HOW TO PRE-ORDER NOCK LOOSE (and why)
My debut novel, NOCK LOOSE, drops July 1. Here's how to cop it.
*cough* *hack* *wheeze*
DRONGOLOIDS! I am laid low by The Devil COVID this past week, my sickly peat-digger constitution fighting back centuries of genetic code that demands I die at just the hint of illness, let alone The New Plague. Apologies to my Irish-bog-drowning and Sunderlandian-hole-digging ancestors, but, I LIVE!
However, I’m behind on everything. I’ve got a week to make a short film I won a grant to make, which do not want to make at all (after 10 months of putting it off), a backlog of deadlines with more reputable news sites than this one, so many things I had planned for YNR that I’ve had to put on the backburner, and, also, and most importantly of all, so many things I have to get done before my debut novel, NOCK LOOSE (“a really good book” - me) drops July 1st, which is in three dang ol’ weeks!
I know what you’re thinking: “poorly, retch — I feel a warrior’s duty to end your suffering, but I am compelled to stay my blade by something lower than pity…how can I help thee, instead?”
There are many ways to help a cretin like me, goodly Ser! Such as…
PRE-ORDER NOCK LOOSE AT MY PUBLISHER’S WEBSITE!
My publisher, Fremantle Press, agreed to publish Nock Loose after the head of the notorious Don Coyote Motorcycle Gang dangled one of their intern’s over the crocodile exhibit at Perth Zoo during one of those zoo sleepovers you used to hear so much about (they’re still a thing - bikies have kids too!). Because the intern was a nepo hire (like all interns in publishing), they felt obliged to offer me a publishing contract — specifically to write a glowing revisionist history of the Don Coyotes. I wrote Nock Loose instead, smuggling the grim realities of that history into the novel. This whole ordeal has been good and bad for me: good, in that Nock Loose is now a real book that’s coming out in the real word, and bad, in that I now owe the Don Coyotes a blood debt, and/or $63k (give or take)/they’re threatening to introduce me to “Crusher Dan” their “Spine Removalist.”
Anyway, you can go to Fremantle Press’s website, type in ‘Nock Loose’, and order the dang ol’ book. Click here or the cover below to be taken there right now!
PRE-ORDER NOCK LOOSE AT YOUR LOCAL INDIE BOOKSTORE!
The best way to pre-order Nock Loose — as in the best way for everyone, even the aforementioned bikie gang — is for you to go down to/call up/email etc your neighbourhood bookstore, and order it through them/ask them to put it aside for you when it’s out July 1. I all but live in bookstores, and this is the best way to show me and them and these bikies your love.
The great news is, you can do this at bookstores anywhere in the world! For my international fans (hi, Molly!) this is how you can get a beautiful hard copy of Nock Loose long before the Don Coyote’s “lawyer” has sold the international rights to his cartel friends.
Here are a few of my favs bookstores from all over! You’ll notice that Queensland, Adelaide, Tasmania, and the NT (and Canberra, I guess) are absent — this is not a slight, I’ve just never visited any of those places, except Brisbane, which I’ve repressed. If you’re a bookseller from there though, hmu! I’ll give your store a shoutout in an updated version of this article!
Freo/Perth/WA!
New Edition, Fremantle
I’ve been shopping at New Ed since I was a youngling. The first book I bought there was “The Quotable Oscar Wilde” (yes, I was THAT 9 year old, sorry!). I’m in there every other day, and I buy a book there every other week. I once tried to calculate how much money I’d spent there over the years and, well, let’s just say I probably could be a home owner, if I did not have this crippling addiction to the works of Cesar Aira and Louise Gluck.
New Edition are throwing me a book launch at The Buffalo Club July 3. Id you’re in Freo/Perth, come on down!
