Fables from the Mud

When Erik Quisling first wrote The Angry Clam, at the tender age of 21, he was just out of college and already realized the absurdity of taking life too seriously. If you're a fan of Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull, then you should know that this is the antithesis of that style...

There must be a perfect balance between someone who takes life too seriously, as is taught in Fables from the Mud, and a person who doesn't take life seriously enough.

It's been billed as a "self help tonic," laughing off those who spend year after year trying to discover how to make life better when the simple solution is to live life with a less serious approach in the first place!

The book appeals most to people who are tired of being immersed in self-help ideology and who appreciate new age writing with a heavy sense of humor. Quisling doesn't make light of those in need of direction - just uses a different approach to explain his philosophies.

Fans of Erik Quisling's Fables from the Mud include Hollywood royalty such as Larry David (of Curb Your Enthusiasm), David Lynch, Billy Crystal, Crispin Glover, Patricia Arquette and Nicholas Cage.

The book can be dark and gory, but with few words and optimal illustration to get its points across. In The Angry Clam, the mollusk is searching for the meaning of life, and after attempting various pursuits, he meets a tragic end.

In Adventures of Glen in My Stone Garden, while enduring life's trials and tribulations, the cynical ant undergoes some of the worst situations life has to offer. But in the end, he finally gets what's important and what's not.

The last character, the warrior worm in Grant's Tomb, finds life meaningless and plans to kill himself. But while planning the perfect suicide, he discovers there's reason to live, but meets a tragic ending anyway.

The fables have become so popular that Hollywood's famous fans have optioned for the rights to the stories.

While it's a parody of life, there are real lessons to be learned from these invertebrates.

Erik Quisling was born on July 8, 1971 in a Texas army hospital. He was raised by his father, a psychiatrist, his mother, a psychiatric nurse, and his older sister (a fine counselor in her own right) in the suburban cow town of Modesto, California.

He is part of the graduating class of 1993 from UCLA as well as the graduating class of 1994 from the National Bartender's School (the latter of which has made him a far greater sum of money).

Besides writing, his interests include playing piano and guitar (sometimes at the same time), golf, bush-league philosophy, and seafood. He currently resides in Los Angeles.

When Warner Books, one of the world's largest publishing companies, published my first book, The Angry Clam, back in 1998, the most common question I was asked was, "What were you smoking when you wrote this book?" This was quickly followed by the second most common question, "How in the world did a 40-page, hand-written book with bad drawings of a clam get published?"

The answer to the first question was easy - pure Turkish Hashish - just kidding. (Actually, I awoke in the middle of the night with the idea of a ticked off clam running through my head, then feverishly spent the wee hours putting a frantic pencil to paper.) The answer to the second question takes a little bit more explaining but I believe it contains one of the essential keys (and secrets) to getting published.

The story of how I got The Angry Clam published is a brief one so I will share it with you now:

After I awoke from my long morning nap after having spent the previous night beginning and completing my first ever attempt at literature, I reviewed what I wrote, kind of liked it, and then decided to show it to a few friends. To my amazement, they all thought it was hysterically funny - but in a good way. (They were actually laughing WITH the book not at it!)

Inspired by this, I purchased the supplies necessary to create a more presentable copy of the book - like giving it a cover and hand-writing and drawing each page in pen - and then went to my local Kinko's to get 50 copies printed up. The following day, with my 50 copies in hand, I decided to go to the owner of a neighborhood bookstore to see if he would be interested in selling The Angry Clam on consignment. To my delight, he looked at the book, laughed, and then said sure, why not, he would take 5 copies. (I believe he was half taking pity on me.) Unbelievably, within 24 hours, I received a call from the owner asking me for 10 more copies. He then explained how the staff of the bookstore had bought the books and they were now passing them around for everyone to read. I brought over the 10 copies and they were immediately placed in the "Staff Favorite" section near the front register. Incredibly, I began receiving weekly orders for the books.
Encouraged by this, I then went to the owner of another neighborhood bookstore, described the tale of what was happening down the street, and he too agreed to take a few copies. Astonishingly, a very similar phenomenon happened. So this was great - I now had 2 local bookstores consistently selling and promoting The Angry Clam. It was at this point that I stumbled upon the very simple idea that would eventually get big New York literary agents and then several major publishing houses to pay The Angry Clam notice.

Placing a call to the owners of the 2 bookstores, I very politely asked them if they would each write a brief letter describing the "phenomenon" of The Angry Clam at their store. Thankfully, they both agreed and within a day I had my two letters.

