Indie Spotlight: Chris Dietzel

How hard can gaining an audience for your book really be? Surely, the biggest battle is getting it signed by a publisher, right? Well, as a long-time blogger and newbie to the marketing and publicity side of  publishing, I'm here to tell you that, as an author - whether you self published or were picked up by a small press - the hard work is only just beginning...

And Chris Dietzel, author of The Man Who Watched the World End, agrees with me. Heck, this former MMA cage fighter has a pretty cool analogy about fighting vs writing for you to sink your teeth and fists into.... Check it out:

Fighting and Writing

I’ve fought inside a cage, and I’ve written a novel. I’m here to tell you that winning in mixed martial arts (MMA) is easy compared to gaining an audience when you’re an unknown author.

After graduating college in 2000, I immediately started training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) with the intent of fighting in sanctioned cage fights. I had always been a goofy kid, the class clown, but as soon as I saw tapes of MMA fights in college, I knew I needed to give it a shot. As someone who never took anything seriously, even the dreams I held most dear, the cage fights were a test of the most basic fight-or-flight variety, a challenge that would teach me what type of person I really was.

The goal became an obsession. I saw the people in my gym who trained more often and more ferociously than everyone else, and I wanted to train even harder than they did. Along the way, the confidence that BJJ gave me in myself, changing me from the court jester to someone who understood the importance of goals and personal victories, allowed me to think about my other dream, even more secretive and dear to me than fighting, as something other than a fool-hardy delusion. I wanted to write the Great American novel.

In college, I had so little confidence in achieving my goals that I didn’t even bother taking a creative writing class. But only a few years later, thanks to BJJ, I began to think of this fantasy as something I could achieve if I truly dedicated myself to it. It was still a secret from my friends and family, something they might think of as an unrealistic pipedream. But to me it was no longer a foolish goal to be laughed away.

Starting in 2004, when I wasn’t working at my 9-5 job or training in BJJ or MMA, I was writing. Instead of going out with friends on Friday and Saturday nights, I wrote. Instead of going to Happy Hour, I went home and wrote. I had two goals: fighting and writing. Absolutely all of my time was devoted toward these two ends.

In 2006, I earned my brown belt in BJJ and had my first MMA fight, which I won. A couple months later, I had my second fight and my record improved to 2-0. What I noticed was that both fights were easier than the training I went through in preparation for them. I practiced with the goal that if I trained harder, trained more often, and trained smarter than my opponent, I would win. The result was completely up to me.  And that theory held up.

During this entire time, I was honing my craft as a writer, developing my voice, understanding my strengths and weaknesses, and generally improving my craft.

My original intent was to fight four times. That would give me a big enough taste of MMA to prove to myself that I had achieved my goal. Life has a way, though, of altering your plans. Right before my third fight, I suffered a series of injuries, culminating with a neck injury that would ultimately prevent me from ever fighting again. This was okay because it allowed me to focus my time on writing.

In the years since, every hour I have that’s not spent working at my day job is dedicated to achieving my dream of being a novelist. I come home from work and I write. When my friends go out on the weekends, I stay home and write. This is not meant to sound like a sacrifice; it’s what I enjoy and it comforts me to know I’m working toward a dream that I was once afraid to tell other people I even had.

Over the years, I’ve had a couple short stories published and I’ve been signed to a wonderful literary agency. Little did I know that the most difficult fight was still in front of me, the aspect of writing that makes it so much more challenging than evading kicks and elbows. Both adventures require determination if you want to have any hope of following through with your goal. Both require an endless willingness to learn from your mistakes. But when you fight, the outcome is completely in your own hands. If you have better technique and better conditioning than your opponent, chances are extremely likely that your hand will be raised after the final bell. But in writing, no matter how much you work toward your goal, no matter how focused you are, the result depends on other people. You can become a truly great writer. You can write powerful stories. But in the end, whether or not people want to read what you write is out of your hands. You depend on other people to see value in what you’ve written, and you depend on them to spread the word about it.

