Colin Dodds is an award-winning author and filmmaker, whose works include Pharoni, Ms. Never and The 6th Finger of Tommy the Goose. He grew up in Massachusetts and lived in California briefly, before finishing his education in New York City. Since then, he’s made his living as a journalist, editor, copywriter and video producer. His work has appeared in Gothamist, The Washington Post and more than three hundred other publications, and been praised by luminaries such as David Berman and Norman Mailer. Forget This Good Thing I Just Said, a first-of-its-kind literary and philosophical experience (the book form of which was a finalist for the Big Other Book Prize for Nonfiction), is available as an app for the iPhone. He lives in New York City, with his wife and children. ************************************************************************************************************************************
Praise for Pharoni
- Named a Notable 100 Book in Shelf Unbound's Best Indie Book List
“A literary masterpiece” - READER VIEWS (5/5 STARS)
“(S)hows the face of the world that we often ignore” - INDEPENDENT BOOK REVIEW
“Not since Fight Club have I encountered a novel of such energy and passion” - HEAVY FEATHER REVIEW
”Completely fresh and utterly surprising” - INDIES TODAY (5/5 STARS)
“(I)ngeniously mysterious…” - KIRKUS
“(A) supremely intelligent work… amongst the best of indie sci-fi…” - READERS’ FAVORITE (5/5 STARS)
“A mercurial story that takes many satisfyingly surprising twists” - MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
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Praise for Ms. Never
“(A)n exceptional work… a fantastical tale…” – Kirkus Reviews (STARRED REVIEW)
“(A) wildly entertaining novel.” – Indies Today (5/5 Stars – a finalist for the Indies Today Best Books of the Year Award)
“(A) soaring novel, an imaginative, creative triumph” – Lost Coast Review
“(E)xtraordinary and unreservedly recommended…” – Midwest Book Review
“After reading Ms. Never, you will never again look at the world in the same way” – Samsara Magazine
“Smart and mysterious… sure to satisfy” – Independent Book Review
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Praise for WATERSHED
“(P)acked to the gills with absurd and yet oddly-believable detail… It’s the real deal…a strong contender to be one of the most interesting books you’ll read this year.” – IndieReader Reviews (4.7/5 Stars)
“Readers will never be quite sure what lurks around the next corner… An appealing mix of adventure and contemplation.” – Kirkus
“(A) unique book, and one that will grip you from the first page… exceptionally well-written, unique, and an overall brilliant ride… unlike any you’ve seen before, and which is rife with fascinating ideas played out to gleeful excess.” (5/5 Stars) – The Indie Book Journal
“The masterfully dystopian WATERSHED unpacks the future of a modern America that, while spectacular, nobody was expecting… It’s a future that, as Leonard Cohen sang, is murder. The revelations of prose in WATERSHED makes that murder enjoyable… one of the few things worth believing in.” – Two Thirds North
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“WINDFALL is not your typical political thriller. Dodds deftly weaves in a solid paranormal thread that explores ambition, myth and morality in an indifferent America without resorting to pulpit thumping or cardboard villains.”
-The New Podler Review of Books
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“Dodds… creates exceptionally vivid characters, a story which sneaks up on you at first, then gathers pace, and the book has tight writing which keeps you turning the pages right until the profoundly moving denouement. Simply put, Another Broken Wizard is brilliant. Read this book!”
-David Gaughran, author of A Storm Hits Valparaíso and If You Go into the Woods
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“(What Smiled at Him) has an angry edge to it, recalling the spirit of the Beats. Many of the peripheral characters speak like prophets… Marv and Lynn are just as self-aware as their supporting cast, and their abundance of wisdom sometimes stretches believability; it’s tempered, however, by the flaw of their continually self-destructive behavior. Watching them ignore their better instincts… makes the characters more endearing.”
-Kirkus Reviews
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“Another Broken Wizard is a terrific coming-of-age tale that rings utterly true. Dodds has a gift for conveying the sounds of his people and their world. He can make highway hypnosis as fascinating as a gang brawl. And he has a natural radar for locating the perfect detail to evoke the sense of what it feels like to be caught between the past and the future, between loyalty and logic, and between the security of the known and the impulse to evolve. Though I came of age in the primordial mists, it somehow felt like he was giving me a tour of my own past. Another Broken Wizard is compulsively readable. I’ll be giving this book to some of my friends.”
- Jack O’Connell, author, The Resurrectionist, Box Nine and many others
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“Dodds gets Worcester and shows it in all of its glories and cracks…He runs through the streets of the city and nearby towns and takes the reader with him…Dodds is a master of writing the town life and capturing all of the said and unsaid. His characters are so full of waiting, of pain, and of hope that never reaches past the next day.”
-Worcester Pulse Magazine
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“When I read Colin’s work, one of his own lines comes to mind: ‘What persists / is glad amazement.’ His work consistently delights with humor, inventiveness, a blessed dose of sarcasm and, yes, wisdom (despite his best intentions). We are all ‘born for that other thing,’ and this is that other thing.” – Sharon Mesmer, author, Greetings from My Girlie Leisure Place
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“Colin Dodds’ cataclysm of phrases and lines, broken by a tough guy making good on his promises, has got the Zarathustra thunder of myth and the You Can’t Win resignation of Jack Black (not the singer, the old grifter-writer who sent William Burroughs to the interzone). He provides us with sharp knives of the low life mind and a cathartic liturgy genuflecting for an exit. Spokes of an Uneven Wheel speaks for noses out of joint, joints out of town, and entire towns out of luck. And we are there too, among the overcast of characters. Maybe we’re at the helm of a ship that sunk before it was built. Or maybe we’re prisoners not of walls, but expanse, free to roam forever with zero chance of escape. Being bad at things is the one thing we’re good at. Like a singer songwriter whose masterpiece depends on laryngitis and a guitar in the pawnshop, in total exile from easy street. But exile from is also exile to, where despite the bleak economics, overbooked disappointment calendars, and a landscape of scapegoats, we prevail together. Life is uneasy, dark, and essentially impossible, yet here we all are. Under Dodds’ gaze, our existence is the obtained unobtainable which easily surrounds the darkness… sometimes.” – Brendan Lorber, author, If this is paradise why are we still driving?
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“People pick up a book of poetry at leisure, but can find themselves stopped in their tracks, pacing the room, weeping at an insight or a way of looking at things that simply hadn’t found that magic formula of words to express before. Colin Dodds is the kind of writer who believes in this.” – Blognostics
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“A vividly and inventively dark dystopia… This is intelligent writing, the images are often startling and usually thought-provoking… Powerful work and well worth anyone’s time.” – Pulsar Poetry
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“(The Last Bad Job) shows something that very few writers have; a species of inner talent that owes very little to other people.”
- Norman Mailer
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“…likely to become one of our premiere writers.”
-Grady Harp, Literary Aficionado
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