Video Games are Real

Category: Marketing & Promotion

  • Hey Chicago-ers: Chicago Publisher ‘CCLaP’ Holds Quadruple Book Release Party, August 10th

    Hey Chicago-ers: Chicago Publisher ‘CCLaP’ Holds Quadruple Book Release Party, August 10th

    (This post is cross-posted from the Outsider Writers site)

    From CCLaP

    The Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, or CCLaP, is proud to announce their latest local live event, a large-scale party to celebrate the release of their first four paper books this summer. An electronic publisher since 2007, CCLaP has been quietly releasing new special-edition, handmade “Hypermodern” paper editions of its four titles throughout the summer; and on August 10th the group will be gathering at the popular Beauty Bar in the Bucktown neighborhood for drinks, free food, and a half-hour reading from all four featured authors, as well as a few surprise guests. Beauty Bar is located at 1444 West Chicago Avenue, and the free event will take place from 7 to 9 p.m., the reading itself from 8:00 to 8:30. All four books will be for sale individually for $20 apiece; or for one night only, attendees can purchase all four in a bundle for only $50.

    Books and performers being featured that night include the novella “Too Young to Fall Asleep” by SALLY WEIGEL, about a Radiohead-listening “emo” high-school student who volunteers for the Iraq War (originally published in 2009);“99 Problems” by BEN TANZER, essays about the mental intersection between running and writing (originally published in 2010); “Life After Sleep” by MARK R. BRAND, a day-after-tomorrow tale concerning a device that allows people to only need two hours of sleep a night (originally published this past winter); and “Salt Creek Anthology” by JASON FISK, a collection of linked “micro-stories” regarding four trashy couples in the far Chicago suburbs (published this summer).CCLaP’s “Hypermodern” series is an attempt to create special collector-worthy editions of all the center’s electronic books, reasonably priced yet expertly made; they feature handmade hardbound covers, including a color photo of the ebook’s original cover adhered to the front, external Coptic stitching, whimsical decorative endpapers, a special signature/provenance page for collectors, and a full Colophon in the back listing all materials used. CCLaP itself has been open online since 2007, and with a handful of local live events held in varying venues across the city each year; the center also produces a semi-weekly podcast, sells general giftstore-style merchandise, and publishes over 150 book reviews a year at its popular website. Among other accolades, it’s been featured twice at respected arts guide BoingBoing.net, and its blog is followed by almost ten thousand unique monthly visitors.

    For questions or more information, please contact executive director
    Jason Pettus at cclapcenter@gmail.com, or visit
    [cclapcenter.com/events].

  • Six Personal Investigations of the Act of Reading: Caleb J. Ross’ Stranger Will at the Sri Lanka Sunday Observer

    Six Personal Investigations of the Act of Reading: Caleb J. Ross’ Stranger Will at the Sri Lanka Sunday Observer

    Pablo D’Stair returns with his second installment of his Six Personal Investigations of the Act of Reading, this time with my novel, Stranger Will, as the article’s referent object (with a focus on Genre). I simply could not be more delighted. He’s already tackled Stephen Graham Jones’ The Bird is Gone: a manifesto and is prepping investigations of Goodloe Byron’s The Wraith (which I am currently reading), Amelia Gray’s, AM/PM, D. Harlan Wilson’s Peckinpah: an ultraviolent romance, and Brian Olu’s So You Know It’s Me. This guy could run his own online psychology classes, I swear. I’d enroll (mostly so I could shoot virtual spitballs at his touchscreen whiteboard).

    Here’s a bit from Pablo’s Stranger Will investigation:

    There can come a point where the magnetism of the internal conflict of a central character can be abandoned or toned down for “the reveal” the exposition of the superficialities of the plot (“whodunit”, as they say, taking center stage) a delicate tension can be lost which to me is always a shame.

    Returning to Chinatown, a piece exemplary of what I consider a flaw in some branches of noir, a piece in which the unveiling of who-did-what-to-who-and-why-and-when demolishes the connection to the world, takes the intimacy of the shared experience and makes it remote, only observed, no longer “lived” (even only vicariously). Because of Chinatown, of the letdown I feel every time I get wrapped in its spell and its spell for me falls limp, I always dread when it seems we’re going to learn of a “dark secret” or “a cover up” or any of the conventions, it gets my guard up.

