The Indie Ink Runs Deep: Jason Pettus

I've been tossing around the idea of blogging a tattoo series for nearly a year now. I know there are websites and books out there that have been-there-done-that already, but I hadn't seen one with a specific focus on the authors and publishers of the small press community. 

After hoarding the photos and essays I've been collecting from these guys since July of 2012, and with the promise of spring peeking its deliciously sunny head out through all of this winter gloom, I decided there was no better time than now to finally unveil THE INDIE INK RUNS DEEP mini-series!

Today's Indie Ink is from my new boss, Jason Pettus, owner of CCLaP:

Back when I was an undergraduate, I decided to celebrate my 21st birthday with a rite of passage, by doing something I had always wanted to do but had always been afraid of; the original plan was to get my first tattoo, but I ultimately chickened out and got my ear pierced instead (which turned out to be pretty terrifying indeed, in that my starter stud got stuck in the gun that shot it through my ear, and they had to twist and turn it to no end of intense pain). Ten years later, I decided to finally make a go of it with a tattoo; it was the late '90s and I was living in Chicago by then, and was a writer myself at the time so decided to get a copyright symbol inked on my shoulder, done by someone who was a fellow participant in what at the time was Chicago's large poetry-slam community. It took about an hour and was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, which is what has kept me from getting any others besides this.

Indie Spotlight: Ilan Mochari

Almost every author has two jobs: Writing the book, and finding the employment that allows time to write that book.

In today’s spotlight, Ilan Mochari, whose debut novel, Zinsky the Obscure (Fomite Press), has earned high acclaim from Booklist and Kirkus Reviews, talks about his nine years as a waiter in the Greater Boston area.

There’s a One-Letter Difference Between Waiter and Writer

I know, I know. It’s not the deepest etymological observation.

But when you spend nine years as a waiter -- and it’s during those years that you write your first novel -- well, the similarity between the words doesn’t lose its charm.

And here’s the thing: I never wanted to be a waiter. In 2003, when this adventure began, I hated staying up late; I was indifferent to recipes and mixology; and I was exceptionally unkempt. Previous employers had critiqued my appearance in annual performance reviews.

So why did I do it? Mainly because of my admiration for a woman named Sarah Casalan. We had grown very close, speaking almost every night on the phone. She was under 30 and already a project-management rockstar, on track to be a C-level exec in the near future. And I? I was 28, unemployed, and drowning in red ink. My debt had reached $20,000 and I still spent exorbitantly on trips to Vegas and God knows what else. (When your late-twenties brain is still filled with teenage levels of passive suicidal ideation, that’s how you roll.)

I told Sarah that what I wanted -- more than anything -- was to write a great novel. But how could I find the time to do it, while working enough to climb out of debt? She suggested waiting tables. It was, she argued, the best way to be “all in” about writing a book, while staying fiscally responsible. You made good money, yet it was the type of job that you didn’t take home. Leaving aside the memorization of menus, your downtime was yours, rather than your manager’s.

I savored the suggestion, for the geekiest of reasons. The narrator of one my favorite novels, I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal, was a waiter. “Try putting that on a job application,” Sarah joked.

I was terrible at the beginning. I dripped drinks, I dropped dishes, I mangled orders. And I struggled to primp properly. There were wrinkles in my clothes and flakes of dandruff in my dark-brown hair. But after a few false starts -- where my employers, with plenty of justification, lost patience with me -- I settled in at the Full Moon Restaurant. The owners took a chance, despite the warts on my profile. I had no idea, when I began working there in October of 2003, that I would stay until February 2012. But that’s exactly what happened. And it was one of the best things to ever happen to my writing life.

For one thing, I got to work with other creatives. Musicians and glass artists, painters and filmmakers. All of us were waiting tables for the same reason. Our interactions were fruitful and empathetic, absent the petty jealousies that sometimes arise when you’re talking shop with genre bedfellows.

For another, my Spanish improved dramatically. That will happen, when most kitchen employees hail from Central America. At one point I was reading voraciously about El Salvador’s history. I composed three stories in what I (then) conceived would be a collection of Salvadoran tales.

