In breaking news, On the Origins of Joy Boy's Chasm has successfully made it through Round One of the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA). Round One narrowed the field of 5,000 entries down to 1,000, leaving an 80 percent wake of what the ABNA Administrators are referring to as "collateral damage" in its path.

The next round, strangely enough, will be called, "Round Two." In this cryptically titled round, the remaining 1,000 entries will be quartered to 250, leaving a wake of destruction not seen since the now fabled "Round One."

Not since the dawn of time (you know, like a few thousand years ago, when God made all those dinosaur fossils and then put them under all those sedimentary layers of the earth and then created science and radiometric dating and universities with archaeology departments and people with a passion for that kind of stuff so that he could trick people into believing there were dinosaurs 60 million years ago to separate the "faithful" (aka those who are offended by facts) from the "blasphemers" (aka those who so self-righteously claim that God would never act in such a deceitful and manipulative fashion) and, actually, since even before then, has a book with the words "origins" and "chasm" made it through Round One of any ABNA. Ever. Please join me in a moment of celebration for this historic moment. I did not crawl out of the ocean. I did not crawl out of the ocean. I flopped out of the ocean.

In other exciting news, I have been collaborating over the past couple of months with four other writers, four of whom are immensely more talented than yours truly, to launch a new humor website, The Parody Files. We went live today with the Inaugural Post, and you can catch us all writing there weekly beginning next week. Until then, you will find us at the Inaugural Ball being held for the Inaugural Post at the Inaugural Mansion. Blasphemers welcome.

Godspeed,
LJL