That’s the difference between fighting and writing that makes the latter so much more brutal than breaking another man’s spirit inside a cage. A fighter controls his destiny. A writer, no matter how hard he or she works toward their goal, needs good luck and good fortune and support from people all over. For a fighter, for someone who relishes that outcomes are based on tangible things such as hours spent in the gym, this is the most formidable type of battle.

Do not interpret this as pessimism sneaking into the cracks of a lifelong dream. Nothing will make me give up my goal of gaining an audience for my novels. If BJJ and MMA have taught me anything, it’s that even if you lose one day, you’re only defeated when you don’t get back in for the next fight. Then, and only then, are you truly beaten. I know it sounds corny, but it’s true. No, it’s not pessimism at all that makes me say how much more difficult writing is than fighting. It’s a personal reminder that the eventual victory will be even sweeter in the end. It’s meant to remind any other struggling writers out there that what you’re doing requires more tenacity than dodging punches and escaping chokes. You are only defeated when you stop putting words to paper. To quote the writer J.A. Konrath, “There’s a word for writers who never say die… the word is published.” I will keep up the fight. If writing is your dream, you should keep going too.

And along the way, the next time you read something that you enjoy, no matter what it is, pass it along to someone else who may enjoy it. And when you do, know that you are helping its author do something even more demanding than beating a trained fighter—you are helping them achieve their dream.

Chris graduated from Western Maryland College (McDaniel College).  He currently lives outside Washington D.C.  His dream is to write the same kind of stories that have inspired him over the years. His short stories have appeared in Temenos, Foliate Oak, and Down in the Dirt. THE MAN WHO WATCHED THE WORLD END is his first novel.

More information about the novel can be found at: http://www.watchtheworldend.com and https://www.facebook.com/TheManWhoWatchedTheWorldEnd

Where Writers Write: Adam Golaski

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 Adam Golaski. 

Adam is the author of Color Plates and Worse Than Myself. He edited The Problem of Boredom in Paradise: Selected Poems by Paul Hannigan. His blog is called Little Stories. 

Where Adam Golaski Writes

On a drive to Boston, I jotted notes in marker on the cardboard box that rode shotgun; while seated in the sun I draft an essay on the flyleaf of my copy of Billy Budd. I like to write outdoors, to sketch from the scene. More often, I work in-studio.

Recently, I write at a little table beneath the stairs. You may not be able to see the wallpaper pattern clearly, but it's quite unique--in gold and green, it depicts the island featured in the Robert Aickman short story "The Wine-Dark Sea." In the boombox on the steps is a cassette I found half-buried in Hadley, Mass.

From time to time, I write in an office. There's one with no windows. I dislike the overhead lights, so I use a lamp I hauled out of broom closet. It weighs a ton. The little fluorescent tubes its hood houses hum pleasantly.

The other office is a little more mundane. At the moment, I’m seated on the dining room floor, a box for a table.

Check back next week to find out where Eric Hudspeth writes.

The Indie Ink Runs Deep: Christoph Paul

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 Christoph Paul. Christoph is a former porn store manager and singer/guitarist of the rock band The Only Prescription. He graduated from the Wilkes University with an MA in Creative Writing. "The Passion of the Christoph" is his first book of non-fiction and satire being released April 1st 2013 with Swift Ink Books. He is now working on a YA book called "Joey 'The Art Film' Caldo" and a collection of poetry with the working title "Buy This Poetry Book So I Can Afford Therapy."

The higher tattoo above proves a fact that nerds can have tattoos, as those who have healthy sex life probably do not recognize that the man with red eyes and playing cards is Gambit from the X-Men (hey, its better than a tribal tat.) I was obsessed with X-Men as a kid and loved Gambit because he had a cool accent, a cool power of putting energy into things so they blow up, and hit the character Rogue. Though, when I am asked by a female I find attractive about the tat I say, "I have so much energy and need to put into something to feel alive..." Or "It represents my magician energy to use Jungian Philosophy." Which sounds a lot better, but is total bullshit. I just really like Gambit.

