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Norman Rockwell is Full of Baloney

October 1, 2009

I’ve long used the phrase Norman Rockwell nostalgia as a way to describe those yearnings for simpler times that, in truth, never existed. We watch reruns of Leave it to Beaver or Lassie and imagine how great it would have been to have lived during those depicted times, times when war meant girls and the biggest threat to our national heath was undercooked vegetables. Because these hyper-polished versions of reality were standard TV fare, they became following generations’ standard understanding of better times. But again, this type of harmony never existed. Is it escapism that causes us to willfully absorb into obvious fictions (along with the 1950’s audience who would have seen these shows during their original runs)? I think so. Can this concept of escaping to a fading past continue in a time when everything is recorded and youtubed? Will we ever have the opportunity to be fooled by…

Nothing for Money OR How to Diminish a Prize’s Power

September 29, 2009

After Blake Butler, editor of the print lit journal NO COLONY, posted an aside about publishing and Pushcart-nominating anyone willing to pay $650, Shya Scanlon called his bluff, and quickly rallied 65 people, each willing to fork over $10, to put together a composite of 150 word prose chunks. That’s 9,750 words by 65 authors, each with claim to 1/65th of a Puschart nomination. The entire point of Butler’s original offer, I think, was to comment on how easy it is to manipulate these sorts of literary prizes. In truth, anyone with anything published can be nominated for a Pushcart. All it takes is an editor willing to write your name on a piece of paper. And in a world of zero-overhead POD printing, anyone can be an editor. I hope that those in charge of choosing the Pushcart winner know how to filter out stuff like this NO COLONY…

Orange Alert! Caleb talks!

September 17, 2009

Blogs have two major purposes: 1) to serve their ego-maniacal masters (hopefully not my site), and 2) to alert the somewhat socially inept to trends befitting their interests (am I’m closer to this one). A couple years ago, Tim Hall directed me to What to Wear During an Orange Alert, which has consistently fallen into the latter category (wow, two uses of the word “latter” in consecutive blog posts. Pompous, I may be). When it comes to music, art, and literature, Jason Behrend’s Orange Alert delivers beautifully. So, in a weird mix of the aforementioned purposes, I’m here to tell you that Orange Alert has posted a new interview with yours truly (***creepy picture warning***). Among topics discussed: The Process for getting my work in front of faces (re: stalking) What kinds of books should be reviewed (re: hocking) Some of the music I’ve been listening to lately (re: rocking)…

Beer und Questions Asks – Gordon Highland

September 13, 2009

Gordon Highland is not Drew Ballard. Though, to know the former after reading the latter, one might not recognize a distinction. Ballard, the protagonist of Highland’s first novel, Major Inversions, has much in common with his author: 80’s tribute band member, check; film scoring history, check; unending wit, check. Film set drug dealer…no. After reading Major Inversions, I sat with Gordon to ask him a bit about these parallels (as well as a couple especially interesting others). Check out the video interview, the first of what I hope to be a series of author interviews called Beer und Questions Asks. Buy a copy of Major Inversions online at Amazon.com. I recommend it. Further reading: My review of Major Inversions at Outsider Writers Collective Gordon Highland homepage

Fans of Sideshow Fables

August 22, 2009

When Sideshow Fables creator Paul Eckert approached a group of writers (to which Paul and I belong) about creating a magazine of circus themed tales, I said a silent thank you on the behalf of all readers. He’s got it right, I think. Going about fanbase-building and marketing in the way that independent record companies have been doing for years is a wise move when falling publisher profits has become too common a story. It was at last year’s AWP Conference in Chicago when I heard a panel of small press publishers (I can’t remember any of them, I apologize) where one of the editors made mention of the indie record label model. The publishing logic having always been, we will make readers fans of authors. But, said the editor, why not make readers fans of the publishers? It seems obvious. And to do that, readers have to be able…

Charactered and Vain make for great reading

August 17, 2009

Vain Magazine could claim more ancestral lit zine origins than most. They have the staple bound cover of an indie mashup, the forward thinking mindset of an east coast glossy, the strong literary content of small press chap network, and the design sensibilities of art school college grad with trust fund comfort to keep his ideals high and his being higher. Writer, editor, designer, and 1000 more -ers, Richard Thomas, turned me on to Vain Magazine last year when his story, "Underground Wonderbound" graced its pages. I was impressed, not only with his story, but with the overall aesthetic appeal of the magazine. Too often, hand-stapled, small print magazines get the scoff. This one deserves some praise. Now, after all that build up, I'm here to let the ego shine. My story, "Charactered Pieces," appears in the new issue, #7, right now. I wrote the original version of this story…

The Coming (Staying?) of Metafiction…

August 15, 2009

Metafiction (see: “intertextual fiction”): self-referential fiction. A simple definition but one open to great possibilities. Think of the infinite mirror effect in that when two similar subjects are forced to reflect each other, self-commentary snowballs. For me, the pull started with Jorge Louis Borges’s story, “The Garden of Forking Paths”: “In all fictional works, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the fiction of the almost unfathomable Ts’ui Pen, he chooses – simultaneously – all of them. He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork…No one realized that the book and the labyrinth were one and the same.” Wow. For Borges, character was secondary to plot, a tactic generally snubbed by the literateri as a convention of commercial(ized) fiction. But for Borges, the philosophical ideas were so strong that they became characters in…