Nick Antosca’s MIDNIGHT PICNIC
With the shitty demise of Impetus Press, Nick Antosca has already gotten his forthcoming MIDNIGHT PICNIC lined up with a new press, Word Riot Books. Very glad to see this getting saved so quickly, and with hardly any delay. Here’s a press release:
Middletown, NJ — Punk rock-spirited independent publisher Word Riot
Press will release Nick Antosca’s second novel Midnight Picnic on Dec.
15.Midnight Picnic was slated to be released by Impetus Press on Oct. 31.
The book’s publication was put on hold when Impetus Press publishers
Willy Blackmore and Jennifer Banash announced the dissolution of the
company due to financial pressures. Shortly afterward, Impetus Press,
Word Riot Press and Antosca began discussions about the novel’s
future.“Willy Blackmore and Jennifer Banash’s dedication to Impetus authors
is remarkable,” Word Riot Press publisher Jackie Corley said. “When
Willy and Jennifer learned of Word Riot Press’ interest in Midnight
Picnic, they worked tirelessly to make a deal happen.“I’m pleased and impressed by how fast Word Riot stepped up,” Antosca
said. “Jackie didn’t hesitate, and I think it’s a wonderful thing for
independent literature that she runs her press so fearlessly. It’s
terrific that she’s going to publish Midnight Picnic.”An eerie story about the nature of death, Midnight Picnic is a
non-traditional ghost story in which a vengeful child searches for his
murderer on the deserted roads of the American countryside, drifting
in and out of the afterlife.“If there’s a real Hell out there in the American heartland, and real
ghosts, I suspect Nick Antosca has seen them. Midnight Picnic
reinvents the ghost story for our unsettled times—it’s a riveting and
terrifying 21st Century Book of the Dead that’s one of the most
frightening novels I’ve read in years,” said Elizabeth Hand, author of
Generation Loss, Mortal Love, and Winterlong.Jami Attenberg, author of The Kept Man, has called Midnight Picnic “a
thrilling follow-up to his contemplative debut, Fires. His
imagination makes an astonishing show in this macabre, bizarre and
witty story of ghosts and revenge. Impossible to put down until the
extremely satisfying end, Midnight Picnic conjures up the mounting
tension of the finest Bradbury story.”John Haskell, author of American Purgatorio and I Am Not Jackson
Pollock, concurred with Hand and Attenberg’s assessment of Antosca’s uncanny ability to unearth the darker elements of human nature:
“Beneath the skin of emotion there are muscles and nerves, and that’s
where Antosca takes us.”Called a “page-turner” and “a demented little novel” by Publishers
Weekly, Midnight Picnic will be at home in Word Riot Press’ diverse
stable of literary and experimental works of fiction.“Nick’s forceful authorial voice has made him a young writer to watch.
I’m elated to have Nick as part of the Word Riot Press family,” Corley
said.
Preorder LIGHT BOXES
from Publishing Genius:
Preorder Light Boxes and receive free BLACK KIDS IN LEMON TREES from Mud Luscious Press
YES, receive BLACK KIDS IN LEMON TREES from Mud Luscious Press free,
but only if you are within the first 25 people who preorder.
That’s 25 people.PAY $12 for LIGHT BOXES (includes shipping) which is cheaper than if you wait till February.
So huge, so awesome, thanks for pre-ordering.
Thank you MUD LUSCIOUS PRESS for making available the previously OUT OF PRINT copies of Black Kids in Lemon Trees for people who preorder LIGHT BOXES.
This is one worth supporting. Let’s have at it.
BlazeVox; free ebooks out the ass
I knew BlazeVox had ebooks, but I had no idea of there were more than 60.
In particular, there is a brand new e-title from one of my recent favorite people:
Sean Kilpatrick’s THE MAN WHO FOLLOWED ME HOME FROM WORK: Sean is just a slayer and will say anything, and his power comes through in the lines. I am excited for this compendium of his earlier stuff.
Also free are books by Ted Pelton, Juliet Cook, and Mark Cunningham, among others. A great trove of stuff.
Looking through this, then, also inspired me to take up their 3 for $20 deal on print titles, which includes ones from Louis E. Bourgeois, Michael Basinski, Daniel Borzutzky, Noah Eli Gordon and more.
If that isn’t enough, there’s also a new issue of their e-journal, which has the badass Brandi Wells, among many others.
Get to work.
Keyhole Books 1st Releases
A nice, big announcement from Keyhole Press:
Keyhole has several full-length releases scheduled in 2009.
First up is William Walsh’s Questionstruck – A Collection of Question-based Texts Derived from the Books of Calvin Trillin.
