Secret Santa Sneak Peak
Based on the emails I’ve been getting, there are some cool gifts out there. According to my list of confirmation emails, about half of the gifts have been purchased/sent out out to all of you. Things so far seem to be running smoothly.
Reminder to all of those still wondering what to get: time is running out.
In the meantime, I discovered this ‘thank you’ post by Michelle Panik. Have a look to see what her Secret Santa sent her. A brief preview of the joy to come for all of you.
Also, due to popular demand, I have reopened accepting new Santas until this Thursday at 5pm CST. If you missed out, it’s not too late to sign up.
Rain Taxi Benefit Auction
from Rain Taxi:
RAIN TAXI BENEFIT AUCTION!
Our benefit auction has returned, and this year it’s enormous! Held on eBay, the auction lets you support Rain Taxi while getting cool literary stuff. Most items were donated by authors or publishers to help Rain Taxi stay in gear: You’ll find signed first editions, gorgeous broadsides, rare chapbooks, seminal graphic novels, quirky collectible books, handcrafted items, and more! M.T. ANDERSON, John ASHBERY, Paul AUSTER, Charles BERNSTEIN, Robert BLY, Paul BOWLES, Stephen COLBERT, Samuel R. DELANY, Neil GAIMAN, Patricia HAMPL, Richard HELL, Jaime HERNANDEZ, Garrison KEILLOR, Jonathan LETHEM, David MARKSON, Henry MILLER, Rick MOODY, Barack OBAMA, Ron PADGETT, Jerome ROTHENBERG, Joe SACCO, Arthur SZE, Jeff VANDERMEER, Anne WALDMAN, Keith and Rosmarie WALDROP, and Marjorie WELISH are just some of the authors whose works you’ll find. To see the full listings, go to our online benefit auction now!
Dan Wickett Previews 2009
I used to think Dan Wickett was an auto mechanic. I think I thought that for several months when I first heard about the Emerging Writers Network.
Anyhow, here’s his massive preview of 2009:
I know, I know. 2009? What about reviewing a few more 2008 titles? I hear you and, at least in my own mind, have that all under control. You’ll see more of those soon, as well as varying lists of my favorite books, novels, story collections, poetry collections, non-fiction titles – well, you know the deal.
In the mean time, I’ve been looking at catalogs and getting emails from authors and am already a little terrified that there’s no way in hell I’m going to be able to read every title published in 2009 that I already know I want to read. One interesting thing to note – some of these were submitted to Dzanc Books and, well, since I’m not going to include the Dzanc titles publishing in 2009 in this post, obviously were not accepted by Dzanc Books. However, it is absolutely possible to find yourself both receiving a no thank you note from myself in regards to your book, and then finding out I am anxiously looking forward to it when published elsewhere.
You can see the entire list here: What Books I’m Looking Forward to in 2009.
Home Video Review of Books, Vol 1, Issue 2 now live!
by Julia Cohen & Mathias Svalina. This issue has home video reviews of:
Kim Hyesoon’s Mommy Must Be a Fountain of Feathers
Lisa Jarnot’s Night Scenes
Dan Machlin’s Dear Body
Brett Price’s Trouble with Mapping
John Taggart’s There are Birds
Ara Shirinyan’s Your Country Is Great
Brandon Shimoda’s The Alps
Joel Chace’s Matter No Matter
Jon Godfrey’s City of Corners
Jen Tynes’s Heron / Girlfriend
Anne Heide’s Wiving
Anne Boyer’s Art is War
Darcie Dennigan’s Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse
Allison Carter’s Shadows are Weather
Mark Cunningham’s Body Language
Orange Alert Holiday Guide
not alicia pernell or ben segal
From Ben Segal:
Dear HTML Giant,
I admit a bit of self-promotion here, because I wouldn’t have found out about this probably if they hadn’t included my book, but I thought you might be interested in knowing about this:
What to Wear During an Orange Alert, which as you know interviews and writes about a lot of the people regularly contributing/featured here, just released their ‘Holiday Guide.’ It has a nice little write up of Sam Pink, plus also 4 other emerging writers, plus a list of the favorite 10 books of the year, 10 small presses doing cool things, and a bunch of art/music/random recommendations as well. It’s a nicely laid out guide to a lot of very exciting small press/general independent media releases from the last year and I thought that it might be of use to Secret Santas and also public Santas and Jews like myself who never actually do Secret Santas because they only make purchases for ex- and/or possible future girlfriends, but still like to buy those gifts from small presses.
Best,
Ben
I downloaded the ‘Holiday Guide’ last night (took me about ten minutes or so), and I’m slowly picking through the PDF file. Lots of recommendations for those looking for gift ideas and for those just interested in seeing what’s new.
Take a look.
Thanks to Alicia Pernell of Yippee Magazine for the tip as well.
All Points Bulletin: Mother Giant looks out for its Young
Rock. Star.
