Tips For Getting Published
Rauan — boils it down
*****
[ …touched and overwhelmed by all the letters I get bemoaning the travails of getting published I spent the last few days locked up in my laboratory boiling my thoughts and advice down to the basics. The essentials.
Stick to my program and you’ll likely be a Bestseller before the cows come singing on down through their skulls full of rice (results not typical)… ]
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1) “It’s all about the writing”—well, you know, that’s absolute crap.
2)
If your nose
Aint brown, this book’s
Going down(like the Titanic, fire & Ice, blah, blah)
These sorts of mantras and reminders are vital. Tape this one on the wall over your desk. Engrave it on your sad, desperate brain.
publishing’s a cold-blooded beast
3) Lie, beg, borrow, steal, squeal, bribe, flatter, romance, fuck, suck, READ MORE >
Brian McGuigan (of Seattle) talks Tao, Junot Diaz, Guns, Poetry Readings, etc……
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writing, like Nascar, needs to “twerk”
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Rauan: so what do you think of Tao Lin’s prose?
Brian McGuigan: Tao Lin is the literary equivalent of Nascar without the excitement of car crashes. I know people out there love his work (as there are many out there, like me, who don’t), but reading his prose is like watching cars drive in circles. His sentences lack much pulse. The verbs don’t twerk–they don’t even do the Hokie Pokie. They just lay there flat, motionless, like sex you don’t really want to have but you’re doing it because you know your partner wants it and you just want to go to bed. I feel the same about Lin’s dialogue, which is often cited as his skill, but it reads like a bad Miranda July movie, overcooked and unsalted. There’s just no spice. The sum of it all reminds me of writing I read in college workshops over a decade ago. If I could ever make it through one of his novels (Twenty pages into “Richard Yates” I chucked the book on the floor of a beloved Seattle indie bookstore and walked out.), I’d have red-penned the shit out of it. I’ve never understood the hype around Tao Lin. His writing just isn’t for me.
*****
w/ Spice — (twerkin’)
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Okay, so that was the first part of my latest Seattle Author Spotlight (# 8, featuring Brian McGuigan).
*****
Brian was, until quite recently, the program director at Hugo House. Brian’s still involved with Hugo House, curating among other events his regular and extremely popular Cheap Wine/Beer & Poetry/Prose nights, but now, after the success of his essay My fantasies of mass murder at Salon, Brian spends most of his working hours on a memoir regarding his experiences with violence, guns, etc. Brian McGuigan is street wise, a damned hard worker and has an excellent and elegant sense of humor. Coming out of a tough Irish family Brian certainly has toughness also and, though I don’t think he’s been to Ireland, Brian speaks as though he’s kissed the Blarney Stone several times! It was great chatting with him in preparation for this Spotlight.
And, to follow then READ MORE >
Interview w/ Melanie Page of Grab the Lapels
I recently stumbled across Grab the Lapels, a book review venue that describes itself as “ladies only — the books are written by women, and read by a woman.” In light of continuing conversations about both the VIDA count and related gender critiques in the publishing world, and the environment of literary criticism in general, I found the concept of this site really interesting. Melanie Page, the brain behind Grab the Lapels, was kind enough to answer some brief questions:
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JL: For those that don’t know, can you explain the concept behind Grab the Lapels?
MP: Grab the Lapels is a website (so far, it’s just me) that posts reviews of prose—but everything reviewed is written by women. The only reason I don’t do poetry is because it’s not a comfortable place for me to review well. Not all reviews are 100% gushing/positive, but all of them are respectful toward the author. Reviews are posted on the 1st, 7th, 14th, and 21st of the month. They are posted not only at Grab the Lapels, but on Google+, Amazon Reviews, Goodreads, Facebook, and are linked to The Next Best Book Blog‘s site. The books I review can be genre, innovative, mainstream, whatever.
JL: Can you talk a bit about your past experience reviewing for other publications and what led you to start a review site specifically for and by women?
MP: I started with one review in The Collagist after Cris Mazza posted on Facebook that she wanted someone to review her forthcoming book. After I caught a typo in a book review at JMWW I was brought on to review there, and have done so regularly since 2012. I’ve also written for the Notre Dame Review, Necessary Fiction, The Next Best Book Blog, and American Book Review. In some cases, like NDR and ABR, the reviewer has little choice about what she reviews, but for the other publications I was often given a list of books from which I could choose. Most of the time the list was full of men and very few women, which bothered me. I started only choosing books by women after I reviewed a book that I thought was shallow and misogynistic (downright degrading, really) for one magazine. My review was so negative that the magazine shied away from publishing it, so I posted it on my Goodreads account and ventured out on my own.
Seth Abramson’s Using Me!!
