Where Writers Write: Kate Tough

Welcome to another installment of TNBBC's Where Writers Write!

Where Writers Write is a series that features authors 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 Kate Tough. Kate worked for the Scottish Parliament for six years before returning to her home city and gaining a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow in 2008. She writes poetry and fiction, spends too much time on email and doesn't do 'social networking' because it competes with writing time. Kate volunteers with children to aid literacy skills and works with new writers through workshops and mentoring. 

Her debut novel, Head for the Edge, Keep Walking, was selected for WHSmith’s summer travel book club, the Kindle Summer Sale and has garnered five star status on Amazon.co.uk. Kate held a Scottish Literature residency at Cove Park, 2014, and has received two Creative Scotland Awards to develop work (2009 and 2013). More info, extracts and audio clips at: www.katetough.com 

Where Kate Tough Writes

I write beside a window. Always beside a window. With trees outside… always trees. In the last decade, in six different homes, the desk has taken that spot. I need daylight, awareness of the weather and space to stare into. Doesn’t everyone? In the last couple of years, as laptops became lighter and smaller, I got into a habit of writing curled up in an armchair, but my arm muscles rebelled with tightness and aches, so I’m back at the desk and very happy.
 

The desk is from Ikea, via Gumtree. The chair too. And the printer. And the laminator. Hmm, I hadn’t realised how much I used Gumtree over the years! 

When I’m making visual poetry, I kneel on the floor (the rug wasn’t from Gumtree). I write away from home as much (or more) than I do at home. Writing activity at home is often ‘writing-related’ rather than actual writing (e.g. admin, emails, articles, editing, rehearsing for events). The best way to get a good run at something creative is to take myself away (borrowing the accommodation of people I know). I prefer access to nature on these trips. For me, the best writing routine is to punctuate long working days with coast or countryside walks, or outdoor swims. I couldn’t do total isolation, though. A lone cottage on a deserted hillside? No thanks! I’ve done spells of writing in many places; below is a small selection. Sorry about the photo quality – I didn’t know I’d need them for a blog one day.

 

This is the view from my “writer’s cube” at the wonderful Scottish residency centre, Cove Park, in July 2014. International writers can apply, too. Hours, days and weeks were spent sticking poems together on the floor and watching ducks raise their young.

  

The view from the Edinburgh flat where I wrote a three-part poem, ‘Calm Seizure’.

The living room in the Gallowayforest where a novel chunk was written. See andypriestman.tumblr.com  for photos of the stunning vista from the window.

The living room in Lochancroft Cottage, Wigtown (Scotland’s Book Town), where a novel chunk was written beneath the twin velux. It’s available to rent, too – book it and write! 
 

 The garden of the Spanish apartment where swimming breaks were enjoyed during long days of writing and editing. It made using my vacation for work a bit easier…!

Giano Cromley Recommends: Mystery in the Night Woods

And so we continue our Writers Recommend - a new series where we'll be asking writers to, well, you know.. recommend things. Like the books that they've enjoyed. To you. Because who doesn't like being recommended new and interesting books, right?! Think of it as a PSA. Only it's more like a LSA -Literary Service Announcement. Your welcome. 

Giano Cromley Recommends Mystery in the Night Woods by John Peterson

When Lori mentioned her “most influential book” blog series, one book leapt to mind – a memory-flash that brought me back to my most formative reading experience. I told her I’d do it and then set out to track down a copy of Mystery in the Night Woods by John Peterson. Published in 1969 and long since out of print, the interwebs assisted me greatly in finding a used copy.

I first obtained Mystery in the Night Woods when I was nine. My family had gone to the annual book sale at the Parmly Billings Library where I stumbled across this paperback with a picture of a scarf-wearing squirrel and a bat on the cover.

At 80 pages, it was the longest book I’d attempted to read up to that point. But it was immediately rewarding. This book had the perfect cocktail of story elements – friendship, betrayal, crime, struggle, redemption, and anthropomorphic cross-dressing animals – that set my nine-year-old endorphins pumping. It remained my favorite book until well after the point when admitting your favorite book has a character named Police Chief Skunk would prove to be a social liability.

