Indie Spotlight: Nathan Leslie

I always find it interesting to hear what goes into a particular story collection.

Are they stories that were written over a long period of time and pieced together into themed groupings after the fact or did the theme come to them first and then they wrote the stories around it, with specific purpose?

Are the stories based on personal experience and fictionalized to protect the innocent (or not-so-innocent) or are they based completely in the author's head?

Today, Author Nathan Leslie shares an essay on just that topic, how his story collections come together and how this one, in particular, came into being. Read on and enjoy getting to know a little bit about his latest collection Sibs:

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Having written several thematically connected story collections before (Drivers, Believers, Madre, etc.), I thought I would turn my attention to brothers and sisters.  I’ve been writing a lot about family over the last five or six years, for a variety of reasons.  One of the main reasons probably has to do with the fact that I find family so central to good story telling.  Unless you are a hermit living in a mossy cave somewhere,  you probably have a family of some shape and size and you have complex and nuanced relationships with your family members which go back to your childhood.  I’m no different. 

With Sibs I wasn’t as interested in probing autobiographically, however; rather, I was fascinated by exploring the broad array of sibling relationships and how those relationships might spur on a compelling story.  Of course many components of sibling dynamics play out in real life:  age difference; rivalry—for one reason or another; personality.  I was driven to see how these relationships between brothers and sisters panned out on the page.

Let me make mention some particular stories in the collection that I find interesting to discuss or noteworthy, and then I’ll make mention of my writing process at large.  Two of the first stories I wrote were “The Bed” and “Preservation,” which I see as companion pieces—both revolve around a bed—as a piece of furniture.  Those stories were fun to write—to see how completely different stories could spin out of a somewhat similar initial conflict (though in one story the bed is a shambles; in the other it is a work of high art).  I also tried my hand at some flash fiction with this collection; or if they aren’t condensed enough to be considered flash fiction, then certainly shorter stories.  I particularly enjoyed writing “Just Cheese,” “Burlap,” and “A Day in the Park,” all of which revolve around children.  At readings recently I’ve been reading “Just Cheese” and “A Day in the Park” frequently.  The story “A Day in the Park” was also perhaps behind the wonderful cover which Ryan Bradley concocted for Sibs. Yes, I like to play chess—a lot—mostly online with strangers in some far flung part of the world, in a sort of pact of overly competitive shame.  It’s weird.

I wanted a sense of menace reverberating throughout most of these stories, so a few stories entail physical conflict, danger, or violence.  Thinking all the way back to Cain and Abel, siblings (especially when they are young) seem often to jockey for status, vying for the attention of their parents.  With “Olives” and “The Good Man” I was trying to tap into this wobbly territory.  With others, such as “Backsliding” and “Attending,” I wanted to tap into a kind of verbal intimidation—the kind that siblings sometimes (often?) unleash upon each other.  The two wildest stories in the collection are perhaps “The Mellow” and “Joy Pasture.”  The former involved a lot of linguistic restraint on my part, as I was going for a certain kind of craggy, pinched voice; for the latter, I did some research at the local library, which helped immensely with the hippie commune language involved.

My writing process is rather simple but methodical.  I do most of my initial writing by hand in ordinary composition books.  In Fairfax, Virginia where I live with my wife, Julie, we have a nice sunroom surrounded by trees and this particular place brings the best out in my writing.  I spend much of my summers out there scribbling away, napping, then scribbling away some more.  Later I’ll transcribe the first draft into the computer and use that transcription as a chance to make some initial changes in the story.  Then I revise in fits and starts during the school year when I’m consumed with teaching and grading.  Many people are surprised I write by hand first (perhaps also because my handwriting is atrocious), but I find that it slows down my eye, gives me entry into the written word and characterization that Microsoft Word does not, and maybe the slower process allows for additional layering somehow.

I enjoy writing these thematically connected collections most of all because the connection inspires me to be inventive and use a variety of methods, and frankly, the theme helps me arrive at more material.  The theme is almost like a dare I give myself:  Leslie, I bet you can’t write another story about siblings in a different way—and then I have to defy myself.  The challenge somehow keeps me sane. 

It took many years for Sibs to finally appear in book form, and I’m glad that it’s now available to readers.  I can relax for a few days before I unleash myself upon the next project.

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Nathan Leslie’s seven books of short fiction include Madre, Believers, Drivers, and Sibs (just out from Aqueous Books).  He is also the author of Night Sweat, a poetry collection.  His first novel, The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice, was published by Atticus Books in 2012.  Nathan's short stories, essays and poems have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines including Boulevard, Shenandoah, North American Review, South Dakota Review, and Cimarron Review.  He was series editor for The Best of the Web anthology 2008 and 2009 (Dzanc Books) and edited fiction for Pedestal Magazine for many years.  His website is www.nathanleslie.com.

