Bøger af Colin Dodds

Rudolph's in a Cadillac, Santa's in hiding and Christmas itself is being bought and sold with the fate of the world at stake. The Reign of the Anti-Santas tells how Christmas fell into the hands of Santa's spoiled kids, low-level gangsters, faded TV-movie heartthrobs, tech bros and lifestyle gurus, and what happens when one elf and an old Santa on the lam step up - against all odds - to save the day.A raunchy thrill ride through seventy Christmas Eves, The Reign of the Anti-Santas is Goodfellas meets 'Twas the Night Before Christmas - just in time to wash the candy-cane taste out of your mouth, get Mariah Carey out of your ears, and change how you see December 25th forever! WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING"If you're looking for meaning, there is plenty to be found, and if you crave satire, there is none better. Even if you're just looking for a fun twist on some beloved traditions, you'll be glad you picked up this unconventional elf-noir holiday extravaganza... A holiday parody for the ages..."- Indies Today (5/5 STARS)"(A) potent combination of dark humor, satire, and even tragedy"- Readers' Favorite Reviews (5/5 STARS)"The transition of Christmas history becomes an immersive and captivating read... joy and laughter in this witty and thought-provoking narrative."- Lit Global Reviews (5/5 STARS)"Dodds has crafted the perfect book that just may change your perspective on the holiday... fresh perspective and wit are what drive the story... a coming-of-age story for us all."- Reader Views (5/5 STARS)"I was delighted and laughing all the way through the book... insight after insight into the actual world... and how easily we are manipulated... All in all, it's a tremendously entertaining story."- Casey Dorman, author, Voyages of the Delphi and Ezekiel's Brain"(S)candals, crimes, the arrival of the computer/internet/AI, corporate greed, hegemony, social changes - all related with an infectious sense of humor...an immersive, fascinating read... Once again, Colin Dodds proves his mettle."- Grady Harp"The wit and humor throughout the book is slick and biting."- Reedsy"Business intrigue, international crime, and bawdy humor abound in this adults-only take on Christmas."- Independent Book Review

Heaven Unbuilt is the sum of roughly ten years of Dodds' work as a poet. The poems wander the hallucinatory frontiers of experience to the dangerous, unlikely moments of insight for which readers had feared themselves too decent, too well liked and too cautious. Heaven Unbuilt encompasses Spill-O's fitful travels toward grace, poems from songs for the band Adultogram, then down the streets of Brooklyn, over the mountains and across the deserts of the American West, through casinos and churches, to a long interlude in a bar, through grief and into the slow, sometimes reluctant submission to love. It's a book of poems that does something that no book of poems has done in a while.

What do we give away when we click "I AGREE" to the terms of service on our phones? Why are the billionaires squirrelling away all that money? Why do old photographs and songs hint at a history we can't remember? Why do professional sports teams need new stadiums so often? And why is everyone so depressed?These are just a few mysteries that Ms. Never - a new novel by Colin Dodds - takes on (and possibly answers) in startling fashion.Farya Navurian seems like an ordinary young woman trying to get ahead in the city while struggling with depression. But her depression is anything but ordinary - it has the power to destroy time and space. Growing up the moody daughter of a space-faring hero of The Greater Anointed Imperial Ohioan Commonwealth, Farya annihilated most of that world and its history, leaving behind the husk-like Buckeye State.One day at a record swap, she meets Bryan, a divorced telecom CEO. More than record collecting, what they share is that they each carry a howling secret. Bryan's business is a cover for a bigger operation that buys human souls and sells luxury afterlives using shady terms of service in mobile-phone contracts. The two of them fall in love, and as they start a life together, their secrets back them into a corner where they have to come clean - and take drastic steps - to save themselves, and possibly reality itself.Ms. Never is a distinctly 21st-century vision of consent, memory, and the ways we create and destroy the world every day. REVIEWS!"(A) transfixing, fantastic narrative... The author executes the story with exacting, direct prose and characters who live and breathe in the mind... an exceptional work. Existential dread takes on new meaning in a fantastical tale..." - Kirkus Reviews"Ms. Never is a big-picture novel, which encompasses the nature of reality, the universe, and life after death... a crazy world, but even the craziest parts of it have a ring of truth to them... Dodds' prose is exquisite... Farya's battle is the battle we all face: to impose a meaning on a world we only partially understand by fighting to retain what is worthwhile and battling against those people and events that cheapen everything around us... Ms. Never is a soaring novel, an imaginative, creative triumph and one that has some power to change the reader" - Lost Coast Review"Smart and mysterious... With themes uniquely developed and a musicality to the prose... this is a great story with a powerful theme and just about enough mystery to keep you asking questions. It introduces a really unique concept on understanding depression and its impact... this one is sure to satisfy" - Independent Book Review"MS. NEVER is a vast, multifaceted undertaking... adjectives like 'riveting, complex, detailed, skillfully crafted' come immediately to mind... delves into comparisons between worlds imagined and worlds that were... manipulating spiritual infrastructures, making a fast buck from knock-off universes... chock full of intriguing ideas" - IndieReader Reviews

One well-placed elf finally tells the whole story about Santa, his children, the Wall Street manipulations that warped Christmas, the internet colossus that almost ended it all - and the daring scheme to save Christmas, at least for now.