As a writer, it showed me how a book can create an entire world. From the opening lines, Peterson’s writing is filled with tiny details that help draw you in to the Night Woods: “The setting sun made long shadows in the Night Woods. The day animals were going to bed. They were finished with the work of the day. Now the night animals were waking up. It was time for their day to begin.” In the span of its eighty pages, the reader gets a glimpse of the Night Woods’ judicial system, its banking system, its network of friendships and alliances. It’s a fully functioning society operating at night, like some kind of shadow universe just beyond the one we know. I was inspired by this act of creation. It allowed my pre-teen self to dream of other worlds, other stories, that one day I might tell.

The story revolves around the relationship between the charming but overbearing Flying Squirrel, and his friend Bat. We first see them on the night that Bat is teaching F.S. to fly. Soon after that night, F.S. is accused of a crime and banished to Far Island. The rest of the story follows F.S.’s struggle to redeem himself in the eyes of his fellow Night Woods citizens.

A used copy of Mystery in the Night Woods arrived this past week, and I was struck by how slender it felt. I was nervous that it might not live up to my memories. When I finally got up the courage to read it, though, I was not let down. The story is still engaging and the Night Woods are still as interesting and fascinating as ever.

I was also struck by details I could not have noticed as a child. I’d never recognized the hubris of Flying Squirrel. He believes everything and everyone in the world is malleable to this will – and this is what gets him into trouble. I was also struck by a somewhat superfluous section where F.S. is reunited with his mother, who he hasn’t seen in years. It is touching and painful in a way I could have never understood before.

There was one final gift this book gave me. Reading it last week, I came across a passage when F.S. is attempting to escape from Far Island and finds himself caught up in the raging waters of Bad Creek:

“Flying Squirrel sank toward the bottom of Bad Creek. He thought his life was over. Then he remembered something Bat had said: ‘A drowning animal sinks three times before he dies.’ The little squirrel kicked and paddled hard with his paws. ‘I’m going to get my three chances,’ he decided, ‘just like everybody else.’”

Seriously, just read that passage again for its profound truth! Now read it out loud, and feel the meter of those syllables! We all could benefit from hearing that lesson more often, repeating it like a mantra.

To me, writing is an act of resistance, defiance even. It’s a measure of how well you can take criticism, risk failure, and not let it crush your spirit. I didn’t understand that when I was a child, but I’d like to think this passage left a subliminal mark, that it made me more resilient, more able to bounce back from adversity, to swim toward the surface when all hope seems lost.

Giano Cromley was born in Billings, Montana. The Last Good Halloween is his first novel. His writing has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Literal Latte, and The Bygone Bureau, among others. He is a recipient of an Artists Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council. He teaches English at Kennedy-King College and lives on Chicago's South Side with his wife and two dogs.

Book Review: The End of the World Running Club

Read 9/15/14 - 9/29/14
3 Stars - Great fun for fans of post-apocalyptic books that just keep going and going and going...
Pages: 355
Publisher: Self published
Released: June 2014


For Edgar and his family, the end of the world does not come quietly, in the throes of some unknown virus that reanimates those it kills. Instead, while on an early morning walk to calm his fussy little boy and shake off the last of his late night hangover, contemplating his dead-end middle-aged life, Ed and his neighbors get caught up in the confusion of a technological black-out and watch as a series of meteors head straight for their hometown. Acting on impulse alone, Ed grabs a case of water from his buddy's shop, races home and piles his family into the basement, bringing in whatever they can carry, whatever's within reach, to wait out the worst of it.

A week after the meteors wiped out most of the United Kingdom, Ed and his family are rescued - right at the very moment he comes to terms with the fact that he, his wife, and his two young kids will die in that dark, disgusting cellar. They are escorted to a makeshift shelter at an army barracks, and after the shock of seeing the devastated land around them, the routine of three straight meals and regular "work assignments" temporarily lulls him back into his disenchanted old ways. Until the day he returns from a routine salvage run to find his family gone.

This is the story of Ed's awakening. The world as he knew it has been blasted away; those who survived will live a simpler, more severe life; and it's just the chance this overweight, reluctant husband and father has been waiting for. Accompanied by a ragtag team of barracks residents, Ed follows his family across the UK, in a race against time and the long list of obstacles that stand in his way.

