Where Writers Write: Robin Lamont

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 the authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen. 

This is Robin Lamont. She is the author of Wright for America, published in October - a biting political satire and a fiercely funny detective story. 

You may also know Robin Lamont as the voice behind the hit song ‘Day by Day’ from the Broadway show and motion picture Godspell.  Lamont was not only an original cast member, she was one of the creators of the show. Her voice was a beacon for a new generation of theatergoers, and fans continue to follow her. 

Where Robin Lamont Writes

There are two different places where I write.  When I’m crafting a storyline or constructing a scene or a character, I tend to stare into space a lot.  When weather permits, I’ll do that outside on our deck, which sits high on a wooded hilltop.  It feels like being in a tree-house.  You’d think it would be distracting to be in a such a beautiful place, but the leaves, sky and clouds create a repetitive rhythm that’s as soothing as being rocked in a boat.  I need peace when I’m thinking big picture.  

If it’s too windy or cold or rainy, which is a great deal of the time in the northeast, I work at my desk in what used to be the dining room of our house.  Although my desk is cluttered with necessary writing tools – a cup of coffee, thesaurus, a dictionary, my reading glasses, and Kleenex – I keep the wall in front of me bare.  I feel that pictures or photos hung on the wall where I can see them will color my ideas and limit my thinking.  

Once the outline is developed and I’m working on individual scenes, I feel as though I can let more of the world in.  To get going each morning, I’ll re-read what I’ve written the day before.  For me, it’s sort of like getting an old car rolling downhill so you can jumpstart the engine.  Then as I get going, I stay connected to my computer because I will toggle back and forth to other documents where I’ve kept my outline or notes, or I need to look something up quickly on the internet – like, how much does a good size pig weigh?    

Next week, Lynn Melnick shows off her writing space.

The Audio Series: Alexander Yates

Our 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.   


Today, Alexander Yates reads an excerpt from his novel Moondogs, which was published by Doubleday in 2011. Alexander has an MFA from Syracuse University, and his fiction and reviews have appeared in Salon, American Fiction, Fivechapters.com and the Kenyon Review.  He currently lives in Kigali, Rwanda, with his wife and cats. His cats fucking love it, and he does, too.

Click the soundcloud file below to experience an excerpt of Moondogs as read by author Alexander Yates. 

The word on Moondogs:

A singularly effervescent novel pivoting around the disappearance of an American businessman in the Philippines and the long-suffering son, jilted lover, slick police commissioner, misguided villain, and supernatural saviors who all want a piece of him. 

Mourning the recent loss of his mother, twentysome­thing Benicio—aka Benny—travels to Manila to reconnect with his estranged father, Howard. But when he arrives his father is nowhere to be found—leaving an irri­tated son to conclude that Howard has let him down for the umpteenth time. However, his father has actually been kid­napped by a meth-addled cabdriver, with grand plans to sell him to local terrorists as bait in the country’s never-ending power struggle between insurgents, separatists, and “demo­cratic” muscle. 

Benicio’s search for Howard reveals more about his father’s womanizing ways and suspicious business deals, reopening the old hurts that he’d hoped to mend. Interspersed with the son’s inquiry and the father’s calamitous life in captivity are the high-octane interconnecting narratives of Reynato Ocampo, the local celebrity-hero policeman charged with rescuing Howard; Ocampo’s ragtag team of wizardry-infused soldiers; and Monique, a novice officer at the American embassy whose family still feels feverishly unmoored in the Philippines. 

With blistering forward momentum, crackling dialogue, wonderfully bizarre turns, and glimpses into both Filipino and expat culture, the novel marches toward a stunning cli­max, which ultimately challenges our conventional ideas of family and identity and introduces Yates as a powerful new voice in contemporary literature.
*lifted with love from goodreads

Review: Grey Cats

Read 11/24/12 - 11/27/12
4.5 Stars - Highly Recommended to readers who enjoy having a good story slap them in the face
Ebook
Publisher: 3 AM / Press
Released: Nov 2012

"In ze night, all ze cats are grey."

