We discuss the final stories in The Elephant Vanishes. One of which turns out to be the weirdest story of them all! 

Be sure to listen to the end to get our final rating of The Elephant Vanishes, as well as a quick breakdown of the stories we liked the most.

We talk about 50 of the best books that are under 200 pages. We get a bit ridiculous in this one but we do our best to keep things moving. 

You can check out the list at https://lithub.com/50-great-classic-novels-under-200-pages/

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We break down three more weird Murakami stories. In this one, we meet a young man who works for a bizarre letter reading company, a guy who has unnerving encounters with the "TV People" who nobody else seems to notice, and a guy who reminisces about all the Chinese people he's ever met in his life.

We open things with a chat about freelance writing jobs. After that, we get into the gritty details of indie publishing, traditional publishing, working with small publishers, and what it all means for us writers. 

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In the stories we cover today, we meet a hopelessly romantic little green monster who falls in love with a dangerous woman. After that, we're dropped into the world of a young man who refuses to grow up while his younger sister plans to get married and live a mature life.

We start today's episode off with a discussion about the use of adverbs in your writing. Specifically, whether you should follow the old adage of cutting them out of your work or if it's not actually that bad to use them. After that, we have a long conversation about purple prose. 

For those who don't know, purple prose is essentially overwriting to the point that it harms the story you're telling. We talk about whether we think purple prose gets a bad rap and if it should hold a place in your writing. 

We end the episode by talking about allegory (not analogy, which we so egregiously say over and over again). 

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This week we cover three more wild stories from Haruki Murakami's short story collection, The Elephant Vanishes. We meet a man who has a very odd diary, a miserable wife who shops for lederhosen, and a mysterious rich guy who has a passion for burning down random barns. 

We cover a lot of topics in this one. We start off by discussing Professor Tolkien's view on escapism and what we think about people who use entertainment as a means to escape their lives for a bit. That transforms into a quick conversation about media personalities who purposely say and do outlandish things to garner attention. 

When we finally get to the topic at hand, we have a wonderful discussion about how underappreciated we feel classic pulp writers are. Writers like Robert E. Howard, Raymond Chandler, Ian Fleming, and H.P. Lovecraft. Then Spencer takes things to a controversial level by naming who he thinks is the greatest living American author. This opens up a whole new discussion that gets really fun.

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In today's episode, we discuss three more stories from Haruki Murakami's short story collection, The Elephant Vanishes. In this one, we cover themes of obsession, living a mundane, unfulfilling existence, and weird creeps!

We had wayyyy too much fun recording this episode. We start things off with a quick conversation about the appropriate size for cupcakes. After that, we get into the heart of things and break down 50 of the best fantasy characters from books, movies, and TV shows.

Spoiler alert, there are a lot, and we mean A LOT, of characters left off of the list we found. But we still think there were some solid picks on the list and we had a blast acting like buffoons while discussing them. Also, be sure to check out what comes after the outro music.

Check out our work at www.drunkenpenwriting.com

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