Joe Pernice Finds a Brother in Homer

Singer-songwriter Joe Pernice is losing the "singer-song" portion of his job description for his next project: a novel. The Pernice Brothers frontman already has a novella, 2003's 'Meat Is Murder' (inspired by the Smiths album of the same name), and a book of poetry, 'Two Blind Pigeons,' to his credit.

His debut novel will be published by Riverhead, a division of Penguin Books, to which Pernice quips, "I am really excited to join the Penguin family, where I get to be label mates with writers like Homer."

Pernice is about a third of the way through the book, but he's not yet ready to talk plot. However, seeing as how this is the man who gave us the Most Exquisitely Sad Song in the Whole World, we can pretty much rule out the book being a joyful, inspirational tale about, say, a boy finding his lost dog.

"I'm just not very good at writing explicitly happy songs," Pernice recently told Spinner of his captivation with sorrow. "I've tried it, believe me ... I guess I know my medium."