The Audio Series: Eli Brown

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


Today, Eli Brown reads to us from his novel Cinnamon and Gunpowder. Eli Brown lives on an experimental urban farm in Alameda, California. His first novel, The Great Days, won the Fabri Literary Prize. His most recent title is Cinnamon and Gunpowder.

Click the soundcloud link below to experience Cinnamon and Gunpowder as read by author Eli Brown:

The word on Cinnamon and Gunpowder:

A gripping adventure, a seaborne romance, and a twist on the tale of Scheherazade—with the best food ever served aboard a pirate’s ship

The year is 1819, and the renowned chef Owen Wedgwood has been kidnapped by the ruthless pirate Mad Hannah Mabbot. He will be spared, she tells him, as long as he puts exquisite food in front of her every Sunday without fail.

To appease the red-haired captain, Wedgwood gets cracking with the meager supplies on board. His first triumph at sea is actual bread, made from a sourdough starter that he leavens in a tin under his shirt throughout a roaring battle, as men are cutlassed all around him. Soon he’s making tea-smoked eel and brewing pineapple-banana cider.

But Mabbot—who exerts a curious draw on the chef—is under siege. Hunted by a deadly privateer and plagued by a saboteur hidden on her ship, she pushes her crew past exhaustion in her search for the notorious Brass Fox. As Wedgwood begins to sense a method to Mabbot’s madness, he must rely on the bizarre crewmembers he once feared: Mr. Apples, the fearsome giant who loves to knit; Feng and Bai, martial arts masters sworn to defend their captain; and Joshua, the deaf cabin boy who becomes the son Wedgwood never had.

     Cinnamon and Gunpowder is a swashbuckling epicure’s adventure simmered over a surprisingly touching love story—with a dash of the strangest, most delightful cookbook never written. Eli Brown has crafted a uniquely entertaining novel full of adventure: the Scheherazade story turned on its head, at sea, with food.
*lifted with love from goodreads

Indie Spotlight: Samuel Sattin

For years, we've stood by and listened (and possibly participated) as people discuss what exactly moves a book from the literary fiction realm into one of genre fiction. If it's plot heavy and straight forward, does it become genre? If it's prosey and character driven, does it then become literary? What if a book contains both a strong plot and flowery language? Is it possible for a book to hover above such classifications?

Samuel Sattin, author of League of Somebodies and contributing Editor at The Weeklings, has something to say about that very discussion and where he feels his own novel falls.

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Yesterday I was graciously welcomed to Houston by one of my favorite writers (and friends) Mat Johnson to read at a local series put on by some of his university’s alums. While I received a compounded dopamine infusion of beer and Texas BBQ, Mat said one of the most flattering things I’ve heard since I started down this daft and anxiety-laden literary path. Basically, that one of the reasons he liked my debut novel (a miracle in itself), League of Somebodies, because it has an interesting concept. Now this might not sound too important to you—you’d think that every book that claws its way to the shelf is rooted in basic narrative cohesion. But you’d be wrong. Literary fiction in particular, while making up a significant chunk of what I read, and claiming to corner the market on ‘felt life,’ trades pesky interest-clinchers such as plot and concept for character and prose in what can amount to a whopping amount of snooze.

League of Somebodies’ bare bones elevator pitch is essentially this: A father feeds his son measured amounts of a plutonium compound to turn him into the world’s first superhero. I don’t quite know where it came from—it’s not terribly complex, and doesn’t pretend to create a tangle of twists and turns. But it is a framework, built upon science fiction tropes, within which to pursue serious themes. Books that rely too heavily on prose and character while ignoring the ingenuity of fresh, compelling ideas can be accused of being meandering at best, uncompelling at worst. Similarly, novels that rely purely on plot, especially in the genre fiction realm where certain writers fall prey to clunky language and flat characters, can be equally unsatisfying, centralized around cheap thrills without a cause or concern for verity. For this reason, there have been many books, whether New Yorker darlings or hard fantasy/sci-fi grocery store paperbacks that I’ve shook my head at in scorn before retiring them from my vision. Elitism in the literary world panders purely to itself, while sensationalism amongst the annals of genre fiction flounders in the ephemeral. My favorite books are the ones that seem to understand that elements of storytelling can compliment each other, and that all literary devices are effective in their own capacity. Nothing can be discounted based on a desire to erect and/or defend an ivory tower.

