Indie Spotlight: Joe Lane

We love to read novels. To get lost in the fictional worlds the authors have created for us. But how often are we reading a book that was based on an event or series of events that took place in the author's life, without ever knowing it?

In today's spotlight, we meet Joe Lane. He wrote a fictional novel called Aftershock what was inspired by the economic collapse of 2008. Here, Joe shares his thoughts on why he used that specific event as a catalyst for his novel, and why female protagonists are featured so prominently.

The Inspiration Behind Aftershock

I am often asked why I wrote Aftershock. What got me going was rage over what happened leading up to and the ultimate economic collapse of 2008. There was also a lot of frustration about how successful the perpetrators and their political enablers had been at hiding the egregious illegal and unethical practices that made 2008 inevitable. I had done a lot of research over the past decade about how the financial elite had been able to so completely capture the political system and reshape it to their exclusive benefit. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial earthquake I imagined, since their transgressions had been so well documented, that just about everyone would understand and demand both retribution from them and a righting of the system to eradicate their dominance.

What I found when talking with a lot of people was that very few, very, very few, had much of an inkling of what actually happened or who was responsible for it. It isn’t that the data isn’t available, but rather that it has been presented in bits and pieces. Presented by people who are not celebrities or current or former leaders that the general public knows and trusts. In discussion after discussion, it was clear that the moneyed and political elite had done a masterful job of distraction and distortion. Essentially they played a very sophisticated version of ‘hide the pea’ with the general public. If, and only if, one had the time and the patience to wade through often mind numbing papers, endless documentaries, and then follow-up with authors and directors/writers could one grasp the big picture with sufficient minutia to enable one to point to specific acts by specific miscreants. 

I wanted tell the story in a suspenseful setting, provide an outcome that would be less depressing, and give readers certain factual data they might not otherwise come across. Of course the names are changed, much to my chagrin, to protect the guilty. So, while reading Aftershock and trying to imagine if specific instances or people (not of course their real names – I’d be in court for 150 years proving they did in fact do what I wrote down) are for real, read a few of the books I recommend, watch the documentary Inside Job, and peruse the Internet. I surmise you will learn enough to make you want to join the WA Cultural Restoration Society tomorrow, if not tonight.

Another question that often pops up is why women. And why so many? Why not a female Jason Bourne? It turns out that the two people I admire the most are women – the love of my life, Barbara, and my daughter, Kathryn. They are both tough as nails and the two most principled people I’ve ever encountered. It is also true that women are much tougher, and seriously more tenacious than men. Can you imagine men enduring 9-months of pregnancy and then delivery – our species would have died out eons ago. And keeping a secret, forget about it.

Another reality is that no one person ever accomplishes great change without a team of equally dedicated and tough partners. Dr. King had team of really talented and tough men and women to help him every step of the way. President Lincoln had partners, and even adversaries, who helped him get elected and then eradicate slavery from American soil.  Nelson Mandela had many people working with him from his earliest days as a freedom fighter to the completion of his term as President of South Africa.

Veterans retuning from war today mostly tell us they still believe that all killing is wrong, but sometimes necessary. So I needed a team of tough, dedicated, extremely dangerous women, who could wear tainted white hats yet still cut a heart out when all other options had been exhausted. A team who also knew they would have to employ sufficient slight of hand to keep all the alphabet agencies chasing shadows. The myth of the lone tough guy tearing through the universe vanquishing all enemies single handedly is, I think, a dangerous one. In reality, changing just about anything of consequence takes partners, intense cooperation, and time. Keeping people searching for, waiting for, a superman is a very clever way to keep those very same people from organizing and realizing the power of their numbers.

I think readers may find the women of the WA are not only tougher and more lethal than any of the comic book heroes, but perhaps even more unsettling than Dr. Lecter. So, keep the lights on while you read, and keep reminding yourself it is fiction … well mostly.

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

BIO: 

Joe Lane is an international business man and filmmaker and the author of AFTERSHOCK, a political thriller about the 2008 financial crisis and its aftershock for many Americans. Joe splits his time between the U.S. and China where he launched Spango, a new pizza chain in Zhao Qing. A renaissance man, he's been as a contract consultant for new product development, a speaker, Yale student, works with animal shelters to raise funds for abandoned pets, and he's been a pilot for over 45 years. For more info, visit: www.joelanemedia.com

Ben Tanzer Recommends The Basketball Diaries

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. 

