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.


Monday, May 27, 2013

The Audio Series: Nan Cuba



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, Nan Cuba reads an excerpt from her novel Body and Bread. Body and Bread 
(Engine Books) was named one of “Ten Titles to Pick Up Now” in O, Oprah’s Magazine.   Nan also co-edited Art at our Doorstep: San Antonio Writers and Artists (Trinity University Press), and published other work in such places as Quarterly West, Columbia, Antioch Review, Harvard Review, storySouth, and Connotation Press.  As an investigative journalist, she reported on the causes of extraordinary violence in LIFE, Third Coast, and D Magazine. She is founder and executive director emeritus of the nonprofit literary center, Gemini Ink (www.geminiink.org), and an associate professor of English at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio.




Click on the soundcloud link to experience Body and Bread, as read by author Nan Cuba:





The word on Body and Bread:

Years after her brother Sam's suicide, Sarah Pelton remains unable to fully occupy her world without him in it. Now, while her surviving brothers prepare to sell the family's tenant farm and a young woman's life hangs in the balance, Sarah is forced to confront the life Sam lived and the secrets he left behind. As she assembles the artifacts of her family's history in east Texas in the hope of discovering her own future, images from her work as an anthropologist—images of sacrifice, ritual, and death—haunt her waking dreams.

In this moving debut novel, Nan Cuba unearths the power of family legacies and the indelible imprint of loss on all our lives.
*lifted from goodreads with love

CCLaP: Women Float

It's May 27th and do you know what that means? CCLaP has another book birthday to celebrate!





Today, we usher Maureen Foley's debut fiction novella Women Float into the world. The book tells the story of 29 year old lonely California pastry chef Win and her decision to take swimming lessons for the first time—finally confronting her hydrophobia and trying to make sense of why her mer-mother suddenly swam off when she was a little girl. She is also dealing with a desperate crush she’s developed on her New Age neighbor, mysterious postcards that keep arriving in the mail, and her bad habit of pathological lying. This touching and humorous look at female relationships and the dramas that come for contemporary women turning thirty also doubles as a loving ode to the small coastal town of Carpinteria and the laid-back SoCal lifestyle that guides it. 


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

Goodreads users are already digging it:

Debbie Wilson calls it "A well crafted poetic tale of the loves and losses in our lives."

Sandra Katsikas says its "A beautifully written story about the power of women and their friendships."

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

When I first read Maureen's book, as it was being shaped and shifted through the editing process, I felt an immediate and interesting connection to our protagonist Win. Though our lives are very different, we both tire and ache over the hole that is left behind when the people we love leave us. Troubled over the crush she's harboring for her neighbor, frightened by the memories that the ocean holds, and powerless in face of emotionally strong yet complicated women, we follow Win on a journey of self discovery - or what I like to call "uncovery". The perfect book for readers who enjoy books that center around strong female characters, friendship lit, foodie lit, SoCal lit, and light LGBT lit. 

You can now purchase a gorgeous, handmade edition of Women Float on CCLaP's website. And you can add it your goodreads shelf too! 


Review copies are still available in Mobi, ePub, and PDF, so if you'd like to review it for us, raise your hand!! I'd be happy to send one over to you. Maureen is also open to doing interviews, audio excerpts, and guest posts. 

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Review; A Questionable Shape

Read 5/7/13 - 5/23/13
4 Stars: Strongly recommended to fans of zombie-lit where the zombies are not the be-all-end-all
Pgs: 218
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Released: May 2013

Whenever an advanced copy of a Two Dollar Radio book shows up at my doorstep, all other review copies seem to know their place and move sadly out of the way. Not because they are not worthy of being my next-read, but because they know I simply cannot resist the Radio lit. Like a moth to a flame, people, like a moth to a mother-fucking flame.

So it should go without saying that I fell hard and fast into this incredibly introspective "zombie novel that is not about zombies". Bennett Sims has done something with A Questionable Shape that many authors fail to do when writing "monster lit". He has finagled his way out of genre lit-ification. He can stand proudly, shoulder to shoulder, with the likes of Glenn Duncan (of The Last Werewolf) and Colson Whitehead (of Zone One) - authors who refuse to throw good writing out the window for the sake of a flash-in-the-pan paranormal sensation. I feel smarter and more intellectually stable having read this book. Yes, people, a mentally stimulating zombie novel... you've really got to read it to believe it.