The other tattoo is from a literary novel I have been working on with the working title 'Prophet' and will finish it in probably 10 more years. It's inspired by a scene where a father tells his son who is 9 years old that the wild bird he loves to feed will not find a mate because his feathers aren't colorful enough. The boy becomes sad and angry at God and he says to Him "It is not fair, why is the world like this?" Later he captures the bird and paints his feather brighter losing his bird friend but happy that he brought justice into the world...damn, I need to finish this book, that is pretty artful. 

The Audio Series: Eli Brown

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, Eli Brown reads to us from his novel Cinnamon and Gunpowder. Eli Brown lives on an experimental urban farm in Alameda, California. His first novel, The Great Days, won the Fabri Literary Prize. His most recent title is Cinnamon and Gunpowder.

Click the soundcloud link below to experience Cinnamon and Gunpowder as read by author Eli Brown:

The word on Cinnamon and Gunpowder:

A gripping adventure, a seaborne romance, and a twist on the tale of Scheherazade—with the best food ever served aboard a pirate’s ship

The year is 1819, and the renowned chef Owen Wedgwood has been kidnapped by the ruthless pirate Mad Hannah Mabbot. He will be spared, she tells him, as long as he puts exquisite food in front of her every Sunday without fail.

To appease the red-haired captain, Wedgwood gets cracking with the meager supplies on board. His first triumph at sea is actual bread, made from a sourdough starter that he leavens in a tin under his shirt throughout a roaring battle, as men are cutlassed all around him. Soon he’s making tea-smoked eel and brewing pineapple-banana cider.

But Mabbot—who exerts a curious draw on the chef—is under siege. Hunted by a deadly privateer and plagued by a saboteur hidden on her ship, she pushes her crew past exhaustion in her search for the notorious Brass Fox. As Wedgwood begins to sense a method to Mabbot’s madness, he must rely on the bizarre crewmembers he once feared: Mr. Apples, the fearsome giant who loves to knit; Feng and Bai, martial arts masters sworn to defend their captain; and Joshua, the deaf cabin boy who becomes the son Wedgwood never had.

     Cinnamon and Gunpowder is a swashbuckling epicure’s adventure simmered over a surprisingly touching love story—with a dash of the strangest, most delightful cookbook never written. Eli Brown has crafted a uniquely entertaining novel full of adventure: the Scheherazade story turned on its head, at sea, with food.
*lifted with love from goodreads

Indie Spotlight: Samuel Sattin

For years, we've stood by and listened (and possibly participated) as people discuss what exactly moves a book from the literary fiction realm into one of genre fiction. If it's plot heavy and straight forward, does it become genre? If it's prosey and character driven, does it then become literary? What if a book contains both a strong plot and flowery language? Is it possible for a book to hover above such classifications?

Samuel Sattin, author of League of Somebodies and contributing Editor at The Weeklings, has something to say about that very discussion and where he feels his own novel falls.

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Yesterday I was graciously welcomed to Houston by one of my favorite writers (and friends) Mat Johnson to read at a local series put on by some of his university’s alums. While I received a compounded dopamine infusion of beer and Texas BBQ, Mat said one of the most flattering things I’ve heard since I started down this daft and anxiety-laden literary path. Basically, that one of the reasons he liked my debut novel (a miracle in itself), League of Somebodies, because it has an interesting concept. Now this might not sound too important to you—you’d think that every book that claws its way to the shelf is rooted in basic narrative cohesion. But you’d be wrong. Literary fiction in particular, while making up a significant chunk of what I read, and claiming to corner the market on ‘felt life,’ trades pesky interest-clinchers such as plot and concept for character and prose in what can amount to a whopping amount of snooze.