Friends, our own Mike Young NEEDS YOUR HELP! His essay “It Ain’t Me, Babe” is in the running for Best Nerve.com Feature of 2008. The competition is fierce. Right now Rachel Shukert’s essay about spending the night in a crappy lovenest in Nebraska is in the lead, with some bullshit about Stuff White People Like trailing not far behind it, but as you’ll see when you go over there, the vote-count is pretty low across the board so a decent influx of GIANT voters could seriously tip things Mike’s way. Also, FYI, you can only vote for each essay once, but you are allowed to vote for more than one essay.
I also gave a vote to “Triangulation” by Caitlin Macrae. It’s a piece about threesomes. She seems to really hit the nail on the head about what makes them so alluring, and she seems to like them even more than I do, which is seriously saying something.
Bonus points if you get this reference.
2 Recordings of Flannery O’Connor Reading Her Work!
This comes with a tripple hat-tip, and proves why the internet is awesome.
1) Did you know I have the same name as a somewhat famous preacher? That’s right. Justin Taylor of Wheaton, Illinois, who blogs at Between Two Worlds and is the author and/or editor of several books, including Overcoming Sin and Temptation, Communion with the Triune God, The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World, and Where Did Christianity Come From? I often wonder if he knows I exist. I mean, if he searches his own name on Amazon, he’ll get my anthology The Apocalypse Reader, as his #3 response, right between Communion with and Supremacy of.
Friends: In Which People Who Don’t Know Eachother Try to Get Along
Perennial provocateur and imminent instigator P.H. Madore, has written A Wordless Threat of Kung Fu Reprisal, featuring Htmlgiant contributors and other likely lit world suspects.
An exceprt:
Ken Baumann struck the bartender called J. K. very hard with a dead fish he’d had wrapped in recycled chapbooks specifically for such an occasion. The bartender dropped the champagne bottle. Jackie Corley shrieked and said, “Fuck this, I’m getting back to work!” Nick Antosca smiled. Ken Baumann said, “No posit, no colony, motherfuckers!”
Mmm…I wonder if J.K. stands for ‘just kidding.’
Personally, I welcome such satirical takes on me, and hope — god I hope — others feel the same about them.
P.H. Madore is off to Iraq soon, so be nice. Gawd bless you Madore, and Amerika.
Secret Santa Special Offers
With Indie Press Secret Santas being assigned today (massive props to Ryan Call for going through and organizing all that and emailing everybody, holy shit), we’ve received a couple special offers from publishers with Santa-only deals lined up.
1st off, Hobart is offering half-price subscriptions. Usually they are $18, so for $9 you can get your gift recipient a year’s worth of a really excellent lit mag. That even leaves room for two gifts. Can’t beat that. In your paypal order, just mention that you are ni the SS program, and make sure to include your recipient’s address (which will be coming with your assignments, half of which have already been sent. If you haven’t gotten yours yet, it should be coming soon).
2nd, from Dzanc Books:
Dzanc Books is excited about the HTMLGIANT Secret Santa program and will happily gift wrap any books ordered through our website for the Secret Santa program. We will gift wrap the book(s), place the gift wrapped books inside a postal envelope (we typically ship things priority) or box, as well as a half sheet page designed by our Art Director, Steven Seighman, which will announce that the accompanying gift wrapped package is arriving as a result of the Secret Santa program, and that their Secret Santa ordered them something from Dzanc Books, and that they should hold off opening the package until Xmas.
http://www.dzancbooks.org/store/index.html
All a Secret Santa will need to do when they order directly from us, is add a note through the Paypal order that it’s for the HTMLGiant program. We will also accept checks/orders via email as well. Those can be sent to dan@dzancbooks.org.
With these deals, you can get a pretty hefty present for $20, not to mention all the other sales going on now (such as the Word Riot bundles).
If publishers would like to extend other Santa promo deals for customers, the comments section is wide open.
Administrative Email to All You Secret Santas
Here’s the email I just sent out to you Secret Santas in case some of you have insane spam filters (if you’re not a Secret Santa, please disregard or something, I don’t know):
Hi Everyone,
Thank you for signing up for our Secret Santa thingy. I have finally gotten all of the Secret Santas assigned. I used a fancy random number sorting system in Excel. I typed random numbers very quickly into a column and then sorted everyone’s names by those random numbers in an ascending order and then pasted that list against the master list.
I will begin sending out those assignments later tonight.
So, the purpose of this email is to go over a few things. I will try to keep it as clear as possible.
1) Because the main idea behind this exchange was to support independent presses/journals/authors/etc, we strongly encourage you to choose a gift from that ‘world.’ If you’re unfamiliar with the small press world, then have a look at the links over at Newpages.com or check the HTMLGIANT archives for various presses/journals that we’ve spotlighted. Many of these presses/journals are also running holiday specials at this time. We’ll try to spotlight more of these in the coming weeks. Also, feel free to email me back (SECRET SANTA ??? in the subject field) if you have a question.