Posts tagged "molotov hearts"

3
molotov hearts me hoodieripper

Mar 06

Phoenix From the Ashtray

(That’s me looking at Vancouver. A lot’s changed in the past couple of years.)

I feel like Ash at the end of Army of Darkness. Like I went into a cave to finish editing my novel and when I came out thousands of years had passed and I was standing in the middle of a post-apocalyptic landscape, holding my manuscript aloft and yelling, “NOOOOOOOOO!!! I EDITED TOO LONG!!!”

And, I mean, that’s mostly true, right? Since 2010, we’ve basically been living in a Road Warrior future where there are constant tribal biker wars over gasoline and Monsanto polices the wasteland in its armored SUVs, firing dented cans of Spaghetti-Os at anyone who speaks out against their agricultural practices.

It’s hard for me to remember what happened before I went into the cave, but a lot’s happened to me since, so let me try to sum it up in non-boring form:

  • The book editing took an involved and difficult turn.

  • I spiraled into one of the worst depressions of my life.

Yeah, other things happened (I decided to build a tiny house, I became the building manager of my apartment), but those are the parts of most interest here and now. I’m a little mad at my brain for not keeping the depression in check until after I got my editing done, but my brain is a spiteful little beast that does what it wants and I might as well get pissed off at the passage of time.

HEY, FUCK YOU, TIME! *cough*

Anyway, the editing kind of ground to a halt with a difficult section, but life went on, and eventually I found a hidden reserve of inner strength and resolved to just plough through the goddamn depression and get the book done and guess what—I did. I put my nose to the grindstone and made the nonsensical parts make sense. My friend Lisa (who lives in a nearby city) went on vacation and I hid in her apartment for five days and just clickity-clacked away on my computer, until I could finally type THE END (which I didn’t actually do—I just sprawled on the couch with a couple of cans of cider and just lay there).

And now it’s done. Molotov Hearts, the first HoodieRipper novel, is completed and you’ll get to read it very soon. How soon? Well, it will be serialized here (hoodieripper.com) starting March 30! I’ll be posting a chapter every Friday until it’s done, with illustrations by the talented and amazing Karlene Harvey (I’ll post some teaser pics in the next week or so as soon as I can pry them out of her hands). And if you don’t want to suffer through the wait between chapters, this summer I’ll be launching an IndieGoGo campaign to publish the print version of the book (it’s like Kickstarter, except you don’t need an American bank account to use it). There are a LOT of cool rewards I’ve got lined up for that, and I’ll tell you more about them a little closer to the date.

What’s it about? Well, this:

‘Molotov Hearts’ is the first book in the HoodieRipper series of punk romances. The book follows the life of Jenn McNabb, a teenage girl with a crappy home life and crappy school life who finds the punk scene and discovers through it that she isn’t obligated to be who the world wants her to be—she has the freedom to be who she wants. ‘Molotov Hearts’ features punk houses, punk parties, basement shows, make-out sessions, fist fights and dumpster diving. It’s funny, sad, and is written by a punk for anyone who wants to read a story in the tradition of “girl-meets-boy, girl-joins-a-punk-band, girl-kicks-ass.”

And what’s beyond Molotov Hearts? More stories. So many more stories. I have a plan (like a Cylon), a goal (like Gretzky) and more ideas than I know what to do with, all of which will start after Molotov Hearts is done serializing in late 2012.

So, ball up your jacket, stash it in the corner and get ready to dive into the pit, because this is the year romance learns to love the punk scene despite its better judgment. Get ready.


1
hoodieripper molotov hearts trailers

Mar 14

HOODIERIPPER’S FIRST TRAILER! It’s finally here! A sweeping, one minute epic full of pathos, hilarity and punks kissing!

Feel free to share it far and wide and get ready for the first chapter of Molotov Hearts, the HoodieRipper novel, to drop right here on March 30! Thanks!


1
molotov hearts

Mar 30

Molotov Hearts - Before We Start

Here we are at the online equivalent of you standing in the bookstore, picking Molotov Hearts up off the shelf and wondering whether or not you should invest your time in this book.

The simple answer is “yes.” The longer answer is “c’mon, obviously yes.”

