Wordhustler is your pimp
“Submit to Over 4,000 Literary Markets Without Leaving Your Desk” is WordHustler‘s tag-line. Basically, from what I can gather without actually signing up for an account (scary!), this is the match.com of the literary world: you make yourself seem as unrealistically attractive as possible for daunting goals, give them your credit card number, and wait in desperation.
Hey I’m just a joker with a day-job, check out what the writer of freakin’ The Bourne Identity says:
“The only thing I don’t like about WordHustler is that it wasn’t around when I was getting started. I can only lament the countless hours I spent grappling with commerce when I could’ve been focusing on art.”
— William Blake Herron, Screenwriter of The Bourne Identity
Haha! You started saying one thing, but then switched it! That’s like when Jason Bourne says he’s going to Berlin but goes to Hamburg!
They also have this nifty diagram of a SASE citing attributes such as the stamps. Who is stupid? Us or them? Somebody is stupid and I demand to know who it is.
What they said about what we said
In the fall last year, a +3000 page pdf titled “Issue 1” was published featuring +3000 writers/poets by For Godot, a glorified blog. There was a catch: 1) the poems were never submitted/solicited, 2) the poems were not authored by the cited writer (instead generated by an online algorithm) and 3) no editorial correspondence preceded the publication. In short, this was more about the conceptual, probably satirical, musings of the ‘editors,’ and less about the content of the publication. I smell commentary.
The classical education I never had: Herakles
One half of Power & Glory
I don’t know balls about the Greeks or antiquity, friezes or columns. I sort of remember reading Antigone in school, but don’t remember being all that interested in the degenerate offspring of Oedipus. Still, knowing the difference between the major Greek playwrights, or even just a workable understanding of the mythology, seems one of the marks of an educated person, and I find myself in the possession of two collections translated by the wonderful Anne Carson. The one, a collection of four plays by Euripides, is called Grief Lessons. Here, my internship begins with Herakles—Euripides’ take on the half-human son of Zeus, once ably portrayed by television star Kevin Sorbo. I wonder, was anything lost between the fifth century BC and mid-nineties USA programming? READ MORE >
Today in Big Publishing’s Dying Shudder
Oh, hey! Another editor has managed to convince his bosses that his internet addiction is not a huge drain on company time and bandwidth by getting a freely accessed photo blog turned into a book!
Harper Big Wig into phone: Nelson? Get into my office. Now.
Nelson, entering: Yes boss?
HBW: Nelson, I don’t know if you are aware of this, but all the office computers now have spyware on them. According to our records, you spent all of last week surfing the internet.
N: Uh. Well, sure. I was…doing…research?
HBW: Research? Why weren’t you reading the slush pile? Did you find anything?
N: [Pause.]
HBW: Well?
N: A blog with pictures of fried foods?
HBW: Nelson, you’ve done it again! Let’s get a contract drawn up.
And scene.
Keep throwing shit against the wall, fellas. Something is bound to stick.
English lessons with Ma
My mom recently (finally) started using email. I set up a yahoo account for her and she doesn’t understand the concept of passwords, so neither my father or I can use our yahoomail accounts, as we must keep her ‘signed in’ at all times. The few times when I signed her out, she freaked. She has officially acclimated/regressed like the rest of us. Now she emails me every day ad infin asking me to edit her emails to her friends in China. This was today’s discourse:
Fun with… Mathias Svalina’s iPod
Probably most of you know Mathias Svalina as half of Octopus. Well, unlike other-half Zachary Schomburg, Mathias made the mistake of coming over to my house and drinking beer with me. He also made the mistake of leaving his iPod here. Then he went to Nebraska for a week. Then I went to Atlanta for a few days. Now other stuff is happening, but the upshot is that I’ve had his iPod for at least two weeks now–maybe three? It’s just been sitting on my desk. And we keep emailing about setting up a time to get it back to him, but we never seem to be able to meet up. So I finally decided I should make the most of my time, and share some of the highlights with you.
WHAT ARE YOUR WRITING HABITS/RITUALS/METHODS
"dear new yorker, enclosed is my story, HIT A HOMERUN FOR GRANDMA, LITTLE BILLY."
i think everyone has or has had a method. what is your method? here’s mine for right now:
sit down on my bed (which has no box spring, sits on floor)
pinch my eyes closed to avoid crying (then use the one or two tears that fall onto my leg to twist up my leg hair into “dreads”)
inhale a beachball filled with nitrous
then just cut and paste babysitter’s club books and pantera lyrics
This Post Should Be Meaner: Authors BookShop
One time I asked this musician named Joe Nolan — who is cool, who is awesome, who knows what he’s doing, here’s a song — how come he didn’t hook up with some indie label, and he said an indie label was just a kid with a book of stamps.
You can self-publish your fuckin’ CD, but not your stupid book.
To see what the people who self-publish their books are doing, check out the Authors BookShop.
Especially check out the list of publishers — how many do you recognize? For me, not a lot (though there a good few, for sure). I did a few clicks and it seems like many of these are them least-fancy self-publishing services. Oh man, they’re lousy.
But the Authors BookShop is okay. ABS is providing a necessary service at a far better deal than Amazon. It has a bad name and most of the publishers who use the service are, to put it nicely, different than what most HTML Giant readers care about — but Brad Grochowski (President, Founder and author of The Secret Weakness of Dragons) is doing something that should be done, can be done, and — he’s opened it up to everyone.
Here’s why Grochowski started the thing: READ MORE >
Alice Blue Where Are You
Alice Roosevelt, whose blue dresses defined the color Alice Blue, seen here wearing (nice job, internet) yellow.
One of my favorite online litmags is the rather low profile Alice Blue Review. They publish both fiction and poetry, and their aesthetic reminds one pleasingly of mint leaves, gangplanks, polar bears, and polar bears who hitchhike.
Sadly, their site has been down the last few weeks. I emailed their Poetry Editor Amber Nelson about this sadness and she emailed me back:
Mike
Thanks for your concern! alice blue is not dead! We know there is a problem and are working on it. It should be back up shortly.
thanks again!
amber
So there you are. Thanks Amber! Alice Blue fans: Worry about something else! It’s the Wild West and do you know where your magnolias are.