Monday, June 10, 2013

The Audio Series: Kenny Mooney


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, Kenny Mooney reads us one of the stories from his collection The Drowning Man. Kenny is a writer and musician, currently residing in York, England. He was born in Berlin and grew up in England, Scotland and Cyprus. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Housefire, Sundog Lit, Atticus Review and other places online and in print. He is fiction editor for A-Minor Magazine & Press. He blogs at www.dragline.co.uk. 






Click on the soundcloud link below to experience the short story Woe Lung, as read by author Kenny Mooney.





The word on The Drowning Man:

A collection of eight short, dark works of surreal fiction, exploring obsession, paranoia, lust, love, and madness.
*lifted with love from goodreads

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Where Writers Write: Kim Henderson

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 Kim Henderson. 

Kim’s chapbook of short-short stories, The Kind of Girl, won the 2012 Rose Metal Press contest and is forthcoming this summer.  She has published work in the Tin House Open Bar, Cutbank, H_NGM_N, River Styx, New South, The Southeast Review, and elsewhere.  Originally from New Mexico, she now lives on a mountain in Southern California with her husband and dogs, where she chairs the Creative Writing Department at Idyllwild Arts Academy.





Where Kim Henderson Writes


I am mostly a morning writer, and mostly write here at my desk.  I do love to get outside and write in different places, and often come up with new material in those settings, but it’s at my desk where the majority of the work happens.


My desk, my comfy chair, my nerdy owl collection to remind myself that I am a nerd (do I really need a daily reminder?).

Speaking of nerdism, my mom recently made me go through some boxes in her shed, and I found this owl from when I was about five.  There was a whole series of these career-themed animals—cat nurses, dog doctors, bear mailmen, etc. (and I guess the owl graduate is a more abstract version of success).  The nerd thing is what stuck.

Note the Rose Metal Press pin!  I picked that up when I discovered them at AWP.


My writing partner, Nikki.  She supplies most of the ideas.

  My book closet.  I also spend at least thirty minutes each day staring at my guitar and thinking how cool it would be if I could actually play it.  The yarn mess there in the corner provides another diversion.
Note the orange walls, in the interest of staying awake.


I drink coffee out of this cup nearly every morning.  My students tell me writers are the awkward penguins of the world—perhaps that’s why I ended up with this cup.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

The Indie Ink Runs Deep: Chris Moraff




I'd been tossing around the idea of blogging a tattoo series for nearly a year. 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 comes from Christopher Moraff  – writer, photographer, commentator, blogger and unrepentant bibliophile. He lives in Philadelphia where he writes for a number of local and national media outlets. Chris served on the Board of Editors of In These Times  – the Chicago-based political magazine founded in 1976 by the leftist intellectual James Weinstein and now writes a weekly column on politics and culture for Philadelphia magazine. He is also a collector of books and several months ago began the unforgiving task of bloggingthrough his entire library. In his spare time he makes slow, meandering progress on a collection of short stories, as yet untitled, which he hopes to see in print while he is still of this world.  

These are his tattoos. This is their story.



I got my first tattoo when I was 19. It was a poorly chosen duo of Chinese characters on my upper arm that were supposed to represent my initials. I learned shortly thereafter that there is no literal translation of the Latin alphabet in Chinese hanzi characters and felt pretty stupid until I managed to find someone who could decipher the small permanent reminder of my youthful naivete on my left shoulder. Lucky for me it turned out that in translation my characters reads something akin to “good health” and not “asshole American who thinks he's Chinese.” In light of that I decided to keep it instead of getting it covered up. I'm glad I did. It's one of two tattoos (the other is on my leg) that I had done in Philadelphia by the legendary Sonny Tufts, a tattooer of the old school who died in 2010. He must have thought I was an idiot, which of course I was.

Since then I've been more careful about what I put on my body. Most of my ink is Asian traditional and reflects Buddhist spiritual themes. Both sleeves are works in progress. The left arm is Kuan Yin – the Bodhisattva of Compassion – in a field of water and cherry blossoms. Right arm (courtesy of Dave Resp at Art Machine Productions in Philly) is the wrathful deity Fudō Myō-ō – whose sword cuts through ignorance – surrounded by fire, smoke and peonies. To my mind, this juxtaposition of tenderness and ferocity -- and the search for reconciliation -- is characteristic not only of my own past struggles, but of the human condition as a whole. As a poor freelance writer sometimes I question the sensibility of spending thousands of dollars to decorate my body with colorful imagery, but as a lifelong tattoo enthusiast that usually goes out the window as soon as I find the time and money for another session. 

