If you've been following the recent books coming out of Publishing Genius, you know they've recently released Matthew Simmons' A Jello Horse and Shane Jones' Light Boxes. Next in their new series where the only publish people whose last names end in "s" comes Justin Sirois' MLKNG SCKLS. (One day, I will submit a novella to Publishing Genius under the name Matt Bells, and they will be powerless to resist it).

Publisher Adam Robinson asked me to provide a blurb for MLKNG SCKLS, and so I did. I rea read the book twice over a couple of days, then wrote this:

In MLKNG SCKLS, two young men leave Fallujah to follow a river, letting its flow dictate the path of their escape. Along the way, the narrator keeps track of his thoughts on his slowly dying laptop, its fading battery power increasing the tension of his already fraught passage through this dangerous landscape. These brief entries record not just the thoughts of the refugee, the exile, but also how these two men try to understand themselves through tall tales about brothers saved from rabid dogs by mere cigarettes, through fantastical memories of uncooking meals for girlfriends, through hallucinatory visions of predatory trees and circling vultures. These are stories told first to pass the time, sure, but also to explain who they once were, in the lives they have just left behind.

Sirois' masterful creation is not just a travel narrative, not just an epistolary, not just a war story. This is desert madness made universal, a coming of age rendered apocalyptic in language as sparse and beautiful and ultimately perilous as the desert passage it describes.

You can pre-order the book here, for just $8, including shipping. Like everything Publishing Genius puts out, it promises to be both a great-looking book and a great read, and I'm excited to receive a physical copy when they ship later this month.