Lancelot Schaubert's Would You Rather

Bored with the same old fashioned author interviews you see all around the blogosphere? Well, this 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. I've asked them to pick sides against the same 20ish odd bookish scenarios....

WOULD YOU RATHER

LANCELOT SCHAUBERT

Would you rather write an entire book with your feet or with your tongue?

I've already written short stories with my feet and journalled with my feet, so my feet. Though I can tie a cherry stem with my tongue. I was told in the 5th grade that this would make me a good kisser. They didn't, however, tell me that being an overly melancholy hopeless romantic would repel most girls rather than attract them, so kind of a horse before the cart skill, all told. 

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

I really don't care, as long as it's the truest, best, most beautiful work I can write. As long as it's really real, that's all I care about. Is the money the same? Then moderate sales is great because it's continuous. If the bestseller is traditional and I can get paid in undervalued shares of the parent company, then that. Or paid in a downmarket. See this is the problem with asking about sales: books aren't about sales, first and formost. Keep the wealth, the power, the pleasure, the honor, the fame. I want to be wise and good and a beautiful soul.

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

Neither. I'd rather my name rot in obscurity, but the work live on and change people for teh better.

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

"...and I never really understood why authors didn't start with more conjunctions. But I suppose it's a personal preference thing, though some seem to forget how well it can be done. For other authors in times goneby have written this way. Nor did they write poorly. So well did the conjunctions shape their prose. Yet even now, folks run from conjunctions at the start of sentences. Or at least let them languish in obscurity..."

I could go on with coordinating ones, but I doubt you want 1,000 words on the matter.

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?

This is very difficult for me. Insanely difficult. I have an auditory processing issue so audio noise stresses me out more than most. But I also see my skin as a one-of-a-kind living canvas and a tattoo to be a one-of-a-kind commission on that canvas. So I've yet to see a tattoo that's worthy. If it could be hand tapped by Samoans whom I had earned the right to be called "chief" as did my friend Roger Andruss (only white man I'm aware of to become a chief and get the tattoos) AND if this is the platonic IDEAL of the novel, then sure. My skin. Otherwise I'd be tortured auditorily for the sake of my own moral and aesthetic code.

Would you rather write a book you truly believe in and have no one read it or write a crappy book that comprises everything you believe in and have it become an overnight success?

The former, obviously. The world has enough commodity and propoganda.

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

If by "hate" you mean "disappointed by," the twist. If by "hate" you mean "have a severe negative emotional reaction to so that you nearly wish them ill" then the character.

Would you rather use your skin as paper or your blood as ink?

I have written with my blood before. It replenishes much quicker than skin. So blood. Though I have vaso vago, so I'd likely pass out after the first pint.

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

BELL HAMMERS and my universe THE VALE features both me as a character and characters escaping the novel, but I prefer the former.

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

The former. I'm a student of Koine, Ionic, and Hebrew which all feature the former and don't bother me. The former doesn't bother McCarthy and the latter doesn't bother e.e. cummings.

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

Both. Ban it and then teach why it was banned, in cycles.

Would you rather be forced to listen to Ayn Rand bloviate for an hour or be hit on by an angry Dylan Thomas?

I'd rather get hit on by an angry Dylan Thomas who's trying to avoid Ayn Rand who's been hitting on him. I'd also like to hear her bloviate if I'm allowed to dialog because maybe — maybe — a Socratic dialog would undo much of the terrifying nonsense she produced.

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

If it's Japanese haiku and there are no line breaks, I pretty much do that in description anyways. Japanese haiku (non-syllabic, but "on" and morae based) and Old English alliterative meter are separated by a hair's breadth and to prove it, I'll make a haiku out of English cliches:

black and blue

babe in the woods

weathers storm

That's a japanese haiku, 1.5 feet in an Old English alliterative meter (unless the middle starts and ends one, then it's two), and it's three cliches. So we talk like this and write like this all the time in English. I'll point to Chesterton on alliteration:

