Indie Spotlight: David Beers

Every author has a choice to make when they hold that finished manuscript in their hands for the very first time. Submit to an agent and try to get published traditionally, or self publish.

For some, I suppose, there is no question. They've dreamed of being a traditionally published author. Or they just don't have the time, energy, or desire to take on the roll of (or seek out) editor, designer, graphic artist, publicists, etc.

For others, self publishing is more appealing. They want complete control over the finished product. They don't want to settle for a measly percentage of sales. Or, in the case of David Beers, author of the recently self published The Devil's Dream, these four simple reasons made self publishing the only way to go....

The Four Reasons I’ll Never Go Traditional

I remember being unsure about whether to traditionally publish or self-publish. I remember being unsure even after I self-pubbed my first book. I remember being unsure after my second. I remember being unsure up until about 2/25/2014, which, at this writing, was three days ago. Three days ago, I understood without a doubt, that regardless of the economics underlying either one of the choices, I wasn’t going to traditionally publish. Here are the 4 reasons why:

1.       I can’t work for anyone else. I mean, I’m almost unemployable. I hate being questioned; I hate being talked down to; I hate being told what to do. If someone even ASKS if my data could possibly be wrong, I almost have an aneurysm. My jaw opens slightly, my eyes turn into boiling pots of hate, and I stare at them…until they leave—and, that’s about a job I really don’t care that much about. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a publisher tell me I have to change something in my novel or it’s not coming out. I can’t imagine an editor cutting huge chunks from my novels to make it fit their word counts. There is no doubt, in any of those two situations,  that I would end up in jail for murder. So where does that leave me? I’m unable to take order from anyone else but I can’t stop writing? Self-publishing.

2.      I don’t want to just be a writer. This goes back to not wanting to work for anyone, but it also extends from that. I want to produce, and I want to produce things that I’m proud of. In self-publishing, writer is not your only title; in the beginning, CEO of a start-up would be more apt, and when you reach Konrath status, CEO of a one-man corporation. When you begin to think of self-publishing like that, at least for me, it revealed a whole new meaning of what I was actually doing. My job wasn’t simply to write novels. It was to control everything, from the first words I type on my computer, to what I’m reading to keep myself educated on the industry. Which leads me to my next point.

3.       Control. Not over just your business, but of your destiny. I’m not at the whim of a manager who may or may not like me. I’m not plugging away at making my numbers for the quarter so that the corporation’s stock rises a few points. I control my life. When I wake up, when I go to bed. How hard I work and in turn, how much success I have from that work. I write what I want. My covers look how I want. I implement the edits I want. When I think about it, longer term, I can’t imagine failure if I’m in control, because, quite simply, I won’t quit.

4.       Hard work. I’m addicted to it. Literally, I may end up in some kind of twelve step program someday, but not until I’m rich. They never tell the unsuccessful that they’re work-a-holics, they just say they’re trying to make ends meet. Right now I work sixteen hour days, Monday through Friday, and a little less on the weekends. I end each day completely spent, with maybe only a few minutes to read the current novel I’m on before my eyes shut. There isn’t any other way I would want to live. Now, I know I can work that hard for a corporation, or as a teacher, or any other profession, but with self-publishing, I get to do what I love. I get to write. I get to speak with fans. I get to create, and I get to do it all day, every day, if I choose.

Those four reasons aren’t for everyone and, to use a cliché, self-publishing isn’t for everyone. They’re for me though; they fit everything about my personality. This isn’t a choice for me anymore—I simply won’t traditionally publish.

Unless they offered me like an eight figure deal. Then I could probably throw those four reasons away.

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I used to deliver pizza. I was pretty good at it, too. I mean, it's not that hard, but if I'm not going to brag, who is, right? Anyways, so I'm delivering pizza while I'm in college, and my boss has been in the pizza industry like six years. He's supposed to graduate from college this year, and I ask him, what are you going to do after college? We're all supposed to go out and conquer the world right after college, so this guy has to have some kind of plan. He looked at me like I was delusional. "I'm a writer, man." Those four words changed my life more so than anything else ever spoken to me.

I'd always written, since I was twelve participating in online-wrestling forums in which you acted out your character. I wrote because it came naturally. Never once, in the entirety of my nineteen years did I think that writing could be a career though, until a Pizza Sage said those four words to me. So what did I do? I went home and wrote a short story and immediately understood that I was the greatest writer to ever touch a keyboard. I brought it to the Pizza Sage and he told me what anyone could have told me--it was horrible. I might be dumb, probably am, but I'm also tenacious.

I spent the next seven years writing almost every day. My first novel grew to the length of 40,000 words, then I threw it away. My second novel grew to 140,000 words. I didn't throw it away, but it was rejected about 50 times by agents. My next novel ended up at around 55,000 words, which I showed to a few friends and shelved. Then I wrote Dead Religion, which received amazing reviews. I just put out my newest novel The Devil’s Dream! (Get in touch with David through Twitter or Facebook) 

Book Review: Nefarious Twit

Read 2/28/14 - 3/9/14
3 Stars - Recommended to readers who can forgive a cool story its rough writing
Pages: 298
Publisher: Branch Hand Books
Released: Dec 2013



Debut novels are tricky little things. Especially when you read reviews where said debut is described as "if so-and-so-super-famous-author and so-and-so-super-famous-author had a baby and that baby ended up on an acid trip and wrote a book". Cause you know... I mean, c'mon, you KNOW it's not gonna compare to those super-famous-author peoples. They've been honing their skills for years. They've had a shit-ton of practice and some pretty hard-core editors tearing their shit up. And if you read the first book or two that they published, you'll see that back then, even THEY weren't so great. Not back then. Not when compared to what they can write NOW. So can we all agree to stop promoting every new debut author by claiming that they are on par with literary super-gods? Cool? Yes?

