Book Review: League of Somebodies

Read 5/26/13 - 6/26/13
3 Stars - Recommended to fans of the underdog, superheros, and villainous nonsense
Pgs: 400
Publisher: Dark Coast Press
Released: April 2013

Good god it took me for-evvv-eerrrr to read this bad boy. And while there were many contributing factors to the tortoise-like speed at which I raced through this novel, two stand out more than the rest: my usual aversion to all things superhero-y and the cumbersome writing style of the author.

Disclaimer: this is me trying to branch out and read things that I normally wouldn't because awesomeness is almost always uncovered in the unknown. Right? Well, how the heck would you ever know that if you didn't broaden your reading horizons and give it a go?! So a-go I gave.

Or something like that.

Anywhoo..

What I held in my hands, I was pleased to discover, was the genre-defying story of how a real life superhero is born. League of Somebodies bends and bleeds science fiction, begging the reader to suspend all reality, but its power (and sometimes its downfall - more on this later) lies in the author's use of language to sell the story. This is not your typical POW BAM BANG story - there is very little action and quite a lot of set up and storytelling. It's literary at heart, and it has heart in spades.

Imagine this: You're an unpopular, grossly deformed pre-teen, Jewish boy - huge upper body; stunted, small, and practically useless legs - and you're informed by your father that you have been spoon fed small amounts of plutonium in the hopes that you will become the world's first real superhero. And that now, you must complete a series of multiple, life-endangering tests to prepare yourself to fight against THEY - a villainous entity that is coming after your family to steal The Manaton - a sacred, secret rulebook of manhood. Oh, and that grossly deformed body, no worries, alright, cause those tests will bring out all the wonders that the plutonium has been building up inside you. You'll look awesome in no time, kid!

That's basically what happened to poor little Lenard. Reluctant and pissed off (who wouldn't be?), he finds himself at the mercy of his trickster father time and time again, as he is shaped and molded into the man his father needs him to be, all the while falling deeply and madly in love with Laura, a family friend who is being groomed to become his wife.

Fast forward 20 years: Laura and Lenard have a son, Nemo, and begin putting him through the same rigmarole when he comes of age - only now, THEY are in hot pursuit and nothing short of snagging that Manaton, and killing anything and anyone who gets in their way, will stop them.

League of Somebodies is many things all at once. It's a tongue-in-cheek look at masculinity in all its superiority; it's a close study of fatherdom and the unending love, no matter how fucked up that father is, a son will always have towards him; and it's a tale of good vs. evil and just how difficult it is to sometimes tell who is on the side of good and who is on the side of bad.

It captivates with its less-than-perfect characters, wildy absurd man-isms, and sheer quirkiness.

Wordiness is this novel's true enemy. The story moved along so slowly at times that I actually lost the plot and had to go back and reread a page or two to regain momentum (you know how that goes, when you're reading along and suddenly you can't remember what you were just reading because it was going on and on and your mind started to wander and you lost the gist of where the author was going with it all?). Word economy can be your friend. That's all I'm saying.

Clocking in at an overwhelming 400 pages, it also required a final read-through from its editor. There were grammatical and structural issues within sentences that, while not taking away from the story exactly, were mildly distracting and sometimes frustrating, especially when they popped up all over the place. Hell, I'm no professional, so when I catch things like missing words and conjunctions, and double half-sentences, I tend to get a little ragey towards the end.

Dark Coast Press is a new-to-me press, so having never read them before, I don't know if this is a common issue of theirs, and it's certainly not one I blame entirely on the author. I'd happily be the final set of eyes to scrutinize their books before they hit the printers to help avoid this kind of faux pas in the future. (wink wink, cough cough, Dark Coast, are you listening?) Poor editing is not only damaging to the press, sadly, it's damaging to the author, too.

So, my ultimate ruling is that, while awesomeness does exist in the unknown, it sometimes comes with rough edges that still need a little smoothing out. Check it out if you can overcome the stubborn grammatical boo-boo's and excessive wordiness to read a truly unique tale about the reluctant coming of age of a superhero.

Book Review: The Great Lenore

Read 7/4/13 - 7/6/13
4 Stars - Highly recommended to fans of modern gothic literature and fuckeduppery
Pgs: 204
Publisher: Atticus Book

I cracked open The Great Lenore two days ago (which I've been holding on to ever since I met its author JM Tohline at AWP in March) in anticipation of its upcoming Author/Reader discussion in August, and despite my usual dislike of gothic, faux memoir-ish, tragic literature, I found myself instantly intrigued by Tohline's teasing narrative. He pulls you in, he pushes you away, he hints at things and cleverly sidesteps them time and time again until he's ready to reveal it all. And all the while, he's got you tied to the end of a set of marionette strings, helpless in his hands, following the tugs and tickles of his fingers, eyes dancing across the pages, unable to stop until you reach The End.

