Richard Martin’s, I Inherited a Mixed Animal from Uncle Living in Woods, will be released June 10, 2025, on all platforms where books are sold. Martin is a second time author and will release this work after developing it for over a decade online. This exciting story has been developed bit by bit from an online forum to page, where Yonder and Lemuel travel through their journey at last.”Richard Martin’s, I Inherited a Mixed Animal from Uncle Living in Woods is strange, brilliant, unique, and hilarious. There are so many moments of brilliance in this book. Byway of Lemuel, Shane, Yonder, and the ragtag citizens of Hmm, Martin draws us in to a place we don’t recognize at all until we recognize it so completely we come to think of it as home. Somehow infusing beauty and humor into each page, if not every sentence, Martin reminds us the world is not to be taken lightly, except when it is. Simple and complex, ludicrous yet authentic, and utterly, painfully relatable, it reminds one of the old theatre of the absurd. Ionesco. Ibsen. A tale about finding our people in this often-lonely and messed up world, this book is nothing short of incandescent. I hope the Pulitzer folks take note.” said Gae Polisner, author of In Sight of Stars and Jack Kerouac Is Dead to Me.
“Brilliantly creative and utterly hilarious, Richard Martin’s I Inherited A Mixed Animal From Uncle Living In Woods is a masterpiece. This wonderful novel is consistently laugh-out-loud funny, but in a loving way. The author through his sardonic narrator, Lemuel, isn’t shy to point out that the human flaws and frailties we find amusing can be found in all of us if we look hard enough. The oddball yet incisive and warm humor make us care about Yonder and his bewildered keeper. Filled with colorful and memorably unexpected prose to match its characters, the novel’s humor is reminiscent of T.R.Pearson’s A Short History of a Small Place; its delightfully original settings and cast recalling Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love; its gentle yet incisive satire resurrecting memories of the canon of Kurt Vonnegut; its homespun wisdom walking in the footsteps of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row.
However, it is by no means derivative. This book, like Dunn’s Geek Love, has no siblings. It is anonly child.” said, Steven Mayfield, award-winning author of The Penny Mansions.
Available wherever books are traditionally sold.
Description:
I Inherited a Mixed Animal is the story of a young misanthrope who is forced to decide if he will sell (for one million dollars) about the only thing he loves in the world, in order to save the same whole stinking world. It is a novel of wonder, happiness, joy, and rampant political village tyranny. Young Lemuel Washington is a self semi-educated fix-it man/inventor in the village of Hmm, where he resides in mutual deterrence with his fortune-telling mayoral candidate sister Shane. Hmm is aquaint, lazy, and idyllically corrupt hamlet located in the Distant Northern Parallel. Lemuel is a fellow at the height of his powers minding his own business and encouraging others tomind theirs. Fixing and inventing are his passions. He is working, for example, on a village-circling treadmill on which the population will exercise and simultaneously generate green power for Hmm. Furthermore, he rigs Lottie Engram’s tea kettle to mimic her dead husband Rudolph whistling their song, ‘You Give Me Fever.’ Keeping Lemuel company at night is his collection of Reader’s Digest Condensed World Literature. His favorite authors are Kafka and Lao Tzu. Still, something is missing from Lemuel’s consummate existence. Lem’s hermit uncle Leonard perishes under violently mystical circumstances in the Unconscious Forest and bequeaths him the creature in question. Lemuel’s nirvana is instantly upended. He is forced to caretake the inexplicable beast, root out its elusive origins, and safeguard it from its nemeses: the looming Strangitor, Mabelthe mountain woman, and Sister Shane, all while trying to make a dollar or two off the animal himself.
About the author:
Martin’s work has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Chicago Review, Night Train, Wind, Greensboro Review, Adirondack Review (Fulton Prize Winner), and elsewhere. Martin’s first novel, Oranges for Magellan, was published in 2022 by Regal House Publishing, an indiepress in North Carolina. He lives in Santa Monica with his wife Paris and their two abandoned cats, Slim and Martin, who wandered into their yard one day and adopted them.
About Apprentice House:
Apprentice House is the nation’s first and largest entirely student-managed book publisher. Students at Loyola University Maryland are responsible for every aspect of the publishing process, from acquisitions to design and publication of every book. Our mission is, first and foremost, to educate students about the book publishing process. As a program within the Communication Department at Loyola University Maryland, it is driven by student work conducted in four courses: Introduction to Book Publishing, Manuscript Acquisitions and Development, Book Design and Production, and Book Marketing and Promotion. Students in these courses serve as staff in Apprentice House’s acquisitions, design, and marketing departments, respectively.
