Cursing, slang and other blends of the english language are just as legitimate as "standard" writing.

I recently passed around a draft of a short story I’d been working on for the last month. It concerns a kid named Javier from the Bronx, who is in search of love on Facebook. The story’s purpose, among other things, is to paint a picture of life for an inner-city teen and the role Facebook plays in youth culture. I wanted my story to be genuine, so I wrote in language commonly used in my neighborhood. This language includes cursing, slang, Spanglish and references some may find vulgar. Gauging the feedback I received, most enjoyed the story, but the language put some off. Some felt I overdid it and others couldn’t get through it because they felt there wasn’t a place for cursing and slang at all. At first I thought I was wrong, maybe my language was too vulgar, should’ve toned down the fuck’s and shit’s. And maybe that was true; I might’ve been too authentic. But the larger issue I realized was that some people weren’t appreciating the language. Some still held the belief that slang and cursing is vernacular of the uneducated and had no place in literature –– and that’s wrong. Read more »

I do my best to stay calm.

In between barely making enough money and working on my art (and occasionally watching True Blood), I force myself to meditate, breathe with intention and stay mindful.  I’ve bought into all that stuff, because I want a balanced, fulfilled life.

But then something happens — something that knocks me over and causes my heart to drop or break or just generally stop — and I doubt all of the work I’ve ever done.

You’re just not built for peace.

At least that’s what I think when I’m crumpled in a heap on the floor, feeling sadness and pain in places like my knee caps and right shoulder.  …Because that isn’t how normal people act.  Normal people aren’t wrecked for years after a break-up, writing songs and plays and short stories while filling journals to the brink with stuff that would make even Sylvia Plath blush. Normal people don’t stay in on a Saturday night so they can exorcise demons with a keyboard.  I have normal friends.  They agree with me on this one.

And so that’s why I wonder: can true artists ever live a “balanced” life? 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 Melanie for getting a free copies of the chapbooks The Drunk Sonnets by Daniel Bailey and We Were Eternal and Gigantic by Evelyn Hampton.

This week, we are giving away TWO copies of the book The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores by Corey Mesler. The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores is set in the fictional Queneau, Arkansas. Restaurant reviewer Tom More is living the good life, small-town style. He is a cad, a rural Romeo. But his sense of self is abruptly shaken when another man with the same name moves into town. Meanwhile, as the residents of this countrified Peyton Place are lustily carrying on, there is another darker energy at work. Somebody is bumping off the male inhabitants of Queneau. Someone, it would seem, is on a self-appointed mission of extermination. The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores is dark comedy at its most outrageous–imagine a three-way between Carson McCullers, Henry Miller and Peter DeVries.

This week’s Free Book Friday is sponsored by Bronx River Press.  Read more »