League of Somebodies’ bare bones elevator pitch is essentially this: A father feeds his son measured amounts of a plutonium compound to turn him into the world’s first superhero. I don’t quite know where it came from—it’s not terribly complex, and doesn’t pretend to create a tangle of twists and turns. But it is a framework, built upon science fiction tropes, within which to pursue serious themes. Books that rely too heavily on prose and character while ignoring the ingenuity of fresh, compelling ideas can be accused of being meandering at best, uncompelling at worst. Similarly, novels that rely purely on plot, especially in the genre fiction realm where certain writers fall prey to clunky language and flat characters, can be equally unsatisfying, centralized around cheap thrills without a cause or concern for verity. For this reason, there have been many books, whether New Yorker darlings or hard fantasy/sci-fi grocery store paperbacks that I’ve shook my head at in scorn before retiring them from my vision. Elitism in the literary world panders purely to itself, while sensationalism amongst the annals of genre fiction flounders in the ephemeral. My favorite books are the ones that seem to understand that elements of storytelling can compliment each other, and that all literary devices are effective in their own capacity. Nothing can be discounted based on a desire to erect and/or defend an ivory tower.

When people who like League of Somebodies talk about it, they describe it as being difficult to classify, as inhabiting a strange space between absurdity and pragmatism. As basically fucking bizarre (in a good way). Though the book has a premise steeped in science fiction, that premise, like all good science fiction, is a vessel for the exploration of universal themes: manhood, fatherhood, the destruction of the home, the reason behind our obsessions with heroes and their accomplishments. And while such arcane elements were important to me while writing, I tried to make sure that the importance of the imagination, the super powers and hellish beasts weren’t overly dwarfed by the book’s themes. Whether successfully or not, League of Somebodies tries to straddle the ground between literary and genre fiction without patronizing, or elating, either one. The best books, in my opinion, tend to inhale and/or gestate multiple genres in that exact fashion. If a novel resolves to discount another form fiction as if in protest to it, it ultimately limits its own capacity and becomes—even if brilliant—narrow. League of Somebodies doesn’t pretend to be brilliant, but it is an exercise in inclusion. Superheroes, monsters, mothers, fathers, serial killers, serial monogamists, giant robots, angels, devils death incantations, folklore, masculine identity, giant octopi, hermaphroditic lions, misogyny, and coveted tomes of ancient importance: that is League. A Frankenstein’s monster that walks and grunts and hopes to remain on two feet. Regardless of what opinions it ends up receiving, the creature is alive. And it's going to try to remain relevant in our world of flawless, anodyne form.

Samuel Sattin's work has appeared in Salon Magazine, The Good Men Project, io9, Kotaku, and has been cited in The New Yorker. He is a Contributing Editor at The Weeklings, and author of the debut novel LEAGUE OF SOMEBODIES, described by Mat Johnson as "So rich with originality it's actually radioactive," and by Joshua Mohr as a “Whirling force that blends the family saga, superhero lore, and a coming of age story to a frothy cocktail.” He lives in Oakland, California, with his wife, beagle, and tuxedo cat. Please visit him at samuelsattin.net

Matt Salesses Guide to Books & Booze

Time to grab a book and get tipsy!

Books & Booze is a new mini-series of sorts here on TNBBC that will post every Friday 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. 

Let Matt Salesses show you how it's done:

How to make my book, I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying, into a drinking game.

Drink: soju

Time: 3 hours

Drunkenness: guaranteed

Here are the rules:

1. Don't bring anything you might lose--my 1st time drinking soju, I either lost my wallet or had it stolen; I don't remember most of the night, so!

2. Play by the cultural rules: turn away from an elder when you drink; serve the person you are with and let yourself be served; always pour or receive a drink with two hands if the person you are with is above you in age or stature; if someone says, "one shot," you have to down the entire shot.

3. Drink anytime the narrator does something crummy. Drink double anytime he does something nice.

4. Read aloud and drink anytime you slur or get tongue-tied.

5. Drink until you feel Korean.

Warning - here are some things that may happen to you if you drink too much soju: selfies, bunny ears, karaoke, piggyback rides, passing out, addiction to soju.