Adrian J Walker does a really nice job of capturing the human side of the apocalypse. Writing Ed as a self-depreciating protagonist helped to keep the dark times from becoming too dark and the brief moments of smooth sailing from becoming too boring. Darkly comedic, incredibly humbling, The End of the World Running Club shows us what can happen when we're pushed to the very brink of sanity. When everything we love's been taken from us, we've got a choice between stepping over the edge and plummeting into the madness or turning ourselves around and finding a reason to keep on going. Which path would we choose? What kind of survivor would we be? Or would we survive at all? How long would we last when the world around us begins to work against us? I swear, I could see myself ending up either (a) like the lady who was banging on Edgar's door right as the meteors were crashing down, praying that the kindness of a stranger might save me (and of course, it won't, and I'd die right there in the blaze and heat of it all) or (b) I'd ball up and become a bitch, taking whatever I need from who ever has it, and getting totally fucking lucky when I convince others to join my "team", as we reek havoc all over our new little territory. I'd like to think I'd end up the latter, but I bet I'd be dead before the opening credits finished playing out. I'd be a red-shirt for sure. In the post apocalyptic life, I'd be "nameless dumbass #2" whose 15 seconds of fame would be "standing in the middle of the street staring in disbelief as the meteors fell out of the sky above me".

While I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, I think it went on for much too long. Adrian could have easily shaved off 100 pages and still had a killer story. There were times, while reading, that I practically shouted out "Seriously?! How much more can this guy take? How can you STILL be throwing things at him?" However, that's not exactly a knock on the editing, because for all the hoops that Ed and his pals had to jump through, each part was well written, each event flowed easily into and out of the other (well, except for the labyrinth part maybe, that one was kind of rough).

The feeling I got as I read the book was more of a "kid in a candy store"... where there are barrels and barrels of candy, and the choice is almost impossible to make, so you start to fill your bag with a little bit of everything... This book offered so many cool opportunities. I mean, hello? A post apocalyptic novel where anything can happen, and people can become anyone and do anything they want! What writer wouldn't go a little overboard, right?

The Audio Series: Roberto Calas

Our audio series "The Authors Read. We Listen."  was hatched in a NYC club during BEA back in 2012. This feature requires more time and patience of the author than any of the ones that have come before. And that makes it all the more sweeter when you see, or rather, hear them read excerpts from their own novels, in their own voices, the way their stories were meant to be heard.


Today, Roberto Calas reads an excerpt from his novel The Scourge. Roberto Calas is an author and lover of history. This serial trilogy is about a 14th century knight fighting his way through a demon-infested England to reunite with the woman he loves. And every bit of it is true except for the made up parts. In addition to The Scourge series, Roberto has written The Beast of Maug Maurai (fantasy), and Kingdom of Glass (historical fiction in the Foreworld universe). He lives in Sandy Hook, Connecticut with his two children, and visits the United Kingdom on a monthly basis to be with his fiancée, Annabelle. Sometimes he fights demons to reach her. You can learn more about Roberto on his website: robertocalas.com. He'd be most appreciative if you liked his Facebook page, too: https://www.facebook.com/RobertoCalasAuthor. And if you feel you can only take 140 characters worth of him at a time, his twitter handle is, @robertocalas.

Click on the soundcloud link below to experience an excerpt of The Scourge as read by Roberto Calas:






The word on The Scourge:

A mysterious plague descends upon 14th century England, ravaging the country and trapping the souls of the afflicted in eternal madness. The feudal hierarchy--and even the church itself-- slowly crumbles as the dead rise to feed and the living seek whatever shelter they can. The bishops of England call for calm and obedience, but one man isn’t listening.

Sir Edward of Bodiam has been separated from the woman he loves and nothing on heaven or earth can stop him from seeking her out. 

Edward and two of his knights travel through the swiftly changing landscape of England, a countryside now overrun by the minions of hell. The knights encounter madness, violence, and sorrow, but Edward fights his way ever deeper into the thickening darkness of unholy terror. 

Roberto Calas brings you along on a dark, historical tale full of love, death, and black humor. Follow Edward as he journeys to save his wife, his kingdom, and his very soul.
*lifted from goodreads with love

Mark R Brand Recommends: McTeague by Frank Norris

And so we continue our Writers Recommend - a new series where we'll be asking writers to, well, you know.. recommend things. Like the books that they've enjoyed. To you. Because who doesn't like being recommended new and interesting books, right?! Think of it as a PSA. Only it's more like a LSA -Literary Service Announcement. Your welcome. 