Audiobook Review: Immobility

Listened 5/29/14 - 6/2/14
5 Stars - Highly Recommended / The Next Best (Audio)Book - A kickass audiobook if ever there was one / Get yer Post Apoc fix on now, Biatches.
6 1/2 hours audio download
Publisher: AudioGo
Released: 2012


Audiobooks are strange animals. The story could be well written, the plot could be interesting, the characters engaging, but if the voice of the narrator grates on me; if their pacing is off; if they overly, painfully enunciate, the darn thing won't stand a chance. 

For me, everything hinges on the narrator.

And in the case of Immobility, Brian Evenson's storytelling and Mauro Hantman's narration were a perfect match. 

(Beware: The jacket copy for the book is a bit misleading. Written in second person, you might - not surprisingly - assume the book is also written that way. But fear not, "you" non-fans, you'll find the third person narration comforting.) 

The story is set in a post apocalyptic world - brought about by what we are led to believe was a nuclear war, but is simply referred to as the Kollaps - and revolves around Josef Horkai, who has just been pulled out of a 30 year cryogenic sleep. As he begins to wake up, he realizes that he is paralyzed from the waist down, something that he seems to have no memory of. Heck, he seems to have no memory at all of being stored, of why he was stored, of where he is, who he is or what he was prior to the Kollaps.  

All of these questions are answered by Rasmus, the leader of a group of people who have made their home in an old ruined university, and his two lackeys Olag and Olaf. Rasmus explains to Horkai that he is not like them, he can regenerate and survive outside in the brutal and inhospitable environment, but he is also infected with a debilitating disease that has left him crippled and will continue to cripple him over time, which is why he has been stored - to stop the disease from spreading while they work on a cure. The Community, as Rasmus refers to his group, needs Horkai's help to retrieve something that has been stolen from them, something very valuable, something very important, something... that their very survival hinges on. And they will provide Horkai with two Mules - identical human-like men named Qatik and Qanik - whose sole purpose is to carry Horkai on their backs, like a burden, while traveling to the mountain where Rasmus believes the stolen capsule is hidden. Though Horkai can travel outside with no ill side effects, his Mules cannot. And though they are fitted with hazard suits, the clothing will only slow the effects of the radiation on them. Rasmus urges Horkai to make the trip there and back as quickly as possible - the longer the Mules are exposed, the quicker they will die. 

All of this makes little sense to Horkai but with nothing else to go on, he agrees to do as Rasmus asks. 

Brian Evenson allows us to see the world as Horkai sees it, with new and disbelieving eyes. We ponder the same things he ponders - Who is he? What's happened to the world? Where are all of the other people? What is the Community? How did he end up in storage with them? Who are these strange and obedient men he travels with? Why are they so willing to follow their purpose without questioning? How can they be so willing to die for him? What happens when he gets where they're going? 

As Horkai pokes and prods at what little knowledge Qatik and Qanik have, and tries to reason out the situation he has found himself in, he begins to question his place in the mission and allows himself to doubt the sources of his information. Nothing makes sense. The pieces don't seem to fit. The Community, the Mules, Rasmus, even Olag and Olaf... something is going on and Horkai won't be at ease until he uncovers what that is. 

This book reeks of cultish and organized religious behavior (and not in a bad way). The blind, adoring faith of the religious compares greatly to that of the members of the Community. The unquestioning obedience and willingness of the Mules to perform their purpose feels very much like the drink-the-koolaid mindset of cult members. The re-appearance of religious or cult-like tendencies, even when the religion we had is dead. And then there's Horkai, much like myself, who questions everything he hears and sees, not content to take what he is told at face value, unafraid to push for answers even when he knows those answers will remain to be vague and clouded. Immobility challenges the reader to look at humanity from a different angle. Not one of imminent survival-at-all-costs. But one of whether or not it should be allowed to survive at all. In Evenson's world, we have managed to kill most of our species (and all other species) off. Should we be given the opportunity to do it again? If we did manage to survive this, we will learn from our mistakes or continue to make more? Do we deserve a second chance?

I listened to this book every chance I could get - on my commute to and from work, driving out to run errands, sitting and waiting at my son's baseball game - I devoured it, because I was dying to learn what Horkai was learning. I needed to know what the endgame was. I couldn't shake the feeling that I knew how it was going to end and I needed to see if I was right. 

I enjoyed putting the pieces of this novel together. As Horkai comes into contact with more people - like Mahonri for example, a "brother" who looks exactly like him, who calls himself a Keeper, and Rykte, the recluse who is content to remain un-influential in the trials and tribulations of humanity - as he began collecting more pieces of the puzzle, as realization begins to dawn on Horkai that he's a part of something much bigger and much more awful than he initially anticipated, I began to unravel the knotted road Horkai would end up travelling. And even though I had the ending pretty well pegged, I wasn't disappointed when Evenson delivered it. 