Matthew Salesses is the author of I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying. He also wrote The Last Repatriate , and two chapbooks,Our Island of Epidemics and We Will Take What We Can Get . He was adopted from Korea at age two, returned to Korea, and married a Korean woman. He writes a column about his wife and baby for The Good Men Project. His other essays and fiction appear in The New York Times Motherlode blog, Glimmer Train, The Rumpus, Hyphen, Koream, Witness, American Short Fiction, and others. He has received awards from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, PANK, Glimmer Train, Mid-American Review, HTMLGIANT, The University of New Orleans, and IMPAC. He did his MFA at Emerson College (2009), where he was the Presidential Fellow and editedRedivider, and now serves as Fiction Editor for the Good Men Project.

Where Writers Write: Scott Elliot

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 Scott Elliot. His new novel is TEMPLE GROVE (The University of Washington Press.) Scott’s first novel Coiled in the Heart (BlueHen/Putnam, 2003) was a Booksense 76 Selection, a Literary Guild alternate selection, and a finalist in two award categories for The Texas Institute of Letters. The novel was featured on NPR’s Morning Edition with Bob Edwards and was chosen for the 2005 American Library of Congress sponsored One-Community-One-Campus-One-Book celebration in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Scott’s essays and short stories have been published in several literary and other journals including the Antioch Review, The New York Times, the Louisville Review, Juked, Mayday, Forklift Ohio, Hawk and Handsaw, the Writer’s Chronicle, and elsewhere. His collection of short stories Return Arrangements was a 2009 finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award for short fiction. In 2011 he was awarded the G. Thomas Edwards Award for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship at Whitman College, where he is Associate Professor of Creative Writing and English. In 2012 he founded the Walla Walla Whitman Imaginative Writing Partnership, which places talented Whitman undergraduate writers in public schools. He lives in Walla Walla, Washington with his family. His website is www.scottelliott.net

Where Scott Elliot Writes

 Spaces Away from the Desk

There’s the place where a writer does the actual physical writing, puts the ass in the chair, gets black on white.  And then there are the places where the writer does the imaginative work. These places are everywhere, unconfined even to waking hours.

The poet Donald Hall has mentioned the idea of hosting an idea for a long time before writing it down. The writer and teacher of writing Donald Murray spoke of assigning tasks to his subconscious that it would perform while he was going about his day, or seeming to.  One of the best writing jobs I’ve ever had was when I worked in the Shipping and Receiving Department of Case Logic in Boulder, Colorado. I would fill orders and often simply stroll the aisles cleaning up packing material while also working on my first novel. This hosting, this work of the subconscious, happens everywhere, even (for some writers especially!) in dreams, and sometimes without the writer’s volition. 

For a variety of reasons due to the complete onslaught of two boys (now 5 and 2), priorities elsewhere, my writing space has not been the retreat it once was or that I would like it one day to be. It is not a bastion from the chaos of the world whose controlled environment might help me control the worlds I want to create. The space doubles as our guest room and, unless the boys are asleep, it’s prone to frequent and often wonderful visits. While I foresee a future in which I won’t trip over fire trucks and squeaky toys  as I fumble toward the writing desk to see if I can work in some time at the QWERTY keyboard before the boys wake up,  more often I have to take my writing where and how I find it. The poet Sara Vap who visited Whitman College (where I teach) said that after her children were born she went so far as to write poems in her car while she was stopped at traffic lights. I haven’t tried this—perhaps this is more an option for a poet than a novelist?-- but this extreme and efficient (!) technique of tucking in any time you can after the advent of kids resonated with me.

 There are some ways in which one can better court the activity of mind conducive to good writing, jumpstart the process and get it moving when one is away from the space where the actual writing happens.  A good walk works for me if there’s not much time, doing  yard work or gardening is also good thinking-prior- to-actual-writing activity.  I once heard T.C. Boyle say at a reading that while at work on one of his books he got into the habit of digging a hole and filling it back in. For me, solo hiking and fly-fishing work like nothing else to get me into the proper head space for working on writing obstacles and generating good  energy and ideas to bring back to the page. Where I live in Walla Walla, Washington, I’m lucky to have a few relatively quick hiking spaces that help me get into the zone where the best writing away from the desk may happen. One of these is the South Fork Walla Wall River Trail, a view from which is here.