Ben Tanzer Recommends The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll

I am hunkered down at a long table at The Bottom Line in Greenwich Village. I am in my early twenties and I am waiting patiently for it to happen.

            What is it?

            I will tell you in a minute, because this part is about the thing before the thing.

            The thing before the thing is that as I sit there milking my watery Gin & Tonic, tracing the sweaty trickles of condensation with my finger as it slides down the side of my glass, and as I try to be patient, or at least not a stalkerish freak, I feel someone place their hands on my shoulders and then lean over me to get a better look at the still empty stage.

            I look up to see who it is, not that I expect I will know.

            And yet as it turns out, I do know who it is. Not personally, but I do know, and how couldn’t I, with his clunky glass, beard, crazy Jew hair, and bemused grin.

            It’s Allen Ginsberg, yes that Allen Ginsberg.

            He smiles at me and then he walks away.

            Why is this important?

            For one, because I am terrible starfucker and Allen fucking Ginsberg has just touched me, then smiled.

            But that’s not the most important thing.

            No, what’s important is that Allen Ginsberg is at The Bottom Line to read that night and I had no idea that was the case.

            How couldn’t I know that?   

            Because I am there to see Jim Carroll, he is the thing before the thing, and I had no idea, because no writer is more important to me than Jim Carroll.

            I love him.

            I love him like women my age love John Cusack. And why is that, because he speaks to them, and yes, Jim Carroll speaks to me in much the same way John Cusack speaks to them.

            They don’t know John Cusack, but through watching him in Say Anything, certainly, The Sure Thing, possibly, and Serendipity, maybe, fuck, Christ, John Cusack inhabits something, an ideal of some kind, funny, passionate, tall, and crazed about the women he loves, and everyone wants crazed, until they get it anyway.

            Like them, I don’t know Jim Carroll, technically I now know Allen Ginsberg better than Jim Carroll, but Jim Carroll wrote The Basketball Diaries, and nothing before The Basketball Diaries ever spoke to me like The Basketball Diariesdid.

            I re-read books as a boy, I was ravenous for words and the escape and balm they provided, and some books filled the chasm for me again, and again, Carrie, The Catcher in the Rye, The Outsiders, Flowers in the Attic, Then Again, Maybe I Won’t, The Chocolate War, and so many others, but none of them was The Basketball Diaries.

            It was electric, and real time, all live wire, and nerve endings, a mash-up of masturbation, drugs, sports, underage sex, predators, crime, writing, hustle, art, New York City in the mid-sixties, and people love to talk about cities, especially New York Cityas characters in stories, but usually they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about, here though New York City was oozing and fresh, and another breathing slice of a book, that was so graphic, vivid, and fraught with gunk and stickiness, it was like watching a documentary.

            To this day I remember when he jerks-off on the roof of his building under the stars.

            The college scout Bennie who wants to blow him.

            The twins Winkie and Binkie who he wants to fuck, and how he worries that he chose the wrong one after one sister strips for another guy, before realizing they must look the same.

            The date that won’t sleep with him, and keeps insisting there’s a time and place for everything, until it actually is the time and place.

            How they would cliff dive into the Harlem River while dodging the shit and scumbags floating by.

            The girlfriend who gets him hard during gym class in Central Park, which leads him to picture an old woman’s varicose veins because he isn’t wearing underwear.

            Playing basketball with Lew Alcindor.

            The drugs, the uppers and downers, the endless marijuana, and the heroin.

            Carroll at his most haunting and prescient, as he describes his fantasies of gunning down everyone in his classroom out of pure boredom.

            And then there is the language, fluid, poetic and crass, a twisty mix of slang and detail, all piling-up on itself, until it becomes something more than language, something visual, a fever dream, or overture, filled with spiky notes, and jazz beats.

“After silly hash goofs with other loony heads, Brian and I split and taxi to 168^thfor the junk juice, but to no avail because the place we hit turns us down because the man’s been bugging him about selling it to minors (you’re supposed to be twenty-one to cop this stuff). After two more turnaways we almost give up hope when Brian decides to call old Johnny Murray, whose been drinking six bottles a day since he was fifteen (p. 81).”

            I imagine it would have been impossible not to be taken with all of this when I was twelve and first got the book from my friend Adam, but looking back I must have wondered if this was what the future could hold, girls and sports and grit and hustle and living in New York City, and the idea that like Icarus, Jim Carroll may have flown too close to the sun, wings melting, and fraught with plummet, yet somehow he landed on his feet.