Monday, June 3, 2013

The Audio Series: Jesse Bradley


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, Jesse Bradley reads to us from his book It Smells Like Plastic and Hurt Feelings (published by KUBOA). Bradley is the author of Bodies Made of Smoke (HOUSEFIRE, 2012). He is the Web Editor of Monkeybicycle and lives at iheartfailure.net. 






Click on the soundcloud link below to listen to Jesse Bradley as he reads Shoulders, from It Smells Like Plastic and Hurt Feelings. 






It Smells Like Plastic and Hurt Feelings hasn't found a home on goodreads yet and its amazon page is descriptionless. Kuboa, his publisher, has listed all of their books free for digital download here. I have to admit, I was enticed by how much effort went into keeping this thing a secret. So I downloaded it (among others). You should too.


Sunday, June 2, 2013

Indie Spotlight: Mellow Pages Library

If you ever needed a reason to fall in love with small press literature (as if I haven't given you a million reasons to do so already, right?...), I've just found the perfect one for you.

Mellow Pages Library. This neat little Brooklyn library and reading room opened their doors back in February, and are doing some fucking amazing things with small press literature. Like, collecting limited runs and out-of-prints of the shit and hanging them all over the walls, inviting people up to read (as in both sit-down-on-the-couch-and-read, and authors-reading-out-loud-from-their books-read), and posting pictures of everyone who donates to their catalog

(side note: have you ever noticed how strange a word begins to look when you type it a lot? read read read read read read Read READ read readReadREADread...)

Between you and me, I want to move into that room and throw my naked, small press obsessed body against the walls again and again again and never stop. Yes. I said it. What of it? I also want to be Matt and Jacob's bestie because they love small press literature as much as I do and have tons more of it than I do and they look like cool dudes and who DOESN'T want to be besties with two cool dudes who read and collect awesome literature and SHARE IT WITH THE WORLD, well, ok just Brooklyn for now, or those who can get to Brooklyn, but still, I'm sure THE WORLD is on their list of places to share their books with....

In the meantime, I wanted you to meet them, so you could fall in love with them too, and Matt and Jacob were incredibly obligingly wonderful and threw together this imaginary screenplay for you. Throw your feet up, balance a bowl of popcorn on your knees and prepare to fall in love....




“Toasted Trout Tart on an Alfalfa Bedding”
a Guest Screenplay written by mellow pages library

SCENE 1:


[THE CURTAINS RISE AND SEVERAL CAMERAS ARE POINTED TOWARD A SUBJECT/NARRATOR, SEATED STAGE CENTER. HEAVY LIGHTING. BLINDING LIGHTING. AUDIENCE IS UNAWARE SUBJECT IS ACTUALLY BEING FILMED. SUBJECT BEGINS TO DELIVER A MONOLOGUE:]


SUBJECT: “I heard about Mellow Pages Library when their first young spurts burst onto the indie book scene a few months ago. This was all online. My friend told me one of them had a knife collection. The Founders. The other one had a set of fine shaving razors. Yet they both had beards. Nothing seemed to add down. They were young and in control of their lives. They had everything. Or so it seemed...”


[THE SUBJECT IS IN FACT REVEALED TO BE JAMES LIPTON OF “IN THE ACTORS STUDIO”. AUDIENCE APPLAUDS. HE OPENS HIS EYES, THOUGH THINLY, THROUGH CIRCULAR SPECTACLES. MONOLOGUE CONTINUES]