Because, to be fair to the debut author and what they are bringing to the book at hand, we should really just judge them against, well, themselves. And go in with no (but not low) expectations. This way, if they suck, we might not think they are as sucky as if, say, we were expecting so-and-so-famous-author awesomeness. And if they are great, we can actually say they are great without worrying about the comparison to so-and-so-famous-author so they can be great within their own right.

So why the chatty intro about debut novelists and comparisons to other authors?

Well, frankly, I wasn't sure how else to start this review. See, Tony McMillen is making his debut with Nefarious Twit, and prior to picking up the book, I had read reviews where he'd been compared to some similar-in-concept-but-in-my-opinion-not-similar-in-writing-strength authors aaaaand I'm pretty sure those comparisons caused me to expect something a bit... more from this book than it was capable of giving. Which left me a bit frustrated and may have affected the way I read it, which isn't exactly fair to the book or the author.

I was well aware of this bias as I went into it and tried to be less critical when grammatical errors, strange phrasing or wonky sentence structure reached up off the page and slapped me in the face.

Tony's approach to the story itself was interesting. The narrator played it close to both the reader and the characters, behaving as our guide and confidante as we progressed from chapter to chapter. He would begin each chapter with little pro-tips, letting us know if it contained information that was important to the plot or additional backstory on a main character. He even warned us away if a particular chapter was heavy on violence - though, let's be honest, there's not a whole lot that I'd find too violent or excessive, did you forget that I grew up on a steady diet of Stephen King and that I'm a fan of bizarro lit?!

At its core, Nefarious Twit is a book about books, a book about drugs, murder and mayhem, and a book about family, for better or worse. Our main man Rick is the son of Nefarious Twit, estranged father and legendary children's book author. Rick's mother recently committed suicide and he's bringing his half-brother Lou along on a hunt for dear ole dad. This won't be a warm and fuzzy family reunion. Oh no. Rick is going after him for some revenge, and he's removing the final page in every copy of his father's book along the way. There are drugs and lots of them. Strange and trippy things happen. Tiny time travelling alien things happen to Lou. Hard things happen to Rick's face. There are girls and then there are dead girls. And there are no happy endings. Sorry, but it's just not that sort of book.

If you can forgive the blatant overuse of drugs as a plot device, and the somewhat slow and repetitive story telling for favor of a cool tale of jealousy and revenge, then go ahead and bury your nose inside this one.

Indie Spotlight: Leo X Robertson

I first discovered Leo over at Goodreads while I was pitching books to reviewers for my "moonlighting" position as Marketing Director with CCLaP (and for a side job I had as publicist for a couple of Davis Schneiderman's titles). He's got eclectic taste when it comes to literature and when he reached out to me about his debut self published novel Findesferas, I knew I had to get him over here on the blog. By the way, if you are interested in taking a peek at his book, it's available as a free epub download here.

Today, he shares an interesting concept - the lies he tells himself while writing. I think you'll get a kick out of these, or, if you are writer, perhaps you'll see something of yourself in them?

 Lies I tell myself when writing

I recently self-published my first novel and already feel like I learned a lot from the experience. Far be it from me to speak with authority about the process, so instead I’d like to share with you some lies I tell myself while writing, and what I suspect is the truth.

I don't wanna read anything- I'm too jealous/ this author's rubbish/ this author's too good (“this author” may or may not be the same author)

Reading when you’re writing is a great way to pick up new ideas, even if they’re not directly related to what you’re working on. You’ll probably feel that you’ll never be good as someone, and you’ll also be outraged that someone clearly less talented than you is writing for a living while you’re slaving away at etcetera. Everything’s fine. Learn what you can from good or bad writing and do your own thing.

I’ve just started/ I'm too young to have to write anything good. No one even knows who I am, I’m sure they’re not expecting anything stellar.

People have been defying logic by writing from the irritatingly young to the why-start-now old. You are the leading authority on your life right at this moment, and there are readers your age or otherwise looking for a different perspective or new insight. I wrote my first novel during my master’s studies and incorporated a number of scientific concepts that I barely remember studying now- if I’d waited, chances are I wouldn’t have been able to use them. If you have an idea for a piece you wanna write, you should start now, and whatever you write, do it with conviction and to the best of your ability- that’s something people can expect.

I heard this great anecdote from a friend the other day, and it sounds exactly like something my character would do. Shame I can’t use it…

I used to think that everyone else was sequestering their stories for their own creative outputs, but having asked, I’ve generally found people quite willing to help out and contribute. So long as the input doesn’t get too heavy and cloud your judgement, it can be very helpful.

I need to focus on one project at a time: I won’t start something else until this is finished.

Up to you but it can enhance inspiration when you have thoughts that are related to many different projects. It’ll prevent your current project from becoming confused with too many differing ideas if you start assigning them to their most appropriate piece. This also makes your next project easier because of the bonus planning!

I can't use that writer's technique: I don't think I understand completely why they used it, and if people recognise it and think it’s an homage to that writer and that I used it incorrectly, they’re gonna think I’m stupid.