            Jim Carroll was real, he was punk, and he was legend.

            I also think that over the years I must have somehow overlooked the second half of the book, where it’s all junk, and desperation, and nodding out, and Rykers Island.

            I imagine that it didn’t fit my narrative for Jim Carroll, or at least the Jim Carroll life I might have almost aspired to if I had any idea how anyone aspires to such a life.

            And I know this because I recently re-read the book for the first time in twenty years.

            I wanted to know if it still spoke to me.

            I should say here, that when I saw Jim Carroll at The Bottom Line I was there with Adam who had been the one to introduce me to The Basketball Diaries all those years ago.

            I was at work, in New York City thank you very much, when the phone rang.

            “Yo, meet me at The Bottom Line at 7:00, Jim Carroll is performing,” Adam said.

            Not reading mind you, performing.

            As I have mentioned, we didn’t even know Allen Ginsberg was going to be there, Allen fucking Ginsberg, but that was because we loved Jim Carroll, and everything else was ephemera, beautiful, and raging, but ephemera none-the-less.

            On stage he was as Jim Carroll as you could ever want him to be, loose-limbed, and gaunt, all vibrato, and stalking the stage like a punk junkie spider, as he read some piece about his father, maybe, and a scorpion, definitely, and if it is true that this piece couldn’t possibly touch the sacred text that is The Basketball Diaries, it didn’t matter, he didn’t really have to do anything but show-up.

            Which for the most part is what he did for years, though not for much longer, because somewhere along the way, he stopped showing-up, and at the end, it was him living as a shut-in, and a memory, primarily kept alive, by his primary, not only, but primary legacy, The Basketball Diaries.

            So, given that, how does it hang now?

            Brilliant, and beautiful, as lyrical and raucous as ever, mostly, totally, I don’t know. I still love it, and all those memories I had, they were all there, which made me happy.

            It’s funny though, reading it again now I’m amazed at how young he was, and so close to my age when I first read it, when he seemed so old, or worldly, or something.

            The druggy stretches near the end get somewhat draggy and repetitive, even if they remain at times both sad and funny.

            But there are still the girls and the basketball, and the hustling, though I had forgotten just how far he was willing to go to make a buck. I remembered the stick-ups and the purse snatching, but I’m not sure I recalled his working as a john.

            The pages are still alive and humming though like few things I’ve read since, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Cruddy, We The Animals, Hairstyles of the Damned, and Bastard Out of Carolina, come close, very, but they’re not like this, not like a movie wrapping itself around my brain, first as a hug, and then as a bruise.

            The book is also something else though, because there is one piece of The Basketball Diaries I somehow forgot about entirely: it’s when he writes about becoming a writer.

“The more I read the more I know it now, heavier each day, that I need to write. I think of poetry and how I see it as just a raw block of stone ready to be shaped, that way words are never a horrible limit to me, just tools to shape. I just get the images from the upstairs vault (it all comes in images) and fling ‘em around like bricks, sometimes clean and smooth and then sloppy and ready to fall on top of you later (p. 159).”

            It’s impossible to read it now, and not think, there, right there, thirty-five years ago, something was set in motion for me, something started there, and I’m not even remotely sure that I knew it was.

            Later, and when I was now living in Chicago, Jim Carroll came to perform at Lounge Axe. He was older than when I saw him at The Bottom Line, still lanky and gaunt, and still Jim Carroll, but barely anyone was there, and I didn’t see Allen Ginsberg anywhere.

            He read the same piece he read when I saw him read in New York City and I felt sad.

            He seemed stuck in place, and after many years of being stuck myself, I was finally not, not really, I was writing, and it wasn’t clear that he still was.

            Then one day he was dead, a sickly, skeletal, shut-in, who never quite finished his final book.

            Maybe it couldn’t end any other way for him, not when he had flown so high and so bright, and maybe it doesn’t matter, he was a poet, and he was a punk god, he survived the junk, and the hustle, and the streets of New York City, he changes lives, he wrote The Basketball Diaries, and what more do we need from him?

            I don’t know, but I do know that he had once made us feel like more was possible, that the hustle was beautiful, and that a poet can emerge from the streets, and isn’t that enough for any one life time?