Those answers may not entirely convince you, since they’re written by the author and he has a personal stake in the matter, so here’s a brief synopsis to allow you to make up your own mind:

Jenn McNabb is a girl who spends her days shuttling back and forth between her crappy home life and crappy school life, dreaming of the punk scene—dreaming of escape (and maybe that punk boy she saw). But even if she manages to get into the scene (or get the boy), will that be enough to fix her problems and change her from the girl the world thinks she is to the girl she wants to be? And will she figure out how to throw a punch if she needs to?

Molotov Hearts features punk houses, punk parties, basement shows, make-out sessions, fist fights and dumpster diving. It’s funny, sad, romantic and a novel for anyone who wants to read a story in the tradition of “girl-meets-boy, girl-joins-punk-band, girl-kicks-ass.”

I’ll post a chapter every Friday until the book is done (sometimes two chapters when they’re particularly short). All I ask in return is that if you like it, tell your friends about it. If you like it a lot, please tell them repeatedly. And please also like the HoodieRipper Facebook page, because stuff will pop up on there that you’ll miss if you only check the blog on Fridays.

There will be a print edition in the fall and there’s going to be some seriously cool bonuses if you pre-order it, but I’ll talk about that more when it gets closer.

Until then, kick back and enjoy. Like The Ramones said, “Hey, ho, let’s go.”


27
karlene harvey molotov hearts novel prose fiction

Mar 30

Molotov Hearts - Prologue


by Chris Eng, illustration by Karlene Harvey

For the third day in a row, Jenn stood across the street and stared. She was trying to be as nonchalant as possible about it, but wasn’t sure how well it was working, mostly because she was studying each of them carefully, in turn.

A couple of them were new, but several had been there all three days, and it was them she spent most of her time watching. There was the black girl with the foot high crimson mohawk who punctuated her conversation with vicious jabs of a cigarette. She’d worn the same denim skirt/vest combo every day and made it look like a uniform. The guy she was jabbing the cigarette at was average height but wide and beefy, hair shaved close, with a faded shirt for some band called the Cromags tightly adhering to his muscular yet slightly chubby chest. He looked Mongolian, she thought—he was certainly built like he was born to conquer Asia on horseback—and he grinned a lot. There was a blonde girl no older than her late teens wearing sunglasses and a black, one-piece dress possibly made by Prada. At her side she carried a Louis Vuitton handbag with an air which suggested she didn’t have time for knock-offs. She was talking to a woman in her early- to mid-20’s whom Jenn had dubbed Queen Bee, because if she wasn’t the Queen of this small community, Jenn wasn’t sure who was. There wasn’t anything specific in her appearance that led Jenn to that conclusion; she matched a pair of skin-tight, ripped blue jeans with world-weary black Chucks and a Black Flag “Jealous Again” shirt she’d cut a v-neck cut into. Her hair was greasy and dishevelled and she looked like she hadn’t had a shower in a week, but there was an air of control and authority coming off her as unmistakeable as Prada Girl’s grasp of fashion.

And then there was the boy ignoring them all, back to the wall, and reading.

He’d been reading the same thing every day—a huge, hardcover volume that looked like a textbook. She’d been trying to get a good look at the cover, but that hadn’t worked out well from across the street, so the day before she’d taken a picture of it with her phone’s camera and used every photo enhancement the internet could come up with to zoom in on the title. After a half-hour of work, she got it: An Introduction to Quantum Physics. This guy was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk reading a textbook on quantum physics for fun. Standing, he wandered over to Queen Bee and Prada-Girl. He was tall, almost a good foot above Jenn, maybe 6’5” or 6’6”, and gangly in an awkward but endearing way, like Joey Ramone. A mop of dark brown hair hung in his face, almost obscuring his eyes, and an all-weather navy RCMP coat hung limply from his shoulders. It was the beginning of fall and still kind of hot outside, so he should have been roasting in it, but he didn’t seem to notice. A pair of straight-cut black jeans complemented some worn but polished army surplus combat boots. He was laughing now and the sound of his laughter carried over to Jenn’s side of the street. It was a rich, full-timbred laugh and it had him going so hard he bent at the waist and put his free hand on one of his knees to steady himself. He was, Jenn thought to herself, probably the most intriguing, charming and goddamn handsome boy she’d ever laid eyes on.

But he belonged to the punks who hung in front of Pete’s Burgers, a group she had no connection to. She couldn’t talk to him, she could only watch him from across the street, letting the ache grow until she had no other option but to walk to the bus stop, turning her frustration over and over in her mind while she waited for her ride home, just like she’d done on the previous two days.

Click here for the next chapter.