When people who like League of Somebodies talk about it, they describe it as being difficult to classify, as inhabiting a strange space between absurdity and pragmatism. As basically fucking bizarre (in a good way). Though the book has a premise steeped in science fiction, that premise, like all good science fiction, is a vessel for the exploration of universal themes: manhood, fatherhood, the destruction of the home, the reason behind our obsessions with heroes and their accomplishments. And while such arcane elements were important to me while writing, I tried to make sure that the importance of the imagination, the super powers and hellish beasts weren’t overly dwarfed by the book’s themes. Whether successfully or not, League of Somebodies tries to straddle the ground between literary and genre fiction without patronizing, or elating, either one. The best books, in my opinion, tend to inhale and/or gestate multiple genres in that exact fashion. If a novel resolves to discount another form fiction as if in protest to it, it ultimately limits its own capacity and becomes—even if brilliant—narrow. League of Somebodies doesn’t pretend to be brilliant, but it is an exercise in inclusion. Superheroes, monsters, mothers, fathers, serial killers, serial monogamists, giant robots, angels, devils death incantations, folklore, masculine identity, giant octopi, hermaphroditic lions, misogyny, and coveted tomes of ancient importance: that is League. A Frankenstein’s monster that walks and grunts and hopes to remain on two feet. Regardless of what opinions it ends up receiving, the creature is alive. And it's going to try to remain relevant in our world of flawless, anodyne form.

Samuel Sattin's work has appeared in Salon Magazine, The Good Men Project, io9, Kotaku, and has been cited in The New Yorker. He is a Contributing Editor at The Weeklings, and author of the debut novel LEAGUE OF SOMEBODIES, described by Mat Johnson as "So rich with originality it's actually radioactive," and by Joshua Mohr as a “Whirling force that blends the family saga, superhero lore, and a coming of age story to a frothy cocktail.” He lives in Oakland, California, with his wife, beagle, and tuxedo cat. Please visit him at samuelsattin.net

Matt Salesses Guide to Books & Booze

Time to grab a book and get tipsy!

Books & Booze is a new mini-series of sorts here on TNBBC that will post every Friday in October. The participating authors were challenged to make up their own drinks, name and all, or create a drink list for their characters and/or readers using drinks that already exist. 

Let Matt Salesses show you how it's done:

How to make my book, I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying, into a drinking game.

Drink: soju

Time: 3 hours

Drunkenness: guaranteed

Here are the rules:

1. Don't bring anything you might lose--my 1st time drinking soju, I either lost my wallet or had it stolen; I don't remember most of the night, so!

2. Play by the cultural rules: turn away from an elder when you drink; serve the person you are with and let yourself be served; always pour or receive a drink with two hands if the person you are with is above you in age or stature; if someone says, "one shot," you have to down the entire shot.

3. Drink anytime the narrator does something crummy. Drink double anytime he does something nice.

4. Read aloud and drink anytime you slur or get tongue-tied.

5. Drink until you feel Korean.

Warning - here are some things that may happen to you if you drink too much soju: selfies, bunny ears, karaoke, piggyback rides, passing out, addiction to soju.

Matthew Salesses is the author of I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying. He also wrote The Last Repatriate , and two chapbooks,Our Island of Epidemics and We Will Take What We Can Get . He was adopted from Korea at age two, returned to Korea, and married a Korean woman. He writes a column about his wife and baby for The Good Men Project. His other essays and fiction appear in The New York Times Motherlode blog, Glimmer Train, The Rumpus, Hyphen, Koream, Witness, American Short Fiction, and others. He has received awards from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, PANK, Glimmer Train, Mid-American Review, HTMLGIANT, The University of New Orleans, and IMPAC. He did his MFA at Emerson College (2009), where he was the Presidential Fellow and editedRedivider, and now serves as Fiction Editor for the Good Men Project.

