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Author Spotlight & Reviews

Sean Lovelace Is the Server Working Now

lovelaceI think Sean Lovelace’s blog is hilarious and always spot on. His writing there makes me not hate runners as much. Like when he did the airforce marathon, I thought that was a fascinating and rugged bit of literary essay.

I also think he thinks that how a thing is said matters more than what that said thing is. That’s a smart rule, a top ten rule, one that can’t be made too elastic. I mean, really, I don’t know him at all so there’s not much reason for me to care about his running habits, impressive though they are, or his disc golf hobby, whatever that is, or how much he likes hot dogs and thinks they are the greatest food on the planteen. But since, blogwise, he often opts to invent a phrase like “hang something all oyster” rather than to further explain a point that is (maybe) clear enough or (maybe) less valuable than the vim of the saying or (maybe) whatever — since that — then I’m piqued and I have a reason to care about all the else, the running and deer hunting and whatever hippy hobby he has.

He can’t, thank heavens, go a blog-sentence without ending awonk. A paragraph like this gives the reader a lot of credit and gives him the opportunity to use language like paint:

. . . I ate my pre-race meal, a mixture of liquids and gels and potato chips and solvents and Near Beer and oil additives. My body felt like a Global Hawk. My stomach did the cloud-cover, the sandstorm. I then descended into the arms of Morpheus.

That excerpt starts with lucid detail then crashes another party. This is the reading eye I brought to his chapbook, How Some People Like Their Eggs, fresh from the Rose Metal Press skillet. How does it measure up?

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September 30th, 2009 / 3:24 am

sean lovelace releases his new chapbook HOW SOME PEOPLE LIKE THEIR EGGS (rose metal press) onto the world much like a mean janitor releasing the class pet just to make everyone sad.  read an excerpt here.  the excerpt is really good.  it has fullness.

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Elizabeth Ellen Rules

I’ve written about her before, but frankly, I could write about her every week. Check out her website for all thing Elizabeth Ellen, including contributions to A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness (Rose Metal Press and a forthcoming chapbook with Paper Hero Press. Here are some power quotes from the woman who was largely responsible for my change in opinion of “online writing”:

From an interview in 3am magazine (linked here):

As for getting noticed…I don’t know. You can always try to be controversial, I guess. That’s certainly one way of getting noticed. Initiate a public feud. Be a dick. Write about it on your blog. That sort of thing. Other than that, I’d say just keep doing what you’re doing. This is going to sound like total, lameass bullshit, but I swear it’s true: I enjoy writing. I love it. I get off on it. I don’t do it to be in a particular magazine or to get a particular publisher’s notice. Not that I wouldn’t be stoked to be in The Paris Review or Tin House or with a major publisher. Of course I would. That’d be awesome. It’s just not something I think about on a daily or weekly basis.

 

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Author Spotlight / 21 Comments
April 3rd, 2009 / 6:14 pm

Rose Metal Chapbook Contest Back For Third Year

The Rose Metal Chapbook contest has announced it’s third annual chapbook contest, beginning October 15th.

Having dipped into the realm of hybrid-fiction, and gained lots of notice from online writers (including Claudia Smith whose The Sky Is A Well and Other Shorts won the first year and helped launch Rose Metal into a little monster of a press) this year’s contest aims to publish another writer of flash fiction or short-shorts or whatever you want to call your pieces under 1,000 words (non-fiction included).

Manuscripts should be 25-40 pages.  Check the website as the opening date approaches for more details.

Contests / 2 Comments
September 29th, 2008 / 10:50 am