Sometimes writing can hit you viscerally but you don’t know why, but you probably understood it better than you think. If you didn’t understand it but you still like the technique, then use it for your own purposes- maybe this is even better because people will think you're stunningly original!

I can't let anyone see this- I hate it!

Might happen. If you've edited it and read it enough times until it's lost all meaning, I think you're supposed to hate it by the end. Who knows? If you don't hate it, you might not have proofread it enough! If you’re really unsure, just leave it a while, no rush at all and you can come back refreshed.

I'll just write something simple to begin with.

Great! Get started with something you can do, but funnily enough you might find it easier if you choose something ambitious, complex in theme or structure, number of characters, subplots whatever it is. If you have a lot planned and you haven’t yet fulfilled all your criteria, it means you must have more to write, and anything which gets you thinking about writing more is usually helpful, as is any reasonably challenging ambition for your book.

I'll write when I have an idea/ I’ll just write the scenes as they enter my head, then connect the dots later.

If your story is to have any kind of progression, connecting the dots, while there are infinite ways to do it, can be restrictive, and you may well end up with a later scene which takes your characters in the wrong direction. This typically leaves you with thousands of words that you grow an affection for and refuse to throw away- then a week later you’ll concede but keep one or two good sentences and put them somewhere where they don’t belong, making your manuscript a bit too disjointed. It’s a sign of a great writer if they can throw away their crap bits, but it can be painful. I try to minimise opportunities for this happening: working from beginning to end is one way to do this, while a note here or there about how the story might progress is a nice way of keeping a goal in mind.

I can’t be doing with all this new software. Good writing is good writing, I don’t need any help.

Yeah… So I got a copy of Robert McKee’s book Story (which is great) and he suggests that you plan all your scenes by writing them on flashcards and putting them up on your wall, which I did. But I hadn’t yet heard of Scrivener. Your story can be planned, re-worked or discarded more readily using for example Scrivener’s corkboard feature. Similar to the random scene order technique, throwing away work you’ve done is not easy, and any method which is going to make you cling on to bad material for sentimental purposes should be avoided, ‘cause if you’re anything like me, you pure will and you’ll have to fix it later. Different software could make your creative life much easier.

I’m not aiming for a strong plot: this novel’s more literary, more conceptual. It’s not about character either. It’s about… um… ah… eugh.

You won’t (or at least shouldn’t) get away with a book that lacks plot, conflict, characterisation, no matter what your aims are with the text. Every great book, literary or otherwise, has had a plot- sometimes you need to look for it but it’s still there. Crack out your conflict!

Phew! I’m not necessarily cured of all these thoughts, but sometimes it’s just nice to know it happens to someone else too. Best of luck with your writing!

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Bio: Leo X. Robertson is a 25 year-old Scottish chemical engineer living in Stavanger, Norway. His first novel, Findesferas, is available in paperback or as a free ebook. Find him on Twitter: @Leo_X_Robertson

Indie Spotlight: James Dorr

The trick to getting short stories picked up sometimes isn't really a trick at all. Networking, submitting appropriate stories to the right magazines, and being thick skinned are all necessary travel-mates down the road to being published. 

Today, author James Dorr, whose THE TEARS OF ISIS was published with Perpetual Motion Machine, shares some of the keys to his success to those writers out there who may feel as though they are bashing their heads against the brick wall of submissions and rejections....

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I had just come back from a horror convention where an editor who had published me some years back happened to mention that he still had slots open in his latest anthology -- one that was supposed to have been closed months before.  I made a point to say hello and chat a bit and, once I was home, looked up the old guidelines on the computer and went through the stories I had on hand.

I thought I had one that just might fit.

And that’s how the game is played.  It may be a long shot, yes, but he’d liked my work in the past and now he’s been reminded of this.  The anthology pays a professional rate, so I’d be a fool if I didn’t try.

So that’s part of it, to be on the lookout for opportunities to submit work and to be ready to jump when you find them.  I belong to a number of online groups, for instance, on Facebook and elsewhere that sometimes, along with the rest of the gossip, give marketing tips.  I also check lists like Ralan.com from time to time and, even though it costs money now, I’m still getting Duotrope on the assumption it will earn its cost back on sales I‘ll make as a result of its listings.  And of course I also keep in touch with other editors’ and publishers’ websites who’ve used my work, checking to see if they have new guidelines for upcoming anthology projects as well as check back with magazines in terms of theme issues.   This includes, if I’m at a convention, looking these people up in the dealers room if only to ask how things are going, but at the same time giving them a face to connect my name to, as well as underscoring that I care -- sort of what businesspeople call networking.  It’s not necessary, but it doesn’t hurt, nor does keeping a fairly high profile, getting on panels when I can, giving readings, etc.

To give an example, a year or two ago I sent some stories to a semipro publisher, Dark Moon Books, for a couple of flash fiction anthologies they’d announced guidelines for.  These were accepted and, at 2012’s World Horror Con, I went to their table to pick up a contributor’s copy of one that was just out.  While there, I talked with the publisher about various matters, and also met one of their assistants, Max Booth III, who  it happened was editing an alternative history anthology for them called ZOMBIE JESUS AND OTHER TRUE STORIES which, as it also happened, I had sent a story to about a month before.  As a result, when it came time for him to decide on the stories he’d use, he remembered my name and seeing it in the stack, as he said himself later, “quickly read it and knew right away I wanted it.  The story was, in fact, the first story I accepted for the anthology.”