Book Giveaway: 8 - Bit Christmas

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 July's Author/Reader Discussion book!

Awwww Yeaaaah! We're celebrating Christmas in July, 80's style!!

We will be reading and discussing 8 Bit - Christmas

with author Kevin Jakubowski

The author has generously agreed to give away up to 15 copies of his book...

Print (for US residents only) and digital formats PDF or MOBI (open internationally)

Here is the Goodreads description to whet your appetite:

It's 1980-something and all nine-year-old Jake Doyle wants for Christmas is a Nintendo Entertainment System. No Jose Conseco rookie card, no GI Joe hovercraft, no Teddy friggin' Ruxpin--just Nintendo. But when a hyperactive Shih Tzu is accidentally crushed to death by a forty-two-inch television set and every parent in town blames Nintendo, it's up to Jake to take matters into his own hands. The result is a Christmas quest of Super Mario Bros. proportions, filled with flaming wreaths, speeding minivans, lost retainers, fake Santas, hot teachers, snotty sisters, "Super Bowl Shuffles" and one very naked Cabbage Patch Kid. Told from a nostalgic adult perspective, 8-Bit Christmas is a hilarious and heartfelt look back at the kid pop culture of the 1980s.

Oh my gosh! You've sooo got to read that, right? 

This giveaway will run through June 8th. 

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

Here's how to enter:

1 - Leave a comment here or in the giveaway thread over at TNBBC on goodreads, stating why you'd like to receive a copy of the book, what format you prefer , and where you reside (remember, only US residents can win a paper copy!).

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 July 21st through July 27th. Kevin Jakubowski 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!!!!

Book Review: Depth Charging Ice Planet Goth

Read 5/13/14 - 5/21/14
3 Stars - Recommended to fans of Gothic 1980's teenage coming-of-age stories where the coming of age is anything but...
320 Pages
Publisher: Perfect Edge Books
Releases: July 2014


Depth Charging Ice Planet Goth is a dark and angsty roller coaster ride set to a wickedly awesome goth rock soundtrack.

In the center of it all is Mina, an anything but typical teenager. Long time sufferer of mental and physical abuse at the hands of her brother, daughter to a dead mother and somewhat clueless father, shy and self-conscious Mina struggles to find her place among the rest of her school mates. Sure, she's part of an inner circle of friends, but she often finds herself on the outer edges of the group, peeking in from beneath her fringe bangs, feeling the most alone when in the presence of others. At home, when she's not being roughed up, she locks herself away in her room composing short stories, rocking out to the darker classic alt bands of the eighties, and hanging with her feathered friend Animeid, a girl she looks to as protector and confidant, a girl who is a complete and utter figment of her imagination.

Mina does a pretty good job of playing normal and seems to be keeping her crazy in check - acting out in all the usual teenage ways: dying her hair, plastering on the goth greasepaint, getting drunk in the clubs, falling for strange older boys, and getting dumped by one group of friends only to find herself caught up in the swish and sway of another.

But the crazy can only be quieted for so long before we find ourselves staring over the edge of the rabbit hole with Mina, slugging back Elysium in the hopes of returning to a relatively normal life and instead, finding ourselves tugged down inside its black, gaping maw, directly into Bergen's capable and waiting hands.

Depth Charging Ice Planet Goth is a book that avoids genre. It's a melting pot of science fiction, murder mystery, and coming of age YA, whipped to a froth and blended beyond recognition. While it's not for everyone...  it's a reading experience that the braver fans of unconventional literature will not want to miss.

Think cult classic film Heathers with a healthy heap of Alice in Wonderland, and you've got the idea.

Where Writers Write: Jennifer Pieroni

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 Jennifer Pieroni. 

She grew up in a small, rural town in central Massachusetts, studied writing at Emerson College in Boston, and now lives on the north shore of the state with her husband and son. Her fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Guernica, Wigleaf, andPANK. She served for more than a decade as the founding editor of Quick Fiction and currently works as a grant writer in the nonprofit sector.

Where Jennifer Pieroni Writes

This is the desk I wrote my novella Danceland at. It was situated in the corner of our apartment living room. Behind me would have been the television, and that was the direction from which the afternoon sun entered the apartment. To my left a bay window overlooking the street, which was always being traveled. To my right the front door, which opened to a foyer. Sometimes the neighbor across the way left his door open and the sound of him clearing his throat grated on me. At the time, my son was 15 months and I was his full-time caregiver. I wrote the book while he napped, and here you can see that when he was awake, he scratched out the bad parts. I kept my grandfather's typewriter on the desk, because I like to surround myself with artifacts of my family's past. I also had my notebook and loose papers with various outlines and plans. Unfortunately I never found a chair I liked, and used that cube. Usually I sat cross-legged and slouched forward.