Where Writers Write: Scott Elliot

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 Scott Elliot. His new novel is TEMPLE GROVE (The University of Washington Press.) Scott’s first novel Coiled in the Heart (BlueHen/Putnam, 2003) was a Booksense 76 Selection, a Literary Guild alternate selection, and a finalist in two award categories for The Texas Institute of Letters. The novel was featured on NPR’s Morning Edition with Bob Edwards and was chosen for the 2005 American Library of Congress sponsored One-Community-One-Campus-One-Book celebration in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Scott’s essays and short stories have been published in several literary and other journals including the Antioch Review, The New York Times, the Louisville Review, Juked, Mayday, Forklift Ohio, Hawk and Handsaw, the Writer’s Chronicle, and elsewhere. His collection of short stories Return Arrangements was a 2009 finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award for short fiction. In 2011 he was awarded the G. Thomas Edwards Award for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship at Whitman College, where he is Associate Professor of Creative Writing and English. In 2012 he founded the Walla Walla Whitman Imaginative Writing Partnership, which places talented Whitman undergraduate writers in public schools. He lives in Walla Walla, Washington with his family. His website is www.scottelliott.net

Where Scott Elliot Writes

 Spaces Away from the Desk

There’s the place where a writer does the actual physical writing, puts the ass in the chair, gets black on white.  And then there are the places where the writer does the imaginative work. These places are everywhere, unconfined even to waking hours.

The poet Donald Hall has mentioned the idea of hosting an idea for a long time before writing it down. The writer and teacher of writing Donald Murray spoke of assigning tasks to his subconscious that it would perform while he was going about his day, or seeming to.  One of the best writing jobs I’ve ever had was when I worked in the Shipping and Receiving Department of Case Logic in Boulder, Colorado. I would fill orders and often simply stroll the aisles cleaning up packing material while also working on my first novel. This hosting, this work of the subconscious, happens everywhere, even (for some writers especially!) in dreams, and sometimes without the writer’s volition. 

For a variety of reasons due to the complete onslaught of two boys (now 5 and 2), priorities elsewhere, my writing space has not been the retreat it once was or that I would like it one day to be. It is not a bastion from the chaos of the world whose controlled environment might help me control the worlds I want to create. The space doubles as our guest room and, unless the boys are asleep, it’s prone to frequent and often wonderful visits. While I foresee a future in which I won’t trip over fire trucks and squeaky toys  as I fumble toward the writing desk to see if I can work in some time at the QWERTY keyboard before the boys wake up,  more often I have to take my writing where and how I find it. The poet Sara Vap who visited Whitman College (where I teach) said that after her children were born she went so far as to write poems in her car while she was stopped at traffic lights. I haven’t tried this—perhaps this is more an option for a poet than a novelist?-- but this extreme and efficient (!) technique of tucking in any time you can after the advent of kids resonated with me.

 There are some ways in which one can better court the activity of mind conducive to good writing, jumpstart the process and get it moving when one is away from the space where the actual writing happens.  A good walk works for me if there’s not much time, doing  yard work or gardening is also good thinking-prior- to-actual-writing activity.  I once heard T.C. Boyle say at a reading that while at work on one of his books he got into the habit of digging a hole and filling it back in. For me, solo hiking and fly-fishing work like nothing else to get me into the proper head space for working on writing obstacles and generating good  energy and ideas to bring back to the page. Where I live in Walla Walla, Washington, I’m lucky to have a few relatively quick hiking spaces that help me get into the zone where the best writing away from the desk may happen. One of these is the South Fork Walla Wall River Trail, a view from which is here.

Another place I sometimes go for away-from-the-desk writing is McKay Grade,  a rough gravel road used infrequently by hunters on quads, that goes up into the Blue Mountains, our little spur of the Rockies . I sometimes joke that McKay grade is my Stairmaster. It’s also sometimes my writing desk away from my writing desk. It’s about a ten to fifteen minute drive from my house. Herds of elk sometimes grace and  graze in the wheat fields nearby, there’s  bear scat under the apple trees in the fall, and a few years ago a cougar kit was abandoned in a barn on one of the farms I pass on the way in. Here’s the view from McKay Grade:

I also sometimes take walks at Bennington Lake, a reservoir about five minutes away, surrounded by rolling wheat fields and with views of the Blue Mountains.