Another place I sometimes go for away-from-the-desk writing is McKay Grade,  a rough gravel road used infrequently by hunters on quads, that goes up into the Blue Mountains, our little spur of the Rockies . I sometimes joke that McKay grade is my Stairmaster. It’s also sometimes my writing desk away from my writing desk. It’s about a ten to fifteen minute drive from my house. Herds of elk sometimes grace and  graze in the wheat fields nearby, there’s  bear scat under the apple trees in the fall, and a few years ago a cougar kit was abandoned in a barn on one of the farms I pass on the way in. Here’s the view from McKay Grade:

I also sometimes take walks at Bennington Lake, a reservoir about five minutes away, surrounded by rolling wheat fields and with views of the Blue Mountains.

Within an hour to two hours of Walla Walla are some good fishing streams. . I can only count fishing as writing work if I go alone. If someone else is there, I become too self-conscious to enter the writing zone. The activity of fly casting, the quiet sweep of the line, occupies the surface of my mind, while I work on problems in the writing. The motion of the river suggests narrative motion. There are, of course, also parallels between fly-fishing and writing—casting into the mystery of words.  David James Duncan has referred to a fly as a little floating fiction, tied with nimble fingers to resemble a real fly, a bit of entomological mimesis. When I can (see passage on kids above), in the fall, I go fishing for steelhead (ocean-going rainbow trout up to fifteen pounds) on the Grande Ronde River.  Sometimes, of course, the quiet thinking is interrupted  by beautiful action, which I will submit is analogous in some ways to the writing process—patient, speculative, quiet work resulting in a discovery, a take, something worthwhile on (or within) the line(s) that pulls at you with surprising urgent force. Holding a fish that has traveled hundreds of miles upriver from the sea is something like holding a published book in which you’ve invested hundreds of days’ work. Here’s a photo of Grand Ronde steelhead that rudely interrupted my away- from -desk writing one day two falls ago:

These outings might be said to be part of a healthy writing ecosystem; I could and do get work done without them, but it doesn’t feel as good and right. For each novel I’ve written, I would guess there were probably a dozen or so breakthrough moments attributable to outings like these on which I courted energy to serve me in my writing. Probably as many or more eureka moments can be credited dreams, but that’s a different space for another time. Many a time I’ve returned from one of these walks or a fishing trip with my heart rate up, my senses awakened, a renewed wonderment at the teeming gifts of the natural world, and, as if in response to these superabounding gifts, the glow of a new idea, a fresh approach, something I need to get down alive in me.  In these moments I know that whenever or wherever I do next sit down to write, whether in an airplane seat, the porous borders of my toy-strewn study/guestroom, or during a quiet early morning or late night moment I’ve stolen from a busy day, this energy will pull me down the hill of the project because I’ve already done the uphill pushing away from the desk.  

Check back next week to see Adam Goloski's writing space...

The Indie Ink Runs Deep: Ryan W Bradley

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 a TNBBC favorite... Ryan W Bradley. Ryan has pumped gas, changed oil, painted houses, swept the floor of a mechanic's shop, worked on a construction crew in the Arctic Circle, fronted a punk band, and managed an independent children's bookstore. He now designs book covers. He received his MFA from Pacific University and his poetry and fiction has been published widely online and in print. He is the author of three poetry chapbooks, a story collection, PRIZE WINNERS (Artistically Declined Press, 2011) and CODE FOR FAILURE, his debut novel (Black Coffee Press, 2012). His poetry homage to Pablo Neruda, THE WAITING TIDE will arrive in 2013 from Curbside Splendor. He lives in Oregon with his wife and two sons.

I have been in love with Maurice Sendak's illustrations for as long as I can remember, especially the world and creatures of Where the Wild Things Are. I remember wanting tattoos when I was as young as 9. One of my earliest ideas was to get my favorite Wild Thing, Bernard, tattooed on me. The years passed and the idea never left, but got pushed off in favor of other tattoos. Then Sendak passed away. It made me immeasurably sad for the art the world would miss out on. I knew it was time to get my Bernard tattoo. I had him done holding Max's crown in remembrance of Sendak, who will forever be one of my favorite artists.

