Longlisted for the ReLit Award (2005)

Foozlers is a 24-hour "Odyssey" that runs a juggernaut through the high- and lowlands of Vancouver. Jerry Lowe is the reluctant driver of a getaway car for two sketchy junkies on the make. A pair of cops spend a shift wobbling on the cusp of total breakdown. The groom-to-be in an Indian arranged marriage seeks an escape of the carnal variety. Soon, they will all intersect paths with a gas station attendant and a very "special" car wash operator. And somebody's got to do something about that noisy, bad-tempered cockatoo.

Foozlers chronicles that thin line between sane and insane behaviour, and the mayhem and unpredictability fuelled by the "Butterfly Effect"-strangers' paths crossing for only an instant but having explosive effects. By story's end, lives, or at least attitudes, will change. Sort of.

Praise for Foozlers:

"Like Blaise Cendrars' To the End of the World, John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces and the whacked-out works of J.P. Donleavy, Terry Southern and William Burroughs, Foozlers is a madcap tour de force." (The Vancouver Sun)

"irreverent, break-neck pace, and rollercoaster prose that's a lot of fun to ride" (Quill & Quire)

"It's a caper story with every element slightly off-kilter. And that's the charm of [Foozlers] . . . . Read it and laugh." (RainReview.com)

Tom Osborne was one of the founding editors of the notorious Pulp Press Publishing Co. (now Arsenal Pulp Press) in the 1970s. Osborne is the author of two novels published by Anvil Press: Foozlers and Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit. He is also the author of several poetry collections: Under the Shadow of Thy Wings, 9 Love Poems, The Reamer's Car Club Blues Band Story, and Please Wait for Attendant to Open Gate (the latter two of which are now “rarerdquo; finds). His work has appeared in Geist, subTerrain, and 3-Cent Pulp. He was born on Baffin Island, spent his youth in Kamloops, BC and later years in Vancouver. He currently resides in Maple Ridge, BC.

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