The Audio Series: Brian J Bromberg

Our 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, Brian J Bromberg reads us the entire second chapter of his new release Falling Up. Brian is a comedic writer living and working in New York City. As an Emmy-nominated children’s writer, he has penned ten television scripts, one movie, 12 books, several video games and apps, live event scripts and more exclusively for children. This juvenile experience has given him much grist for the mill in his more life-lampooning, adult-oriented work, which has featured in literary magazines, short story collections, Bromberg’s stand-up comedy act, and off-air creative for Comedy Central, MTV, Spike TV, and Paramount Pictures. Falling Up marks his first novel for – er, um – adults. It is available for purchase at brianjbromberg.com/ and at amazon.com.

Click the soundcloud link below to experience Falling Up as read by author Brian J Bromberg:

The word on Falling Up:

Gregg Freeman is living the American Dream ... in reverse. For he can't be the Great American Writer of his dreams unless he feels sufficiently tormented enough to have something to say. But that's his problem. He's too comfortable to have anything to say. Instead, he's got a high paying corporate day job, a sexy pseudo-girlfriend, a posh New York City apartment, and as such, complete and total Writer's Block. So when his best friend Alvaro drunkenly suggests the Muse of Misery best inspires artists, Gregg takes him at his word, embarking upon a systematic campaign to destroy everything in life that has plagued him with stability, comfort, contentedness, or joy. His job? His bank account? Sex? Sobriety? All of it must go. The worse his life, the better his work. But how far will Gregg allow himself to fall so that his creativity may rise? Pretty damned far, as it turns out. For it's hard to hit rock bottom when you believe you're Falling Up.
*lifted with love from goodreads

Melanie Reviews: A Cute Tombstone

A Cute Tombstone by Zarina Zabrisky

48 pages

Published by Epic Rites Press, 2013

Guest review by Melanie Page

This book definitely has shelf appeal: put it facing out on the stands in a bookstore and people would buy it for curiosity alone. On the cover stands a blond woman. Her hair looks wet or greasy and partially covers her face, but she is mid-dance in high heels on one of those tombstone benches, the kind designed so you can sit and chat with your dead relatives. Did I mention she’s naked? I’m not sure if this picture is of Zabrisky, but it could be. The publisher noted that the "naked' cover of the book is the limited edition version.

There are only two pieces, a short poem called “The Hat” and the main story. Before the poem is a beautiful black-and-white picture of a woman in a giant, fluffy black hat with bows on it. The woman herself is quite attractive and put together. In the poem, the hat first represents love, but the hat might disintegrate or be the woman herself (without a head) or be put on a man’s head or the woman’s head (it fits at first but then it doesn’t) until we’re uncertain what the hat means, as if there cannot be love because we don’t know what it means.

Following the poem is the long story “A Cute Tombstone,” preceded by another black-and-white picture of a woman in simple clothes. Her portrait is beautiful, but comes from the era when smiles in pictures were not welcome, so she looks unhappy or mournful instead. In this title story, a Russian woman who moved to the U.S. 11 years prior gets the call that her mother has died in Russia. The narrator reflects on the ease of death in the U.S. and that shoppers at Costco can sample nuts, buy Cheerios, or purchase a coffin. Before the mother died, Russia represented crazy, decadent summers of parties and friends for the narrator, but when she returns to make the funeral arrangements, she can’t help but note that everyone winks, the traditions try to overpower the individual’s wants, and there are always smells in the air that are unfamiliar to Americans: fish pies, vodka, raspberry marmalade. In this way, Zabrisky produces the experiences of a Russian through the lens of an American.

American readers see what’s unusual, and the details are enough to make the story’s setting and characters vividly “other.” When the narrator heads to a funeral portrait business to get her mother’s photo enlarged to put next to the closed casket, she notices the displays of others’ funeral portraits: “I imagine their lives: At six, they probably played with German trains and tanks—war souvenirs. At eighteen they were getting married in dresses made from curtains, airy veils and ill-fitted military uniforms—the women pregnant already.”

Zabrisky’s story is smooth and melodious. It’s important to read the punctuation carefully, the words slowly, to get the full poetic effect. A sentence may begin positively and end in a new place. You won’t be lost; she’ll lead you there, but if you read too fast, you’ll find you’re trying to gulp down your specially-made meal.

Bio: Melanie Page is a MFA graduate, adjunct instructor, and recent founder of Grab the Lapels, a site that only reviews books written by women (www.grabthelapels.weebly.com).

Dave Newman's Guide to Books & Booze

Time to grab a book and get tipsy!