Within an hour to two hours of Walla Walla are some good fishing streams. . I can only count fishing as writing work if I go alone. If someone else is there, I become too self-conscious to enter the writing zone. The activity of fly casting, the quiet sweep of the line, occupies the surface of my mind, while I work on problems in the writing. The motion of the river suggests narrative motion. There are, of course, also parallels between fly-fishing and writing—casting into the mystery of words.  David James Duncan has referred to a fly as a little floating fiction, tied with nimble fingers to resemble a real fly, a bit of entomological mimesis. When I can (see passage on kids above), in the fall, I go fishing for steelhead (ocean-going rainbow trout up to fifteen pounds) on the Grande Ronde River.  Sometimes, of course, the quiet thinking is interrupted  by beautiful action, which I will submit is analogous in some ways to the writing process—patient, speculative, quiet work resulting in a discovery, a take, something worthwhile on (or within) the line(s) that pulls at you with surprising urgent force. Holding a fish that has traveled hundreds of miles upriver from the sea is something like holding a published book in which you’ve invested hundreds of days’ work. Here’s a photo of Grand Ronde steelhead that rudely interrupted my away- from -desk writing one day two falls ago:

These outings might be said to be part of a healthy writing ecosystem; I could and do get work done without them, but it doesn’t feel as good and right. For each novel I’ve written, I would guess there were probably a dozen or so breakthrough moments attributable to outings like these on which I courted energy to serve me in my writing. Probably as many or more eureka moments can be credited dreams, but that’s a different space for another time. Many a time I’ve returned from one of these walks or a fishing trip with my heart rate up, my senses awakened, a renewed wonderment at the teeming gifts of the natural world, and, as if in response to these superabounding gifts, the glow of a new idea, a fresh approach, something I need to get down alive in me.  In these moments I know that whenever or wherever I do next sit down to write, whether in an airplane seat, the porous borders of my toy-strewn study/guestroom, or during a quiet early morning or late night moment I’ve stolen from a busy day, this energy will pull me down the hill of the project because I’ve already done the uphill pushing away from the desk.  

Check back next week to see Adam Goloski's writing space...

The Indie Ink Runs Deep: Ryan W Bradley

I've been tossing around the idea of blogging a tattoo series for nearly a year now. I know there are websites and books out there that have been-there-done-that already, but I hadn't seen one with a specific focus on the authors and publishers of the small press community. 

After hoarding the photos and essays I've been collecting from these guys since July of 2012, and with the promise of spring peeking its deliciously sunny head out through all of this winter gloom, I decided there was no better time than now to finally unveil THE INDIE INK RUNS DEEP mini-series!

Today's indie ink is from a TNBBC favorite... Ryan W Bradley. Ryan has pumped gas, changed oil, painted houses, swept the floor of a mechanic's shop, worked on a construction crew in the Arctic Circle, fronted a punk band, and managed an independent children's bookstore. He now designs book covers. He received his MFA from Pacific University and his poetry and fiction has been published widely online and in print. He is the author of three poetry chapbooks, a story collection, PRIZE WINNERS (Artistically Declined Press, 2011) and CODE FOR FAILURE, his debut novel (Black Coffee Press, 2012). His poetry homage to Pablo Neruda, THE WAITING TIDE will arrive in 2013 from Curbside Splendor. He lives in Oregon with his wife and two sons.

I have been in love with Maurice Sendak's illustrations for as long as I can remember, especially the world and creatures of Where the Wild Things Are. I remember wanting tattoos when I was as young as 9. One of my earliest ideas was to get my favorite Wild Thing, Bernard, tattooed on me. The years passed and the idea never left, but got pushed off in favor of other tattoos. Then Sendak passed away. It made me immeasurably sad for the art the world would miss out on. I knew it was time to get my Bernard tattoo. I had him done holding Max's crown in remembrance of Sendak, who will forever be one of my favorite artists.

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Because Ryan is the cool dude that he is, he's also shared a sound bite of himself reading from Where the Wild Things are.. Take a listen:

The Audio Series: Alta Ifland

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


Today, we are treated to two excerpts - one from The Snail's Song and one from Death-in-a-Box - as read by author Alta Ifland. 

Alta grew up in communist Romania and immigrated to the United States in 1991. After teaching French for many years, in 2004 she left academia and became a freelance writer and book reviewer. She is the author of two books of short stories: Elegy for a Fabulous World (Ninebark Press, 2009, finalist for the Northern California Book Award) and Death-in-a-Box (Subito Press, 2011, winner of the Subito Fiction Prize); and two collection of prose poems: Voix de Glace/Voice of Ice (Les Figues Press, 2007, bilingual, winner of the Louis Guillaume Prize) and The Snail’s Song (Spuyten Duyvil, 2011). She is currently at work on her third novel.