Mark R Brand Recommends McTeague by Frank Norris

McTeague (1899) by Frank Norris.

Why I recommend it: An enormous dentist who can pull teeth with his bare hands, his thrifty unassuming wife who has a sexual fetish for money, their love-struck elderly upstairs neighbors who sit on either side of a thin wall and listen to each other patter around their apartments, their former-heiress housekeeper who goads them into giving away what possessions she doesn’t steal outright, an alley-dwelling junk collector in search of a lost fortune in gold flatware, a winning lottery ticket, a gold rush, sex, squalor, murder, mayhem, a race through Death Valley… Need I go on?

Like a handful of other novels written around this time—Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle come immediately to mind, as does most of Jack London’s work—McTeague is deliciously sordid, adventuresome, and exciting. Norris’ prose is crisp and readable for the era and, as with a novel like Call of the Wild, it’s hard to put this book down once you pick it up. There are many ways to describe McTeague, but perhaps the most cogent for a modern audience is to think of it as a very early predecessor of Quentin Tarentino’s storytelling style. First, because it consists of equal parts quirky, hilarious characters finding their way into semi-absurd circumstances and reacting in wildly unpredictable ways, and second because the book itself is quite cinematic in its detail and pacing. It can’t decide what it wants to be; it starts funny, turns kinky, gets very dark, and then widens into a balls-out adventure tale, making the end product something far better than any of those taken on their own. It’s Amelie meets There Will Be Blood, and written by one of the masters of Naturalist prose whose scene framing and pacing could be dropped squarely into a film today and you’d never guess that it was 115 years old.

Best of all? It’s in the Public Domain. Download it for free at Gutenberg.org or listen to the free audiobook at Librivox.org.

Mark R. Brand is the two-time Independent Publisher Book Award-winning author of Long Live Us (2013), The Damnation of Memory (2012),Life After Sleep (2011), and Red Ivy Afternoon (2006). He is the short fiction editor of Silverthought Press and the editor of the collection Thank You, Death Robot (2009). His essays have appeared at Salon.com, The Weeklings, and The Good Men Project, and he is the creator and host of Breakfast With the Author.

Brand teaches English and first-year writing at Wilbur Wright College in Chicago and he is currently completing his PhD in English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Joe Milazzo on "Being Indie"

On "Being Indie" is a blog series, here on TNBBC, that introduces us to a wide variety of independent authors, publishers, and booksellers as they discuss what being indie means to them.  

Joe Milazzo is a writer, editor, educator, and designer. He is the author of the novel Crepuscule W/ Nellie (Jaded Ibis Press) and The Habiliments (Apostrophe Books), a volume of poetry. He also co-edits the online interdisciplinary arts journal [out of nothing] and is the proprietor of Imipolex Press. Joe lives and works in Dallas, Texas.

By the time Jaded Ibis Press first showed an interest in my debut novel, Crepuscule W/ Nellie, I had all but given up on the book. To the point, in fact, that I could no longer imagine it a book. Crepuscule W/ Nellie—a novel very loosely based on the relationships triangulating the great jazz composer and pianist Thelonious Monk, his wife Nellie, and his patron the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter— had instead become an intractable aesthetic and commercial problem. Neither experimental enough for the few small presses who specialize in such novels nor as flattering of readerly expectations as the Big 5's commodities; a fiction historical in its conception, but virtually ahistorical in its execution; too obscure in its interests (jazz, and, by extension, one supposes, African-American life and culture); too long; too dense; too recondite in its architecture; too finicky about its typography and presentation on the page... I had simply had too many agents and editors tell me that, in short, the novel was too much of a sell and not enough of a sale. To be writing a year later that Crepuscule W/ Nellie is soon to be a book, in fact still, leaves me feeling as though I am the butt of one of those jokes improbability likes to play on us all. My authorship is not so much a dream from which I fears I must soon awake, but more like an outcome so utterly contingent that, even as I celebrate it, I nag myself with the suspicion that I cannot take any responsibility for the victoriousness I'd like to enjoy.