Sims ushers us gently into the midst of an undead apocalypse, right at the point where the infection seems to have been contained by means of government quarantine, and life as people once knew it seems possible again. The undead, upon reanimation, before they are caught by the LCDC and locked away, shuffle blindly back to the places they used to haunt when they were alive - regardless of where they reanimated. And since so little is known about their undead status or the nature of the infection that caused the dead to rise again, their basic human rights have been left in tact - they are not to be murdered.

Mike, whose head we find ourselves in, has agreed to help his friend Matt locate his father, whom Matt believes may be reanimated and wandering back to one of many locations - the house he lived in, the local park, the Citiplace where they used to meet up at once a month to see a movie. Matt is desperate to find him before the LCDC does and Mike, to the frustration of his girlfriend, tags along to ensure his friend doesn't get bitten or worse, attempt to infect himself to gain a better understanding of how the undead mind works.

The book follows Mike and Matt for six days, and for a large chunk of those six days, as they move from one potential haunt to another in search of the missing, overweight plumber, we are treated to Mike's sometimes-corney-sometimes-spot-on internal ruminations. Why do the undead seem drawn back to the places that hold the strongest memories for them? Can they think? Can they see? Is there anything that was once them left inside that twitching, rotting corpse? Is Matt off his rocker to be making these daily trips out to the places he thinks his father might return to? What will Matt do if he does find his father?

A Questionable Shape forces the zombies into the background and focuses its lens most intently on what's happening to humanity - bringing the emotional and the introspective to the forefront, casting fear and confusion and uncertainty as its main characters. It offers a powerful perspective on survival, and may have you question who has it worse, those who wander the world infected with undeath or those who are left behind to watch them?

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Where Writers Write: Kevin Haworth


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 Where Writers Write is part of CCLaP's Famous Drownings in Literary History blog tour. Check it out:





This is Kevin Haworth. 

Kevin's first novel, The Discontinuity of Small Things, was awarded the Samuel Goldberg Prize for best Jewish fiction by a writer under 40. It was also recognized as runner-up for the 2006 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His collection of non-fiction essays, Famous Drownings in Literary History, was released by CCLaP in 2012, and won Kevin a pre-publication grant from the Ohio Arts Council. A two-time resident of the Vermont Studio Center, he is also a winner of the David Dornstein Prize for Young Jewish Writers and the Permafrost Fiction Prize. His fiction and nonfiction appear in Sentence, ACM, Poetica, Permafrost, and others. He lives in Athens, Ohio with his wife, Rabbi Danielle Leshaw, and their two children, Zev and Ruthie. He teaches writing and literature at Ohio University.




Where Kevin Haworth Writes



We live in a tiny house.  It used to be even smaller—to get to the space where my desk is now, you had to walk out the kitchen door, go through the backyard and past a wall where a big snake lived, and enter the bottom half of the house through a separate entrance.  When we moved in, eleven years ago, the already-small house was divided into a top half, where we lived, and an “in-law” apartment with its own kitchen and bedroom.  Eventually, with two children, we outgrew the luxury of this dedicated guest space, broke through the floor, and installed a spiral staircase that connects the upper half of the house to the lower one.  My office is in that lower half, in a former bedroom that now shares space with the spiral staircase, a walk-in closet, and the door to our current bedroom.  Because of the stairs, some of the noise from upstairs always drifts down, but there’s plenty of desk space and room for books all around.

We are a creative family.  My wife is an award-winning writer.  My son plays the cello and several other instruments.  My seven-year old daughter seems to require two distinct art spaces—a desk for drawing and journaling, and a section of the front porch for painting and displaying her work.  All of our creative spaces bleed into our family spaces.  That can lead to conflict (Now is not the time for cello! my daughter will yell, when she wants to watch television right next to where her brother is playing), but it reflects the priorities of our household.

I’m the fortunate one—my little studio, next to the staircase, backed by a closet—is as private as it gets around here.

Where Writers Write: Eric Hudspeth


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 particular Where Writers Write is part of the Quirk Books blog tour to celebrate Eric's new novel/art book The Resurrectionist! Check it out:



This is Eric Hudspeth. 

Eric was raised in Colorado but lived in several states throughout the U.S. while growing up. He worked as a snow and ice sculptor for nearly ten years, always writing and painting. His love for the arts led him all over the country and eventually to Pietrasanta, Italy where he worked as a marble sculptor. While in Italy, working on anatomy designs of impossible beings, he created the beginnings of what has become The Resurrectionist. Now living in New Jersey with his wife and two children, Eric continues to work as a professional artist.





