Ryan Call

Publishing Genius Wants Your Pictures

Adam Robinson is redesigning the Publishing Genius website and wants pictures, especially MSPaint pictures, from everyone. He wants to take these pictures and rotate them through the website at the top of the page. Once he has enough pictures lined up, he’ll launch the new site.

You can be famous for a week.

Go here for information.

Presses & Web Hype / 2 Comments
October 8th, 2008 / 10:24 am

Lamination Colony

New Lamination Colony is up with killer work by Amanda Billings, Joshua Ware, Phil Estes, Matt Kirkpatrick, Stacy Kidd, Jamie Iredell, Ian Davisson & Ryan Downey, Krammer Abrahams, Shane Jones, Scott Garson, Angela Genusa, Daniel Bailey, Brandon Barrett, Brandon Scott Gorrell, Gene Morgan, Conn Thomas O’Brien, Thomas Cook, Molly Gaudry, and Matt Bell.

Probably old news to many.

Go read.

Uncategorized / 2 Comments
October 7th, 2008 / 11:12 pm

Raise Cash for Dzanc Books by Writing Words

Dan Wickett, god of small presses, has announced a Write-a-Thon! on the Emerging Writers Network – basically, you get a sponsor to pay a certain amount of money depending on how much your write and then that money goes to Dzanc Books. He has better details over at the site.

I once did a Jump-Rope-a-Thon! and raised some money that way. I also went Trick or Treating with a UNICEF box.

Oh, also, a prize: the writer who raises the most money gets the ‘full run of’ Dzanc’s titles.

Presses / Comments Off on Raise Cash for Dzanc Books by Writing Words
October 7th, 2008 / 8:53 pm

Improbable Object

From Matthew Kirkpatrick, that guy who works for FC2 and, last I checked, coedits Barrelhouse, comes a new online journal: Improbable Object. In the first issue there is work by Blake Butler, Justin Taylor, Davis Schneiderman, and art by Bill Dunlap: Blake Butler wants to sell his face on Ebay, Justin Taylor writes “the truth about cemeteries is they only / exist because we all keep clapping,” and Davis Schneiderman takes us to the Island of Lost Souls and the Island of Blessed Sheep.

Good things happen.

I enjoyed the contents of this issue. I read each piece several times after drinking two glasses of scotch and three glasses of wine. It was a good experience overall. Matthew Kirkpatrick is doing something very interesting, and I want to watch him keep doing it. As I read Improbable Object, I thought of other online journals. DIAGRAM came to mind. So did Lamination Colony.

Improbable Object is a very clean-looking online journal, and one, I suspect, that needs more submissions. So if you’ve got awesome stuff lying around, send away; the submission guidelines suggest that you “submit something short” if you’d like your work to be considered.

I recommend this journal to everyone, sober and drunk.

Web Hype / Comments Off on Improbable Object
October 6th, 2008 / 3:24 am

Tao Lin Rates a 9.4-9.8 on the Push-Down Worthiness Scale

In a suprising announcement today, casual blog commenter and fan of Tao Lin ‘when.parents.flee.the.country’ awarded Tao Lin a 9.4-9.8 on the Push-Down Worthiness Scale at 5:44am this morning after two hours of steady deliberation in front of a blank computer screen. In his/her comment, which can be read attached to Tao Lin’s post ‘victory in japan,’ he/she congratulates Tao on eee‘s recently being published in Japan, calls Tao Lin’s second novel Richard Yates, which has not yet been released, a “masterpiece,” and then types the word “really” a lot. I mean, really, probably more than necessary. When.parents.flee.the.country then announces Tao Lin’s Push-Down Worthiness rating, saying:

“and for the mother of all coincidences, i saw you on the l-train monday night. you’re very short, probably 5’6″ or so; i would describe your gait as existentially slackerish; and, given how you carry yourself, on a scale of 1-10 i would rate your push-down worthiness a 9.4-9.8.”

No word yet as to how useful such a scale will be, nor has when.parents.flee.the.country revealed what factors affect his/her calculations when he/she manipulates the scale (this blogger, however, believes height to have some importance).

Oh, also, uh, congrats to Tao on his book thing, I guess. That’s cool and stuff.

Author News / 11 Comments
October 2nd, 2008 / 6:52 pm

No Faces Are Safe

This morning an anonymous tip sent me to the website redesign of new and insane journal No Colony, which recently began ‘eating face’ all around the literary world.

