer to it as “Lillian Saxton #1.” I even got a little mock-up cover.

I have the editor’s changes back and they are mostly integrated. The book is nearing its readiness for the world. And believe me: this is the book I want everyone to read. It’s got a little of everything: old flames, action, suspense, espionage, discussions of treason, and my favorite car chase sequence. It’s wonderful.

If I only knew what to title it. Well, this week, I believe I have stumbled into the title.

One of the themes is treason and loyalty. For the longest time, “treason” was a word I kept using in my potential title list. I didn’t mind it so much, but my very first novel is titled TREASON AT HANFORD and I didn’t want two books to compete. I made a list of synonyms of treason: betrayal; treachery; deception; seduction; forsaken; exploit and more. My antonym list was much shorter: trust, faith, and valor. Right now, you can put together a title using just those words and you’d have a perfectly acceptable thriller title. But not a truly unique one.

I was getting frustrated until I started thinking of other aspects of the book. My draft book description reads thusly:

Sergeant Lillian Saxton receives a cryptic message from an old flame: meet me in Belgium and I’ll not only give you the key to the Nazi codebooks but also information about the man who murdered your brother.

Lillian conducts her missions for the Army with panache and confidence, even when bullets start to fly and enemy agents zero in to kill her. She’s more uncertain of how she’ll react when she sees the man who broke her heart or how she’ll get out of Belgium when the Nazis launch their invasion.

Lillian does not reveal to her superior officers that her old friend has knowledge about her murdered brother. She doesn’t want to be told to stay in America. So, she has an ulterior motive.

Bingo! The phrase “Ulterior Motive” sounded pretty good. But it leaned a little too much to crime and mystery whereas this novel is a World War II thriller. So I kept banging around trying to figure out a word I could substitute for ‘motive.’ It didn’t take long before I had one.

So, with a high degree of certainty, the title of the first Lillian Saxton thriller will be ULTERIOR OBJECTIVES.

What do y'all think of the title? 

How are y’all at titles? Do you have them before you start, halfway through, or after the manuscript is completed?

I Like the Way You Die.

I could watch Tim Roth die all day.

Not  because I hate him, it's just that he's so damn good at it.

We all have our talents and his is dying in interesting, engaging ways.

I've watched him die at least 125 times in Reservoir Dogs alone. It's the kind of skill you don't really think of as a skill until you see someone knock it out of the park. It's like Elmore Leonard with dialogue. I know he said he just wrote the way people talked, but no one I've ever met sounds half as cool as his characters. His immense talent was writing mind blowing dialogue so well that you just believed people talked that way, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Hemingway's great talent was saying a whole lot with very little. Stephen King's talent is saying a whole hell of a lot, but doing it well enough that you don't mind. Alissa Nutting's talent is titillating and revolting the reader in a single sentence. Chuck Palahniuk's talent is being Chuck Palahniuk - which maybe doesn't sound like much until you read a writer who's really trying very hard to be Chuck Palahniuk, and failing. 

Going back to movies for a second - Tarantino's talent is making you root for the good guys and the bag guys at the same time. You want Mr. Orange out alive, but you also want the jewel thieves to get away. Robert Rodriguez's talent is reversing the trope-y coding (example, in El Mariachi, the blonde man in the white hat is the villain, and the hero is dressed in black). 

Now more than ever, a writer has to have some special talent, some knack for something we didn't realize people had knacks for, to get attention in the big world of writing. This brings up an obvious question - what's my secret talent? Shit, I don't know. I don't have nearly enough time for an existential crisis, so I guess I'll write my way to that discovery. But it is fun and interesting to look at different writers (and actors, because seriously, no one dies as engagingly as Tim Roth) to see what they do that no one else seems to do as well. I think sometimes the greats are doing something the rest of us didn't even realize needed doing.

So go out there and do whatever you do better than anyone else. Even if it's just dying.

The Post-Launch Blues

By Alex Segura

Great pre-pub buzz.

Good momentum.

Everything’s clicking.

Strong pre-orders on this one.

You hear these things sometimes. Maybe I do more than most, working as a publicist by day. As an author, these phrases are like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Especially after months or years spent toiling away at a novel. Finally! Someone read it! Someone even likes it!

It’s a validation, in a way, of the hard work you put in. If your publisher is on their game, it’s also a testament to them and their ability to get the word out and make sure the right people have copies of your book. Of course, the story comes first. If your book doesn’t work or isn’t the best it can be, these things don’t happen. But let’s assume we all know what we’re doing and you’ve written a good book. The early reviews are strong. The blurbs are in. The launch party went great. You’re riding high.

