Father's Day Fiction

Happy Father's Day to all you daddy's out there. 

In honor of Father's Day, I thought I'd share some of the father-focused books I've read in recent years. Each one of these novels deals with fatherhood in one way, shape, or form. Good dad's, confused dad's, or absent dad's... no matter what kind of dad, we celebrate you in literary fashion!

I Love You Much Like Ice Cream 

Lincoln Bradley

(Artistically Declined Press)

When you're 4 years old and your dad owns his own publishing company, you can pretty much bet that the cute and crazy things you say will eventually be recorded and released for the entire world to pine over. 

An adorable collection of silly and stunningly insightful sayings from 4 year old Lincoln - and yes, he has quite a lot to say about his daddy.

A Questionable Shape

Bennet Sims

(Two Dollar Radio)

In this zombie novel that is not a zombie novel, friends Matt and Mike wander the streets in search of Matt's father, who they believe has been turned into one of the undead and who may, at any moment, come shuffling back to one of his many old haunts. 

The love and concern that Matt has for his father, the fear he harbors of leaving him out in the world, undead and wandering alone, is the rock around which this novel revolves. 

Famous Drownings in Literary History

Kevin Haworth

(CCLaP)

This collection of non-fiction essays focuses on what it's like to be Jewish, to be a father, and to be a Jewish father in the 21st century.

Kevin shares the memories of his son's circumcision, and during elementary school, his obsession with wearing dresses. And the story of his daughter's near drowning in the pool, among others.

I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying

Matt Salesses

(Civil Coping Mechanisms)

The story of a reluctant father told in flash fictions bits, I'm Not Saying picks apart one man's reaction to the news that he is the father of a 5 year old boy, upon the death of the boy's mother. 

It's lovely and heartbreaking and tender and wicked all at the same time. 

 Fight Song

Joshua Mohr

(Soft Skull Press)

Fight Song is about a father who is failing at life - sucky programmers job where is under appreciated, a near loveless marriage, and kids who'd rather text and play video games than hang out with him. 

Rather than suffering through a depressing story about a man who is this close to losing it all, we instead find ourselves on a journey of self-discovery, of finding friends in the unlikeliest of places, of learning the value of accepting help even when you weren't asking for it.

The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving

Jonathan Evison

(Algonquin)

Another father-in-crisis story that you worry will tug horribly at your heart strings but instead finds you strapping your ass to the car seat for fear of falling off!

TRFoC is an incredible demonstration of human resilience. A father who blames himself for the death of his children hits rock bottom and decides to claw himself back out by taking on a job that puts him in charge of the care and counseling of a crippled teenage boy. The two hit the road on a journey of sorts - one that helps and heals them both. 

Big Ray

Michael Kimball

(Bloomsbury)

A son's tender, honest look back at the life and death of his abusive father and the impact it has had on his life - Another knock out from Michael Kimball. 

Big Ray is a microscopic look at how the things we do and say scar a person's soul, leaving permanent reminders of us, for better or worse, long after we are gone. But it's not entirely morose. Michael's thrown in some dark humor and "yo daddy's so fat" jokes to lighten the mood a bit, and because, well, it's human nature to find the funny in the face of death.

My Father's House

Ben Tanzer

(Main Street Rag)

As I read My Father's House, I saw it as Ben's way of publicly expressing what it is like to lose a parent to the front row horror show that is Cancer. It felt like a cleaning of the slate and of properly saying goodbye. And I felt it was a true reflection of the chaotic feelings that rush through you from moment to moment, day to day, when preparing yourself for the ultimate and unavoidable loss of someone you can't imagine living without.

FatherMucker

Greg Olear

(William Morrow)

Greg Olear has found the magic combination with this "day in the life of a stay-at-home-dad" dramedy. It's a book that quickly worms its way to your heart while fingering your funny bone.

Fathermucker is a mosaic of fatherhood. It's clearly filled to the brim with pieces of Greg's own experiences and it tenderly balances the good with the bad, the funny with the serious, the parental frustrations with the silliness of childhood.