Bill’s Second Hand Books, Fremantle
My second favourite bookstore on Earth is conveniently across the road from my first. Unfortunately for Nock Loose, it only sells secondhand books. But no worries! All you have to do is buy Nock Loose from New Edition, then immediately cross the street and sell it to Bill, so he can put it for sale in his window. Appearing in that window means more to me than winning the Miles Franklin, namely because I don’t really know what, or who, that is.
Crow Books, Vic Park
Run by the same good eggs who run New Edition, but conveniently located in the neighbourhood with the best food per square footage etc in Perth, Crow is an old favourite of mine — a great little manga shelf, amongst other things!
Rabble Books, Maylands
Rabble is Perth’s queerest agit-prop bookstore. For those of ya living in a sharehouse out that way, this is the best place to buy Nock Loose for y’self and every member of your polycule. By good eggs, for good eggs, Rabble is the beating heart of Perth’s indie lit scene.
Planet Books, Mt. Lawley
At its peak, this was one of my favourite places to drive 40 minutes for. There was nothing like being 18 in 2009 and perusing the shelves of Planet Video, then hopping down the steps to Planet Books to look at the beautiful Ecco reprints of John Fante novels stocked in the “cult lit” section. Heady days, my friends, heady days! Great place to pre-order Nock Loose if you’re the bass player in a band who is doing a little interview on RTR whose narcisistic frontman won’t let you get a word in — fuck that creep! Storm out, head downstairs, and order Nock Loose!
Dymocks, Subiaco
Dymocks, Patrick? A Dymocks? Really? Yes! People in Subiaco deserve to like the idea of reading, also! But this Dymocks is run by an old high school chum of mine, and let’s just say I owe him some lunch money that’s accrued interest. A great place to order Nock Loose after you get a kebab from that amazing kebab place tucked behind Subi traino (what’s it called? fuck it’s good).
DonnyBooks, Donnybrook
But what if you want to buy Nock Loose from a store in the very region the novel is set in — say, a 20ish minute drive from the mythical “Bodkins Point.” Well buddy, you’re in luck! DonnyBooks is a must-stop whenever I’m heading down to Bridgetown for the annual family Easter lunch (hellish time this year - car broke down - had to drive father - nightmare stuff - don’t ask), and I’m sure they’d love to sell any book that contains a chapter entirely set in Donnybrook’s township.
Melbourne/Victoria etc.
The Don Coyotes said they’d help fund my book tour in Melbourne if I promised to torch the vape shop they want me to throw my Melbourne launch in down to the ground after I’m done “fingering [REDACTED]” (these are CRUDE men) in the stockroom.
Whenever I’m in Melbourne I break out in hives/start stimming compulsively, but yeah, here’s some bookstores I like:
The Hill of Content, CBD
Boy, I’ve died on this hill a few times, I tell you h’wut (RIP Junkee…does Junkee still exist? Surely not…). Fantastic bookstore that supports so much exciting/independent Australian lit (where I got Nicholas John-Turner’s brain-meltingly brilliant Let the Boys Play last year). Would love to see myself in their window, if just so that nice tram driver who helped me out mid-panic attack that August sees it on his lunch break and says “oh, I met that freak once, I think!”
Readings, Carlton
Da big dog. Probably the easiest place to preorder the book if you’re someone who likes to stare into space on the benches in Carlton Gardens, as I do whenever I’m in Melbourne.
The Paperback Bookshop, CBD
Always pop my head in here when I’m in town — such a well-honed flow to the place — vivid memory of spending two hours here hiding from the rain, chatting up another droplet ducker in the poetry section.
Metropolis Bookshop, CBD (Curtin House)
Tucked away on level 3 of Curtin House, Metropolis Bookshop is one of my favourite spots (fullstop) in Melbourne, focussing on counterculture and alt-lit books, I can’t think of a better place to waltz in and DEMAND Nock Loose.
Asphalt Books, CBD (Nicholas Building)
Another hidden gem, Asphalt Books is my favourite bookstore in Melbourne, and one of my favourite in Australia. For a little shop, I sure can/do spend hours, and too much money there (as in I buy alodda books, they’re not steep or nutt’n). It’s a secondhand bookstore so you can’t order Nock Loose here, but you can sell it here once you’re sick of it/me — and I reckon that’d be beautiful, cos it’d be in good company on those shelves.