— Seth Abramson —
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[ “…….. I’m kind of thinking, believing, that even without these peculiar and exceptional contexts (and this is impossible for me to truly know) that there’s something really compelling here. Something really fascinating. Many of you will think I’m goofing around here. I am not ……..” ]
***
to follow is an excerpt from one of Seth’s newly-minted poems (available on Inknode (here) and on Youtube (here) where you can listen to the audio of the poem coming out of the visual of a disconcerting seated-figure):
“…Seth Abramson grabbed her. Threw her to the ground. Pulled off her pants. Ripped off her panties. Mounted her. Seth Abramson’s young pink balls rubbed painfully against her hairy twat. O Lord, he thought. O Lord. O Lord. And finally Seth Abramson collapsed in a young boy’s cumless climax. She pressed charges. Seth Abramson was arrested. But when they examined her they found no traces of semen or forced entry. And when they examined Seth Abramson it all made sense: he had a house-mouse cock…”
(from “Strangers,” a poem “comprised of 275 statements made by individuals I have not met.”)
***
And this, if I might say so myself, is excellent work (ha ha), and I say so, because I have a sense of humor, and because I wrote a “version” of this in my Adventures of Sex Ableton (# 11, to be precises) that I posted READ MORE >
NYFW COMMANDO CASTING FAIL & “THE ROOM”
Last week was particularly weird. It was–is?–New York Fashion Week. This always means there is a lot that is happening in which I am not particularly interested in partaking but will end up doing anyway, because I am interested in the act of mistake-making. Every year and season I have a different approach to the fashion weeks, but usually it is a combination of excitement and confusion for what might possibly happen. [1]
DIRTY LAUNDRY
This year the surprise came to me as I was sitting on Houston eating the Whole Foods pizza slice my friend Brenna bought me. I looked like I smelled and was wearing my favorite hat, which no longer exists because of this beautiful dog I was dogsitting. Three short figures approached me and started talking to me about doing a runway show, and I definitely did not say yes and I was trying to be fully uninterested but maybe I wasn’t convincing. Initially, I did a stellar job at ignoring the email I received following the proposition, a message that emphasized how much they would love for me to stop by for the casting. [2] But then, two days later I got additional strongly-worded texts and voicemail messages. “We really want you!” read an SMS my ego believed, and there I was in an ugly white room with fluorescent lighting in Midtown.
Unfortunately, I had shaved and they liked me much more with facial hair and stinky, so in the end this was a waste of energy. But I was also rolling and attended the casting underwearless, swiftly adhering to commands such as: ‘Take your pants off, please.’
Perhaps I self-sabotaged, but at least I didn’t have to wear cowboy gear in public.
Behind the Scenes & Craft Notes & Random / Comments Off on NYFW COMMANDO CASTING FAIL & “THE ROOM”
September 9th, 2013 / 1:42 am
September 9th, 2013 / 1:42 am
HTMLGIANT Updated Review Guidelines
FOR PUBLISHERS/PRESSES/AUTHORS:
Email info about upcoming titles to janice@htmlgiant.com. Just the basics are fine ie. Title, Author, Release Date, Publisher, and URL to the book page online.
Only if someone is interested in reviewing a title, will I write back with a request for a review copy and you can send a review copy directly to the potential reviewer. This helps preserve sanity, space, and dollars.
FOR REVIEWERS:
Most of our reviews are submissions-based. Send any formal review submissions to janice@htmlgiant.com and any 25 points or anonymous review submissions to brooks@htmlgiant.com.
If you’re interested in reviewing for htmlgiant and would like to stay updated on possible review copies or are open to assignments,etc, send an email to janice@htmlgiant.com.
Behind the Scenes & Random / Comments Off on HTMLGIANT Updated Review Guidelines
September 6th, 2013 / 5:11 pm
September 6th, 2013 / 5:11 pm
Alex Dimitrov: “It’s My Book”
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The writer Ted Rees takes real issue with Alex Dimitrov’s decision to use a photograph from David Wojnarowicz’s Rimbaud in New York series as the cover of his book. Rees is clearly disturbed by this and over on his Tumblr (HARM MASSAGE) he fleshes out what he considers to be “a multitude of problems” in the form of a letter (DEAR ALEX DIMITROV) that you can read in full here .
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Here, now though, is an extract from Rees’ letter:
…your use of Wojnarowicz’s photograph is, to quote a friend, “one of the most unconscionable appropriations” of another’s artwork that I’ve seen in years. It speaks to a self-importance wrapped in ignorance at best, and a type of colonialism at its worst. Through social and perhaps physical capital, you have acquired an image, totally denuded it of its creator’s political and social intentions, and made it into what you imagine is a reflection, and thereby a representation, of yourself and your work. The act debases Wojnarowicz, whose life was punctuated by poverty, hardship, confusion, and resistance, and whose work attempted to bring attention to how these elements worked on his own life as well as the lives of those around him.
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And, to follow, now, is the transcript of a little Q & A that I did with Alex:
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Rauan: You don’t seem too bothered by Rees’ criticisms. But could you tell us why you chose the Rimbaud Wojnarowicz piece for your cover?
Alex: Wojnarowicz’s work is important to me—the anger and passion READ MORE >
No End to Things That Are Not Holograms
The company responsible for the Tupac hologram that performed at Coachella last year, Digital Domain Media Group, recently went bankrupt, somehow, despite the millions pouring in from investors, the $400,000 Dr. Dre himself reportedly paid for the puppet Tupac, and funded plans they had to resurrect Elvis as a hologram and possibly pitch holograms to political candidates to deliver virtual speeches this upcoming election.