CCLaP: Love Songs of the Revolution

Yesterday, CCLaP brought another brand spankin' new book into the world!

Come snuggle up against Bronwyn Mauldin's 

Love Songs of the Revolution

This book is unlike any other that CCLaP has published. It's a literary spy thriller with a kick. I know, I know, you're going to shake your head and say, "Nah, not much of a spy thriller kinda person"... and I get it, I do. Because neither am I. But this is not your typical crime novel. I swear it. You have to believe me. Have I steered you wrong yet? 

If you dig books set in politically charged countries, books that center around murder and mayhem, books that don't insult your intelligence, that force you to dig deep and seek out the truth behind the lies... you'll want to get your hands on this one!

And I'll let you in on a little secret... there's additional content post-ending that will have you rethinking everything you thought you knew up to that point. Love Songs of the Revolution is not what it appears to be, not by a long shot. 

So go on, dig in, trust me. You'll be hooked in no time. 

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Here's the publisher's blurb:

An official painter for the Lithuanian Communist Party, Martynas Kudirka enjoys a pleasant, unremarkable life with a beautiful wife and all the privileges that come with being a party member. Yet in the summer of 1989, his ordinary world suddenly turns upside down. Political revolt is breaking out across Eastern Europe, and Martynas comes home to find his wife dead on the kitchen floor with a knife in her back. Realizing the police will not investigate, he sets out to find his wife's killer. Instead, he stumbles upon her secret life. Martynas finds himself drawn into the middle of an independence movement, on a quest to find confidential documents that could free a nation. Cold War betrayals echo down through the years as author Bronwyn Mauldin takes the reader along a modern-day path of discovery to find out Martynas' true identity. Fans of historical fiction will travel back in time to 1989, the Baltic Way protest and Lithuania's "singing revolution," experiencing a nation's determination for freedom and how far they would fight to regain it.

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Author Bronwyn Mauldin recently began a blog in which she will be posting her thoughts and insights on the book, as well as myriad other things. Be sure to check it out.... 

http://www.bronwynmauldin.com/blog/category/love-songs-of-the-revolution

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Love Songs of the Revolution is available for purchase in a gorgeous paperback edition (cover designed by Ryan W Bradley, ain't it a hottie?!), and like all of our titles, can be downloaded for free at the publisher's website. 

Happy reading everyone!

Drew Reviews: Countdown City

Countdown City by Ben Winters
4 Stars - Strongly Recomended
316 Pages
Publisher: Quirk Books
Released: 2013


Guest review by Drew Broussard 

The Short Version: Detective - well, formerly Detective - Hank Palace is doing the best he can trying to keep an eye on everyone he can as doomsday marches inexorably closer.  When his old babysitter asks him to find her husband, he dives into the case - and takes us on a journey through an increasingly dangerous landscape as our time ticks away...

The Review: I read the first book on a Sunday and, by the time I woke up and started reading this one, my tone had changed.  I was angry, now - angry at humanity for slipping like this.  Does the end of the world mean that everything needs to go to hell in the meantime?  Could we not be better, try harder to retain our shared humanity?

But, then, that's optimistic at best - and Winters knows it.  And this book, we see the tipping point.  It's somewhat unexpected, honestly: things have been humming along with some loose semblance of order and then in the span of a few pages, almost before you can register it, the wire snaps.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Again, Winters uses the setting of the book to address some major socio-philosophical issues - although they dovetail with the actual case a little more cleanly this time around.  The police department having been effectively nationalized at the end of The Last Policeman and the location of the asteroid's impact determined to've been halfway around the world, America has (at least within the tiny parameters of Palace's purview) settled into a sort of routine.  There were riots - bad ones, it seems - on July 4th but a heavy police presence, the Bucket Listers pretty much having gone a-bucketing, and people just attempting to make the most of the last days of civilization.  It's a strange sort of calm, almost.  An easy false sense of security.

When Hank ends up involved in this case - a late-in-the-day Bucket List guy, it would seem - he does it almost out of instinct.  That last gasp of the policeman inside of him fighting against the inertia of this calm before the absolute fucking shitstorm.  It's something for him to do because to give in to the calm is to accept death.  His crazy sister is, of course, the perfect counterpart - they're so similar and yet so different, one attempting to save the world while the other tries to just make a few lives easier in the time we have left.  But both of them have people's best interests in their hearts.  And when Nico returns 2/3rds of the way through the novel, it raises the faintest specter of hope - a dangerous ghost to stir in the chest of a condemned man, for sure.

But again, I get ahead of myself.  The most interesting sequence in the book comes when Hank heads to the "Free Republic" that has been established on the campus of UNH - on the trail, of course, of the missing husband - and it gives Winters a platform to address more directly the fallout of putting hypotheticals into practice in a terminal society.  After all, who better to spout serious-minded statements about government than students?  My favorite quote, one I wrote down immediately was this:

"Radical social theories when put into practice have a notoriously short half-life. They dissolve into anarchy. Or the people’s power, even when carefully delegated to provisional authorities, is seized by totalitarians and autocrats."