On top of all this, I built something of a fan base from my regular customers. One of them -- the playwright Lydia Diamond -- ended up giving my novel a blurb.

But more than anything -- corny as it sounds -- I learned how to persevere as a writer. Two examples:

•   The Sunday of Despair. I wrote my entire first draft by hand in coffee shops in 2003 and early 2004. By the summer of 2004 I had completed a second draft by typing it up (and editing as I went) on my computer. Then -- one Sunday morning in 2004 -- my PC died. I worked an entire brunch shift almost certain I’d lost my book. Fortunately, the PC hadn’t died. It had just lost the ability to run Windows. So with a few tricks of the MS-DOS trade, I was able to copy the Word file onto a disk and save it. But let me tell you -- that was one bleak Sunday.

•   The Years of Rejections.One of my favorite moments in The World According to Garp is when young T.S. Garp realizes, while living with his mother in Vienna, that he has what it takes to be a writer. He just knows he can write a better story than the famous (fictional) Australian writer Franz Grillparzer. My own Grillparzers were too many to mention. Getting published? How hard could it be, in a world full of Grillparzers? How wrong I was. I began seeking agents in 2007. I still don’t have one. And I didn’t find my publisher until 2011. By which time I realized how fortunate I was to find one. And how lucky I was that it only took four years.

All this is why I’ll always be grateful to Sarah. At a time when I was struggling, she gave me some killer advice. And now, nearly 10 years after I wrote its first sentence, my novel is coming out. I am holding my head a little higher. My ideation is almost gone. And I am paying more attention to how I dress.

Bio:

Ilan Mochari’s debut novel, Zinsky the Obscure (Fomite Press), is now available on Amazon. His short stories have appeared in Keyhole, Stymie, Ruthie's Club, and Oysters & Chocolate. He has a B.A. in English from Yale University. He used it to wait tables for nine years in the Boston area.

Larry Closs: A First Time Author's First Year

Back in December 2011, I received an email from Larry Closs, a first time author, requesting a review for his upcoming release Beatitude. The well written, personalized pitch and the interesting premise of the book caught my attention. Having fallen in love with his writing and his characters, I offered to host a blog tour for Larry's book, fearful that his newness to the literary world and the smallness of his super-small press might cause it to go generally unnoticed.

To kick off the tour, I asked Larry to discuss what being an indie author meant to him. You can read his essay on the topic here. Today, a little over a year after the book's release, Larry is back on TNBBC with a guest post, sharing his thoughts and gratitude...

Gratitude for Beatitude

A first-time author’s first year

Stopping by New York’s landmark independent bookshop The Strand recently, I headed to a specific stretch of the store’s “18 miles of books”—a few inches on a shelf in the fiction section. As I made my way down a 15-foot canyon created by towering black shelves on either side, I scanned the last names of the authors on the spines of books I passed, advancing in reverse alphabetical order until I arrived at the letter C. Holding my breath for just a moment as I zeroed in, I happily exhaled when I saw not one but four copies of my debut novel, Beatitude.

And there you have it, one of the minor yet sublimely soul-satisfying moments in the life of a first-time author—seeing your book in a bookstore. It’s a moment that comes after a myriad others that punctuate the countdown to publication. You write a book. Intrigue an agent. Land a publisher. Negotiate a contract. Finesse the manuscript. Caress the galley. Bless the cover. Brace for the Big Day. And though you’ve daydreamed for a full year or longer about what happens next, how your life will be irrevocably altered when your words finally enter the world, you never could have predicted what actually happens, where your book will take you.

That’s what I found, anyway. Being an author has indeed altered my life irrevocably, not in the big ways I might have imagined, but in small ways that are no less significant. Beatitude has brought an ever-increasing collection of insights, encounters and connections accentuated by a series of firsts that continue to unfold. Here is what happened.