17
molotov hearts novel karlene harvey prose fiction

Apr 06

Molotov Hearts - Part I, Chapter 1


by Chris Eng, illustration by Karlene Harvey

Click here for the previous chapter.

“Hey.”

The six teens in the smoke pit of Willeford Senior Secondary stopped talking and looked at Jenn. They were punk by her reckoning, but bore as much in common with the crew in front of Pete’s Burgers as cats with dogs or lemurs with human beings. Their clothes were torn, but precisely and intentionally as opposed to rips that come from years of casual wear. Their hair was multi-coloured, but tinted with temporary dyes that would wash out if parents protested. Their belts were huge, spiked and non-functional. Their shirts were tight and new, the fronts emblazoned with the names of bands familiar to anyone with even a passing knowledge of punk. And they were all smoking, but there was a deliberateness to it which made it seem like they were part of an animatronic display at Disney World.

Claire, a girl in Grade 12 with lavender highlights and a Sex Pistols shirt, gave Jenn a look up and down, then said, without any enthusiasm at all, “What’s up, McNabb?”

Jenn gave herself the same look in her mind’s eye. There was nothing going on with either her or her wardrobe. At 16, Jenn had mastered the art of being non-descript. She was pretty—with some effort and an hour or so in the morning she might have been beautiful—but she consistently veered toward plainness, covering up her slight but curvy frame in grey or tan blouses, sweaters and knee-length skirts, and topping it all off with thick stockings and worn maryjanes. Her auburn hair hung straight and unmanaged, parted on the left and framing her face in an acceptable yet entirely uninvolving way. A black knapsack, heavy with schoolwork, hung off her right shoulder and she’d wedged a book tightly under her left arm. It was an appearance that almost satisfied people’s conceptions of ‘nerdy’ but settled on ‘wallflower’ instead.

Jenn shrugged. “Nothing. Just seeing what was going on.”

“We’re smoking.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Jenn replied, wondering why she’d come over to talk to them. She knew, of course—they were punks, or the closest thing to them she had any contact with. They were obviously socially separate from the group downtown, but she thought if she hung out with this group for a while, she might better understand the culture.

Claire grinned at Jenn—a shark’s smile, carnivorous and hungry—and said, “So, why’d you ask then?”

Read More


16
molotov hearts novel karlene harvey prose fiction

Apr 13

Molotov Hearts - Part I, Chapter 2

by Chris Eng, illustration by Karlene Harvey

Click here for the previous chapter.

ThrifTown described itself as a thrift store, but marketed itself as a department store, staying open until nine every night and illuminating their multiple-football-field size selection with banks of fluorescent lights until every particle of dirt (and there were oh-so-many particles of dirt) was blindingly obvious under the barrage.

Jenn had originally headed there because it was one of the few places downtown (admittedly, the very edge of downtown, bordering the industrial area) open past six, but as she walked slowly and absentmindedly down the aisles she began to form a plan.

Fingering a poofy blouse with football player shoulder pads, she stopped. She was in the wrong section. Straightening herself, Jenn strode across the store to the childrens-wear. She would have looked in the men’s department, but figured she was too tiny even for a men’s small.

Her mother, despite the grabbing and slapping, had been right. It fucking killed Jenn to admit it, but it was true: no boys would look at her. No boys or girls would look at her, sexually or otherwise. She couldn’t make friends. She was, in a best case scenario, effectively invisible. She picked up a pair of jeans from the rack, held them up to herself to check the fit and put them back.

The only people in the world Jenn was remotely interested in befriending were the Downtown Punks, and despite the fact they seemed to take anyone into their ranks, she still didn’t feel like she stood a chance in her secretary-wear. She’d seen some odd people hanging out with them… but none that looked like her.

She picked up another pair of jeans and held them against herself. Looking down, she took all her preconceived ideas of fashion and crammed them and their nearly deafening voices down into the pit beneath her heart where she could no longer hear them. This wasn’t a matter to be decided by self-doubt. This was something that required cool-headed and logical evaluation: WWQBW?

What would Queen Bee wear?

Read More


4
molotov hearts novel karlene harvey prose fiction

Apr 20

Molotov Hearts - Part I, Chapter 3

by Chris Eng, illustration by Karlene Harvey

Click here for the previous chapter.