"Characters speak like prophets," (Kirkus) in this early 21st century road trip, murder mystery and love triangle. "Watching them ignore their better instincts-especially concerning women... makes the characters more endearing..." One night far from home, a mix of alcohol, recklessness and coincidence reunite childhood friends Lynn and Marv with Caroline, the beautiful and unpredictable object of their desires. When Caroline is arrested for the murder of her husband and child, Marv and Lynn find themselves entangled in a mystery. The question that pursues the two friends through their searches for love, stabs at success and self-destructive lapses is: Will they bother to solve it?Praise for What Smiled at Him"The novel has an angry edge to it, recalling the spirit of the Beats. Many of the peripheral characters speak like prophets... Marv and Lynn are just as self-aware as their supporting cast, and their abundance of wisdom sometimes stretches believability; it's tempered, however, by the flaw of their continually self-destructive behavior. Watching them ignore their better instincts... makes the characters more endearing." -Kirkus ReviewsLynn and Marv, now in their late twenties, are beginning to question the choices they've made. One is a struggling musician, the other a salesman. One night, far from home, alcohol, irresponsibility and coincidence reunite them with Caroline, the longtime object of their desires. Married into a wealthy Chicago family and unhappy, she begins an affair with Marv. A few weeks later, she's arrested and charged with murdering her husband and infant son. As her trial nears, the unwelcome mystery pursues the friends through their searches for love, stabs at success, self-destructive lapses and leads one of them to his death.Praise for Colin Dodds' Another Broken Wizard"Dodds gets Worcester and shows it in all of its glories and cracks...He runs through the streets of the city and nearby towns and takes the reader with him...Dodds is a master of writing the town life and capturing all of the said and unsaid. His characters are so full of waiting, of pain, and of hope that never reaches past the next day."-Worcester Pulse Magazine"Masterfully written with all the grit and grisly humor of returning to one's dingy blue collar hometown, Another Broken Wizard is the compelling, tightly-woven story of a couple of 30-year old boyhood chums who don't grow up until it's too late."-Boston Literary Magazine "It kept me nostalgic for something that isn't my story, isn't my town, and I got really emotionally involved. I may have shed a tear at the beautifully foreshadowed climax, and I do not cry easily! Seriously. Give it a read." - Illiterarty.com"Another Broken Wizard is a terrific coming-of-age tale that rings utterly true. Dodds has a gift for conveying the sounds of his people and their world. He can make highway hypnosis as fascinating as a gang brawl. And he has a natural radar for locating the perfect detail to evoke the sense of what it feels like to be caught between the past and the future, between loyalty and logic, and between the security of the known and the impulse to evolve. Though I came of age in the primordial mists, it somehow felt like he was giving me a tour of my own past. Another Broken Wizard is compulsively readable. I'll be giving this book to some of my friends."- Jack O'Connell, author of The Resurrectionist, and Box Nine "Dodds has written a fine novel. He has a voice wholly his own, and he captures the elemental good and bad in the American male. Joe's recklessness and gang feud creates a looming peril that keeps the reader on edge." -Kevin Kosar, author of Whiskey: A Global History

Jim Monaghan really didn't want to go back to Worcester. But his father's open-heart surgery and Jim's sudden unemployment forced his hand. Making daily trips from the hospital to his father's empty apartment, Jim seeks out his childhood best friend, Joe Rousseau. But Joe has problems-a feud with a local gang. And Joe's plan to resolve the matter only makes things worse. Tending to his father and embarking on an ICU romance in the day, Jim tries to help his friend. He follows Joe into Worcester nights defined by drugs, guns and fistfights. As the danger escalates, Jim makes a painful choice to save his friend, and then has to live with the consequences. Another Broken Wizard is a book about straddling childhood and adulthood, straddling a fading industrial home town and the information-economy world of our attenuated aspirations, straddling the love for a friend and self preservation. It is an evocative portrait of Worcester, Massachusetts-both its place in the 21st century and its past."Dodds gets Worcester and shows it in all of its glories and cracks...He runs through the streets of the city and nearby towns and takes the reader with him...Dodds is a master of writing the town life and capturing all of the said and unsaid. His characters are so full of waiting, of pain, and of hope that never reaches past the next day."-Worcester Pulse Magazine"Masterfully written with all the grit and grisly humor of returning to one's dingy blue collar hometown, Another Broken Wizard is the compelling, tightly-woven story of a couple of 30-year old boyhood chums who don't grow up until it's too late."-Boston Literary Magazine "It kept me nostalgic for something that isn't my story, isn't my town, and I got really emotionally involved. I may have shed a tear at the beautifully foreshadowed climax, and I do not cry easily! Seriously. Give it a read." - Illiterarty.com"Another Broken Wizard is a terrific coming-of-age tale that rings utterly true. Dodds has a gift for conveying the sounds of his people and their world. He can make highway hypnosis as fascinating as a gang brawl. And he has a natural radar for locating the perfect detail to evoke the sense of what it feels like to be caught between the past and the future, between loyalty and logic, and between the security of the known and the impulse to evolve. Though I came of age in the primordial mists, it somehow felt like he was giving me a tour of my own past. Another Broken Wizard is compulsively readable. I'll be giving this book to some of my friends."- Jack O'Connell, author of The Resurrectionist, and Box Nine "Dodds has written a fine novel. He has a voice wholly his own, and he captures the elemental good and bad in the American male. Joe's recklessness and gang feud creates a looming peril that keeps the reader on edge." -Kevin Kosar, author of Whiskey: A Global History

