This is my first novel, The Toy Collector.  Releasing it has been a harrowing experience.  I wouldn’t recommend writing and releasing a first novel to anyone.  There’s no place to hide, not from family or strangers or reviewers or whomever flipping casually through what is essentially my tender, naked soul, semi-grammatically expressed.  But, alas, what’s done is done.  Here you are, my feeble life: $23.95.

 A couple of questions come up when people read The Toy Collector.  The first is, “James, how did you get so damn funny?”  I usually tell them I use humor to block my memories of the sexual abuse I suffered at the hands of my uncle.  There’s absolutely no truth to this statement, but it often stops them from asking me the second question, which is, “Where do you get your nutty ideas?”  In fact, it regularly stops them from asking any questions whatsoever. 

But if they’re persistent, they cut to the third question, being, “What on earth possessed you to name the protagonist of the book James Gunn?”  To this I reply I like the sound of my name, I’ve always been somewhat enamored of myself, and what better advertising for ME than having my name on every single page?  I forgot Hubert Selby Jr.’s name for a couple of years after I read Last Exit to Brooklyn; but if he had named the protagonist after himself, well, it might have been a different outcome altogether. 

So I have a bit of an ego problem, I know that.  I’m dealing with it.  I’m in therapy.  That’s no secret.  

Now back to the novel.  I think you might enjoy it.  Although it’s dark, and sometimes lonely, and it’s sad, because it’s about loss, this novel is as honest as I could be at the time.  Though perverse, violent, and even bileful, I wrote it with a sincere heart.  My agent, who’s a pretty nice fellow, mentioned that reading this book is like watching a train wreck.  But it’s a train wreck giving you a hug, which is what deep down we all want anyway, isn’t it?  Tragedy isn’t quite as bad when you embrace it.

Click here to read the First Chapter of The Toy Collector.


Toy Collector (Hardcover/Paperback)
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