I admit that, initially, this was a difficult book for me to read. The timing was uncanny. Very early in, I found myself closing the book and walking away from it, unsure if I wanted to continue. Because I was pretty sure that, up to this point in my life, I'd had just about all the infidelity I could handle...

If you don't know anything about this book, you should know this: Infidelity plays a large role in this tale of love, loss, and deep, dark secrets. Not that infidelity in and of itself is by any means a new plot concept. But I'm sick of how accepted and common it is, in all aspects of media - listen to the lyrics of a song and you're bound to hear about how the singer has cheated or was cheated on; watch any movie, good god, any HBO or Showtime series, even if it's not the driving force of the show, and you're almost guaranteed to see characters cheat on one another, sometimes with one another. And it's not just media, is it? It's all around us. How many of us have cheated on our spouses, boyfriends or girlfriends, discovered that we've been cheated on, or know someone close to us who has? And how many of us just sit by and let it all happen, know about it and never say anything, hide it and feel guilty about it? Jesus, it's everywhere you turn; and once you're aware of it, you can't seem to escape it. And I was pretty sure that I didn't want to immerse myself in literature that hinged so heavily on it right now.

But as I mentioned, Tohline hooks you, and once hooked, it's pointless to struggle, impossible to walk away. It just keeps pulling you back in.

So I gave in, and gave up, and gave my mind over to our narrator Richard, who is telling the tale of how he ended up so severely entwined in the ridiculously destructive love quadrangle between Montana brothers Chas and Maxwell, Jez - a close friend of the family, Chas's wife Lenore, and Chas's girlfriend-on-the-side Lily.

Much like those horribly dated TV soap operas that I refuse to burn brain cells on, and reminiscent of the dark and dreary classic Victorian Gothic novels that I somehow managed to eye-roll myself through, we are drenched in this family's who-is-fucking-who and who-fucked-them-first and how-can-anyone-not-know-who-is-plotting-what-with-who fucked-uppery. And oh yeah, there's Lenore's death, that is actually a non-death (and no, I'm not spoiling anything for you, because this is the hook that the author sinks into your skin upon reading the very first line!) that causes all of the family's secrets to come rushing to the surface like an overflowing toilet...

Lenore; she who all men are helpless against, the spider who weaves her web around each and every one of their hearts, the muse, the innocent angel, the devious devil, the true marionette master... Lenore.

Go on and give it a read. If for no other reason than to join in on our discussion with the author this coming August - cause there is a whole lot that's worthy of discussion here; if for no other reason than to see why I can review it so wearily and yet still give such a wonderful rating. It's a novel that's bound to toy with you. And you will like it. I guarantee it.

Placing Literature - Mapping Your Favorite Books

A few weeks ago, I received an email from Andrew Bardin Williams, co-founder of PlacingLiterature, introducing me to this new bookish website that maps literary scenes.

Initially, I thought "Small demons has already claimed that corner of the bookish playground" but the more I messed around with the site, and the more I questioned Andrew about its purpose, the more I began to see its differences. For starters, the data is crowdsourced, meaning, if you can log in to Google, you can add scenes from YOUR favorite titles to the map. And although the information doesn't exactly allow you to see anything - it just sort of sits there, as a pinpoint on a map - it does allow you to click on each location and virtually "check-in" to the destination.

While I'm not really interested in virtually visiting a scene from the book I'm reading, I can certainly see the 'cool factor' when travelling the states... if your idea of vacationing includes hitting up any and all literary locations!

Now, I know word has gotten out there by now, so I'm probably not introducing you to anything new at this point, but I did want to give Andrew a chance to tell you a bit more about the site.. like, why it was born, and what he hopes to accomplish with it, and I'm curious to know what you guys think of it. Have you used the site yet? Have you added any of your favorite scenes or are you just perusing the ones that are already there? Do you think this is a site you will be returning to, time and time again?

Keeping that in mind, here's Andrew:

Placing Literature maps literary scenes in the real world

Like many authors and readers of fiction, I’ve always thought that the relationship between literature and real, physical places helps enhance the reading experience and develop a sense of community where these scenes take place. This relationship has always stuck in the back of my mind, so I recently teamed up with a geographer and a software engineer to found a new web application called PlacingLiterature.com that maps places from novels that take place in real locations. Our goal is to help connect readers to the places where their favorite novels take place.

Using the website, detective novel fans can see where Sam Spade of the Maltese Falcon lived and worked in San Francisco. Book lovers in Duluth, Minnesota, can track the literary scenes that take place around the shore of Lake Superior. Or Amy Tan fans can track the Woo, Hsu, Jong and St. Claire families through their journeys from China to the Bay Area.