1. The first time I held Beatitudein my hands. It’s hard to believe, but supply-chain idiosyncrasies provided Amazonwith copies of Beatitude a week before my publisher, Rebel Satori Press. Frustrated at seeing my book for sale online, and by the idea that warehouse workers could hold it but I couldn’t, I finally caved and ordered two copies, not only paying full price for the books but splurging on overnight shipping. I held the package for a minute before ripping it open, and I sat with the book in my lap for a lot longer, staring at the cover and reflecting on the long and winding road that had brought me to that moment. It’s often said that the journey is the destination, and Beatitudehad taken me on quite a journey, but there’s a lot to be said for finally reaching the destination.

                        2. The first email from a reader. Shortly after Beatitudewas published, I received an email from a reader, someone I didn’t know, who wrote to tell me how much he’d connected with the story of Harry and Jay, two young men who bond over their shared fascination with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and the Beat Generation and struggle with the sometimes thin line between friendship and love. “The message Harry reiterated, that sometimes people are only capable of giving a certain amount of love and that doesn’t mean they love you any less than you love them, rang very true. A lot of the scenes I felt like I lived through but never could have put into such lucid words. Thanks for doing that.” No, Mark, thank you. Few words have ever meant more to me.

3. The first reading. In a coincidence I discovered at the last moment, the date I selected at random from a list of possibilities provided by Barnes & Noble Community Relations Manager Lou Pizzitola was Jack Kerouac’s 90^th birthday, March 12, 2012. For a reading from a novel inspired by the Beat Generation, I couldn’t have picked a more appropriate date if I’d tried—even more so, given that one of the themes Beatitude examines is whether there’s such a thing as coincidence. The best part of the reading, besides seeing a lot of friends in the crowd? Seeing a lot of strangers.

4. How much of the book is true? This is the most frequently asked question I get. Because Beatitudeis a first novel and written in the first person, many assume that everything described in the book actually happened in real life. My answer? It’s all true. Including the talking cat.

5. Read me, maybe. People I never expected to read Beatitude did; people I felt sure would read it didn’t. What can you do? I’ve never asked anyone to read Beatitude. I figure if they want to, they will. And though I love hearing reactions to the book, I never ask anyone who has read it for their thoughts. Again, I figure if they want to share them, they will. On a related note, I discovered that anyone who knows me might not know what to say after they’ve read it, especially if they believe that every word is true (see No. 4).

6. Giving thanks. The last thing I wrote before Beatitude went to press was the Acknowledgements, and I was elated to finally, formally, thank everyone who had helped me along the way. Some were surprised to see themselves there, thanked for something they said or did—sometimes long forgotten—over the 10 years it took me to write the book. They never realized they had inspired me to keep going, keep believing, when it was hard to believe I would ever finish. I can never thank them enough.

7. Readers’ favorite lines and passages. I have my favorite lines and passages as, I imagine, every author does. Some were surprisingly effortless, but most were the result of many hours laboring to perfect the rhythm and cadence, sometimes for a single sentence. So it is fascinating to hear which lines resonated with others. From Jennifer: “It arrives when you least expect it, in ways you never imagine, from a place you never thought it could come, in a form you never thought it could take…” From Ben: “It was only a matter of time, I told myself, before everything fell into place. It was only a matter of time, however, before everything fell apart.” From Chris: “We’re sharing experiences right now. You only have to be in the moment to realize it.” From Patrick: “To be Beat was to be in love with life, to exist in a state of beatitude, to exist in a state of unconditional bliss.”

8. The first review. And every other review.There’s nothing more rewarding than an insightful book review that uncovers layers of meaning never consciously intended but, now that you mention it, there they are. I’m fortunate to have had many perceptive reviews of Beatitude in mainstream media, literary magazines, industry trades and book blogs, as well as equally discerning reviews on Goodreads.com, Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I’ve read every one, never tire of them and try to personally thank everyone who took the time to read my words and offer their considered opinions. I love learning what my book is about.