An author would be be laboring under serious error, however, if he or she were to discount the happier contingencies of author-publisher compatibility. Such compatibility is often to credit for transforming books—of which there are certainly more than can ever be read—into what we think of as literature—which we all know from experience can be scarce, despite the abundance of books available to us. Jaded Ibis was willing to believe in my book (and assume the burdens associated with such belief) at a time when I felt exhausted by caring for it as long as I had. At the same time, Jaded Ibis accepted that I had to get to know my manuscript all over again. My editor, Janice Lee, did more than assign me a deadline; she gave me permission to read and write for the sake of fulfilling my vision for the book, even if that meant rediscovering it. Most importantly, Jaded Ibis respected how honest I was with them about the novel—how unfinished it was, how troublesome it might be in its characterization of historical personages and dramatization of historical events, how it had to make its own music—by being transparent with me about how they conduct their business. The press made no promises to me other than that they would require to me work hard on behalf of my book. Still, they made it clear to me that they would match my efforts as their own best. In short, Jaded Ibis agreed to collaborate with me, and I they, but only after we had established s set of shared values.

These values, it turns out, are more than aesthetic. Yes, Jaded Ibis is committed to innovative writing that promotes dialogue between divergent artistic practices, and across a wide array of media. Poet and dramatist Will Alexander has composed a "soundtrack" for Crepuscule W/ Nellie, and Janice and I are currently mapping out an interactive edition of the book that will reside on the web. And, yes, Jaded Ibis strives to produce books that are beautiful objects. In doing so, however, Jaded Ibis owner and editor Debra DiBlasi is dedicated to environmental sustainability throughout the entire production process. The press makes its ARCs available almost exclusively in digital form and only prints its books "on customer demand" in order to avoid the frankly appalling waste of paper incurred in the traditional manufacture and distribution of what we read. Such a commitment to sustainability allows Jaded Ibis titles to stay in print in perpetuity and further affords the Press the means to be more equitable in its remuneration of its authors. (Of course, like many independent publishers, Jaded Ibis cannot invest in advances, which, however, like any wager is checked and balanced by many caveats.)

These facts were familiar to me as a Jaded Ibis reader, but I will admit that, before I was one of their authors, this business model felt to me only rather hypothetical, i.e., "nice," in the manner of a gratuity. To see this model in action, and to see its mechanics shaping the thing that my writing is about to become: that has been an experience in the most profound sense of the word. Publishers are important; authors are important; designers and copy-editors and publicists are important. But readers are indispensable. It is the reader who completes the work of art that the work of literature initiates. Like many independent presses, Jaded Ibis understands that this principle is one of generosity, and further comprehends that it is not antithetical to succeeding in the literary marketplace. What does my book have to give? How might its intersecting narratives represent opportunities not, as Jules Renard had it, "to talk without being interrupted," but to give oneself over to listening? Crepuscule W/ Nellie is ultimately a novel about the things we hear and how we attend with our imaginations as well as our ears. What better publisher for such a book than one more attuned to the wondering murmur of many different voices than to the buzz of those few convinced of their own uniqueness, secure in their own discriminations? I am thankful that I do not have to think of one, much less search one out.

Audiobook Review: Hold the Dark

Listened 9/23/14 - 9/27/14

4 Stars: Recommended to fans of the kind of literature that's cold and dark and gets into your bones

Audio 6.7 hours

Publisher: Liveright Publishing / Blackstone Audio

Released: September 2014

I am not ashamed to admit that I was trolling downpour.com looking for something to fill my ears during the commute to work when I stumbled across Hold the Dark. I hadn't heard a peep about it (which is usually a sign that I am onto something), but the cover and title caught my attention right away, and the blurb sold me seconds later.  

Set in an Alaskan village so far off the map you'd never know it existed unless you were born there or beckoned there, during the teeth-chattering and snot-freezing dead of winter, Hold the Dark is a twisted, chilling thriller of a story. The wolves are starving and desperate. Children are going missing. And when Medora Slone swears one took off with her son, she sends a letter off to wolf expert and nature writer Russell Core, begging him to come to the village to help her reclaim his bones. 

As Russell attempts to settle in and starts digging into the goings-on in Keelut, Medora disappears and her husband Vernon returns from the war to discover the news of his son. With his crazy-ass childhood friend Cheeon in tow, Vernon goes on the hunt for his wife, driving deeper into the Alaskan wilderness, leaving a trail of dead bodies for local detective Donald Marium to clean up after him. Things are definitely not what they appear on the surface of this strange and unfriendly place and we soon discover that it's going to take a whole lot more than Russell and Marium to ebb the grieving father's desire for revenge.