Armed with these testaments of The Angry Clam's selling prowess, I was ready to see just how far my little book could go. So I purchased a copy of the Writer's Guide to Literary Agents, picked about a dozen agents, and then mailed out a copy of the book and the 2 letters to each one of them.

What happened next has made me a legend in my own mind. Within 2 weeks I received calls from 5 of the agents - each wanting to represent The Angry Clam. After carefully selecting one of them, it took less than a month to get my first of several publishing offers.

What happened after the book was bought by Warner Books is a tale for another day. (The Angry Clam eventually hit the shelves of bookstores all over the United States and even rose into the Hot 100 on Amazon.com.)

But the moral of The Angry Clam story is this - in the publishing world, a book's perceived ability to sell is king. Prove to the publishing companies that your books can sell on a small scale and they just might take a chance that your books will sell on a large scale. What have they got to lose? Unknown authors rarely get more than a tiny advance and the cost to print up the first 2,000 books is nothing to a large company.

After all, Publishing is just a business.

Our world moves fast these days, faster than I think any of ever imagined. To keep up this feverish pace we often get lost in the pace itself. There is a saying that goes: "even if you win the rat race you're still a rat". When we look at our lives, so complicated, busy, and overwhelmed with data (whatever happened to that paperless society we were told about 20 years ago?). We find that it sometimes seems impossible to make a difference and if we did, who would care.

To that point, I'd like to say that the point often isn't who would care, the point is why not do it just to do it for you. Meaning: don't do it because someone will notice and care, do it because it makes a difference to you. Sometimes feeding our soul can be a lonely proposition but it needs to be fed and unfortunately, you're the only one who can do it. If you wait on society to give you what you need for your spiritual growth, you might be waiting a long time.

I don't believe that the world is indifferent. The world is a perception of what we want it to be, what we believe mirrors back and reflects on us, so why not work on a better reflection? It's easy to become jaded when the world doesn't seem to care but the point is, care anyway. Make the point and the effort to care regardless of whether anyone notices. Someone once said that the true measure of a man (or woman) is who s/he is when no one is looking. When you do something just to do it, because it's good, because it can leave a little bit of goodness in the world, you're doing it not for acclaim, fame, or recognition, you're doing it because it's the right thing to do.

The "things" we do to make a difference don't have to be big. Sometimes a smile, or an extra dollar in the tip jar can make all the difference. Point being, don't let a seemingly indifferent world make you indifferent as well. Put goodness into the world and goodness will come back to you.

Fables from the Mud mixes dark humor with sly wit
and poignant insights into the human condition

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - The trials and tribulations of three unlikely invertebrate heroes: an angry clam, cynical ant and warrior worm, are told with care, humor and depth in a highly entertaining collection of three short stories, Fables from the Mud by Erik Quisling.
Quisling presents his heroes' hilarious quests for self-revelation straight up, tweaking pop culture and our society's endless obsession with self and self-improvement, a kind of twisted Aesop's Fables, although others have compared him to Shel Silverstein or Richard Bach. "I'd like to think of the book as a dark, adult-oriented version of Shel Silverstein," said Quisling.
Previously labeled "the anti-Jonathan Livingston Seagull and a tonic for self-help burnouts," Fables from the Mud is engaging and delightfully illustrated. The tales are:
Fable 1: The Angry Clam, who struggles with the absurd reality of his own impotence
Fable 2: Adventures of Glen in My Stone Garden, the story of a cynical ant whose view of the world is turned on its head by the discovery of a magical stone garden
Fable 3: Grant's Tomb, the tale of a great warrior worm who, despite having achieved everything he'd striven for in life, is still left feeling empty and alone

These philosophical tales are the perfect mix of dark humor and simple yet shrewd observations of the human condition.

People are always telling you: remember what's important in life. But what is it, really? Well for all of us it's very different. For some it's family, friends, their favorite pets, for others (hello entrepreneurs) it's their work and/or business. The point is, what's important to you might not be important to anyone else.

Putting life in perspective is making a very clear statement to yourself about what you feel is worth fighting for, and what isn't. We have a lot of choices these days. A lot of choices. Stuff's being thrown at us all the time and sometimes, it's hard to know what to take and what to leave behind. Knowing what's important to you will make all the difference. Be clear on what matters most to you. Don't let your friends decide or, for that matter, your family. And remember, it's ok to be selfish once in a while. We (and especially women) tend to give, give, give without ever saying "wow, is this important to me?" If it's not, it's time to let it go.