So, okay, if it was a good story he would have accepted it anyway, but there’s more to it.  When he was later promoting the book, among other things running interviews with some of the authors, I emailed him to let him know I was available too and otherwise worked to cooperate with him.  Then, last fall, he set up his own publishing company, Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing, and, liking what he’d seen of my work thus far (in this case including some other anthologies we’d both had work in), he sent me an email asking if I’d consider doing a book with him.   

The result:  in May 2013, my latest collection THE TEARS OF ISIS was published, timed by mutual agreement to be available a month preceding that year’s World Horror Convention in New Orleans in June -- seventeen stories and an opening poem of horror and dark fantasy, with some mystery and other things thrown in, about art and artists, and vampires and ghouls. . . , well, Max having given me a free hand, mostly stories published before that have been favorites of mine for various reasons but also chosen with an eye to a coherent whole, along with at least one that’s never been seen before.  And also tales about rats and dragons, and UFOs, and insects, and sleeping beauties and Medusa and Isis. . . .  

So not everyone’s going to publish a book, at least not right away, but we are in a sense members of a family, we writers and publishers and editors.  And when the time comes, it never hurts to have made connections.  But there are other aspects to submitting as well.  I already mentioned reading guidelines, usually obtainable on a publisher’s website.  These may vary in information quality, but if an editor states a preference -- or lists taboos -- adhering to the editor’s wants as closely as possible, or at least explaining in a cover letter why you might be bending a rule if you have a good reason to, will leave a good impression for future submissions even if this particular one fails.  And if an editor says, even though rejecting this story, to please send another, take him or her up on it if you can.

That’s the big rule for successful marketing:  perseverance.  For myself, I try to send something or other out on an average of three or four a week and, needless to say, when something comes back, the first thing I’ll do is look to see where else I can send it.  But also be polite, businesslike, and cooperative if an editor has suggestions or requests.  If an editor asks you to rewrite something, you don’t necessarily have to agree with everything asked, but if you don’t, give him or her a reason why or, better yet, suggest another way of changing it as a compromise.

Then one more thing, with the number of pieces I send out, it doesn’t mean that I’m that prolific -- just that I’ve been around a long time.  You’ll build up a stable of stories that, while still good, for one reason or another have not yet been published, so keep looking out for places to send them.  But also a lot of marketing I do these days is with reprints, especially in a soft economy where the number of higher paying markets may not be that great, and that’s another reason to read guidelines carefully.  Some markets will be for new stories only, but others are happy to look at older work that hasn’t been in print for a while.  From my point of view it’s still extra money for something I’ve already sold before as well as exposure to new readers.  So on the one hand, I’m not going to get rich on short stories and poems, but now and then if I can make, say, an additional $10, that’s enough to buy a pizza.  Pizza is good.  But also, aggressively keeping my work in the marketplace can sometimes engender new opportunities, a case in point being THE TEARS OF ISIS.  

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James Dorr’s newest collection, THE TEARS OF ISIS from Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing, joins STRANGE MISTRESSES: TALES OF WONDER AND ROMANCE and DARKER LOVES: TALES OF MYSTERY AND REGRET (Dark Regions) and his all-poetry VAMPS (A RETROSPECTIVE) from Sam’s Dot Publishing. You can find out more about James Dorr at http://jamesdorrwriter.wordpress.com, and learn more about THE TEARS OF ISIS at http://perpetualpublishing.com/the-tears-of-isis/

Indie Spotlight: Rafael Alvaerz

I am convinced that most of us can remember the person, place, or thing that helped us define what it was we wanted to be when we grew up. That one teacher who made you fall in love with learning, and decide to become one too; a particular photograph or artist that influenced a similar passion in you; a specific book that spoke to you so strongly that you began to shape a lifelong dream of publishing some of your own...

In today's indie spotlight, Rafael Alvarez - author of the recently released Tale from the Holy Land - shares a short reflective essay on his dream (before he realized it was his dream) of becoming a writer:

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I am currently living the dream of an 8-year-old kid who didn't even know what the dream was. I was in the third grade and the teacher - Mrs. Jean Ortgies, she seemed ancient at 50 - read aloud to us. My favorite was Stuart Little and I could see myself in the matchbox canoe with him.

I went home and told my parents I was going to be a writer. They were kind, smiled, and told me to eat my vegetables. (I often hid peas and lima beans in the corners of my mouth and excused myself for the bathroom where I spit them in the toilet.)

I never lost sight of that dream and today - Feb. 6, 2014, three days before the 50th anniversary of the Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan (which changed my life two years before the stuart little epiphany, which i use to connect the dots from a kid who liked to read to a kid who wanted to write). I am driving through the south in search of warm weather and an audience - one or two, wherever two or more are gathered - to hear fictional accounts of those very people who told me to eat my vegetables, stories collected in tales form the holy land: my father the tugboat engineer who sailed to venezuela as a teenager on a Baltimore ore ship; my Polish-American mother who liked nothing better growing up than chocolate milk and coconut custard pie, who went to work with her depression era cannery worker mother - the great anna potter jones - and played in bushel baskets while her mom snipped string beans on an assembly line. 

I sleep in the back of the truck by the side of the road and dream bigger dreams, all of which take me back to a holy land bounded by the Baltimore harbor on the south and Johns Hopkins hospital on the north. When there are no customers, I give the books away. I want to be read ...