The data is crowdsourced, so anyone with a Google login can add a scene to the database by clicking on the map. Since launching on June 19 at the Arts and Ideas Festival in New Haven, Conn., users have logged more than 500 places in the database from Castle Kronborg in Hamlet to Forks High School in the Twilight series.

We’ve also been getting a lot of attention, being mentioned in the New Yorker and the Paris Review as well as a slew of book blogs and technology websites. But ultimately, the success of this project falls to you, the crowd. I invite you to explore the website, find literary places that take place around your communities and map those scenes.

Andrew Bardin Williams is a co-founder of PlacingLiterature.com, a website that maps literary places that take place in real locations. He is also the author of Learning to Haight, a 2012 Indie Reader Discovery Award finalist in literary fiction. Like Placing Literature on Facebook at Facebook.com/placingliterature.

Where Writers Write: Jess Riley

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 Jess Riley. She is the author of three novels --Driving Sideways, All the Lonely People, and Mandatory Release (July 2013)—as well as a novella, Closer Than They Appear.

She lives in Oshkosh, Wisconsin with her husband and a nutty Cairn Terrier that despises public radio. She blogs at www.jessriley.com; follow her on Twitter (@jessrileywrites) or Facebook (www.facebook.com/JessRileyAuthor).

Where Jess Riley Writes

I’m fascinated by where writers write. I love, for example, hearing that Sara Gruen basically wrote Water for Elephants in a tiny closet. I’m not in the closet, but I did write all of my novels at this sensible, particleboard desk that my husband and I somehow assembled years ago. I’ve got my PC, he’s got his Mac, and we share the same screen. All of my reference books are handy in two cozy little bookshelves: Stephen King’s On Writing, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Save the Cat, Roget’s Super Thesaurus, several dictionaries and style guides, and 35,000 Baby Names because those characters don’t name themselves.

If I get writer’s block, I can spin around and play guitar. Well, I can look longingly at this wall and dream of a day when I might know how to play guitar.

If I’m feeling uninspired, I can turn to my right and stare out the window, listen to the birds singing and take in the vista: lush maples, a stately old white pine we’ve nicknamed Harold, my neighbor’s disintegrating rooftop. This is perhaps the most inspiring thing to look at, because it says to me, “If you don’t finish that novel, you will always live in this neighborhood and look out this window at your drug-dealing, degenerate neighbor’s crumbling shingles and clogged gutters.”

Every so often I wistfully cruise the Pottery Barn office collection, but there’s no direct link between a better desk and a better novel. And I honestly don’t want to be the smug jerk who writes a novel at the standardized, overpriced, bourgeois Pottery Barn desk. I want to inherit the desk in my father’s office, because it was handmade by inmates in a carpentry program. I want to find a desk at an old estate sale that’s made of reclaimed barn planks, that bears four generations of ink stains and scuffmarks and cheerful graffiti from three-year-olds.

Until then, I’ve got my utilitarian, pragmatic MDF cockpit--coffee-stained, watermarked, lumpy veneer and all. Close the door, turn on some tunes, write 2,000 words a day. Works for me. 

Indie Book Buzz: Quirk Books

It's the return of the Indie Book Buzz here at TNBBC. Over the next few weeks, we will be inviting members of the small press publishing houses to share which of their upcoming releases they are most excited about!

This week's picks comes from Eric Smith,

Social Media & Marketing Coordinator at Quirk Books.

William Shakespeare’s Star Wars by Ian Doescher
(July 2, 2013)

When this proposal was brought into acquisitions, I couldn’t hide the smile on my face. I may have gasped. It was love at first sight. I wanted us to have this book so badly, and I’m thrilled that we’re publishing it.
The summary? It’s Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, retold in iambic pentameter, the way the Bard would have done it. Loaded with references to the Shakespearian canon, it’s a hilarious, smart read.
I still question how Ian was able to do this. He’s really a master of his art, and I can’t wait for this book to come out. Fun fact, when I met Ian for the first time, instead of shaking his hand like a professional, I high fived him in my office.

We’ve been posting images from the book and just released the book trailer. So for updates, go ahead and like the Facebook fan page for the book. You can also learn more about the book on Quirk’s website.

Countdown City: The Last Policeman Book II by Ben H. Winters
(July 16, 2013)

I still remember the acquisitions meeting when Quirk’s publisher Jason Rekulak brought up The Last Policeman, a series proposal from New York Times bestselling author Ben H. Winters.

When he explained it was a post apocalyptic police procedural (try saying that three times fast, I dare you) that would take place at the end of the world, months before a giant asteroid is set to hit Earth and eliminate life as we know it... well, needless to say, I was really excited.

