A Crash Course on the Anatomy of Robots (Blog Tour)

Welcome to Stop #7 for A Crash Course on the Anatomy of Robots blog tour. 

I typically do not host a leg of a blog tour for books I haven't read. But I enjoy working with JKSCommunications and thought A Crash Course on the Anatomy of Robots sounded like something I could totally get behind (even though I knew I could never review it in time for its release). 

Here's what goodreads says about it:

Damien Wood's path to adulthood in the last decade of the 20th century is marked with effortless success - creative, financial, sexual. Yet, his half-Asian lineage with its inherent cultural clashes is coupled with the inability to be touched by feelings or the people around him. Damien's efforts to reach his inner self take him from place to place and one hollow relationship to another, but he remains stuck outside of his experiences, a robot convincingly playing the role of daredevil artist and globetrotter.

Then, the century turns. As Damien's mother dies after a long and agonizing illness, and 9/11 inaugurates a reign of fear and terror, his emotions, from desire to despair, begin to emerge unbidden. These birth pangs of humanity send Damien on a mordantly comic, darkly suspenseful quest from the Americas through Southeast Asia in the company of an expatriate colony with too little to lose - including values - until violence comes to claim him as one of its own. No longer a robot, Damien has become a wanted man...

The original soundtrack for A Crash Course On the Anatomy of Robots was written and recorded at On Studio in Guanajuato, Mexico. The album will be available on iTunes prior to the release of the novel and come free as a companion piece with the Kindle version.

Today, you're treated to a guest post by its author, Kent Evan, in which he discusses how he created the soundtrack for his book:

Incorporating music into a novel

Late last year I started writing the music for what would become the soundtrack to my new novel with my experimental drum and bass progressive funk metal collective We’re Not Vampires. I have often used music as a bridge between spoken word and writing, and in the beginning this was no different.

Me, Moises Ruiz and Benjamin Santana were playing out quite a bit and more and more I began to incorporate pieces from Crash Course. When we started talking about the novel coming out later this year, I was already in the studio working on a soundtrack for Bermudan director Antoine Hunt. I had recruited Ramon Hernandez from Barro Negro and Mike Severens (GTO orchestra, and Tom Petty, among others) to bring in drums, bass and cello respectively. Moi provided some additional production, as did my best bro and longtime collaborator Kienyo (DJ Sujihno from Nossa).

My approach to music is similar to my approach to writing, or to cooking or dancing, or any other creative form of expression for that matter. I take what I’ve learned over the years and approach it from the heart - from a gut level. I initially wrote all the guitar riffs, and then jammed em out with Vampires. They grew organically from there, and the excerpts from Crash Course just sort of popped out of the text screaming to be married to them. After that, Ramon worked really hard to help me realize my vision in the Studio, and Michael added the almost epic component we’d been missing with the Cello.

Once we started playing it just fell into place and seemed like a perfect fit for the iReader version of Crash Course to best utilize both the technology and showcase myself as a multi-platform artist. When you buy certain versions of the novel electronically it gives you the option to hear those pieces narrated/performed with musical accompaniment. More traditionally, if you buy a physical copy of the novel, you can either download the album from all major distributors, or order a physical CD from Amazon. For a novel with Robots in the title it only seemed natural to embrace the benefits that come with new technology.

The result is something I’m really proud of, and I think is really hard to fit in a genre. The iReader with embedded music and narration is something that has almost never been done, and I think both Crash Course the novel and the soundtrack defy easy categorization. On one hand we have an experimental Fictional Memoir told in everything from 3^rd person narrative to direct conversations with the reader, and on the other we have a Spoken Word album that flows between Rock, Trip-Hop, and jazz in a natural way that has rarely been executed on this level. Together, they create a unique reader/listener experience that I think people are going to be surprised and intrigued by.

For the tour starting September 18^th (Northeast, South, Texas, California) I’ve got some great musicians like Carl Restivo (Tom Morello’s Freedom Fighter Orchestra, Rhianna), Drew Trudeau and Anthony Valenzisi (Lions of Judah, Sicboy), Laura Wilson (Gypsy Fiddler extraordinaire), country singer and guitarist Johnny Hunt, along with some surprise guests who are gonna help recreate and re-interpret the album. In this way, the project continues to change and grow, and keeps me interested as an artist. I’m lucky that I’ve been able to take two of my great loves, writing and music, and been able to able to combine them in a way that I, and hopefully others, will enjoy.