Ah, Paris at night. I cannot imagine a more perfect setting for a love story. Nothing could be more romantic than walking hand in hand under the street bridges, following the silent canals that reflect the twinkling street lights, breathing in the smell of bread and cigarette smoke as you pass by the late night cafes, listening to the gentle clinking of silverware and the husky voices of those dining outside.

And yet nothing could be more heartbreaking than waking in the middle of a Paris night to discover her side of the bed cold and empty, throwing on clothes, and hustling out into the lonely dark to wander the streets in search of her.

She is a night person. You are of the day. This is not the Paris you are familiar with and it behaves much like a living, breathing thing. You should be wary of it, and yet, you believe you can tame it. As the city reacts to the threat of an impending ash cloud, you begin to trace the cold trail of her passing based on the words of complete strangers.

Adam Biles's  Grey Cats, a finalist in the 2011 Paris Literary Prize, is tricky little thing. A deceptively delicious tale that is at once tender and twisted, we follow along in the shadows as our narrator moves through this dream-like terrain, spurred on by his intense longing and random encounters with an ex-convict, a roller-skating gang member, and a surly underground sex club pimp. As he picks his way through the dark underbelly of Paris in search of his Melina, we are bombarded by the memories of their relationship - a feisty, passionate coupling that, more times than not, leaves them achingly and emotionally spent. As we are left chewing on their history, he continues to weave his way deeper into the nightlife, and soon the two realities come collapsing in on each other.

Much like what I imagine it must feel like in those first few moments as you slip out of a fevered dream - the blurry vision and confusion wearing off, the slow realization of where you are and what you've just gone through - Grey Cats reads like a soft yet urgent slap in the face. (Are you awake, reader? Do you know where you are? Do you know what year it is? Phew! That was a close one. For a moment there, I thought we'd lost you.)

I dare you to finish it and fight the urge to reread it immediately, filled as you will be with the truth of what just took place. No, on second thought, I want you to. Because it won't be the same book the next time around.

Where Writers Write: Joyce Hinnefeld

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 the authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen. 

This is Joyce Hinnefeld. Her work has appeared in a variety of literary and scholarly publications, and her short story collection, Tell Me Everything and Other Stories (University Press of New England, 1998), received the 1997 Bread Loaf Conference Bakeless Prize in Fiction. 

Her novel In Hovering Flight was the Booksense/Indie Next #1 Pick for September 2008. Her novel Stranger Here Below was published in the fall of 2010. She is the recipient of a Christopher Isherwood Foundation Fellowship and is the Cohen Chair in English and Literature at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA. 

Where Joyce Hinnefeld Writes

The subject of where I write is a fraught one for me. I seem to be perpetually dissatisfied with my writing space, wherever it is, and not for particularly good reasons. Here’s a photo of my main workspace, which occupies part of a room in our house that we refer to as my study--though it’s also the guest room.

You can see that there are two windows looking out on a lot of green, some photos of my daughter, bookshelves, files. On the wall are photographs from Mexico by a photographer named Ron Terner and a nice black-and-white portrait of my husband by photographer Karen Tweedy-Holmes. Behind that big Dell monitor is my beloved MacBook Pro. I set up the monitor, and the Apple keyboard on a lower tray, and the chair with the back cushion, two years ago, when I had an unhappy incident with a herniated disk and decided I needed to create a workspace that would be easier on my back.

So what’s to complain about, right? Well, I wrote a blog post on this topic, or sort of on this topic, last spring (see http://strangerherebelow.blogspot.com/2012/03/my-writing-process-and-my-beautifully.html). Actually, that post was about giving writing advice, and specifically about my own “writing process.” In discussing my own writing space, I referred to my inability to keep my desk cleared of

notes about my daughter’s camps, school field trips, acting and dance and music classes and lessons and performances and recitals; printed email messages (because I’ll never remember them otherwise) and so on from people I need to write to, etc., as part of promoting my novels; receipts; bills; more printed emails, etc. related to my teaching; recommendation letter requests; coupons; publishers’ flyers about books I need to order; tape paper clips a phone nasal mist a camera old printer cartridges notebooks files and a ridiculous number of books, most of which I looked a little something up in, six months ago or more, for the novel I’m working on and which I can’t bring myself to return to the library because what if I need to check one more thing?

