A Messed Up Mind

　　◎This isn’t a novel. This is a collection of random stuff. Well, ‘random stuff’? Dive in to find out.
　　獨創「非小說」體裁，翻翻看，真的只有「對話」及「詩篇」！
　　◎The characters are anonymous, and the narrator is absent. So time to stimulate your imagination, and enjoy the bizarre ride.
　　沒有人名的對話，刺激讀者的想像，邀您共遊奇異之旅。

　　This is the fourth book by Taiwanese teenage author Andy Chen, and unlike his previous works, there are many changes.

　　This is not a novel. This is a book made out of 26 short stories, with a handful of poems and imaginary rap lyrics. The stories are mostly unrelated with each other, and so are the poems and imaginary rap lyrics.

　　The rap lyrics sections in this book exist only in print and never in audio form, so the flows of the lyrics are up to the reader to decide-if readers want to spit the lyrics.

　　Random Disclaimer: The lyrics may contain offensive language and content (though neither frequent nor excessive). So better keep your kid away. If readers want to rap them out loud, don’t spit the lyrics at the wrong occasion. Don’t write any bit of them in the form of graffiti either. In general, don’t do anything that may cause repercussions, repercussions that has something to do with the lyrics.

　　If anyone gets in trouble because of reading the lyrics out loud at an inappropriate occasion; writing them in graffiti or committing any kind of potentially bad action that’s lyrics-associated, the author is not responsible. Possible readers, it’s made clear. So be cautious and do not blame the author if anything bad happens.

　　The book is the author’s first adult-oriented work to date, so listen up kids: Hands away from the book. Capiche?

　　The book is mostly inspired by the author’s life himself and rap songs ranging from the late ‘90’s to the modern ones. Themes in the book include rebellion, suicide, addiction, depression and inequity.

　　Dialogue is a prominent medium of storytelling throughout the book. The narrator, however, is almost entirely absent. Characters’ names are hardly shown or revealed. There are several non-human characters.

　　Notice： The book is pretty weird. Here are five examples of the book’s short stories：
　　1. Two polar bears entering a heated argument which soon escalates into a fight and things get worse when a human gets caught in the midst of it.
　　2. A porn-addicted slob is sleeping calmly, but gets awakened by a ghostly voice. The slob soon finds out that the owner of the voice is-predictably, a ghost. Or is it something more?
　　3. A dumb kid forces his younger brother to snort white powder with him. The younger brother tries to decline, yet eventually snorts a lot of white powder.
　　4. Two girls tried to take pictures of themselves with a celebrity, who both the girls are obsessed with. One girl wants a photo of herself with her idol. Turns out, she doesn’t get the photo she wanted, which the other girl laughed at her for. Stuff gets heated.
　　5. Two friends found out that their house is vandalized by an unsanitary, violent, deranged person. The psycho gets into a vicious fight against the two friends.

　　《A Messed Up Mind》（《混沌》）為陳立恩第四部出版作品。此書與作者前幾部作品風格截然不同。

　　1.為作者第一部短篇故事及詩篇合輯。
　　2.本書篇幅簡短，普遍使用非裔英文方言，給人耳目一新感受，深刻的文字內涵，更值得讀者慢慢咀嚼。
　　3.本書的短篇故事沒有旁白、人名，只有角色的對話內容。
　　4.二十六篇短篇故事中，少數篇章有情節上的關聯，要找出其中相關性，需要讀者充分思考、發揮觀察力！
　　5.部分情節生動描述精神病患者病狀，宜滿十五歲以上身心成熟者閱讀。
 

作者簡介

Andy Chen（陳立恩）

　　Andy Chen（陳立恩）is a seventeen year old senior high school student. He taught himself English generally at a young age and has interest in making works using the English medium. He has many handwritten, illustrated, amateur, non-published works, mostly wrote around the age of seven to ten.

　　When Andy was twelve, his first novel, Mankind vs Extraterrestrial, was published. This marks his first completion of a published work. Stan Duke and The Doll are the following published works of Andy, both published when he was thirteen. A Messed up Mind (this book you’re reading now) is his fourth published work.