Kent Evans is the author of Malas Ondas: Lime, Sand Sex and Salsa in the land of conquistadors, a semi-autobiographical novel about self-destruction throughout Latin America and finding that corniest of motivators – love. He was a fixture on the spoken word and experimental art scene throughout the 90’s and is currently pursuing his artistic craft through music and fiction. 

A Crash Course on the Anatomy of Robots released September 17, 2012 from Pangea Books. Half Cantonese and half UK, Kent was born in New York City in 1975 and grew up between New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island. He fully expects to answer that “but where are you really from” question the rest of his life.

You can follow the tour here on September 25th.

Where Writers Write: Isaac Marion

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

Where Writers Write is a weekly series that will feature a different author every Wednesday as they 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 some of TNBBC's favorite authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen.

This is Isaac Marion. He was born near Seattle in 1981 and has lived in and around that city ever since. Deciding to forgo college in favor of direct experience, he dived into writing while still in high school and self-published three terrible novels before finally hitting his stride with Warm Bodies, his first published work. He currently splits his time between writing in Seattle and hunting inspiration on cross-country RV trips.

Personally, I adored Warm Bodies. (For those of you who haven't read it, For Shame! And also, Booo!) And I adore Isaac. I mean, beyond his obvious good looks, the guys got personality. Have you read his blog? In one post, when readers complain about his leading zombie's lack of zombieness in the upcoming film adaptation of his novel (yep, Warm Bodies is coming to the big screen), he basically challenges readers to learn the rate of decomposition by killing themselves. In another, he dissects the act of kissing. Seriously, world, what's not to love? He's also a badass artist - check out his paintings here - dabbles with photography, and is a musician to boot! 

Ok, enough pimping. Let's let Isaac do what he came here to do, and that's show off his writing space:

Where Issac Marion Writes

I can't write at home. It took me a long time to accept this, but after renting the nicest, coziest, most aesthetically pleasing apartment I've ever seen and setting it up to be the ultimate writer's lair with a big desk and comfortable chair and minimal distractions and finding that I still fled every day to the nearest coffee shop, I realized there was no escaping my wanderlust. There's just something about leaving the house that flips a switch in my brain, letting me know it's time to focus. If I write at home, it's way too easy to jump up and distract myself any time I hit a snag. "Hm, I'm not sure where this scene is going...maybe if I play piano for two hours and then eat lunch and then watch six episodes of Star Trek it will come to me." At a coffee shop, the options for retreat are very limited. I'm sitting at a table. There's nowhere to run.

My coffee shop of choice varies quite a bit. I wrote most of my first novel, Warm Bodies, at a huge place called Aster in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. I wrote most of my short stories at a tiny hole in the wall called Joe Bar in Capitol Hill. A few moves later, I've set up shop at Fremont Coffee in...well, Fremont. This place is pretty much my dream cafe because it has an unbelievable amount of table space, spread out through an amazing four separate rooms of window walls and shadowy nooks. This is the most important thing I look for in a work cafe. There's nothing worse than showing up ready to tackle a crucial scene and finding that the only seat available is the tiny one-person table placed right next to the front door. I'm borderline obsessive about where I sit. The Feng Shui has to be exactly correct. I have to be in a corner or at least against a wall, not too close to anyone else, but near a window. (I don't know how Feng Shui works.) I find it extremely hard to get in the zone if these conditions aren't met. It's ridiculous, but my brain knows what it needs and it's the one paying the bills. I don't argue with it.

The whole concept of writing at a coffee shop is ridiculous, really. I require absolute focus and don't want any human contact disrupting my concentration, so I go to a public place with a constant flow of human contact? It doesn't sound logical, but I've found it creates a certain ideal mix of solitude and stimulation. Even though I don't want to talk or interact with anyone, it's somehow still inspiring just to be around people. The background layer of noise and activity keeps my left brain occupied, leaving my right brain free to do its work without the left whining "I'm bored!" And perhaps most importantly, the human contact--even though it's indirect and barely registers--allows me to spend hours a day inside my own head without going insane from isolation. That faint aroma of humanity is enough to keep loneliness at bay while I'm deep in the mines.