I’ll confess that I cleaned the desk up a bit for the photo above. But a lot of those things I mention in that breathless list are still there.

For a while I wrote at this little table in our tiny enclosed porch during the warmer months:

 But then we moved the cat litter box out there.

Eventually, when I felt like I couldn’t bear the clutter of my desk any longer, and that I had to have a clearer space for writing, I reclaimed a little alcove in “my study” (I forgot to mention that for a while my study/the guest room was actually my study/the guest room/my daughter’s play room). This alcove had been filled with my daughter’s toys and drawings--mostly things she’d outgrown some time before. I moved those things out, and at first all that I had in that alcove was a nice, empty table. But now it looks like this:

 More books have moved in, as you can see, all pertaining to various writing projects. Also a lot of manuscript pages (there’s a big stack below the table that you can’t see in this photo). I love what I have on the wall here, all images of birds, including two crows and one thrush, and, in the largest image--the photograph on the back wall (a piece called ‘they wondered where the path would lead” by photographer Krista Steinke)--two more crows, these following two children along a country road and consuming a trail of Wonder bread slices.

My husband Jim, daughter Anna, and I spent a sabbatical semester in Santa Fe, New Mexico back in 2005, and I wrote a good bit of my novel In Hovering Flight in the reading room of the Santa Fe Public Library. I wish I had a picture of that room, with its old leather chairs and its lifesize horse statue and the homeless guys dozing over newspapers. I love libraries. Here is my local public library, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania . . . just because:

(Guys! I know this library! I hit their book sale every other month!)

When the clutter, or the noise, at home gets to be too much, I sometimes write in a study carrell at Reeves Library, the campus library at Moravian College, where I teach. I’ve been fortunate to share this small, enclosed study with my friend and colleague Theresa Dougal for many years now. I don’t think we’ve ever been in there at the same time; when Theresa’s not there, sometimes I peruse her various books on Mary Wollstonecraft. Here’s a picture of my delightfully spartan study carrell desk in Reeves Library:

 Last fall, when we had a freakish snowstorm two days before Halloween and lost power in our neighborhood for five days, Jim, Anna, and I spent a couple days together in that study carrell, reading and staying warm and charging our various electronic devices. Did I mention that I love libraries?

As I get older, I’m realizing something about myself. For a long time I thought that what I wanted and needed was a space in my life that was free of clutter, someplace clean and white and vaguely buddhist, with nothing to distract me from the purity of my own work. But I’ve noticed that no matter how many times I try to create such a space, I always seem to end up filling it with more stuff. I’ve also noticed that, instead of cleaning up my old spaces, I just keep adding new ones. Eventually I’ll run out of spaces to fill, of course. And I’ll have to follow my own advice in that blog post, where I admonished anyone who was reading it just to “shove the crap out of your way, and get your ideas down.”

In other words, learn to write wherever you are. I think I’m getting there, slowly.

Check back next week when we take a peek into Robin Lamont's writing space.

The Audio Series: Ken Sparling (read by Jonathan Goldstein)

Our 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.   



Today, Jonathan Goldstein reads an excerpt of Ken Sparling's first novel Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall, which has just been reissued by Mudluscious Press. Jonathan Goldstein is the host of CBC Radio One's Wiretap. He is the author of three books, most recently, "I'll Seize the Day Tomorrow." Ken Sparling is the author of six novels. He is the creator and curator of TheSerialLibrary.com.

Click the soundcloud file below to experience Ken Sparling's Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall as read by  Jonathan Goldstein.