"A mesmerizingly fascinating and addictive story," of alternative energy, demonic possession and the second American civil war, WINDFALL follows Seth Tatton, a corporate attorney with a side job as a bespoke hitman for a cabal of politicians, magnates and military leaders. Even under Seth's secret life, things aren't what they seem, because of something inside him - with big plans. And when Seth is assigned to watch a troubled young woman, all of those plans start to fall apart... "WINDFALL, while a mesmerizingly fascinating and addictive story, steps beyond the usual campfire-cum-barbershop tales spread around town or discussed in literary circles... (I) encourage those whose hunger for the new in writing will be stimulated to become submerged in this very contemporary landfall of a book. Colin Dodds has arrived."-Grady Harp, Literary Aficionado"WINDFALL is not your typical political thriller. Dodds deftly weaves in a solid paranormal thread that explores ambition, myth and morality in an indifferent America without resorting to pulpit thumping or cardboard villains."-The New Podler Review of Books"Dodds manages to throw fantasy, horror, and sci-fi into a mixing bowl and stir his readers up a delicious literary cake, cook it, and serve it with a sly and knowing smile. It may be cliché to say, but trust me, you'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll want more." - AE Stueve, editor, EAB Publishing; author, Former"Smart people compliment the smart and direct narrative in a way that keeps a reader... eager to turn the page to discover the next big move from these compelling leads... (WINDFALL) could easily stand up against the more famous works of the genre."-Rabid Readers Reviews

The Last Bad Job is the story of a reporter on a hell of an assignment: Five months on a New Mexico desert compound to cover the next Jonestown. For one reporter, it could be a career-maker. But when a cult member close to him drowns herself, he decides to run for it, and sets unimaginable events into motion. What ensues is a dark and comic journey through sex, drugs, cults, suicide, the apocalypse, and what comes after it. Available for the first time from the author of the widely acclaimed novels Another Broken Wizard and What Smiled at Him comes The Last Bad Job-a book the late Norman Mailer touted as showing "something that very few writers have; a species of inner talent that owes very little to other people." Praise for Colin Dodds' What Smiled at Him: "The novel has an angry edge to it, recalling the spirit of the Beats. Many of the peripheral characters speak like prophets... Marv and Lynn are just as self-aware as their supporting cast, and their abundance of wisdom sometimes stretches believability; it's tempered, however, by the flaw of their continually self-destructive behavior. Watching them ignore their better instincts... makes the characters more endearing." -Kirkus Reviews Praise for Dodds' Another Broken Wizard "Dodds gets Worcester and shows it in all of its glories and cracks...He runs through the streets of the city and nearby towns and takes the reader with him...Dodds is a master of writing the town life and capturing all of the said and unsaid. His characters are so full of waiting, of pain, and of hope that never reaches past the next day." -Worcester Pulse Magazine "Masterfully written with all the grit and grisly humor of returning to one's dingy blue collar hometown, Another Broken Wizard is the compelling, tightly-woven story of a couple of 30-year old boyhood chums who don't grow up until it's too late." -Boston Literary Magazine "It kept me nostalgic for something that isn't my story, isn't my town, and I got really emotionally involved. I may have shed a tear at the beautifully foreshadowed climax, and I do not cry easily! Seriously. Give it a read." - Illiterarty.com "Another Broken Wizard is a terrific coming-of-age tale that rings utterly true. Dodds has a gift for conveying the sounds of his people and their world. He can make highway hypnosis as fascinating as a gang brawl. And he has a natural radar for locating the perfect detail to evoke the sense of what it feels like to be caught between the past and the future, between loyalty and logic, and between the security of the known and the impulse to evolve. Though I came of age in the primordial mists, it somehow felt like he was giving me a tour of my own past. Another Broken Wizard is compulsively readable. I'll be giving this book to some of my friends." - Jack O'Connell, author of The Resurrectionist, and Box Nine "Dodds has written a fine novel. He has a voice wholly his own, and he captures the elemental good and bad in the American male. Joe's recklessness and gang feud creates a looming peril that keeps the reader on edge." -Kevin Kosar, author of Whiskey: A Global History