Back by popular demand, Books & Booze, originally a mini-series of sorts here on TNBBC challenges participating authors 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. 

Today, Dave Newman wants you to get drunk for all the right reasons, and he shares two special drinks for the occasion!

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

GETTING DRUNK FOR ALL THE RIGHT REASONS

or DRINKING WITH TWO SMALL BIRDS 

Let’s get drunk! The world is a terrible ball of violence and indifference spinning so fast and wide we can barely stand up. People hate each other. There’s too much arguing and not enough fucking. The job you work is not the job you want to work and the pay is terrible.

I saw a woman shout-down another woman in line at the grocery store because the one woman, dressed in sweatpants and looking exhausted with a young kid on her hip, was buying brand-name Mountain Dew with her foodstamps instead of some lame-ass off-brand that lacks bubbles and tastes like syrup.

I’ve spent a lot of time in sweatpants since I’ve had kids and I still feel exhausted even though my kids are too big to be carried around on my hip.

While I’ve often been broke, I’ve never been on foodstamps, but I believe in them, and I believe in welfare, and I believe in kindness, and I believe in supports, and I like my brand-name Mountain Dew too.

I dislike motherfuckers.

I dislike people who abuse those who need compassion.

I hate how Walmart treats their employees and I hate myself for shopping at Walmart but I shop at Walmart all the time because they have the best price on Coke Zero and I’d drop over without the fucking caffeine.

I love caffeine.

I’m guzzling it right now.

I love energy drinks but energy drinks are expensive.

I have my Coke Zero from Walmart. It’s ten in the morning and I’m on my fourth can. I’m about to make a cup of tea. I’ll drink five of those before I get back on the Coke Zero.

Now I’m wired. Really. I’m about to tweak.

So let’s get drunk. If it’s okay with you, let’s get drunk and talk about my book. If you purchase a copy and say some nice things, I’ll even let you buy me the next round.

Dan Charles, the main character in my novel, reads Walt Whitman the way some people read the Bible. He’s in his twenties and he’s obsessed with being a writer. He works three jobs. He attends college. When he can, he gets drunk with his older brother, John. John works endless hours selling industrial parts and has to drink with his clients and his boss and he wants out. He wants to drink for fun in bars and maybe get laid. John wants to pay off his student loans and the credit card he charged all his college textbooks on. John wants to be happy. Dan wants that too. So they dream of starting a business. To get money for that business, Dan takes a job as an over- the-road truck driver. Bad shit ensues.

People drink terrible things in my book, rotgut wine and warm beer, cheap vodka in cheap orange juice, lots of domestic drafts. It’s not PBRs in some hipster bar. It’s light beer on draft at a bar filled with old men and people who suffer from mental illness buying their booze with silver change from a plastic bag reinforced with duct tape.

If you want to be sympathetic to the characters in my book, you should drink Coors Light. Join the macro-brew revolution, it’s huge. I hate cans but a can would be better. The more metallic the taste, the more sympathetic you’ll be. You can clean the metallic taste out of your mouth with a fistful of pills. Remember, my main character is a truckdriver and he has to be awake and ready to drive at all hours of the day. Score some speed. Score some Adderall. Or hit the local truckstop and load up on Truckers Luv It, the go-to over-the-counter speeder for professional drivers. Truckers Luv It is ephedrine and some other stuff that isn’t as important as the ephedrine. Seriously, ephedrine is great. It’ll stop your heart right on the highway.

So that’s my sympathetic drink, Coors Light can and some Truckers Luv It. Let’s call it a Trucker’s Speedball. Here’s the recipe:

TRUCKERS SPEEDBALL:

1 Coors Light, can

6 Pills, Truckers Luv It

If you want to read the book and not stop your own heart, I’d recommend a Hoegaarden on draft from my kegerator. My wife bought me the kegerator for Father’s Day a few years ago and it paid for itself in a couple months. Great investment. I get to drink fancy beer on draft for the price of cheap beer in bottles. I love it. Frosted mugs are available in my freezer. I like my Hoegaarden a little sour and I like to be healthy so I squirt a couple shots of lemon juice in each beer. It tastes great and I’m pretty sure I’ll never get scurvy.

Let’s call this drink a Frosted Newman. Here’s the recipe:

FROSTED NEWMAN

Hoegaarden, frosted mug

2 squirts Real Lemon lemon Juice

Frosted Newmans are available whenever you arrive but don’t arrive too often or I’ll never get any writing done, thanks. 