Ben Tanzer is the author of the books My Father’s House, You Can Make Him Like You, Orphans, which won the 24th Annual Midwest Book Award in Fantasy/SciFi/Horror/Paranormal, and Lost in Space, which received an Honorable Mention in the Chicago Writers Association 2014 Book Awards Traditional Non-Fiction category, among others. He also contributes to Men's Health, directs Publicity and Content Strategy for Curbside Splendor, and can be found online at This Blog Will Change Your Life, the center of his vast, albeit faux, lifestyle empire.

Audio Series: Tiff Holland

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, Tiff Holland reads from Betty Superman, which is included in the collection My Very End of the Universe. Tiff is originally from Ohio. She attended The Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction appear regularly in literary magazines and anthologies and have won several awards. Her novella-in-flash Betty Superman won the Rose Metal Press Fifth Annual Short Short Chapbook Contest in 2011. She has taught creative writing and literature at Kent State, University of Southern Mississippi, and Austin Community College. She currently lives in Hawaii.

Click on the soundcloud link to hear Tiff reading from her novella Betty Superman:

The word on My Very End of the Universe:

My Very End of the Universe is a celebration of an increasingly popular genre: the novella-in-flash: a novella built of standalone stories. The novellas in this collection—Betty Superman by Tiff Holland, Here, Where We Live by Meg Pokrass, Shampoo Horns by Aaron Teel, Bell and Bargain by Margaret Chapman, and The Family Dogs by Chris Bower—are compact and specific, yet whole and universal, using the flexibility of the form to offer a polyphony of setting and emotion. Accompanying each novella-in-flash is a craft essay by the author, making this anthology an ideal text for both entertainment and instruction, as well as for use both in the classroom and out. Additionally, the editors’ introduction by Abby Beckel and Kathleen Rooney offers a detailed history and discussion of the evolution of the versatile and hybrid novella-in-flash genre.
*lifted with love from goodreads

Book Review: Suffer the Children

Read 10/29/14 - 11/4/14
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to those who get creeped out by evil blood-hungry children
Pages: 352
Publisher: Permuted Press (imprint of Simon and Schuster)
Released: May 2014


Craig DiLouie walks a fine line between horror and the absolutely horrific in his latest novel Suffer the Children when one day, without warning and for no immediately apparent reason, all of the children, all across the globe, die. Amid the ensuing confusion, as grieving parents prepare their little ones for mass burial, the cause is discovered. They're calling it Herod's Syndrome - a parasite that resides inside every living person. What caused it to active and why it only affected the pre-pubescent is still unknown, and the world is forced to consider the inevitable. No more children will mean the eventual end of humanity.

Three days later, however, as the town of Lansdowne, Michigan's sanitation department begins to collect the bodies for burial, the children awaken and return home to their parents. Bloated with gas and in the early stages of decay, they reek of rot and moan about hunger. But they refuse the food their parents put in front of them. Because this is a different kind of hunger. They hunger for blood.

The average human body contains ten pints of blood. One pint will keep a child "awake" for an hour. Without it, the parasite stops functioning and they return to that state of rotting, stinking death. How far would you go to save your children? How much would you give to keep them alive? And at what costs? And when you can't give any more? What then?!

DiLouie paints a very somber picture of the lengths a parent will go to in order to protect and defend their family. He plays around with religion and politics - rising from the dead on the third day; blood sacrifice; the economic collapse caused by a world suddenly without children - no more need for school teachers, pediatricians, clothing, toys; the rise of black market blood, cleverly renamed "medicine"; and the depths to which people will sink to keep their kids "fed".

It really is a terrifying thought. Helplessly watching your child die right before your very eyes, grieving the sudden loss, and then having them return to you in this unbelievable undead state. Like a second chance, like an act of God. Though you can now help them, these children have the upper hand. They demand, they need, they REQUIRE your blood to survive. As a mother, how could not provide it? How could you live with yourself? Sit there and watch the light and life fade from your precious babies? How could you let them slip back into death when your very veins carry the cure for them? How could you not push your body to the limit? How could you not beg friends and family to give until it hurts them too? And what if they refuse? Would you TAKE it from them?! Your children, their very lives, depend on you now in ways you could never have imagined.

Suffer the Children takes vampirism to a new, chilling level as DiLouie masterfully tugs at your heartstrings while terrifying the shit out of you.