The word on Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall:

From Ken Sparling's intro: "When someone asked me what DAD SAYS HE SAW YOU AT THE MALL was about, it felt like I'd seen a beautiful tree and struggled to describe it to someone, only to have that someone say: 'Yes, but what is the tree about?' You wouldn't know how to answer that question. It isn't the right question. The tree wasn't ever about anything. It was just beautiful."
*lifted with love from goodreads

Book Giveaway: Wool

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.  

I'm excited to be partnering with Hugh Howey 

to bring you next month's Author/Reader Discussion Book!

We will be reading and discussing

Wool and Wool Omnibus with Hugh!

In order to stimulate discussion, 

Hugh Howey has agreed to an INTERNATIONAL give away of 10 copies of either: 

A signed copy of Wool 

-----or-----

 

The eBook version of Wool Omnibus (Wool 1 - 5)

Winners choose which option they prefer!

Here is the Goodreads description:

 This is the story of mankind clawing for survival, of mankind on the edge. The world outside has grown unkind, the view of it limited, talk of it forbidden. But there are always those who hope, who dream. These are the dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing they profess to want: They are allowed outside.

This giveaway will run through December 8th. 

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

Here's how to enter:

1 - Leave a comment stating which you format you prefer - a signed copy of Wool to be mailed to you, or an eBook version of Wool Omnibus (Wool 1 -5) to be sent to you electronically. 

2 - State that you agree to participate in the group read book discussion that will run from January 15th through the end of the month . Hugh Howey has agreed to participate in the discussion and will be available to answer any questions you may have for him. 

 *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!!

Review: Fridgularity

Read 11/19/12 - 11/23/12
3.5 Stars - Recommended to font and word nerds, internet addicts, and end-times humorists.
Pgs: 397
Publisher: Monkeyjoy Press
Published: November 2012

I'm a GenXer. Born into that strange "slacker" generation where the Baby Boomers weren't yet ready to loosen up their death grip on the cool corporate jobs and personal computers and MTV suddenly became permanent fixtures in our daily lives - slowly softening, then mushing, then downright killing our brain cells. I can clearly remember the day our Word Processor was replaced with the Commodore 64. And the day my parents allowed us to upgrade our gaming system from Atari to Nintendo is forever etched into my mind. Or how about this doozey... remember Webtv? Microsoft's failed attempt at bridging the gap between those who were afraid of the internet and those who just couldn't afford a home pc? Yup I owned one of those bad boys! Even bought one for my mom when I moved out so we could keep in touch more easily. Heck, I think the first time I ever used a real, honest to goodness computer was in my High School Journalism class. It's amazing to me that my kids were TAUGHT on pc's  in preschool and kindergarten.

And please don't get me started on the transition from LP's to cassette tapes to CD's to MP3's.... I'm still a little bitter about being forced to move through each one of those phases; I lost some amazing albums along the way. And how about the evolution of the telephone? From princess dialers to wall mounted 20 foot corded phones to portables to cell phones to internet-enabled smart phones? Mind. Has. Been. Blown.

The one thing I will say about my generation? We are awesome at adapting. In a time of ever-growing and ever-changing technology, we've sort of had no choice. If it can be dreamed, it can BE!

And if you were to turn to me one day and inform me that our technology has grown smarter than us and is currently holding the internet hostage while it builds itself up into a god-like entity, well hell, I'd probably be awfully likely to accept and adapt to that too.

In Mark A Rayner's newest release, Fridgularity (a satire on technological singularity), that is exactly what is happening when a web-dependent generation is suddenly and horrifically without internet. An end-of-the-world panic blankets our Canadian characters with fear and a geeky corporate boy named Blake Givens is chosen by the bi-polar internet-stealing entity calling itself Zathir as its Speaker.