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

Dave Newman is the author of the novels Two Small Birds (Writers Tribe Books, 2014), Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children (Writers Tribe Books, 2012) and Please Don’t Shoot Anyone Tonight (World Parade Books, 2010), and the collection, The Slaughterhouse Poems (White Gorilla Press, 2013). He’s worked as a truck driver, a book store manager, an air filter salesman, a house painter, and a college teacher. More than 100 of his poems and stories have appeared in magazines throughout the world, including Gulf Stream, Word Riot, Smokelong Quarterly, Rattle, Wormwood Review, Tears in the Fence (UK), and The New Yinzer. He has been the featured writer and on the cover of both 5AM and Chiron Review. Anthologies include Beside the City of Angels (World Parade Books) and The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary Poetry (Autumn House Press). Newman has won three chapbooks prizes. In 2004, he received the Andre Dubus Novella Award. His work has been recently optioned for film. He lives in Trafford, Pennsylvania with his wife, the writer Lori Jakiela, and their two children.

 

www.davenewmanwritesbooks.com

Pete Anderson's Would You Rather

Bored with the same old fashioned author interviews you see all around the blogosphere? Well, TNBBC's newest series is a fun, new, literary spin on the ole Would You Rather game. Get to know the authors we love to read in ways no other interviewer has. I've asked them to pick sides against the same 20 odd bookish scenarios. And just to spice it up a bit, each author gets to ask their own Would You Rather question to the author who appears after them....

Pete Anderson's

Would You Rather

Would you rather write an entire book with your feet or with your tongue?
I'm not even sure how tonguewriting would work, so I'll say feet. And my footwriting probably wouldn't be much more illegible than my pathetic handwriting already is.

Would you rather have one giant bestseller or a long string of moderate sellers?
Moderate sellers, because that would mean that I've been able to maintain the ability to write well, enough so that people actually want to keep reading. So I'll settle for long-term middling notoriety and modest income. Besides, let's face it: all kids dream of someday becoming a midlist author.

Would you rather be a well known author now or be considered a literary genius after you’re dead?
History is littered with dead geniuses who starved during their lifetimes. So, well-known author. Hell, I'll even settle for vaguely-familiar author.

Would you rather write a book without using conjunctions or have every sentence of your book begin with one?
If I'm already abandoning punctuation (see below), I'd better hang onto conjunctions. My toolkit is already pretty limited. Imagine the opening lines of some of the great works of fiction had their authors used the conjunction approach: "And call me Ishmael." (As if the narrator had just been offended by being called Dipshit.) "Or it was the best of times, it was the worst of times." (As if Dickens really had no idea at that moment how to describe the times, but would be more than happy to spend the next 800 pages trying to figure it out, via approximately 432 colorful characters.) "But Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins." ("...you don't really think I'm that old, do you?")

Would you rather have every word of your favorite novel tattooed on your skin or always playing as an audio in the background for the rest of your life?
My favorite novel is Knut Hamsun's Hunger, which even at only about 200 pages has enough words to make it too painful to be tattooed onto my body. I'll go with the audio, preferably narrated by Donald Sutherland.

Would you rather write a book you truly believe in and have no one read it or write a crappy book that comprises everything you believe in and have it become an overnight success?
I have a comfortable lifestyle and enough money to live on, so I don't need a soul-destroying blockbuster. And if nobody else reads my beloved novel, at least I can read it myself during all of the spare time gained from not being interviewed by Oprah or Entertainment Weekly.

Would you rather write a plot twist you hated or write a character you hated?
Hated character. Because if he is capable of inspiring true hatred, he must be extremely well-written. Every writer dreams of creating a character that vivid and real, even if loathsome.

Would you rather use your skin as paper or your blood as ink?
Using blood as ink, I wouldn't be writing for very long, nor doing much of anything else. So I'll say skin as paper, even if that means having to write in several areas where nobody would ever want to read.

Would you rather become a character in your novel or have your characters escape the page and reenact the novel in real life?
Escaped characters. I'm always visualizing my characters acting out my narrative, even though that often results in frustration over not being able to adequately translate the visual into written words. Maybe I should have been a filmmaker?

Would you rather write without using punctuation and capitalization or without using words that contained the letter E?
The letter E is a vital component to my writing (that's four e's already in this answer! no, seven! no, nine! argh!) so instead I'd go without punctuation and capitalization. I could get by without punctuation by replacing all periods and commas with line breaks, which is the only way I could ever write a War and Peace-length novel.