The first book introduces readers to Hank Palace, a detective who refuses to quit doing his job. His experience navigating the crumbling landscape of a world on the brink of destruction made for one hell of a riveting read, and I loved getting the word out about the book.

Fast-forward a year. The Last Policeman went on to win an Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original, and has been translated into six languages. And the sequel, Countdown City, is set to hit stores July 16^th. Without dishing out any major spoilers, the second book picks up where the first left off, and the stakes for Hank are even higher.

If you want a sneak peek of Countdown City, you can check out an excerpt on Quirk’s website here. And if you’re not familiar with the series, read the beginning of the first one on Quirk’s site here.
And be sure to follow Ben H. Winters on Twitter (he’s a great guy), and like the fan page for The Last Policeman on Facebook.

Nick & Tesla’s High Voltage Danger Lab by Steve Hockensmith and Science Bob Pflugfelder
(November 5, 2013)

Quirk’s been venturing into new territory over the past two years, and one of those new places is the world of middle grade books. We started with Tales From Lovecraft Middle School, and now we’re publishing a new series, Nick & Tesla.

The series focuses on two incredibly bright kids, Nick and Tesla, and their adventures living with their zany, mad-scientist-ish uncle while their parents are away. They solve mysteries using the gadgets they build in their lab… and the kicker is the instructions for those projects come with the book! Kids can actually build along with Nick and Tesla (with parental supervision, of course).

Now, one of the great things about working in publishing is every once and a while you get to work with an author you’re already a fan of. Such is the case with the co-author of the book, New York Times bestseller Steve Hockensmith.

Before I came to Quirk, I had read his bestseller Dawn of the Dreadfuls (the prequel to Pride & Prejudice & Zombies), and his Edgar nominated Holmes on the Range books he published with Minotaur Books (check out the series list on Goodreads). He’s a talented writer and a hilarious guy, and I’m really thrilled to be swapping emails and tweets with him all day.

And chances are, you’ve seen Science Bob. Ever watch Jimmy Kimmel? He’s the scientist that pops up and does experiments on the show. Check out this video of him doing science with Kimmel. Cool stuff, right?

Combine Steve and Bob, and you’ve got the perfect team for this series. I can’t wait for it to come out, and for kids to be thrilled by the projects inside.

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

Eric Smith is the Social Media & Marketing Manager at Quirk Books, and the author of The Geek's Guide to Dating (Dec 2013). He's hopelessly addicted to good books, bad movies, writing, and video games. You can follow him on Twitter at @ericsmithrocks and Quirk at @quirkbooks.

Book Giveaway: The Great Lenore

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 Great Lenore

with author JM Tohline

In order to stimulate discussion, 

Atticus Books has offered up  

5 paper copies

to residents of the US only

Here is the goodreads description to whet your appetite:

The tale of a ravishing young Brit whose falsely-reported death provides her with an opportunity to begin a new life. Before she can disappear for good, however, she longs to know the reaction of her two-timing husband and his aristocratic family. To find out, Lenore enlists Richard--an outsider in the money-and-booze sodden landscape of Nantucket high society--to be her eyes and ears. As events unfold, Richard discovers the entanglements of Lenore's relationships are more intricate than he ever expected...more intricate even than the secrets within Lenore's miniature punt boat. This elegant debut paints an idyllic island surrounded by reflective seas and encased in a world where souls collide, mysteries thicken, and dreams unravel.(less)

This giveaway will run through July 8th. 

Winners will be announced here and via email on July 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 August 15th through the end of the month. JM Tohline 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!

Melanie Page Reviews: My Pet Serial Killer

My Pet Serial Killer

Michael Seidlinger

312 Pages

Enigmatic Ink, January 2013

By guest reviewer Melanie Page

No matter how much or how little torture is shown in a movie, for the victim, it has to be never-ending. Real time freezes and torture time is the new reality. Places in Michael J. Seidlinger’s novel My Pet Serial Killer froze in time--but not for the victim--for the killer. The novel opens with college student Claire attending parties and going to clubs to find the perfect person. She emphasizes she’s an “observer,” lest we forget, which makes her seem extra creepy; she’s looking for the perfect boyfriend, right? Not true--Claire wants the perfect serial killer, one she can take home and call her own, her “pet.” Naturally, a pet needs a master, and Claire becomes just that to the man she finds, Victor.

Thanks to her major in forensics, Claire knows know to make her pet immortal in history, if only he’ll “satisfy” her, which doesn’t really have a definition other than making sure Victor tells her the flavor of each victim’s genitals. Claire supports the whole operation from her apartment, making sure her pet isn’t caught. The concept is unique, one that begs a reader to explore the book.

