Indie Spotlight: James Dorr

The trick to getting short stories picked up sometimes isn't really a trick at all. Networking, submitting appropriate stories to the right magazines, and being thick skinned are all necessary travel-mates down the road to being published. 

Today, author James Dorr, whose THE TEARS OF ISIS was published with Perpetual Motion Machine, shares some of the keys to his success to those writers out there who may feel as though they are bashing their heads against the brick wall of submissions and rejections....

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I had just come back from a horror convention where an editor who had published me some years back happened to mention that he still had slots open in his latest anthology -- one that was supposed to have been closed months before.  I made a point to say hello and chat a bit and, once I was home, looked up the old guidelines on the computer and went through the stories I had on hand.

I thought I had one that just might fit.

And that’s how the game is played.  It may be a long shot, yes, but he’d liked my work in the past and now he’s been reminded of this.  The anthology pays a professional rate, so I’d be a fool if I didn’t try.

So that’s part of it, to be on the lookout for opportunities to submit work and to be ready to jump when you find them.  I belong to a number of online groups, for instance, on Facebook and elsewhere that sometimes, along with the rest of the gossip, give marketing tips.  I also check lists like Ralan.com from time to time and, even though it costs money now, I’m still getting Duotrope on the assumption it will earn its cost back on sales I‘ll make as a result of its listings.  And of course I also keep in touch with other editors’ and publishers’ websites who’ve used my work, checking to see if they have new guidelines for upcoming anthology projects as well as check back with magazines in terms of theme issues.   This includes, if I’m at a convention, looking these people up in the dealers room if only to ask how things are going, but at the same time giving them a face to connect my name to, as well as underscoring that I care -- sort of what businesspeople call networking.  It’s not necessary, but it doesn’t hurt, nor does keeping a fairly high profile, getting on panels when I can, giving readings, etc.

To give an example, a year or two ago I sent some stories to a semipro publisher, Dark Moon Books, for a couple of flash fiction anthologies they’d announced guidelines for.  These were accepted and, at 2012’s World Horror Con, I went to their table to pick up a contributor’s copy of one that was just out.  While there, I talked with the publisher about various matters, and also met one of their assistants, Max Booth III, who  it happened was editing an alternative history anthology for them called ZOMBIE JESUS AND OTHER TRUE STORIES which, as it also happened, I had sent a story to about a month before.  As a result, when it came time for him to decide on the stories he’d use, he remembered my name and seeing it in the stack, as he said himself later, “quickly read it and knew right away I wanted it.  The story was, in fact, the first story I accepted for the anthology.”

So, okay, if it was a good story he would have accepted it anyway, but there’s more to it.  When he was later promoting the book, among other things running interviews with some of the authors, I emailed him to let him know I was available too and otherwise worked to cooperate with him.  Then, last fall, he set up his own publishing company, Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing, and, liking what he’d seen of my work thus far (in this case including some other anthologies we’d both had work in), he sent me an email asking if I’d consider doing a book with him.   

The result:  in May 2013, my latest collection THE TEARS OF ISIS was published, timed by mutual agreement to be available a month preceding that year’s World Horror Convention in New Orleans in June -- seventeen stories and an opening poem of horror and dark fantasy, with some mystery and other things thrown in, about art and artists, and vampires and ghouls. . . , well, Max having given me a free hand, mostly stories published before that have been favorites of mine for various reasons but also chosen with an eye to a coherent whole, along with at least one that’s never been seen before.  And also tales about rats and dragons, and UFOs, and insects, and sleeping beauties and Medusa and Isis. . . .  

So not everyone’s going to publish a book, at least not right away, but we are in a sense members of a family, we writers and publishers and editors.  And when the time comes, it never hurts to have made connections.  But there are other aspects to submitting as well.  I already mentioned reading guidelines, usually obtainable on a publisher’s website.  These may vary in information quality, but if an editor states a preference -- or lists taboos -- adhering to the editor’s wants as closely as possible, or at least explaining in a cover letter why you might be bending a rule if you have a good reason to, will leave a good impression for future submissions even if this particular one fails.  And if an editor says, even though rejecting this story, to please send another, take him or her up on it if you can.

That’s the big rule for successful marketing:  perseverance.  For myself, I try to send something or other out on an average of three or four a week and, needless to say, when something comes back, the first thing I’ll do is look to see where else I can send it.  But also be polite, businesslike, and cooperative if an editor has suggestions or requests.  If an editor asks you to rewrite something, you don’t necessarily have to agree with everything asked, but if you don’t, give him or her a reason why or, better yet, suggest another way of changing it as a compromise.