Indie Spotlight: Corey Mesler

Ever sit around and wonder if you should become a writer? I can honestly say that I've never had much interest in writing - I'm a much better reader than I am a writer; I thank god for you writerly folk every single day - but I imagine there are tons of people out there who attempt to pick up the pen (or stab at the keyboard) to make their literary mark on the world.

For those of you who wish to start, but don't know how... or for those of you who are afraid to ask for advice for fear of being told "stop while you're ahead", author Corey Mesler has something he'd like to share with you.

I'm happy to present the following guest post - some cheeky words of wisdom from one who writes to one who wants to write...

How to be a Writer

Even with my small-pond modicum of success I am often asked for advice about writing. “I know nothing,” is usually my initial response. But sometimes people want the advice, no matter how dubious the source. So, I pin here a few thoughts about the writing life. 

First off, congratulations on your bravery for choosing one of the loneliest, most solitary of the arts. (Or perhaps you believe it has chosen you. Perhaps you will be one of the chuckleheads [and I use the word in a non-pejorative sense since I consider myself Prince of the Chuckleheads] who add the words “Poet” or “Author” to their name. Like this: Author Corey Mesler. Or Corey Mesler, Poet.) Either way, writing is not a collaborative art. (Unless you’re James Patterson, and then, foo on you for making novels a workshop product.) Though you must stand on the shoulders of the giants before you, you will write in your own garret. It will be done in silence, inside a bell jar, so to speak. Even if you have smart, writerly friends with whom you may share a piece while you’re working on it, even if you have great advice from other writers, the actual work will be done by yourself, alone. All alone. And, out in the workaday world, you may find few people who understand just what it is that you do while in your laboratory. Still, you must soldier on.

My first, best piece of advice is not very original: Read. Read everything and everybody. Read the greats. Read your peers. Let one book lead you to another book, link to link, like a pre-computer, foolscap webpage maze. Or, more currently put, like how one webpage links to another which links to another, and you follow because it’s easy, because you trust the good people who made webpages.  Read the writers who make you happy, who challenge you, who seem to talk specifically to your heart.

And my second piece of advice is equally unoriginal: write. Just keep writing. The crafting of a melodious sentence is difficult work, achieved after hours and days and weeks and years of practice. But, when it happens, there are few joys that compare. You can only learn to write by writing, by doing it, by placing word after word, until you partly understand how this amazing alchemy called language works. I say partly understand because, no matter how long you stay at it, you will never fully comprehend why sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Why is it that one day you feel like John Updike, like everything is flowing from you as naturally as Avon flowing by Stratford, and on another day, a day you began the same way you began the wonderful day of writing, the words seem stuck in you like some kind of constipated paste? Why is that? No one knows. In the end, writing, like most art, is a great mystery, done by magicians. Really, done by magicians.

So, just go read, and write. And luck to you all, brave astronauts! And, remember, when you get to be my age and you’ve published a few scrawny, nursling, introspective, wobbly, sincere or insincere volumes, some youth will come up to you and ask for your advice. They will ask how to become a writer and you can say to them: I know nothing. 

COREY MESLER has published in numerous journals and anthologies. He has published six novels, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue (2002), We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2006), The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores (2010), Following Richard Brautigan (2010), and Gardner Remembers (2011), Frank Comma and the Time-Slip (2012), 2 full length poetry collections, Some Identity Problems (2008) and Before the Great Troubling (2011), and 3 books of short stories, Listen: 29 Short Conversations (2009), Notes toward the Story and Other Stories(2011) and I’ll Give You Something to Cry About (2011). He has also published a dozen chapbooks of both poetry and prose.

He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times, and two of his poems have been chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. His fiction has received praise from John Grisham, Robert Olen Butler, Lee Smith, Frederick Barthelme, Greil Marcus, among others. With his wife, he runs Burke’s Book Store in Memphis TN, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He can be found at www.coreymesler.wordpress.com. 