A very sympathetic reviewer said that I used too much alliteration; and quoted Mr. T.S. Eliot (see apology in Introduction) as saying that such a style maddened him to the point of unendurance; and a similar criticism of my English was made, I think, by another American writer, Mr. Cuthbert Wright.  Now I think, on fair consideration, that it is perfectly true that I do use a great deal too much alliteration.  The only question on which these gentlemen and I would probably differ is a question of degree; a question of the exact importance or necessity of avoiding alliteration.  For I do strongly maintain that it is a question of avoiding alliteration — and even that phrase does not avoid it! If an English writer does not avoid it, he is perpetually dragged into it when speaking rapidly or writing a great deal, by the whole trend and current of the English speech; perhaps that is why the Anglo-Saxon poetry even down to Piers Plowman (which I enjoy hugely) was all alliteration.  Anyhow, the tendency in popular and unconscious speech is quite obvious, in phrases and proverbs and rhymes and catchwords and a thousand things.  Time and tide, wind and water, fire and flood, waste not, want not, bag and baggage, spick and span, black and blue, deaf and dumb, the devil and the deep sea, when the wine is in the wit is out, in for a penny, in for a pound, a pig in a poke, a bee in a bonnet, a bat in a belfry, and so on through a myriad fantastic changes of popular imagery.  What elaborate art, what sleepless cunning even, must these more refined writers employ to dodge this rush of coincidences; and run between the drops of this deluge!  It must be a terrible strain on the presence of mind to be always ready with a synonym.  I can imagine Mr. T.S. Eliot just stopping himself in time, and saying with a refined cough, “Waste not, require not.” I like to think of Mr. Cuthbert Wright, in some headlong moment of American hustle, still having the self-control to cry, “Time and Fluctuation wait for no man!” I can imagine his delicate accent when speaking of a pig in a receptacle or of bats in the campanile.  It is a little difficult perhaps to image the latter critic apparently confining himself to the isolated statement, “Mr. Smith is spick,” while his mind hovered in momentary hesitation about how to vary the corresponding truth that Mr. Smith is span.  But it is quite easy to conceive an advanced modern artist of this school, looking for some sharp and graphic variation in the old colour scheme of black and blue.  Indeed, we might almost invent a sort of colour test, like that which somebody suggested about red grass and green sky as a test of different schools of painting.  We might suggest that Decadents beat people black and yellow, Futurists beat them black and orange, Neo-Victorians beat them black and magenta; but all recoil from the vulgar alliteration of beating them black and blue.  Nor indeed is the reference to these new and varied styles irrelevant.  Some of the more bizarre modern methods seem to me to make it rather difficult to have any fixed criticism at all, either of their style or mine.  Take, for instance, the case of Mr. T.S. Eliot himself.  I recently saw a poem of his praised very highly and doubtless very rightly; though to some extent (it seemed) because it was a poem of profound “disillusionment and melancholy.” But the passage specially quoted for commendation ran, if I remember right:

“the smell of steak in passages.”

That quotation is enough to indicate the difficulty I mean.  For even style of this severe and classic sort is after all to some extent a matter of taste.  It is not a subject for these extreme controversial passions.  If I were to say that the style of that line maddened me to the point of unendurance, I should be greatly exaggerating its effect on the emotions.  I should not like everything to be written in that style; I should not like to wander for ever in passages stuffy with steak (there we go again!) but I cannot think these questions of style are quite so important as these pure stylists suppose.  We must be moderate in our reactions; as in that verse specially headed “The Author’s Moderation” in the Bab Ballad about Pasha Bailey Ben — another great poem written in a tone of melancholy and disillusion.

To say that Bailey oped his eyes

Would feebly paint his great surprise;

To say it almost made him die

Would be to paint it much too high.

I may be allowed to open my eyes for a moment at some of the literary models thus commended to me; but I shall soon close them again in healthful slumber.  And when the more refined critic implies that my own manner of writing almost makes him die, I think he over-estimates my power over life and death.