Then one more thing, with the number of pieces I send out, it doesn’t mean that I’m that prolific -- just that I’ve been around a long time.  You’ll build up a stable of stories that, while still good, for one reason or another have not yet been published, so keep looking out for places to send them.  But also a lot of marketing I do these days is with reprints, especially in a soft economy where the number of higher paying markets may not be that great, and that’s another reason to read guidelines carefully.  Some markets will be for new stories only, but others are happy to look at older work that hasn’t been in print for a while.  From my point of view it’s still extra money for something I’ve already sold before as well as exposure to new readers.  So on the one hand, I’m not going to get rich on short stories and poems, but now and then if I can make, say, an additional $10, that’s enough to buy a pizza.  Pizza is good.  But also, aggressively keeping my work in the marketplace can sometimes engender new opportunities, a case in point being THE TEARS OF ISIS.  

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James Dorr’s newest collection, THE TEARS OF ISIS from Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing, joins STRANGE MISTRESSES: TALES OF WONDER AND ROMANCE and DARKER LOVES: TALES OF MYSTERY AND REGRET (Dark Regions) and his all-poetry VAMPS (A RETROSPECTIVE) from Sam’s Dot Publishing. You can find out more about James Dorr at http://jamesdorrwriter.wordpress.com, and learn more about THE TEARS OF ISIS at http://perpetualpublishing.com/the-tears-of-isis/

Indie Spotlight: Rafael Alvaerz

I am convinced that most of us can remember the person, place, or thing that helped us define what it was we wanted to be when we grew up. That one teacher who made you fall in love with learning, and decide to become one too; a particular photograph or artist that influenced a similar passion in you; a specific book that spoke to you so strongly that you began to shape a lifelong dream of publishing some of your own...

In today's indie spotlight, Rafael Alvarez - author of the recently released Tale from the Holy Land - shares a short reflective essay on his dream (before he realized it was his dream) of becoming a writer:

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I am currently living the dream of an 8-year-old kid who didn't even know what the dream was. I was in the third grade and the teacher - Mrs. Jean Ortgies, she seemed ancient at 50 - read aloud to us. My favorite was Stuart Little and I could see myself in the matchbox canoe with him.

I went home and told my parents I was going to be a writer. They were kind, smiled, and told me to eat my vegetables. (I often hid peas and lima beans in the corners of my mouth and excused myself for the bathroom where I spit them in the toilet.)

I never lost sight of that dream and today - Feb. 6, 2014, three days before the 50th anniversary of the Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan (which changed my life two years before the stuart little epiphany, which i use to connect the dots from a kid who liked to read to a kid who wanted to write). I am driving through the south in search of warm weather and an audience - one or two, wherever two or more are gathered - to hear fictional accounts of those very people who told me to eat my vegetables, stories collected in tales form the holy land: my father the tugboat engineer who sailed to venezuela as a teenager on a Baltimore ore ship; my Polish-American mother who liked nothing better growing up than chocolate milk and coconut custard pie, who went to work with her depression era cannery worker mother - the great anna potter jones - and played in bushel baskets while her mom snipped string beans on an assembly line. 

I sleep in the back of the truck by the side of the road and dream bigger dreams, all of which take me back to a holy land bounded by the Baltimore harbor on the south and Johns Hopkins hospital on the north. When there are no customers, I give the books away. I want to be read ...

  - Rafael Alvaerz, on the road, 02.06.14, rocky mount NC

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Rafael Alvarez is a short story writer based in Baltimore and Los Angeles. A longtime City Desk reporter for the Baltimore Sun where he wrote obituaries while documenting the folklore of the old port city – Alvarez wrote for the first three seasons of the HBO cop drama, The Wire.

Eat Like an Author: Alan M Clark

When most people get bored, they eat. When I get bored, I brainstorm new series and features for the blog, and THEN eat. And not too long ago, as I was brainstorming and contemplating what I wanted to eat, I thought how cool it would be to have a mini-foodie series where authors share the things they like to eat. Photos and recipes and all. And so I asked them, and amazingly they responded, and I dubbed it EAT LIKE AN AUTHOR. 


Today, Alan M Clark, author of the bizarro early western The Door That Faced West, shares a southern recipe you are sure to fall in love with...

