Edna's Employment Agency

Edna's Employment Agency by Wred Fright is available as an ebook on Google Play, Amazon Kindle (Amazon also has a print on demand edition), and Smashwords (who also distribute it to a number of other ebook retail outlets)!  You can also get it directly from me here:

Format

Google Play also has an audiobook version read by one of their artificial intelligence bots.

They say that the only thing worse than having a job is not having a job, but they're wrong.

There is something worse than not having a job.

It is being so desperate in looking for work that you show up at Edna's Employment Agency where her team of charlatans, ne'er-do-wells, and screwups probably won't find you a job, but they will find you some laughs as they loudly discuss their sex lives, fake drug tests, break into the office, burn down the office, dig donuts out of the trash, get punched in the face, make fun of resumes, drag coworkers into the restroom, hide under desks, get drunk, look for better jobs themselves, treat cancer as a bad excuse for missing work, plot their way through office politics using bagels, take smoke breaks during their smoke breaks, watch training videos from the 1980s, use copious amounts of profanity to prepare for meetings, engage in slapstick to express their status, war against the I.T. department, fume that people who don't even know how to spell make more money than they do, and, sometimes--just sometimes--, actually work.

And that's just the staff of the staffing firm. Then there are the temps . . .

You'll meet them all in Edna's Employment Agency, the book you shouldn't bring to a job interview because you're dressed nicely, so you don't want to piss yourself laughing.

Unless, you know, it's that kind of job . . .

If you like television shows such as The Office and Parks And Recreation, then you likely will enjoy this novel of workplace humor.

Edna's Employment Agency is the fourth novel by Wred Fright. The other three are The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus, Blog Love Omega Glee, and Frequently Asked Questions About Being Dead. More info about the author and his books can be found at Wredfright.Com.

Praise for Fright and his works from fellow writers, literary critics, and scruffy publications:

"Wred Fright does it again. His almost-all-dialogue treatise on employment agencies comes fast and furious, or maybe furiously fast. Either way, it sets into motion manic episodes of grand proportions, a whirlwind of oftentimes zany characters who Fright gives gravitas to by intermingling snippets of their lives that read like some stream-of-consciousness-infused Winesburg, Ohio, and a tale that stomps the fringes of absurdity like a cowpoke riding a mad bull.

The kooky cast of Edna’s Employment Agency will almost make you wish you were out of a job just so you could have them find one for you." - Mark Justice, author of Gauge Black: Hell's Revenge

"[A]n innovative writer of fun new pop lit--a pioneer in the fight to revive American literature" - American Pop Lit

"[I]nfinitely preferable to the eye-glazing 'literary fiction' shoveled out by the bigger publishers" - Daniel Green

"I can't wait to read the next one!" - Eddie Willson

"Wred Fright is one of the best pseudo-fiction (maybe even just fiction) writers that I’ve ever had the luck to stumble upon" - James McQuiston

"This book is a trip, well worth checking out." - Razorcake

"I found myself laughing out loud a number of times, and that's a rare occurrence" - Zine World

Here are what the critics are saying about the book:

"I stopped by Edna's Employment Agency.

Meeting their misfit employees and questionable clientele, I wondered how they all survived, what with the staff spending more time getting through their damaged lives than finding jobs for others, while the job seekers drag out the process as long as possible to collect unemployment - all this drenched in TV sit-comish humor (a lot of it rude and crude).

Wasn't sure I wanted to spend time with these folk, but kept reading, and I'm glad because beneath this chaos lies a sweetness... by the time I was done, they were my misfits, whom I actually cared about.

At first the employees seem inept, shallow, selfish (and they are), but page by page their humanity surfaces, revealing an office family sort of looking after each other and their clients. Their often surreal and slapstick office adventures are interspersed with outside slices of the customers' lives, so the job seekers slowly become someone to care about as well, rather than something to gawk at like cultural roadkill.

This comedic novel captures the acerbic humor that dominates most places I've been employed, as well as the tenuous friendships developed with co-workers you may not even like.