Come back next week to see where Michael Kleine (author of Mastodon Farm) writes. 

The Audio Series: Collin Kelley

Our new audio series "The Authors Read. We Listen." is an incredibly special one for us. Hatched in a NYC club during BEA week, this feature requires more work of the author than any of the ones that have come before. And that makes it all the more sweeter when you see, or rather, hear them read excerpts from their own novels, in their own voices, the way their stories were meant to be heard.   


Last week we listened to M.L. Kennedy read from his novel The Mosquito Song. Click here if you missed it. 


Today, Collin Kelley reads from his newly released eBook exclusive short story collection Kiss Shot. A novelist, poet and playwright from Atlanta, Georgia, Collin's second novel, Remain In Light (Vanilla Heart Publishing), was a finalist for the 2012 Townsend Prize for Fiction and is available in eBook format and trade paperback. His critically acclaimed debut novel, Conquering Venus (Vanilla Heart Publishing), was released in 2009 and an Amazon bestseller. He is co-director of the Atlanta Queer Literary Festival, sits on the board of Poetry Atlanta and on the advisory council for Georgia Center for the Book. By day, Kelley is the managing editor for Atlanta Intown newspaper. He has been a journalist for more than 25 years. 

Click here to experience "I Got A Name" read by author Collin Kelley. 

Collin wrote a guest post for TNBBC back in April of 2010 on unconscious connections,  submitted a previously unpublished poem to our Tell Me A Story feature, and shot of video of his writing space for Where Writers Write.  

The word on Kiss Shot:

 [Collin Kelley]... explores his Southern roots with this collection of four short stories set in the town of Cottonwood, Georgia. A devoted maid recalls the hijinks surrounding her employer's death from a brain tumor in "How Fanny Got Her House," while a teenage boy comes to terms with his sexuality during an unexpected game of pool in the title story, "Kiss Shot." A woman escaping an abusive relationship arrives in New Orleans during a rain storm and wanders into the famed "Clover Grill" on Bourbon Street, and "I've Got A Name" follows the trials and tribulations of an overweight woman looking for love at a community theater company.

*lifted from goodreads, with love

TNBBC's First Night Out...

.. at Brooklyn's Book Thug Nation was a bust.

I had started promoting the event a couple months back. I threw together a flyer, designed a cute tri-fold to hand out at the event, special ordered Tshirts for David Maine and me to wear during the reading, and sent out personal invites, mass event invites, and event reminders through Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads.

I'm not sure what else I could have done to hype it up. And it's sad-making, because David Maine is an awesome author and I feel like Brooklyn really missed out on something good last night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yesterday was my first time visiting Book Thug Nation, our host space. It's this teeny little bookstore on N 3rd street in Willamsburg, Brooklyn. Barely larger than my bedroom, it sits beside an antique shop and directly across the street is this great little German bar that David and I slipped into, grabbing a celebratory beer before the reading began.

While sitting in the bar, my cell phone started getting hit with cancellations from the few people I had personally invited and had been really excited to see. Oh No, I thought. This does not bode well. And while it's always wise to be prepared for things like this, I don't think you can ever prepare yourself ENOUGH...

We head back over to Book Thug Nation, help the store associate set up the chairs, and while David grabs a seat in preparation, I scout the sidewalks to see who's coming and talk up the reading to a few of the browsers. One local, Anna, took an interest in hearing more about the book and the three of us chatted for a bit about music and books and mass-consumer-madness. 

Eventually, the store associate asked if anyone else was coming. She was itching to open the store back up to the public before she had to close for the evening. We had an audience of one, and David had no one to read to. Dejected and humiliated, I thanked Anna for hanging out, apologized profusely to David as I helped fold up the empty chairs, and asked for directions to our separate subway lines. 

After David and I said goodbye, I walked down the length of Berry St toward the L running everything through my head. I considered chucking in the towel. I replayed the conversation David and I had on our way to the bookstore earlier that evening - where we discussed the power (or lack thereof) of social media, blogging vs professional newspaper reviews - and how certain I had been that voices matter, no matter how small, so long as there was an audience for them. I thought about how he had tried to prepare me for tonight's event by making sure I had set "low expectations", and I thought that no one could ever their expectations low enough to prepare for a turnout of ZERO people. I felt like a failure. I felt like everything I had ever done up to this point was for shit. For nothing. For no one. Who was I kidding, I had no audience! No one was listening to a fucking thing I was saying! I was talking to empty space. But worst of all, I felt like I had let  David down. And that bothered me the most. 