But I have begun with this personal example of alliteration; because a question like that of alliteration is not so simple as it looks; and the answer to it applies to much more important things than my own journalistic habits.  Alliteration is an example of a thing much easier to condemn in theory than in practice.  There are, of course, many famous examples in which an exaggerated alliteration seems quite wrong.  And yet those are exactly the examples which it would be most difficult for anybody to put right.  Byron (a splendid example of the sort of writer who does not bother much about avoiding anything) did not hesitate to say of his hero at Quatre Bras that he “rushed into the field and foremost fighting fell.” That is so extreme that we might well suppose it described the end of the life and adventures of Peter Piper.  But I will trouble anybody to alter one word in the line so as to make it better; or even so as to make it sense.  Byron used those words because they were the right words; and you cannot alter them without deliberately choosing the wrong words.  This is more often the case in connection with alliteration than many people imagine.  I do not mean to claim any such exalted company when I say that, on this particular point of conduct, I agree with Byron.  But Byron does not stand alone; Coleridge, a person of some culture, could burst out boisterously and without stopping for breath:

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,

The furrow followed free.

and I do not see that he could have done anything else.  I do not think anybody could interfere with that foaming spate of Fs, if the verse that followed was really “to follow free.”

There is a problem behind all this which is also illustrated in other ways.  It is illustrated in the other much controverted question of puns.  I know all about the judgments regularly cited as if from dusty law-books in the matter.  I know all about the story that Dr. Johnson said, “The man who would make a pun would pick a pocket.” How unlucky that the lexicographer and guardian of our language, in the very act of purging himself of puns, should have plunged so shamelessly deep into the mire of alliteration!  His example, in that very instance, would alone be enough to prove the first part of my case, even when it is brought forward against the second.  Johnson spluttered out all those p’s because he was an Englishman with a sense of the spirit and vigour of the English language; and not a timid prig who had to mind his p’s and q’s by using them in exact alternation with a pattern.  But if it came to the old joke of invoking authorities, it would be equally easy to invoke even greater authorities on the side of the pun.  Also there is something that is more important to my purpose here.  It would not only be easy to quote the puns of the poets; it would be easy to quote the very bad puns of the very good poets.  But the question I wish to ask is wider and more essential than all this hotch-potch of snobbery and legalism and A Hundred Familiar Quotations, which goes to make up the modern invocation of authorities.  I wish to point out that there is a general attitude of mind, which is defensible; or rather two attitudes of mind, which are both defensible.  It is a question of style; but there are here two different styles; because there are two different motives.  If one is now criticising the other, I do not merely wish to retort the criticism; but rather to proclaim liberty for both.

All of that to say, I'm intimidated by neither because when defining haiku properly — by morae — we English speakers do this all the time. To talk or write in another way is to talk awkwardly.

Would you rather be stuck on an island with only the 50 Shades Series or a series in a language you couldn’t read?

The latter. And make it the greatest novel series of all time. Preferably an alien island. Then I'm not only reading a classic, I'm learning a culture through its language. This is the plot of both Out of the Silent Planet and Arrival, both of which understand the fundamental nature of language to thought, both of which 50 Shades arguably destroys.

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

I thrive on public flogging, particularly when I'm allowed to respond graciously to jerks. There are so few classic critics these days.

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

The latter. Brother Lawrence called that "prayer."

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

My computer can go straight to hell. And that goes for all complex technology with egregiously simple uses. I prefer simple tech with near infinite applications. Pen on the paper. Sword in the stone. Wood in the stove. What sort of spacetravel tech we will invent, I cannot say. But we'll always need tea kettles for tea and baths when the power fails and purifying water we drew from a well. 

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

I have a standing desk, so I've done the former. But I've also written words while bedridden in my bunk bed growing up. So both are good. 

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

Oh gosh, the latter. I've read to empty rooms. But public nudity... I can't do that. I don't kiss and tell. I could barely change in the lockerroom growing up.

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? 

I've seen plenty of MFA literature: highly polished turds. On the other hand, George MacDonald's stories have TERRIBLE prose, and yet because of him we have Narnia and Smith of Wooton Major and a slew of other great things: his stories are so mythic, they'll last forever even if his name fades. He's the reason we have the fantasy genre and almost all of the modern tropes go back to him.