CCLaP: Mountainfit

Holy cow, CCLaP is at it again! 

We've gone and released another non fiction collection out into the world. 

This week, we celebrate the re-birth of Meera Lee Sethi's non fiction, memoir-ish collection  Mountainfit. Meera self published this book through a successful kickstarter campaign as a personal project, with no real intentions of seeing it make a splash in the literary world. One fateful day, however, after reading a few of CCLaP's critical book reviews, Meera submitted the book for our publisher Jason's consideration. Jason, rather than accepting the book for review, read it, fell in love with it, and asked Meera to sign it with CCLaP!

Mountainfit is an ecological field notebook, a keenly observed natural history of the life that sings from the birches, wheels under the clouds, and scuttles over the peat bogs of the Swedish highlands. And it is a letter, in 21 jewel-like parts, from a well-read and funny friend. 

In 2011, a tiny bird observatory in far western Sweden found itself hosting its first American volunteer, and Meera Lee Sethi found herself exactly where she wanted to be: watching great snipe court each other under the midnight sun and disturbing lemmings on her way to find a gyrfalcon nest. Meera’s vigorous, graceful prose communicates a wry understanding of how utterly ordinary it is to long for more out of life—and how extraordinary it can feel to trust that longing. Meera's intent was to create a book small enough to fit in your pocket and read on the train to work in the morning. It is that. But it's also large enough to contain a mountain or two.

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

We are actively seeking reviews for Mountainfit, so raise your hand if you're interested! 

We've got Mobi, EPub, and PDF copies for the picking. 

We are also selling Mountainfit in a hand-made, hardback hypermodern edition - which you can order here if you like that sort of thing! Who wouldn't a copy of that beauty?!

You can also add it to your goodreads shelves here. 

Meera is also available for interviews, guest posts, and audio excerpts! Comment here, or send me an email at mescorn@ptd.net if you'd like to get your Mountainfit on....

The Indie Ink Runs Deep: Kelly Davio

I'd been tossing around the idea of blogging a tattoo series for nearly a year. 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 ink comes from Kelly Davio, Managing Editor of The Los Angeles Review, Associate Editor of Fifth Wednesday Journal, and a reviewer for Women’s Review of Books. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets, Verse Daily, and others. Her debut collection of poetry, Burn This House, was published by Red Hen Press in 2013. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, and she teaches English as a second language in the Seattle area.

Life involves a good quantity of bad news. Those of us who choose to become writers sign up for even more bad news than we might get otherwise. We even self-address stamped envelopes so that we can receive bad news in our mailboxes. It can be tempting to see writing and publishing as consisting, on the whole, of piles of rejection.

When I had Derek Nobel of Lucky Devil Tattoo ink this piece on my shoulder in 2008, it was because I needed to believe that good news would eventually outweigh the bad, and that devoting myself to the written word would bring me more joy than disappointment. This envelope is my good news, which I choose to believe is always coming. It serves as my visible, physical reminder not to allow discouraging circumstances color my perspective on the long arc of the writing life.

In a quick succession of events in the year after I got this tattoo, I would become an editor for The Los Angeles Review, receive a publishing contract for Burn This House, and sign with my fantastic agent, Gordon Warnock. Was my ink a lucky talisman that made it all happen? Probably not. The work I’d been putting in for years was simply starting to bear fruit. But the good news I carry on my back stood as a daily reminder that, if I work hard and work well, good news will eventually come to me.

The Audio Series: Kenny Mooney

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, Kenny Mooney reads us one of the stories from his collection The Drowning Man. Kenny is a writer and musician, currently residing in York, England. He was born in Berlin and grew up in England, Scotland and Cyprus. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Housefire, Sundog Lit, Atticus Review and other places online and in print. He is fiction editor for A-Minor Magazine & Press. He blogs at www.dragline.co.uk. 

Click on the soundcloud link below to experience the short story Woe Lung, as read by author Kenny Mooney.