9. Is Beatitude a gay novel—or not?This question came up almost immediately and took me by surprise. The backstory: Though my publisher, Rebel Satori Press, has an imprint for works of interest to the LGBT community, QueerMojo, founder Sven Davisson felt Beatitude belonged under the Rebel Satori imprint, which focuses on inspirational books exploring “revolutionary personal transformation.” One of the very first reviewers tagged Beatitude as “gay literature,” adding that the author would no doubt “cringe to have it described as such.” I did cringe, but only at the suggestion that I would, and only until the next reviewer, on an LGBT literary site, praised Beatitude but concluded that she “would probably not label this novel as ‘gay’ if asked.” So which is it? And does it matter? An interviewer asked me my thoughts. Here’s what I told her:

I didn’t set out to write a “gay novel.” I’m not even sure what makes a novel “gay.” A gay writer? A gay narrator? Two gay characters? Three gay characters? What’s the tipping point? How many gay characters does it take to screw in a…? Is a gay novel about an experience that only an LGBT person can have? Putting prejudice, bigotry and religious nonsense aside, what experience would that be? When Brokeback Mountain came out, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal were constantly asked what it felt like to kiss another guy. Ledger was so exasperated by the question that he finally snapped: “It’s kissing a human being. So fucking what!” The point is: Remove gender, sexuality, race, class and nationality from the equation and human experience is universal. I read and relate to plenty of “straight” novels but I’ve never thought of them as such. No one does. They’re just novels.

Are novels gay by virtue of who writes them or who reads them? It’s like a Zen koan, a riddle. Two monks observe a flag flapping in the wind. “The flag is moving,” says one. “The wind is moving,” counters the other. Their master overhears them and says, “Not the flag, not the wind; mind is moving.” To me, Beatitude is a novel. Like it says right on the cover. But I know that readers will view it through their own preconceptions, which is entirely appropriate, because how preconceptions affect the ability to view things accurately is one of the themes Beatitudeexplores.

One of my favorite reviews, by Tara Olmsted of BookSexy, sums it up best: “And that’s the heart of Beatitude: the reminder that love is love, regardless of whether it’s romantic or platonic. Larry Closs weaves together a beautiful and complicated narrative around this idea. He’s created a novel that shouldn’t be pigeonholed as any one thing: as a love story, LGBT lit, a memorial to the Beats, a book about NYC. Because it’s all those things and more. There are multiple layers to the story Closs has given us, and it’d be a mistake to allow ourselves to get caught up in just one.”

10. Best LGBT Fiction of 2012. Beatitudewon a Gold IPPY in the Independent Publisher Book Awards for Best LGBT Fiction of 2012. So, that settles No. 9, right? Not exactly. Seems the Best LGBT Novel of 2012 wasn’t even nominated for any awards sponsored by LGBT organizations, despite accolades from many LGBT magazines, literary publications and websites. Is Beatitude gay or not gay? Not gay enough, someone suggested. Whatever that means.

11. Starving, hysterical, naked. So what? While clearing the rights to several literary excerpts that appear in Beatitude, I discovered I had included two poems I’d heard Allen Ginsberg read—“Like Other Guys” and “Carl Solomon Dream”—that, surprisingly, had never been published. Even more surprisingly, Ginsberg’s literary agent granted permission to feature the poems in Beatitude, the first time they would be published anywhere. As a Beat aficionado, I couldn’t have been more thrilled. Even better, two unpublished Allen Ginsberg poems were an unexpected and amazing promotional opportunity. Though I alerted every major poetry publication about the poems, and each asked for a copy of Beatitude, not one has ever mentioned either the poems or the book. I wasn’t expecting an article or a review, but I did think that the discovery of two previously unpublished poems by one the giants of modern poetry would merit a few sentences. Lesson learned: It’s extremely challenging for a first-time author published by an independent press to get attention. Allen Ginsberg also appears in the book trailer I produced for Beatitude. With Johnny Depp. No one cared about that, either.

12. The unseen scheme. It’s difficult to choose the single most significant aspect of being an author, but if pressed, I’d say it’s the connections that Beatitude has both forged and fortified. As Beatitudehas made its way in the world, I’ve met fellow Beats, other authors, readers, reviewers, bloggers, booksellers and a multitude of assorted literary types. A few are famous—composer David Amram wrote a testimonial for the cover, City Lights Bookstore co-founder, publisher and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti sent a postcard thanking me for the book I sent him—but most simply saw something of themselves in Harry and Jay, inspired, perhaps, by their loyalty and dedication to each other in the face of forces that might drive them apart. From that first unexpected email from a reader, Beatitudehas turned strangers into friends, taken friendships to another level and brought my closest even closer. I couldn’t ask for more from 77,000 words wrapped in an illustration of a cat with a New York City subway token for an eye. I couldn’t ask for more, period.