I applaud Seidlinger’s boldness to take on such a sensitive subject and get inside the head of a killer’s puppetmaster. There were some issues with pacing, though, making the book speed through areas that required more information and dragging in places that had been iterated and reiterated before. In twelve pages Claire finds her killer (if you don’t count the italicized sections that instruct reads to skip them if he/she wishes), but we learn so little about her. It’s unclear if she’s a graduate/undergraduate, who pays for her apartment, where are her friends/family. The simple logistic are fuzzy.

The italicized sections also made the story drag, being unclear about setting, character, and narrator (confusion between he/she/I/you). What do they each mean? Again, these sections ruminate on the observer/observed, master/pet, sex/violence. The last italicized section even functions as the audience; what did we think of the book (here it’s called a movie), and did any of it make sense? Did we hate or love it?

I think the best tool for Seidlinger’s novel would have been a firm editor who would cut unnecessary repetition. I wanted sections like this to move a whole lot faster:

            “But see how I’m not really telling you the whole story? I’m not going to because leaving a

bit of it to mystery keeps everyone guessing. It turns a person’s mind into a powerful weapon. Guess all you want but you’re not going to figure it all out. And then you’re thinking maybe it’s impossible to figure out. Eventually you might give up, but the mystery never gives up on anyone.”

Could 100 pages been removed and we still get the same book? I think we would have had a stronger, more polished book. Even on the sentence level, a good editor would have corrected spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. I don’t typically point these things out, but they were distracting (“I walk from room to room a finger where it feels good”).

A brave take on an unusual subject, I could already see My Pet Serial Killer being used as a basis for the next Hollywood horror.

Bio: Melanie Page is a MFA graduate, adjunct instructor, and recent founder of Grab the Lapels, a site that only reviews books written by women (www.grabthelapels.weebly.com).

Looking for a few good reviewers...

Yeah, you read that right! 

TNBBC is officially on the hunt for a few good reviewers. 

I'm looking for voracious readers who adore the heck out of small press literature and are willing to contribute some creative and insightful reviews to this blog. Actually, the more creative, the better! Do you review in comic form? Do you compare and contrast? Do you write your reviews as letters to the author? Do you review in eBook or Audio form only? Do you specialize in a specific literary genre - noir fiction, translated fiction, Bizarro?

Here's what we're looking for and what you can expect when you review for us:

We want reviewers who:

• Are extremely passionate about reading
• Aren't shy about expressing their opinions
• Will commit to contributing a couple of reviews a month
• Give us first-day dibs on the premiere of the review
• Review books that are published by small press only (backlist, new release, or pre-release)
• Are not afraid to let their book-nerdy personalities show

In return we'll:

• Spread your awesome review all over our Twitter and Facebook page
• Send our traffic to whatever links you include in your bio
• Add a permanent button on our sidebar to promote you
• Increase your exposure to the small press publishers and authors you adore
• Pay you in love, admiration, and - from time to time - opportunities to choose from a list of arc's or review copies on our backlist. 

So how does that sound?! If you'd like to be considered as a guest reviewer at TNBBC, check out the reviews we've written in the past, and if you think you've got what we desperately need, hit me up with a few sample reviews at mescorn@ptd.net. 

Show us what you've got!! Knock our socks off!! 

The Audio Series: Mary Vensel White

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


Today, Mary Vensel White reads from her novel The Qualities of Wood. Mary was born in Los Angeles and raised in Lancaster, California. She graduated from the University of Denver and lived for five years in Chicago, where she completed an MA in English at DePaul University. She lives in southern California with her husband, four children and two badly trained dogs in a chaotic but happy home. Her husband is an attorney and she is the mom with a book or laptop at the little league game, soccer field or dance studio. THE QUALITIES OF WOOD is her first novel but she has just completed a second entitled Fortress for One, and is currently working on a collection of interrelated stories. 

Click on the soundcloud link below to experience The Qualities of Wood, as read by author Mary Vensel White:






The word on The Qualities of Wood:

A haunting and beautifully written debut novel by an exciting and new author.

When Betty Gardiner dies, leaving behind an unkempt country home, her grandson and his young wife take a break from city life to prepare the house for sale. Nowell Gardiner leaves first to begin work on his second mystery novel. By the time his wife Vivian joins him, a real mystery has begun: a local girl has been found dead in the woods behind the house. Even after the death is ruled an accident, Vivian can’t forget the girl, can’t ignore the strange behaviour of her neighbours, or her husband. As Vivian attempts to put the house in order, all around her things begin to fall apart.