JAMES LIPTON: “...Everyone wanted a piece of them, their ideas, yet they were giving them away quicker than one could politely ask. And why? This was the new question, the real question. Eventually I found myself experiencing that same eager pull. To ask. What was it these guys had to say for themselves? What were their principles, their morals? I wanted to know. What I didn’t realize, and now regret to disclose, is the discovery of an ‘Underground Indie Book Conspiracy’ Mellow Pages had been drug into and were fighting, at the expense of the wider scene, with hands perfect-bound behind their backs. [LIGHTS DIM HEAVILY, PROJECTOR SCREEN DESCENDS. NARRATION CONTINUES WHILE IMAGES BEGIN TO FILL THE SCREEN. A NORTHWEST SKYLINE APPEARS. TIMBERS AND SOARING EAGLES] This is a story of murk and corruption. Gloom and glitz. A story of boys struggling to stay afloat against the very conspiracy that sent them falling, Underground-Underground. To the Real Underground. [THE PHRASE: “OPERATION DUCK & DIVE” APPEARS ON THE SCREEN IN HELVETICA NEUE LIGHT ITALIC FONT, NO CAPS] This is their story, as they told it. And this is also my story. How I learned about “Operation Duck & Dive”...”


SCENE 2:


[IMAGERY BEHIND FONT FADES FROM TREES TO THE DUSTY STREETS OF BROOKLYN, THEN INTO A LARGE-ISH STUDY WITH A COMPUTER AND LIPTON HIMSELF TYPING AWAY. NARRATION CONTINUES]


JAMES LIPTON [ON SCREEN]: “When I got a chance to interview the elusive northwest beardboys about their mossy beginnings in the heartland of Cascadia my first inclination was to invite them over for a sustainable farm-to-table dinner. It had been a long time since they’d had a good meal and I needed them to talk, talk, talk. Food always arrows to talk.  I had planned a toasted trout tart with an alfalfa sprout bedding yet they refused. As it turned out, the boys only consume Loaded Baked Potato Flavored Kettle Chips and had already begun the five mile ride to my home on two stolen bikes, unbeknownst to me, torn-up flannels wrapped around their faces. One was missing a shoe. Before I could finish a response message I heard a ring at my door. I stood up and peered through the blinds. Could it be?”


[MATT NELSON AND JACOB PERKINS (THE FOUNDERS) BURST THROUGH JAMES LIPTON’S DOOR ON THE PROJECTOR SCREEN. JAMES LIPTON MAKES A SQUEALING SOUND. THE BOYS SIT LIPTON DOWN IN HIS LARGE-ISH STUDY AND BEGIN TO ASK HIM ANSWERS]


JACOB: “James Lipton. We’ve been waiting for your call. In times like these, trust everyone, including your best friends. We know. But we have something to tell you. We’ve been caught up in somewhat of a pickle here, Lipton. Listen, Lipton. THEY’RE OUT TO GET US.”


LIPTON [ON SCREEN]: “I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about, boys. What’s the problem? I thought you could maybe explain some things for me. Small things. I’ve been reading all about you guys. I just wanted to ask you some questions. Really.”


MATT: “That’s what they all say, Lipton. Look, Lipton. Listen. We’ve got nothing left to tell. You said it yourself. You’ve been reading all about us. We know what you’re up to. YOU’RE ONE OF THEM.”


JACOB: “That’s right, Lipton. The old Duck & Dive, hah? Well, let me tell YOU something. We love indie book culture. In fact, we support it. By shelving indie books, buying indie books, hosting indie readers, promoting indie books online, arranging venues in which indie books can be sold. The list goes on. But you know it. It’s all there, Lipton, you just have to see around the lies.”


MATT: “Real lies, yes, Lipton. There are lies. One of them is the old Duck & Dive. You heard of the Duck & Dive, Lipton? Ring a bell? Well, we know all about it. And we’re on to you.”


LIPTON: “I am so very confused but no, no, I haven’t heard of the “Duck & Dive”.”


JACOB: “It’s a conspiracy, Lipton. I’m sure you know what that means.”


MATT: “Of course you do. Sure, you’d like to hear about our 200 square foot space located on Bogart Street right off the Morgan L stop, 56 Bogart to be exact. How you enter the front door and the third door on the left houses a thousand plus indie books loosely defined as a library but also a reading room wherein membership is free upon inclusion of ten books which, I might add, are always property of the member and redeemable at any time. You want to hear all about it.”


LIPTON: “Well, that’s exactly what I’d like to hear but now, well. Now I’d like to hear about this conspiracy of which you speak so aggressively.”