    And Ross plays in the tropes, as though cognizant of precedent as something essential. This was evident to me from early on, inseminated in the prose, the clip-and it reinforced my reading it through my own stance on genre.

    And perhaps even greater than Pablo’s inclusion of Stranger Will in his investigations, is an interview with the man himself, here, part one of Exploring writers’ intricate world
    By Ranga Chandrarathne    . Pablo is a true thinker, with words that could level armies.

  • More love from Orange Alert, Stranger Will gets Watched…

    More love from Orange Alert, Stranger Will gets Watched…

    How could you not love Jason at Orange Alert? For the second day in a row I get a bit of love from that lovely soul. This time, in the from of a mention on his weekly The Watch List segment for my Stranger Will book trailer.

  • A rest from the road to read at Orange Alert Podcast, episode 70

    A rest from the road to read at Orange Alert Podcast, episode 70


    Literature lover and good natured promoter of all things indy, Jason Behrends offers up his newest episode of the Orange Alert Podcast with lovely side dish of yours truly. He has included my reading of the first chapter of As a Machine and Parts (from a March reading at Method in Kansas City) in this newest episode. Jason was one of the earliest supporters of As a Machine and Parts, so it means a lot to have him include me.

    Listen to the full episode here.

  • Stranger Will tour stop #42: NOO Journal blog

    Stranger Will tour stop #42: NOO Journal blog

    Today , NOO Journal is kind enough to post an interview that author Nik Korpon did with me a few weeks back. NOO is too good to me.

    Click here to read the interview. Also, don’t forget that if you comment on all guest blog posts, you will get free stuff.

    See all tour stops here

  • An extremely stupid book trailer for Stranger Will. Share the stupidness.

    Disclaimer: I actually really love each of the three aristocratic representative books in the above trailer. In fact, Freedom was definitely one of my favorites from last year. It’s just fun to chip away at pillars.

  • Stranger Will gets the Pablo D’Stair treatment: Six investigations of the act of reading

    Stranger Will gets the Pablo D’Stair treatment: Six investigations of the act of reading

    Pablo D’Stair is easily the hardest working man in independent literature. The guy has operated his own publishing press (Brown Paper Publishing) for a few years now, he continuously produces his own amazing fiction (he’s authored about 43,000 books, I think), he’s innovative with his means of extracting meaningful dialog between author and reader (see: The Predicate Dialogues, and Norman Court for his latest projects in this space) and he works tirelessly to apply critical analysis to fiction in a way that maintains intellectual integrity without compromising accessibility. Above all, he’s a passionate thinker.

    Though I’ve known Pablo for a while (I was involved in his first The Predicate Dialogues back in March 2010), his most recent critical contributions, and his inclusion of my novel Stranger Will, leave me no less impressed. Pablo is currently conducting a series of Six Investigations of the Act of Reading for the Sunday Observer (Sri Lanka’s largest circulation English newspaper, according to the logo above).

    Here’s a bit from the introduction to the series:

    In the order of the series, the authors and works I will be using, as well as the slant to each investigation, are as follow-Stephen Graham Jones, the Bird is Gone: a manifesto (Context); Caleb J. Ross, Stranger Will (Genre); Goodloe Byron, The Wraith (Subtext); Amelia Gray, AM/PM (Type); D. Harlan Wilson Peckinpah: an ultraviolent romance (Referent); Brian Olu, So You Know It’s Me (Framing). While familiarity with the works has no bearing on what I investigate in the series, it also couldn’t hurt-various excerpts, reactions, discussions can be found regarding all of these titles may places online. Additionally, I welcome any and all contact with regard to this series and will respond to all correspondence. I can be reach through unburiedcomments@gmail.com.

    ***

    It is my sincere hope that this series will both be somewhat intriguing toward a further delving into the contemporary American Indie scene, and (moreso) that it will encourage a particular self-consciousness to reading which I believe is to be valued above all else, whether reading is done for leisure, study, or is merely dabbed at, incidentally.

    I am damn excited to follow this series. More posts to come, for sure.