‘The Qualities of Wood’ is a stunning novel from an exciting new writer. Perfect for readers of Anne Tyler and Anita Shreve.
*lifted from goodreads with love

Indie Spotlight: Boss Fight Books

It's always most awesome to meet new small press publishers, but it's absolutely the BOMB to meet them before they are even born.

This is the story of the birth of a brand new small press called Boss Fight Books.

This print and ebook video-game-focused publishing company created a kickstarter to get themselves up and running, and within hours of the campaign going live, they found themselves fully funded at $5,000. (I was one of the early backers, this shit looks rad!) Not one to lose the momentum, founder Gabe Durham began throwing out stretch goals to keep the interest up. Stretch goal #1, set at $10,000, was exceeded by day two. And so it goes...

Currently, with 12 days left to accept funding, 735 backers, and nearly $25,000 sitting in the pot, Boss Fight Books is able to dream bigger and farther than they ever imagined. So what the heck is Boss Fight Books all about? Well, I thought I'd let Gabe tell you that:

Ok Gabe, let’s start with you. What should we know about you? How did you come about the idea for Boss Fight Books?

I'm a guy who likes his creative projects: writing, editing, music, and this year I've been getting into sketch/improv through the UCB scene in LA. If I've got some good projects going, I'm pretty happy.

A few months ago, I was in a position where my novel FUN CAMP was about to come out, I'd just finished a big nonfiction manuscript, and I was pretty hungry for the next thing. I was reading a book about Nintendo that I'd picked up at the library and I thought: "There ought to be a 33 1/3 for video games. Surely there is." And when my google search turned up nothing, it annoyed me. The market had failed me! And so the next thought was: It must be me.

And so a new small press was born! How’d you settle on the name Boss Fight Books? And how did you determine who your cohorts would be?

First I brainstormed a list of video game tropes, whatever I could think of, and then looked to see which ones were already the name of a popular gaming-related site, book, or movie. That narrowed it a lot. I love "Boss Fight Books" for the way the violence of "Fight" is tempered by the solitary act of reading. I must have a thing for that kind of contrast: I performed in a little comedy thing the other day and we needed a name for our group, just for the afternoon, and I suggested "Tummy Stomp." And so we were Tummy Stomp.

2. I met up with Ken in Silverlake a few months ago for smoothies, and told him about my idea for Boss Fight, and he was really excited about it. He emailed me later that day and said, "I was thinking about it and you've got to do it." And I said, "I'll do it if you write one." And then it was on.

The other authors were the result of an intensive R&D phase. I asked friends on Facebook to tell me about their favorite video game writers, and was avalanched with great writing. Turned out Anna, Darius, and Jon all came up in that discussion, though it took a lot of reading before I made my choice about who to invite. I'm really grateful they all said yes. They had little reason to take a chance on a dude from the internet.

Michael--the most seasoned writer of us all--I already knew a little, and our mutual friend Adam told me all about Michael's Galaga obsession. The kicker, Adam explained, was that Michael was ready to tackle a new project. So I made my pitch and Michael graciously accepted.

I’ve got to admit, I’m dying to see what Michael Kimball does with his Galaga obsession. He has such a unique eye; I expect it to be nothing less than magical. Honestly, I believe I am not the only one when I say this, but I am anticipating your entire lineup to be nothing less than magical.

Thanks, Lori! I think it's inevitable that once these books are out, people will have strong opinions about which books are their favorite. I bet too that a reader's best-loved book and best-loved game are not the same. For instance, my favorite 33 1/3 book of the ones I've read is on Pavement's Wowee Zowee by Bryan Charles. That's not such an important album to me, but the book is incredible and makes me care because Charles cares. So my hope is that readers will give, say, ZZT a try even if they never played it growing up.

With the release of Ready Player One last year, and BJ Best’s Our Princess is in Another Castle this year, video games seem to be influencing literature at an alarming rate. How do you and your partners hope to differentiate yourselves from the other retro-literature noise out there?

You're right--game-influenced lit is thriving. I'd love to check out both of those books you mentioned. People are making really strong literature out of the material of video games: The poems of Gregory Sherl and prose poems of Brian Oliu are great too.

I think what Boss Fight offers is focus: The notion that a single game is worthy of an entire book is a tenet, but it's also a dare to writers. Anybody could write 1,000 words on the history of Super Mario Bros 2, but to write an entire book requires the author (Jon Irwin) to dig deep, unsure of what he'll come up with. The length demands that it will be an exploration. And that's what my favorite nonfiction books are: explorations. (To name a few: In Cold Blood, About a Mountain, A Supposedly Fun Thing, Body Politic, U&I.) So that the subject is a game, and then the writing of the book is also a sort of game.