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Two excerpts of Lancelot Schaubert’s debut novel BELL HAMMERS have sold to The New Haven Review (Yale’s Institute Library) and The Misty Review, while a third excerpt was selected as a finalist for the last Glimmer Train Fiction Open in history. He has sold poetry, fiction, and essays to TOR (MacMillan), The Anglican Theological Review, McSweeney’s, Poker Pro’s World Series Edition, The Poet’s Market, Writer’s Digest, Space and Time, and many similar markets. Spark + Echo chose him for their 2019 artist in residency, commissioning him to write four short stories in addition to the seven they already purchased. He has published work in anthologies like Author in Progress, Harry Potter for Nerds, and Of Gods and Globes — the last of which he edits and has featured stories by Juliet Marillier (whose story was nominated for an Aurealis award), Howard Andrew Jones, Kaaron Warren, Anne Greenwood Brown, Dr. Anthony Cirilla, LJ Cohen, FC Shultz, and Emily Munro.

Blog Tour: The Cipher

 

We're happy to help Meerkat Press support the release of their latest title The Cipher by participating in their blog tour. And if you're at all into winning free stuff, they're running a giveaway where you can potentially win a $50 book shopping spree.

 Click here to enter!

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For today's stop, author Kathe Koja ruminates on other items that could be dropped into the funhole for... well... funsies!

What belongs in the Funhole?

 

The Funhole Contest Winners Designs

It’s a hole in the floor of a crappy little nondescript storage room in a crappy and nondescript building. It’s the Funhole, the calm, terrible, inexplicable hole that ignites and drives the story of The Cipher, my latest—and also my first—novel.

A word of explanation: The Cipher was originally published as the lead title for an experimental and ass-kicking line of horror novels back in the day (1991!), and has just been reissued by the mighty Meerkat Press for a (w)hole new generation of readers. But the Funhole, which lies, literally, at the heart of the story, has been there all along.

“It was of no one’s making, not a thing like that . . .Pure black and the sense of pulsation, especially when you looked at it too closely . . . Its edges were downhill, and smooth. They asked for touch.” In the course of the story, every item put into the Funhole by hapless Nicholas and unstoppable Nakota comes back altered in unpredictable ways; I’ll leave it to you, if you’re curious, to find out what those items were, and what they turned into. And what happened to Nicholas and Nakota, and to their interested, greedy, helpless friends.

But what else could they have dropped, or lowered, or introduced into that pulsating dark? What would you put down there? It would be almost impossible not to try. Curiosity is like an itch, it’s hard to stop scratching, once you start.

So how to start? Maybe with something easy, something already in that storage room—a push broom, maybe. Hold the handle, poke the bristles into the hole. But what if something tugs back?

Maybe an empty bottle, or a can? How about a full one? How about a high caliber energy drink? Monster energy, ha ha. If it comes back opened, would take you take a sip?

How about a pocket knife?

How about a bread knife?

How about a gutting knife?

How about your phone? Would you want it close to your face, afterward? What if there are photos on it, now, that you never took?

Or how about a book? Would the pages come back wet? or singed? or bare of words? Or with an entirely new story inside? And what would happen to you if you read it, if you put that story inside your mind?

Curiosity is a terrible thing.

Have fun.

 

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Released 9/15/20

Horror | Dark Fantasy

Winner of the Bram Stoker Award and Locus Awards, finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award, and named one of io9.com's "Top 10 Debut Science Fiction Novels That Took the World By Storm." With a new afterword by Maryse Meijer, author of Heartbreaker and Rag.

"Black. Pure black and the sense of pulsation, especially when you look at it too closely, the sense of something not living but alive." When a strange hole materializes in a storage room, would-be poet Nicholas and his feral lover Nakota allow their curiosity to lead them into the depths of terror. "Wouldn't it be wild to go down there?" says Nakota. Nicholas says, "We're not." But no one is in control, and their experiments lead to obsession, violence, and a very final transformation for everyone who gets too close to the Funhole.

Buy Links: Meerkat Press | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

 

Kathe Koja writes novels and short fiction, and creates and produces immersive events. Her work has won awards and been multiply translated and optioned for film. Her most recent books are VELOCITIES: STORIES and THE CIPHER, from Meerkat Press.  

Author Links: Website | Twitter

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Where Writers Write: Wile E. Young

 Welcome to another installment of TNBBC's Where Writers Write!