Would you rather have schools teach your book or ban your book?
Having your book taught in schools gives you a guaranteed audience but, if you're someone like Nathaniel Hawthorne or John Milton, it also eventually gives you multitudes of bitter adults who curse and grit their teeth at the mere mention of your name. By contrast, getting your book banned usually turns you into an iconic hero. So ban me.

Would you rather be forced to listen to Ayn Rand bloviate for an hour or be hit on by an angry Dylan Thomas?
Is Dylan buying all of my drinks? If so, he can hit on me as much as he wants, even angrily, because I can't imagine Rand buying. And I couldn't listen to her for even five minutes without a quart or two of liquid patience.

Would you rather be reduced to speaking only in haiku or be capable of only writing in haiku?
Speaking in haiku
People stop talking to me
Ah, blessed silence.

Would you rather be stuck on an island with only the 50 Shades Series or a series in a language you couldn’t read?
If well-written, the foreign language series would be worth the trouble of deciphering, and even undeciphered it could be enjoyed simply for its pleasant sounds and rythyms. I can only think of 50 Shades being useful for one purpose, and for that I can simply use my imagination instead.

Would you rather critics rip your book apart publically or never talk about it at all?
Neither. Anyone who doesn't praise my brilliant book to the high heavens, but instead rips or ignores it, is obviously an idiot, and not worth my concern or anybody else's.

Would you rather have everything you think automatically appear on your Twitter feed or have a voice in your head narrate your every move?
I would offend far too many people with the brain-to-Twitter interface, leading to social ostracization or even physical violence. I already talk to myself all the time anyway, so having every move narrated by a voice in my head would be an easy transition.

Would you rather give up your computer or pens and paper?
Both are essential. I need the slower pace of pen and paper to compose. But I also need the computer to edit once that handwritten mess has been typed up, and also to send my manuscript to prospective publishers. I can't really count on the U.S. Postal Service to be in existence for the rest of my writing career.

Would you rather write an entire novel standing on your tippy-toes or laying down flat on your back?
My failed attempt at distance running this past spring tells me that tippy-toes would soon have me in such excruciating pain that I'd never be able to write. So although laying down flat on my back usually puts me right to sleep, that will have to do. The novel may have to consist entirely of one-page chapters, each quickly jotted down before I doze off.

Would you rather read naked in front of a packed room or have no one show up to your reading?
Kind of a moot point, because if I was naked, the room wouldn't be packed for very long anyway. After a few minutes the only audience members remaining would be those yelling at the management or waiting for the police to arrive.

Would you rather read a book that is written poorly but has an excellent story, or read one with weak content but is written well?

I'm always a sucker for that one perfect line of lyrical prose that sticks in my head, but over the course of an entire book all of that lyricism isn't worth much if it says nothing. So excellent story it is. 

And here is Pete's response to Matt Salesses' question from last week:

Would you rather have a terrible TV series made of your book or write for a terrible TV series?
Either way, my good name would be associated with a terrible TV series, so I'll go with the former. That way I'd get a nice option payment without having to do any more writing work, leaving me free to sit at home and deny I had anything to do with the whole hideous abomination.

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

Check back next week to see how Jessica McHugh answers Pete Anderson's question:

Would you rather be Holden Caulfield or Scout Finch? 

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

Peter Anderson's debut novella, Wheatyard, was published earlier this year by Kuboa Press. His short stories have appeared in many fine venues, including Storyglossia, THE2NDHAND, RAGAD, Midwestern Gothic and the collections On the Clock: Contemporary Short Stories of Work (Bottom Dog Press, 2010) and Daddy Cool: An Anthology of Writing by Fathers For & About Kids (Artistically Declined Press, 2013). A financial professional by trade, he writes fiction to ease the crushing monotony of corporate life. He lives and writes in Joliet, Illinois.
(Publisher link: http://kuboapress.wordpress.com/kuboa-series-2/)

The Audio Series: Michael LoCurto

Our 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, Michael LoCurto reads an excerpt from his book To Sea. Michael is a New Yorker—born in Shirley, MFA’d in Southampton, and currently lives in Brooklyn.  To Sea is his first novel, and Smith Point Press's debut.  He is currently working on his second novel, Significant Lives, due for a 2014 release.  For more information, please visit smithpointpress.com.