As life gets busier, it becomes more important to focus on what matters most to us. Many of you reading this probably thought this would be some flowery message about how families are the core most important thing, or that friendships should be on that list and you'd be right. Both are important. But if you've always put your friends and family first, sometimes at your own expense, then it's time to realign your "important" list and figure out what matters most to you, right now. The key is, figuring out what is important to you is sort of like creating your own mission statement. When you define your own personal mission statement you'll become very clear about what's important to you and everything, all the other choices, options, and possibilities will fall away. Listen, you can't do everything, but you should do things that fall in line with your own personal mission statement. If you don't know how to create one, take a look at some corporate mission statements and you'll get an idea. Basically it outlines the principles and motives of the company. Yours should be no different.

The key to this exercise is that figuring out what's important to you will enrich your life and your relationships and isn't that what living is all about?

It's easy to let circumstances control our thinking, isn't it? Someone cuts us off, a store clerk isn't particularly friendly or nice, despite the fact that you're spending money in their store. Your boss is in a bad mood. And the list goes on. I stumbled in a saying, I'm not sure where I found it, but it stopped me in my tracks:

"Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle."

When you think about it, it's very true. The person who cut you off might be rushing to visit a loved one in the emergency room. The store clerk may not have enough money to pay for her child's healthcare, and your boss might have just found out that his wife is leaving him. Point being, you never know what someone's story is. Understanding that we're all in this together, we're all in some form of a battle will go a long way to helping you smooth out some of life's bumps. Sure, the person who cut you off may just be downright mean but the point is, you just never know.

Taking life with a grain of salt doesn't mean not taking life seriously, it just means learning to control your sometimes out of control emotions. You can't control life, but you can control your reactions to it. You can control how you feel and how you respond to other people when you realize: we're all in this together.

So be kinder than you need to be and kindness will flow back to you and learn that while there is a lot to be serious about in live, sometimes you have to step back and pick your battles. Take life with a grain of salt. Understand battles that are worth fighting and those that aren't. When you step off of life's treadmill for a moment, long enough to look at the situation for what it is, long enough to assess it intelligently, instead of just reacting and responding, then you're ten steps ahead of everyone else. Take a deep breath and relax. Everyone's fighting some sort of battle including you, you don't have to suit up all the time. Somedays you can just sit back and watch life unfold.

"Very occasionally a book comes along that breaks out from the norm, that can be taken on many different levels, and more importantly, enjoyed by a wide audience. Erik Quisling has produced such a work with Fables From The Mud. It may be a quick read, but it is a very contemplative work, and one that once you finish it, you will want to reflect on the stories. Minimalist it certainly is, but it is well worth the price of admission. There is something for everyone in this book."

--- The Cleveland Plains Dealer

Straight Whisky: A Living History of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll on the ...

By Erik Quisling and Austin Williams
Contributor Henry Rollins

For 40 years, the Sunset Strip has reigned supreme as rock 'n' roll's most enduring boulevard of dreams. No other street has witnessed so many immortal moments, so many legendary performances, and so much wretched excess. Virtually everyone who has made a meaningful impression on rock has been inside the Strip's three most famous nightclubs: the Whisky A-Go-Go, the Roxy, and the Rainbow Bar and Grill. Psychedelic pioneers like the Doors and the Byrds, notoriously heavy supergroups of the '70s like Led Zeppelin and Humble Pie, furiously nihilistic L.A. punk bands like X and Black Flag and local heroes responsible for the rebirth of hard rock in the '80s like Guns N'Roses and Motley Crue: they all played here, partied here, made history here, and sometimes died here. Straight Whisky is the first book ever to chronicle all the music, magic, and mayhem of the Sunset Strip. Authors Erik Quisling and Austin Williams have created a unique multi-leveled portrait that is unlike any other rock book on record. With its sweeping historical analysis and down-and-dirty details, Straight Whisky pulls no punches and leaves no stone unturned. Quisling has drawn upon extensive research to chronicle the ways in which music on the Sunset Strip has both shaped and reflected the American experience since 1964. Williams has chosen 16 of the most memorable events from the period and developed them into dramatic narratives that offer an intensely intimate view of this incredible story. Along with dozens of rare photos and original interviews with the rock stars who were there when it all happened, these two perspectives provide a comprehensive look at the most famous stretch of rock 'n' roll real estate onearth: the famed "rock block" of Sunset Blvd. Here are the stories that have been whispered about for decades. Now they can be told out loud for the first time.