This is a young girl (well, youngish - mid-20s probably) talking to Palace after he's witnessed a strange and chilling tribunal of sorts.  He spoke up, seeking due process for the accused, because that's what he understands to be good and right and true.  But Julia, the girl quoted here, goes on to explain that the accused was actually brought in under these trumped-up charges because she didn't want to bring him in under his real charge: rape.  Because she fears that they'd hang him - and, as she says, "once you start hanging people..." 

It's an absolutely chilling moment and one that forced me to pause in my reading.  Our society is exactly that fragile, according to Winters.  Even in the face of those who would do good, pragmatic good, there is this understanding that we must really just pick the less evil choice - we advocate for order and justice in all things even as we lie to protect that order, that justice.  Or to protect some modestly acceptable form of it.  

Again, the case concluded a little too speedily for me - there were interesting aspects, including the revelation of the first big red herring, but it was just all a little too broad.  There were leaps that felt, even under the circumstances, just a little too strange.  But then, it's also clear that we definitely don't know the bigger picture here.  Nico does - or at least she knows some of it - but Hank is out of the loop and that, too, provides a pulse of fear under the storytelling.  As Hank returns to town and that aforementioned wire snaps... my mouth went dry, my heart was pounding.  Why did the cops get pulled off the streets?  What, truly, will the last weeks of civilization look like?  I know Hank's headed back out there for the final book of the trilogy... and I'm not just scared for impact, I'm scared for what we'll have turned into before it comes.

Rating: 4 out of 5.  Watching Ben Winters pull apart society under the guise of a procedural remains entertaining and engaging - but, again, it's not because of the procedural.  It's because he's got a gift for really zeroing in on the fundamental building blocks of society and just how those might fracture, splinter, collapse, or otherwise change in the face of seismic catastrophe.  He indulges the academic stuff even further here, under the guise of a community at a college - but it allows him to really open up these issues and turn everything that's said into theory that sits underneath the entire rest of the novel.  It's sad, strange, and smart all at once.

 Drew Broussard reads, a lot. When not doing that, he's writing stories or playing music or acting or producing or coming up with other ways to make trouble.  He also has a day job at The Public Theater in New York City.

Indie Spotlight: Andrez Bergen and the Tobacco- Stained Kickstarter

Andrez Bergen is no stranger to TNBBC. When I saw that he had put together a kickstarter to turn his debut novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat into a graphic novel, I thought it was a pretty cool idea, and knew I wanted to help him get the word out there to make the comic a reality: 

A TOBACCO-STAINED KICKSTARTER?

By Andrez Bergen

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/754267967/tobacco-stained-mountain-goat-the-graphic-novel

Four or eight?

Not my favourite numbers in the world — I prefer six and seven — but apparently when you're assembling a graphic novel you need to think in terms of four, as in four pages at a time, when you're increasing or decreasing the size as this makes the easier for the printer. But I live in Japan, and here the number four is considered unlucky since it sounds the same as the word for death. Eight, on the other hand eight in China sounds similar to their word which means "prosper" or "wealth".

So maybe I'll go with eight.

What on earth am I waffling about? Well, I'm currently finishing off a graphic novel called Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, to be funded via a Kickstarter campaign that finishes on May 23rd.

While the initial funding was based around the concept of a bare-bones book 130 pages long and 50% colour, the Kickstarter campaign reaching that threshold thanks to some very cool and wonderful people — granting me the opportunity to move and breathe with the project.

It's now expanded to 144 pages at 75% colour, and I'm seriously contemplating extending the story to 148 or 152 depending on final progress with the Kickstarter over the next few days.

The thing is that extension is not stretching, since this graphic novel is based on my 2011 book Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, a hardboiled/noir detective story based in the dystopia that is near-future Melbourne. So I have plenty of room to move. I've only translated the first eighty-odd pages.

That novel got some great critical plaudits and has an average of 4.8 out of 5 stars on Amazon, so I must've done something right with the thing. I've also thought long and hard about narrative elements involving the fringe characters that were not in that original book.

This graphic novel has granted me the opportunity to return to that terrain, especially to develop the personalities of the women involved, Laurel and Veronica.

It's also given me the chance to go back to sequential artwork, something I've loved tinkering with since school days, and to here try to push the envelope.

While I wouldn't say I'm inventing brave new worlds of imagery, the art does veer into territory unto itself. Or so I like to believe. JR Love said it reminded him of Raymond Pettibone's artwork for the Sonic Youth album GOO. Probably I've been better brainwashed by my love of comic book artists Will Eisner, Barry Windsor-Smith, Jim Steranko, Steve Epting, Frank Miller, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and David Aja.