Where Writers Write is a series in which authors showcase their writing spaces using short form essay, photos, and/or video. As a lover of books and all of the hard work that goes into creating them, I thought it would be fun to see where the authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen. 

This is Wile E. Young.

Wile is from Texas, where he grew up surrounded by stories of ghosts and monsters. During his writing career he has managed to both have a price put on his head and publish his southern themed horror stories. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in History, which provided no advantage or benefit during his years as an aviation specialist and I.T. guru.

Wile and Stephen Kozeniewski recently collaborated on the horror novel The Perfectly Fine House, released this past March with Grindhouse Press.

Where Wile E. Young Writes

I’ve had the privilege to write all over the world due to the time I spent studying abroad for college. Ski slopes in Zermatt, Switzerland; cafes in Budapest, Hungary; my dormitory in Vienna, Austria… All of these places were joys to experience and, more importantly, feed off of for inspiration, but nowhere has quite the allure of my family’s lake house on Caddo Lake.

Located on the Texas/Louisiana border in Uncertain, Texas, it has served as my home away from home for several years. I think I was around ten when my family first purchased the house.

It was originally envisioned as a place that each main branch of our family would take a weekend of the month to use: my parents and myself, my paternal uncle and aunt along with their respective children, and my grandparents. However, my grandparents took their first weekend and never left, which just goes to show the pull that this place has.

The whole area is a mass wetland of rivers, bayous, and creeks that run out into a vast lake, and like most places that trace their origins back past a century, it’s filled with its own stories and legends.

Purported to be the oldest natural lake in Texas, Caddo was supposedly formed in the Great Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-1812. The lake was used to ferry supplies between Jefferson, Texas and ports in Louisiana, and even all the way down to New Orleans.

When the Great Log Jam on the Red River was removed, it lowered the lake by a good ten feet and destroyed the steamboat industry. As of 2020, there is only one steamboat that still plies its trade on Caddo Lake and that is the Graceful Ghost, though even it has been berthed until it undergoes repairs.

But the best part of growing up down there were the stories and characters that resulted. It was partially because of these characters and locations that I set my debut novel Catfish in the Cradle there, which takes place mainly in the town of Uncertain. From the time I was very young we would take a sojourn to eat breakfast at Shady Glade Café.

The place was like a real life Mos Eisley Cantina. You’d have the old fishermen talking about their catches or what they’d seen out on the river, tourists from Houston and Dallas eating their fills of that Uncertain cuisine, and the owners and staff bustling around chatting up the regulars.

There were so many meals partaken in that place after both tragedy and triumph. When my grandfather passed, we ate in his memory under his picture on the walls (he was quite popular there, even had a meal named after him) and I ate there the morning following the engagement to my now wife.

You can find me in Shady Glade from time to time, typing away. If you recognize me, sit down; I’ll buy you a coffee.

Caddo had a lot of legends; twenty-foot alligators, giant fish, ghosts in the trees, etc. All of these are probably based on some truth where someone saw something that they couldn’t quite explain. After all, Caddo has more sightings of Bigfoot than anywhere else in East Texas and people have caught some truly astonishing fish there.

This has all contributed to stoking the fires of my imagination, the legacy of the swamp and river running like muddy water through my veins. It truly is a land of infinite stories and I could spend an eternity sitting out on the river letting the muse take over and I’ve often commandeered my grandfather’s desk to do just that.

This is where I love to write the most. My grandfather conducted most of his business here and it’s where I feel the most connected to him so I can continue carrying on his storytelling tradition.

Every time a boat passes, an owl hoots in the night, or I hear a gator hissing from somewhere, all I can think about is that it’s good to be home and what a pleasure it is to be able to write here.

 

Jason Tanamor's Would You Rather

Bored with the same old fashioned author interviews you see all around the blogosphere? Well, this 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. I've asked them to pick sides against the same 20ish odd bookish scenarios....

Would You Rather

Jason Tanamor

Would you rather write an entire book with your feet or with your tongue?

 Feet, as I’d hate to get paper cuts on my tongue. I was so happy when stamps went to self-adhesive backs.