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Certain flavors of the American South stick with you, especially if you are a Southerner as I am.  They create nostalgia to smell or taste them. As one who has written historical fiction about southern people and environs, such favors are just the thing to put me in a creative state of mind. I’ve always loved cajun and creole cooking. Visiting New Orleans and some of the surrounding State of Louisiana, I’ve sampled many different cuisines particular to that part of the world.  When not in that area, I’ve tried a cajun or creole restaurant here and there, but I never found the food to be very good. I wanted to make a good pot of gumbo or shrimp creole, but I didn’t much like the recipes I found.

In the ‘80s I taught painting at Centennial Park in Nashville, TN, and had a student whose name was Roberts (It’s been so long now, I cannot remember her first name). She had illustrated her mother’s cookbook.  Her family was from New Orleans. Her mother, Bobbie Roberts (I know the name because it’s on the cover of the book) had written the Mélange!  A Celebration of Louisiana Kitchens. In it, I found recipes that tasted like those you find in and around New Orleans!

I’ve altered the recipe for gumbo that I got from the cookbook a bit.  It gets rave reviews when we have a house full of hungry guests. Here’s my recipe, based on Bobbie Robert’s version.  

Mine I call Bog Mummy Gumbo. 

Ingredients:

—3/4 cup oil

—3/4 cup flour

—5 onions

—1 bell pepper

—2 stalks celery

—1/2 cup okra

—1-large chicken, preferably a hen

—2 beers

—a small dash of molasses

—1/4 cup “What’s-This-Here-Sauce” (Worcestershire sauce)

—water

—season with salt and ground green and black peppercorns and cayenne pepper.

—1 lb. Andouille sausage.  If this can’t be found use a smoked sausage such as Kielbasa

—cup of parsley

—cup of green onions or onion tops

—2 Tablespoons of Gumbo File (ground sasafras leaves)

All the vegetables should be chopped roughly. 

Make a roux in a heavy cast-iron pan using the oil and flour.  Heat until a dark brown, stirring constantly.  Do not allow to burn.

While roux is hot throw in all the vegetables except the parsley and green onions or onion tops.

Once the vegetables look cooked, dump in the chicken whole, pour in the beers, the “What’s-This-Here-Sauce,” molasses, and enough water (you could use stock made from boiling crab and shrimp shells) to cover the chicken.  Add salt and ground green, red, and black pepper to taste. Simmer slowly for 2 hours.

Remove chicken and allow it to sit and cool a bit.

Chop the sausage roughly and throw it in the pot.  Continue to simmer very slowly.

When chicken is cool enough pick off the meat and chop roughly, then return it to the pot.  Throw away the skin and bones of the chicken.

Add the last three ingredients and serve immediately in bowls over a small amount of rice.  Just before serving you can also put crab, shrimp, crawfish and such like in it.

Gumbo is one of those dishes that you can add a few extras to, such as cave crickets, crayfish, tree bark slimed by the Mingit Toad, oysters, and such-like.  It is usually cooked in a big pot, so be careful not to fall in—unless you really want to.

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Alan M. Clark grew up in Tennessee in a house full of bones and old medical books. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute. His illustrations have appeared in books of fiction, non-fiction, textbooks, young adult fiction and children's books. Awards for his illustration work include the World Fantasy Award and four Chesley Awards. He is the author of thirteen books, including seven novels, a lavishly illustrated novella, four collections of fiction, and a nonfiction full-color book of his artwork. His latest novel, The Door That Faced West, is an Early Western that takes place in Tennessee and Kentucky in 1799-1800. www.alanmclark.com

CCLaP: Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas, Vol. 1

Today, CCLaP is celebrating the birth of another book!

Our first handmade, hardback, hypermodern title of 2014 

Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas, Vol.1 

is now available to the public!

Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas, Vol. 1 was written by artist and Austinite Fernando A. Flores. This novella length collection of short stories showcases the tumultuous highs and lows of being in punk rock bands. It's edgy and endearing and bound to please lovers of rock-lit. 

McAllen, Texas is the indie-rock capital of the world; or at least it would be, if all their bands didn't have the pesky habit of disintegrating before ever having their first big success. That's the central premise of Austinite Fernando A. Flores' literary debut, and anyone who's ever pawned their guitar to buy more beer will find much in this book to celebrate. Working from the conceit that all acts of creativity are vital to human happiness, no matter what the public reaction, Flores presents a smorgasbord of interconnected tales about artists who can't quite seem to get their act together--from the performance artist whose most important work was only ever seen by five people, to the revered punk singer who never recorded a single album, to the bar band who accidentally become pawns of a local political campaign--and shows how in all these cases, the mere existence of these artists is a magical antidote against day-to-day ennui and adversity, and that it's actually the rest of the squares who are the true bullshit artists. By turns hilarious, heartbreaking and infuriating, this compact story collection is a loving ode to small-town music scenes in all their messy glory, and a welcome slap in the face to our "Yes We Can" times.