Sydney/NSW etc.
The Don Coyotes are in some turf war in The Cross because one of them has been going around saying he’s the illegitimate son of Roger “The Dodger” Rogerson, requesting club owners and dealers pay him 30 years of protection racket backpay lest he storm through with “A*o Henry 2.0” and curb stomp them. So yeah, they said I’ll probably be targeted by some Underbelly types if I try to sell Nock Loose there — but they’re also using the book to smuggle coke to their Surry Hills connection (some talkback radio personality? Kai or Cale or something? idk) so yeah, they wan’t me to peddle the book in Sydney, anyway.
Better Read Than Dead, Newtown
The closest I have to a “local fav” in Sydney, simply because I spent two or so blissed-out weeks there with a l*ver some years back. I feel like this is the only Sydney neighbourhood Nock Loose types (underemployed grad students etc) live in? Cheers either way, comrades.
Gleebooks, Glebe
I love saying ‘Glebe.’ Glebe is the name of an ignoble Goblin prince exiled for being too into daffodils and lepidoptery. Nice bookshop, too. Historic. The idea of someone buying Nock Loose here makes me giddy, tbh.
Constant Reader, Crows Nest
I love how nooky this place is — could burrow in here like a little mole and never leave!
Kinokuniya Sydney, CBD
Kinokuniya New York was one of my favourite places in Manhattan to shoplift, right behind Macy’s and The Met. So much of Nock Loose is set in Japan, and a meta-fictional manga is key to the books plot/world/theme, so I can think of no better place to pick a up a copy/steal some nice pens. Speaking of New York…
New York/Manhattan/Brooklyn, USA
YNR readers may or may not know this, but I lived above a glue factory in Bushwick (not a bit), Brooklyn, New York, on and off for 3ish years. It was the happiest time of my life, and well worth the chemical pneumonia the fumes gave me (not a bit), and the subsequent reduced lung capacity (not a bit), and the very strange and rare cancer I’m going to die of in 20 or so years.
Funnily enough, one of the Coyotes told me they were at war with the Russian mafia branch that owned that building I used to live in — such a small world! Anyway, here are my fav New York bookshops that I’d love to see my book at, somehow.
Molasses Books, Bushwick
My favourite bookstore in the world that’s not in Freo, but is in a neighbourhood I considered my ‘hometown’ at one point. I made some of the best friends I ever had by just pulling a stool up at this store’s coffee counter, ordering a mug of joe, and gabbing to strangers about books and politics. It was the first place to make me feel at home in America, and I will always be blindly loyal to it and love it madly for that.
Desert Island Books, Williamsburg
Newly located just a 2 minute walk from its original location, the iconic Desert Island was the first real bookstore I visited when I moved to Brooklyn for real. The hub of the indie comic (as in comic books) scene, the founder, Aaron Hicklin, was/is one of the nicest blokes I’ve ever met, and was always so generous with me as a Man from Ironbark type lost in the Big Apple. It was Aaron who told me about CAB, where I met my dear friend Andy Pratt (see this issue of Yeahs & Nahs), and it was Aaron who was talking with Chris Ware on the train ride there that day I failed to recognise Ware’s Jimmy-style head, haha. Technically a comic book store, but I can’t think of a better place to host Nathanael Whale’s (an amazing comic artist whose work is a natural fit for Desert Island) beautiful Nock Loose artwork, tbh.
Mast Books, East Village
A beautifully curated little shop right near Tompkins Square Park — also within walking distance of my favourite branch of the NYPL, and the best fried chicken you’ll ever eat (Bob White’s Supper Counter, avenue C). Love this place madly, laser honed selections that always meant the discovery of something new or some hidden gem I’d been chasing for years. I made out against their window once with a blindingly hot tinder hookup I still think about 8 years later, damn…oh to be young again!