  - Rafael Alvaerz, on the road, 02.06.14, rocky mount NC

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Rafael Alvarez is a short story writer based in Baltimore and Los Angeles. A longtime City Desk reporter for the Baltimore Sun where he wrote obituaries while documenting the folklore of the old port city – Alvarez wrote for the first three seasons of the HBO cop drama, The Wire.

Eat Like an Author: Alan M Clark

When most people get bored, they eat. When I get bored, I brainstorm new series and features for the blog, and THEN eat. And not too long ago, as I was brainstorming and contemplating what I wanted to eat, I thought how cool it would be to have a mini-foodie series where authors share the things they like to eat. Photos and recipes and all. And so I asked them, and amazingly they responded, and I dubbed it EAT LIKE AN AUTHOR. 


Today, Alan M Clark, author of the bizarro early western The Door That Faced West, shares a southern recipe you are sure to fall in love with...

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Certain flavors of the American South stick with you, especially if you are a Southerner as I am.  They create nostalgia to smell or taste them. As one who has written historical fiction about southern people and environs, such favors are just the thing to put me in a creative state of mind. I’ve always loved cajun and creole cooking. Visiting New Orleans and some of the surrounding State of Louisiana, I’ve sampled many different cuisines particular to that part of the world.  When not in that area, I’ve tried a cajun or creole restaurant here and there, but I never found the food to be very good. I wanted to make a good pot of gumbo or shrimp creole, but I didn’t much like the recipes I found.

In the ‘80s I taught painting at Centennial Park in Nashville, TN, and had a student whose name was Roberts (It’s been so long now, I cannot remember her first name). She had illustrated her mother’s cookbook.  Her family was from New Orleans. Her mother, Bobbie Roberts (I know the name because it’s on the cover of the book) had written the Mélange!  A Celebration of Louisiana Kitchens.In it, I found recipes that tasted like those you find in and around New Orleans!

I’ve altered the recipe for gumbo that I got from the cookbook a bit.  It gets rave reviews when we have a house full of hungry guests. Here’s my recipe, based on Bobbie Robert’s version.  

Mine I call Bog Mummy Gumbo. 

Ingredients:

—3/4 cup oil

—3/4 cup flour

—5 onions

—1 bell pepper

—2 stalks celery

—1/2 cup okra

—1-large chicken, preferably a hen

—2 beers

—a small dash of molasses

—1/4 cup “What’s-This-Here-Sauce” (Worcestershire sauce)

—water

—season with salt and ground green and black peppercorns and cayenne pepper.

—1 lb. Andouille sausage.  If this can’t be found use a smoked sausage such as Kielbasa

—cup of parsley

—cup of green onions or onion tops

—2 Tablespoons of Gumbo File (ground sasafras leaves)

All the vegetables should be chopped roughly. 

Make a roux in a heavy cast-iron pan using the oil and flour.  Heat until a dark brown, stirring constantly.  Do not allow to burn.

While roux is hot throw in all the vegetables except the parsley and green onions or onion tops.

Once the vegetables look cooked, dump in the chicken whole, pour in the beers, the “What’s-This-Here-Sauce,” molasses, and enough water (you could use stock made from boiling crab and shrimp shells) to cover the chicken.  Add salt and ground green, red, and black pepper to taste. Simmer slowly for 2 hours.

Remove chicken and allow it to sit and cool a bit.

Chop the sausage roughly and throw it in the pot.  Continue to simmer very slowly.

When chicken is cool enough pick off the meat and chop roughly, then return it to the pot.  Throw away the skin and bones of the chicken.

Add the last three ingredients and serve immediately in bowls over a small amount of rice.  Just before serving you can also put crab, shrimp, crawfish and such like in it.

Gumbo is one of those dishes that you can add a few extras to, such as cave crickets, crayfish, tree bark slimed by the Mingit Toad, oysters, and such-like.  It is usually cooked in a big pot, so be careful not to fall in—unless you really want to.

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Alan M. Clark grew up in Tennessee in a house full of bones and old medical books. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute. His illustrations have appeared in books of fiction, non-fiction, textbooks, young adult fiction and children's books. Awards for his illustration work include the World Fantasy Award and four Chesley Awards. He is the author of thirteen books, including seven novels, a lavishly illustrated novella, four collections of fiction, and a nonfiction full-color book of his artwork. His latest novel, The Door That Faced West, is an Early Western that takes place in Tennessee and Kentucky in 1799-1800. www.alanmclark.com

CCLaP: Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas, Vol. 1

Today, CCLaP is celebrating the birth of another book!

Our first handmade, hardback, hypermodern title of 2014 

Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas, Vol.1 

is now available to the public!

Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas, Vol. 1 was written by artist and Austinite Fernando A. Flores. This novella length collection of short stories showcases the tumultuous highs and lows of being in punk rock bands. It's edgy and endearing and bound to please lovers of rock-lit. 

McAllen, Texas is the indie-rock capital of the world; or at least it would be, if all their bands didn't have the pesky habit of disintegrating before ever having their first big success. That's the central premise of Austinite Fernando A. Flores' literary debut, and anyone who's ever pawned their guitar to buy more beer will find much in this book to celebrate. Working from the conceit that all acts of creativity are vital to human happiness, no matter what the public reaction, Flores presents a smorgasbord of interconnected tales about artists who can't quite seem to get their act together--from the performance artist whose most important work was only ever seen by five people, to the revered punk singer who never recorded a single album, to the bar band who accidentally become pawns of a local political campaign--and shows how in all these cases, the mere existence of these artists is a magical antidote against day-to-day ennui and adversity, and that it's actually the rest of the squares who are the true bullshit artists. By turns hilarious, heartbreaking and infuriating, this compact story collection is a loving ode to small-town music scenes in all their messy glory, and a welcome slap in the face to our "Yes We Can" times.