Then Stephanie Johnson’s fiction collection, One of These Things is Not Like the Others and a fiction collection by Shellie Zacharia, Now Playing.
More info on each release will be available soon.
Exciting to see another great new press revealing their debuts.
Excerpts from William Walsh’s ‘Questionstuck’ can be found at his blog here.
Keyhole I believe is also still open to submissions of book length work for their press, and shorter work for the web, which is currently chock full of incredible people like Amelia Gray & Kim Chinquee.
Matthew Simmons interviews Brian Evenson
A great interview with Brian Evenson on his forthcoming book LAST DAYS is now available to be read at the Underland Press website. Simmons does a great job discussing Evenson’s masterful ability to impart extremely brutal or heavy circumstances in an even tone. Here’s a quote from Evenson regarding his restraint:
There’s an ethical openness there, a refusal to tell readers what they should think about what they’re perceiving. At its best it can create a tension between the reader and the characters, one in which they start to project their responses into the hole left by the flatness of the response. I try to be very precise, to give the readers just enough to let their imaginations do the work: the words are a catalyst to get their imaginations to take a dark inward turn.
Check out the rest of the interview and keep tabs for more new web only content from Underland, it is a press to watch for sure.
Black Kids in Lemon Trees
I will write something about the other two ML Press books soon. I received them yesterday—simple design, simply made, good job J.A.—and enjoyed all three.
I’ll start with Black Kids in Lemon Trees by HTMLGiant’s Shane Jones. I’m a big fan of Shane’s writing. I am happy to cop to that. Shane is one of only two people I have let take over The Man Who Couldn’t Blog when I asked him if I could put an excerpt from his book Light Boxes on the site. So there’s that.
This almost seems unfair. It’s apparently already sold out. So you, dear reader, can’t go get a copy for yourself. But I want you to. That’s what I am here to say. It’s very, very good.
In 25 little sections, BKILT follows this wonderful thread of dream logic. Shane does surrealism about as well as one can and still make a readable story on a page. Police in the clouds, cop eyes, shooting at the sun, kids in dayglo shorts throwing lemons at the clouds—the images are so strong, so neatly and quickly rendered. And they all gather together well like cogs in a watch. Or, not a watch. Some sort of mechanism. The function of the mechanism may not make perfect sense, but the gears fit against one another, and the machine has an internal integrity.
There was a nice Believer article about how to read a Russell Edson poem. You can read it all here. That article has been very helpful for me when approaching work like Shane’s.
Nice job, Shane. Sorry, people who don’t have a copy on the way or in their hands.
Sorry, Nick
Apparently, Impetus Press, home of Nick Antosca’s novel Fires and Dave Housely’s Ryan Seacrest is Famous, is going away.
Sad. From their letter:
We are terribly sorry that things worked out this way. As much as it hurts to lose our business, the feeling of letting down our authors is even worse. We have always loved the close relationship we share with our authors and have prided ourselves on having them much more involved throughout the publication process than they would be at many other presses. We are doing our best to make sure that they come out of this as unscathed as possible. For those authors whose books have not yet been published, we are working on placing their titles with other houses.
Small Beer Press Sale
I wish I had seen this a little sooner. If you go to the Small Beer Press website and place an order, they will donate 20% of the proceeds to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
Possibly, this is moot. Obama is way up and has lots of money. And the election is next week. And. And. And.
But you might as well do it because the books are all also on sale. For $264 you can have hardcover copies of everything they have published.
For $78, you can have everything they published in 2008.
Even if you are apolitical, you should consider buying stuff. Small Beer Press rules. Recommendations after the jump.
ML Press Adds More Authors
Announced last Friday, ML Press has quickly expanded their catalog from their opening line-up of: Ken Baumann (chap pictured), Jimmy Chen, and Shane Jones, to Nick Antosca, Brandi Wells, and Blake Butler.
From editor and publisher J.A Tyler on the first three chaps released, “we’ve sold nearly a third of each title, & as ml press will do only one run of each, place your orders soon.”
The chapbooks are single works and cost a economy friendly two dollars including shipping.
Browse and buy here.
Centennial Press
Having been around for a while — I think I remember first hearing about the journal Anthills about six years ago — Centennial Press is one press I never hear people talk about. I mean, nothing. From chapbooks, to broadsides, to perfect-bounds, editor Charles Nevsimal does an excellent job at creating interesting paper works. One of my favorite pieces is Anthills #4 – a journal of poetry and short prose that on first look appears to be a mini-chapbook but unfolds into a 17×25 poster complete with incredible graphic art.
The site says submissions are always open, but from what I remember response time is slow and the publication schedule is pretty inconsistent.
Browse the site here.