Ken Baumann—
The rad novel Fires, by Nick Antosca, has just been rereleased by Civil Coping Mechanisms. It’s also packed with a few short stories, including a short story that is actually uncomfortably sexy: The Girlfriend Game.
1
Ken Baumann—
Nick Antosca on reading Lolita at 12. What was the first book that you felt dirty reading? I’d say mine was either A Confederacy of Dunces around the same age, or maybe The Godfather. Hard question for me because I was watching stuff like Terminator & Skinemax from about 5 on. You?
Mike Young—
Spooky kudos to Nick Antosca, whose book Midnight Picnic is a finalist for a 2009 Shirley Jackson Award in the Novella category. If you’re wondering how to deliver your own congratulations, Nick likes swimming and Cuban sandwiches. Good work, Nick!
Word Spaces (16): Nick Antosca
Hi everyone. Here’s Nick Antosca‘s apartment and a few paragraphs describing where he writes. He wrote Midnight Picnic in this apartment. Thank you, Nick Antosca, for taking the time to do this post.
I write in my bedroom. I have a large bedroom for New York, so I can fit a small couch in it. (My bedroom used to be half the living room, but we chopped it up when we moved in. Three people live in what was originally a one bedroom apartment.) My bed is in one corner and diagonally across from it is the black leather couch I sit on when I write (on my laptop). This is really not ergonomic, but when I used to write at a desk, with ergonomic pads in an ergonomic chair, my wrists and back hurt a lot. They don’t hurt now; I don’t know what that’s about, but that’s the way it is.
Winners of the Nick Antosca ‘Midnight Picnic’ Contest
Here are the winners of Nick Antosca’s Midnight Picnic Contest, as chosen by the author:
Winners:
Ben Spivey (points for picture) (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v719/truettdietz/MScontest.jpg)
Ken Baumann (chill of truth) (http://htmlgiant.com/?p=1936#comment-3436)
Honorable Mentions:
pr ( http://htmlgiant.com/?p=1936#comment-3470 )
barry ( http://htmlgiant.com/?p=1936#comment-3447 )
jereme ( http://htmlgiant.com/?p=1936#comment-3481 )
crispin ( http://htmlgiant.com/?p=1936#comment-3701 )
Honorable mentions winners can email me (brothercyst@gmail.com) their mailing address and whether they would like to receive a copy of FIRES or a randomly selected book off my bookshelf. (I will not be offended if they choose the randomly selected book. I will politely assume they already have FIRES.)
Thanks to all who participated, may they die peacefully in their sleep.
All else, you can pick up your copy from Word Riot Press, and really should: it’s a wild book.
Now, to counteract the psychic violence of the photo that accompanied the original contest post, here is a ‘compromise’ video accompaniment: cute meets curdled. It’s as far as I’m willing to go.
Win Nick Antosca’s MIDNIGHT PICNIC
You may have heard by now that Nick Antosca‘s brightly anticipated new novel, MIDNIGHT PICNIC, is coming out this month from Word Riot Press. It’s been through some kind of phantom haunting of its own but now in the firm hands of Jackie Corley and company, it will soon available for your eyes (and is now out from preorder on the site, if you are so inclined, and should be.)
I really loved Nick’s first book, FIRES, and having read MP already I can tell you it is like a mix of Cormac McCarthy’s CHILD OF GOD on too much Kool Aid and full of magic, phantoms, surreal shopping malls, those shots from Lost Highway where it is just the car going into the night, etc.
To celebrate the coming release, Nick and WR Press have hooked us up with two copies of the book for to give away to HTML Giant readers. Entry to the give away is simple:
What is the way you would least like to die?
Answer this question in as little or as many words as you need to best elucidate the exit method. Bonus points have been promised to those who illustrate their deaths with pictures or drawings in MS paint. Whoever most effectively, creatively, disgustingly, or whatever other adverb seems good as deemed by Nick will take home what I can guarantee is a book you will not soon forget.
Another thing I won’t soon be forgetting is the picture the author requested to be included in this post, which I will now bestow up you in all good faith that it will lead your mind to the gory end that gets you the book prize.:
Contest closes Monday night. Let’s hear it.
MLP: 3 Reviews
I got the second batch of Mud Luscious Press chapbooks today, and read them excitedly. J.A. Tyler (editor) chose bright neon colors which, for me, reflected a certain kind of synthetic violence I found to be a unifying factor.
Rat Beast by Nick Antosca
[Spoil alert] This piece starts off fairly ‘normal,’ a first person narrative about a dour kid turned teenager having trouble at school. A Huxleyian counselor enters with treatment alternatives, the final of which takes a rather grotesque Kafkian turn (two name-drops, sorry), towards the eponymous animal. The ending is even more evocative due to the well-handled restraint in the writing.
Patience by Brandi Wells
A man carves the female reproductive system in the rind of an orange, creating a fetus in place of the fruit. At one point he “carves a fist beside the labia,” an allusion (in my sick mind at least) to fisting, or at least the manual ways women’s bodies are altered by patriarchal ideals (I’m so gay). Wells describes fallopian tubes wrapping around blades of glass and ants eating them; a kind of abortion detritus. J.A. Tyler plays well with the physical page break, embracing the most precious (bad word!) moment of the story.
In the Rape Year of the Ghetto Toddler the Houses Will Awaken by Blake Butler
To try to understand the title is to try to understand Butler’s writing, and I mean that in a good way. Butler is concerned with ideas, themes, and language–and how those three things cook down into meaning. He doesn’t explain it; but describes it, and he trusts the reader and himself enough to know that, through the thick confusion and minor nausea, his writing will be intuitively understood, and more importantly, viscerally manifested. Herein, rabbits live in bacon-greased arm sockets, wallpaper patterns dent cheeks, and a man is on vacation his whole life. Unabashed controlled chaos. Through the surrealism, I always get the feeling that Butler is talking about something less metaphysical, and more actual: an America today that might cause one to dry heave.
On a formal note, J.A. Tyler is marking MLP chapbooks with a signature ampersand in place of all ‘and.’
& it rocks.
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.