Hold the Dark is an extremely dark and violent, slow moving, tension-filled tale that's meant to mess with your mind. In it, we witness the lengths to which an isolated village will go to stand together and protect its own.  A place where law is not necessarily recognized and strange, murdery deeds typically go unquestioned. A place where a man will put himself through hell to get back the one thing he wants most and death will befall those who are dumb enough to get in his way.

William Giraldi's careful prose and simplistic world-building go a long way to pulling the reader in, despite it's slow place. His willful withholding is actually part of the book's charm. And the near-tender descriptions of his characters' violent acts render them almost beautiful. Kudos also to Blackstone Audio, for finding a reader capable of conveying the quiet fierceness of Giraldi's words.

My only real critique is the final chapter. Despite the fact that had a different feel to it, as if it was written by a different hand, it felt like a sad surrender to a story that could have, and should have, gone off in another direction. Perhaps by eliminating that last chapter, the book would have been stronger. Perhaps if Giraldi had a little more faith in his readers, he wouldn't have needed to take it that far? Look, if you're an attentive reader, you'll pick up on some of what Giraldi's laying out as he goes along; you'll already have a sense of what's coming, of where he's heading. Trust me. That final chapter just cleans up what should, in my opinion, remain a messier tale.

Also, can we get off the whole "comparing every new author to a super-famous author that they kind of sort of write similarly to" now? Can we, please? I've seen Giraldi compared to both Cormac McCarthy and Ernest Hemingway. Why? Because he writes sparse, bleak landscapes? Stop. Just stop. Let's not pollute the waters around a fresh and emerging writer. Let him be who he is without the pressures of having to stand as tall as our literary heroes. And let's just agree to enjoy the cold Alaskan landscape he sets his words in, as it freezes our skin solid and sends icy cold chills up and down our spines. 

Book Giveaway: Cloud Pharmacy

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 November's Author/Reader Discussion book!

We will be reading Susan Rich's

poetry collection Cloud Pharmacy.

Susan and her publisher, White Pine Press, have made a total of 10 copies available for giveaway.

5 print (for US only) and 5 digital PDF's. 

Here's a little something about the book from goodreads:

"Cloud Pharmacy is a book of lyric fire. In our epoch of quick and shallow literary conversation it is rare to come across such level of attentiveness as one finds in this book."—Ilya Kaminsky

"In a central sequence, Rich explores nineteenth-century photographer Hannah Maynard's proto-surrealistic images, looking in grief-heavy places for revelation. The result is wonderfully strange and unsettling; this is Rich's most haunting collection yet."—Kathleen Flenniken

"Rich's gorgeous poems affix moments, both magnificent and minute. And in exquisite and playful poems, a pageant of a life in process develops before our eyes."—Oliver de la Paz

This giveaway will run through October 8th. 

Winners will be announced here and via email on October 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 (choose one option from above), 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 November 17th through November 22st. Susan Rich 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!!!

Indie Ink Runs Deep: Steph Post

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 Steph Post. Steph is the author of the novel A Tree Born Crooked and an editor for Pandamoon Publishing. She lives, writes and teaches writing in St. Petersburg, Florida.

I’m one of those strange folks who are covered in tattoos, but don’t really like to talk about it. I tend to shy away when people- in the checkout line at the grocery store, at restaurants, in classrooms at the high school where I work, walking down the street- reach out, grab my arm and ask me the dreaded question “so, what’s it all mean?” (as if somehow the secret meaning of life is somewhere between my armpit and my elbow…) It’s not that I don’t want to talk to people; it’s just that it’s hard to explain the history and justification of an entire sleeve in the brief five seconds of attention that most people are willing to give. So I usually respond with the vague, “oh, you know, stuff” and move on.

But the opportunity of getting to explain the origins of a tattoo on one of my favorite book review sites is another story all together, so here goes…

I’ve lost track of how many tattoos I actually have- I counted once and I know I’ve sat through over 30 tattooing sessions if that tells you anything- but with my debut novel, A Tree Born Crooked, being released on September 30^th, it seems only right that I tell you about the crooked tree.

