Deal of the Week: Keyhole Magazine
Two news items from Keyhole Magazine:
1) The editors are offering a special discount this week only (November 10-17). You pay them $15 and they sign you up for a yearlong subscription. That’s four issues, if my math is correct. The subscription starts with Issue 6, so it looks like you’ll have to free up another $12 to purchase the nice-looking Handwritten Issue, but that shouldn’t be a problem, right?
2) And in week-old staff-related news, Molly Gaudry, of Willows Wept and Twelve Stories fame, has recently joined the Keyhole masthead as an editor (via Molly’s blog). Handshakes all around.
(sorry if this was already posted before – i have a headache)
MASSIVE PEOPLE (4): Aaron Burch
I first met Aaron Burch at AWP two years ago. I had read some issues of Hobart before and really liked the stuff he’d published, so it made sense to me that I should talk to him. I anxiously introduced myself to him at the Hobart table and babbled to him, asked him many questions about the journal, and felt very sweaty the whole time, especially after I ran out of things to say. I’m glad that he did not punch me in the mouth.
Not that he would have, for Aaron Burch is a kind and gentle human. He grows his beard and keeps it tidy. He smokes cigars and drinks whiskey. He publishes the fine literary periodical Hobart, and he administers the web version as well as the mini-books division.
Aaron Burch lives up north somewhere.
Aaron Burch also does some of his own writing. He is a fine fine writer. His work can be read both online and in print at various publications: Eyeshot, Pindeldyboz, Storyglossia, Phoebe, elimae, MonkeyBicycle, etc. He’s currently reading/writing in the MFA program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he also teaches composition.
I emailed him some questions when I was drunk. They seem ‘aggressive’ now that I’m looking at them again, so I have edited out some of the aggressiveness.
1. Lots of people shit on the MFA. You’ve decided to go for it at UIUC. Why? Tell us some pros and cons you’ve noticed about the program, if you can.
Mean Monday: Christy Call Talks Shit About(2) Irish Literature
We have had no real ‘good’ gchats recently, so I must post this (and invite you to comment on the Wells Tower thread – things are trying to happen there). It’s not real shit-talking, I guess.
Does anyone know of good irish literature I can read, aside from the obvious? At Swim-Two-Birds is sitting on my shelf right now. Should I read that?
Okay, our discussion of Irish Literature:
me: dang olwhat aboutoktalk aboutirish literatureno that is dumbChris: irish literature?me: ignora that
Bright Stupid Confetti – Change
Christopher Higgs astounds me. The content he posts over at Bright Stupid Confetti always gives me something to watch, look at, think about, etc. I am always amazed at the stuff he finds.
On October 28th, he wrote the following:
CHANGE: I’LL BE POSTING LARGER IMAGES & PERHAPS MORE CHANGE WILL COME, MAYBE, PROBABLY, YES, IT WILL, STAY TUNED…THINGS HAVE GOTTEN TOO STATIC…
And now he’s followed through. The site has changed. He’s reorganized the site. Everything is bigger, easier to look at. The emphasis is on the content much more so than before. The new layout forces you to look at one thing at a time, to sort of pause before moving on. I like the new change.
The Corduroy Mtn. Now Live
Everyone, looks like The Corduroy Mtn. is now running live.
Uncategorized / 8 Comments
November 8th, 2008 / 1:38 am
November 8th, 2008 / 1:38 am
Boobies Friday: let down
Sorry. I am bored. And I have a cold.
Uncategorized / 8 Comments
November 7th, 2008 / 11:36 pm
November 7th, 2008 / 11:36 pm
Mean Monday: Christy Call Talks Shit About(1) Ya’ll
I’ve decided to do an intermittent feature for Mean Monday based on the gchats that my sister and I have about stuff. I will select a small excerpt of our conversation, remove it completely out of context, change words around, and then post it for your enjoyment.
If anyone has any requests or topics about which they would like my sister and me to chat, please email me or post in the comments section. We will do our best to have a discussion about it at some point in the future.
Ok, so here is the first entry.
Christy Call on the quality of the posts here at HTMLGIANT (with apologies to Sam Pink, whose chapbook I got in the mail a few weeks ago and read from cover to cover without stopping it was so good it hurt me a lot and then I couldn’t function for the rest of the evening):
some is ok, some is ok++reallyi sitll dont like sam pinkah well
New Hobart WebContent and MiniBook
You probably already got this info in your email. Hobart just posted new content at their website: stories by Ravi Mangla, Lindsay Hunter, V. Ulea, and Sara O’Leary. Also, there is an interview up: our own Matthew Simmons asked questions of Michael Kimball. This new issue is the first curated by new web editor Stephany Aulenback. Hooray!
Also, the people at Hobart‘s minibooks division have officially announced their next release: Mary Miller’s Big World. Congratulations to everyone on another successful thing.
They’ll have more details soon about ordering info.
Starcherone Contest?
Maybe not a useful post, but if anything it reminded me that I have a few books that I must still purchase.
Starcherone Books has announced contest guidelines for its annual Innovative Fiction Contest.
The 2009-10 contest, offering $1000 and publication with Starcherone Books, is now accepting entries. Contest is open to story collections, novels, or indeterminate prose works up to 400 pages. Manuscripts will be blind-judged; the author’s name should appear on the first of two title pages and nowhere else in the manuscript. There is an administrative fee of $30. Please do not send cash. The postmark deadline is February 15, 2009. The winner will be announced in August 2009. All finalists will be considered for publication with Starcherone Books. See our ad in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers.
Also, they have a special offer going for those who want to submit. If you add an additional $10 to your entry fee, they’ll throw in a copy of The Lost Books of the Odyssey for your trouble.
Ben Marcus is the final judge.
NaNoWriMo – 101 Reasons to Stop Writing
Today, people all across everywhere have typed the first word on their way to writing 50k words that should resemble in some way a ‘novel.’
I am not a ‘fan’ of NaNoWriMo. There is something corporate and mindless about it, to me anyhow. Even the website looks corporate and mindless. Not that corporations are bad. I just have a hard time thinking about writing that way – have you seen these romance novels that you can insert your name into and the name(s) of your lover(s)? That is corporate to me.
But I know many people who are fans of NaNoWriMo and who participate in it, and they are all good people (I think). So that makes me think that maybe there is something I don’t get about NaNoWriMo. That maybe I am the moron. That maybe while I complain about NaNoWriMo, all these other people are actually getting some writing done.
I once took a class that forced me to write a 40k word novel in a semester. The experience was painful. My writing was pretty awful. I felt like a kid throwing a temper tantrum. I purchased Chris Baty’s book No Plot, No Problem (NoPloNoPro, as I like to call it). In it, a man who has maybe three or four unpublished manuscripts sitting in his desk gave me advice about how to write a novel. Thanks Chris.
In good news, that class led to some stories that were later published.
But not a novel.
If the number of participants in NaNoWriMo each year equals the number of people who have purchased his self-help book novel book, then Chris Baty is making good money.
What is good about NaNoWriMo? I’m sure there are good things about it, but I am stubborn and like to only think about things in my brain using very simple language, such as ‘bad’ and ‘good’ and ‘sleepy,’ etc.
I am sitting in the Las Vegas airport and I am waiting to board my airplane to Houston. If the plane crashes, then this will be the last thing I ever wrote in my life:
A shitty post on NaNaWriMo.
Okay, we’re boarding. Wish me luck and then go visit this site – 101 Reasons to Stop Writing. I laughed a little bit: “Express yourself all you want. Just don’t keep submitting it for publication. You’re filling the world with shit.”