Welcome to this week’s Free Book Friday, wherein we give you the best titles in indie publishing for the low low price of nothing. Congrats to last week’s winner Jennifer Czajka for getting a free copy of The Awful Possibilities by Christian TeBordo.
This week, we are giving away a copy of AM/PM by Amelia Gray. If anything’s going to save the characters in Amelia Gray’s debut from their troubled romances, their social improprieties, or their hands turning into claws, it’s a John Mayer concert tee. In AM/PM, Gray’s flash-fiction collection, impish humor is on full display. Tour through the lives of 23 characters across 120 stories full of lizard tails, Schrödinger boxes and volcano love. Follow June, who wakes up one morning covered in seeds; Leonard, who falls in love with a chaise lounge; and Andrew, who talks to his house in times of crisis. An intermittent love story as seen through a darkly comic lens, Gray mixes poetry and prose, humor and hubris to create a truly original piece of fiction. Read some samples here.
Today I had the pleasure to attend Book Expo America (BEA), the largest book conference in America. Geared toward publishing professionals, booksellers and educators, BEA is probably the only opportunity you’ll have to see the number of men come anywhere close to the number of women in publishing. (Seriously. There were men there. And they like BOOKS.)
Though this wasn’t my first time around the BEA dance floor, I am reminded about a few things every year. Here are the highlights (and lessons relearned) today!
1.) Pounding the Javits Center hurts. A lot. Today’s heels means tomorrow will be spent in flip flops. As in other years though, I am sure that by the time Thursday comes around, everybody will be in sneakers and jeans, and they will be much more selective about the amount of swag they want to carry.
2.) About swag. It’s heavy. Free ARCs (advanced reader copies) freaking rock! At the next pub party, you get to talk about all the books you’ve read that the general public won’t even get to touch, let alone finish reading, for another two to six months. But they are still made of paper (at this point), and so by the third day, you become a little more picky about what swag you want to carry out with you. Book with a three page sex scene between woman and monkey, yes. (It’s literary fiction, it actually looks quite good!) Book that’s being handed out at self-publishing booth, perhaps not. (Lesson here — less free books handed out on Tuesday, so if you are a self-published author at BEA, go then. Less competition for bag space, and generally more excitement for the free.)
3.) Industry panels. Today’s panels were all about social media. Authors, aspiring authors, publishers — it comes down to Nike’s infamous slogan — just do it. (It was perhaps said more eloquently than that. But another thing I’ve learned about panels is that brevity is key. Especially when chances are, your topic is going to overlap with another panel your audience sat through just an hour or two before.)
4.) It’s still kind of odd to approach your favorite authors for signings. At BEA, authors are like celebrities, but more accessible and with a slightly more awkward following. In fact, last year, my colleague and I said to Jonathan Lethem as he signed our books, “we are extremely awkward.” That, of course, made things even more awkward.
5.) It’s becoming increasingly difficult to remember who you’ve met in real life, and who you recognize from their Twitter handle. Is that an editor I’ve met before at a lunch? Or someone who happens to tweet very frequently in my feed? Oh wait, I must know them from Twitter because I’ve seen pictures of their cats! And speaking of Twitter, now as the speaker you can see in real time if your audience thinks your panel sucks. Talk about pressure!
6.) Book parties. Book nerds know how to party. We really do. Last year, I managed to rip a hole in my shirt at a tweet-up. A tweet-up! So far, my shirts remain intact. But BEA is young. There are still two more days of swag collecting, Twitter stalking and pub partying.
I’m exhausted! But it’s true guys — BEA is like Christmas in May. (If you habitually go to happy hours during Christmas.)
When you're thinking about how to make it as a writer, think about hip-hop
I’ve been a hip-hop head for a lot longer than I’ve been a writer, ever since Mom let me buy Jay-Z’s Dynasty album back in 2000. Hip-hop gets a bad rap sometimes, but I love it. It’s raw, it’s passionate and believe it or not, it teaches me fundamental lessons I apply to writing.
The first lesson is having confidence in my artistry and myself.
Hip-hop is all about self-promotion. In every track, an artist is telling you how great his lyrics are, how fly he is, how tough he is, how intelligent he is, and so on. Some people see that as egocentric. I see that as having confidence, or as its commonly referred to in hip-hop circles –- swag. In the hip-hop world, swag is the way you dress, walk and talk. In the literary world, I’d liken it to the confidence you have in your writing and yourself as a writer. Read more »
Welcome to this week’s Free Book Friday, wherein we give you the best titles in indie publishing for the low low price of nothing. Congrats to last week’s winner Lilian for getting a free copy of Sword of My Mouth by Jim Munroe and Shannon Gerard.
This week, we are giving away a copy of The Awful Possibilities by Christian TeBordo. A girl masters the art of forgetting among kidney thieves. A motivational speaker skins his best friend to impress his wife. A man outlines the rules and regulations for sadistic childrearing. You’ve heard these people whispering in hallways, mumbling in diners, shouting in the apartment next door. In brilliantly strange set pieces that explode the boundaries of short fiction, Christian TeBordo locates the awe in the awful possibilities we could never have imagined. You can read an excerpt here.
“This book is presented as a work of fiction and is dedicated to nobody.”