Most of my tattoos mark some sort of event in my life- some physical, some mental or emotional- and this tattoo marked the end of writing A Tree Born Crooked and the beginning of its journey out into the world. It just so happened that my tattoo artist at the time, Evil Don in St. Petersburg, Florida, has as much a fascination with trees as I do, and he was thrilled to draw this piece for me. He even went so far as to create a painting based off of the tattoo design, which still hangs in his tattoo studio today.

So what does it actually “mean,” you want to know? It means on my body what it means in the novel. One of the main characters explains to another that, “a tree born crooked never could grow straight.” (Yes, this is a lyric from a Tom Waits song for all you cool cats out there now squirming with recognition) This isn’t a negative idea, though. As the character, Marlena, goes on to explain, what this really means is that we can’t give up hope. We may be bent, broken, or crooked, but we still have to keep on growing, we still have to keep on breathing, living and moving forward. We may be born with our wounds or we may acquire them, but they are no excuse for giving up.

This is an idea that I truly believe in and comes from a life motto that my husband (who, incidentally, came up with the title of novel) has instilled in me: It’s okay to not be okay. Every time I want to pack it in, every time I want to throw in the towel or say, “I can’t,” my tattoo reminds me that it’s okay to be angry or frustrated or depressed. It’s okay to feel that way, it’s okay to be crooked, it’s okay for the path not to be straight. Just keep moving, keep breathing and keep on living the life you were meant to live. In the end, that’s all that really matters.  

Writers Recommend: Scott Abrahams and The Blue Guide to Indiana by Michael Martone

Last week we broke out our debut post for Writers Recommend, a new series where we'll be asking writers to, well, you know.. recommend things. Like the books that they've enjoyed. To you. Because who doesn't like being recommended new and interesting books, right?! Think of it as a PSA. Only it's more like a LSA -Literary Service Announcement. Your welcome. 

Scott Abrahams Recommends The Blue Guide to Indiana

“WARNING: It seems very likely that many times of opening for museums and sites given hopefully in the text, coupled with general remarks in the Practical Information section, will be found incorrect.”

            The opening disclaimer to Michael Martone’s The Blue Guide to Indiana is an understatement. And that itself is an understatement: the whole book is incorrect, from the opening letter by the Lieutenant Governor of the State of Indiana to the attraction-by-attraction overview of the forthcoming Eli Lilly Land amusement park.

            The book is a masterpiece of the oh-so-plausible untrue. It is a complete guide to the history, culture, attractions, and architecture of an Indiana that totally could be, but totally isn’t. Knowing that the World’s First Parking Lot, a “10-foot square of hard packed dirt,” is not a tourist site in Plato does nothing to temper the irresistible urge to google it. The same goes for the Federal Surface Materials Testbed on the northbound and southbound lanes of Highway US 31 between Rochester and Peru, “established by an act of Congress as part of the Defense Highway Bill of 1955.”

            Read on for helpful tips such as the advisement that, “as one might gather in the state where the automobile was invented, walking is frowned upon,” thus “shoe repair is a clandestine and shady black market enterprise.”

Did you know that in the southern counties of Indiana, where Abraham Lincoln lived as a boy, “the clocks must, by law, always read ten till ten, the moment of Lincoln’s assassination”? That’s why if you ask a resident for the time they will answer with, “The time is three hours and forty-seven minutes before ten till ten.”

The Blue Guide to Indiana is a book you’ll want for your coffee table to confuse your friends. Rumor has it that even though the front cover is stamped with a notice that the book “in no way factually depicts or accurately represents the State of Indiana, its destinations and attractions, its institutions or businesses, or any of its residents or former residents” and is a work of fiction, bookstores still mistakenly file it in the travel section.

Martone beautifully stays within the boundaries of subtle satire, such that you constantly catch yourself starting to believe the book. It doesn’t help that when you search for the architect Michael Graves, who is credited with designing every single building and landmark mentioned, there really does exist a person by that name, and he really is an architect, and wouldn’t you know it, he was born in the State of Indiana.

For me, that uncomfortably enjoyable constant confusion over where the mostly made up becomes the absolutely absurd is what makes the book a must-read example of what I’ve seen referred to as “fraudulent artifacts,” or pieces purporting to be a particular form of writing, such as fake interviews or emails or tables of contents (or travel guides), that turn out to be something else entirely.

The writing itself is as enjoyable as the content. It is clean and quirky, an authoritative voice that speaks as if unaware of the outrageousness of what it is saying. The First and Second Daylight Savings Wars of 1948 and 1955 are described as nonchalantly as the State Hair Dump, a highlight on the tour of Scenic Waste Disposal and Storage Sites.