So, it's the morning after, and while I continue to struggle with feelings of frustration and humiliation and gag on the ginormous heap of humble pie the universe served to me last night, I know that I am going to continue to fight the good fight for exceptional literature. I won't back down and play dead, I won't quiet my voice, I won't give up on spreading the word about the authors I enjoy and the amazing stories they have to tell... because I can't.  

Now excuse me while I burrow back under the covers and continue my pity-party-for-one. I'm not quite done feeling sorry for myself.

Review: Buzz Aldrin, What Happened To You In All The Confusion

Read 8/25/12 - 9/8/12
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to those who prefer coming in second
Pgs: 471
Publisher: Seven Stories

Johan Harstad's novel had been lingering on my bookshelves for over a year. Though I cannot recall whether it was a copy I requested or one that was simply sent for review from Seven Stories, there it sat, patient, unassuming, and content, waiting for me to find a reason to pick it up.

And a reason found me on August 25th, in the form of tweets that alerted me to the passing of Neil Armstrong. I figured, what better way to remember the first man to step foot on the moon than by reading a book that contains a character who idolized the man who stood in his shadow. And so my love affair with the 471 paged translation began.

This awkwardly titled novel is told in the first person narrative of Mattias, a thirty-something year old gardener whose life goal is to play second fiddle to a world of attention-obsessed people. A loner, a worrier, a daydreamer and supposer, Mattias enjoyed being invisible. Growing up, he took pleasure in being the kid in the class who is easily forgotten. When he made friendships, they were few and fierce. Hell, he chose a career in horticulture because of the peace and quiet it afforded him.

But that all changes when his employer goes out of business, his long term girlfriend breaks up with him, and his best friend Jorn asks him to follow his band over to the Faroe Islands. A creature of habit, and not one to stick his neck out, Mattias deals with these sudden changes as you would expect... not very well at all. On the trip across the ocean, things go from bad to worse, and the next thing Mattias knows, he wakes up stretched out and bloodied on an unknown street in an unknown town in the middle of the night with an envelope of cash stuffed into his pocket and not a clue as to how he got there.

Lost and alone, he wanders the island until he is picked up by a wildly entrancing psychiatrist who delivers Mattias into the arms his crazy-farm (aka The Factory, the re-purposed building where a small group of mentally unstable islanders live and work together in relative peace).

Hang out with head cases and you are sure to become one! Mattias suffers a mental breakdown of sorts at the start of his stay at The Factory, but eventually finds himself taking to this new life:

"...I contemplated how everything had happened so fast. I'd lived through nearly thirty years with barely a couple of friends, I'd avoided other people, I'd snuck away from them or they'd passed me by in silence. And now it seemed new friends were tumbling in, in the pace of just a few hours, two women, and two men, and my unwillingness to talk, my unwillingness to accept them, was ebbing away. I was becoming two open arms." pg.152

This story worked for me in so many ways, and on so many different levels, and I was surprised to read reviews where people whined about it being slow and plodding and boring. Because here is how I saw it: We'd been given a complete backstage-pass to Mattias's brain. He allowed us the freedom to wander through his thoughts and leave no stone unturned and rummaging through someone's personal baggage takes quite a bit of time.

He gives us time to understand his obsession with Buzz Aldrin - the strength of character Mattias places in the ability to stand back and let others led the way, the "gigantic heart" of those who are content to take second place, as if it is a conscious choice, something people willingly strive for. Rather than something people must accept.

He gives us time to understand his subtle obsession with Tuesdays - at the start of the book, he mentions how Tuesdays tend to be the most overlooked day of the week, yet in Mattias's experience, they are the most notable. Watch for them when you the read the book. I found this to be one of the most fascinating hints he dropped for us.

He gives us time to accept him and forgive him and root him on.

Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? is a long, hard, slow look at what it takes to overcome your own manufactured obstacles - those barriers and walls you've constructed around yourself, to protect or cushion yourself from things real or imagined. Rather than put himself out there and risk failure, Mattias successfully built a life where he found comfort in second-place. Until second place, and his creative invisibility, were no longer an option.