"(O)ne of the most interesting books you'll read this year," WATERSHED is a thriller about a pregnant woman, and the two men-one a snake dealer with a sideline in secret messages and a billionaire living under an alias-who pursue her through a near-future America of anti-technology neighborhoods and illegal hospitals, where stockbrokers moonlight as assassins, nurses procure obscure pleasures, and the powers that be blow up the new World Trade Center to goose tourism. WATERSHED was named a Book of the Month by The Association of Independent Authors and recognized in Kirkus Reviews' Stars & Recommendations section as "an appealing mix of adventure and contemplation."WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING"A highly readable, quirkily creative alternate reality that comes frighteningly close to real life... the present taken to its logical extreme... much more than social commentary. It's a genuinely captivating edge-of-your-seat thriller, which kept me reading from beginning to end, looking forward to each new chapter." - The Lost Coast Review"The world of WATERSHED is a vibrant one, packed to the gills with absurd and yet oddly-believable detail - everything from a September 11th memorial service that involves a full-scale recreation of the original terrorist attack, to a man who gets off on being locked in a coffin with a bag full of cats... Dodds manages to make all this and more seem not just possible, but vivid and tangible too.... It's the real deal...a strong contender to be one of the most interesting books you'll read this year." - IndieReader Reviews (4.7/5 Stars)"This cynical and surreal vision of a near-future America is intriguing and there is some genuine dark humor in the story... The use of language is interesting and the ideas are expressed thoughtfully, with attention to each word... unusual in both ideas and expression, blending elements of a suspense thriller with hints of paranormal fiction and a fair portion of social commentary to create a unique feel." - Publishers Weekly, BookLife Prize Review "Readers will never be quite sure what lurks around the next corner... An appealing mix of adventure and contemplation." - Kirkus Reviews"Watershed is a unique book, and one that will grip you from the first page... exceptionally well-written, unique, and an overall brilliant ride... unlike any you've seen before, and which is rife with fascinating ideas played out to gleeful excess." (5/5 Stars) - The Indie Book Journal"The masterfully dystopian WATERSHED unpacks the future of a modern America that, while spectacular, nobody was expecting... It's a future that, as Leonard Cohen sang, is murder. The revelations of prose in WATERSHED makes that murder enjoyable... one of the few things worth believing in." - Two Thirds North"The style is simple, uncluttered, but the writer has a gift for magical turns of phrase as well as a natural ear for rhythm... the reader feels as though they have opened a door onto another world." - Bluepepper"All the elements of good storytelling line up in this work. The narrative is crisp, the premise is unique, the description and characterizations are well-drawn and compelling... Dodds deserves your attention - there is excitement in the style and insight in the exposition" - Blognostics"I read this book in one day... striking and clearly not for the faint-hearted... a good read, full of imagination and surprises." - Scarlet Leaf Review (5/5 Stars)"Watershed is a fun read for fans of thrillers and dystopian futures alike... unexpected twists and turns will hold your attention from start to finish." - Furious Gazelle"...a masterful job of weaving in and out of the converging story lines... the ending is satisfyingly explosive." - Miller's Pond Poetry Magazine

Hundreds of fleeting and shocking observations, jokes, meditations, riddles and stories from hundreds of baffling days.

Forget This Good Thing I Just Said is a book of 900 aphorisms by Colin Dodds. By turns funny and upsetting, incisive and poignant, they each contain a small world. For best results, flip around the book and seize on a line, think about it or dismiss it, then start flipping and try again. It was named a finalist for the 2022 Big Other Book Award in for nonfiction!This is a work of literature that lives at the ball-in-socket joint of what the author meant to say, and what he didn't know he meant. Like the cut-ups of William Burroughs, it's an experiment in exposing intentional language to the mysterious dynamics and agendas of so-called randomness. Like the I-Ching, it offers the reader something other than what the reader believes they're looking for, or what the author entirely intends. Like a walk through a city in a strange mood, it is full of messages -some tangential, others meant for exactly where and who you are in that moment.This is philosophy that's closer to first questions than final conclusions, philosophy that springs from the grease on a pizza box, a stranger's glance on a sidewalk, or a child's bedtime negotiations. The aphorism is the unit of meaning because it doesn't leave much room for equivocation or obfuscation. It's also an app for your phone, which you can find at forgetthisgoodthing.com.