Her Own Vietnam Blog Tour

Always flattered to be a part of the Grab the Lapels blog tours because Melanie Page is doing such wonderful things to get writers the exposure and attention they deserve. In today's blog tour post,to celebrate Lynn Kanter's new novel, and to reach out to other women who have something to say about forgiveness and the past. Thank you to all the women who participated! To follow along with the rest of the tour, click here to see the schedule.

About Her Own Vietnam’s Main Character—

When Della Brown was 22 years old, she had just returned from a hellish year serving as a U.S. Army nurse in a combat hospital in Vietnam. During that time she had learned and lost much. She had made mistakes: errors of judgment, of inexperience. One mistake may have ended the life of a grievously injured soldier. Another cost Della her best friend. Thirty years later, Della was forced to confront those mistakes and find out whether she could learn to forgive: her country, her family, and most of all, herself.

Della is a fictional character in my novel Her Own Vietnam. But her dilemma is real. Many of us have made our own lives more difficult by holding onto grievances and regrets.

Looking back at your 22-year-old self, what would you counsel her about forgiveness?

“I would tell the 22-year-old me that she didn't have to try so hard to be who she wanted, that it was okay that she couldn't survive in New York City, that being an ‘artist’ didn't require anything in particular and that she should forgive herself for making choices that were about what she THOUGHT was right instead of what she felt was right.”

—Andi Cumbo-Floyd, Age 40

“You don't have to be perfect and neither does anyone else.”

—Heather Dorn, Age 37

“Dear Karen, You are going to meet a lot of people you think you want to have sex with. Most of them are not worth the effort of shaving your legs. You will convince yourself you are a free spirit, but you will spend hours agonizing over relationships that never really were relationships, and fretting that you never will have a real one, someone who loves you truly. Let me tell you, Karen, one day you will be loved. You will experience many of the things you dream of, and many things you do not. So spend this time before you find love, singing, writing, reading, dancing, and studying the natural world. Spend time in nature instead of seeking the elusive fantasy of a love that will save you. You're better off using this time to learn to make sushi, throw pottery, or bake pastry, than wasting one minute crying over lovers who never loved you.”

—Karen Lynch, Age 56

“You matter.”

—Lidia Yuknavitch, Age 51

“All those years of feeling awful about yourself were bullshit. You weren’t fat, you weren’t stupid, you weren’t ugly, and there were lots of people that really loved and admired you. There will be even more once you stop criticizing yourself so much and therefore are open to people. If you like yourself, it makes it much easier for others to warm up to you. The things that you care about and mean something to you are utterly valid. You’re very smart even though you got the message that this wasn’t true. If you’re the only one who is creative in your immediate sphere, you need to meet others who value this and don’t tell you you’ll never get a job. You don’t have to be with someone who doesn’t treat you well. You’re worth a lot more than that. Flirt, have fun, and bask in your youthfulness. When you meet someone who is going to treat you well, have fun with him or her. But keep doing the other things, too.”

—Bonnie ZoBell, Age 59

“You're worth caring for, and your care is valuable. And don't be so afraid all the time.”

—Beth Couture, Age 34

“There is nothing I could have said to save her from years of anger and blaming. She was not ready to hear the truth about relationships and taking personal responsibility for what she thought and how she behaved. The idea that she had choices about how she perceived herself and the world around her would have been completely foreign. If I had been able to tell her that what her mother taught her about her 'place' in society was all crap she might have gotten a glimpse into a different reality, but she would not have known what to do with it. She wanted to be right. To tell her that being right was not all that important if she also wanted to feel she was loved, would have undermined her foundation. It was her distorted foundation that propelled her forward to over achieve, to be the best, to be above criticism, to care about others, to do the work that needed to be done, to make her own mistakes. Therein, would evolve a new foundation in which forgiveness as her salvation was possible. Forgiveness releases us from the illusions of attack, condemnation, and blame and keeps us focused on love, for if we truly love, there is nothing to forgive. ‘Herein lies the peace of God’ (A Course In Miracles).”

—Merna Holloway, “Now, in the 71st year of my evolution”

“Dear Sheila: He's not worth you.”

—Sheila Squillante, Age 44

“Honestly, I don't think there's much she could hear, but I would keep showing up, being with her, listening and most of all LOVING her until she started to believe the truth that she is loved, she is lovely, that she doesn't need to try so hard - she is enough.”

