St John Karp

Ramblings of an Ornamental Hermit

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Uncle Arnie on Fire

Uncle Arnie on Fire Cover

In the future no-one needs to die, but it would be great for the economy if they did. Funerals are hot pink. Clouds are nothing but unused advertising space. The government encourages state-sponsored suicide. And Uncle Arnie is rapidly approaching his two hundredth birthday. Mel and her cousins have spent the last two hundred years sucking up to their elderly uncle, but will the old man’s death really be the release they expect?

This diabolical dystopian novel is a comedy for adults that goes down like a nasty liqueur. The ebook is available for purchase now: Uncle Arnie on Fire (Amazon.com).

Activate the Device!

Activate the Device! Cover

They say every planet has its own smell, but then so do armpits…

The highlight of Snrt Mallrt’s disappointing career was starring in an ad that can save you fifteen percent or more on space hopper insurance. Now they’ve been wrenched from their cozy life on a space station and forced to migrate across the galaxy with a grab-bag of scofflaws and heavily armed crabs. All Snrt wants to do is ditch these weirdos and migrate in peace, but sometimes the weirdos are the ones who understand us best — Darrode, the thief with a mysterious past; Will the krill, the lobster who loves Shakespeare; Ayleon, the twinky cocktail waiter; and Elissa, the best cat burglar in the galaxy.

Activate the Device! is a queer sci-fi romp about friendship and adventure in space. The ebook is available for purchase now: Activate the Device! (Amazon.com).

Quake City

Quake City Cover

Andre met his best friend Amy on a night like tonight. The way Amy tells it she had to stop him from climbing over the bar at Aunty Bob’s to punch the bartender, though if you ask Andre he’ll say, “What? That never happened. I don’t even know what you’re saying to me right now.”

Now Amy is worryingly missing in action, and Andre goes to Aunty Bob’s on a quest to find her. No sooner does he walk in with his depressingly heterosexual date than his best hat is spirited away by a lesbian in the throes of breaking up with her girlfriend. She in turn has it stolen from her when she starts a fight with two twinks at the bar. The hat makes its way around Aunty Bob’s from one head to another, giving glimpses into the dozens of stories playing out at the same time, unaware of each other but colliding in catastrophic ways. Can Andre find Amy before this party devolves into a nightmare of broken hearts, malevolent drag queens, and spontaneous human combustion? Or has it always happened this way, every night, at Aunty Bob’s Quake City Club?

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Skunks Dance

Skunks Dance Cover

Spivey Spillane’s grandmammy always said there were only two good reasons to kill a man — for cheating on a woman, and for serving drinks to a Yankee. She may have had a hand in winning the Revolutionary War, but even she never met the likes of Alabama Sam. Sam robs a bank under Spillane’s name, casts him in an obscene one-man play wearing only a pink tutu, and starts a betting pool on how many wieners he has. Despite the indignities Spillane suffers, he chases Sam across Gold-Rush-era California because Sam is the only one who knows the location of a hidden fortune buried somewhere in the hills.

Meanwhile in the present, seventeen-year-olds Amanda and Jet have rekindled an old childhood rivalry. Amanda is obsessed with finding the treasure of her infamous ancestor Spivey Spillane. Jet and Amanda’s feud comes to a head over an extended incident involving a broken window, an exploded car, and a charge of sexual assault with a candy Batman. Jet vows that he is going to find to Spillane’s gold before Amanda does, but it doesn’t take them long to realize that someone may have come this way already — someone who wants the past to stay buried.

Inspired by the rickety world of 1960s British-made Westerns, Skunks Dance is a tale of revenge, greed, and men in tutus.

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Radium Baby

Radium Baby Cover

The Pepperpots are dead — the world’s most famous scientists have been poisoned by a radioactive duck. But even though Sam Ticky is little more than a tumbleweed from Oklahoma, he is convinced he is the Pepperpots’ long-lost son.

The Sun Star Radio Corporation starts a nationwide search for the missing “Radium Baby,” but Sam runs into trouble when two other teenagers also claim the title. The Radio Corporation drags the three teens into a race around the world, in which Sam must fend off hornets the size of cats, a cannibal bishop obsessed with playing hide and seek, and an insane Texan robot manufacturer.

But who is the real Radium Baby? And how many people will Sam hurt to find out?

Radium Baby is a strange and exciting adventure about ambition, failure, and radioactive bath-water.

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Saintlike in Repose

How can you tell if you’re at the wrong funeral? A family arrive to mourn the death of their great-aunt, but everyone’s faces are strangely unfamiliar. With a sense of dread they begin to suspect they’re in the wrong place — it doesn’t even have any reviews on Yelp. They decide the only way to find out who’s really dead is to look inside the coffin, but how can they distract that nosey priest…?

Saintlike in Repose is a one-act comedy that had its première in February 2012 at the Valley Repertory Company.

Uncle Arnie on Fire

“Rest in Peas”

Uncle Arnie is pushing 200 years old and lives in his all-comforts-included Funplex. His four nephews and nieces work to please him day and night, but when an unexpected guest stops by the evening turn nasty. The knives and forks come out and there won’t be much left of Uncle Arnie by the time they’re done with him. This play is a biting black comedy about greed, family and what wine goes best with Uncle Arnie.

Uncle Arnie on Fire is a one-act comedy that had its première in February 2011 at the Valley Repertory Company.