It's the anti-hero story. It's the cracking of the shell. It's the caterpillar emerging as the butterfly. It's the realization that people need people, whether you think you do or not. It's awkward and frustrating to watch but at the same time it has utterly captured your attention and refuses to be put down.

Where Writers Write: J.R. Angelella

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

Where Writers Write is a weekly series that will feature a different author every Wednesday as they 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 some of TNBBC's favorite authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen.

This is J.R. Angelella. He is the author of the novel Zombie (Soho Press) as well as a forthcoming Southern Gothic supernatural YA series (Sourcebooks/Teen Fire) co-written with his wife, Kate Angelella. Their first book, Cursed, is set to publish in 2012. He is also a contributing author to the murder-mystery anthology Who Done It?(Soho Teen), benefiting the nonprofit organization 826NYC. He teaches creative writing at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop in New York City. His favorite band is the Drive-By Truckers and he doesn’t understand why they aren’t your favorite band too. He was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, and now lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their two flauntingly obese cats, Pacey and Bailey.

Where J.R. Angelella Writes

“What-ism: My Philosophy of Whatever Wherever & Whenever”

I thought that writing about where I write would be an easier assignment than it proved to be. A no-brainer. No big deal. As my mother likes to say, this assignment was going to be “a gimme.” What I realized, however, was that my writing habits are not, well, traditional, so to speak. I am not a writer who is a creature of any kind of habit. I don’t set daily word count goals for myself. I don’t write inside a rigid early-bird routine. I know that so many writers do set word count goals for themselves and write before the sun also rises, but I am just not built that way, or at least not right now.

Allow me to explain.

I do subscribe to a strict writing routine when I am on deadline for an editor or under contract with a publisher. Presumably, most of my creative heavy-lifting has been done at this point, and all that’s left is for me to turn my madman notes into some semblance of discernible prose. For me, it’s getting to that semblance of discernible prose phase that is the issue. I probably spend more time sorting through and organizing my schizophrenic ideas than I should, but working inside a regular writing routine generally make this process slower and more arduous for me. I used to get up at 5am every morning, cranky-crawl to my desk and pushing-and-pull at words until I had to leave for work at 8am. 

The problem was that I found myself spending an embarrassing amount of time deep-sea researching bizarre subjects online, and less time actually writing. To this day, I, quite innocently, clear out my internet browser history after every computer session, so that no one is subjected to whatever insane curiosity has recently piqued my interest. For example, this week I researched: the migration patterns of Mississippi Black Squirrels; the Zen-practice of provoking “great doubt” through the study of koans; how to harvest the Middle Eastern, DEA-classified, Schedule I narcotic catha edulis, better known as “Arabian tea” or “khat;” and how to tell the difference between a male (cob) and female (pen) Mute Swan. My point is this: clearly, my desk is not the best place for this writer to write.

For a while, I tried writing in bed. However, this, too, proved to be a failed experiment as my Maine Coon cat, Pacey, who I’m fairly convinced believes he will one day rule the world, became inappropriately fascinated with me and wholly committed to: knocking the pen out of my hand, sleep-smothering across all of my notebooks, waging a never-ending boxing battle with my computer chord, and not only ruthlessly stealing my headphones, but then refusing to give them back. 

Finally, I embraced my fate as the Goldilocks of writing spaces and opened myself up to the opportunity of unknown environments. There is an Albert Camus quote from his essay on the absurd “The Myth of Sisyphus” that states: “If the world were clear, art would not exist.” With this, my new philosophy took shape and has been my main belief ever-since: “What-ism: My Philosophy of Whatever Wherever & Whenever.” 

Allow me to explain. I write whatever wherever & whenever. For example:

Airport terminals 

 

The New York City Subway R Broadway Local Line – 

every day, back-and-forth between Brooklyn and Manhattan. 

Hell, I even wrote several key scenes of my novel ZOMBIE while an EMT moonlighting as a “sleep tech” prepped me for a sleep study, and hot-glued 22 electrodes to my head, strapped elastic belts around my chest, and fit a pressure transducer up my nose. 

