The Writers You Might Like portion of my nerdly duties is hands down my favorite part of writing for this site, and I want to say THANK YOU! Thank you to all of the amazing writers who have emailed me about their labors of love (and sometimes hate), and provided copies and hilarious correspondences — you’re amazing. Keep ‘em coming! Happily, I have another round of Writers You Might Like all lined up for cerebral pleasures.

Before delving into individual books, I want to share Write Bloody Publishing with you.  It’s an AMAZING site full of fantastic poets and their works. Check it and their authors out — they’re really doing something wonderful over there. Make sure to pick up their captain Derrick C. Brown’s book Strange Light. Pre-sale is available November 23-December 23 and the full on release is March 2012. Go poke around- get your poetic juices flowin’!

Music breeds duality. We enjoy the music we love-listening to it, talking about it, reading about it… but it’s just as fun to passionately revel in mocking the music we hate. Fortunately, musicians make this two-lane path very easy to follow. Half the time they’re creating timeless works of art that speak to the soul; the other half, they’re recording ridiculous concept albums about robots. I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll (Except When I Hate It) covers both sides: It celebrates the music world’s flashes of genius, the creation of masterpieces, and the little-known stories, as well as the entertainingly bad ideas. Armed with a healthy dose of Brian Boone’s humorous asides and lively commentary, you’ll learn extremely important stuff like:

– How bands got their stupid names
– How all alternative rock bands directly descend from Pixies
– The most metal facts of metal in the history of metal
– The secret lives of one-hit wonders
– The story behind “Layla,” and other assorted love songs about George Harrison’s wife
– What is quite possibly the worst song in rock history

Boone also reveals terribly useful information like chart trivia, the rules of music, lists, and many more origins, meanings, and stories about everyone’s most loved and loathed musicians.

Burn Sky (The Story of Lucasta Bashir) by John Robinson
Lucasta Bashir is a typical teenager, going to school on the Tecumseh space station. Typical, that is, aside from illegally racing homemade spacecraft. Now the school has found out she’s a racer, and has offered her an impossible choice: betray her friends, or be exiled to the Hell of the future- the surface of Planet Earth.

Death Match by Jason Ridler
A friend’s death at a pro wrestling match sends journalist Spar Battersea, a sober and former punk rock star, back to the underground to find the killer. Along the way he encounters a washed up wrestler deadlier than a snakebite, a dominatrix who dresses like June Cleaver, and the twisted monster who may be responsible for his buddy’s death, the mime known as Johnny Silent.

Death Match is a fast paced, rollicking crime novel of dirty heroes and hard knocks that will please the fans of award winning and bestselling crime writers Joe R. Lansdale, Tom Piccirilli, and David Morrell. Death Match has the added bonus of appealing to the millions of professional wrestling fans who are rarely catered to in publishing but have turned wrestlers like Mick Foley and Bret Hart into national and international bestselling authors. Death Match can be their gateway drug into crime fiction, because it was written by a fan who knows just how wild, weird, and deadly the world of professional wrestling can be, inside and out of the ring: sex, drugs and headlocks, oh my!

Double Spaced Anachronistic Propaganda In Times New Roman by Ethan Hunter
Ash Riot is standing on the edge of the George Washington Bridge, waiting for sunrise. This is where his story will end. But before it ends, he will testify. He will tell you how it all begins. He will tell you what brings the most famous voice in the world up to a bridge like this. He’ll tell you how he just graduated college after wandering lost among the chosen ones his entire life. And how he may have just been charged with a righteous task by God Himself. Or he may have just been dead of an overdose and hallucinating.

He will tell you his mission is righteous because we are all righteous. He will tell you the story of his rise to fame as a media-messiah through his platform of hate and rage. He’ll tell you about shopping cart bowling and buying milk and about girls and friends and about a cattle drive in an Audi A-8. He will tell you to kill yourselves. He will tell you it is the only answer. But, if you’re really listening, you’ll prove him wrong.

Buffalo Speedway Series by Yehudi Mercado
The average pizza boy drives 7 hours a day. In those 7 hours they drive an average of 95 miles. A full-time driver will drive enough to circumnavigate the globe in one year and every day a pizza delivery driver is robbed at gun point. This is a dangerous gig.

Figgs is a lifer. He’s 23 years old, he’s been delivering for Houston’s Turbo Pizza for eight grueling years, he lives with his dead-beat best friend, Super Cheese, and he’s got a supreme crush on his Friday Regular, a rich girl named Pia. Life sucks, but it’s about to get suckier.

The day is June 17th, 1994. Today the Rockets will battle the Knicks in the NBA Finals, America will host the World Cup, and OJ Simpson will lead the LAPD on a slow speed chase. These will cause a perfect storm of events, keeping a nation at home, watching TV, resulting in the BUSIEST PIZZA DAY EVER. In the One Bad Day tradition of Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, Clerks, and Do The Right Thing, we go deep inside the dangerous world of pizza delivery drivers.

That’s it for this installment, nerds. Happy reading!