The word on The Drowning Man:

A collection of eight short, dark works of surreal fiction, exploring obsession, paranoia, lust, love, and madness.
*lifted with love from goodreads

Where Writers Write: Kim Henderson

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 Kim Henderson. 

Kim’s chapbook of short-short stories, The Kind of Girl, won the 2012 Rose Metal Press contest and is forthcoming this summer.  She has published work in the Tin House Open Bar, Cutbank, H_NGM_N, River Styx, New South, The Southeast Review, and elsewhere.  Originally from New Mexico, she now lives on a mountain in Southern California with her husband and dogs, where she chairs the Creative Writing Department at Idyllwild Arts Academy.

Where Kim Henderson Writes

I am mostly a morning writer, and mostly write here at my desk.  I do love to get outside and write in different places, and often come up with new material in those settings, but it’s at my desk where the majority of the work happens.

My desk, my comfy chair, my nerdy owl collection to remind myself that I am a nerd (do I really need a daily reminder?).

Speaking of nerdism, my mom recently made me go through some boxes in her shed, and I found this owl from when I was about five.  There was a whole series of these career-themed animals—cat nurses, dog doctors, bear mailmen, etc. (and I guess the owl graduate is a more abstract version of success).  The nerd thing is what stuck.

Note the Rose Metal Press pin!  I picked that up when I discovered them at AWP.


My writing partner, Nikki.  She supplies most of the ideas.

  My book closet.  I also spend at least thirty minutes each day staring at my guitar and thinking how cool it would be if I could actually play it.  The yarn mess there in the corner provides another diversion.
Note the orange walls, in the interest of staying awake.


I drink coffee out of this cup nearly every morning.  My students tell me writers are the awkward penguins of the world—perhaps that’s why I ended up with this cup.

The Indie Ink Runs Deep: Chris Moraff

I'd been tossing around the idea of blogging a tattoo series for nearly a year. 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 comes from Christopher Moraff  – writer, photographer, commentator, blogger and unrepentant bibliophile. He lives in Philadelphia where he writes for a number of local and national media outlets. Chris served on the Board of Editors of In These Times  – the Chicago-based political magazine founded in 1976 by the leftist intellectual James Weinstein and now writes a weekly column on politics and culture for Philadelphia magazine. He is also a collector of books and several months ago began the unforgiving task of bloggingthrough his entire library. In his spare time he makes slow, meandering progress on a collection of short stories, as yet untitled, which he hopes to see in print while he is still of this world.  

These are his tattoos. This is their story.

I got my first tattoo when I was 19. It was a poorly chosen duo of Chinese characters on my upper arm that were supposed to represent my initials. I learned shortly thereafter that there is no literal translation of the Latin alphabet in Chinese hanzi characters and felt pretty stupid until I managed to find someone who could decipher the small permanent reminder of my youthful naivete on my left shoulder. Lucky for me it turned out that in translation my characters reads something akin to “good health” and not “asshole American who thinks he's Chinese.” In light of that I decided to keep it instead of getting it covered up. I'm glad I did. It's one of two tattoos (the other is on my leg) that I had done in Philadelphia by the legendary Sonny Tufts, a tattooer of the old school who died in 2010. He must have thought I was an idiot, which of course I was.

Since then I've been more careful about what I put on my body. Most of my ink is Asian traditional and reflects Buddhist spiritual themes. Both sleeves are works in progress. The left arm is Kuan Yin – the Bodhisattva of Compassion – in a field of water and cherry blossoms. Right arm (courtesy of Dave Resp at Art Machine Productions in Philly) is the wrathful deity Fudō Myō-ō – whose sword cuts through ignorance – surrounded by fire, smoke and peonies. To my mind, this juxtaposition of tenderness and ferocity -- and the search for reconciliation -- is characteristic not only of my own past struggles, but of the human condition as a whole. As a poor freelance writer sometimes I question the sensibility of spending thousands of dollars to decorate my body with colorful imagery, but as a lifelong tattoo enthusiast that usually goes out the window as soon as I find the time and money for another session. 

