I received this book through librarything.com.

Dan Schell does not make a strong showing in "The Road to Fluffer," his first novel. The story is far too similar to the Canadian film "Hard Core Logo" for me to be comfortable.

The narrator, Darrell Steiner, is a music writer assigned to tour with the band Numb Skull. Mr. Schell must have personal experience shepherding a band around the mid-west because the events in the story ring true. We learn a lot about the bottom end of the professional music business, and that is OK.

The similarity to HCL aside, the problem with the novel is that there is no real plot. We just follow the band around from gig to gig in crummy mid-western weather. Things happen but nothing particular. There is no character development, no growth, nothing at all.

Mr. Schell needs to work on his grammar, particularly the use of "I" and "me". The formatting of the ebook - epub and mobi - is incorrectly done, which makes the book annoying to read.

Finally, I wonder that anyone could seriously choose "Fluffer" as the name of an adult energy drink and record label. Every North American knows the name already represents half a child's sandwich. ( )

This was a pretty good book about a man who writes for a rock magazine who tours with a local band. The writing was pretty good and there was good character formation. However, I would have liked to have seen the story go a bit further. Parts of it seemed repetitious but that's what touring is. There could have been more information about each member of the band but I like how the author brought the writers personal life into it. All in all, not a bad book ( )

I read this about 6 or 7 times after I wrote it but I'm not going to assign it a rating. :)