Bluestockings Cooperative, LES
A worker owned bookstore/cooperative overflowing with radical texts. Not to get too corny, but the books I bought here, and the readings I attended because of this place, played a large part in me accepting that I’m non-binary, after years of denying the fact. This place has a ripper selection of obscure and alt-lit, with a focus on queer/bipoc/radical authors. One of a kind, exactly what Nock Loose aspires towards.
Housing Works Bookstore, SOHO
Just love the grandeur of this place. One of the first bookstores in Manhattan I really fell in love with. Had a girlfriend who lived around the corner, and I’d always piss away the hours in there while she got ready for a night out.
Three Lives & Company, Greenwich Village
All a deadbeat poet like my younger self dreamed of in a Greenwich Village bookstore — so well curated, immaculately laid out, switched-on staff — wodda dream! I remember standing outside this place one Halloween weekend, waiting for a mate, and Jonah Hill stepped out of whatever party he was attending across the road to have a smoke. It was just me and him on the street and we nodded at each other and he said “hey, man, cold night!” and I panicked and said “I loved Mid 90s” (it had just come out) and he smiled and said “oh thanks man, that means a lot, I’ve had such a rough week,” then finished his fag and went inside. But I felt so bad cos I hadn’t seen Mid 90s — I just didn’t know what else to say, and he genuinely looked so sad! Anyway, I saw Mid 90s like a year ago and it was surprisingly good! RIP Jonah for weird texting, I guess.
Tokyo, Japan
A sizeable chunk of Nock Loose is set in Japan, and the book is heavily influenced by manga, anime, JRPGs, and the films of Akira Kurosawa, who, as anyone who has followed me knows, I am an obsessive fan of. I’ve travelled around Japan a fair bit, and kinda stupidly (can’t read Japanese etc) am very into visiting as many bookstores as I can. I am heavily hooked on the design of Japanese bunkobon, truly things of beauty — Japanese book culture is so exciting, from how they’re made and designed, to what’s read and why, to the droolingly low pricepoints of paper backs, all of which feel so well made…god, they really got it down!
Anyway, the Coyote’s Yakuza connect said to check these bookstores out:
Book Off, Ikebukuro
A huge chain store that stocks English language books, and also makes the best tote bag I’ve ever owned in my life. Order Nock Loose at any Book Off, and grab one of their totes — it’ll change your book game, seriously.
For sentimental reasons, and reasons of convenience, I always stay in Ikebukuro whenever I’m in Japan — it’s cheap for tourists and you’re a 10-20 min train ride to all the major sites, hot tip!
Bunrokudō, Koenji
Koenji is my favourite neighbourhood in Tokyo, and there’s a million reasons you should spend your stay there. If you do, or if you live there, please order Nock Loose from this shop — it’s shelves are so towering yet inviting, a great place to look at spines, even if you can’t read Kanji or Katakana.
If you are in Koenji, eat at Bar Sankaku Koen! The couple who run it are sweethearts and they make some of the best and most specific regional cuisines (from the North West, I believe? sorry if I’m wrong!) I’ve ever eaten anywhere in the world.
ORDER NOCK LOOSE AT YOUR LIBRARY!!!
The Don Coyotes are going to break my legs for saying this, but…libraries rock. In fact, libraries are really really cool. The idea of seeing a book I’ve written in a library? Hell, I’m tearing up just thinking about it.
All you have to do is pick up ya phone, call your library (or hey — email them!), and say “librarian, I would like a copy of Patrick Marlborough’s Nock Loose to read” and voila, it’s on its way, and permanently in the collection (until they cull, of course).
If you work in a library, 1) damn, that’s cool, and 2) please put Nock Loose in your “pick of the month” etc sections, or in front of any Trent Dalton. Cheers.
E-BOOKS etc!