Jenn’s smile had faded by the time she got home. She’d spent the bus ride going over every possible option to avoid having Round 2 with her mother, but ultimately knew there wasn’t any. She had no friends to stay with and she wasn’t going to spend the night downtown. Besides, it’s not like she was the guilty party. She may have provoked her mother, but Jenn didn’t grab her by the sweater and start slapping her.

The rationalizing didn’t kill her anxiety, but it gave her enough fortitude to get on the bus. Still, by the time she’d reached her stop, her nerves were electric with tension and the tendons in her shoulders were like steel cables. She was a coiled snake, a compressed spring.

Stopping up the block, she took her school books from her knapsack and crammed the ThrifTown bag into it. She didn’t want to have to explain her shopping trip to her parents. Not tonight. She slung the knapsack over both shoulders, put her books under her arm and walked the rest of the way home.

Even before she slid the TV room door open, she knew exactly what she would find; her parents sitting on the couch in silence, waiting for her. And there they were. Her mother was dressed just as she had been a few hours previous, her face red and puffy from crying and rage. Jenn’s dad sat next to her, a man in his early 40s dressed in a crisp and stylish shirt and tie. He surveyed the situation from behind designer glasses, and ran a hand through his well-groomed hair as a matter of preparation. Jenn closed the door behind herself, just as her mother’s voice erupted.

Read More


10
molotov hearts karlene harvey novel prose fiction

Apr 27

Molotov Hearts - Part I, Chapter 4

by Chris Eng, illustration by Karlene Harvey

Click here for the previous chapter.

She waited until 2:00 a.m. before grabbing her bag, shoving her copy of Anarchy for Newbies into it and heading for her dad’s workshop. Jenn wasn’t sure if her parents were still up—if her dad had that much work, it was possible he was—but their rooms were on the opposite side of the house and she wasn’t worried about being discovered.

She flipped the lightswitch and banks of fluorescent lights flickered on. She wasn’t sure why her dad needed a workshop; it’s not like it ever got used. Maybe it was just something dads were supposed to have. Regardless, it was well-outfitted. Her dad had done his duty and filled the room with nearly every kind of tool, gadget and device used in the kind of home-improvement that never took place in their house.

Stepping lightly across the concrete floor, she made her way to the workbench and removed a pair of industrial shears from the wall above it.

Sitting down cross-legged on the floor and opening her knapsack, Jenn took the ThrifTown bag out, turned it upside-down and emptied the contents in front of her. She picked the jean jacket out of the pile and held it up. She’d never intentionally mutilated her clothes before. She smiled and laid the jacket down, stretching the arm of the fabric out. Gripping the shears tightly, she began to carefully cut the arm away, making sure the seam was still attached. Once that was done, she started on the other side. A couple of minutes later she held up the finished product, a perfectly acceptable and functional jean vest.

She laid it on the floor again, back facing up, and moved the rest of the clothes away from it. Next, she headed to the utility shelves that stored the liquids. If there was a liquid product with a household application, chances are it had made its way onto the shelves at some point. There were plastic bottles of motor oil, buckets of wood stain, cans of WD-40, and paint.

Jenn grabbed a can of black spray-paint and went back to the vest. She shook the can vigorously for a few seconds, popped the cap off and evaluated her canvas. Holding the can a few inches off the fabric, she precisely painted a circle about a foot in diameter. When she finished, she looked at it, took a step back, and looked at it again before just as carefully inscribing a capital A inside the circle.

She nodded, pleased. Extracting the book from her knapsack, she plopped into a deck chair and read as the paint dried.

Click here for the next chapter.


11
molotov hearts novel prose fiction

May 04

Molotov Hearts - Part I, Chapter 5

 by Chris Eng, Illustration by Karlene Harvey

Click here for the previous chapter.

The next day at school was a wash.

Jenn had gotten four hours of sleep and proceeded upon waking to shamble through her day, hitting her cues for where she needed to be but not retaining anything in any of her classes. She took no notes and during a post-lunch video presentation in English managed to fall asleep. She was pretty sure she wasn’t snoring, but there was a sizable puddle of drool on her desk when the lights flicked on at the end of class. She wiped it up with her bag as nonchalantly as she was able and exited the room.

Stepping into the hall was good for a sharp shock of awareness, but even the chore of having to move around wasn’t going to keep her upright for long. She stumbled toward Physics and managed to collide head-on with Claire who was talking to the rest of her crew.

“McNabb,” Claire said with an exasperated air. “You look a little tired. Maybe you need a can of Coke or Red Bull or some meth or a new personality. By the way, you’ve got a little something there.” She pointed at Jenn’s cheek.

