Dear Mario Lopez: Sorry For Implying You Are The Antichrist

Hi there, my name is Robert Brockway, and I write for this site. Many of you don't know me, but I used to plague your Internet for years with my drug-fueled madness. Everybody thought it was cute. It was not cute. It was a problem, and I needed help. But all you did was laugh at me. For all those who said that I am not and never was funny -- thank you. You're the only ones who understood.

I've been away from my column for a while, and I'm about to tell you why. See, I wrote this urban fantasy novel called The Unnoticeables that -- well, I'm getting ahead of myself.

For years I had been using my column to warn people about a monster in their midst. A soulless husk masquerading as human, though it was something far more -- or possibly less -- than a man. This creature had taken an innocuous form to deceive humanity: a B-list celebrity most famous for starring in a high-school sitcom in the '90s. The monster's name was Mario Lopez.

That's ridiculous, of course. Mario Lopez -- AC Slater from Saved By The Bell -- an unkillable sociopath that feeds off of innocence?

It's silly. It's absurd. I know this now. I know it as a fact. Because some very nice gentlemen in some very expensive suits (I assumed they were some kind of corporate lawyers by their haircuts, the way one of them hissed at my mother's rosary, and the weird way the other one ate my dog. That's what lawyers do, right?) stopped by my home last year and informed me of this fact. They informed the shit out of me. They informed me so hard that I had to relearn how to write. It took years to do, and I'm still arguably not very good at it.

That's why I've been gone. The good news is that I've since sought therapy -- both emotional, for my foolish delusions, and physical, for all of my fingers pointing in different directions. The bad news is that my sickness went far deeper than I realized. For years I've apparently been seeding my columns with delusions -- delusions that elite Hollywood agents are so jaded by the blind pursuit of money that they actively try to destroy our culture from the inside; delusions that angels are among us, but they're not clean or pure -- they're just uncaring creatures doing a job assigned to them by a god that's more mechanic than father; and, yes, delusions that Mario Lopez is an evil and supernatural force that must be stopped no matter the cost.

I was so sick in the head that I'd been secretly building a narrative and hinting at it through my columns for years. Eventually, I even started to believe it, and in the process I disparaged the name of a beautiful man whose only crimes were spiritual.

So, here it is -- the day I never thought would come. But please believe me when I say: I am sorry, Mario Lopez.

My therapist thought it would be a good idea to bring this secret narrative out in the open and put it all down in words, to see for myself just how mad it all was.

So I've done exactly that. For legal purposes, I should say that no characters in this book are based on real people -- especially not Marco Luis, the soulless monster and former star of high-school-themed sitcom Homeroom -- and that any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is just thinly veiled allusion. Here's the synopsis:

There are angels, and they are not beneficent or loving. But they do watch over us. They watch our lives unfold, analyzing us for repeating patterns and redundancies. When they find them, the angels simplify those patterns and remove the redundancies, and the problem that is "you" gets solved.

Carey doesn't much like that idea. As a punk living in New York City, 1977, Carey is sick and tired of watching strange kids with unnoticeable faces abduct his friends. He doesn't care about the rumors of tar-monsters in the sewers or unkillable psychopaths invading the punk scene-all he wants is to drink cheap beer and dispense ass-kickings.

Kaitlyn isn't sure what she's doing with her life. She came to Hollywood in 2013 to be a stunt woman, but last night a former teen heartthrob tried to eat her, her best friend has just gone missing, and there's an angel outside her apartment. Whatever she plans on doing with her life, it should probably happen in the few remaining minutes she has left.

There are angels. There are demons. They are the same thing. It's up to Carey and Kaitlyn to stop them. The survival of the human race is in their hands.

We are, all of us, well and truly screwed.

See that shit? Jesus Christ. I expected to be locked up or, at the very least, given some free drugs. Imagine my surprise when reviewers somehow got a hold of all this garbage and apparently loved it.

"A nasty, freaky, and haphazardly funny horror story." -Kirkus Book Reviews

"Like Hunter S. Thompson went drinking with Stephen King." -Publishers Weekly

"The Unnoticeables is lean, mean, and perfectly balanced. It's a rare find among urban fantasy novels: one that manages to genuinely terrify and excite in equal measure. It's twisted and original ... an essential read for the fantasy lover looking for a story with a little more bite." -Barnes & Noble Sci-fi/Fantasy

"The Unnoticeables has phenomenal voice. ... It never bogs down, never slows down, and never fails to be interesting." -Staffer's Book Review

They even made a trailer for it, because apparently our society is so literary-deficient that we have to show people videos to remind them that books exist.

I like to think of myself as a dude who, above all, just rolls with it. You want to tell me that my delirium is "deliriously funny" -- that's fine. Laugh at my pain. Recoil at my sickness. Watch the freakshow and throw nickels at my disorders. But most of all: Buy the book.

And, you know, if anybody wants to take a good, hard look at what I've put down in there and HEED IT ALL AS A WARNING, well, that's their business.

I can't help what kind of shit people heed.

Order Robert's hilarious new urban fantasy novel, The Unnoticeables, right here. Read more from Brockway at his own monument to narcissism, The Brock Way, or follow him on Twitter.

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