Where Eric Hudspeth Writes



Where I write has usually been in a single location. I have not been able to do much on the go. I can take notes or jot down ideas but I need to be in the same place for a while before I can write. It can be a hotel or something, I don’t have to be home to write. I used to do everything with a pen and paper but I eventually got used to writing on the computer. The Resurrectionist was largely an art project so I did the drawings on the same desk that I write on. My desk has become crowded these days, which I tend to like it like that way.

When I write I put my feet up and work with the keyboard on my lap. It’s terrible for my neck, but I haven’t broken the bad posture habit yet. It started when I was In italy, I shared a small basement studio with a friend— my side of the room was the kitchen. I didn’t want to sleep on a kitchen floor so I made a narrow bed out of some wood planking I found (at that time I was sleeping on the floor without

 a mattress anyway, so I was used to it). There was absolutely no extra room, the small refrigerator door opened halfway before hitting my bed. Because of the lack of space, I wrote with the laptop on a piece of scrap wood on my lap— and so a terrible habit was born.


I have two children, a toddler and a baby. Over the last few years I’ve been doing a renovation on the entire upstairs of our home so we all packed in downstairs and made a nest of what space remained. The result was cozy but crowded. My son slept three feet from my desk, so not only did I need to be quiet, but I had to work late at night. I dream of someday keeping regular hours. The upstairs renovation is complete and the children sleep there, although I still need to work after bedtime hours.

It’s always a challenge balancing my energy levels. I have always battled insomnia so I try to make it work for me these days. Unfortunately, when I am on a roll and want nothing more than to keep working, I have to pull the plug at some point in order to get a few hours sleep before work the next day. It’s tricky, there are only so many hours in a day.

I can edit or just read while comforting the little ones but usually I just fall asleep too.



You can check out the book trailer for The Resurrectionist here!

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

The Indie Ink Runs Deep: Christy Fearn




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 Christy Fearn, whose novel Framed came out in March through Open Books. Brought up in Lord Byron's childhood home town of Southwell, UK, Christy Fearn was fascinated from an early age with the local poet. She studied English Literature and Drama at Clarendon College and then York St. John University. Her dissertation focused on William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Byron and the Shelleys. Framed is her debut novel which tells the story of the Nottingham Framebreakers. Byron is a character in the novel, stepping in to aid the local Luddites and making his maiden speech in the House of Lords.

A self-confessed Byron nut, Christy has a tattoo portrait of her hero on her arm, including the line from his poem "Maid of Athens" - Zwή ?ou σaς aγaπώ which in Greek means "My life I love you."




The story behind the tattoo 

I had wanted a tattoo of some sort for a while, but knew that it had to be something I liked enough to have on my body permanently. To begin with, I decided to go for something small, like an eye of Horus symbol. However, I realised that this was quite a popular design and not totally original, so I rejected that. As Byron is my hero I wondered if I could have his portrait tattooed on me. So for my first tattoo I created the Byron design myself, using one of his portraits surrounded by olive leaves (native Greek trees) and then the line of poetry. I chose that particular line because I felt it summed up Byron's attitude to life, and reminds me to make the most of my time. People always ask me if it's real - ie. not painted on, and also if it hurt. It just felt like a scratching sensation, not really painful. It was amazing to see the design appearing. The artist, Terry Stafford, is an expert in shading and portraits. He works in Nottingham. I'm proud to be 'The Girl with the Byron Tattoo'!

Monday, May 20, 2013

The Audio Series: Alina Simone


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, Alina Simone reads an excerpt from her upcoming novel Note to Self, which releases June 4th. Alina is a critically acclaimed singer who was born in Kharkov, Ukraine, and now lives in Brooklyn. Her music has been covered by a wide range of media, including BBC’s The World, NPR, Spin, Billboard, The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal. She is the author of You Must Go and Win, a collection of essays. Note to Self is her first novel.





Click the soundcloud link below to experience Note to Self as read by author Alina Simone:






The word on Note to Self:

Anna Krestler is adrift. The Internet has draped itself, kudzu-like, over her brain, which makes it even more difficult to confront the question of what to do when she is dismissed from her job as a cubicle serf at a midtown law firm. Despite the exhortations of Leslie, her friend and volunteer life coach, Anna seeks refuge in the back alleys of Craigslist, where she connects with Taj, an adherent of a nebulous movement known as Nowism that occupies the most self-absorbed fringes of the art world. 

     Art, Anna decides, is what will provide the meaningful life she’s been searching for and knows she deserves. She joins Taj’s “crew” and is drawn into his grand experimental film project. But making art is hard and microwaving pouch foods is easy. Soon enough Anna finds herself distracted by myriad other quests: remembering to ask Leslie “How are you?,” reducing her intake of caloric drinks, and parrying her mother’s insistence that she attend hairdressing school. 