The country quickly divides itself into two groups - those who pledge allegiance to the extremely reluctant Blake and worship Zathir as the New Machine God, and those who follow the anti-Zathir movement led by Lord Sona (a lowly gamer who's tired of being a nobody). While these two factions duke it out, Blake finds himself acting as mentor and therapist to this highly unstable entity, which chooses to speak to him through his web-enabled fridge using a variety of fonts and poor grammar structure, while trying to keep his friends alive and healthy. The younger generation, those who have been plugged into the net since birth, are having a helluva time coping  - fighting the urge to become cyber-zombies, they "play" twitter and write on Blake's walls in an attempt to share information and validate each other's existence as they wait for the world to either return to normal or evolve under Zathir's new consciousness.

I want to laugh, but I can totally relate to the paralysis that accompanies not having access to Twitter or Goodreads or my blog. When my computer caught a virus that kept me offline for over a week, I was incredibly thankful for my Droid and Kindle Fire. Without them and their web-enabled little hearts, I probably would have been one of those cyber-zombies pacing the floors every five minutes, unable to read a book for fear of coming across an amazing sentence that screamed TWEET ME. Go ahead, I don't care what generation you were born into, try to live a week without being able to access the internet. I bet you use it more than you realize you do. And I bet by the end of the week you'd be biting your nails down to the nub... no email, no facebook, no evernote to jot down reminders for things... That's the power of Fridgularity... the more you think about it all, the more scary it becomes.... Mwahhahahaha

Rayner constructs this complicated new world with tongue firmly stuck in cheek. It's 1984's Big Brother but at a much more alien, satirical, and technologically crippling scale. It's a world I hope I don't have to ever adapt to, that's for sure!

Where Writers Write: Kristy Athens

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 the authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen. 

Kristy Athens is the author of Get Your Pitchfork On!: The Real Dirt on Country Living (Process Media, 2012). Her nonfiction and short fiction have been published in a number of magazines, newspapers and literary journals. In 2010, she was a writer-in-residence for the Eastern Oregon Writer-in-Residence program and Soapstone. She is a contributing editor at Bear Deluxe magazine. Kristy lives in Portland, Oregon, where she works at Oregon Humanities. 

Where Kristy Athens Writes

This story is not about my usual writing place, but about two months I spent in Harney County, Oregon, as a writer in residence. In March and April 2010, I visited most of the county’s schools and the library in order to give workshops to children and adults, and worked on the manuscript that became Get Your Pitchfork On!: TheReal Dirt on Country Living.

This residency was ideal for me—not only did I have lots of time to write but I was immersed in rural culture. This was perfect because my book covers everything a city person needs to know if they want to move to the country.

Harney County is seriously rural. It’s 10,000 square miles and there is just 0.7 person per square mile. (By comparison, Portland’s county, Multnomah, is 430 square miles and 1,700 people per square mile.) Scattered around the county are a half-dozen elementary schools, which have two sides: kindergarten through third grade on one side and fourth through eighth on the other. Maybe twenty kids total.

The high school is a boarding school—students live at Crane High School Monday through Thursday, and travel on Friday for sports competitions or go home to help on their families’ ranches.

The only problem: Where to write. Because some of the towns are an hour or more from each other, I couldn’t stay in one place the whole time or I’d waste my whole residency in the car. But there aren’t hotels, and the two bed-and-breakfasts that would have made the most sense refused to open early in the season just for me. So I cobbled together a series of unique residences.

Stay #1: Frenchglen

I stayed in the guest room of the teacher’s residence, right next door to the school. Carolyn provided a great first impression of Harney County. She was a conscientious and easygoing host. In retrospect, I should have stayed longer, but I was anxious to have some serious sequestering and dig into my manuscript. I had reserved a trailer in the middle of the desert, where hundreds of scientists and bird watchers gather because of the major migration routes that pass over Harney County.

Stay #2: Malheur Field Station

Trailer for sale or rent …

Wow, they weren’t kidding when they said “trailer” on the website. It actually had a hitch on it!