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Because Ryan is the cool dude that he is, he's also shared a sound bite of himself reading from Where the Wild Things are.. Take a listen:

The Audio Series: Alta Ifland

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 are treated to two excerpts - one from The Snail's Song and one from Death-in-a-Box - as read by author Alta Ifland. 

Alta grew up in communist Romania and immigrated to the United States in 1991. After teaching French for many years, in 2004 she left academia and became a freelance writer and book reviewer. She is the author of two books of short stories: Elegy for a Fabulous World (Ninebark Press, 2009, finalist for the Northern California Book Award) and Death-in-a-Box (Subito Press, 2011, winner of the Subito Fiction Prize); and two collection of prose poems: Voix de Glace/Voice of Ice (Les Figues Press, 2007, bilingual, winner of the Louis Guillaume Prize) and The Snail’s Song (Spuyten Duyvil, 2011). She is currently at work on her third novel.

Click the soundcloud link below to experience Alta Ifland reading the two stories:

From The Snail's Song:

The word on The Snail's Song:

Poetry. With drawings by the author. "This SNAIL'S SONG is a refined encapsulation of all the beauty and sadness in the world; a true tour-de-force of imagination and sincerity."--Alex Epstein
*lifted from goodreads with love


From Death-in-a-Box:


The word on Death-in-a-Box:

Blending the fabulous with the macabre, the lyrical with the grotesque, the atemporal with the present, and melancholy with dark humor, these stories will take you from the ambiguous world of modern folktales where a man tries to catch Death in a box, to communist Eastern Europe where a man eats his own brains, to contemporary women who like garbage, or who prefer to keep their babies inside their bodies rather than give birth.
*lifted from goodreads with love

Gregory Heath's Guide to Books & Booze

Time to grab a book and get tipsy!

Books & Booze is a new mini-series of sorts here on TNBBC that will post every Friday 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. 

Drowning "Thoughts of Maria" in Booze...

‘Thoughts of Maria’ is a multi-narrative novel, in which each of the main characters relates their own experiences. Here are the characters (and their drinks):

Maria is a nineteen year old Filipina, who lives with her family on a rubbish dump in Manila. They are desperately poor, but they are proud, decent people and it is love, not poverty, which binds them together. There is no money for luxuries such as alcohol, though this will change when Maria meets (and subsequently agrees to marry) Gerry, a recently divorced Englishman in his late forties:

We ate back at the hotel in the evening, and I chose the food. I have not eaten so well for a very long time. We had chicken and pork adobo, followed by hot rice cakes with butter and coconut, and a bottle of Chilean wine. There were some silences between us, but it did not seem to matter.

We are meeting again tomorrow. Gerry says that if we are both happy with the arrangement, we need no longer talk to other people. I think we are both happy with the arrangement.

Gerry is a property surveyor who specialises in old buildings. He is a traditional Englishman through and through, so it’s definitely beer for him. In fact he is having a beer with his son Callum, sitting out in the back yard one evening, when he tells him of his plans to marry Maria:

I wanted to get to the point, but I needed to explain myself properly. I was nursing my beer bottle in both hands now, gazing at it. ‘I was walking into the newsagent’s a few months ago,’ I said. ‘I saw this couple. They looked really content… She was a lot younger than him, and she was oriental… I wondered if they’d met through an agency. I kept thinking about it afterwards… And I’ve met a young lady myself… Her name’s Maria.’

Callum, however, is more into his drugs than his alcohol:

Coke’s my drug of choice. It might not last long but while you’re on it’s like you’re superhuman, alive to every tingle of every nerve ending in your body. I’ve seen some people get wired on it but for me it’s always good. And, God, what it does for music. A banging tune is a great thing anytime, but after a bit of Charlie we’re talking another dimension. You feel the music in you, as physical as the heart pounding in your chest, lifting you up, driving you on.

Yeah, there are dangers if you overdo it. Too much and you’ll burn half your nose out, and there’s always the risk of ending up with a batch that’s been cut with something deadly, but at the end of the day that’s just a risk worth taking. Because what’s the point of a long life if you’ve never truly lived, eh? Honestly, what’s the point?