So will these books be a mix of fiction and non fiction? Just think, you could be ushering in a whole new genre of literature with Boss Fight Books. What would you name it, this new gamers genre lit?

The books will actually be entirely nonfiction. I love to write and read fiction (Dennis Cooper's God Jr. is a great book that largely takes place inside a video game, for instance), but I think nonfiction will better focus the series.

And I do hope we're helping usher in a new era of respectability for longform writing about games. I'd add that there is a lot of exciting writing already being done, just not in a forum quite like this.

As for what to call it... Game Culture Studies? Longform Game Journalism? Memoirio Bros? The Legend of Gaming: A Link to the Past? Game Theft Auto San Andreas? Hmm. I'll have to keep at it.

How did you decide on the order in which you’ll release your titles?

The ordering as it stands on the Kickstarter is the order in which the books were contracted, but it will almost definitely change. Earthbound will be our first title, but the others will be released according to the order in which they are completed. 

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Don't let the fact they hit their funding in the first eight hours of their debut stop you... check out the kickstarter video for Boss Fight Books and throw some money at them. I'm in for the entire, digital first season lineup and cannot wait to see these badboys! 

Gabe Durham is the author of the novel FUN CAMP and the editor of Boss Fight Books. Other writings have recently appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, The Collagist, and The Weeklings. He lives in Los Angeles.

Where Writers Write: Janice Deal

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 Janice Deal. 

Her stories have appeared in literary magazines including The Sun, CutBank, the Ontario Review, The Carolina Quarterly, StoryQuarterly, and New Letters, and in the anthology, New Stories from the Midwest.  Her short-story collection, The Decline of Pigeons, was a finalist in the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and she is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Artists Fellowship Award for prose.  She is currently working on a novel.

Where Janice Deal Writes

I was writing not long ago when my daughter came in to where I was parked on the couch with my laptop, and announced that our bathroom ceiling looked “weird.”  We’ve had a leak there once before and the paint is blotched, something I’ve meant to fix but haven’t gotten around to yet. I blithely told her not to worry, making vague reference to “that old stain,” then swung my attention back to my characters, Dixie and Val, currently raising hell up in northern Wisconsin.

“It’s not a stain, exactly,” she said carefully, edging a little closer.  “More like a . . . bubble?”  Thatcaught my attention, so I left Dixie the hell-raiser to join Marion and check out the bathroom, where a giant bubble of water-filled paint had indeed bloomed on the ceiling.  Oh.  Plumber.  Of course.

Did you know that the best way to manage a water-filled paint bubble is to pop it?  Or that 11-year-olds are more observant than their myopic parents?  No matter.  Our bathroom is in good shape now, and when the time is right I will repaint the ceiling, but perhaps in a nutshell this reminds me why I write anywhere but at home.  I get distracted, if not by plumbing emergencies, then by our three cats, who demand to be recognized as more important than work:

So it is that most of my short-story collection, The Decline of Pigeons – and now my novel-in-progress - got written, not at home, but in one of two places: Starbucks or Barnes & Noble.  

I like the coffee in both locales, I like the warm vibe, and the white noise that comes with working in a public place is so non-specific to me (plumbing emergency?  not my problem!) that I can easily tune it out.  I tend to meet writer friends for “work dates” at these places; the Barnes & Noble near me has wonderful long wooden tables and outlets for laptops, and there’s a Starbucks not far away where they know me and get my latte going before I even say a word.  It’s fun – even comforting - to have company and to work in “companionable silence” with someone else, and then when we’re done we might treat ourselves to lunch and catching up.  In a profession often characterized by solitude, I appreciate this way to connect with my friends. 

Sometimes at the end of the work day, if I’m at Barnes and Noble I’ll relax for a beat with a book.  

And then I look forward to speeding home – wonderful home with its cheerful disarray, the towers of books and aging plumbing, the scuffed wooden floors and my child and my husband and those three crazy cats: so essential to my happiness, which, come to think of it, is that thing most conducive to my writing, after all.

The Indie Ink Runs Deep: Tanya Chernov

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 Tanya Chernov. Tanya earned her BA in English from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington and holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts: Whidbey Writers Workshop. A proud member of the Richard Hugo House and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, her work has been published all over the literary map, ranging from experimental forms to formal verse, from literary narratives to imaginative farces. A Real Emotional Girl: A Memoir of Love and Loss (Skyhorse Publishing) was recently named one of Kirkus Review's 15 Excellent Memoirs. Poetry and translations editor for the Los Angeles Review, Tanya lives and writes in Seattle with her dog, Mona, though roots of her heart remain firmly planted in Wisconsin. Go Packers. Find Tanya and her debut memoir, A Real Emotional Girl, at www.tanyachernov.