The Audio Series: Jesse Bradley

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, Jesse Bradley reads to us from his book It Smells Like Plastic and Hurt Feelings (published by KUBOA). Bradley is the author of Bodies Made of Smoke (HOUSEFIRE, 2012). He is the Web Editor of Monkeybicycle and lives at iheartfailure.net. 

Click on the soundcloud link below to listen to Jesse Bradley as he reads Shoulders, from It Smells Like Plastic and Hurt Feelings. 






It Smells Like Plastic and Hurt Feelings hasn't found a home on goodreads yet and its amazon page is descriptionless. Kuboa, his publisher, has listed all of their books free for digital download here. I have to admit, I was enticed by how much effort went into keeping this thing a secret. So I downloaded it (among others). You should too.

Indie Spotlight: Mellow Pages Library

If you ever needed a reason to fall in love with small press literature (as if I haven't given you a million reasons to do so already, right?...), I've just found the perfect one for you.

Mellow Pages Library. This neat little Brooklyn library and reading room opened their doors back in February, and are doing some fucking amazing things with small press literature. Like, collecting limited runs and out-of-prints of the shit and hanging them all over the walls, inviting people up to read (as in both sit-down-on-the-couch-and-read, and authors-reading-out-loud-from-their books-read), and posting pictures of everyone who donates to their catalog. 

(side note: have you ever noticed how strange a word begins to look when you type it a lot? read read read read read read Read READ read readReadREADread...)

Between you and me, I want to move into that room and throw my naked, small press obsessed body against the walls again and again again and never stop. Yes. I said it. What of it? I also want to be Matt and Jacob's bestie because they love small press literature as much as I do and have tons more of it than I do and they look like cool dudes and who DOESN'T want to be besties with two cool dudes who read and collect awesome literature and SHARE IT WITH THE WORLD, well, ok just Brooklyn for now, or those who can get to Brooklyn, but still, I'm sure THE WORLD is on their list of places to share their books with....

In the meantime, I wanted you to meet them, so you could fall in love with them too, and Matt and Jacob were incredibly obligingly wonderful and threw together this imaginary screenplay for you. Throw your feet up, balance a bowl of popcorn on your knees and prepare to fall in love....

“Toasted Trout Tart on an Alfalfa Bedding”

a Guest Screenplay written by mellow pages library

SCENE 1:

[THE CURTAINS RISE AND SEVERAL CAMERAS ARE POINTED TOWARD A SUBJECT/NARRATOR, SEATED STAGE CENTER. HEAVY LIGHTING. BLINDING LIGHTING. AUDIENCE IS UNAWARE SUBJECT IS ACTUALLY BEING FILMED. SUBJECT BEGINS TO DELIVER A MONOLOGUE:]

SUBJECT: “I heard about Mellow Pages Library when their first young spurts burst onto the indie book scene a few months ago. This was all online. My friend told me one of them had a knife collection. The Founders. The other one had a set of fine shaving razors. Yet they both had beards. Nothing seemed to add down. They were young and in control of their lives. They had everything. Or so it seemed...”

[THE SUBJECT IS IN FACT REVEALED TO BE JAMES LIPTON OF “IN THE ACTORS STUDIO”. AUDIENCE APPLAUDS. HE OPENS HIS EYES, THOUGH THINLY, THROUGH CIRCULAR SPECTACLES. MONOLOGUE CONTINUES]