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Check out what others think so far:

Scott Navicky, whose book Humboldt, or the Power of Positive Thinking, was released by CCLaP last month had this to say: "While Flores’ stories are primarily about music, they’re not about the glamorous side of the music industry. They’re not about fortune and fame, national tours, magazine spreads, groupies, or champagne brunches. They’re about people who live in trailer parks, work dead-end jobs, and drink too much too early in the day. Flores captures this [collective feeling of being in a band] perfectly."

Goodreads user Bradley Gamboa says: "Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas Vol. 1 ... is not just a collection of short stories about the indie punk scene in South Texas. It is a ode to any one who has ever seen joy in listening, watching, or creating works of art anywhere! "

Lixian of Words, Notes, and Fiction says: " The rock star life tends to be too romanticized while Flores seems to make it as gritty, sweaty, dirty, and dark as possible ... it's not cookies and milk, it's chainsaws and nails...."

Goodreads user Woodland Animal shares his thoughts: "Flores presents a smorgasbord of interconnected tales about artists who can't quite seem to get their act together...By turns hilarious, heartbreaking and infuriating, this compact story collection is a loving ode to small-town music scenes in all their messy glory..."

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Read more about the book and Fernando 

in this interview between the author and Hypertext Magazine

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Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas, Vol. 1 can be downloaded for free at the publisher's page.  If you prefer print, you can purchase it as a gorgeous, hardback, handmade hypermodern collectors book there too. 

The Concrete Killing Fields Blog Tour

[The wonderful folks over at JKS Communications reached out to me about hosting a leg of The Concrete Killing Fields blog tour. As someone who puts together blog tours both  professionally as CCLaP's Marketing Director, and out of my sheer love of literature as a blogger, there was no way I was going to pass up the opportunity to help spread the word about Pat Morgan's small press memoir.]

In today's day and age, it is so easy to become a published author. If you are ever in doubt, just take a look at this blog post by Chuck Wendig. So it's no longer a matter of "Will my book ever get published?" The question is, "Do I want to be traditionally published?" Pat Morgan took some time to share her journey from manuscript to finished product, the hard work she had to put into it, and the people she pulled in to end up with a memoir she could be proud of:

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When I was invited to write this essay about “putting a book together,” my first question was “should it be about writing the book, editing the book, or getting it published?” Five minutes later the response read “I think getting published would be a good focus!”  “Oh, great,” I muttered, “now I’ll have to write about how ignorant I was about publishing and how much there still is to learn and how much time it takes and how hard it can be.” But then I thought “so what? This essay has a happy ending.”

It was way past time for me to get serious about getting published. My manuscript was finished—again. I’d basically re-written it at least twice, trying to find a balance between what I wanted the reader to know about the people I had written about, including myself, and what any potential readers might actually want to know. It had been painful at times since I’d written about some of the homeless people who stole my heart and broke it. Too, I’d read that if you write about yourself, you need to be willing to “open a vein.” I’d gone further, I think, and maybe hit an artery a couple of times since what I’d written about why I felt so connected to homeless people seemed to come in spurts. I’d been to a few conferences for writers and “wannabee” writers and twice I’d come home thinking I’d struck gold but neither of those opportunities to land a publisher had panned out. I’d learned a lot, though and even deleted some of the “get even” chapters after I read half a dozen books about how to write a memoir. Finally, I’d edited my manuscript until my eyes crossed and I could almost recite it verbatim. My literary friends had edited it as well, some of them a couple of times. I’d fulfilled my lifelong dream of writing a book but it had taken so long that getting it published was now on my “bucket” list.

I was well aware that thousands of people have self-published books and many of them have done well but for several reasons, that didn’t matter to me. I wanted a top-quality product and the credibility, the “good housekeeping seal of approval” that comes, rightly or wrongly, by having my first book published by someone who publishes books for a living. It hadn’t occurred to me that I could be that publisher until I signed up with a brilliant, bossy “book shepherd” who teaches and helps people become independent book publishers so they can turn out a quality product and make far more money than they can make by having their book(s) published by a traditional publisher.