—Kelly Hausknecht Chripczuk, Age 37

“Dump the handsome Irishman who makes you laugh but drinks too much and cheats on you and stay in school until you get your PhD. That nice Jewish boy will always love you, and he'll wait for you to finish yourself and forgive you when you show signs of asshatness. Grab him and hang on even if he isn't gorgeous. Beauty wanes, companionship will not. You're a bit shallow, my love, but I forgive you. No one knows everything at 22, and BTW, you do NOT always have to say exactly what's on your mind. Even if you're usually correct, you're dead right, and that does not endear you to others. Shut up and listen. Learn to be still.”

—Joani Reese, Age 57

“I consider regret a waste of emotional and physical energy.  Regret indicates you have not moved on and are not living in the present, or have not learned from your errors.  But forgiveness, on the other hand, is extremely important, and for the same reasons.  At 22 I was still blaming my relationship with my father for every sadness, heartbreak, ‘failure’ and embarrassment I experienced. Such bullshit. My father was, and is, simply who he is — not my ideal father but a flawed human being, like all of us.  (Well, perhaps a level of cruelty that verged on astonishing.)  At 22, I was old enough to take full responsibility for my behaviors and emotions, and their consequences. But blaming my father allowed me to avoid that responsibility.  I wonder (but do not regret) what decisions I would have made had I understood the freedom that resides in responsibility of self. It's a matter of curiosity now.  Too bad that wormhole into one or more lives of my multiverse isn't available.”

—Debra DeBlasi, Age 57

“I would tell that nervous little pony to forgive all those slights— both real and imagined—

because if she's done all her work by the time she's my age now, she's not going to remember them anyway, and because if she doesn't, they're going to settle in her shoulders, neck and gut and give her lots of pain and hold her back from following her dreams. I'd tell her keeping that stuff around and real wastes her time, energy and life.”

—Tracy DeBrincat, Age 54

Lynn Kanter is the author of the novels Her Own Vietnam (2014, Shade Mountain Press), The Mayor of Heaven (1997) and On Lill Street (1992), both published by Third Side Press. Her short fiction has appeared in the anthologies Lost Orchard (SUNY Press), Breaking Up is Hard to Do, and The Time of Our Lives: Women Write on Sex After 40 (both Crossing Press), and the literary journal Verbsap. Her nonfiction has appeared in Referential Magazine and the anthologies Coming Out of Cancer (Seal Press), Testimonies (Alyson Publications) and Confronting Cancer, Constructing Change(Third Side Press).

Lynn is a lifelong activist for feminist and other progressive causes, and has the T-shirts to prove it. Since 1992 Lynn has worked as a writer for the Center for Community Change, a national social justice organization. She lives with her wife in Washington, DC.

Indie Spotlight: Andrez Bergen

Andrez Bergen is back on the blog! I love this guy and I have to admit, I'm a bit in awe of him as well. He never seems to stop writing! 

Andrez is here today to tell us about his new comic book Bullet Gal, and the kickstarter his publisher created to support its production. Check it out:

BULLET GAL: CREATING A HILLOCK FROM A COMIC BOOK MOLE HILL?

How on earth did a one-off twelve-page comic book sink into the depths – if not despair - of 300 pages?

Funnily enough, though I’m the culprit concerned, I have no canny response to chuck back at you here. No tale of literary and/or artistic derring-do, zero to say about grand plans or ulterior plots. It just happened.

I think I need to begin at, well, the beginning. Best place, unless you’re up to surreal tricks and prefer to bamboozle the innocent.

Earlier this set I polished off a graphic novel called Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat (you can even read about that here at TNBBB: http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.jp/2014/05/indie-spotlight-andrez-bergen-and.html), and I managed to get financing at the same time for publication of that 144-page beast via Kickstarter.

Once I finished the tome, however, I was at one of those loose ends that pop up – between novels, and with a wee bit of spare time on my hands. So I chose to continue the sequential flow by creating a mini-comic titled Bullet Gal.

This was ostensibly based around one of the characters from my 2013 novel Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?, but I decided to make it a prequel that bounced straight out of the pages of my last novel Depth Charging Ice Planet Goth (which Lori kindly reviewed here: http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.jp/2014/05/book-review-depth-charging-ice-planet.html).

Long story. I’d prefer not to bore you, since quite honestly I can’t recall why I did it. For fun, perchance?