 

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

 One giant bestseller, as I think the success would yield interest in the other books which could then propel them to moderate seller status. Then I could have both.

 

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

 Known author now. Part of the joy of writing is reaping the success that comes with it. You wouldn't get that if you’re dead. Plus, you couldn’t defend yourself to those who think you’re not a genius.

 

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

 One man fell down a cliff and tumbled to his death. One witness reported the incident. One television statement reported the news. One person attended his funeral. One million dollars was left on a stranger’s doorstep. One person did not know what to do with the good fortune.

 That didn’t seem too difficult, AND I like conjunctions too much.   

 

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?

 Playing as an audio in the background. I’m not very tall, so eventually some of those words would be on top of each other. No one would know what it read. Plus, could you imagine people coming up to you who haven’t read the book? They’d be like, “Don’t move. One more chapter.”

 

Would you rather write a book you truly believe in and have no one read it or write a crappy book that comprises everything you believe in and have it become an overnight success?

 Sometimes to get on the radar you have to quote unquote sell out. I’d rather have a crappy book that everyone knows with the hopes that readers look for my other books. I could live with that. Eventually that book would be forgotten.

 

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

 Character. This happens a lot. So long as that character is really compelling to some degree, there is this weird feeling inside that causes you to feel sorry or bad for him/her. Regardless if you hate this character or not. When you have a bad plot twist or one you’re not keen on, it seems to derail a lot of the story.  

 

Would you rather use your skin as paper or your blood as ink?

 Last time I used my blood as ink I became blood brothers with my friend Maurice. We wrote up a contract to be unrelated brothers and signed our names in blood. I haven’t seen him in years when his family moved away. This time around I’d use my skin as paper. But not the words of my favorite novel. See above for why.

 

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

 Many of my characters have some bit of “me” in them, so seeing them jump off the page and reenact in real life would be great to see. Especially if the scenery changes along with them.   

 

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

 I’d write an entire novel without punctuation and capitalization if it meant that people would wonder if I’d dictated the entire manuscript through my talk to text app.  

 

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

 Teach, definitely. If someone reading my book can take away a theme or passage that changes his or her life, the book is worth writing.

 

Would you rather be forced to listen to Ayn Rand bloviate for an hour or be hit on by an angry Dylan Thomas?

 How many pick-up lines does Dylan Thomas have? This, in itself, could go on longer than an hour. At least with Ayn Rand talking for an hour straight, I could tune the conversation out. I’m really trying to answer this question objectively.

 

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

 I like to have a cadence or tempo in my books. Writing haiku would satisfy that requirement. When I speak, I use a lot of words at times, so I don’t think I could live with the standard 5, 7, 5 pattern. 

 

Would you rather be stuck on an island with only the 50 Shades Series or a series in a language you couldn’t read?

 If those are the only items I could have, then the 50 Shades series, only because if I hadn’t learned the language of the other series when I had all the resources available, I wouldn’t learn it stranded on an island.  

 

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

Lucky for me, I’d had both. See some of my past reviews, but also, I’d had reviewers email me telling me that they couldn’t say anything nice about a book so they’d decided not to review. Both are fine. Every person is different, and every person has an opinion.  

 

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

May I ask who the narrator is? Makes all the difference.

 

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

 Pens and paper. I don’t even think I have paper in my house. Half the time I’m writing stuff down on napkins or the back of envelopes from discarded mail items.  

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

 Standing on my tiptoes because I love me some tone calves.  

 

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

 I’d rather have no one show up to a reading, only because no one needs to see that image.

 

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?

 My weakness is writing. My strength is story idea. I’d give writing a pass if the story keeps my attention. I’ve read novels that had won writing awards and afterward I’m thinking that the story wasn’t very good.

 

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Jason Tanamor is the critically acclaimed author of the novels "Anonymous" and "Drama Dolls." His new novel "Vampires of Portlandia" is a NA urban fantasy about Filipino folklore - aswang. His writings have appeared in more than 250 publications. He's interviewed personalities such as Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins), Pete Rose, and Dane Cook, and has covered U.S. President Barack Obama. Tanamor currently lives and works in the Portland, Oregon area.