All the editing that had been done before I sent it to the “smart, sassy, salty” woman who would quickly become my “book shepherd” clearly paid off. Other than a lot of sentences that were a full paragraph long (which is how we speak and write in the south) she and her chief editor said my manuscript was “clean” which made it easier for them to work with me. My willingness to be open to edits by professional editors who did a lot more than catch typos and incorrect punctuation marks helped as well. What I especially liked, even though it was a lot of work, was the way she and her chief editor worked with me to be sure that we were on the same page (literally and figuratively) with their edits and that those edits were compatible with what I was trying to communicate. (By this time, it had become clear to me and my book shepherd that I lacked the technical skills—and the motivation—to become an independent publisher and she had agreed to be my publisher as well as my book shepherd.

When we finished our marathon rounds of editing, the book then went to “layout.” There a computer genius converted the manuscript into a more easily readable font and fit the entire manuscript, including the endorsements, acknowledgements, afterword, and table of contents into the form and size of the book. Then we edited it again, and edited the edits that had been incorporated until we agreed that it was as close to perfect as it could be (within reason).  

While all this was going on, my publisher was working to get the best people—and prices—for the book cover, paper, printer, distributor, etc. She was also “encouraging” me to get top-notch endorsements for the book, write the acknowledgements, the afterword, and my personal information for the cover—and venture into the world of social media—an absolute must for marketing. That it all came together at the same time is a testament to her persistence and professionalism.

One of the things I learned along the way is that traditional publishers, which are corporations, may not even like some of the books they publish. If the book will sell well enough to make money, the traditional publisher likes—and gets—most of the money. Conversely, the small independent press that published my book wants me (the author) to make the lion’s share of the money. I like that even though my goal in writing the book and getting it published wasn’t to make a lot of money. My goal was to keep my promise to tell the stories of the people I loved and lost to the concrete killing fields of homelessness. In doing so, I hoped, and still hope, that readers will understand why they were homeless, why some of us are so driven to help them, and what we need to do to break the cycle of homelessness in our communities—and our country.

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Pat Morgan is a self-confessed political junkie and “Arkansas Traveler” veteran of the Clinton for President, and Clinton-Gore campaigns. She is also a mostly unsuccessful political candidate (won 1, lost 2), a former elected official in county government, an unabashed policy wonk, and relentless (ask anybody who knows her) advocate for effective services, especially mental health care, and housing for homeless people.

Book Giveaway: Kelly Davio's BURN THIS HOUSE

Since July 2010, TNBBC has been bringing authors and readers together every month to get behind the book! This unique experience wouldn't be possible without the generous donations of the authors and publishers involved.

It's the first of the month and you know what that means.

It's time to bring you April's Author/Reader Discussion book!

We will be reading and discussing Burn This House

with poet Kelly Davio

Kelly and her publisher Red Hen Press are giving us a total of 10 copies to giveaway. 

A mish mosh of PDF (open internationally) and print copies (open to US only)

Here's the Goodreads description to whet your appetite:

In her debut poetry collection, Kelly Davio invites the reader into a world where sin is virtue and virtue is vice, where the ominous lingers just beneath the surface, and the everyday is imbued with the fantastic. In these intelligent, compassionate, and harrowing poems, Davio gives a modern voice to metaphysical tradition. The poems in this collection dismantle the specter and judgment of a life shaded by Judeo-Christian religious consciousness. Grounded in Davio’s radical religious childhood and subsequent break with the church, her writing examines the world from the viewpoint of the spiritual dissenter, questioning the mores and motivations of religion, family, and self. In sections that explore concepts of revelation, sin, and virtue, these poems tilt the world at uncharacteristic angles, revealing the ragged edges at the margins of belief. At times solemn, at times exuberant, Burn This House is an intense volume, its darkness lit by the flames of wit, intellect, and curiosity.

This giveaway will run through March 8th. 

Winners will be announced here and via email on March 9th.

Here's how to enter:

1 - Leave a comment here or in the giveaway thread over at TNBBC on goodreads, stating why you'd like to receive a copy of the book. You MUST be a resident of the US to win a paper copy, so please state your preference and where you reside.

ONLY COMMENT ONCE. MULTIPLE COMMENTS DO NOT GAIN YOU ADDITIONAL CHANCES TO WIN.

2 - State that you agree to participate in the group read book discussion that will run from April 20th through April 26th. Kelly Davio has agreed to participate in the discussion and will be available to answer any questions you may have for her. 

 *If you are chosen as a winner, by accepting the copy you are agreeing to read the book and join the group discussion at TNBBC on Goodreads (the thread for the discussion will be emailed to you before the discussion begins). 