Click the soundcloud link below to experience Alta Ifland reading the two stories:

From The Snail's Song:

The word on The Snail's Song:

Poetry. With drawings by the author. "This SNAIL'S SONG is a refined encapsulation of all the beauty and sadness in the world; a true tour-de-force of imagination and sincerity."--Alex Epstein
*lifted from goodreads with love


From Death-in-a-Box:


The word on Death-in-a-Box:

Blending the fabulous with the macabre, the lyrical with the grotesque, the atemporal with the present, and melancholy with dark humor, these stories will take you from the ambiguous world of modern folktales where a man tries to catch Death in a box, to communist Eastern Europe where a man eats his own brains, to contemporary women who like garbage, or who prefer to keep their babies inside their bodies rather than give birth.
*lifted from goodreads with love

Gregory Heath's Guide to Books & Booze

Time to grab a book and get tipsy!

Books & Booze is a new mini-series of sorts here on TNBBC that will post every Friday in October. The participating authors were challenged to make up their own drinks, name and all, or create a drink list for their characters and/or readers using drinks that already exist. 

Drowning "Thoughts of Maria" in Booze...

‘Thoughts of Maria’ is a multi-narrative novel, in which each of the main characters relates their own experiences. Here are the characters (and their drinks):

Maria is a nineteen year old Filipina, who lives with her family on a rubbish dump in Manila. They are desperately poor, but they are proud, decent people and it is love, not poverty, which binds them together. There is no money for luxuries such as alcohol, though this will change when Maria meets (and subsequently agrees to marry) Gerry, a recently divorced Englishman in his late forties:

We ate back at the hotel in the evening, and I chose the food. I have not eaten so well for a very long time. We had chicken and pork adobo, followed by hot rice cakes with butter and coconut, and a bottle of Chilean wine. There were some silences between us, but it did not seem to matter.

We are meeting again tomorrow. Gerry says that if we are both happy with the arrangement, we need no longer talk to other people. I think we are both happy with the arrangement.

Gerry is a property surveyor who specialises in old buildings. He is a traditional Englishman through and through, so it’s definitely beer for him. In fact he is having a beer with his son Callum, sitting out in the back yard one evening, when he tells him of his plans to marry Maria:

I wanted to get to the point, but I needed to explain myself properly. I was nursing my beer bottle in both hands now, gazing at it. ‘I was walking into the newsagent’s a few months ago,’ I said. ‘I saw this couple. They looked really content… She was a lot younger than him, and she was oriental… I wondered if they’d met through an agency. I kept thinking about it afterwards… And I’ve met a young lady myself… Her name’s Maria.’

Callum, however, is more into his drugs than his alcohol:

Coke’s my drug of choice. It might not last long but while you’re on it’s like you’re superhuman, alive to every tingle of every nerve ending in your body. I’ve seen some people get wired on it but for me it’s always good. And, God, what it does for music. A banging tune is a great thing anytime, but after a bit of Charlie we’re talking another dimension. You feel the music in you, as physical as the heart pounding in your chest, lifting you up, driving you on.

Yeah, there are dangers if you overdo it. Too much and you’ll burn half your nose out, and there’s always the risk of ending up with a batch that’s been cut with something deadly, but at the end of the day that’s just a risk worth taking. Because what’s the point of a long life if you’ve never truly lived, eh? Honestly, what’s the point?

Rachel is Gerry’s ex-wife (and Callum’s mother). Now trapped in a loveless relationship with Carl, she is extremely unhappy, and is slipping rapidly into alcoholism. She drinks vodka, and plenty of it:

Now I’m a proper drinker. I sit at the breakfast bar, or at the kitchen table, and I drink vodka. And it doesn’t help me. It helps Carl, in a way, after a while, because I get to the stage where I no longer want to kill him. Because I realise that it’s all my fault. That I’m a stupid bitch and I should have known. That I should have known from the beginning, because I’ve never been special, and I never will be. I am ordinary, just that, and anything else could only ever be an illusion. I should have stayed with Gerry, in our ordinary life. I should have been grateful that he wanted me. But I wasn’t, and now I can’t go back. Because Gerry has shaken me off like dust.

I'm a British writer from a little town called Melbourne, in Derbyshire, England. My poems and short stories appear frequently in literary magazines and I have published two novels.