Click the soundcloud link below to experience To Sea as read by author Michael LoCurto:

The word on To Sea:

The sea is dead—fishless—and Long Island fisherman Jon Brand is to blame. With his greed of overfishing for years—he is surely the cause of the current famine. According to Jon Brand, that is. Elea, Jon’s wife, sees things differently. An oceans-worth of famine cannot be pinned down on one man alone. And she wishes Jon would man-up and find work inland if the sea can no longer provide for the family. But Jon has faith in the sea. His sea. And he cannot simply turn his back on Her. To Sea explores numerous beaches spanning across the Island where Jon seeks the answers of his fate—of his dry ocean—of his God. But the sea is silent. Time after time. Visit after visit. And with each trip to a differing shoreline passing, Jon finds himself closer and closer to a life changing revelation: To land, or, to sea.
*lifted with love from goodreads

Drew Reviews: Hangwire

Hangwire by Adam Christopher
2.5 Stars - Recommended Lightly
364 pages
Publisher: Angry Robot
Releasing: Jan 2014

Guest review by Drew Broussard 

The Short Version: Strange things are happening in San Francisco.  There's a serial killer on the loose, a guy who teaches ballroom dancing who doesn't seem to age, and the circus has just come to town - and, as it turns out, all of these things are connected to a couple of old gods and a power from beyond the stars...

The Review: I haven't read Empire State or The Age Atomic - but I love the concept of these alternating version of our world and Adam Christopher's gotten some great buzz because of those books.  So when given the opportunity to take a crack at his newest book, I thought "why not?" One has to get started with a new author somehow, might as well be now.

But this book - set in present day San Francisco, with flashbacks to a whole span of times between the present and 1869 on a darkly mysterious world tour - felt less like a place to start and more like something I shouldn't be reading yet.  That is to say, it felt like a draft - the marks of the story were there, roughly sketched out of the marble of inspiration... but there was no definition to it, no smoothness.

There's quite a lot going on in this novel, which I think is to its detriment considering the relatively short running time. The back of my proof mentions that it's set to clock in at 400 pages and while that's not a short book, the level of character development here feels like that of a shorter novel.  And the plots are numerous (all leading, as you can no doubt expect, to a single culmination) and while Mr. Christopher seems at times to be managing to keep most of the balls in the air, a reader realizes pretty quickly that, in that sort of sickening way where you can see a trick or stunt start to go wrong, he has in fact launched too many too quickly to sustain more than a few passes before something drops.  We have old gods, we have cosmic entities, we have normal young people who work for a blog (oh San Francisco), we have a serial killer, we have these incessant (and far too numerous) flashbacks to an apparently timeless quest... Oh, right, we also have Ted's sleepwalking thing which may or may not coincide with the serial killer and is also wrapped up in the old god thing and also, and also, and also.  There's a lot going on but I felt like I didn't have the time to really invest in any of it.

Speaking of investment, the characters here are in service of the story - not the other way around.  I couldn't tell you what any of them really looked like, although Benny was Asian and Bob a surfer dude, Zane sort of schlubby, Ted like a Ted Mosby... etc etc.  It's all one-note - here's a single defining characteristic and it will be clung to like a life raft, for each character, without exception.  It felt like the character we spent the most time with was Joel... but I don't understand why we spent so much time with him.  I didn't need to see every little cut scene of him going after another piece of whatever it is he's apparently searching for - even though sharp readers will pick out pretty quickly a) who he is and b) what he's doing, which begs the question of why Christopher felt that there was anything new to be told or developed by showing yet another moment of him "following the light."  Yeah, sure, the 'stakes' (such as they are) raise a little bit as those interludes progress, but not enough to justify what felt like a hundred pages (out of a 400pg novel) of them.

All of this having been said, you can tell that Christopher has a terribly fertile imagination.  The fact that he puts all these plots into motion at the same time belies a desire to tell BIG stories that pull on his varied interests (his bio mentions Pertwee Doctor Who, The Cure, The Beatles, tea, and superheroes) - and I dig that.  Man, do I ever dig that.  And I think that's what disappointed me most as this story went on.  I wanted to follow the serial killer story, directly.  I wanted more time with the gods and their stuff.  I even, cliched and overused as it has become as a plot device, wouldn't've minded more time tied directly into the circus plots.  Each of these stories was cool - but together, there was just too much going on for anything to hold my interest and instead I just sort of... eh.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.  I never shook the feeling that I was reading a still-nacent draft of this novel.  For better or worse - does it mean that there's more to be mined from this story?  Or does it just mean that this one didn't quite ever get there, wherever where is meant to be?  Christopher is a smart writer and excited by what he's coming up with (you can feel the excitement in the writing) but that excitement never left the page, never transferred to me as a reader.  Also, I should note: no one in America calls them prawns.
Anyway.  I'm not turned off of wanting to read Christopher's other work and I'm not particularly against this book in any way - I just never really got into it either.