 3 - Your comment must have a way to contact you (email is preferred). 

GOOD LUCK!!

Book Review: The Mustache He's Always Wanted But Could Never Grow

Read 2/22/14 - 2/27/14

3 Stars - Recommended to those who enjoy reading about the downward swirl of bottom-rung humanity in the toilet of life

101 Pages

Publisher: House of Vlad Productions

Released 2013

Brian Alan Ellis doesn't have much hope for the human race. He doesn't see us in vivid technicolor. Rather, to him, humanity is drenched in darkness, hidden in shadow, and exuding guilt and sin. 

Scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel, we find him shining a light on the squirmy, dirty, shifty souls he discovers buried down there. Fetishists, a dead cat, drunkards, the cripplingly depressed, and self-mutilators all cling together and hang separately in this collection of short (and shorter) stories. 

In my opinion, the stories that bookend the collection - Crumbs of Love and The Sailboat/Hatchet Painting - are the strongest of the bunch. In the former, you have a dude sitting on the couch, absolutely in love with life and his girlfriend. When he opens his mouth to tell her this, she jumps down his throat and shatters his feel-good buzz. She's a bitch, this chick, and we can see it plain as day. But our poor ole dude is so love-struck, and now so panic-stricken at the thought of her not loving him nearly as much as he loves her, we just can't help but shake our heads. Cause we've all been there. At some point, we've all been sitting exactly where he sits, mouth agape with stupid ridiculous semi-blubbering shit driveling out of our mouths. In the latter, we meet two people (pretty sure they are brother and sister) chatting away meaninglessly about what's been going on in their lives. We learn about the sister's second ex-husband who used to crash at the brother's apartment (before the sister met and married him). The guy was an artist and we're given the rundown on the rumored sale of his one and only masterpiece - an unremarkable painting of a sailboat with a hatchet stuck through it that contained some remarkable "ingredients". 

Stories like Eulogy for Johnny Thunders, which is about a dude, his ex-girlfriend, and her mother standing graveside in varying degrees of mourning over the untimely death of their cat; Leftover Heels, about the pair of shoes an ex-girlfriend leaves behind and the things one lonely man does with them; Lunch Lady, where a husband has a bad reaction to his wife's new 'do; and Delia Done Wrong, where a guy who planned to cheat on his girlfriend while she's away on a trip gets what he wants, and worse, hold their own and help to set the tone of the remainder of the collection. 

Not all of the stories reach that same caliber, though. I started and then stopped reading For Pain with Sleeplessness and Loco Mask II because they just weren't grabbing me. And for all the awesomeness of its title, while The Mustache He's Always Wanted But Could Never Grow was short and well written, it was simultaneously disappointing. 

For all their faults, Ellis doesn't paint his characters in a poor light. He isn't asking for your pity. He's simply pulling back the sheet and saying "see, see this stinking, festering wound of a human here? see how handsome he can be?", bringing the ugliness of human nature to the surface so it too can find its moment in the sun.

Sue Lange Takes it to the Toilet

Oh yes! We are absolutely running a series on bathroom reading! So long as it's taking place behind the closed  (or open, if that's the way you swing) bathroom door, we want to know what it is. It can be a book, the back of the shampoo bottle, the newspaper, or Twitter on your cell phone - whatever helps you pass the time...


Today, author Sue Lange takes it to the toilet. Sue has two published works of speculative fiction satire. Her first novel, Tritcheon Hash, was republished as an ebook by Book View Cafe in 2011, and was included in Kirkus’ best of list for that year. Her second novel, We, Robots, was included in io9′s 13 Stories that will change the way you look at Robots list. Her latest novel, The Perpetual Motion Club, is a trek into the Young Adult/Sci Fi genre. Her short fiction has bee published in Futures (Nature), Adbusters, Apex Digest of Science Fiction and Horror, and elsewhere.

Sue Lange's Bathroom Reading Experience

I just moved to an apartment. The bathroom is too small for reading. Serious reading takes a lot of space and accouterments. You can’t just crowd onto a rug in the corner or under the sink. Not if you’re reading big stuff like I read.

 The bathroom in my old house had a lot of space. There I had a throne, a bidet, a basin, a claw-foot tub, and a stand-alone shower. That was a proper reading room. This what I got here is just a travesty.

 Back when I was a queen and had a real bathroom, I read on the throne as well as while taking a good soak in the tub. My choice of reading material depended on which of the two stations I was working in.