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Check out what others think so far:

Scott Navicky, whose book Humboldt, or the Power of Positive Thinking, was released by CCLaP last month had this to say: "While Flores’ stories are primarily about music, they’re not about the glamorous side of the music industry. They’re not about fortune and fame, national tours, magazine spreads, groupies, or champagne brunches. They’re about people who live in trailer parks, work dead-end jobs, and drink too much too early in the day. Flores captures this [collective feeling of being in a band] perfectly."

Goodreads user Bradley Gamboa says: "Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas Vol. 1 ... is not just a collection of short stories about the indie punk scene in South Texas. It is a ode to any one who has ever seen joy in listening, watching, or creating works of art anywhere! "

Lixian of Words, Notes, and Fiction says: " The rock star life tends to be too romanticized while Flores seems to make it as gritty, sweaty, dirty, and dark as possible ... it's not cookies and milk, it's chainsaws and nails...."

Goodreads user Woodland Animal shares his thoughts: "Flores presents a smorgasbord of interconnected tales about artists who can't quite seem to get their act together...By turns hilarious, heartbreaking and infuriating, this compact story collection is a loving ode to small-town music scenes in all their messy glory..."

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Read more about the book and Fernando 

in this interview between the author and Hypertext Magazine

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Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas, Vol. 1 can be downloaded for free at the publisher's page.  If you prefer print, you can purchase it as a gorgeous, hardback, handmade hypermodern collectors book there too. 

The Concrete Killing Fields Blog Tour

[The wonderful folks over at JKS Communications reached out to me about hosting a leg of The Concrete Killing Fields blog tour. As someone who puts together blog tours both  professionally as CCLaP's Marketing Director, and out of my sheer love of literature as a blogger, there was no way I was going to pass up the opportunity to help spread the word about Pat Morgan's small press memoir.]

In today's day and age, it is so easy to become a published author. If you are ever in doubt, just take a look at this blog post by Chuck Wendig. So it's no longer a matter of "Will my book ever get published?" The question is, "Do I want to be traditionally published?" Pat Morgan took some time to share her journey from manuscript to finished product, the hard work she had to put into it, and the people she pulled in to end up with a memoir she could be proud of:

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When I was invited to write this essay about “putting a book together,” my first question was “should it be about writing the book, editing the book, or getting it published?” Five minutes later the response read “I think getting published would be a good focus!”  “Oh, great,” I muttered, “now I’ll have to write about how ignorant I was about publishing and how much there still is to learn and how much time it takes and how hard it can be.” But then I thought “so what? This essay has a happy ending.”

It was way past time for me to get serious about getting published. My manuscript was finished—again. I’d basically re-written it at least twice, trying to find a balance between what I wanted the reader to know about the people I had written about, including myself, and what any potential readers might actually want to know. It had been painful at times since I’d written about some of the homeless people who stole my heart and broke it. Too, I’d read that if you write about yourself, you need to be willing to “open a vein.” I’d gone further, I think, and maybe hit an artery a couple of times since what I’d written about why I felt so connected to homeless people seemed to come in spurts. I’d been to a few conferences for writers and “wannabee” writers and twice I’d come home thinking I’d struck gold but neither of those opportunities to land a publisher had panned out. I’d learned a lot, though and even deleted some of the “get even” chapters after I read half a dozen books about how to write a memoir. Finally, I’d edited my manuscript until my eyes crossed and I could almost recite it verbatim. My literary friends had edited it as well, some of them a couple of times. I’d fulfilled my lifelong dream of writing a book but it had taken so long that getting it published was now on my “bucket” list.

I was well aware that thousands of people have self-published books and many of them have done well but for several reasons, that didn’t matter to me. I wanted a top-quality product and the credibility, the “good housekeeping seal of approval” that comes, rightly or wrongly, by having my first book published by someone who publishes books for a living. It hadn’t occurred to me that I could be that publisher until I signed up with a brilliant, bossy “book shepherd” who teaches and helps people become independent book publishers so they can turn out a quality product and make far more money than they can make by having their book(s) published by a traditional publisher.

All the editing that had been done before I sent it to the “smart, sassy, salty” woman who would quickly become my “book shepherd” clearly paid off. Other than a lot of sentences that were a full paragraph long (which is how we speak and write in the south) she and her chief editor said my manuscript was “clean” which made it easier for them to work with me. My willingness to be open to edits by professional editors who did a lot more than catch typos and incorrect punctuation marks helped as well. What I especially liked, even though it was a lot of work, was the way she and her chief editor worked with me to be sure that we were on the same page (literally and figuratively) with their edits and that those edits were compatible with what I was trying to communicate. (By this time, it had become clear to me and my book shepherd that I lacked the technical skills—and the motivation—to become an independent publisher and she had agreed to be my publisher as well as my book shepherd.

When we finished our marathon rounds of editing, the book then went to “layout.” There a computer genius converted the manuscript into a more easily readable font and fit the entire manuscript, including the endorsements, acknowledgements, afterword, and table of contents into the form and size of the book. Then we edited it again, and edited the edits that had been incorporated until we agreed that it was as close to perfect as it could be (within reason).  