Anyway, this was supposed to be a minor experiment in style and fusion. Namely, taking one set of things I love – hardboiled pulp and crime stories – and applying them to another I dig – sci-fi. Via Dada, classic 1940s film noir and the American comic books that have influenced me. Think silver age Jack Kirby and Jim Steranko right through to contemporary artists and writers like Ed Brubaker, Steve Epting, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Matt Fraction, David Aja and Sean Phillips.

Thing is, I got hooked – and a few months down the line was wrapping my twelfth issue, which was the conclusion to an even dozen story arc that was written and conjured up visually on the fly, and printed monthly in Australia via IF? Commix… in very limited numbers that were never going to barnstorm the rest of the globe.

The other thing I hadn’t accounted for was how much other people dug what was, in effect, a very self-centered series. The critical reaction, and that of a growing number of fans, kind of took us all by surprise, and ended last month with North American indie publisher Under Belly (http://www.underbellycomix.com/) offering a deal to publish the entire series as one book. One of those glossy comic book trade paperbacks that I previously thought only Batman and Captain Americahung out in.

My response required thought – about one second’s worth, while I whooped a bit – and then for the cover I asked one of my favorite artists, Niagara Detroit, to do something. And she said yes. Which floored me again.

Anyway, back to the here, the now, and the why of this piece?

In order to fund their publishing costs, Under Belly run Kickstarter campaigns to foot the bill and get independent projects on the road out there into readers’ hands. I love their philosophy and the way in which they champion underdogs like Bullet Gal, so if you’re still interested in finding out more, you can check out this particular Kickstarter campaign at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/underbelly/bullet-gal

The video clip they created for said campaign is worth the price of admission alone – which, anyway, is free to take a peek. It’s like John Huston grappling Robert Rodriguez’s visual excesses, Raymond Chandler indulging in bar room script-writing fisticuffs with Philip K. Dick.

They even conspired to make my art look good.

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

Andrez Bergen is an expat Australian author, journalist, DJ, comic book artist, and ad hoc saké connoisseur who’s been entrenched in Tokyo, Japan, for the past 13 years. He makes music as Little Nobody and previously ran groundbreaking Melbourne record label IF? for over a decade, before setting up IF? Commix in 2013 in collusion with Matt Kyme. The duo do a comic book together titled Tales to Admonish.

Bergen has also written for newspapers such as The Age and the Yomiuri Shinbun, as well as magazines like Mixmag, Anime Insider, Australian Style, Remix, Impact, 3D Worldand Geek Magazine.

He's published four novels: The noir/sci-fi novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat (2011), surreal slipstream/fantasy One Hundred Years of Vicissitude (2012), comic book, noir and pulp homage Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa? (2013), and the gothic-noir mystery Depth Charging Ice Planet Goth (2014).

Bergen is current working on novel #4 (The Mercury Drinkers). In 2014 he unveiled his first graphic novel, a 144-page adaptation of Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat that Bergen both wrote and illustrated, along with the brand new monthly comic book series Bullet Gal. He's further published short stories and sequantial yarns through Crime Factory, Shotgun Honey, Snubnose Press, Solarcide, Weird Noir, Big Pulp, 8th Wonder Press and All Due Respect, and worked on translating and adapting the scripts for feature films by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), Kazuchika Kise and Naoyoshi Shiotani, for Production I.G. http://andrezbergen.wordpress.com

Bronwyn Mauldin Recommends Nigerians In Space

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. 

Bronwyn Mauldin Recommends Nigerians In Space by Deji Bryce Olukotun

Nigerians in Space begins with lunar rock geologist Dr. Wale Olufunmi stealing a moon rock in 1993 from the Houston NASA facility where he works. It ends with Wale being held at gunpoint in the South African Astronomical Observatory some twenty years later by a mysteriously luminous supermodel.

“All I wanted to do was go to the moon,” Wale shouts. “You’re going to shoot me for that? For wanting to be an astronaut?”

In between these scenes, we travel to Stockholm, Basel and the suburbs of Paris, to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and Hermanus, South Africa. We follow as the lives of three Africans span out across the globe, then converge on a Cape Town neighborhood called Observatory – referred to by locals simply as “Obs” – for a stunning, moonlit climax. 

Nigerians in Space is Deji Bryce Olukotun’s ambitious and imaginative first novel about moonlight, abalone and ambition. It introduces us to people we don’t meet often in American fiction, touches on big geo-political and socio-economic issues, and tells a damn funny story. 