 The toilet was reserved for hardcore material. I’m talking non-fiction, not pornography. Hardcore non-fiction includes things like software manuals, farming how-tos, political manifestos from the days when communism was still a viable philosophy. It was stuff that made you think. And you had to think to get through it. Only while dropping a dense load can you tackle such a dense load.

 I had to sell my house before I got to the instruction manual for the VCR, but that turned out alright because I had to sell the VCR too.

My escape to the tub included sensuous material, as befits a sensual activity. Proust and Colette were favorites. For more modern material, I’d turn to Swamplandia. Perfect for a water environment. The crocodile wrestling really came alive for me in the tub. If you’re going to try this yourself, I’d suggest adding some lily pads for authenticity. A frog or salamander wouldn’t hurt.

The Indie Ink Runs Deep: Jason Helford

Every now and then I manage to talk a small press author into showing us a little skin... tattooed skin, that is. I know there are websites and books out there that have been-there-done-that already, but I hadn't seen one with a specific focus on the authors and publishers of the small press community. Whether it's the influence for their book, influenced by their book, or completely unrelated to the book, we get to hear the story behind their indie ink....


Today's ink story comes from Jason Helford. Jason has written two books: Written in Hell and From a Killer’s Mind. He’s a devoted husband and father, an avid comic book collector and an enthusiastic craft beer drinker. Prizing originality and creativity more than anything else, some of his favorite authors are Hunter S. Thompson, Chuck Palahniuk, Ray Bradbury, Terry Brooks, Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Robert Asprin and Albert Camus. Please don’t be offended if you are an author and your name wasn’t mentioned, he probably likes you, too. He lives in Maryland with his wife, Bella, his daughter, Maddie, and his goofy dog, Sunset.

I got my first tattoo last summer, at the age of 37.  The desire to get one was much, much older than that, but there was always a reason to wait.  Will my wife think less of me?  How will Mom react?  I’m a dad now, so is it the right call?  Why get one when I’m already so far into my 30’s?  Sure, they are cool, but what do I want on my body for the rest of my life?  After a couple seasons of watching tattoo reality shows with the wife, I decided my interest was deep enough to test the waters, and get some answers to the questions that had been holding me back.  The answers surprised me a little.  The wife was on-board, as long as it was something with meaning, and it was done by a good artist.  My mom told me she loves tattoos—who knew?!  My daughter told me, “Wow, Daddy, that sounds really cool!  Get one!”  And as for what I want on my body?  Easy.  Family and comic book art.  And so, in a matter of a few days, years of excuses and fears melted away, and the planning began.

I spent a number of months planning it out, and sketching up ideas.  After a while, I came up with my basic tattoo premise: the idea of a family crest, utilizing Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, and his winged helm.  My family is a family of collectors, and Thor happens to be my favorite comic book, so it was an easy choice once I settled on an idea.  I replaced Thor’s name on Mjolnir with my family name, to start the conversion to a personal crest.  The quill is to denote my life as a writer, and I used a black stork quill-feather to further bolster that theme, since it symbolizes creativity.  The runic words below the helm are written in Anglo-Saxon runes, and read Maddie and Bella, my daughter and wife.  I asked the tattoo artist to use Anglo-Saxon runes to give a nod to my mother’s side of the family, while still sticking with the Viking theme of Thor’s hammer and helm.  The ‘S’ in the leather strap hanging from Mjolnir’s handle is for my step-father and step-sister, standing for Safford.  I took the idea, and a basic sketch, to Dave Waugh at Jinx Proof Tattoo in Washington DC, and he changed around the composition, drew something up that was much better than I could ever produce, and put this awesome tattoo on my shoulder.  My daughter loves it, my wife definitely doesn’t think less of me, and I’m looking forward to number two at some point soon.

Tom Williams's Would You Rather

Bored with the same old fashioned author interviews you see all around the blogosphere? Well, TNBBC's newest series is a fun, new, literary spin on the ole Would You Rather game. Get to know the authors we love to read in ways no other interviewer has. 

This version of Would You Rather features some unique questions in support of Curbside Splendor's blog tour for Tom Williams's new release Don't Start Me Talkin':

Tom Williams's

Would You Rather

Would you rather be a comic or a musician?

 

Both vocations either attract tortured geniuses or turn ordinary people into tortured geniuses but a comic might have to appear on the Bob and Tom Show to promote his appearance at the Funny Bone in Waco. I'll take musician.

Would you rather be yourself and live your life with your flaws exposed, or an invented self, though nobody would know who you truly were?

 

Invented self. I don't know who I truly am, so what's the diff if nobody else does?