Not that it would survive being moved. While it wasn’t dirty per se it was easily the most run-down, ramshackle domicile I’ve ever seen. The floor was squishy with layers over layers of rotting plywood patches under the yellowed, chipped linoleum. The mattress was gray, but it seemed cleaner than the couch. I cowered inside my sleeping bag at night and during the day tried not to touch anything except the kitchen table, where I worked. I got a lot of writing done there, because even washing was off the itinerary—the size, number and variety of spiders inhabiting the shower stall saw to that.

Stay #3: Crane Hot Springs

My cabin is on the right; the steam is from the hot springs

This modest resort seemed absolutely lavish after leaving the field station! I rented a little cabin next to the small lake that is fed by a natural spring. The owners were smart and pumped the water under the sidewalks, which was great because it was still snowing in March! It was very sweet but it didn’t have a bathroom, a kitchen, or, most importantly, a desk, only a giant overstuffed armchair. The whole room had a cowboy theme! I tried to save my back by piling pillows behind me and sitting on the very edge of the seat. Not sustainable. Luckily, I could go dip in the hot springs when I cramped up!

Stay #4: Silver Spur Motel

No vacancy on Fridays!

This was the most practical place for me, so I spent most of my time here. I had wireless internet, a desk and a microwave; there were restaurants within walking distance; I was across the street from the library; the motel served a continental breakfast. The only bad times were Friday nights—I hadn’t brought headphones so it was difficult to hold at bay the revelries of country copulation from all sides. One Saturday morning after a particularly long, acoustic night, I had my revenge: I woke at 9 and starting practicing my fiddle.

Stay #5: Riley Store

Taken from a picnic shelter under a billboard that reads, “Whoa! You missed Riley!”

Classic Western “town”: a post office on one side of the highway and a gas station/convenience store/taxidermy/gun shop on the other. There were two apartments over the store, and I rented one for a couple days. I wrote at the kitchen table, in front of the “fireplace.”

Stay #6: Lone Pine Guest Ranch

This bed and breakfast has quite the view!

My hosts were super-nice but staying there was a little surreal, as I was basically in a house in the next bedroom over from people I had just met. I could hear them talking (and only talking, thank you Jesus) in bed. I’ve always had fantasies of just walking into strangers’ houses and sitting down like I belong there, and that’s more or less what I did!

Being a bed and breakfast, the house was decorated to the nth degree—knicknacks and doilies on every surface. Those sorts of “kountry krafts” like wooden plaques on which things are painted like “God bless this mess.” I hoped they didn’t take it personally that I mostly hid in my room when I was there; the television was blaring in the living room so there was no way I’d get anything done downstairs. I sat on my lace-bedecked bed with my laptop on my legs. I put doilies on them so I fit in.

Stay #7: Reload Ranch

Fine hosts, indeed

During the workshops that I held for adults I met many fine people, including a literal one—Nancy Fine. We got along swimmingly, and she took my plight to heart when I lamented going back to the Silver Spur for the final week of my residency. I will always be grateful to her and husband Matt for inviting me into their home.

They were the ultimate hosts—because Nancy is also a writer she understood my need for a desk (she set me up in a spare bedroom) and privacy, but was always there when I needed food or a break to chat. We are still friends. The best was, truly and by far, last.

Check back next week when we show you where Joyce Hennefeld writes.

The Audio Series: Erika Marks

Our 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.   



Today, Erika Marks is reading an excerpt from her novel The Mermaid Collector. A native New Englander, raised in Maine, Erika Marks now lives in Charlotte, NC with her husband, a biologist, and their daughters. She has worked as an illustrator, a cake decorator, an art director and a carpenter. THE MERMAID COLLECTOR is her second novel after LITTLE GALE GUMBO.

Click the soundcloud file below to experience The Mermaid Collector as read by author Erika Marks.

The word on The Mermaid Collector:

For thirty-five-year-old Tess Patterson, the legend is more than folklore; it’s proof of life’s magic. A hopeless romantic who is profoundly connected to the ocean in which she lost her mother, Tess ekes out a living as a wood-carver and longs to find a love as mystical as the sea. But when she’s hired to carve the commemorative mermaid sculpture for the coming festival, a chance to win the town’s elusive acceptance might finally be in her grasp.