13. Once an author, always an author. One of the best things about being an author? I’ll always be an author. Even if I never write another book. Staring at the four copies of Beatitude at The Strand, I noticed one had a sticker on the cover—“A Strand Signed Copy”—the final volume from a dozen I’d signed months earlier on a visit to the store with my best friend. He had urged me to offer to inscribe the books, which we found prominently displayed on the first floor Gift Ideas table, but I was self-consciously hesitant to follow his advice. When I finally did so, the manager couldn’t have been happier. I was glad to see three unsigned copies on the shelf, an indication that the original stack had sold out and the store had ordered more. And though my best friend wasn’t with me at that moment, his words were. I signed the books. The manager added stickers. And before I left, the books were back on the Gift Ideas table. Yep, I’m an author.

Larry Closs is author of the novel Beatitude, founder and editor of TrekWorld, an adventure travel magazine, and director of communications for Next Generation Nepal, a nonprofit that reconnects trafficked children with their families. He has been a writer, editor, photographer and videographer for News Corporation, Time Warner, Hearst and Viacom. He has produced digital shorts for the Travel Channel and his photographs and videos have been featured by CNN, The Huffington Post, USA Today, HarperCollins and The Nate Berkus Show. Follow him on his site, Instagram, Facebook, Twitterand Google+.

Where Writers Write: Fiona Maazel

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 Fiona Maazel. 

Fiona is the author of the novels Last Last Chance (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008; Picador Paperback, 2009) and the brand spankin' new release Woke Up Lonely (Graywolf, 2013). She is winner of the Bard Prize for Fiction and a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35″ honoree, which feels less potent now that she is 37. Her work has appeared in Anthem, Bomb, Book Forum, Boston Book Review, The Common, Conjunctions, Fence, GQ, Glamour, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Millions, Mississippi Review, N+1, The National Post, The New York Times, The NY Times Sunday Book Review, Salon, This American Life, Tin House, The Village Voice, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. 

She teaches at Brooklyn College, New York University, Columbia, and Princeton, and was appointed the Picador Guest Professor at the University of Leipzig, Germany, for the spring of 2012. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

This is Where Fiona Maazel Writes

Check back next week to see where BJ Best gets his writing mojo...

The Indie Ink Runs Deep: Cynthia of Aqueous Books

I've been tossing around the idea of blogging a tattoo series for nearly a year now. I know there are websites and books out there that have been-there-done-that already, but I hadn't seen one with a specific focus on the authors and publishers of the small press community. 

After hoarding the photos and essays I've been collecting from these guys since July of 2012, and with the promise of spring peeking its deliciously sunny head out through all of this winter gloom, I decided there was no better time than now to finally unveil THE INDIE INK RUNS DEEP mini-series!

Our first human subject is Cynthia, publisher of Aqueous Books:

I'd intended for the tattoo shown on my arm to be quite a bit smaller--a few inches high, in fact. But due to the detail of the knotwork, this is as small as the tattoo artist could craft it. I first found the design in a book of celtic crosses, a small coffee table edition, actually--nothing momentous. The book included rubbings and photographs of crosses throughout the UK, including the one now on my arm, and also one that takes up a large space in the middle of my upper back. Both are from grave markers, and I wish I recalled the particulars regarding whose grave they're from and what the markings mean, but alas. Because the original stones are so ancient, some of the detail has been worn away by time and the elements, so I give hearty kudos to my tattoo artist (Scott Alvarez, formerly of Hula Moon studios in Pensacola, FL) for his painstaking reconstruction of those missing areas.