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

Matt Salesses' Would You Rather

Bored with the same old fashioned author interviews you see all around the blogosphere? Well, TNBBC's newest series is a fun, new, literary spin on the ole Would You Rather game. Get to know the authors we love to read in ways no other interviewer has. I've asked them to pick sides against the same 20 odd bookish scenarios. And just to spice it up a bit, each author gets to ask their own Would You Rather question to the author who appears after them....

Matt Salesses'

Would You Rather

Would you rather write an entire book with your feet or with your tongue?

Tongue. Feet are disgusting.

Would you rather have one giant bestseller or a long string of moderate sellers?

Long string. Seems better for one's career and probably for one's mental health. Unless you stopped writing after the giant bestseller.

Would you rather be a well known author now or be considered a literary genius after you’re dead?

Now. There's no pleasure in death. One might always be “rediscovered.”

Would you rather write a book without using conjunctions or have every sentence of your book begin with one?

Option 1. I've seen option 2 done before.

Would you rather have every word of your favorite novel tattooed on your skin or always playing as an audio in the background for the rest of your life?

Either way you end up hating that book, right? Audio, but only because I'm a baby about needles. I'm sure the tattoo would be more sane.

Would you rather write a book you truly believe in and have no one read it or write a crappy book that comprises everything you believe in and have it become an overnight success?

Option 2. I'm not planning on only writing one book, so some financial success would be welcome once I turned back to “serious” writing.

Would you rather write a plot twist you hated or write a character you hated?

Character. I think it's fine to write hateable characters.

Would you rather use your skin as paper or your blood as ink?

Blood. I have this thing about skin.

Would you rather become a character in your novel or have your characters escape the page and reenact the novel in real life?

I'd rather enter the novel. I don't want the responsibility of creating real people.

Would you rather write without using punctuation and capitalization or without using words that contained the letter E?

Punctuation and capitalization. that's the way a lot of tweets go anyway

Would you rather have schools teach your book or ban your book?

Teach. Who would want their book banned, really?

Would you rather be forced to listen to Ayn Rand bloviate for an hour or be hit on by an angry Dylan Thomas?

Dylan Thomas, though my answer might be different if I were of the fairer sex.

Would you rather be reduced to speaking only in haiku or be capable of only writing in haiku?

Writing. I guess there's always dictation.

Would you rather be stuck on an island with only the 50 Shades Series or a series written in a language you can't read?

50 Shades. I like reading!

Would you rather critics rip your book apart publicly or never talk about it at all?

Rip. On the sales side, it seems pretty clear that no news is bad news.

Would you rather have everything you think automatically appear on your Twitter feed or have a voice in your head narrate your every move?

I already have number 2.

Would you rather give up your computer or pens and paper?

Pens and paper! I can't handwrite!

Would you rather write an entire novel standing on your tippy-toes or laying down flat on your back?

Lying on my back would not be too much of an adjustment.

Would you rather read naked in front of a packed room or have no one show up to your reading?

Have no one show up. Good heavens.

Would you rather read a book that is written poorly but has an excellent story, or read one with weak content but is written well? 

Hard to understand option 2. Written well means strong content, so I take that one.

Here is Matt's response to the question Nick Antosca asked him last week:

Would you rather give up writing (all writing, not just fiction but grocery lists and emails, etc) or sex for the rest of your life, if you had to choose between the two?

I would give up writing and find a good dictation app. I'm blowing a kiss to Siri right now.

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

Check back next week to see how Pete Anderson answers Matt Salesses' question:

 Would you rather have a terrible TV series made of your book or write for a terrible TV series?

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

 Matthew Salesses is the author of I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying and The Last Repatriate. He has written for The Good Men Project, The New York Times Motherlode blog, NPR Code Switch, Glimmer Train, The Rumpus, Hyphen, and others.

Indie Ink Runs Deep: Giano Cromley

Every now and then I manage to talk a small press author into showing us a little skin... tattooed skin, that is. I know there are websites and books out there that have been-there-done-that already, but I hadn't seen one with a specific focus on the authors and publishers of the small press community. Whether it's the influence for their book, influenced by their book, or completely unrelated to the book, we get to hear the story behind their indie ink....


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

Writing sucks.

Hold on, let me clarify.

Writing is great. Everything that happens after you write is what well and truly sucks.

Any writer who’s been doing it for even the briefest of spells will tell you that rejection is their most constant companion. It is the dark-hooded specter that lurks over their shoulder on every trip to the mailbox, during each tremulous click of the email refresh button.

