This blog is part memoir/part fiction about the release of my novel, The American Book of the Dead. The novel’s about a writer working on a book about the end of the world. This blog chronicles the release of that book. I’m also recording a song for every chapter in the novel.

From the back cover:

Eugene Myers is working on a novel about the end of the world. Meanwhile, he discovers his daughter doing porn online and his marriage is coming to an end. When he begins dreaming about people who turn out to be real, he wonders if his novel is real as well. Which isn’t good news: the radical and demented President Winchell is bent on bringing about worldwide destruction. Eugene Myers may just be the one to stop the apocalypse.

This history of the future covers every conspiracy imaginable: UFOs, secret societies, and World War III, as well as theories on life after death and human evolution by a writer whose last novel was called by Dogmatika, “A page-turner and an example of an effective piece of storytelling that should be envied.”

Henry Baum is the author of North of Sunset and The Golden Calf – novels which explore the underbelly of America’s other religion: Hollywood. Now he turns his sights on mainstream American religion in a novel that’s part satire and part memoir/part amusing and part warning. In the tradition of Philip K. Dick and Robert Anton Wilson, The American Book of the Dead explores the nature of reality and the human race’s potential to either disintegrate or evolve.

Trailer:

Thanks to RJ Keller for putting together the video.

Reviews

“If you read Lolita or A Clockwork Orange without drop-kicking the book out into the garden on a rainy day, this novel is for you.” Tessa Dick, author of The Owl in Daylight, and widow of Philip K. Dick

“PKD/Murakami/The Stand-ish. I LOVED it.” Eddie Wright, author of Broken Bulbs

Winner: Best Fiction at the DIY Book Festival

Buy

Buy the book here.

Download the ebook here.

Other Books

“This pacy, tightly written novel is like ‘Taxi Driver’ meets Charles Bukowski’s Factotum.” Uncut

“A marvel of pace and comic timing….Much of Baum’s narrative bears a similarity to Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground.” Daily Telegraph

“Explores the hazy junction where the teeth of the daily grind sink into the day-dreamt certainties of life’s true bell-head sounds.” Lee Ranaldo, member of Sonic Youth

“Successful both as a suspenseful, engrossing thriller and as something more: a savage satire on aspects of modern American life in the vein of DeLillo‘s White Noise.…Overall, North of Sunset is an outstanding feat of storytelling that will gain a wide readership.” Compulsive Reader

“The rare piece of literary fiction that successfully combines a thriller with a healthy dose of popular culture. As the ‘Vanity Plate Killer’ roams the streets in the novel, Baum’s insights into fame, film, and writing are ever present and welcome.” Largehearted Boy

Winner of the Hollywood Book Festival Grand Prize