Why crosses? I'm asked this all the time. It's nothing mysterious, and is directly linked with my personal beliefs and spirituality. I've had a few close calls in my life, and I like to think of these as some sort of protection, as superficial and superstitious as it may seem to others. Also, I thought the knotwork was beautiful--something I could live with for a long time. It also hearkens to my British ancestry (I'm a mixture of heritages, but British is one). I do often wish the cross on my arm was smaller, and I find myself covering it for work and in the professional sphere. So it is really something that is more personal to me, rather than something I like to show off.

BIO:

Cynthia Reeser is the Editor-in-Chief and founder of Prick of the Spindle and Publisher of Aqueous Books. Her poetry, fiction, reviews, visual art, and articles can be found in a variety of print and online sources. Her books include Light and Trials of Light (Finishing Line Press, 2010), a nonfiction book on publishing for children from Atlantic Publishing, which was a finalist in its category in the 2010 Indie Book Awards, and a book on publishing for the Kindle (Atlantic Publishing). Her visual art and a full curriculum vitae can be found at www.cynthiareeser.com.

Book Giveaway: Fight For Your Long Day

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 to bring you next month's 

Author/Reader Discussion book!

We will be reading and discussing Fight For Your Long Day

with author Alex Kudera

In order to stimulate discussion, 

Atticus Books and Alex have agreed to give away 

10 paper copies

to US residents only

Here is the Goodreads description:

Meet Cyrus Duffleman--"Duffy" for short--an adjunct professor who can barely afford his two-room apartment. Forget about an unfinished novel: He'd be thrilled with health insurance. Still, he gamely shuffles to four urban universities each day to teach, and works a security guard graveyard shift once a week. Cobbled together, he can almost make a living. But today, Duffy's routine isn't quite so predictable: The cryptic mumblings of a possibly psychotic student. Government protests and a bow-and-arrow assassination. Frenzied attempts to spare his sanity (and safety)--all while a female coed quietly eyes him. Part A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole), part Straight Man (Richard Russo), FIGHT FOR YOUR LONG DAY is a promising debut from a new literary talent. It will resonate with anyone who has ever known, been taught by, felt sorry for, or lived the life of an adjunct professor.

This giveaway will run through April 8th. 

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

Here's how to enter:

1 - Leave a comment stating why you'd like to receive a copy of the book. 

2 - State that you agree to participate in the group read book discussion that will run from May15th through the end of the month. Alex Kudera 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!

The Audio Series: Andrew Blackman

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.


Today, we're treated to an excerpt of A Virtual Love, read by author Andrew Blackman. Andrew is a former Wall Street Journal staff writer, now living in London and concentrating on fiction. His latest novel, A Virtual Love, deals with identity in the age of social media, and is out in April 2013. His debut novel On the Holloway Road (Legend Press, 2009) won the Luke Bitmead Writer’s Bursary and was shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize. His articles, essays and stories have also been published in Monthly Review, Post Road, Carillon and Smoke, and in books by Twenty Stories Publishing, Negative Press and Arachne Press, among others.

Click the soundcloud link below to experience A Virtual Love as read by the author:

 


The word on A Virtual Love:

For Jeff Brennan, juggling multiple identities is a way of life. Online he has dozens of different personalities and switches easily between them. Offline, he shows different faces to different people: the caring grandson, the angry eco-protester, the bored IT consultant. So when the beautiful Marie mistakes him for a famous blogger, he thinks nothing of adding this new identity to his repertoire. But as they fall in love and start building a life together, Jeff is gradually forced into more and more desperate measures to maintain his new identity, and the boundaries between his carefully segregated personas begin to fray. In a world where truth is a matter of perspective and identities are interchangeable, Jeff finds himself trapped in his own web of lies. How far will he go to maintain his secrets? And even if he wanted to turn back, would he be able to?
*lifted with love from goodreads

This is not your momma's poetry

Whether you noticed or not, TNBBC had taken an unannounced mini-break from the internets this week. While I was cleaning out my head and working through some difficult stuff, I curled up with some amazing new poetry collections from some of my favorite small presses.

All ode-to-video-games and grief-and-depression, incredible sexy-times-to-the-soundtrack-of-the-ocean and hold-your-tummy-hilariousness, these 4 poets are doing things with words you don't want to miss.