While all this was going on, my publisher was working to get the best people—and prices—for the book cover, paper, printer, distributor, etc. She was also “encouraging” me to get top-notch endorsements for the book, write the acknowledgements, the afterword, and my personal information for the cover—and venture into the world of social media—an absolute must for marketing. That it all came together at the same time is a testament to her persistence and professionalism.

One of the things I learned along the way is that traditional publishers, which are corporations, may not even like some of the books they publish. If the book will sell well enough to make money, the traditional publisher likes—and gets—most of the money. Conversely, the small independent press that published my book wants me (the author) to make the lion’s share of the money. I like that even though my goal in writing the book and getting it published wasn’t to make a lot of money. My goal was to keep my promise to tell the stories of the people I loved and lost to the concrete killing fields of homelessness. In doing so, I hoped, and still hope, that readers will understand why they were homeless, why some of us are so driven to help them, and what we need to do to break the cycle of homelessness in our communities—and our country.

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Pat Morgan is a self-confessed political junkie and “Arkansas Traveler” veteran of the Clinton for President, and Clinton-Gore campaigns. She is also a mostly unsuccessful political candidate (won 1, lost 2), a former elected official in county government, an unabashed policy wonk, and relentless (ask anybody who knows her) advocate for effective services, especially mental health care, and housing for homeless people.

Book Giveaway: Kelly Davio's BURN THIS HOUSE

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.

It's the first of the month and you know what that means.

It's time to bring you April's Author/Reader Discussion book!

We will be reading and discussing Burn This House

with poet Kelly Davio

Kelly and her publisher Red Hen Press are giving us a total of 10 copies to giveaway. 

A mish mosh of PDF (open internationally) and print copies (open to US only)

Here's the Goodreads description to whet your appetite:

In her debut poetry collection, Kelly Davio invites the reader into a world where sin is virtue and virtue is vice, where the ominous lingers just beneath the surface, and the everyday is imbued with the fantastic. In these intelligent, compassionate, and harrowing poems, Davio gives a modern voice to metaphysical tradition. The poems in this collection dismantle the specter and judgment of a life shaded by Judeo-Christian religious consciousness. Grounded in Davio’s radical religious childhood and subsequent break with the church, her writing examines the world from the viewpoint of the spiritual dissenter, questioning the mores and motivations of religion, family, and self. In sections that explore concepts of revelation, sin, and virtue, these poems tilt the world at uncharacteristic angles, revealing the ragged edges at the margins of belief. At times solemn, at times exuberant, Burn This House is an intense volume, its darkness lit by the flames of wit, intellect, and curiosity.

This giveaway will run through March 8th. 

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

Here's how to enter:

1 - Leave a comment here or in the giveaway thread over at TNBBC on goodreads, stating why you'd like to receive a copy of the book. You MUST be a resident of the US to win a paper copy, so please state your preference and where you reside.

ONLY COMMENT ONCE. MULTIPLE COMMENTS DO NOT GAIN YOU ADDITIONAL CHANCES TO WIN.

2 - State that you agree to participate in the group read book discussion that will run from April 20th through April 26th. Kelly Davio 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!!

Book Review: The Mustache He's Always Wanted But Could Never Grow

Read 2/22/14 - 2/27/14

3 Stars - Recommended to those who enjoy reading about the downward swirl of bottom-rung humanity in the toilet of life

101 Pages

Publisher: House of Vlad Productions

Released 2013

Brian Alan Ellis doesn't have much hope for the human race. He doesn't see us in vivid technicolor. Rather, to him, humanity is drenched in darkness, hidden in shadow, and exuding guilt and sin. 

Scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel, we find him shining a light on the squirmy, dirty, shifty souls he discovers buried down there. Fetishists, a dead cat, drunkards, the cripplingly depressed, and self-mutilators all cling together and hang separately in this collection of short (and shorter) stories. 

In my opinion, the stories that bookend the collection - Crumbs of Love and The Sailboat/Hatchet Painting - are the strongest of the bunch. In the former, you have a dude sitting on the couch, absolutely in love with life and his girlfriend. When he opens his mouth to tell her this, she jumps down his throat and shatters his feel-good buzz. She's a bitch, this chick, and we can see it plain as day. But our poor ole dude is so love-struck, and now so panic-stricken at the thought of her not loving him nearly as much as he loves her, we just can't help but shake our heads. Cause we've all been there. At some point, we've all been sitting exactly where he sits, mouth agape with stupid ridiculous semi-blubbering shit driveling out of our mouths. In the latter, we meet two people (pretty sure they are brother and sister) chatting away meaninglessly about what's been going on in their lives. We learn about the sister's second ex-husband who used to crash at the brother's apartment (before the sister met and married him). The guy was an artist and we're given the rundown on the rumored sale of his one and only masterpiece - an unremarkable painting of a sailboat with a hatchet stuck through it that contained some remarkable "ingredients". 

Stories like Eulogy for Johnny Thunders, which is about a dude, his ex-girlfriend, and her mother standing graveside in varying degrees of mourning over the untimely death of their cat; Leftover Heels, about the pair of shoes an ex-girlfriend leaves behind and the things one lonely man does with them; Lunch Lady, where a husband has a bad reaction to his wife's new 'do; and Delia Done Wrong, where a guy who planned to cheat on his girlfriend while she's away on a trip gets what he wants, and worse, hold their own and help to set the tone of the remainder of the collection. 