Meanwhile my Melbourne-based partner at IF? Commix, Matt Kyme, is the only one to have read the entire graphic novel as it currently stands — four or eight pages shorter than it might be. “I can recognize when I'm seeing something new and visionary,“ he emailed me back, “something that pushes the boundaries till they topple. I know when I'm staring at Van Gogh's ear.” 

I'm slipping that in here 'cos I'm pretentious and loved the response.

Ears I can live with, even lopped off ones — in the name of art, and that jazz. But the four/eight conundrum is a beastie I won't be able to tackle till after the Kickstarter deadline in a few days' time.

Or maybe I'll just extend to eight anyway. Take that, number four!

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Andrez Bergen is an expatriate Australian journalist, musician, DJ, writer, photographer and ad hoc beer & sake connoisseur who's been ensconced in Tokyo, Japan, for the past 13 years. Under the alias of Industrial Form he dabbled with graf and filmmaking in the early '90s, then set up indie electronic record label IF? in 1995 — since which time Bergen's made music under silly aliases like Little Nobody, Funk Gadget and Nana Mouskouri's Spectacles.

He's also written for a fistful of magazines like Mixmag, VICE, Geek Monthy, Impact, Anime Insider, Filmink and Australian Style, as well as newspapers The Age (Australia) and the Yomiuri Shimbun (Japan).

In April 2011 Bergen published his first novel, 'Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat', through Another Sky Press. His second novel titled 'One Hundred Years of Vicissitude', was published in late 2012 via Perfect Edge Books. Bergen's third novel 'Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?' (a noir/comicbook homage) and an anthology of his short stories and articles ('The Condimental Op') were published in 2013.

Last year he also compiled a noir/dystopian anthology related to 'Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat', titled 'The Tobacco-Stained Sky', and started making comic books with artist Matt Kyme. In July, 2014, look out for the graphic novel version of 'Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat' (IF? Commix), along with new novel 'Depth Charging Ice Planet Goth' (Perfect Edge)

Book Review: Elegantly Naked in My Sexy Mental Illness

Read 4/10/14 - 4/22/14
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to readers who fancy stories about individuals who are just the right amount of fucked up
--- Pages
Publisher: Queen's Ferry Press
Released: 2014


The fine line between what is considered normal and what is actually fucked up is so fine that sometimes we walk back and forth across the damn thing and don't even realize. We live in a world where dysfunction has become a social norm. The distinction between what is acceptable and what is not, what is "normal" and what is not, is not so clear to us anymore. We become numb. We become expectant. We become acceptant. And in this way, we leave ourselves open to unfortunate and sometimes unavoidably unwelcome situations.

The stories in Elegantly Naked in My Sexy Mental Illness, Heather Fowler's fourth collection, hold a scalpel to the brain of each of its protagonists, in an attempt to differentiate true mental illness from what is natural and normal. When does a simple crush become an obsessive desire? At what point do we decide that these paranoid thoughts in our head are no longer innocent, no longer healthy?

In the opening story "Hand Licker", we meet a heartbroken mental case who sees his ex girlfriend's face everywhere he looks - in a burger and fries someone is eating, in other people's faces. His irresistible urge to lick their palms leads him to the redhead Claire, where he finds acceptance in a form he never knew before. In "Losing Married Women", our narrator unabashedly states "I am an unrepentant harvester of other people’s marriages", clearly not to blame for her insatiable appetite and eventual, habitual loss of interest.

There's a story about a women who becomes so fascinated with a co-worker's strange methods of hitting on her that even her own therapist tells her to shit or get off the pot; a relationship gone sour with a guy who's a confessed obsessive and the mental havoc it reeks on his paramour ; a doctor who can't keep his penis in his pants around one of his patients and why she allows it; a man who is abnormally attached to an old raggedy doll and his housekeeper; a good ole country girl with a club fist who gets a visit from a flirty little boy peddling bibles, only when he tries to take her on, she decides she won't go down without a fight.

And on and on.

The thing I love about Fowler and her characters is how they could be anybody. People you know, people you've accepted into your home, people who shoot the shit with you at work. Sure, they're a little weird, a little creepy at times, you all talk about them when their backs are turned, but they're nothing you haven't seen before, nothing to go to running to HR about. Her stories make you wonder, make you think, maybe even scare you a bit, give you those big ole goosebumps when you realize, shit, could have been me. How close am I standing to a situation like this right now? Could I ever be the object of someone's obsession and not even notice until it's too late?

After you read her stories, your guard will be up. Your eyes will turn their suspicious gaze left and right, left and right, all day long. You'll automatically diagnose everyone around you, and begin to keep your distance. But I promise it won't last long. Because the unease will wear off. The routine will suck you back in. The familiarity with these people, the trust, it will all return. And in a few week's time, it'll be as if you never looked at them any differently. And that's ok. Because it's the norm. And because sometimes, we find mental illness a little thrilling, a little sexy.