Today I write with a fluid and flexible mindset that allows for the absurdity of everyday life to influence my writing at any turn. Camus, the godfather of “What-ism,” also wrote: “At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.” Again—another personal truthbomb as the absurd has followed me to the following of late: doctors’ offices, dive bars, chain hotels, the Bolt Bus to Baltimore, corporate coffee shops, independent bookstores, multi-national bodegas, every taxi cab in New York and most restaurants.

·         QUESTION: Where is it exactly that you write again?

·         ANSWER:     See definition of what-sim[1]

[1]What-ism –  (pronunced: wət izəm) (noun) the belief that opacity is the mother of art, which is created whatever wherever & whenever possible; also the illegitimate philosophy of the absurd.

There—does that answer your question?

Why yes, J.R., yes it does!!

Check back next week to see where Isaac Marion gets his writing done.

The Audio Series: M.L. Kennedy

Our new audio series "The Authors Read. We Listen." is an incredibly special one for us. Hatched in a NYC club during BEA week, this feature requires more work of the author than any of the ones that have come before. And that makes it all the more sweeter when you see, or rather, hear them read excerpts from their own novels, in their own voices, the way their stories were meant to be heard.  


Last week we listened to Mark David McGraw read from Heart of Scorpio. Click here if you missed it.


Today, M.L. Kennedy reads from his novel The Mosquito Song.  He has contributed to various online publications, including Inside Pulse Movies, Moodspins, Beyond the Threshold, and Diehard GameFAN. He hopes that his work will one day inspire poorly crafted and sexually uncomfortable fan-fiction. Kennedy currently lives in Chicago with his wife, Jen, and their daughter, Thalia.

Click here to experience The Mosquito Song read by author M.L. Kennedy.

The word on The Mosquito Song:

Hunted by amateur assassins, confounded by a mysterious notebook, and vexed by modern technology, a derelict vampire travels west to Chicago for answers. And maybe a little blood.

*lifted from goodreads with love

Indie Spotlight: Bookslinger

Back in November, I happened to stumble across a weekly twitter indie-chat called #indieview, which I still attend rather religiously. It's run by Rachel of Consortium Books and brings independent bookstores, indie publishers, and book bloggers together for 30 minutes of  topic-driven, highly engaging conversation. This network of forward-thinking indie professionals have their fingers on the pulse of the publishing community and they are ready to take things to the next level.

Today, I've asked Rachel to introduce you to Consortium's Bookslinger App, which launched this past April. If you're a fan of short stories, and you're an Apple user, this is a must-have app! Who doesn't want free weekly short stories sent directly on their phone?

If you haven't downloaded the app yet, take a peek at what Rachel has to say about it:

If you’re anything like me, your to-read pile is more like a to-read bookcase…or bookcases. The problem of deciding what to read next definitely isn’t a lack of options! But when you’ve just put down a book and are trying to decide which of the dozens to pick up next, it’s helpful to have something to help guide your decisions. And, as they say – there’s an app for that!

That’s why we created Bookslinger. Designed to help readers discover new short fiction writers, Bookslinger releases a new short story each week to highlight a book or an author that you might not have found otherwise. Right now, it’s available (for FREE) on Apple devices and we hope to expand to Android devices soon.

Check out some of the stories that have been featured in Bookslinger:

Poison Eaters (Small Beer Press): In her debut collection, New York Times best-selling author Holly Black returns to the world of Tithe in two darkly exquisite new tales. Then Black takes readers on a tour of a faerie market and introduces a girl poisonous to the touch and another who challenges the devil to a competitive eating match. Some of these stories have been published in anthologies such as 21 Proms, The Faery Reel, and The Restless Dead, and have been reprinted in many “Best of ” anthologies.

Cradle Book (BOA Editions): Timeless yet timely and hopeful with a dark underbelly, these fables revive a tradition running from Aesop to W.S. Merwin. With a poet’s mastery, Craig Morgan Teicher creates strange worlds populated by animals fated for disaster and the people who interact with them, or simply act like them, including a very sad boy who wishes he had been raised by wolves. There are also a handful of badly behaving gods, a talking tree, and a shape-shifting room.

