All My Colors

by David Quantick

Overview

March 1979, DeKalb Illinois. Todd Milstead is a wannabe writer, a serial adulterer, and a jerk, only tolerated by his friends because he throws the best parties with the best booze. When he begins quoting from a book no one else seems to know, a novel called All My Colors, Todd is incredulous. He can quote it from cover to cover and yet it doesn't seem to exist. The book is there in his head. Todd makes a decision: he will "write" this book that nobody but him can remember. After all, if nobody's heard of it, how can he get into trouble? -- adapted from back cover

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789091052
Publisher:	Titan
Publication date:	03/18/2020
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	4.10(w) x 6.80(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

David Quantick is an Emmy Award-winning television writer for such shows as Avenue 5, Veep, The Thick of It and The Day Today. He is the author of All My Colors, Sparks, The Mule, and two writing manuals: How To Write Everything and How To Be A Writer.

Editorial Reviews

David Quantick is one of the best kept secrets in the world of writing. He’s smart, funny and unique. You should let yourself in on the secret.”
—Neil Gaiman

“Wonderfully bizarre . . . as a twisty and fitfully funny episode of The Twilight Zone, it’s a blast. A caustic, unexpected comic horror story in which the villain, as always, thinks he's the hero.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“All My Colors is by turns a supernatural revenge fantasy, a black comedy, and a self-abnegating parody. It is hysterical, shocking, and propulsive—leave the lights on for its end.”
—Foreword Magazine

“Quantick ably sketches an unappealing but interesting protagonist swiftly out of his depth, and the slowly unfolding literary menace will appeal to fans of Jonathan Carroll’s The Land of Laughs (1980) or of literary-themed horror in general.”
—Booklist

“With his witty, cautionary horror story, David Quantick entertains readers from start to finish: he turns his sharp eye on the dynamics of publishing industry in a novel that explores the nature of story-telling itself. Fast-paced and easy to read, this novel is a must-read for fans of Chuck Palahniuk, Drew Magary and John Niven.”
—Mystery Tribune

“Part mystery, part fantasy, All My Colors’ rainbow of sensations won’t leave readers unfazed.”
—BookPage

“Quantick spins the tired trope of a book about someone writing a book into a darkly humorous story about ego and comeuppance, one that, for a moment, lets the reader believe in a just world where jerks get their due punishment.”
—Barnes & Noble SFF Blog

“Too many novels about fictional stories do a terrible job of convincing the reader that the subject matter is actually worthwhile: this is one of those rare books that creates a wholly convincing novel on which to hang its plot.”
—The Frumious Consortium

“ . . . cut through with a Jordan Peele-esque level of social satire.”
—Ravenous Monster

From the Publisher

2019-02-04

A wannabe writer who's a real jerk writes a bestseller in an eerie fashion.

There's been a wealth of spooky comic-horror novels in recent years, and this wonderfully bizarre entry from multimedia scribe and Emmy Award-winning Veep writer Quantick (Go West, 2019, etc.) definitely fits the bill. Set in 1979 in a small town in rural Illinois, the book concerns one Todd Milstead, an aspiring writer who is introduced in the first line as "an asshole" and is later described by one of the handful of people who actually like him as a "pompous, vain, arrogant, self-obsessed, rude bastard." He drinks too much, cheats on his wife, lectures his friends, and generally behaves as described. While the character himself is deeply unpleasant, it's worth reading to the end of Quantick's deceptive puzzle-box of a novel. The biggest change in Todd's life comes when he uses his eidetic memory to copy word for word a now-obscure 1966 bestselling novel called All My Colors by a writer named Jake Turner. To Todd's surprise, his copy of the novel, which he's published under his own name, becomes a runaway hit. The middle sags a bit with a painfully accurate portrayal of a book tour, but Quantick gives away just enough strangeness amid Todd's perpetual breakdown to keep the reader going. Following a divorce, Todd hires a seedy private eye to follow his ex-wife and her new lover, who doesn't seem to appear in photographs. Two of his friends die under mysterious circumstances, and Todd himself is stalked by an enigmatic biker, not to mention the weight of his own guilt over his massive duplicity and the certainty that he's sure to get caught. As a satire of the writing life, it's less effective, but as a twisty and fitfully funny episode of The Twilight Zone, it's a blast.

A caustic, unexpected comic horror story in which the villain, as always, thinks he's the hero.

Kirkus Reviews