All good, right?

Well, let’s fast forward to a few months after release. The shine is off the apple. A handful of “pub days” have sped by. Your book isn’t the new kid in school. The review cycle has wound down and your emails to your people no longer sound like that of an excited kid on Christmas - “Look at this great review!” - but more akin to an ex hoping to rekindle a one-sided affair…”Hey, how’s it going…?”

It’s a question that’s plagued authors for a good long while: how do you keep interest alive after your book’s come out? I don’t claim to have any answers, aside from my own experience on the other side of the fence, promoting books myself. I will say, it’s become even harder now that we’re in a 24-hour news cycle and riddled with distractions galore. Why think about a book that came out in February when it’s June and Rooney Mara and Jake Gyllenhaal took a walk together in NYC? Everyone’s talking about that OJ documentary - who cares about your book?

There’s no definite answer, but there are a few options. The easiest one, and the one that speaks to our skill sets as writers is simple: write the next one. There’s only so much you, the author, can control in terms of the “greater conversation.” The initial promotional lap is exhausting, brain-melting and feels like a job unto itself. I don’t know about you, but I got very little writing done while promoting my second Pete Fernandez book, Down the Darkest Street. Actually, that’s not true - I did a lot of writing. But it wasn’t actual novel work. There were guest blogs, interviews, reviews, promotional tweets and Facebook posts...you get it. It’s all part of the game, right? But to my point: there will come a time where that well dries up. The train has passed you by and your only real choice is to pick up your tools and get to work on the next one. It’s frightening (“I don’t want to give up on my book!”) but also liberating - this is what we want to be doing, the writing. Even for someone well versed in the PR game like me, the publicity rounds can be a little soul-draining. It’s nice to hop back in the saddle and just tell stories.

The other thing you can do, which I’ve touched on before, is to talk about books. Specifically, not your books. Talk about the novel you’re reading. Talk about the author you’re enjoying. Spread the word. Karma is a vague, subjective thing - but it works for me. It’s nice to get out of my own headspace and just praise the book I’m enjoying or looking forward to. It’s not as direct as, say, pleading for Amazon reviews - but it sure tastes better.

This is where I press play on Elton John’s “The Circle of Life” and ask you, fellow writer, to share what you do in this situation. How do you handle the post-launch blues?

Ask the Editor: How Much Polish?

by Holly West

I'm gonna be honest with you. Life has been hectic for me lately and with no signs of that letting up, I gave myself permission to skip my regular post this week.

But this morning, as my husband and I were driving up to Oregon where we'll help move my grandmother into her spiffy new house, I got to thinking about my own writing and came up with a quick and easy post--which will hopefully also be useful (it was to me). So here we go.

I contacted author and, for this post's purposes, freelance editor, Bryon Quertermous, and asked him this:

Ideally, how polished--or unpolished--should a manuscript be when you get it? Should the author turn in what they consider to be their final draft or is it better to submit an earlier draft?

This is actually a question that has kind of gnawed at me since I turned my second book, MISTRESS OF LIES, in to my editor. She didn't get a rough draft but it also wasn't as polished as I might've liked at the time. As a debut author, we're constantly told we need to make sure our manuscript is picture perfect before you submit it to anyone. For me, that eased up a bit in my second go 'round, but my third novel was pretty rough when I submitted it to my editor. It made me wonder--what is the optimum time to submit a manuscript for editing?

Here's what Bryon had to say:

"It depends on the author. For a first time author or second time author looking at the very first printout of the manuscript, I think there's more work to be done there. Those first few rounds of working through a manuscript is where a lot of the learning comes from for a writer. Breaking down the story and moving stuff around and really seeing your stuff from the inside out is incredibly helpful. Bringing in another voice too soon can really kill that learning experience. I think once an author has worked through a manuscript on their own a few times until they're too close to it to move to the next level is a good time for a new author to bring in outside voices.

For experienced writers though, I come in at the outline stage sometimes and a lot of times come in after that first draft to help the author assess the work and what it's strengths and weaknesses are. This is usually when they're trying something new or stretching themselves on a new series installment."

Bryon's input pretty much corresponds to my own experience with editors. Ultimately, we all want to publish the best books possible, but sometimes it's hard to suss out just what that means, both in general, and for the individual book and author. That, of course, is why editors exist.

Thanks, Bryon, for sharing a bit of your perspective on the subject.

