THE CYNIC’S DICTIONARY
Morrow, 1994. Quill paperback, 1997. Castle Books edition, 2003.
Eloquently acerbic, wildly funny and bitterly truthful dictionary in the Ambrose Bierce tradition. Ignored by the critics, loved by its many fans. Nearly a thousand disgruntled definitions for our times. Hardcover or paperback, 190 pages.
Buy it at Amazon.com. Out of print, but new and used copies are still available at bargain prices.
WORDS THAT SELL
Caddylak Publishing, 1984. Contemporary Books edition, 1987. Revised and expanded edition, McGraw-Hill, 2006.
Perennially popular thesaurus has provided instant inspiration for over a quarter of a million advertising, marketing and sales professionals. Ideal for small business owners, too. Now with over twice as much material as the original edition. Large paperback, 160 pages.
“The most important, frequently used reference book a copywriter will ever own.” – Dan S. Kennedy
Buy it at Amazon.com.
MORE WORDS THAT SELL
McGraw-Hill, 2003.
Not just more of the same. Indispensable hands-on supplement gives you the words and phrases you need to target your copy to specific markets and fine-tune it to maximize response. Large paperback, 144 pages.
Buy it at Amazon.com.
Bayan’s Unpublished Books
Publishers are skittish these days about risking a $10,000 advance on little-known essayists; they’d rather pay $6 million for the next tome by noted essayist Chelsea Handler. So be it. I’m listing my essay collections here because someday they’ll be justly celebrated when Chelsea Handler is simply a retired multimillionaire living in imperial splendor. When that day arrives, I’ll lift my bald noggin at the nursing home and smile a wistful, toothless smile.
Note: If you’d be willing to pay actual money to own these books, let me know. (No commitment, you understand.) I’m thinking about swallowing my pride and self-publishing them before something irreversible happens, like my own death. I need to know if anyone will be lining up to buy these books. After all, self-publishing is even harder on the average writer’s bank account than freelancing. Maybe a benevolent plutocrat (or two, or twenty) will step forward to help ease the pain. Just e-mail me if you’re interested in reading, donating or both. (Patrons will be duly rewarded with a personal dedication at the front of each book.)
LIFESTYLES OF THE DOOMED
In these pages I growl and rumble about overwork, pretentious food, overhyped tabloid celebrities, fanatics, the wealth gap, hot-coffee lawsuits, reproductive failure, extinction, bad punctuation and other signposts of impending doom. A winning combination of cynical humor, verbal gusto, intellectual passion and penetrating insights. H. L. Mencken’s ghost would be pleased.
EXTREMELY DARK CHOCOLATES
Join me on a morbidly amusing tour of life’s gnarly underside: the food chain, suffering, insanity, houseflies, bad music, chronic disappointment, aging, the inequality of lifespans, death, burial and other inconveniences. Deep, dark and bitter, even by my standards — but strangely comforting to the soul.