Los Angeles Stories(City Lights Publishers): Los Angeles Stories is a collection of loosely linked, noir-ish tales that evoke a bygone era in one of America's most iconic cities. In post-World War II Los Angeles, as power was concentrating and fortunes were being made, a do-it-yourself culture of cool cats, outsiders, and oddballs populated the old downtown neighborhoods of Bunker Hill and Chavez Ravine. Ordinary working folks rubbed elbows with petty criminals, grifters, and all sorts of women at foggy end-of-the-line outposts in Venice Beach and Santa Monica. Rich with the essence and character of the times, suffused with the patois of the city's underclass, these are stories about the common people of Los Angeles, “a sunny place for shady people,” and the strange things that happen to them. Musicians, gun shop owners, streetwalkers, tailors, door-to-door salesmen, drifters, housewives, dentists, pornographers, new arrivals, and hard-bitten denizens all intersect in cleverly plotted stories that center around some kind of shadowy activity. This quirky love letter to a lost way of life will appeal to fans of hard-boiled fiction and anyone interested in the city itself.

This Is Not Your City (Sarabande Books): Eleven women confront dramas both everyday and outlandish in Caitlin Horrocks’ This Is Not Your City. In stories as darkly comic as they are unflinching, people isolated by geography, emotion, or circumstance cut imperfect paths to peace—they have no other choice. A Russian mail-order bride in Finland is rendered silent by her dislocation and loss of language, the mother of a severely disabled boy writes him postcards he'll never read on a cruise ship held hostage by pirates, and an Iowa actuary wanders among the reincarnations of those she's known in her 127 lives. Horrocks’ women find no simple escapes, and their acts of faith and acts of imagination in making do are as shrewd as they are surprising.

Elephants in Our Bedroom (Dzanc Books): The debut short story collection from the editor of the Mid-American Review. Michael Czyzniejewski’s writing is both poignant and playful. The collection includes flash and longer fiction and is the antithesis of those collections complained about for having every story too similar to one another.






You can also check out the Bookslinger blog, which lets you know a little about the story that’s featured each week in the app – and sometimes we release free stories there, too!

*Rachel Zugschwert is the marketing manager at Consortium Book Sales & Distribution. She never runs out of something to read next, but has been known to rely on her phone to help her figure it out.

Review: Who I Was

Read 8/23/12 - 8/25/12
3 Stars - Recommended to readers who like to go with the flow
Pgs: 125
Publisher: mdmw books

Les Plesko is one of those authors who I've allowed myself to trust. I trust him to tell his stories in his own way. I trust his simplistic, sparse, poetic language that reads like a beat in your head and in your heart. I trust him to take me beyond the pages, even if I am not certain where he is taking me.

And I had no clue where his second novel, Who I Was, was going . Consisting of a series of moments, we are given lightening-quick glimpses into the life of Moonie, a free spirited girl who attaches herself to the less-spontaneous but charming Addie. Moonie, forever with a book in her backpack and a penchant for the peace of the aquarium. Addie, always a conversation ahead or behind, the Felix to her Oscar.

Though the book is obviously about their relationship, there seemed to be no real plot. No sense of  "start here and end there" to it at all. It was very much like sneaking a read through someone's diary, all tense and personal and lovely and aloof and confusing, as most relationships I've known had a habit of being.

Take the opening sentences, for example: "There I went wobbling down Alden Drive on my junk bicycle with my whole soul flapping. Started a thing, started another thing. Sometimes nobody even found out about them." Definitely a sense of aloofness to this girl, right? Whether it's manufactured or really how she works in the world-at-large is left mostly up to us. But then, at the same time, she seems to throw it all out there. A living contradiction. With Moonie, we know right quick that she is not one to mince words. I think it's interesting that Les wrote her without a filter - what she thinks is exactly what comes out of her mouth, she makes no apologies for who she is.

And her mind moves so quickly from one thought to the next: "Family stories made me sleepy like one wave rolling over the next. Were we supposed to just tell them and hear them? I buried my feet in the sand where the foam washed over it. The sea's going to yank my ankles, I said. I turned, but Addie's hand wasn't there. I could just keep walking in, I said. My socks were rolled like dirty snowballs on the bird-footed sand. Addie's hand was outstretched. The wind blew my hair and the pages of my book. You're always reading, Addie said and I said, Shut up, I'm reading. The wind blew the pages and I lost my places." I got the feeling, as I read, that Moonie has a bit of an attention issue. More specifically, that she has trouble concentrating in environments that contain lots of outside stimuli. Which might explain her infatuation with the quiet, gurgling aquarium that she so often runs away to. A place to shut off all the inner braininess and let the batteries recharge. And while I'm convinced it's a very private alone-space for her, she seems to share it quite willingly with Addie.

