Ricky Sprague

This summer I’ve been thrilled and honored to be part of several interesting and unique collections of short crime and mystery fiction—all with a humorous or at least very off-beat twist.

DIE LAUGHING: This is a hardcover collection of more than 40 short humorous crime and mystery stories released by the great MYSTERY MAGAZINE (formerly MYSTERY WEEKLY). I was lucky enough to place TWO stories in this great collection, edited by Kerry Carter:

“It Might Be Murder for Hire”

This story features Dan and Chris, the two doofuses who have appeared in several publications (including MYSTERY WEEKLY). Dan and Chris are “roommates” in the sense that Chris has an apartment, and Dan lives there. Occasionally he chips in for expenses. In this story, Dan is concerned that he might have been hired to murder someone. When he attempts to verify, things get complicated. This story holds the distinction of being the first Chris and Dan story narrated by Dan, who isn’t terribly observant or intelligent.

“The Adventure of the Bash-Beaned Fiancée”

In this story, wealthy British layabout Barnie Brewster’s fiancée has apparently been killed. Leading the investigation is the very famous consulting detective, Locksure Homes, and his assistant Dr Watsup. When the investigation takes a rather peculiar turn, it’s up to Brewster’s valet, Jaspers, to swoop in and clear up the mystery. This is the second story I’ve written with these characters. The first appeared in another just-released collection. Namely—

ASININE ASSASSINS: This collection from Weldon Burge’s Smart Rhino Publications centers on stories of serial killers, hired guns, and other rotten eggs—all of whom are plagued by stupidity, ineptitude, and weirdness. I was happy to get a story published in this one:

“Rip Ho, Jaspers!” This is the first story featuring Jaspers and Brewster—the hopelessly competent and capable valet and his hopelessly stupid, venal, and inept employer. In this story, Brewster has been carousing in Whitechapel with ladies of ill repute. When his imperious Aunt Dot discovers his indiscretions, she demands that Brewster eliminate the ladies before they besmirch their good family name.

CRIMEUCOPIA: AS IN FUNNY HA-HA OR JUST PECULIAR: A collection of odd and/or humourous (it was published in England!) stories from John Connor and Jack Bateman’s Murderous Ink Press. In addition to the great stories it contains, it also has the distinction of having a cover illustrated by ME! As for my story:

“Listen to My Pitch!” This is another Chris and Dan screwball potboiler in which Chris gets caught up in a complicated web of lies, deceit, financial malfeasance, and self-promotion gone awry.

The team at Murderous Ink also invited me to draw another cover for them—a book featuring a collection of “cozies” called CRIMEUCOPIA: THE COSY NOSTRA. This collection reckons with the cosy mystery story in its classic and modern forms.

All of the above are available for purchase right now!

And now back to my original author bio:

Ricky Sprague’s work has appeared in a wide range of publications including Mad, Cracked, Nickelodeon Magazine, Mystery Weekly, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. He’s written comics for publishers such as Short Scary Tales, Moonstone Books, and Platinum Studios. His short animated films have screened at festivals worldwide, from Spike & Mike’s Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation to Sydney Underground to Dragon*Con.

Ricky, who is actually writing this right now in the third person, has a fascination with the strange and bizarre. His work reflects a perverse obsession with complication, and his stories and books always have a "hidden" aspect. Usually this is meant to underline the overt themes and ideas of his work, but very often it provides an ironic, subverting element.

For example: His first attempt at a novel, Whimsical Doctor Shoe (largely written in Los Angeles libraries and buses), is ostensibly about conjoined twins who are so desperate to be separated that they'll do anything to satisfy the doctor who has agreed to undertake the procedure. The humiliations that he inflicts on them (which are very funny, trust me!) are in fact part of an occult ritual based on their own horrifying and largely unknown past. Most of this you need to "read between the lines" to fully understand.

It's funny that when you click the "See a sample biography" in Amazon's "Edit biography" window, into which I'm now typing, it takes you to Frank McCourt's Author Page. Are you kidding me? How am I supposed to compete with HIM? He wrote Angela's Ashes, and I wrote a novel about a serial killer who murders by enema (Arsole Fantüme: Gentleman Immoralist).

My most recent publishing endeavor is a collection of comics called Shartboom. You can see that the cover features me sitting in a sort of meditative pose, making a silly "occult" hand gesture, while hovering above me is my spirit animal, dubbed the Flying Robot Tickle Poodle in the book. Flying Robot Tickle Poodle appears to be making the same hand gesture, but inverted, and between the two of us we're doing a parody of the "As Above, So Below" concept. I'm not sure why I did that, except that I thought it was really funny at the time, just like I thought the word "Shartboom" was funny. Anyway, the point is, sometimes I write and draw things and I'm not entirely sure of what the actual meaning is supposed to be, and it's not until long after I've finished and published it that I figure it out.

If you buy and read my stuff, maybe you can help me with that!

Above Shartboom's title is the legend, "Unlock the secrets of wholehearted intelligence!" This is in part because I've been reading a lot of Brené Brown lately. So, if you like Brené Brown and Aleister Crowley, Shartboom is the book for you!

I think that the biggest problem that we face as a species is lack of empathy. The world seems to be engineered to build walls between people, to short circuit our ability to understand others. For now I've got kind of a bug up my ass about that, and I've decided that my work is going to reflect my desire to increase empathy instead of contributing to all the vituperation and hate that I see growing all around me, like leaf mold (that's a Shartboom reference). We'll see how long that lasts.

I feel like if you've read this far I should thank you. I really do appreciate it. It's nice to have someone to talk to.

Two of my biggest selling books were my Hunger Games parody The Hungry Game and my Fifty Shades of Gray parody Filthy Shames of Lame. When I was a kid, circa 5th-6th grade, my favorite book of all time was a Mad Magazine mass market paperback called Mad Clobbers the Classics. It featured prose parodies of classic literary works like Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, and War and Peace. I'm mentioning this book because (a) it's a big influence on why I wrote those parodies and (b) it allowed me to work Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, and War and Peace into my own Author's Biography. In thirty years or so some kid is going to plug their brain directly into the internet, scan this bio, and write a "Para-report" (that's what school book reports will be called in the future) about how Ricky Sprague wrote Moby Dick. Take THAT, William Shakespeare!

(I know that Nicolai Gogol wrote Moby Dick. It was a joke.)

Well I just went and double-checked Frank McCourt's bio, and mine is way longer. Let's see if this one supplants his as Amazon's "sample biography."