{"id":15827,"date":"2025-09-13T07:03:24","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T12:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lavenderink.org\/site\/?post_type=product&#038;p=15827"},"modified":"2025-12-02T15:22:36","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T21:22:36","slug":"pugs","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/www.lavenderink.org\/site\/shop\/pugs\/","title":{"rendered":"Pugs"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lavenderink.org\/site\/books\/skip-fox\/\">Skip Fox<\/a><\/h2>\n<h3>Pugs<\/h3>\n<p>ISBN 978-1-956921-63-2<br \/>\n170 pages: $19.95<br \/>\nOctober, 2025<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Pugs<\/em>, set in southern Louisiana, is an adult novel about a dancing, talking pig. As Carlo Collodi\u2019s <em>The Adventures of Pinocchio<\/em> (1883), on which <em>Pugs<\/em> is loosely based, the plot is picaresque, episodic, following Pugs through a series adventures with human companions, initially two counterfeiting grifters, Lem and Curtis, who are searching for an artistic phenomenon to impress Lem\u2019s billionaire father, but on seeing Pugs dance, they realize his performance\u2019s transformative, almost spiritual, power. The three set out on a series of adventures to make enough money to properly showcase Pug\u2019s talent, believing his art might begin to divert humankind from its suicidal course. His adventures (often dancing in the presence of his muse, a purple haired girl) include dazzling worshipers at a revival\/healing crusade, signaling odds to Lem at a casino\u2019s blackjack table, dancing at a dog fight before a shootout between locals and a biker gang, fleeing wild dogs, escaping captivity though the roof of a motel, dancing with an imaginary ballerina (his muse) mid-hurricane, rescuing his human companions, and dancing before a battle between heavily armed bikers, locals, and federal officers on a small island in the Atchafalaya Basin. Lem, psychologically wounded in their last adventure, is brought back to health by a series of private dances Pugs performs for him and a few friends. But Pugs, haunted by the violence he has witnessed after his performances, is so disturbed he doesn\u2019t think he will be able to dance before an audience again, but allows it might be possible.<\/p>\n<p>But the tale is in the telling.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h3>Praise for Skip Fox and\u00a0<em>Pugs<\/em><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\"><i>Pugs<\/i> opens a portal through Louisiana\u2019s wavering heat, rendered in Fox\u2019s signature style\u2014both gracefully hyperbolic and tenderly human. A Hitchcockian fable that luxuriates in its indelible telling.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">\u2014David Kuhnlein, author of <i>Die Closer to Me<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Offering up insights \u201cwanting to know his thoughts on art (The answer\u2019s in the activity) and life\u201d from a dancing pig named Pugs (\u201ca name made for the stage\u2026 simple, short and sweet.\u201d) Skip Fox threads a needle: \u201cPugs needed little convincing. As far as he was concerned, he was one of them. They [he and his human companions] were in this together. He\u2019d do whatever they said, especially since they treated him as an equal.\u201d Raising echoes of Orwell\u2019s <i>Animal Farm,<\/i> \u201cAll animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.\u201d But don\u2019t overthink it. <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">\u2014Patrick James Dunagan, author of <i>After the Banished <\/i><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Our hippest phenomenologist, Swiftian, ontologist of frass, Sadean, high priest of proctological slapstick, sorrowful, terribly funny, a celebrant of Eros, the enemy of oblivion and diminishing returns\u2014Skip Fox is of the tribe of Cronenberg, Lautreamont, Jodorowsky, Hunter S. Thompson; he is the Keeper of Poe&#8217;s raven and he is a master.\u00a0<em><strong>wired to zone<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>is unique in the history of the novel.<br \/>\n\u2014Rikki Ducornet<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">With<strong>\u00a0<em>wired to zone<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0Skip Fox has crossed tech-noir with bio-punk to create something maddened and strange and utterly new, a kind of blue acid noir licking the flaps of its own pockets and not to be denied. A gorgeous and lurching dizziness of a novel.<br \/>\n\u2014Brian Evenson<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Welcome to the nuance parade of corporate genetic leftovers where &#8220;freaked and fractured thinking&#8221; reigns supreme. With &#8220;a pathos past all measure&#8221; amusing the muses is as primary to Skip Fox as smoking or breathing. Inside his &#8220;chemical stew&#8221; we&#8217;re always almost nearly there and he arrives just in time, lurking at the threshold, leading us while being led.<br \/>\n\u2014Micah Ballard<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Praise writing that tends exuberantly to its composition, enriched by long study and practice, language all generative actuality; characters that exist through act, rather than to represent actors; story not as plot but match with the Deep Blue of fatal logic; a hero stretched from Apuleius to Chandler, as well as two distressed demoiselles: one reincarnates Phoebe Zeitgeist, the other blends Cloned Dolly and Marilyn Monroe. Somebody is threatening zero, nothing, loss of neutrality, the ultimate MacGuffin. Passion of the digital. Them versus whatever we think we are. Praise this book by reading it. You will find it novel.<br \/>\n\u2014Brian Richards<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Skip Fox<br \/>\n<span data-sheets-root=\"1\">9781956921632<\/span><br \/>\nPicaresque fiction about a dancing pig, from Skip Fox<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":15850,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[236,16],"product_tag":[45,517,508,65],"class_list":{"0":"post-15827","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-books","7":"product_cat-lavender-ink","8":"product_tag-fiction","9":"product_tag-louisiana","10":"product_tag-picaresque","11":"product_tag-skip-fox","13":"first","14":"instock","15":"taxable","16":"shipping-taxable","17":"purchasable","18":"product-type-simple","19":"berocket_lgv_grid","20":"berocket_lgv_list_grid"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Pugs - New Picareque fiction from Skip Fox at Lavender Ink \/ Di\u00e1logos<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This new Picaresque Fiction from Skip Fox, set in southern Louisiana, is an adult novel about a dancing, talking pig. 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