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Bryon's latest novel, RIOT LOAD, is out from Polis Books, and is available on Amazon, B&N.com. and from your indie retailers. His website is http://bryonquertermous.com/)

So Long to Gregory Rabassa: Translator Par Excellence

by Scott Adlerberg

Last week Gregory Rabassa, the great translator from Spanish and Portuguese, died at the age of ninety four.  Since so many books I love, primarily Latin American works, have been translated by him, I thought I'd forgo anything crime-related this week and just pay a little tribute to Rabassa. I know that for years whenever I was in a bookstore and would grab a novel by Julio Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or somebody else from Latin America, the first thing I'd check to see was whether Gregory Rabassa was the translator.  I can't read Spanish or Portuguese so would it really have made a difference to me if somebody else was translating?  I don't know.  And obviously I did read (and do read) Latin American works translated by others.  But after reading Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (which Marquez famously said Rabassa improved with his English translation), I just felt that with Rabassa's name there, I'd be getting the closest approximation of the author's voice as is possible to get in a different language.  Such a variety of styles, such different types of novelists - but the constant was that translator, a man born in Yonkers in 1922 to a Cuban father and a mother from New York City.

Anyway, here's a few of the Rabassa-translated novels I've read over the years and can never forget.

Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar (1963)

The book with 155 short chapters you can read, let's say, in any number of ways. You can read the first 56 and just forget about the last 99 (Cortazar tells you this at the outset), or you can read all the chapters by hopscotching around the book according to instructions given.  If you're adamant about having no guidance whatsoever, you can also read the chapters in any order you want, though you may get less out of the book this way.  If this all sounds overly cute and precious, it isn't. Hopscotch takes work, but it's also a game.  There are puzzles within puzzles and there's no need to fight things. Go with the flow. Cortazar wants you to.  One clue to his thinking: the man loved Charlie Parker and bebop jazz.  This is a book that tries to make the reader improvise as he works his way through the story. 

The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquz (1975)

One Hundred Years of Solitude is my favorite Marquez work, but this book comes in a close second. It's a portrait of a dictator of a fictional Caribbean island country, a tyrant of monumentally grotesque proportions.  The book is dreamlike and has as many marvels in it as Solitude, but what's amazing is how it's written. The sentences run for pages and pages and pages, and the imagery is remarkably dense with weirdness, and yet it all flows beautifully. Once you get used to its rhythm, it becomes a fairly easy read.  As always, Marquez's sheer storytelling power carries you on its wings.  But how the hell did Gregory Rabassa translate this? The book took Marquez several years to write and you might guess it took Rabassa that long to turn into English.  But apparently it didn't.  You wouldn't think of this as a beach or vacation read, but  those are exactly the place and time to read the book. You need a hot place and plenty of free time to sink into The Autumn of the Patriarch.  Want an alcoholic drink beside you? Not a bad idea.  But it's the book itself that will make you drunk. 

Also noteworthy for Marquez's use of a variation of a famous class-inflected line:  “...the day shit is worth money, poor people will be born without an asshole”

Mulata by Miquel Angel Asturias (1963)

Pure psychedelia, Guatemalan style.  I read this long ago and can't remember the plot details, to be honest. But that's also because the plot blurs; Mulata is a book that I'd have to rate as hallucinatory as any I've ever read. The material is drawn from Mayan mythology and Catholic lore, and if you can imagine a Hieronymous Bosch painting come to life, you'll have some idea of what this book is like.  

I have my old Avon Bard edition here beside me, so I may as well put down what the back cover says to describe the book: 

"One day the Fly Wizard - so called because of the way he dressed to gain attention - made a secret pact with the Corn Devil.  In return for limitless wealth all the Fly Wizard had to do was expose himself at Mass so that women would commit sin by looking at his private parts and then take Communion without confession...The Fly Wizard did it and became so rich even his bones turned to gold  And that was just the beginning..."

A lot goes on and everything keeps changing in shape and substance in this rumbling, swirling book. Stories pile upon stories, and there are people, demons, gods, and creatures of all sorts.  Sex among these myriad forms of life happens often and results in odd offspring. Again, I can only marvel at Rabassa's skill in translating this stuff from one language to another.  

My guess is that if you used to take acid and miss it, or like Bizarro lit, you'll go for Mulata. 

I could go on.  There are several other works Gregory Rabassa translated that I read, but these three give a good indication of the magic he could work with gnarly material.  They are also three books I remember reading when I couldn't get enough of Latin American fiction (a craving I've never lost and don't expect to lose), and I'm glad I was able to give a modest tip of the hat to the person who brought these books to the entire English reading world.