JAMES LIPTON: “...Everyone wanted a piece of them, their ideas, yet they were giving them away quicker than one could politely ask. And why? This was the new question, the real question. Eventually I found myself experiencing that same eager pull. To ask. What was it these guys had to say for themselves? What were their principles, their morals? I wanted to know. What I didn’t realize, and now regret to disclose, is the discovery of an ‘Underground Indie Book Conspiracy’ Mellow Pages had been drug into and were fighting, at the expense of the wider scene, with hands perfect-bound behind their backs. [LIGHTS DIM HEAVILY, PROJECTOR SCREEN DESCENDS. NARRATION CONTINUES WHILE IMAGES BEGIN TO FILL THE SCREEN. A NORTHWEST SKYLINE APPEARS. TIMBERS AND SOARING EAGLES] This is a story of murk and corruption. Gloom and glitz. A story of boys struggling to stay afloat against the very conspiracy that sent them falling, Underground-Underground. To the Real Underground. [THE PHRASE: “OPERATION DUCK & DIVE” APPEARS ON THE SCREEN IN HELVETICA NEUE LIGHT ITALIC FONT, NO CAPS] This is their story, as they told it. And this is also my story. How I learned about “Operation Duck & Dive”...”

SCENE 2:

[IMAGERY BEHIND FONT FADES FROM TREES TO THE DUSTY STREETS OF BROOKLYN, THEN INTO A LARGE-ISH STUDY WITH A COMPUTER AND LIPTON HIMSELF TYPING AWAY. NARRATION CONTINUES]

JAMES LIPTON [ON SCREEN]: “When I got a chance to interview the elusive northwest beardboys about their mossy beginnings in the heartland of Cascadia my first inclination was to invite them over for a sustainable farm-to-table dinner. It had been a long time since they’d had a good meal and I needed them to talk, talk, talk. Food always arrows to talk.  I had planned a toasted trout tart with an alfalfa sprout bedding yet they refused. As it turned out, the boys only consume Loaded Baked Potato Flavored Kettle Chips and had already begun the five mile ride to my home on two stolen bikes, unbeknownst to me, torn-up flannels wrapped around their faces. One was missing a shoe. Before I could finish a response message I heard a ring at my door. I stood up and peered through the blinds. Could it be?”

[MATT NELSON AND JACOB PERKINS (THE FOUNDERS) BURST THROUGH JAMES LIPTON’S DOOR ON THE PROJECTOR SCREEN. JAMES LIPTON MAKES A SQUEALING SOUND. THE BOYS SIT LIPTON DOWN IN HIS LARGE-ISH STUDY AND BEGIN TO ASK HIM ANSWERS]

JACOB: “James Lipton. We’ve been waiting for your call. In times like these, trust everyone, including your best friends. We know. But we have something to tell you. We’ve been caught up in somewhat of a pickle here, Lipton. Listen, Lipton. THEY’RE OUT TO GET US.”

LIPTON [ON SCREEN]: “I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about, boys. What’s the problem? I thought you could maybe explain some things for me. Small things. I’ve been reading all about you guys. I just wanted to ask you some questions. Really.”

MATT: “That’s what they all say, Lipton. Look, Lipton. Listen. We’ve got nothing left to tell. You said it yourself. You’ve been reading all about us. We know what you’re up to. YOU’RE ONE OF THEM.”

JACOB: “That’s right, Lipton. The old Duck & Dive, hah? Well, let me tell YOU something. We love indie book culture. In fact, we support it. By shelving indie books, buying indie books, hosting indie readers, promoting indie books online, arranging venues in which indie books can be sold. The list goes on. But you know it. It’s all there, Lipton, you just have to see around the lies.”

MATT: “Real lies, yes, Lipton. There are lies. One of them is the old Duck & Dive. You heard of the Duck & Dive, Lipton? Ring a bell? Well, we know all about it. And we’re on to you.”

LIPTON: “I am so very confused but no, no, I haven’t heard of the “Duck & Dive”.”

JACOB: “It’s a conspiracy, Lipton. I’m sure you know what that means.”

MATT: “Of course you do. Sure, you’d like to hear about our 200 square foot space located on Bogart Street right off the Morgan L stop, 56 Bogart to be exact. How you enter the front door and the third door on the left houses a thousand plus indie books loosely defined as a library but also a reading room wherein membership is free upon inclusion of ten books which, I might add, are always property of the member and redeemable at any time. You want to hear all about it.”

LIPTON: “Well, that’s exactly what I’d like to hear but now, well. Now I’d like to hear about this conspiracy of which you speak so aggressively.”