JACOB: “Hear all about it, hah? Well Lipton, hear about this: there are powers that be, Lipton, under the underground. And they want us. They want us back. They’re real far underground. Been fightin’em for weeks. We tell and we tell, and then they ask. It’s like Arabic, Lipton. All right-left.”


LIPTON: “This tells me absolutely nothing. What is this?”


MATT: “Nothing, Lipton? What about us makes us different than other libraries? Hah? Let me tell you. We try our damndest to get printed matter you can’t find anywhere else. Not at a bookstore, a Barnes&Noble. Not at a public library, not at a used bookstore. Yes we try and we try yet still we explain. We want to prove our necessity in our community. We want a collection of books you cannot find anywhere else. That’s our mission, Lipton. You can come in here on any given day and get coffee, light up a cigarette, drink as much beer as you want, Lipton. Hear that?”


JACOB: “You can submit to our Mellow Pages Paired Reviews for free beers. All you have to do is pair two books in the library and write a review involving both. You can buy books at local booksellers and get our stamp, our Mellow Pages stamp, and thereby come to our Free Beer If event and read from that book you bought at that store. And then we’ll give you a free beer. You can hold a reading, a release, a music show, a film screening, a dance, a fundraiser, anything in our space, and we’ll have you drinking a beer in no time.”


LIPTON: “But what is the conspiracy?” [PROJECTION FADES OUT, IMAGE AND SOUND]


SCENE 3:


[THE SCREEN RISES AND THE REAL LIPTON ONCE AGAIN COMES INTO VIEW. HE IS BLINDED WITH LIGHT. HE CONTINUES HIS ORIGINAL MONOLOGUE]


JAMES LIPTON: “As the evening went on the boys Matt and Jacob continued to explain their theory. What I gleaned from the exchange was somewhat vague. Although, to be sure, they had been followed. They had been followed to the house. We heard strange rustling in the bushes and when Matt and Jacob asked to leave, the strange bush figures seemed to run away with them, into the night. I had to rub my eyes at the sight of it. What I was witnessing? They had never removed their torn flannels and as such their expressions were mute. It was all a weird blur. I retreated to my study for some reflection, in the form of written word...” [THE CAMERAS AROUND LIPTON STOP ROLLING]


[AGAIN THE LIGHTS DIM HEAVILY, PROJECTOR SCREEN DESCENDS. NARRATION CONTINUES WHILE IMAGES BEGIN TO FILL THE SCREEN. A NORTHWEST SKYLINE APPEARS. TIMBERS AND SOARING EAGLES] ...“JAMES LIPTON: “...This is a story of murk and corruption. Gloom and glitz. A story of boys struggling to stay afloat against the very conspiracy that sent them falling, Underground-Underground. To the Real Underground. [THE PHRASE: “OPERATION DUCK & DIVE” APPEARS ON THE SCREEN IN HELVETICA NEUE LIGHT ITALIC FONT, NO CAPS] This is their story, as they told it. And this is also my story. How I learned about “Operation Duck & Dive”...””...

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Book Giveaway: The Wonder Bread Summer

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 Wonder Bread Summer
with author Jessica Anya Blau


In order to stimulate discussion, 
Jessica and her publisher, Harper Collins, have agreed to give away 
10 paper copies
to residents of the US only


Here is the goodreads description to whet your appetite:

It's 1983 in Berkeley, California. Twenty-year-old Allie Dodgson is a straitlaced college student working part-time at a dress shop to make ends meet. But when the shop turns out to be a front for a dangerous drug-dealing business, Allie finds herself on the lam, speeding toward Los Angeles in her best friend's Prelude with a Wonder Bread bag full of cocaine riding shotgun and a hit man named Vice Versa on her tail. You can't find a more thrilling summer read!


This giveaway will run through June 8th. 
Winners will be announced here and via email on June 9th.


Here's how to enter:

1 - Leave a comment 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 July 15th through the end of the month. Jessica Anya Blau 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!

Friday, May 31, 2013

Kelly Davio'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. 

Tonight, author Kelly Davio gets down in it:


I believe that you can tell a lot about a person from looking at books she reads and the cocktails she drinks. In my case, when it comes to both poems and libations, I have a passion for the classics—though I appreciate a modern twist—and I like my wit and my beverages dry. 