Two of the three main strands of the book begin with a theft. First is Wale and the moon rock. Next we meet Thursday Malaysius, a hard-working but hapless stoner who gets caught up in a scheme to poach abalone (or perlemoen, as they’re called in Afrikaans), an endangered species under special protection.

The third strand follows Melissa Tebogo, a young Zimbabwean who wears a niqab to cover a chronic skin disease. Both her father and Wale have been recruited by a Nigerian government minister to join Operation Brain Gain, a project intended to bring expat Nigerian scientists back home to launch the country’s space program. Will Brain Gain achieve its goal, or will the dreaded Ibeji get them first? 

Olukotun has woven an enjoyably complex story, but it is his characters that really shine. Wale believes in his country, and in the promise of Operation Brain Gain to reverse the years of brain drain and modernize Nigeria. We can’t help but root for him, even as his plans unravel and his life comes apart. Thursday’s affection for his beloved “perlies” and how far he will go to keep them alive is unexpectedly touching. Melissa, forced to take on adult adversaries at a young age, never gives up on her father, and is transformed in the process.

As you read Nigerians in Space – and I recommend you do – keep your eye out for moonlight. You never know where it will appear next.

Bronwyn Mauldin, creator of GuerrillaReads, the online video literary magazine, won The Coffin Factory magazine’s 2012 very short story award for Měiguó, her story exploring the unexpected dangers of international migration. Her previous work includes the short story collection, The Streetwise Cycle, and a Kindle single, Body of Work. Mauldin’s work, which spans both fiction and nonfiction, has appeared in CellStories, The Battered Suitcase, Blithe House Quarterly, Clamor magazine and From ACT-UP to the WTO. She is a host of Indymedia on Air on KPFK, the Los Angeles affiliate of the Pacifica radio network, and is a researcher with the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.

Audio Series: Chris Bower

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, Chris Bower reads an excerpt from his contribution to My Very End of the Universe, a collection being released by Rose Metal Press. Chris Bower is a writer and teacher based in Chicago. He is the curator and host of the Ray’s Tap Reading Series in Chicago and a founding member of Found Objects Theatre Group. Little Boy Needs Ride, his debut book of short stories with illustrations by Susie Kirkwood is forthcoming in 2015 from Curbside Splendor Publishing. You can find him at holdmyhorses.com.

Click on the soundcloud link below to hear Chris read an excerpt from My Very End of the Universe:






The word on My Very End of the Universe:

My Very End of the Universe is a celebration of an increasingly popular genre: the novella-in-flash: a novella built of standalone stories. The novellas in this collection—Betty Superman by Tiff Holland, Here, Where We Live by Meg Pokrass, Shampoo Horns by Aaron Teel, Bell and Bargain by Margaret Chapman, and The Family Dogs by Chris Bower—are compact and specific, yet whole and universal, using the flexibility of the form to offer a polyphony of setting and emotion. Accompanying each novella-in-flash is a craft essay by the author, making this anthology an ideal text for both entertainment and instruction, as well as for use both in the classroom and out. Additionally, the editors’ introduction by Abby Beckel and Kathleen Rooney offers a detailed history and discussion of the evolution of the versatile and hybrid novella-in-flash genre.
*lifted with love from goodreads

Book Giveaway: A Red Woman Was Crying

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 December's Author/Reader Discussion book!

We will be reading Don Mitchell's story collection

A Red Woman Was Crying 

Don Mitchell has made have made a total of 10 copies available for giveaway.

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

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

Don Mitchell's new collection of short stories, set among tribal people on Bougainville Island in the late 1960s, demystifies ethnography by turning it on its head. The narrators are Nagovisi - South Pacific rainforest cultivators - and through their eyes the reader comes to know the young American anthropologist, himself struggling with his identity as a Vietnam-era American, who's come to to study their culture in a time of change. Beautifully written, evocative, and utterly original, A Red Woman was Crying takes the reader into the rich and complex internal lives of Nagovisi -- young and old, male and female, gentle and fierce -- as they grapple with predatory miners, indifferent colonial masters, missionaries, their own changing culture, their sometimes violent past, and the "other" who has come to live with them. 

This giveaway will run through November 8th. 

Winners will be announced here and via email on November 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 December 15th through the 21st. Don Mitchell 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!!!