For the foodies out there, Martone includes a selection of recipes from Cooking Plain by Helen Walker Linsenmeyer. I googled her, and guess what? She’s on Goodreads, and she really wrote a book by that name. But surely it doesn’t contain the recipe for snow ice cream cited in The Blue Guide, does it? The one that calls for 1 heaping china bowl of freshly fallen snow, maple syrup or warmed honey, and some more snow? I don’t know! And that’s what makes The Blue Guide to Indiana so delicious. Treat yourself and go pick up a copy at your local bookstore. It’s probably in the travel section.

Scott Abrahams is an analyst by day
 and novelist by slow day. 
He is the author of Turtle and Dam, 
a novel about contemporary China."

Drew Reviews: Galaga

Galaga by Michael Kimball
3 Stars
Pages: 136
Publisher: Book Fight Books
Released: July 2014



Guest review by Drew Broussard 

The Short Version: Everybody has a game that they love, that means something special to them.  For Michael Kimball, that game is Galaga - and he explains not only what makes the game marvelous but also what makes it so important to him in simple, honest terms.

The Review: I'm too young to have really ever encountered arcade culture.  Oh sure, I've been to arcades and played plenty of arcade games - but home systems were the norm by the time my friends and I were old enough, so we only know of things like Pac-Man and Galaga through a different lens: that of their being 'classics', respected but also a bit antiquated. 

But that doesn't make them any less potent than their successors.  For every memory I have of playing Myst or Heroes of Might & Magic III, I have to acknowledge the simple wonder that was these games.  These games that made our games possible.  And it's not like we're unfamiliar with Galaga, us millennials: we caught that reference in The Avengers, you know?

But this book is as much about Galaga as it is about one man's experience with the game and the way that it - not to put too fine a point on it - saved his life.  The confessional bits of this novel are, in fact, rather startling for their openness and simplicity.  Kimball endured a childhood of abuse at the hands of his father and older brother and he's really honest about it.  To the point that he says that he still, many many years later, flinches at unexpected contact.  That's pretty heavy stuff for a book about a video game.
But the thing about the game is, it was his lifeline.  It was something that he found that allowed him to escape - not unlike books, movies, music, etc do for countless others.  If anyone in the world still believes that video games rot people's brains, I'd direct them to this installment of Boss Fight Books.  I challenge you to hear this story and think ill of video games or video game culture.

And when I say that, I do mean the purest form of that culture, that artistic expression.  Example: the Grand Theft Auto games hold no redeeming quality, I'm sorry (except for maybe that horse video).  But the honest joy of playing a game and acquiring skill at said game - even if it's a skill that can't exactly be replicated in the world (e.g. shooting alien bugs from the sky)... there are a lot of good things that come out of it.  There's even a delightful list towards the end of the novel of "lessons" that can be learned from Galaga about life - and, you know what, they're good ones.  Simple ones, but they're good ones.  Sometimes, especially in light of tough times, it's good to be reminded of those simple, good life lessons.  

A word, in closing, about the book-as-concept.  Kimball uses the structure of Galaga to tell the story both of his life and of the game and its development - but there are, not surprisingly, moments here that might only appeal to the hardcore fan.  Or that feel a little like filler in order to flesh out the 255-stage concept.  This is the danger of a series like this (I think, too, of the 33 1/3 series - some of those are great, others... not so much).  I'm intrigued by Boss Fight Books, believing immensely that video games (especially classics) deserve the attention that music/movies/shows/books have received... but also, you have to know that they're for a limited audience no matter who writes it or what game they write about.  Still, if you're part of that audience, you'll enjoy this one, and even if you aren't, Kimball transcends the traps that a lesser writer could easily fall into with a book like this.

Rating: 3 out of 5.  Again, it's a question of your interest level.  If you're into classic games, this is ideal.  If you're into stories about how [insert artistic thing here] shaped the life of a young person, this is also ideal.  Kimball does a really great job at elevating what could've been a boring, dry fact-based thing about the game into a deeply personal look at life, at youth, and at love - of others and of an object.  Your mileage will vary, but the fact is: this book does what it sets out to do and more.  And for that, it is a success full-stop.

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.