In the nearly twenty years I’ve been trying to get published, I’ve been rejected in every way imaginable. I’ve gotten nice rejections, hopeful rejections, curt rejections, mean rejections, and flat-out confusing rejections. I’ve been passive-aggressively rejected by simply getting no rejection at all.

I’ve also had some successes. Just enough to keep whatever flame of hope there is alight.

The funny thing I've realized is that rejection and acceptance aren’t so different from each other. At the end of the day, yea or nay, a writer must always go back to the blank page, stare down the emptiness, and summon the audacity to dare to fill that space with words.

About halfway through the manuscript for The Last Good Halloween, I told myself I was going to get a tattoo if I ever managed to find a publisher. It was one of those silly self-promises that grew in significance. As time wore on, it became its own finish line, a reason to forge ahead. While I finalized the manuscript and began the tortuous process of seeking publication, I pondered this theoretical tattoo. Whatever I was going to get, it had to be good, it had to be perfect.

Over the years, the Greek mythological figure, Sisyphus, has come to take on an outsized importance in my life. When I tell people that Sisyphus was the guy whose punishment from the gods was to roll a boulder up the hill, only to have it roll back down when his task was completed, they cringe. They cringe because they imagine some sweaty guy toiling endlessly, skinning his elbows, straining at the sinews, sweating blood. But that’s not how I think of Sisyphus. I see what Albert Camus, in his famous essay, saw – someone who was unafraid to hold his middle finger up to the gods, someone who walked back down the hill, bravely put his shoulder to the rock, and got back to work. After all, what was the purpose of the gods’ punishment if not to break Sisyphus? And what was the one way he could thwart them?

That's exactly what writing is. It’s starting over, no matter what, every day, because keeping going is the one thing that’s actually within your power. Sisyphus should be every writers’ superhero. How could I not get him inked on me? If only I could get my manuscript published, because that was the original promise I’d made.

A little less than a year ago that promise wasn’t looking too good. After being burnt by agents and pigeon-holed by editors, it was starting to look like there was no hope for my little manuscript. I began to question the entire premise of my vow. Why did I say I’d get the tattoo after I published my book? Wouldn’t I need to internalize the lesson of Sisyphus even more if I didn’t publish it? And who the hell cares about such chronological semantics when the only one you're arguing with is yourself?

Last March I decided to do it. I scoured the internet until I found a stylized depiction of Sisyphus by Marcell Jankovics. I printed it out and took it to Old Town Tatu in Chicago.

A few weeks after it healed, I heard from an editor at Tortoise Books. Not a rejection. This time, an acceptance. And the next day, in true Sisyphean fashion, it was back to work again. The image is etched on the inside of my left forearm, in plain view every time I hold a pen poised over a blank sheet of paper – the moment when all writers are most in need of a superhero.

The Audio Series: Kevin Jakubowski

Our 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.


This week, Kevin Jakubowski reads an excerpt from his book 8-Bit Christmas. A native of Batavia, Illinois, Kevin is a film and television writer best known for the Bruce Willis comedy Assassination of a High School President and for his work on the Comedy Central series Brickleberry. He has written and co-written scripts for Warner Brothers, Paramount, Lionsgate, Sony and Fox and is currently developing his own animated series at Nickelodeon. He lives in California with his wife and his Nintendo.

Click the soundcloud link below to experience 8-Bit Christmas, read by Kevin.






The word on 8-Bit Christmas:

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

5 Bookish Christmas Gifts I'm Crushing On

So I think I've finally found a few cool bookish gifts that I am actually crushing on this holiday season. 

These Lithographs of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in 80 Days, and Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Buy them here for under $30 bucks each.

A subscription to The Thing Quarterly. A periodical that is in the form of 4 unique household items. A bit pricey but I imagine it'd be worth the surprise...

Buy a subscription here for $240

A street map that contains fictional streets and locations from over 600 books. Titles like Harry Potter, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Where the Wild Things Are...

Pick one up for 25 pounds. (anyone know the conversion for that?)

You've seen these around, right? The bookish infinity scarves? This one is Romeo and Juliet, but there is a whole slew of them.... so you are bound to find a text you love.

Snag a scarf here (when the owner gets back from vacation?!)

The Humument: a Treated Victorian Novel is the book that influenced Austin Kleon's Newspaper Blackouts. The "author" chooses words from each page to create new, poetical meaning, while incorporating these gorgeous designs. A poetry-slash-art book.