Not all of the stories reach that same caliber, though. I started and then stopped reading For Pain with Sleeplessness and Loco Mask II because they just weren't grabbing me. And for all the awesomeness of its title, while The Mustache He's Always Wanted But Could Never Grow was short and well written, it was simultaneously disappointing. 

For all their faults, Ellis doesn't paint his characters in a poor light. He isn't asking for your pity. He's simply pulling back the sheet and saying "see, see this stinking, festering wound of a human here? see how handsome he can be?", bringing the ugliness of human nature to the surface so it too can find its moment in the sun.

Sue Lange 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, author Sue Lange takes it to the toilet. Sue has two published works of speculative fiction satire. Her first novel, Tritcheon Hash, was republished as an ebook by Book View Cafe in 2011, and was included in Kirkus’ best of list for that year. Her second novel, We, Robots, was included in io9′s 13 Stories that will change the way you look at Robots list. Her latest novel, The Perpetual Motion Club, is a trek into the Young Adult/Sci Fi genre. Her short fiction has bee published in Futures (Nature), Adbusters, Apex Digest of Science Fiction and Horror, and elsewhere.

Sue Lange's Bathroom Reading Experience

I just moved to an apartment. The bathroom is too small for reading. Serious reading takes a lot of space and accouterments. You can’t just crowd onto a rug in the corner or under the sink. Not if you’re reading big stuff like I read.

 The bathroom in my old house had a lot of space. There I had a throne, a bidet, a basin, a claw-foot tub, and a stand-alone shower. That was a proper reading room. This what I got here is just a travesty.

 Back when I was a queen and had a real bathroom, I read on the throne as well as while taking a good soak in the tub. My choice of reading material depended on which of the two stations I was working in.

 The toilet was reserved for hardcore material. I’m talking non-fiction, not pornography. Hardcore non-fiction includes things like software manuals, farming how-tos, political manifestos from the days when communism was still a viable philosophy. It was stuff that made you think. And you had to think to get through it. Only while dropping a dense load can you tackle such a dense load.

 I had to sell my house before I got to the instruction manual for the VCR, but that turned out alright because I had to sell the VCR too.

My escape to the tub included sensuous material, as befits a sensual activity. Proust and Colette were favorites. For more modern material, I’d turn to Swamplandia. Perfect for a water environment. The crocodile wrestling really came alive for me in the tub. If you’re going to try this yourself, I’d suggest adding some lily pads for authenticity. A frog or salamander wouldn’t hurt.

The Indie Ink Runs Deep: Jason Helford

Every now and then I manage to talk a small press author into showing us a little skin... tattooed skin, that is. 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. Whether it's the influence for their book, influenced by their book, or completely unrelated to the book, we get to hear the story behind their indie ink....


Today's ink story comes from Jason Helford. Jason has written two books: Written in Hell and From a Killer’s Mind. He’s a devoted husband and father, an avid comic book collector and an enthusiastic craft beer drinker. Prizing originality and creativity more than anything else, some of his favorite authors are Hunter S. Thompson, Chuck Palahniuk, Ray Bradbury, Terry Brooks, Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Robert Asprin and Albert Camus. Please don’t be offended if you are an author and your name wasn’t mentioned, he probably likes you, too. He lives in Maryland with his wife, Bella, his daughter, Maddie, and his goofy dog, Sunset.

I got my first tattoo last summer, at the age of 37.  The desire to get one was much, much older than that, but there was always a reason to wait.  Will my wife think less of me?  How will Mom react?  I’m a dad now, so is it the right call?  Why get one when I’m already so far into my 30’s?  Sure, they are cool, but what do I want on my body for the rest of my life?  After a couple seasons of watching tattoo reality shows with the wife, I decided my interest was deep enough to test the waters, and get some answers to the questions that had been holding me back.  The answers surprised me a little.  The wife was on-board, as long as it was something with meaning, and it was done by a good artist.  My mom told me she loves tattoos—who knew?!  My daughter told me, “Wow, Daddy, that sounds really cool!  Get one!”  And as for what I want on my body?  Easy.  Family and comic book art.  And so, in a matter of a few days, years of excuses and fears melted away, and the planning began.

I spent a number of months planning it out, and sketching up ideas.  After a while, I came up with my basic tattoo premise: the idea of a family crest, utilizing Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, and his winged helm.  My family is a family of collectors, and Thor happens to be my favorite comic book, so it was an easy choice once I settled on an idea.  I replaced Thor’s name on Mjolnir with my family name, to start the conversion to a personal crest.  The quill is to denote my life as a writer, and I used a black stork quill-feather to further bolster that theme, since it symbolizes creativity.  The runic words below the helm are written in Anglo-Saxon runes, and read Maddie and Bella, my daughter and wife.  I asked the tattoo artist to use Anglo-Saxon runes to give a nod to my mother’s side of the family, while still sticking with the Viking theme of Thor’s hammer and helm.  The ‘S’ in the leather strap hanging from Mjolnir’s handle is for my step-father and step-sister, standing for Safford.  I took the idea, and a basic sketch, to Dave Waugh at Jinx Proof Tattoo in Washington DC, and he changed around the composition, drew something up that was much better than I could ever produce, and put this awesome tattoo on my shoulder.  My daughter loves it, my wife definitely doesn’t think less of me, and I’m looking forward to number two at some point soon.