Rachel is Gerry’s ex-wife (and Callum’s mother). Now trapped in a loveless relationship with Carl, she is extremely unhappy, and is slipping rapidly into alcoholism. She drinks vodka, and plenty of it:

Now I’m a proper drinker. I sit at the breakfast bar, or at the kitchen table, and I drink vodka. And it doesn’t help me. It helps Carl, in a way, after a while, because I get to the stage where I no longer want to kill him. Because I realise that it’s all my fault. That I’m a stupid bitch and I should have known. That I should have known from the beginning, because I’ve never been special, and I never will be. I am ordinary, just that, and anything else could only ever be an illusion. I should have stayed with Gerry, in our ordinary life. I should have been grateful that he wanted me. But I wasn’t, and now I can’t go back. Because Gerry has shaken me off like dust.

I'm a British writer from a little town called Melbourne, in Derbyshire, England. My poems and short stories appear frequently in literary magazines and I have published two novels.

The main theme of my work is people’s inability to communicate in a meaningful way with those whom they love, and this idea forms the basis of my first novel, ‘The Entire Animal’, which was published in 2006 by The Waywiser Press.

My second novel, ‘Thoughts of Maria’, published in 2013 by Open Books, continues this theme, but also touches on wider issues such as drugs, arranged marriages and sexual obsession.

I love to hear from my readers - visit my website at or tweet me @_GregoryHeath! 

MP Johnson Takes it to the Toilet

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

Today, MP Johnson gives us the toilet treatment. His short stories have appeared in more than 25 underground books and magazines, including Bare Bone and Cthulhu Sex. His debut book, The After-Life Story of Pork Knuckles Malone, was recently released by Bizarro Pulp Press. He is the creator of Freak Tension zine, a B-movie extra and an obsessive music fan currently based in Minneapolis. Learn more at www.freaktension.com. 

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I don’t read novels on the toilet. I’ve tried. I end up getting sucked in and staying on the sweet seat well after I’ve done my business and crusted over. When I get up, I can barely stand through the pins and needles of legs that have fallen asleep, and I imagine falling face first into the radiator and knocking myself unconscious. If you can read a novel on the toilet, you’ve got more willpower than me or you read shitty novels.

I don’t read comic books on the toilet either. I’ve tried that too. I’m too anal about keeping them in mint condition, and somehow if I bring them into the danger zone they turn into magnets, pulling in liquid, and their value decreases exponentially. I don’t bring my phone, IPad, laptop, etc. into the bathroom for the same reason.

When I’ve got a number two brewing, there’s only one thing that’s coming with me: a zine. You know about zines, right? Do-it-yourself, often-photocopied publications typically filled with content that is easily absorbed in short bursts.

Take, for example, Hot Dog Dayz #3, which I just got in the mail. It’s filled with collages made out of old wrestling trading cards and photos of mangled couch cushions in the woods, easy to stare at in a zen-like trance as your body eases its waste into the great porcelain sea. Or how about No Vanguard #2 and its stark black and white images paired with stream of consciousness rants about drinking whisky and pondering the cosmos? Thinking and stinking, that’s what I do.

More substantial business requires a zine with more than just images. I was recently gifted a stack of Wasted Quarter zines dating back to the late ‘90s. Each one is filled with microscopic print that obsessive-compulsively, and quite humorously, covers every aspect of the author’s life, from going to the Northtown Mall to creating answering machine greetings entirely out of Fred Flintstone phrases and Hanna Barbera sound effects.

Sometimes, I need fiction. I’ve got a couple issues of Splatterpunk zine, so I can read gore stories and interviews with the likes of Ray Garton and get inspired while I’m perspiring out a hard load. I also recently got Wizened Youth by Michael Kazepis, which is technically a chapbook but it looks like a zine to me so what the fuck. I read the whole thing while making waste, and loved every sentence. Fictionalized accounts of Henry Rollins’ Black Flag days? Hell yeah!

So, ummm, want to borrow some zines?