Would you rather be Brother Ben, the performer, or Mr. Mabry, the manager?

 

Brother Ben. Wilton Mabry has one path to follow; Brother Ben has many. I made him up and still haven't tracked him down fully.

Would you rather live in a world without music or a world without books?

 

You guys aren't making this easy. I guess it would be a world without music. I do, even in a time with music on my phone, in my car, on my computer, go without it for days at time. But a day without a book? Even to check the spelling of a word or to re-read a sentence I already know by heart? I couldn't imagine it. I think every writer who watched the Twilight Zone (which is every writer I know) shudders at the thought of that episode with Burgess Meredith, "Time Enought at Last," where just as he prepares to read all his books his glasses shatter. Yeah, I could hum and pat my knees for rhythm. A world without books, nah. Can't deal with that.

Would you rather “tell everything you know” or stay silent?

There's no room for compromise in Would You Rather, is there? Okay. I'd rather "tell everything I know" because I have been for a long time silent about a lot. I wonder if that's not the whole enterprise for me as a writer, though: holding in the words until they're all ready to spill on the page.

 

 

Would you rather play harp or guitar?

I currently play guitar badly, so I'll opt for harp. You can carry it in your pocket, nobody's going to bang you over the head with it. And on the roads traveled by bluesmen, a hasty retreat can often be for the best.

You’ve mentioned that you deal with race differently as an biracial person. Would you rather be mixed racial or a single race?

 

I'm just going to shut up now. I could carp and say nobody's really a "single race," but then I'd not be playing the game right. And the answer is, sure, I'd rather be mixed, just because it's the best of both worlds, even if I've made a career out of feeling ambivalent about it.

Would you rather be a well known author now or be considered a literary genius after you’re dead?

 

NOW, NOW, NOW. You can't get on Oprah after you're dead!

Would you rather write a book without using conjunctions or have every sentence of your book begin with one?

But why this false dilemma? And is this the right question? Or should we consider that . . . I could go on. Every sentence begins with one.

Would you rather write a plot twist you hated or write a character you hated?

 

Plot twist. I don't even know if I know how to do a plot twist. Seriously. And characters one hates--I don't think that's possible for me. I really do like them all.

Would you rather have schools teach your book or ban your book?

 

Ban, of course. If you want to see a young reader's eyes glaze over, tell her this book will be on her English IV syllabus.

Would you rather be reduced to speaking only in haiku or be capable of only writing in haiku?

 

Speaking. I'm inscrutable already. This would be a natural progression into incoherence.

Would you rather critics rip your book apart publicly or never talk about it at all?

 

"The only thing worse than being talked about," Oscar Wilde tells us, "is not being talked about."

Would you rather give up your computer or pens and paper?

Pens and paper. How can you look up Oscar Wilde quotes on your Bic?

 

 

Would you rather have everything you think automatically appear on your Twitter feed or have a voice in your head narrate your every move?

 

I already have the voice in my head thing. Doesn't everyone?

Would you rather read a book that is written poorly but has an excellent story, or read one with weak content but is written well? 

 

We have become a bunch of word-squeezers, haven't we? And you know, I've put aside plenty of books, but never because they didn't soar in every sentence; it was because there was no story.We want both, of course, and get that a lot. But yeah, give me story every time.

Would you rather read naked in front of a packed room or have no one show up to your reading?

 

Read naked. I've already had the other experience.

Would you rather have one giant bestseller or a long string of moderate sellers?

 

I think the one giant bestseller would be freeing. You could just start throwing things around that you mightn't have considered before.

Would you rather have every word of your favorite novel tattooed on your skin or always playing as an audio in the background for the rest of your life?

 

I like tats and prefer short novels, So, yeah, sure. Book me an appointment and get out my copy of The Moviegoer.

Would you rather become a character in your novel or have your characters escape the page and reenact the novel in real life?

 

Let the characters escape. I'm not too interesting. I'd barely be worthy of a walk on role.

Would you rather write without using punctuation and capitalization or without using words that contained the letter E?

 

Of the two constraints, the one that strikes me as most useful is the avoiding words with "E." Punctuation and Capitalization are both too crucial to the construction of everything. It would be like taking out mortar or bone.

Would you rather write an entire novel standing on your tippy-toes or laying down flat on your back?

Tippy-toes. I'd be better able to see what might be coming next. 

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Tom Williams's newest book of fiction, the novel Don't Start Me Talkin', is on shelves and available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble now. He lives in Kentucky with his wife, Carmen Edington, and their son.