For Tom Grace, life’s magic was lost at eighteen, when the death of his parents left him to care for his reckless brother, Dean. Now thirty-five and the new owner of Cradle Harbor’s prized lightkeeper’s house, Tom hopes the quiet town will calm Dean’s self-destructive ways. But when Tom discovers Tess working on her sculpture, an unlikely and passionate affair ignites between them that just might be the stuff of legend itself—even as it brings to the surface a long-buried secret that could tear everything apart.  
*lifted from goodreads with love

Review: Sloughing Off the Rot

Read 11/13/12 - 11/19/12
3 Stars - Recommended to readers with strong stomachs and a sense of humor
Pgs: 125 (eBook)
Self Published - Release Date Unknown

In his third self published novel, Lance Carbuncle takes us inside the head of a comatose man and leads us down the red brick road to redemption.

Our protagonist, John, awakens in a cave with no memory - he has no clue who he is, how he got there, or why this is happening to him. With a voice in his head and a demented madman by his side, he sets out on a dream-like quest to cleanse his soul. Along the way, he picks up Alf the Sacred Burro (long time Carbuncle fans will remember this filthy, lovable little guy), a philosophical giant, and a group of colorful desert indians - all of whom play a special role in John's unusual spiritual journey.

While it's not a story for the weak of heart or soft of stomach, Sloughing Off the Rot does have quite the cheeky sense of humor. Pop Culture references are hidden like Easter Eggs in this incredibly raunchy, slightly pornographic, bizarro mashup of the Bible and the Wizard of Oz. John's quest comes complete with its own red brick road, burning bushes, sleepy field of poppies, and new-wave zombies who will either eat you or gang-bang you. The strange, dreaming landscape is reminiscent of what we're taught to think of as purgatory - that in-between place where you work off your sins to prove you are worthy of living the good life in heaven.

In Carbuncle's hands, though, the inherent good in people is tested in the most hellish and nightmarish ways. A near-complete departure from his previous books, he plays around with salvation and forgiveness and the ability to overcome one's own festering wounds. He toys with man's willingness to persevere. He decorates the path to redemption with some of the most foul and disgusting things I've ever read.

Clocking in at a short 125 pages, I found myself wishing that Lance taken more time to expand on the story - there were times where it felt as though it wasn't as polished as it could have been, where some moments flew by at lightening speed while others seemed to plod along unnecessarily. However, the overall dream-like/ nightmarish setting made it easy for me to forgive those. When we dream, things are not always as clear and linear as we would like them to be, right?

Take a peek at this spotlight, where Lance features an excerpt and two illustrations from the book. Then, go give his writing a whirl. Your mind will never be the same again!

Where Writers Write: Brian Griffith

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 the authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen. 

Brian Griffith is an independent historian who's interested in culture wars and cultural creativity. So far he's published four books. The Gardens of Their Dreams: Desertification and Culture in World History examines how environmental degradation has affected society across the center of the Old World from ancient times forward. Correcting Jesus: 2000 Years of Changing the Story and Different Visions of Love: Partnership and Dominator Cultures in Christian History reflect on the culture wars that have raged within Christianity from the religion's beginning down to the present. A Galaxy of Immortal Women: The Yin Side of Chinese Civilization explores the alternative traditions and religions of Chinese women, which offer the world a powerful vision for partnership, health, and spirituality. Griffith lives in a multicultural marriage in the multicultural hub of Toronto.

Where Brian Griffith Writes

Here's my solarium tower, shown with the blinds pulled aside for a 10th floor view of Toronto's burbs. The view out the windows has remained almost unchanged for years in this economy. About half the year, the outside world is cold, gray, or just iced over. But that's okay for focusing on the screen or pieces of paper without distraction. For some reason, however, I always seem to write about other parts of the world. The flower pots seem to have baby date palms growing in them, because I ate dates on the job and tossed the seeds there. Guess we'll soon need a neon flamingo to go with the palm trees.