I discovered that editors Ken Bauman and Blake Butler have moved away from the movie stills this time around and instead have settled upon the color black for their new background. The standard text blocks are still there: submissions information, ordering information, buy-in information, and Pushcart nomination purchasing information. PayPal links seem scattered throughout the page in a helpful manner.

New to the site: a neat cover shot and three online fictions by Sean Kilpatrick, Corey Zeller, and Patrick Leonard. Sean Kilpatrick’s piece is a selection from the print issue. The other two are a surprise for you to read on your own.

Some sort of facial covering is recommended.

Web Hype / 6 Comments
October 2nd, 2008 / 7:19 am

Print Industry Shakeup

A while ago, I read this post by Reb Livingston of No Tell Books and thought, ‘yeah, fuck Amazon’ and ‘man, Reb is awesome.’

Then I ordered a lot of things from Amazon the next day; I binged like crazy, sent things to a friend through Amazon, those things were lost in the mail, etc. Now I am outraged again. It is probably not the kind of anger that Reb had, but it is anger, and that’s what matters.

So I am happy to see that Adam Robinson, the man behind Publishing Genius, has posted this prospectus for an article he’d like to write. He wants reading suggestions. He wants to break scholarly ground. He wants to write an annotated bibliography for fuck’s sake. Help him out.

Presses / 2 Comments
October 2nd, 2008 / 1:36 am

First Book Interviews with Keith Montesano

Although I’m not an expert on the poetry of Keith Montesano, I’m sure I’ll be reading his first book soon. I’m told it’s a killer manuscript that’s won all sorts of finalist spots in contests and such. And most of the poems from that manuscript have been published by now in some nice journals. So, it’s just a matter of time.

Unfortunately, that time has been filled with lots of rejection, revising, contest fees, increased postage rates, more revising, querying, and research. Also, I imagine lots of alcohol in there somewhere. I don’t know all the specifics – you’d have to click his blog to see how long he’s been working on this manuscript and to read some funny, if you could call it that, rejection situations. I only know that this whole thing has sort of inspired Keith to seek out other authors with first books, other authors who have gone through the whole process themselves. What follows, then, is First Book Interviews, an interview blog that continues the tradition of Kate Greenstreet. He’s just posted interview #1 with Matthew Guenette, and he soon plans to post interviews with the following people: Paul Guest, Jason Bredle, Mark Wunderlich, Sandra Beasley, James Allen Hall, Jennifer Chang, Alison Pelegrin, Brian Barker, Jericho Brown, and Dan Albergotti.

Author News & Web Hype / 6 Comments
October 1st, 2008 / 10:44 am

!!!OMG!!!Avery Anthology Gossip!!!OMG!!!

If my Facebook feed is correct, and if we can trust the information on the Avery Anthology weblog, then Avery coeditor Emma Straub and Avery designer/art director Michael Fusco got married this past weekend in an impressive power grab at indie giant Avery House Press. I admit that I did not try to contact Emma and Michael for a comment, nor did I ask Emma’s permission to use this yummy picture. Instead, I just sort of clicked around the Internet for a while.

Anyhow, now I understand the inactivity on Duotrope recently – instead of reading submissions, they were getting married and eating a lot of chocolate.

Congratulations, you two.

Now when is Avery #4 coming out?

Web Hype / 6 Comments
October 1st, 2008 / 2:06 am

I Want to Give Someone a $6 Bailout Package

The economy doesn’t look good, but I have a plan.

I have $6 left in my PayPal Account Balance. I used to have more money, but I used that money to purchase many things: the first issue of The Open Face Sandwich, a chapbook from Octopus Books, some subscriptions to literary journals, Shane Jones’ novel from Publishing Genius, and stuff like that.

I would like to give away that $6 to someone or some press or some journal or something. It is not a lot of money, I understand, and I would like to receive something in return, preferably a chapbook, or a book, or some other neat trinket. I know that is a lot to ask for.

The idea is that I could then read that chapbook or journal back issue or whatever and talk about it in another post to promote literature and the economy and capitalism and other American things.

I guess this is like a reverse auction?

I am interested in these places:

Jaguar Uprising
Paper Hero Press
FuturePoemBooks
Ugly Duckling Presse
Chiasmus Press
Future Tense Books
Black Ocean Press

I am going to stop listing things, because it is time for bed. I realize that $6 might not cover the full cost of whatever. I hope that is not an insult. It is all the money I have right now in the account. At least someone will make a sale?

At least one unit will move, I guess?

I am also up for suggestions? Please, tell me about a cool thing I can read that I might have missed, preferably something that looks nice and I can touch in a nice way as I read it.

Web Hype / 8 Comments
September 29th, 2008 / 1:41 am