I won't incriminate myself too far in saying how large a role the following two drinks had in my poetry collection, Burn This House, coming to its final, published form (I kid. Hemmingway famously said that one should write drunk and edit sober, though I preferred to do both sober and celebrate and with a cocktail later). Yet when I think about the best flavor analogues for the mood of this book, there are two cocktails that taste, to me, just like poetry.

The first is an homage to the collection’s unofficial mascot. He makes a number of appearances throughout my collection, from his cameo appearance in smacking my window to his cohort’s swarming the streets of England. He even takes a prominent spot as the variegated beauty on the book's cover. It seems only appropriate that my own twist on the Aviation Cocktail should give a nod to the lowly pigeon.

The Wayward Pigeon

•           2 ounces of Aviation American Gin
•           2 teaspoons of maraschino liqueur
•           1/2 ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice, a little more or less depending on the acidity of the lemon
•           A brandied cherry for garnish

Shake the first three ingredients over ice, and serve straight up in a martini glass.

The title poem of Burn This House was among the first of the pieces in the book to be published, and as such, it became a controlling tone for the collection as a whole. That favorite poem seems like a perfect partner for my favorite warm-weather cocktail, my ginger-heavy variation on the Moscow Mule.


The Mule that Burned Your House Down

•           2 ounces of vodka
•           4 ounces of naturally brewed ginger beer
•           1 tablespoon of fresh lime juice
•           1 long, thin slice of fresh ginger for garnish and for a delicious, tasty burn

Pour the vodka over ice and the raw ginger in a copper mug (no, a glass won't do), then top off with ginger beer and fresh lime juice.


Plan to make yourself a few of these—you have a lot of poems to get through in Burn This House. Just don’t stand up too quickly afterward. 



Kelly Davio is Managing Editor of The Los Angeles Review, Associate Editor of Fifth Wednesday Journal, and a reviewer for Women’s Review of Books. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets, Verse Daily, and others. 

Her debut collection of poetry, BurnThis House, was published by Red Hen Press in 2013. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, and she teaches English as a second language in the Seattle area.

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Andrew F. Sullivan Takes it to the Toilet


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

Today, author Andrew F. Sullivan takes it to the toilet. Andrew's from Oshawa, Ontario. His fiction has been published by Joyland, Necessary Fiction, EVENT and Little Fiction, among other places. His debut short story collection All We Want is Everything is forthcoming from Arbeiter Ring Publishing in June 2013. He no longer works in a warehouse. Find Sullivan at www.andrewfsullivan.com



Intestinal Demons



As a child, I thought it was a joke when someone said they were reading on the toilet. Every bowel movement was fast, sudden, healthy even—I thank my parents for this experience growing up free from constipated hours trapped inside the house, the bathroom walls becoming a tomb to snare me inside a cloud of my own waste. I was lucky to escape those horrors.

Intestinal distress waited far over the horizon, beyond my reach or understanding until I met alcohol many years later. Alcohol will teach you many things—its greatest tool takes the form of consequences. I have learned a lot about consequences since then, mainly the consequences of rye and gin crossing paths in the middle of the night. As time has passed, those easy bowel movements of old have become harder to remember or understand—each one has been flushed away as they all end up in the same place as gold fish, forgotten babies and crocodiles. They belong to a different era, one I can’t really keep track of anymore. Back then, I thought you lit a match to see if your gas would come alive as fire. I still kind of wish that part was true.

I still cannot get much reading done in the bathroom, but it has crept into my life, slowly slipping in around the edges as I get older. I don’t leave many books in there—I still worry about the ghosts of mold and mildew waiting to find a foothold in my apartment. The building is old and the spores are always waiting, patiently biding their time until some sopping wet paperback lets down its guard. I do not trust my aim in the middle of the night and I don’t want to leave library books reeking of ammonia. I bring the book with me and leave nothing behind.