Heads up to those of you who'd like to learn a little bit more about Heather Fowler and this collection. Melanie, founder of Grab the Lapels (and TNBBC review contributor), has organized a blog tour and it'll be running around the internet all next week!

Here's the tour roster so you can follow along.

Drew Reviews: The Last Policeman

The Last Policeman by Ben Winters
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended
316 Pages
Publisher: Quirk Books
Released: 2012


Guest review by Drew Broussard 

The Short Version: After the discovery of Maia (formerly known as asteroid 2011GV1) and it's impending impact with our fair planet, a lot of people have pretty much given up on normality - jobs, socio-cultural stuff, even sometimes their lives.  But not Detective Hank Palace.  And when a suspicious suicide crosses his desk, he's on the case - but what could be worth killing for when we're all doomed anyway?

The Review: I read pretty much this whole book over the course of a lovely, sunny Sunday afternoon in the middle of Washington Square Park.  There were people everywhere - children, students, old folks, yuppies, artists, tourists... if you wanted to check out a pretty decent slice of the folks who make up Manhattan on any given day, you only had to look at Washington Square.  And as I read this book, I was wondering about just how fragile our social constructs actually are.

The novel is, for the most part, just a traditional noir-styled mystery: there is a crime that nobody believes to be a crime except for one dogged cop, there's a dame, there's an injury to the dogged cop, there's naysayers on the force and The Man mucking things up, etc etc.  All of the traditional trappings.  What makes this novel an exceptional twist on those themes is that it isn't really so much about the mystery at all or even about any of those noirish trappings: it's about humanity and what we might well do in the face of certain destruction.  And honestly I think it's the genre stuff that allows Winters to really get into the nitty-gritty (pun slightly intended) of human nature.

Karen Thompson Walker's The Age of Miracles and Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers both deal with apocalyptic scenarios and with humanity's reactions to them - but neither of those books deal with the absolute end of everything.  Which, let's face it, a massive asteroid strike would probably be.  I mean, there'd be some who'd survive and be plunged into a massive, ash-induced winter.  So honestly, I'm not sure which would be better - dying right away or dying later - but that's not the point.  What would you do, would you actually do, if you and everyone you knew had ten months to live.  Six months to live.  Three months to live.  And Winters' depiction of it looks... well, pretty much like I might expect it to look.  Plenty of people doing their "Bucket List", plenty of people finding God, plenty of people killing themselves.

And yet, would law and order remain?  Would we still have an economy, a traditionally run society?  For a time, probably - but these things would fall apart and Winters drops us right in the midst of that falling-apart period.  Cell service is spotty at best, ditto internet.  The economy, in a larger sense, is kaput as are a large majority of things like fine dining.  Movies still play and Panera is still around... but it's all starting to get pretty bleak.  And so you have to ask yourself what you'd do in that situation.  For Hank, it's obvious - and he's so... not even squeaky-clean, it's just that he's a good guy.  He wants to do right, not for some higher power but for himself and for anybody who might've been affected by something bad.  It's a form of goodness that's almost too simplistic to understand - and he is, by most, misunderstood.  People just... don't get it.

But we do.  The reader does.  We are grateful that Hank is there, a beacon not of 'goodness' so much as of 'normalcy'.  Of the way things were.  Because this is a deeply scary, unsettling book and it's nice to know that there's a good guy there when the lights go out.  Here I am joking about reading this book in the midst of a crowded New York park on a blissful Sunday afternoon - but seriously, there was something about looking up and taking in the crowd and just... wondering.  Winters does a nice job of setting the stage for the rest of his trilogy - the book ends with six months to go until the big day and there are rumblings of strange government conspiracies that I'll be curious to see play out over the next books - but really he did something more impressive by taking a pretty typical genre story and dropping it in the middle of a setting that we, as human beings, don't particularly want to think about.  We'll take our dystopias, our post-apocalypses, thank you - but to imagine the waiting period before the terror... it takes a true existential mind to stare into that unstoppable, immovable abyss and keep on going.  But, then, I really loved Melancholiatoo.

Rating: 4 out of 5.  I was actually weighing giving this a higher grade but, upon reflection, the case itself actually wraps up a little too messy for me.  The resolution, that is, was just a bit... unclear.  I think that might be my failure as a reader (and/or sunstroke) but I was watching the whole thing wrap up and wondering "Wait, really? That's it?" because it just seemed so... Well, I just didn't follow Hank's final jump in logic.  But the conclusion itself made sense once we got there - and it was a stark reminder of just how the world might look if/when this all goes down.  And that psychological impact far outweighs any issues I might've had with the story, because I will not sleep well tonight for having read this book... and that's kind of great.