The main theme of my work is people’s inability to communicate in a meaningful way with those whom they love, and this idea forms the basis of my first novel, ‘The Entire Animal’, which was published in 2006 by The Waywiser Press.

My second novel, ‘Thoughts of Maria’, published in 2013 by Open Books, continues this theme, but also touches on wider issues such as drugs, arranged marriages and sexual obsession.

I love to hear from my readers - visit my website at or tweet me @_GregoryHeath! 

MP Johnson Takes it to the Toilet

Oh yes! We are absolutely running a series on bathroom reading! So long as it's taking place behind the closed  (or open, if that's the way you swing) bathroom door, we want to know what it is. It can be a book, the back of the shampoo bottle, the newspaper, or Twitter on your cell phone - whatever helps you pass the time...

Today, MP Johnson gives us the toilet treatment. His short stories have appeared in more than 25 underground books and magazines, including Bare Bone and Cthulhu Sex. His debut book, The After-Life Story of Pork Knuckles Malone, was recently released by Bizarro Pulp Press. He is the creator of Freak Tension zine, a B-movie extra and an obsessive music fan currently based in Minneapolis. Learn more at www.freaktension.com. 

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I don’t read novels on the toilet. I’ve tried. I end up getting sucked in and staying on the sweet seat well after I’ve done my business and crusted over. When I get up, I can barely stand through the pins and needles of legs that have fallen asleep, and I imagine falling face first into the radiator and knocking myself unconscious. If you can read a novel on the toilet, you’ve got more willpower than me or you read shitty novels.

I don’t read comic books on the toilet either. I’ve tried that too. I’m too anal about keeping them in mint condition, and somehow if I bring them into the danger zone they turn into magnets, pulling in liquid, and their value decreases exponentially. I don’t bring my phone, IPad, laptop, etc. into the bathroom for the same reason.

When I’ve got a number two brewing, there’s only one thing that’s coming with me: a zine. You know about zines, right? Do-it-yourself, often-photocopied publications typically filled with content that is easily absorbed in short bursts.

Take, for example, Hot Dog Dayz #3, which I just got in the mail. It’s filled with collages made out of old wrestling trading cards and photos of mangled couch cushions in the woods, easy to stare at in a zen-like trance as your body eases its waste into the great porcelain sea. Or how about No Vanguard #2 and its stark black and white images paired with stream of consciousness rants about drinking whisky and pondering the cosmos? Thinking and stinking, that’s what I do.

More substantial business requires a zine with more than just images. I was recently gifted a stack of Wasted Quarter zines dating back to the late ‘90s. Each one is filled with microscopic print that obsessive-compulsively, and quite humorously, covers every aspect of the author’s life, from going to the Northtown Mall to creating answering machine greetings entirely out of Fred Flintstone phrases and Hanna Barbera sound effects.

Sometimes, I need fiction. I’ve got a couple issues of Splatterpunk zine, so I can read gore stories and interviews with the likes of Ray Garton and get inspired while I’m perspiring out a hard load. I also recently got Wizened Youth by Michael Kazepis, which is technically a chapbook but it looks like a zine to me so what the fuck. I read the whole thing while making waste, and loved every sentence. Fictionalized accounts of Henry Rollins’ Black Flag days? Hell yeah!

So, ummm, want to borrow some zines?

Where Writers Write: Leah Umansky

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 Leah Umansky. Her first book of poems, Domestic Uncertainties, is out now by BlazeVOX [Books.] She is a poet, a writer, a collage-artist, a teacher, a mad-men enthusiast and a concert-junkie. She is a contributing writer for BOMB Magazine’s BOMBLOG, a poetry reviewer for The Rumpus and a live twit for the Best American Poetry Blog. She also hosts and curates the COUPLET reading series in NYC. Read more at: http://iammyownheroine.com

Where Leah Umansky Writes

I love reading about the life of writers. I always have, but seeing where they lived and where they wrote is the most exciting.   I’m one of those people who love to visit the homes of writers when I’m on vacation and one of my favorite parts of visiting London is actually roaming around the streets and looking for those blue plaques that indicate what famous author lived, or was born, in a certain house.  Next to visiting Emily Dickinson’s house in Amherst, my favorite writer’s house is naturally that of the Bronte Sisters at the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth, England. 