So what do I bring with me? Graphic novels and comic books—for a while it was Hellboy I held in my hands while dealing with all the abject I had to offer. Maybe it was due to his violent adventures in the supernatural muck of our distended world. Maybe it was due to some long implied belief that you’re shitting out a demon, all the terrible things inside you—I was raised Catholic after all. But in the end, I think it’s the stories you can follow without straining under the single light bulb, the ability for a graphic novel to let a narrative to take shape without all the heavy lifting done by words. Mike Mignola and all his artists create a world in Hellboy defined by its shadows, by what is lurking just beyond the edge of the light. Hellboy is a monster fighting monsters, but the real details lie in the design of the panels, the spaces where his battered humanity might shine through with the flick of a wrist or a lighter. That’s a lot easier to look for those moments when you are trapped inside the bathroom with your mistakes from the night before, wrestling with your own intestinal demons. Sometimes I wonder if Hellboy ever had to wipe with that big, stone hand. I hope it never came to that in the end.


Once I have it in my hands, I may end up reading my own book in the bathroom over and over again. After all, just like any child, we will always be fascinated with our own shit.

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Where Writers Write: Susie Sexton

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 Susie Sexton. 

She currently writes monthly columns "Old Type Writer" for a popular local blog “Talk of the Town” and "Homeward Angle" for the "Columbia City Post and Mail" newspaper. She has been a frequent contributor to the literary journal "Moronic Ox," and her poetry was selected by Wayne State professor M.L. Liebler to be featured in "Poetic Resonance Imaging: Behind the Door." She also has been featured in "Writing Raw" and "InD'tale" magazines. 

Her first book "Secrets of an Old Typewriter" is available now as a paperback (as well as download formats) at www.open-bks.com, www.amazon.com, and www.susieduncansexton.com




Where Susie Sexton Writes


I still live in the tiny, cute house in the tiny, occasionally cute town where I grew up. I upgraded to a computer from a Royal Typewriter a few years ago, and that computer sits in our back room that once doubled as an office/rec room for my father. It is a happily haunted house full of memories and love and I try to channel those sprightly specters through my writing.


My workspace, I suspect like that of many writers is cluttered with the ephemera of a life lovingly lived. I have a full-sized cutout of JFK looming above my monitor, more piles of paper than the Library of Congress, ashtrays, half-empty Pepsi One cans, a handy magnifying glass for that itty bitty print they seem to love on the internet, and my faithful feline sidekicks. My space. My cave. And like another one of my heroes Greta Garbo, I want to be let alone…so my cave will likely never be photographed. Magicians never reveal their secrets! ;D

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

The Indie Ink Runs Deep: Sara Rauch


I'd been tossing around the idea of blogging a tattoo series for nearly a year. 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 comes from Sara Rauch. She is the founder and editor of Cactus Heart Press and a writer of fiction.




“i had to leave the house of self-importance
to doodle my first tattoo
realize a tattoo
 is no more permanent
than i am
and who-
ever said that life is suffering
i think they had their finger
on the pulse of joy.
ain’t the power of transcendence
the greatest
one we can employ”
—Ani DiFranco, “Shroud”


Of the several tattoos I have inked on my body, these two—the Sagittarius constellation and a woodblock print of a eucalyptus tree—were done within a few months of one another.

About a month after I got the eucalyptus tree tattoo, I left my boyfriend of three and a half years, the one everyone thought I would marry and settle down with. Six months later I fell in love with a woman. Those actions transformed the plot of my life.

For some reason, I see the tattoos as a turning point. A sort of reclamation of my body. Because in the act of inking my skin, I began to see who I was, what I wanted. I saw strength. I saw courage. I saw impermanence, and instead of frightening me, it inspired me. There is no escaping the eventuality of my body’s demise, and so I decided I might as well live with it, live in it, as best and as honestly as I could.

And so it was that I walked away from the life I’d built and began again. I’ve never looked back. Not once. That woman I fell in love with is still my partner—my number one supporter, the reason I’m able to give my life over to writing, and to running Cactus Heart.

The tattoos are a detail in my story, and an essential one—a place where transcendence snuck in.

It always sort of surprises me, when someone grabs my arm, or touches my shoulder, and says, “What does this tattoo mean?”

A smattering of stars. A framed eucalyptus branch. Images I had inked into my skin many years ago, for no better reason than I liked them. I thought them lovely.

I’m often tempted to say to those curious questioners: They don’t mean anything. Sometimes art is just art.

But that would be a lie.