So begins Bukowski’s debut novel Post Office, which, as the dedication implies, is a reluctant and drunken stagger through Bukowski stand-in Henry Chinaski’s tenure at the US Postal Service. Bukowski had a knack for writing hilarious and fitting dedications like these, yet another reason why he’s so awesome (you can also throw this song on that pile of awesome as well). Ham on Rye, for example, is dedicated to “All the fathers,” which seems benign until you actually read the book and see that Bukowski’s dad was a cruel and abusive douchebag. Pulp is optimistically dedicated to “Bad writing.”
Bukowski actually got me thinking about other memorable dedications, those oft-overlooked little prefaces that are really like literary tattoos: they stay with you for life, so perhaps you should think twice before ascribing your current flame’s name on there in big bold letters. A quick browse through my bookshelf revealed some memorable finds between all the For My Mothers and To My Beloved Whomevers. Because I’m so wonderful I’ve shared a few of them below:
I have a friend who’s read almost every classic piece of literature there is, on her own. A few of them we had to read in school, but all those others…yeah, she read them on her own time. For enjoyment.
I hear a lot of people do this sort of thing; pick up an old, thick book that’s been embedded in the literary canon for centuries and read it in a hammock or by the fire, soaking up the famous words for their own benefit. It sounds impressive. Especially to me – because almost every classic novel I’ve read has bored me into a coma.
It occurred to me that this was going to be an issue among my peers as soon as I hit high school. While all my other writing / book nerd buddies found Jane Austin to be a delightful romp, I had to virtually skim the chapters because it annoyed me too much to read slowly. And while they were all recieving A’s on their essays about The Awakening, I was busy getting the lowest essay grade of my life, because all I could stand to write about was how much I hated the protagonist and good lord why was she so selfish?! My teacher told me I missed the point of the story. Maybe I did. But whatever. That book pissed me off. Big time. Read more »
Welcome to this week’s Free Book Friday, wherein we give you the best titles in indie publishing for the low low price of nothing. Congrats to last week’s winner Willamae for getting a free copy of The Origin of Species by Nino Ricci.
This week, we are giving away a copy of Sword of My Mouthby Jim Munroe and Shannon Gerard, which launches in Detroit at 7pm on Saturday, May 15th at Leopold’s Books (free event, so go!). Ella’s baby isn’t quite right. But since the righteous floated into the sky and magic started working, not much is. Sword of My Mouth is a stand-alone story continuing on from the acclaimed graphic novel Therefore Repent! (“It’s completely nuts…. It’s a book about what if the Rapture actually happened, and that’s all I’m gonna tell you.” — Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz on Therefore Repent!), Sword of My Mouth moves the focus from Chicago, under siege by angels with machine guns, to the urban prairie of Detroit. Folks in the D have banded together to turn land with burned-out crackhouses into farming tracts, and seem to be on a road to self-sufficiency… until Famine rides into town. (Ed. note–I’ve read a copy of this book and it friggin rocks.)
Welcome to this week’s Free Book Friday, wherein we give you the best titles in indie publishing for the low low price of nothing. Congrats to last week’s winner Jabraille for getting a free copy of The Beijing of Possibilities by Jonathan Tel.
This week, we are giving away a copy of The Origin of Species by Nino Ricci. Montreal during the turbulent mid-1980s: Chernobyl has set Geiger counters thrumming across the globe, HIV/AIDS is cutting a deadly swath through the gay population worldwide, and locally, tempers are flaring over the recent codification of French as the official language of Quebec. Hiding out in a seedy apartment near campus, Alex Fratarcangeli (“Don’t worry. . . . I can’t even pronounce it myself”), an awkward, thirty-something grad student, is plagued by the sensation that his entire life is a fraud. Scarred by a distant father and a dangerous relationship with his ex Liz, and consumed by a floundering dissertation linking Darwin’s theory of evolution with the history of human narrative, Alex has come to view love and other human emotions as “evolutionary surplus, haphazard neural responses that nature had latched onto for its own insidious purposes.” When Alex receives a letter from Ingrid, the beautiful woman he knew years ago in Sweden, notifying him of the existence of his five-year-old son, he is gripped by a paralytic terror. Whenever Alex’s thoughts grow darkest, he recalls Desmond, the British professor with dubious credentials whom he met years ago in the Galapagos. Treacherous and despicable, wearing his ignominy like his rumpled jacket, Desmond nonetheless caught Alex in his thrall and led him to some life-altering truths during their weeks exploring Darwin’s islands together. It is only now that Alex can begin to comprehend these unlikely life lessons, and see a glimmer of hope shining through what he had thought was meaninglessness. You can read an excerpt here and watch the related video here.
I just finished my first year of creative writing graduate school (cue exhausted applause), and now I’m facing the prospect of a semi-unstructured summer in which I need to: a.) earn money, b.) continue to write my thesis manuscript, c.) do research for my thesis, d.) sit in the sun a lot and have picnics, e.) recuperate from the stress of school.
To that end, I’ve secured a part-time job and have applied to a bazillion writers retreats, conferences, and residencies.
Read more »
I have a friend who’s read almost every classic piece of literature there is, on her own. A few of them we had to read in school, but all those others…yeah, she read them on her own time. For enjoyment.