Drew Broussard reads, a lot. When not doing that, he's writing stories or playing music or acting or producing or coming up with other ways to make trouble.  He also has a day job at The Public Theater in New York City.

Indie Ink Runs Deep: Tim Chapman

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 Tim Chapman. 

Tim is a former forensic scientist for the Chicago police department who currently teaches English composition and Chinese martial arts. He holds a Master's degree in Creative Writing from Northwestern University. His fiction has been published in The Southeast Review, the Chicago Reader, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and the anthology, "The Rich and the Dead." His first novel, "Bright and Yellow, Hard and Cold," was recently released by Allium Press. In his spare time he paints pretty pictures and makes an annoying noise with his saxophone that he claims is music. He lives in Chicago with his lovely and patient wife, Ellen and Mia, the squirrel-chasingest dog in town.

I have a tattoo of a dragon wrapped around a yin/yang symbol on my shoulder. Why I have any tattoo, and this tattoo in particular, is a bit convoluted. Back in the late 1970s a woman I loved was killed in a car accident. This kind of pulled the rug out from under me, both emotionally and intellectually. I sort of drifted around the country for a while, and I was angry—really angry. I was like a clenched fist looking for someone to hit. Whenever I walked anywhere I punched street signs and parking meters. Other pedestrians crossed the street to avoid me. Once a cop yelled at me for punching a no parking sign.

One hot day I drifted into a movie theatre in downtown Los Angeles. I think I went in just because it was air conditioned. There was a Bruce Lee movie showing. As soon as I saw his balletic, stylized violence, I was hooked. I started a lifelong practice of martial arts in order to rid myself of my anger. The martial arts led me to a study of Buddhism. Buddhism is what helped me understand and eventually extinguish my rage. Life isn't fair? Loss is painful? I get it.

The other thing I got from my martial arts training was kung fu. Kung fu translates as effort or hard work. I had been a terrible student in high school, but eighteen years later I earned a degree in forensic science and went to work for a crime lab. Ten years after that I decided I wanted to write, so I went back for an MA in writing and have since produced a novel, Bright and Yellow, Hard and Cold, and an upcoming short story collection. I currently teach writing and tai chi chuan at a Chicago city college. My wife and I have been together for over twenty years, and we couldn't be happier.

I designed the tattoo as a reminder of my personal philosophy. The dragon reminds me that, though I am not naturally talented, I can accomplish goals that are important to me through hard work and perseverance. The yin/yang symbol reminds me that nature and circumstance will often play a part in changing those goals and, rather than whine about the changes, I will be happier if I embrace them.

Lavinia Reviews: My Name Is Hate

My Name is Hate by Dave K

100 pages

Self-published: Banners of Death

Released: April 2014

Guest Reviewed by Lavinia Ludlow

Dave K’sMy Name is Hate is a steampunk-y and compelling depiction of a pregnant woman’s dismal hunt for her deadbeat husband, Jesse. A social commentary of sorts, Dave sheds light on how selfish and cowardly humanity can be when under duress to step up to the plate:

When the doctor told us I was pregnant, [Jesse] said that he couldn’t believe it, that he never thought I’d be able to have a baby. I told him I wouldn’t have, if I’d had his attitude. We live in America, after all. Anything is possible here. Jesse laughed until the doctor told him he’d have to quit smoking on account of our baby. Maybe that’s why he ran off.

Packed with sinister imagery, the beautiful and moving yet morbid and dark narrative voice evokes chills:

Last time I cut open a horse, its guts rushed out like that, just happy to meet the day.

Simultaneously, Dave’s simplistic choice of words and rhythmic delivery inspires a deep sympathy and concern for the conflicted and emotional protagonist: an abandoned pregnant woman straining to trek across a barren landscape of horse chips and flies in search of her baby daddy.

I don’t want to think about Jesse, either. I don’t want to remember him. I want him here.

Though a quick read, Dave more than just sets the scene, maintains the conflict, and conveys an immense amount of detail in his short micro-fiction sprints. He does a phenomenal job of portraying a fragile woman’s state of mind, and the agony and humiliation of walking into town searching the bars for her husband. Passages such as this still brought me to my proverbial knees:

The heart is a pair of saloon doors, swinging open and shut as people enter and leave.

My only qualm would be over the title. I’m not sure it did justice to such a heartbreaking story, and may lead book cover-judgers astray. That aside, Dave K’s released one of the most dynamite flash novellas of 2014. 5 stars means get your hands on it now.

Lavinia Ludlow is a musician, writer, and occasional contortionist. Her debut novel alt.punk can be purchased through major online retailers as well as Casperian Books’ website. Her sophomore novel Single Stroke Seven was signed to Casperian Books and will release in the distant future. In her free time, she is a reviewer at Small Press Reviews, The Nervous Breakdown, American Book Review, and now The Next Best Book Blog.