The office's interior walls are also of glass, as you see looking through them in the picture from the dining room table, The reference books and boxes of notes are fairly under control, and mostly inside drawers or bedroom closets. If my clutter was exposed to view, it would be clearly visible from the surrounding living and dining areas, which would clash with my wife's clean and open style of life. The desk has a fairly big surface, but still holds little more than the computer equipment, keyboard, and mouse pad. To use notes for writing or to keep style sheets for editing, I need to set up folding tables to the side. Anyway, that's the condo writing life -- small spaces with big views.

Check back next week to see where Kristy Athens gets her writing done.

The Audio Series: Daniel Clausen

Our 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.   




Today, Daniel Clausen is reading an excerpt from his novel The Ghosts of Nagasaki. Daniel has wanted to be a writer ever since he was in elementary school. He has published stories and articles in such magazines as Slipstream, Black Petals, and Leading Edge Science Fiction. He has written three books, The Sage and the Scarecrow (a novel), and the Lexical Funk (a short story/word dance), and The Ghosts of Nagasaki (a novel).

Click the soundcloud file below to experience an excerpt of The Ghosts of Nagasaki as read by author Daniel Clausen.






The word on The Ghosts of Nagasaki:

One night a foreign business analyst in Tokyo sits down in his spacious high rise apartment and begins typing something. The words pour out and exhaust him. He soon realizes that the words appearing on his laptop are memories of his first days in Nagasaki four years ago. 

Nagasaki was a place full of spirits, a garrulous Welsh roommate, and a lingering mystery. 

Somehow he must finish the story of four years ago--a story that involves a young Japanese girl, the ghost of a dead Japanese writer, and a mysterious island. He must solve this mystery while maneuvering the hazards of middle management, a cruel Japanese samurai, and his own knowledge that if he doesn't solve this mystery soon his heart will transform into a ball of steel, crushing his soul forever. Though he wants to give up his writing, though he wants to let the past rest, within his compulsive writing lies the key to his salvation.

*lifted from goodreads with love

Review: The Alligators of Abraham

Read 11/5/12 - 11/12/12
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to fans of the unconventional / historical fiction but not really
Pgs: 214 (read on Kindle)
Publisher: Mud Luscious Press
Release Date: Nov 15, 2012

Beware readers. The Alligators of Abraham is not a book that is passively read. Written in the strangely comforting second person plural, Kloss sucks you into this novel, dragging you through the dead bodies that are left behind in this war, and our country's obsession with embalming EVERYTHING, and your father's particular brand of CRAZIES after losing his first son and your mother, and the death of Lincoln and the rise of Grant, and the uncontrollable infestation of alligators.

Unlike anything I have read before, and certainly not typical of what I normally read, this war-time explosion of sound and vision moves you beyond the historical and into the inexplicable. God, how often I found myself clawing at the surface for breath as I made my way through these sentences as thick as stew, these emotions forced out of the pixelated text, everywhere I turned was death and destruction and confusion and no way of escaping it.

And there was no escaping your father until he began to forget you, the general who lost his mind and hated you for being alive, the pining for your brother and mother that consumed him and the juices he pushed into his veins, perfecting and practicing for their own.

And the snapping, starving alligators that pulled themselves out of the waters to devour the dead, to pull down the still living, until the living struck back, and hung the alligators from the street lamps, leaving them to eat each other.

A powerful, possessing novel that crawls down into your throat and chokes you from the inside out, The Alligators of Abraham shakes loose the skin of fiction and marches through your streets bare and bloodied and full of rage.

I have been waiting to get this novel into my sweaty little hands ever since Mud Luscious Press premiered it in our Indie Book Buzz series last December and it was worth every agonizing second...

Listen to Robert Kloss as he reads an excerpt from the book.

Then go and give it a read. You will be gasping for air, too. That is a promise.