Forget gay romance! Throw it out the window, bury it in the backyard, or stick it where the sun don’t shine. I’m finished with it, but the blood of an author still courses through these veins. Never fear, a new Jay Bell book is here! I’d like to invite you to take a moment, click on the cover art to the left, and read the text there. Too lazy to do so? No problem, because I’ll sum it all up in three little words. In. Your. Face. This book’s got attitude! I’m not sure you can handle it. I barely could while writing it. I’d describe All I Can Get as a tour de force, but those are weird foreign words, and this book is all about being an American. Like me! The story centers around a guy named J. B. … Hey, those are my initials too! What a coincidence! Anyway, you’re probably dying to know what J.B. gets up to. Well, here’s a little taste of his life. I’m about to hit you with the first three sentences of the book FOR FREE! Here goes:

It was 1951. It was raining in New York, and I stood in the bus depot working a kink out of my back from the long ride. The khaki jacket I’d bought in Houston had split down the back the first time I stretched, my fly edges were soiled from lots of beer drinking in Beaumont and too much dirty-handed peeing across the country.

That’s right. Dirty-handed peeing. Do you know what that is? I sure don’t. Anyway, let’s not get too caught up on details or silly things like beginnings. Let’s cut strait to the meat and look at an honest-to-goodness excerpt from somewhere in the middle.

We made love like bandits, but afterwards she seemed depressed.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “I was just thinking, I’d like to have a big bust. I look funny undressed, don’t I?”
“I think you look great.”
“No, tell me the truth. I’m skinny and flat-chested. God, I’m a mess.”
“Stop it, will you. You’re fine.”
She lay silent for awhile, then suddenly asked, “Honey, have you ever slept with a girl who had really gigantic breasts?”
“A woman in Mexico.”
“Did you pay her?”
“Sure.”
“But wasn’t it degrading to pay?”
“I was young and in a hurry.”
“Will you pay me?”
“Pay? What for?”
“I don’t know. Just once. There must be something special, a feeling when you’re paid. Promise you’ll pay me. Just once.”
“How much will you charge?”
“What’s it worth?”
I smiled slowly and put my hand on her. “I can’t afford it.”

Do I know women or do I know women?!? This is EXACTLY how they think and talk. Oh man. You’re so lucky that you get to read this book! I almost wish I could get amnesia and forget having written it, just so I could read it like the first time ever. But no. I’m not a reader. I’m an author. If you have any doubt of that, just look at the photo on the back cover. Am I clutching an invisible phone to my ear? Staring with horror at a giant spider on the wall? I don’t know. I’m no actor, but I have been a steeplejack before. Just one of the many qualifications that makes me awesome.

Okay, okay… Obviously all of the above is an April Fools’ Day joke. If you live in a country that doesn’t have this holiday, it’s basically a day when people try to trick you by lying or getting your hopes up or generally just screwing with your head. It’s pretty twisted, now that I think about it, but this little joke has roots in the truth. The above book was written by Jay Bell a good decade before I was born. And yes, the excerpts are real. Jay Bell went on to write a second book featuring J.B. called One More Time. The author seemed to have kept his promise, because as far as I know, that was the grand finale. I don’t know anything about him or even if he’s still alive, but I’m sort of glad he didn’t become a household name. Otherwise I’d probably have to use Jimmy Bell as my nom de plume or something goofy like that. But I still think it’s cool that another Jay Bell was out there writing books, one who is just as obsessed with dames as I am dudes. Right on, man!