Jason Teal's Guide to Books & Booze / Fall Edition

 

Time to grab a book and get tipsy!

Books & Booze challenges participating authors to make up their own drinks, name and all, or create a drink list for their characters and/or readers using drinks that already exist. 

However, I'm breaking my own rules because 2020 has been a literal shitshow and covid threw a nasty wrench in so many small press authors and publisher's plans for their book releases. So we're saying FUCK IT and just throwing all the booze at all of the books for the hell of it!

Welcome to the boozey Fall Edition!!!

Today, we welcome Jason Teal to throw all the booze at his recent release We Were Called Specimens!

Ready to get your small press books and booze on???

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Fall means football, dead leaves underfoot, early frost, new beginnings. End of the line. Last stop. This is the way we change, perpetuate life. Our deity Marjorie, the focus of my book, was inspired from this place of starting over—which we do multiple times throughout the text in order to understand the problems plaguing story and time across hauntings, apocalypses, dystopian realms. 

 

All season fare Winking Owl wine was within arm’s reach and what my mom had on hand to frame the book among her fantastic fall decor. I had to outsource this project to those with the means, obviously.

 

Marjorie Cameron Parsons. Famed occultist, Thelemite, strikingly Iowan, Navy volunteer, poet, artist. This book has nothing to do with her. Or is it the key to the universe? You, reader, have summoned the Three, intertwining your fate with their own. Relationships are mutable and the world spins into another year. WE WERE CALLED SPECIMENS is Jason Teal's first book of flash fictions. The collection centers on a mythical, supernatural Marjorie untethered to time and space. Follow her into the bleakest, harshest storms of humanity--and flee with her from the onslaught of dreamers and villains alike.  

 

We Were Called Specimens Buy Links: Publisher's Website | SPD Books | Amazon

Audio Series: Lake of Urine

Our audio series "The Authors Read. We Listen."  was iriginally hatched in a NYC club during BEA back in 2012. It's a fun little series, where authors record themselves reading an excerpt from their own novels, in their own voices, the way their stories were meant to be heard.

In light of all the social distancing and recommended reduction to group events, we're happy to help support those who have recently published, or will soon be publishing, a book. It's hard enough to get your books out there, and now with the cancelation of book events and readings making it even harder, I want to do my part to help you spread the word!


Today, Guillermo Stitch joins us to read an excerpt from his novel Lake of Urine. Guillermo is also the author of the award-winning novella, Literature™. He lives in Spain.

Click on the soundcloud bar below to hear Guillermo read the excerpt "Emma Naranja" from the book 

What Lake of Urine is about: 

Once upon a time that doesn't make a blind bit of sense, in a place that seems awfully familiar but definitely doesn't exist, Willem Seiler's obsession with measuring his world—with wrapping it up in his beloved string to keep the madness out—wreaks havoc on the Wakeling family.

Noranbole Wakeling lives in the scrub and toil of the pantry, in the ashes of the cold hearth—which, come to think of it, also sounds pretty familiar...She lives, too, in the shadow of her much wooed and cosseted sister, worshipped by the madman Seiler but overlooked by everyone else.

And that, it turns out, is a good thing.

As lives are lost to Seiler's vanity, the inattention spares her. She spots her chance to break free of the fetters that tie her to Tiny Village—and bolts.

But some cords are never really cut. In her absence, the unravelling of the world she has escaped is complete. Another madness—her mother's—reaches out to entangle her newfound Big City freedom. The unpicked quilt-work of a life in ruins threatens to ruin her own. It will be up to Noranbole to stitch it all together, into something she can call true.

"Lake of Urine" might just provide the year's literary splash. Dark and funny in equal measure, it is a sui generis romp through every fairy tale convention and literary trope you can think of—the wicked stepmother, the fairy godmother, Pinnochio, an enchanted penis, the goose that laid the golden egg, binary code, marmalade art and alcoholic meat snacks you can drink. They're all in there.

It is also a merciless take down of self and self-importance, satirising a society that exalts the inane, drowns out the sane and eschews the divine for the profane. And it is a lament for the dreadful weight of our own origins, for the heartbreaking impossibility of absolute reinvention, and the heartening tug of the ties that bind us.