And how about that relationship with the mathematical and broody Addie? Sometimes I'm not sure Moonie was even very certain: "I loved him the way you don't really know if you do. Maybe you wanted to. Did my life change completely from him? Or didn't every moment. Those were the thoughts I had. His will and his mind confused mine." Either you're in love with him, or you're not, my dear. Except, we all know that relationships are never that clear-cut and defined, are they? They're flexible, they expand and contract, they bore us and excite us, and most especially confuse the holy fuck out of us. I don't care if you're dating 15 days or married 15 years, it never seems to get easier to be with someone.

All I know is that everyone needs a Moonie in their lives. She's the bright star in an otherwise dark sky. She's the ying to most people's yang. She's the Clementine in a world of Josh's. Or, if you're more like Moonie, go find yourself a sweet, level headed Addie. And then go make memories that will turn into stories that you can tell your grand kids about it, when they're old enough to understand!

Check out the Plesko's book trailer for Who I Was:

Where Writers Write: Jennifer Spiegel

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

Where Writers Write is a weekly series that will feature a different author every Wednesday as they 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 some of TNBBC's favorite authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen.

Photo by Anastasia Campos 

This is Jennifer Spiegel. She has an MA in Politics from New York University and an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Arizona State. Also the author of the story collection The Freak Chronicles, She lives in Phoenix with her husband and two children. She reads a lot, tries to buy mostly organic food, and drinks strong coffee with cream. She may stop coloring her hair soon, but there’s no guarantee. Love Slave is her debut novel.

Where Jennifer Spiegel Writes

 Hemingway and Jennifer in Cuba,
where she tried to learn to write on
paper napkins on barstools 

It’s complicated. In a beginning creative writing class, I heard that real writers can write anywhere, at anytime.  I wasn’t supposed to need props or special music to get into the right mood. Paper napkins on barstools or laptops in train stations: I should just write like a mofo.
Really?

coffee, taken by
 Anastasia Campos 

Here’s the deal. I write fiction in cafes. I write nonfiction at home. No music for fiction. Background noise is okay; actually, I like it—unless it’s my own children making the noise. Music is fine for nonfiction. The constant for any writing:  coffee.

 Jennifer's desk at home
(yes, that appears to be an issue
 of Ranger Rick on her desk)  

I’m afraid to say this aloud, but I think I will. I value my fiction more! I need to remove myself from my home and its demands. I can’t know I need to put in a load of laundry or the dishwasher needs to be emptied. I can’t get stuck listening to the lyrics of a Bob Dylan song. If there’s music playing in some café, that’s okay; I just don’t want to think too much about it. In that café, over my coffee and laptop, I am artiste—responsible only to my art!

I love writing nonfiction too. I do. But it comes from somewhere else, somewhere less precious, less pretentious, more responsible. That nonfiction writer may need to change the cat litter soon. She accepts this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now that you've seen her writing space, get to know her writing!! 

Unbridled Books has generously given us 5 copies

to give away to celebrate its release!!

 (US residents only, sorry guys!)  

                  
What it's about: 

It’s 1995. When she can, Sybil Weatherfield works as an office temp. But in her jobless hours she may be her generation’s Dorothy Parker, writing a confessional column for the alternative weekly, New York Shock. Her friends include a paperpusher for a human rights organization and the lead singer of a local rock band called Glass Half Empty. Together they try to find a path from their own wry inactivity to something real and lasting that can matter to them. Richly funny and wincingly specific, this cunning debut novel is a bittersweet and ironic look at what it means to be enthralled by an idea—by even the most ragged possibility of love.

And check out Unbridled's cool pin board for the book!

Here's how to enter:

1 - Leave a comment stating why you would like to win a copy.

2 - Your comment must have a way to contact you (email is preferred), and you must be a US resident. 

That's it! No strings attached!

Good Luck!

Giveaway ends September 11th.
Winners notified on September 12th here and via email.