     But when Anna’s twenty-seven-year-old roommate—a terminal intern named Brie—announces her pregnancy, it forces Anna to confront reality, setting off a chain of events that lead to a horrifying climax of betrayal.  

     Alina Simone’s Note to Self is a shrewdly perceptive, hilarious, moving tale about friendship, art, and the search for a meaningful life in an era of rampant narcissism.
*Lifted with love from Goodreads

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Indie Spotlight: Chris Dietzel


How hard can gaining an audience for your book really be? Surely, the biggest battle is getting it signed by a publisher, right? Well, as a long-time blogger and newbie to the marketing and publicity side of  publishing, I'm here to tell you that, as an author - whether you self published or were picked up by a small press - the hard work is only just beginning...

And Chris Dietzel, author of The Man Who Watched the World End, agrees with me. Heck, this former MMA cage fighter has a pretty cool analogy about fighting vs writing for you to sink your teeth and fists into.... Check it out:





Fighting and Writing

I’ve fought inside a cage, and I’ve written a novel. I’m here to tell you that winning in mixed martial arts (MMA) is easy compared to gaining an audience when you’re an unknown author.

After graduating college in 2000, I immediately started training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) with the intent of fighting in sanctioned cage fights. I had always been a goofy kid, the class clown, but as soon as I saw tapes of MMA fights in college, I knew I needed to give it a shot. As someone who never took anything seriously, even the dreams I held most dear, the cage fights were a test of the most basic fight-or-flight variety, a challenge that would teach me what type of person I really was.

The goal became an obsession. I saw the people in my gym who trained more often and more ferociously than everyone else, and I wanted to train even harder than they did. Along the way, the confidence that BJJ gave me in myself, changing me from the court jester to someone who understood the importance of goals and personal victories, allowed me to think about my other dream, even more secretive and dear to me than fighting, as something other than a fool-hardy delusion. I wanted to write the Great American novel.

In college, I had so little confidence in achieving my goals that I didn’t even bother taking a creative writing class. But only a few years later, thanks to BJJ, I began to think of this fantasy as something I could achieve if I truly dedicated myself to it. It was still a secret from my friends and family, something they might think of as an unrealistic pipedream. But to me it was no longer a foolish goal to be laughed away.

Starting in 2004, when I wasn’t working at my 9-5 job or training in BJJ or MMA, I was writing. Instead of going out with friends on Friday and Saturday nights, I wrote. Instead of going to Happy Hour, I went home and wrote. I had two goals: fighting and writing. Absolutely all of my time was devoted toward these two ends.

In 2006, I earned my brown belt in BJJ and had my first MMA fight, which I won. A couple months later, I had my second fight and my record improved to 2-0. What I noticed was that both fights were easier than the training I went through in preparation for them. I practiced with the goal that if I trained harder, trained more often, and trained smarter than my opponent, I would win. The result was completely up to me.  And that theory held up.

During this entire time, I was honing my craft as a writer, developing my voice, understanding my strengths and weaknesses, and generally improving my craft.

My original intent was to fight four times. That would give me a big enough taste of MMA to prove to myself that I had achieved my goal. Life has a way, though, of altering your plans. Right before my third fight, I suffered a series of injuries, culminating with a neck injury that would ultimately prevent me from ever fighting again. This was okay because it allowed me to focus my time on writing.

In the years since, every hour I have that’s not spent working at my day job is dedicated to achieving my dream of being a novelist. I come home from work and I write. When my friends go out on the weekends, I stay home and write. This is not meant to sound like a sacrifice; it’s what I enjoy and it comforts me to know I’m working toward a dream that I was once afraid to tell other people I even had.

Over the years, I’ve had a couple short stories published and I’ve been signed to a wonderful literary agency. Little did I know that the most difficult fight was still in front of me, the aspect of writing that makes it so much more challenging than evading kicks and elbows. Both adventures require determination if you want to have any hope of following through with your goal. Both require an endless willingness to learn from your mistakes. But when you fight, the outcome is completely in your own hands. If you have better technique and better conditioning than your opponent, chances are extremely likely that your hand will be raised after the final bell. But in writing, no matter how much you work toward your goal, no matter how focused you are, the result depends on other people. You can become a truly great writer. You can write powerful stories. But in the end, whether or not people want to read what you write is out of your hands. You depend on other people to see value in what you’ve written, and you depend on them to spread the word about it.