Beware, this is not your momma's poetry collection:


BUT OUR PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE
BJ Best (Rose Metal Press / March 2013)

Who doesn't love old school video games, right? If you're a GenXer like me, you can't pass up this collection of poetry inspired by the best of the retro-80's Atari and Nintendo games. Finding inspiration in the likes of Dig Dug, Pole Position, The Oregon Trail, and Space Invaders, BJ Best infuses his words with nostalgia and longing. Each poem recalls to us the wonder or aggravation of the game for which it was named, forcing us to recall those simpler times and sweeter victories. How very alike our feelings for these games mirror our interpretation of the world beyond the cartridge and console.

Even the collection's title, cleverly stolen from the Super Mario Bros game in which each castle defeat left the gamer frustrated because the prize - the princess - was yet at ANOTHER castle... even the title causes that familiar ache of love, expectation, and disappointment to wash over us. Imagine what the words contained within will do.





MAN VS SKY
Corey Zeller (YesYes Books / March 2013)

To look at Corey - who I had the opportunity to meet at AWP this month - you'd never peg him as a poet. Not that I have this preconceived notion of what a poet should look like, mind you. But the words you'll find within the pages of this collection, words dripping with grief and ghostly ponderings, don't seem to match the man with the sideways cap and sleepy eyes.

There is incredible tenderness in these poems, a hesitant curiosity and confusion about what happens when someone we love leaves this world, and us with it, behind. Ghosts haunt its pages and feelings and thoughts seem to float up into the ether even as the poet attempts to tie them down and keep them grounded.






THE WAITING TIDE
Ryan W Bradley (Concepcion Books {imprint of Curbside Splendor} / Sept 2013)

I got me a new collection of poetry from one of the coolest author/poets around. Ryan W Bradley is second only to Rod McKuen when it comes to tickling my heart and lady-parts with his words. That's right, I said it. His poetry touches me in all the most inappropriate ways and I simply cannot get enough.

This particular collection, an ode to Pablo Neruda's The Captain's Verses, contains some of the most passionate and love-drenched poetry I've read in a long, long time. Ryan, much like McKuen, has this incredible knack of taking a single, intimate moment and by turning it over and over again in his hands, stretching it into a lifetime into which he is born, lives and dies, and becomes born into again.

If you haven't had the experience of getting lost Ryan's poetry, I recommend you get that remedied right away. Since this collection doesn't release until fall, try these to whet your appetite: Love & Rod McKuen  and There Will Always Be Better. 




INJECTING DREAMS INTO COWS
Jessy Randall (Red Hen Press / Sept 2012)

Jessy Randall is a girl after my own heart. Her poetry is about robots, muppets, monsters, dreams, video games, and motherhood. It's perfection parading around as paranoia. It makes you giggle, snort, hiccup, and gasp.

I stumbled across her collection just a few weeks ago while flipping through my twitter feed. Her Muppets Suite poem was linked through The Nervous Breakdown and I thought it was absolutely brilliant. The good news is... as awesome as this is.. there are poems within this collection that are even better. I know, how could that be possible, right?

Her approach to poetry is so refreshing. I'm betting she'd be a cool chick to hang out with. Go on and get this one. You're going to find so much to love here.

Jessy Randall's Guide to Books & (non-alcoholic) Booze

Time to grab a book and get tipsy!

Books & Booze  premiered as a new mini-series of sorts here on TNBBC back in October. The participating authors were challenged 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. 

In the Spirit of Carrie Nation

I don’t drink (my father was an alcoholic), so my Guide to Books & Booze will be in the spirit of Carrie Nation, 19th century axe-wielding teetotaler.

Injecting Dreams into Cows is a collection of poems. I know, yuck, right? Well, that’s what I think about alcoholic drinks, so shut up. These poems are about robots, video games, phone sex, Muppets, and Pippi Longstocking (not all at the same time).