I’ve always been that person that rips things out of magazines, takes cards from restaurants and stores and quickly sticks it somewhere with a magnet or a thumb tack. (Both sides of my refrigerator are also much like this pegboard.) This is a photo of the pegboard that sits above my desk. It makes me happy to look up from my laptop and relive some of these memories.   I have photos of my sister and I, some of my best friends, my old cat from childhood, and old birthday cards.  One of my favorites is a photo I took of Jeanette Winterson, in Edinburgh, Scotland back in 2001 when I studied in London.  I I like surrounding myself with the things I love.  It makes sense that eventually I’d make start making real collages on paper, like the one on the cover of my first book of poems, Domestic Uncertainties.

This is a picture of some of the books I keep on my desk. I also have a stack on my night-table. They fluctuate between books I love to re-read, books I need to review, and books I use for inspiration.

Here’s a photo of my desk.  The chair is from an old schoolhouse that I found at a garage sale. It  has carvings from previous students in the wood.   I do all of my writing at my desk. I need a laptop. I take notes all the time in my notebooks (at readings, museums, on trips) but I always write at my desk on my laptop. I’m very old-school in that I love “real”  books, and I love annotating them.  When it comes to the actual writing process, I need to type. I like utilizing the whole “page” of the computer screen when I write a poem, which is tough to do elsewhere. I was a teenager when people began using email and the internet, and well, as a result, I’m a very fast typist. Sometimes my fingers move faster than my mind. 

I love my little british box. It’s perfect as I’ve filled it with my notebooks and my stationary.  The big red notebook in the back, is what I use in writing workshops and what I often take with me to readings.  I love the red moleskins the best.  Behind the box are my folders – my attempt at being organized – some of these folders are:  Book Two, Acceptances/Rejections, Prompts and Feedback.

I live in an old building with wall moldings and so I have a little bit of “shelf” above my desk and my memory board. Most are postcards I’ve received from my best friend, Louise, in London, and the middle one is a little painting a student of mine made me a few years ago with a Robert Frost quote.

I hope I always have a cat walking around my library; though, I’d barely call this a library.  I have two more legs of this bookcase in my parents’ garage, along with many books that I just don’t have the room for right now. All are waiting for a bigger home, but such is NYC living.   Most books, behind the horizontal stacks, are organized by author and genre.

My #bookdress (made by Joseph A.W Quintela -- www.footknots.com) hangs above my "library," and is made from five copies of my book. This gives me constant inspiration.

Check back next week to see where Scott Elliot writes. 

Book Giveaway: The Taker

Since July 2010, TNBBC has been bringing authors and readers together every month to get behind the book! This unique experience wouldn't be possible without the generous donations of the authors and publishers involved. 

I'm excited to to bring you next month's 

Author/Reader Discussion book!

We will be reading and discussing The Taker 

with author Alma Katsu

In order to stimulate discussion, 

Alma has agreed to give away 

10 paper copies

to residents of the US and Canada only

Here is the Goodreads description:

True love can last an eternity . . . but immortality comes at a price. . . . On the midnight shift at a hospital in rural Maine, Dr. Luke Findley is expecting another quiet evening of frostbite and the occasional domestic dispute. But the minute Lanore McIlvrae—Lanny—walks into his ER, she changes his life forever. A mysterious woman with a past and plenty of dark secrets, Lanny is unlike anyone Luke has ever met. He is inexplicably drawn to her . . . despite the fact that she is a murder suspect with a police escort. And as she begins to tell her story, a story of enduring love and consummate betrayal that transcends time and mortality, Luke finds himself utterly captivated.

Her impassioned account begins at the turn of the nineteenth century in the same small town of St. Andrew, Maine, back when it was a Puritan settlement. Consumed as a child by her love for the son of the town’s founder, Lanny will do anything to be with him forever. But the price she pays is steep—an immortal bond that chains her to a terrible fate for all eternity. And now, two centuries later, the key to her healing and her salvation lies with Dr. Luke Findley.

Part historical novel, part supernatural page-turner, The Taker is an unforgettable tale about the power of unrequited love not only to elevate and sustain, but also to blind and ultimately destroy, and how each of us is responsible for finding our own path to redemption.

This giveaway will run through May 8th. 

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

Here's how to enter:

1 - Leave a comment stating why you'd like to receive a copy of the book. 

2 - State that you agree to participate in the group read book discussion that will run from June 15th through the end of the month. Alma Katsu 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!