JACOB: “Hear all about it, hah? Well Lipton, hear about this: there are powers that be, Lipton, under the underground. And they want us. They want us back. They’re real far underground. Been fightin’em for weeks. We tell and we tell, and then they ask. It’s like Arabic, Lipton. All right-left.”

LIPTON: “This tells me absolutely nothing. What is this?”

MATT: “Nothing, Lipton? What about us makes us different than other libraries? Hah? Let me tell you. We try our damndest to get printed matter you can’t find anywhere else. Not at a bookstore, a Barnes&Noble. Not at a public library, not at a used bookstore. Yes we try and we try yet still we explain. We want to prove our necessity in our community. We want a collection of books you cannot find anywhere else. That’s our mission, Lipton. You can come in here on any given day and get coffee, light up a cigarette, drink as much beer as you want, Lipton. Hear that?”

JACOB: “You can submit to our Mellow Pages Paired Reviews for free beers. All you have to do is pair two books in the library and write a review involving both. You can buy books at local booksellers and get our stamp, our Mellow Pages stamp, and thereby come to our Free Beer If event and read from that book you bought at that store. And then we’ll give you a free beer. You can hold a reading, a release, a music show, a film screening, a dance, a fundraiser, anything in our space, and we’ll have you drinking a beer in no time.”

LIPTON: “But what is the conspiracy?” [PROJECTION FADES OUT, IMAGE AND SOUND]

SCENE 3:

[THE SCREEN RISES AND THE REAL LIPTON ONCE AGAIN COMES INTO VIEW. HE IS BLINDED WITH LIGHT. HE CONTINUES HIS ORIGINAL MONOLOGUE]

JAMES LIPTON: “As the evening went on the boys Matt and Jacob continued to explain their theory. What I gleaned from the exchange was somewhat vague. Although, to be sure, they had been followed. They had been followed to the house. We heard strange rustling in the bushes and when Matt and Jacob asked to leave, the strange bush figures seemed to run away with them, into the night. I had to rub my eyes at the sight of it. What I was witnessing? They had never removed their torn flannels and as such their expressions were mute. It was all a weird blur. I retreated to my study for some reflection, in the form of written word...” [THE CAMERAS AROUND LIPTON STOP ROLLING]

[AGAIN THE LIGHTS DIM HEAVILY, PROJECTOR SCREEN DESCENDS. NARRATION CONTINUES WHILE IMAGES BEGIN TO FILL THE SCREEN. A NORTHWEST SKYLINE APPEARS. TIMBERS AND SOARING EAGLES] ...“JAMES LIPTON: “...This is a story of murk and corruption. Gloom and glitz. A story of boys struggling to stay afloat against the very conspiracy that sent them falling, Underground-Underground. To the Real Underground. [THE PHRASE: “OPERATION DUCK & DIVE” APPEARS ON THE SCREEN IN HELVETICA NEUE LIGHT ITALIC FONT, NO CAPS] This is their story, as they told it. And this is also my story. How I learned about “Operation Duck & Dive”...””...

Book Giveaway: The Wonder Bread Summer

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 The Wonder Bread Summer

with author Jessica Anya Blau

In order to stimulate discussion, 

Jessica and her publisher, Harper Collins, have agreed to give away 

10 paper copies

to residents of the US only

Here is the goodreads description to whet your appetite:

It's 1983 in Berkeley, California. Twenty-year-old Allie Dodgson is a straitlaced college student working part-time at a dress shop to make ends meet. But when the shop turns out to be a front for a dangerous drug-dealing business, Allie finds herself on the lam, speeding toward Los Angeles in her best friend's Prelude with a Wonder Bread bag full of cocaine riding shotgun and a hit man named Vice Versa on her tail. You can't find a more thrilling summer read!

This giveaway will run through June 8th. 

Winners will be announced here and via email on June 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 July 15th through the end of the month. Jessica Anya Blau has agreed to participate in the discussion and will be available to answer any questions you may have for her. 

 *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!