“Your Brain,”  a poem about my first kiss, is a two-liter bottle of warm Tahitian Treat, because that’s what was available at the Saturday night Doctor Who get-togethers where I got to know that boy. Also available: Doritos. So, I had Dorito breath for my first kiss, but so did he, so I guess it’s all right.

“The Consultant,”  which gives my book its title, is a chocolate egg cream, because both almost always require additional information. “The Consultant” is a strange poem and I don’t really have an explanation for it. I can, and have, given instructions to servers at ice cream parlors on how to make an egg cream, even though egg creams appear on their menus. When they look confused at my order, I can’t change it, because if there’s a chocolate egg cream on offer, I want it. So I walk them through the recipe (it’s basically chocolate milk with seltzer in it).

(http://eatuptheworld.blogspot.com/2012/05/pop-this-in-your-mouth-and-taste-it.html)

The lavender lemonade at Shuga’s in Colorado Springs is the drink for “Muppet Suite,” because they are both a bit sour when you expect them to be sweet, with (I hope) some complexity to the taste. Shuga’s also sells a ginger lemon tea so spicy it bites you in the mouth. I don’t have a poem like that, I don’t think. Well, maybe “Phone Sex with You.”  

“She Confuses Up with Down”   has to be milk in a juice glass with a dinosaur on it, because that’s the usual drink of my children.

Bio:

Jessy Randall’s poems, poetry comics, diagrams, and other things have appeared in Asimov’s, McSweeney’s, Mudfish, Painted Bride Quarterly, Rattle, and Sentence; they have also been hung from trees, hidden in birdhouses, and sold in gumball machines. Her new collection of poems is Injecting Dreams into Cows (Red Hen Press, 2012). She is the Curator of Special Collections at Colorado College, where she co-teaches a class on the history and future of the book. Her website is http://personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jrandall and she blogs about library shenanigans at http://libraryshenanigans.wordpress.com/.  

Susie (of Insatiable Booksluts) Takes it to the Toilet

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

Susie, the brains behind Insatiable Booksluts, gives us a good soak in today's bathroom post:

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There are many popular reading spots that just don't work for me. I don't like reading in bed very much; I can never seem to get comfortable when I'm completely horizontal, no matter how much I roll around trying to find a sweet spot for reading. I don't own enough pillows to get a good angle, and hubs gets mad at me for some reason when I try to commandeer the blankets to prop myself up better. Nor do I have a favorite reading chair these days; my papasan bit the dust in college when my idiot roommates left it out in the rain to get mildewed, and I never bothered to replace the cushion. I can't say that I don't like to read on the john--I frankly don't trust anybody who claims they never read there--but . . . well, I have to confess that I often use that time to level up in Bejeweled.

When Lori mentioned that she wanted to launch a bathroom reading series, I immediately knew that I needed to participate, even though it was geared more toward toilet reading and that's my Bejeweled time. Why? Because my ideal reading place, practically since I learned how to read, has been here:

The bathtub is perfect for reading, provided you can hang onto your book and keep it from taking a dip. (Have I had bathtub casualties? Yes, indeedy. Do I frequently risk dunking my Kindle anyway? I do. I live on the edge.) In the tub, I can lay at a perfect angle with ample back support, be surrounded with warm or cool water appropriate to the weather, and even dump in some bubbly smelly things to heighten the ambiance. The lighting is usually bright, and--the best part--people tend to leave me alone when I'm in the bathroom with the door closed. I can't get that kind of alone time in any other part of the house, where cats and husband vie for my attention. One of my cats does her best to actually sit on whatever I'm trying to read . . . but not if I'm in the bathtub, with a protective moat of water around me.

I particularly like my current bathroom. It has a cool focal wall and a window overlooking some trees. It lacks any kind of storage, but I made--I mean, asked--my husband to install some shelves. You know, for shampoo, soap . . . and books.

I keep a pile right above the tub to make sure I'm never caught without something good to read. It works if I don't have my smartphone handy for a round of games, too. (I may or may not also have The Old Man and the Sea stashed under a box of tampons. Papa H is probably rolling in his grave.)

Now you know my secret--when I talk about reading, I'm almost always parked right here:

Except, you know--without pants.