This Book Will Change Your Life - Life After Sleep by Mark Brand.

Life After Sleep is the new novella by TBWCLY, Inc. favorite and This Podcast Will Change Your Life podcastee Mark R. Brand. It is also the new joint from CCLaP Publishing, which means, first, that 99 Problems is officially archived, which we're okay with, really, because not only has it been a good run, but we are quite geeked about Life After Sleep, which we are certain will change your life; and second, that the brain trust at CCLaP has asked our team here to write a "Passing the Torch" essay for the CCLaP site as they seek a gentle transition from one book to the next. We in turn would like to share a slightly tweaked version of the essay here as well, which we hope is cool with you? Great.

There is the belief that we should temper our reaction to things, that caveats are required, and biases should be identified, that it's okay to love something as long as we explain how and why that love may be impacted by the personal, by history and preferences. But we would rather not take that approach to things. We suppose this eliminates any hope we have of being perceived as any kind of legitimate critic, but being a critic has never been the goal. In fact our primary goal is to embrace the sheer fanboyness of our day to day existence and not be so embarrassed by our exuberance for the things we love and that which we have any kind of personal association with.

Which brings us to Life After the Sleep, the new book by Mark Brand which is being released by the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography. Mark Brand is a friend. We have read together and edited one another's work. Mark Brand is also quite attractive, and we, like you are drawn to attractive people, that's just evolution so please don't fault us for that. Mark Brand writes science fiction, love the science fiction, always have, and that's not changing.

Further, CCLaP has released two joints of ours and we are indebted to them for that. CCLaP's director Jason Pettus and TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer have also drank any number of beers together and we greatly appreciate his discerning and critical eye, even when we disagree, which isn't often, but it happens.

Hello, Requiem for a Dream. What the fuck?

But we digress.

We are also drawn to any author that matures with his work and grows more nuanced as his vision expands, as well as, any publisher who understands what he likes, yet continues to try and capture that like in as many disparate ways as possible.

Which also brings us to Life After Sleep, a book by a maturing, and yes, dammit, attractive writer, being published by an ever evolving publisher, and our unabashed excitement by all facets of this project, none of which should diminish the work itself, a comment on who we are now and where we might be, but still remains grounded in all things recognizable as real, work stress, PTSD, family dynamics, and mostly, finally, sleep, how we get it, why we need it, and what happens when we can't find it, something else I am terribly biased about, but as we said, we are not critics, we're are fanboys, and we are all fan when it comes to this book and all it represents.