"This is one of the most abnormal books of all time, and also one of the best... No home is complete without this magnificent book." Dan Rhodes Join the King of Rock and Roll as he wreaks crazy havoc with the Memphis Mafia, murders huge numbers of groupies, destroys televisions, sabotages Led Zeppelin gigs with great big bags of pigs' blood and somehow also breaks your heart. The best book you have never read - but really must. Praise for my Elvis Blackout: "Like an episode of South Park, where just as you get into the story something goes splat, Crump's contorted imagination is alarmingly enjoyable." The Guardian "If I was born with a name like Simon Crump, I would spend the rest of my life trying to get all that anger and resentment out of me by being very rude about other people. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me. Or something like that. No, I wouldn't even give this a passing thought. When you are a famous person, you are there; you are up for grabs for people to have a go at. I know there are comedians who make fun of me. But, you know, I look at my beautiful family, I look at the house I live in and I look at my fans all over the world, and I look at my career and I think, well it's all based on jealousy and envy and really I don't give a toss." Chris De Burgh This ebook edition comes with a brand new introduction by Jon McGregor and a postscript by the author. It also contains the complete text of one of the best book's written in the past twenty years. First published in 2000, but shamefully overlooked ever since, My Elvis Blackout is a work of genius. Of particularly twisted and unsettling genius, but genius all the same. A book so strange, sick and strange again that you'll often wonder what on earth you're reading. But as you wonder, you'll also marvel. In these 37 short stories, the King of Rock and Roll - "hero and model to teenagers the world over" - joins a choir in order to torture and murder Christians, labours under the delusion that he's a major rock-star (when really he's just an inmate in an asylum who's afraid of potatoes), and kills both Barbara Cartland and Chris De Burgh. And then he does some bad things too. Needless to say, it's very funny - but My Elvis Blackout is more than just a laugh riot. This acerbic take on the cult of Elvis' personality tells plenty of uncomfortable truths about our relationship with celebrity, while Simon Crump writes with astonishing force and power about mortality, human cruelty and the horrors that man inflicts upon his fellow man. It's daft. But it's also profound. And don't think that this is disrespectful to the King, either. Elvis remains a strangely sympathetic (albeit psychotic) character throughout. It's one of the best tributes to his unique genius you can hope to read. Just don't buy it if you're a Chris De Burgh fan...

We follow a thoroughly unreliable narrator Lamar (a former member of the Memphis mafia who has now been employed by Michael Jackson) as he loses his wife, drinks drugged coffee and sleeps for years at a time, gets shot and dies - an event that only seems to incapacitate him in so far as he can no longer smoke his favourite brand of mini-cigars. His employer, meanwhile, takes part in the last great gold rush of 1898, tries to buy a unicorn from Ebay, starts fights in shopping malls with Uri Geller, forces Lisa Marie Presley to play with his lego and attacks a horse. it took three years to put together Neverland, a novel about "Michael Jackson and his loud mouth friend Uri". Three years during which, Simon Crump said, Michael Jackson was "with me at home, at work and in my car. He shared my meals and even some of my dreams." Crump finished the book around 9pm BST on 25 June. The real Michael Jackson was dead less than four hours later.

Whose Book is it Anyway? is a provocative collection of essays that opens out the copyright debate to questions of open access, ethics, and creativity. It includes views – such as artist’s perspectives, writer’s perspectives, feminist, and international perspectives – that are too often marginalized or elided altogether. The diverse range of contributors take various approaches, from the scholarly and the essayistic to the graphic, to explore the future of publishing based on their experiences as publishers, artists, writers and academics. Considering issues such as intellectual property, copyright and comics, digital publishing and remixing, and what it means (not) to say one is an author, these vibrant essays urge us to view central aspects of writing and publishing in a new light. Whose Book is it Anyway? is a timely and varied collection of essays. It asks us to reconceive our understanding of publishing, copyright and open access, and it is essential reading for anyone invested in the future of publishing.

A novel written by the author of My Elvis Blackout and Monkey's Birthday.

Disc jockey Alan Freed coined the term "rock and roll" in the 1950s. Rooted in rockabilly, rhythm and blues, country and western, gospel, and pop, the genre was popularized by performers like Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. Rock and roll's originators and revivalists continue to entertain crowds at roots music festivals worldwide. This book presents stories about performers' lives on the road and in the studio, along with the stories behind popular songs. Informative biographical profiles are provided. Artists sharing their experiences include Dale Hawkins, Big Jay McNeely, Ace Cannon, Sleepy LaBeef, Billy Swan, Robin Luke, Rosie Flores and James Intveld. Conway Twitty, Buck Owens and Janis Martin are also featured.

On a hallucinatory road trip from the Badland to Graceland, the spirits of Theodore Roosevelt and Elvis Presley battle over the soul of Ann, a painfully shy meat-processing plant worker. Set against the boundless blue skies of the Great Plains and endless American highway, RoosevElvis is a new work about gender, appetite, and the multitudes we contain.