Ok, so Tupac is double dead now, him and his hologram. Sort of. I mean some still insist he is not physically dead, but one thing for certain I feel moved to clarify is that he was never a hologram. Not even remotely close.
The Tupac hologram was simply a high-quality isolated video projection (niced up with 3-D graphics to provide depth cues) on a transparent screen (a sheet of mylar stretched across stage). Not very different, technologically speaking, than what you see when you go to the movies. It was sold as a hologram because it seemed like a free-moving 3-D object “beamed” from some magic device, like what we saw in the first Star Wars movie when Princess Leia sent an image of her bodily form to convey a message to Obi-wan instead of just simply sending a recording of her voice or some writing. (The significance of her using her whole, three-dimensional (but shrouded) body to plead her message, virtually, is a topic for a different article, but of course this fictional technology is already inspiring a robust pursuit at MIT.)
The real name for what you saw in the Tupac trick, or in Gorillaz “live” stage performances of its cartoon members, or in Hatsune Miku, a blue-haired Vocaloid anime girl/voice synthesizer whose songs can be created by users, is the Pepper’s Ghost Illusion, which you have seen if you’ve ever been through the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. It’s a stage trick involving secret rooms, angled glass and lights that create ghostly images that seem to float and disappear midair. Although mentioned by some news sources, “Pepper’s Ghost Illusion” obviously doesn’t sound as technologically-advanced as “hologram”; in fact, it sounds a little quaint and old-fashioned, which is why marketers haven’t seemed to want to bring it up.
The only reason this misnomer bothers me is that it masks the true facts of real holograms, and the facts are wonderful, more wonderful than the facts of Pepper’s Ghost Illusion. I recently finished writing a whole book inspired by the facts of holograms borne out of an accidental obsession that started when, for no reason I can remember, I looked up holography on Wikipedia. READ MORE >
Sounds of a Cowhide Drum
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A morning mist
and chimney smoke
of White City Jabavu
flowed thick yellow
as puss oozing
from a gigantic sore
These lines, the opening lines of a poem entitled “An abandoned bundle,” were composed in or around Johannesburg in the late 1960s. It is possible they were written in 1967 the year I was born. It is quite unlikely (but I guess it’s possible) that they were written on October 18, 1967, the exact day I was born in a white hospital in white Johannesburg. These lines, though, were most likely written in Soweto, or on a train between Soweto and Johannesburg, where the author Mbuyiseni Oswald Msthali lived and worked in the 1960s.
And then, a bit further down in the poem, we find
Scavenging dogs
draped in red bandanas of blood
fought fiercely
for a squirming bundle
and, finally, the “abandoned bundle” (the “squirming bundle”) is “a mutilated corpse – / an infant dumped on a rubbish heap-”
[ Sounds of a Cowhide Drum released in 1971 (Renoster Books). A new Jacana Media edition, including isiZulu translations of the poems as well as a foreword by Nadine Gordimer, is now available. ]
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Mtshali, somewhere, says “I am not a Liberal, Nationalist or Progressive but a black who tried to articulate the daily hopes and disappointments of his life.” But these are not simple poems. READ MORE >
#LINDSAYSNEXTCHAPTER (/& EXTREME EXTREME TRANSFERENCE)
RUMORS
In a 2010 Grace Kelly inspired front-cover profile of Lohan for Vanity Fair, the Nancy Jo Sales we know and love states: “Lindsay looked a little raw. And yet shining through her worry and stress and whatever else was currently affecting her mood was her all-American beauty, finer and more delicate in person than in pictures. She still looked like a movie star. She smelled of cigarettes and exotic perfume.”
A very embarrassing thing I have fully embraced about myself is that my brain holds too much information about Lindsay Lohan. In a hypothetical quiz where I was presented with a random photo of the actress, I would swiftly be able to easily identify what specific era it is derived from, as well as extensive details that to someone unfamiliar with her saga would seem chimerical. When names like Patrick Aufdenkamp become familiar, I begin to wonder why I care so much. There is an element of irony in my admiration, but there is no doubt I do hold a positive stance about the starlett.
Tabloids and gossip magazines often report the behaviors of young stars. A large segment of the tabloids focus on those who act entitled and expect special treatment due to their fame. The inquiry ‘Don’t you know who I am?‘ is most frequently perceived as pompous, but maybe it should also be interpreted as the absolute cry for help. The person posing such a self-important question is so unaware of his/her reality that s/he needs others to remind him/her of it. The worth or lack of worth ultimately appears to fully depend on the recognizability of the individual.
TRUTHS
In “The Schema of Mass Culture,” Adorno argues that the commodification of the cultural industry ceases its distinction from pragmatic life: “On all sides the borderline between culture and empirical reality becomes more and more indistinct.” Consequently, the individuals who find themselves in the culture industry confront the loss of their private reality, especially when their public presence is one in which they are investing in to develop a personal brand. As the person becomes the product, the risk of losing a part of their previously held individuality becomes grave: the personality features that are expected to generate more profit will comprise the new “person,” more representative of the brand/ product.