Jenn reached up and touched her face.

“Almost,” Claire encouraged.

Jenn moved her fingers around for a second and then felt a slight crust.

“Yeah, there ya go,” said Claire, the rest of her cronies barely containing their laughter.

Jenn rubbed at the crust but it wasn’t going away.

“You seem to be having some trouble with that. Well, see ya.”

She waved goodbye and the cluster of friends dispersed in gales of no-longer-contained laughter.

Jenn broke for the nearest washroom in a sudden flash of panic, careening through the halls and barely avoiding multiple collisions with the rest of the student population. She burst through the door and screeched to a halt in front of the mirror.

Read More


7
fiction molotov hearts novel prose karlene harvey

May 11

Molotov Hearts - Part I, Chapters 6 & 7

by Chris Eng, illustration by Karlene Harvey

Click here for the previous chapter.


CHAPTER SIX

Jenn changed back into her school clothes before she got home. The jean jacket and mack came off, the blouse and sweater went on over the t-shirt. The skirt went on over the jeans, the jeans came off, and the stockings went on real quick. She did it all in the park, and after she changed she hung out and just basked, taking her time.

She rolled into the TV room around six and was just depositing her knapsack beside the loveseat when her mother’s voice echoed down the stairs.

“Jenn?!” It was only half a question.

“Yes?” she yelled back up.

“Dinner,” came the flat response.

Dinner was a spartan affair, composed of two or three things her mother had assembled after boiling them in their respective bags, and the atmosphere at the table was even more tense than usual.

“So,” her mother said, a forkful of what appeared to be sweet and sour chicken locked in a holding pattern in front of her. “Out with your friends again?”

“Yes,” Jenn responded with as much patience and courtesy as she could muster.

“I thought you said you didn’t have any.”

“Hesther,” her dad interrupted.

Jenn felt her mother’s eyes on her and tried to ignore the sensation as she worked on finishing her dinner with as much nonchalant speed as she could.

“What’s that?” her mother said low and casually, practically purring, like a panther toying with its prey. Jenn looked over warily to see her mother pointing a knife at the back of Jenn’s hand. At Spit’s address.

“It’s an address.” Jenn looked down at her plate and continued to work through dinner in as little time as possible. “I told you I had friends,” she said to no one in particular.

“Mm-hm,” said her mother, still purring, and Jenn swore she could feel her mother’s gaze burning a hole through the back of her hand.


CHAPTER SEVEN

Friday was like Christmas when Jenn was seven. Christmas when she lay awake all night because she couldn’t sleep. Christmas when her waking days were lengthened by a factor of ten or more. Each of Jenn’s classes seemed to last 12 hours, but even though it was torture, Jenn couldn’t shake her good mood, and she endured her scholastic prison sentence with the serenity of a Zen monk.

After school she went home and stuck around for dinner, partly because she didn’t want to pay for it and partly because she thought it would involve less interrogation from her mother (which was becoming a larger and larger concern). As Jenn predicted, dinner was a conversational dead zone and everybody ate in silence. Jenn knew her dad was happy (or at least satisfied) if she and her mother avoided going for each other’s throats and Jenn wanted out of the house with as little fuss as possible. She was going to have to bring it up, though.

“I’m going out tonight.”

“You’re going out?” her mother asked, incredulous.

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“To Claire’s.”

“I don’t think I know Claire.” Jenn could hear the panther tones creeping back.

“She’s never been over here.”

“Is she one of your new friends?”

“Yeah.”

“Is she the one whose address was on your hand the other day?” The panther leapt.

A shock ran down the length of Jenn’s spine, but she replied calmly and pulled a name out of the air as she spoke. “No. That was Fiona.”

“I don’t know Fiona either.”

Her dad rubbed his temple in a small circular motion with his index finger.

“Hesther,” he said, injecting himself into a conversation he clearly didn’t want to be a part of. “She said she has some new friends. It’s good Jennifer is making new friends.”

His wife glared at him as he spoke to Jenn. “Honey, we may not know Claire and Fiona, but it’s not like we need to meet all your friends. Go have fun tonight, all right?”

“Okay. Thanks, dad.”

The sound of silverware clinking on plates dominated the room, punctuated only briefly by the low sound of her mother talking under her breath. “Well… look who grew a pair.”

They finished their meal in silence.

Click here for the next chapter.