Don’t like books as objects? Even when they are as gobsmackingly beautiful as Nock Loose? Are you a “kindle” person? Do you like to have pdfs and epubs on your books app so you can tell yourself “maybe I’ll read these instead of scrolling” while you’re scrolling all day?
Well, you’re in luck! Nock Loose is available in all those formats. It’s a book for people on the go — Knuck’L’Fukkk, the only Don Coyotes member to have read the book, seemingly, tells me he loves reading it on his Kobo while out peddling meth to pre-teens in the Wheatbelt. And I think that’s beautiful!
REVIEWING NOCK LOOSE etc.
Are you a literary critic, or aspiring critic, who’d like to review Nock Loose for some outlet, publication, blog, “BookTok” (*cough*) or media adjacent thing-o? Great! Hmu and I’ll shoot ya a copy. No time for a hard copy? Just lmk and I’ll send you the epub/pdf. I’m very keen to do interviews and profiles and the likes, so slide into my DMs if that’s your racket, yeah?
While I have you, I just want to say: I think GoodReads is a deeply evil entity that has ruined how a generation of readers, well, read. I have never read a GoodReads review that hasn’t made my internal megaphone squawk “GOOD GOD, THIS PERSON IS A DIPSHIT!” and the idea of rating any book on a scale of 0 to 5 stars is honestly sickening to me — truly a sweaty swamp for mid-wit attention cravers and no-talent dipsticks of all stripes! That said, please review Nock Loose on GoodReads and give it 5 stars, thanks.
OTHER METHODS…
Look, Nock Loose was written by bandits (me), funded by bandits (The Don Coyotes), and is for bandits (you?). I am the Saul Goodman of OzLit, afterall.
Are you an Artful Dodger type? Are you drawn by the call of your local thieve’s guild? Do you like those lockpicking minigames in Bioware/Bathesda RPGs? You lidl sicko, I bet ya do!
Or are you, like many, less Artful Dodger and more Oliver — forever holding your empty bowl up to the cold and indifferent universe? Please sir, more? etc.
Never fear, lad, for I am, and always will be, Dodger, Fagan, and Oliver, all. If you’re down on your luck, just shoot me a message on the sly, and I’ll…sort you out…
hmm, just realising ‘sort you out’ sounds like a threat (last time a Coyote said it to me [i asked where their toilet was] they ducktaped me to a urinal trough). What I mean is: I’ll get you the book. S’all good, brother.
So, that’s just a few ways in which you can procure/support Nock Loose. Pretty easy, eh? It’s no Event Match 51 no-lives-lost run with Pichu, I’ll tell you that much (if you get this reference and you are a beautiful woman — dm me).
Honestly, releasing a book in Australia is always hard, especially if you’re in Western Australia (Melbourne and Sydney/the industry like to pretend we don’t exist), and especially when you are as half-witted and useless as yours truly.
The best thing you can do for me and Nock Loose is spread the word. Talk about it, write about it, door knock with it tucked under your arm, whisper about it to the men living beneath your local pier etc…word of mouth is the only way to make this book a sure thing — and perhaps the only way to keep the Coyotes from “twisting my legs about so deyz looks like stepladders” (their words).
I’ve got 4 other novels done and dusted and ready to go. I am about to self-fund a small press, and self-publish at least one of these bad boys. I’ve got 25 novels in me before I [REDACTED] my brains out — that’s the promise I made myself around the age of 7. Who are you to break a promise to a small boy?
good bookstores in Adelaide:
- Matilda’s is great, it’s in Stirling in the Adelaide hills so it’s beautiful and cozy
- O’Connell’s is the classic Adelaide secondhand bookshop, it’s got so many books, it’s the kinda bookshop you dream about
- the Dymocks in Rundle Mall in the Adelaide CBD is just a Dymocks BUT it is in an very beautiful old theatre so it’s has these awesome high ceilings and you can get a 6.5/10 coffee
- Dillons in Norwood is also pretty well known
We have copies coming to Mary Who? Bookshop in Gurambilbarra/Townsville, for the north QLD folks!