One blurb likens Edna's Employment Agency to "The Office" and "Parks and Recreation" (which I've not seen, but feels right from what I've read).

The book is short, humane, gentle, absurd, and should put a smile on your face. By the end you might even like Edna." - Steven B. Smith, author of Stations Of The Lost & Found

"the zombie apocalypse has already happened but you weren't paying attention.  I guess you’re supposed to confess to Kommissar Bezos if you’ve got a connection to the person whose book you’re reviewing so yes I was in a writer’s group with Wred or Fred.  Anyway, I think his novel is worth some attention.  You could classify it as a sort post-industrial novel.  Which is something fitting for America’s post-industrial age.  It doesn’t have what you’re supposed to expect in a book, and for us GG Allin fans this is cool because like he said, 'with GG you don’t get what you expect, you get what you get'.  Maybe there are elements that could be called 'literary' there.  Perhaps the index finger of Edna is the red right hand of Satan.  Maybe the numerous reflections upon digestive processes are a metaphor; we’re just pieces of meat being dissolved in bile of the G.I. tract of society.  The manageress does get some kind of Santeria water to improve her sexual relations with her girlfriend.  You could say about it what the Times said about 'The Rules of Attraction' (but these people don’t skip lectures about the postmodern condition or pretend to be interested by Fassbinder’s early films), 'A tour of the heart of darkness, a moral Armageddon' (and by the way an eighteenth century writer for the Times called the first French republic a pagan cult of death).  A pagan cult of death should be lots of fun and maybe a moral Armageddon too but the these people aren’t having any fun.  There’s no 'trajectory' for them.  Occasionally some metaphysical musing is incited by a tooth broken by an overcooked french-fry (and not a fried frenchy like Sartre).  Which I find refreshing because every book you read about it says every story must have structure, a three part structure, or a five part structure embedded in a three part structure, a seven part structure embedded in a five part structure embedded in a three part structure.  The inciting incident is Godot not arriving, the midpoint is Pozzo and Lucky arriving instead of Godot, and the climax is that Godot is probably never going to arrive.  These are just the lowly middleclass of America slowly sinking into the smoking drugs on the sidewalk class (where I’d already be myself if I hadn’t found a means of escape)." - James Nowlan, author of Shock And Awe.

"Do you know what the world needs?  More people like Wred Fright.  Talk about someone who follows the creative impulse, I think Wred has given his free reign over his life.  Wred is the author of four novels--Blog Love Omega Glee, Frequently Asked Questions [A]bout Being Dead, The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus, and Edna's Employment Agency.  He also has a blog, which he posts to on a regular basis, and he always seems to have other writing or zine-related irons in the fire (see the listing for The Slush Pile below to see what I mean).  In short, Wred is a DIY-publishing dynamo who deserves some of your time and attention.

Should you decide to do that, I recommend you start with Edna's Employment Agency.  I was told (and not necessarily by Wred) that the book is "laugh-out-loud funny" and, because I'm a bitter, cynical fuck, I didn't believe it.  I should never have doubted him.  Wred had me laughing out loud by page 3.

I must confess, I haven't gotten all the way through the book, so I can't give it a thorough review at this time.  (Sorry, Wred).  To that end, I'll borrow the following text from the book's introduction to give you some idea of what you're in for:  'If you like television shows such as The Office and Parks And Recreation, then you likely will enjoy this novel of workplace humor.'

For the record, I did not like those shows (or I didn't watch them), but that didn't stop me from enjoying the pages I did read.  Regardless of your thoughts on The Office and Parks [A]nd Recreation, I think you'll like it too, assuming you like to laugh and you don't mind some foul-mouthed dialog.  Check this book out.  You'll be glad you did." - Joe Smith in Alternative Incite #2


You can read an excerpt here:



New Pop Lit's Extreme Zeen also has some excerpts from the novel.
Order Wred's New Novel Here!:

Format


Word Count: 83,805

If you are press, a high resolution image of the cover is here and one of the author is here.

You can also groove to the theme song!:

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