My first tattoo was a blocky, unplanned, ugly mistake: Hebrew text that matched my now-ex fiancé's and which read "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine, that shepherds among the lilies" from the Song of Solomon. Yeah--oy veyis right.

Since I can remember writing, which—as is the case for most of us—goes pretty far back, I've been fussy about the implements used in my work. The type of paper and pen are most crucial, the tactile sensation of the keys on the keyboard having heavy influence on the tone and timbre of what I create. I began cultivating an obsession with antique typewriters after college, reveling in the way the high-mounted keys almost made it seem as if another person was writing my words altogether.

In the days before my former betrothed got mean, in the early days before he turned on me every night after he'd turned to the liquor, we were actually quite sweet together. More in love than you'd guess. One day while I was working at home with the dogs lying lazily in the sun at my feet, Chris came bounding through my office door and whisked me outside to the running car. Down the street, he'd found the most incredible garage sale, he'd said, and he wanted to take me there before all the good stuff was gone. An older couple was selling a million little trinkets and wares from their life together, and Chris and I wanted to buy every bit of it so we could force our own world to construct itself just so. But instead, we settled on what we could get for the cash in our pockets, which included an Underwood typewriter and its heavy black carrying case. Together they weighed nearly as much as a Volkswagen, and Chris lugged them into the back of the car for me.

Though I never found any ribbons to fit inside and didn't have the patience to nurse it back to functioning order, that typewriter became a sort of mascot, an inanimate pet. I would stroke its keys late into the night when the words wouldn't flow, imagining my black metal machine spitting out letters and poems and dreams high through the air in an endless stream, my fingers simply taking dictation.

Because he knew I loved it, Chris kept the typewriter from me when I left him. Held it hostage like the child I thank the heavens we never had. He kept other things that stung me, too--the Dyson vacuum, the vintage leather couch from my office, the plant I'd moved with me from house to house since high school. But the typewriter was mine, through and though. Chris had no use for it; he doesn't even read.

A few months after I found the courage to leave that deeply necrotic relationship, I found a brilliant tattoo artist who specialized in cover-ups and happened to be from my home state of Wisconsin. She did a remarkable job creating something I absolutely loved to replace what had become a terrible reminder of my near-disastrous marriage. When it was time for my second tat, I knew exactly who I wanted to do the art, and exactly what I wanted: an old-fashioned typewriter.

I have more antique typewriters in my house now than I know what to do with, several of which are worth a good deal of money, in fine condition, and with fabulous aesthetic appeal. But none of them can replace my first—that true gem with all its greasy charm, its hulking presence a comfort I can't accurately describe.

The tattoo on my bicep gives me some small solace in its absence and provides exactly the sort of touchstone quality I so hoped it would possess. Every time I look at the tattoo, or touch it, or simply remember that it's there, I am reminded of my devotion to this writer's life, to my love of the written word. Like a ballet dancer returning to the barre and knowing exactly where she is, having this tattoo reminds me that every time I return to the page, I have come home.

The Audio Series: Heather Fowler

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


Today, Heather Fowler reads from her new collection This Time, While We're Awake. Heather is also the author of the story collections Suspended Heart (Aqueous Books, Dec. 2010), People with Holes (Pink Narcissus Press, July 2012), and Elegantly Naked In My Sexy Mental Illness (Queen's Ferry Press, forthcoming May 2014). Fowler’s People with Holes was named a 2012 finalist for Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award in Short Fiction. She received her M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Hollins University. Her stories and poems have been published online and in print in the U.S., England, Australia, and India, and appeared in such venues as PANK, Night Train, storyglossia, Surreal South, JMWW, Prick of the Spindle, Short Story America, The Nervous Breakdown, and others, as well as having been nominated for the storySouth Million Writers Award, Sundress Publications Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. She is Poetry Editor at Corium Magazine and a Fiction Editor for the international refereed journal, Journal of Post-Colonial Cultures & Societies (USA). 

Click the soundcloud file below to experience This Time, While We're Awake as read by author Heather Fowler:





The word on This Time, While We're Awake:

Fowler's new collection, This Time, While We're Awake, welcomes you to the worlds of egregious dystopias—environments where tornadoes come one after another as neighbors spar, drugged breeders make babies in the near-future for the sterile rich, and humans are sacrificed by contract to aliens who protect them. In this collection, Fowler examines what it means to be fair and humane in the surreal landscapes where the ruling factions are neither of these things. Come and get your Practice Baby, if you'd like to try parenting. Take an injection to experience love without a partner. This collection showcases not only Fowler's trademark heart and humor, but also a darker dimension of commentary similar to Bradbury or The Twilight Zone. Selected stories in this volume have been published internationally and online.

*lifted from the publisher's website with love