Amazon sells these for a little less than $20.

What bookish gifts are you crushing on this holiday season? 

Nick Antosca's Would You Rather

Bored with the same old fashioned author interviews you see all around the blogosphere? Well, TNBBC's newest series is a fun, new, literary spin on the ole Would You Rather game. Get to know the authors we love to read in ways no other interviewer has. I've asked them to pick sides against the same 20 odd bookish scenarios. And just to spice it up a bit, each author gets to ask their own Would You Rather question to the author who appears after them....

Nick Antosca's 

Would You Rather

Would you rather write an entire book with your feet or with your tongue?

With my tongue.

Would you rather have one giant bestseller or a long string of moderate sellers?

In the “one giant bestseller,” presumably I wouldn’t stop writing after that one book, unless I died or something, so I’d still have other projects after that — I guess the implication is they’d all be commercial failures?  That’s fine.  So I’m going to go with one giant bestseller.

Would you rather be a well known author now or be considered a literary genius after you’re dead?

I’d rather be a well known author now, because I don’t believe in an afterlife.  I don’t care what happens after I’m dead.

Would you rather write a book without using conjunctions or have every sentence of your book begin with one?

Without conjunctions.  A lot of writers I like rarely use conjunctions.  James Salter seems not to like them.

Would you rather have every word of your favorite novel tattooed on your skin or always playing as an audio in the background for the rest of your life?

Tattooed on my skin!  The audio would drive me insane. 

Would you rather write a book you truly believe in and have no one read it or write a crappy book that comprises everything you believe in and have it become an overnight success?

I don’t know.  I can’t answer that one.

Would you rather write a plot twist you hated or write a character you hated?

I’d rather write a plot twist I hated.  At least I can move past that.  The character, I’d be stuck with.

Would you rather use your skin as paper or your blood as ink?

Blood as ink.

Would you rather become a character in your novel or have your characters escape the page and reenact the novel in real life?

Some of the things I’ve written are so directly drawn from real that the question almost seems moot.  Both things have happened!  Both things have absolutely happened, or at least it feels like it.

Would you rather write without using punctuation and capitalization or without using words that contained the letter E?

I’d rather write without punctuation or capitalization, no question.  Seems near-impossible to write anything without using the letter E that isn’t completely tortured.

Would you rather have schools teach your book or ban your book?

I’d rather have them ban my book, because that’s good publicity.

Would you rather be forced to listen to Ayn Rand bloviate for an hour or be hit on by an angry Dylan Thomas?

The implication seems to be that it would be a bad thing to be hit on by an angry Dylan Thomas, but that sounds pretty memorable.

Would you rather be reduced to speaking only in haiku or be capable of only writing in haiku?

Speaking.

Would you rather be stuck on an island with only the 50 Shades Series or a series in a language you couldn’t read?

Only the 50 Shades series.  I’ve never read them but I’m sure I would find them more entertaining than something I couldn’t actually comprehend.  The nice thing about sex is that we appreciate it with a different part of our brain than the part that judges artistic merit.

Would you rather critics rip your book apart publicly or never talk about it at all?

I’d rather they rip it apart publicly.

Would you rather have everything you think automatically appear on your Twitter feed or have a voice in your head narrate your every move?

I’d rather have a voice in my head narrate my every move.  I feel very detached a lot of the time anyway, so I don’t think it would be all that strange, just annoying.

Would you rather give up your computer or pens and paper?

I’d rather give up pens and paper.  I need my computer to feel happy and safe.

Would you rather write an entire novel standing on your tippy-toes or laying down flat on your back?

I do write most of my novels lying on my back, so I’ll definitely choose that option.

Would you rather read naked in front of a packed room or have no one show up to your reading?

I’d rather read naked in front of a packed room.  One does want people to show up.

Would you rather read a book that is written poorly but has an excellent story, or read one with weak content but is written well? 

I’d rather read a book that is poorly written with an excellent story.  Maybe that’s one reason I also write for TV.

And here is Nick's response to JA Tyler's question from last week:

Would you rather have rampant misspellings in your obituary or a negative New York Times review of your book?

I would rather have the review.  I don't care what my obituary says!

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Check back next week to see how Matt Salesses answers Nick Antosca's question:

 Would you rather give up writing (all writing, not just fiction but grocery lists and emails, etc) or sex for the rest of your life, if you had to choose between the two?

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Nick Antosca is a novelist and screenwriter living in Los Angeles.  His story collection The Girlfriend Game is now available and a novella, The Hangman's Ritual, will be published in the fall.