That’s the difference between fighting and writing that makes the latter so much more brutal than breaking another man’s spirit inside a cage. A fighter controls his destiny. A writer, no matter how hard he or she works toward their goal, needs good luck and good fortune and support from people all over. For a fighter, for someone who relishes that outcomes are based on tangible things such as hours spent in the gym, this is the most formidable type of battle.

Do not interpret this as pessimism sneaking into the cracks of a lifelong dream. Nothing will make me give up my goal of gaining an audience for my novels. If BJJ and MMA have taught me anything, it’s that even if you lose one day, you’re only defeated when you don’t get back in for the next fight. Then, and only then, are you truly beaten. I know it sounds corny, but it’s true. No, it’s not pessimism at all that makes me say how much more difficult writing is than fighting. It’s a personal reminder that the eventual victory will be even sweeter in the end. It’s meant to remind any other struggling writers out there that what you’re doing requires more tenacity than dodging punches and escaping chokes. You are only defeated when you stop putting words to paper. To quote the writer J.A. Konrath, “There’s a word for writers who never say die… the word is published.” I will keep up the fight. If writing is your dream, you should keep going too.

And along the way, the next time you read something that you enjoy, no matter what it is, pass it along to someone else who may enjoy it. And when you do, know that you are helping its author do something even more demanding than beating a trained fighter—you are helping them achieve their dream.


Chris graduated from Western Maryland College (McDaniel College).  He currently lives outside Washington D.C.  His dream is to write the same kind of stories that have inspired him over the years. His short stories have appeared in Temenos, Foliate Oak, and Down in the Dirt. THE MAN WHO WATCHED THE WORLD END is his first novel.

More information about the novel can be found at: http://www.watchtheworldend.com and https://www.facebook.com/TheManWhoWatchedTheWorldEnd

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Where Writers Write: Adam Golaski


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 Adam Golaski. 

Adam is the author of Color Plates and Worse Than Myself. He edited The Problem of Boredom in Paradise: Selected Poems by Paul Hannigan. His blog is called Little Stories







Where Adam Golaski Writes


On a drive to Boston, I jotted notes in marker on the cardboard box that rode shotgun; while seated in the sun I draft an essay on the flyleaf of my copy of Billy Budd. I like to write outdoors, to sketch from the scene. More often, I work in-studio.


Recently, I write at a little table beneath the stairs. You may not be able to see the wallpaper pattern clearly, but it's quite unique--in gold and green, it depicts the island featured in the Robert Aickman short story "The Wine-Dark Sea." In the boombox on the steps is a cassette I found half-buried in Hadley, Mass.

From time to time, I write in an office. There's one with no windows. I dislike the overhead lights, so I use a lamp I hauled out of broom closet. It weighs a ton. The little fluorescent tubes its hood houses hum pleasantly.

The other office is a little more mundane. At the moment, I’m seated on the dining room floor, a box for a table.

Check back next week to find out where Eric Hudspeth writes.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

The Indie Ink Runs Deep: Christoph Paul



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 Christoph PaulChristoph is a former porn store manager and singer/guitarist of the rock band The Only Prescription. He graduated from the Wilkes University with an MA in Creative Writing. "The Passion of the Christoph" is his first book of non-fiction and satire being released April 1st 2013 with Swift Ink Books. He is now working on a YA book called "Joey 'The Art Film' Caldo" and a collection of poetry with the working title "Buy This Poetry Book So I Can Afford Therapy."




The higher tattoo above proves a fact that nerds can have tattoos, as those who have healthy sex life probably do not recognize that the man with red eyes and playing cards is Gambit from the X-Men (hey, its better than a tribal tat.) I was obsessed with X-Men as a kid and loved Gambit because he had a cool accent, a cool power of putting energy into things so they blow up, and hit the character Rogue. Though, when I am asked by a female I find attractive about the tat I say, "I have so much energy and need to put into something to feel alive..." Or "It represents my magician energy to use Jungian Philosophy." Which sounds a lot better, but is total bullshit. I just really like Gambit.

The other tattoo is from a literary novel I have been working on with the working title 'Prophet' and will finish it in probably 10 more years. It's inspired by a scene where a father tells his son who is 9 years old that the wild bird he loves to feed will not find a mate because his feathers aren't colorful enough. The boy becomes sad and angry at God and he says to Him "It is not fair, why is the world like this?" Later he captures the bird and paints his feather brighter losing his bird friend but happy that he brought justice into the world...damn, I need to finish this book, that is pretty artful.