Sick Ticket by Nikki Guerlain

November 4, 2012 by bizarrojones

Reblogged from The Imperial Youth Review:

Sick Ticket

It had all started at The Neon Boneyard.

We were watching blacklit girls in fluorescent bikinis doing strange things in pools of neon, drinking Bones Under Buttercups— 120 proof butterscotch creams served in white chocolate cups.

An argument broke out at the table to our right regarding the whereabouts of Marilyn Monroe’s body. One man insisted she was still alive and was drinking mojitos with Elvis in Cuba.

Psychotic Housewives and App Hatred

September 22, 2012 by bizarrojones

Things have been moving along nicely since the summer drew to a close. I’ve finally had some time to catch up on creative writing endeavors before hunkering down and starting work on my dissertation. Additionally, some work I submitted before summer has finally hit the shelves, most notably the Death to Brothers Grimm anthology featuring my story “The Housewife and the Ascarid Nematode.” I’m proud to be included in this anthology with some excellent authors. I’m also happy to work with Omnium Gatherum. I missed a deadline for submission a few years ago by just a few days, and regretted not getting something in for their Detritus anthology. So submitting to the Brothers Grimm anthology was another chance at working with them. I’m glad I did.

In addition to this, I’ve also started working with Points in Case, a humor site that features columns, articles and blogs. This is where most of my hate-infused reviews of children’s books will appear first from now on. I’ve added my work with PIC to the sidebar, in case anyone’s interested.

Other than that, Spectacular Productions is about to release an anthology featuring some of my work. But I’ll write more about that on the release date.

Finally, my second book is almost finished. After writing 3/4 of the manuscript, I had to postpone my work so I could finish my PhD course work. Alas, that is finally complete. So while I’m digging into the first three chapters of my dissertation, I’m also writing the final sections of my second bizarro novel. I’m hoping to finish it this weekend if all goes well. There’ll be a lot of revising to follow, of course. But at least the first draft will be complete.

Thanks to everyone who continues to stop by and check out my work on bizarrojones. The two-year anniversary of this blog is fast approaching. And everyone who continues to stop by makes it worth while.

Your Writing Sucks: Elitism in Small-Press Publishing

August 19, 2012 by bizarrojones

This post has no breasts, no bulges, no deaths. What the hell am I doing here?

Like most people I keep in touch with, I grew up on a steady diet of Joe Bob Briggs. That’s probably why I romanticize the plight of B film producers like Troma. It fits in with my relatively Marxist view of the world as well. B films represent the have-nots of the film industry. By that I mean they didn’t always have the resources to make their visions a reality. What they did have, in some instances, was talent and savvy. They used that to up the ante so they could compete with the bigger film companies. And they weren’t afraid to take a few pot shots while they were at it.

After countless decades, not much has changed. I love that Lloyd Kauffman isn’t only out there making and distributing B films. He also supports others who want to do the same. I have watched him appear in countless YouTube shorts made by people just starting out in the B film industry. He’s written books on the art of filmmaking, most notably Make Your Own Damn Movie: Secrets of a Renegade Director. And why not? It’s not going to hurt him any if you make your own film. It most likely won’t hurt the B-film industry either. At worst, it’ll be another drop in the bucket that’s forgotten. At best, it’ll be a hit.

Apparently all that shit’s out the window in small-press publishing today* Every week I see more “you suck/you’re doing it wrong” articles referring to self-published authors than scathing reviews of 50 Shades of Grey. The source of this material is even more shocking than the frequency. It’s coming from my small-press counterparts, the underdogs fighting the good fight against the “big six.”

Every time I see an article or blog post of that rips on shitty self-published books, I can’t help but think about the ever-awesome Maddox, who bashes art drawn by children. It’s humorous because we all know kids aren’t the greatest artists in the world, but we never have the heart to say anything about it. Maddox parodies legitimate criticism because his cruel commentary isn’t constructive in the least, and it is humorous that Maddox pokes fun of people who dive so low to bolster their egos.

I can’t help but feel like posts bashing shitty self-published endeavors are the same, void of the parody and humor of course. These articles tearing down self-published books cover every facet of the publication process, from cover art to bios. I’d like to share a few of my favorite messages directed towards the worst of today’s self-published authors:

1. Your Book Covers Suck

K. Allen Wood has a good point. The cover art featured in this post is pretty rough around the edges. The point resonates with many authors today: if you suck at making cover art, don’t do it.

2. Self Publishing Sucks, and Here’s One Shitty Author to Prove it

I enjoyed this post. It really captures the essence of shock and disbelief when we discover that there are authors out there who literally shit books out and then bubble with pride as they discuss the self-designed covers featuring grammatical errors and horrible fonts.

3. Self Publishing Sucks, Here’s 10 Reasons (that hearken back to the stone-age of print publishing) Why

Self-publishing sucks because bookstores won’t stock them? Hold on Fred Flintstone, Amazon will happily whore shitty books free of charge. And what are these “book stores” you speak of. Finally: “readers care.” That’s nice, but the truly shitty self-published authors don’t. We’ll get to that below

4. Your Self-Published Book Just Plain Sucks

See general comments below.

5. Oh, and Your Bio Probably Sucks

This is reasonably constructive, but the tone borders on non-conducive for the alleged audience.

General Assessment:

One look at most of these articles–not just the ones included here, but the ones that crop up on a weekly basis–and the purpose becomes apparent: these articles aren’t meant to teach ignorant self-published authors how to improve their craft. These articles are preaching to the choir. This is the underdog beating down the uber-underdog. But I can’t understand why. At worst, shitty self-published authors should be met with apathy. At best . . . no, they should just be met with apathy.

I’m not debating the legitimacy of self-publishing here. It can be good and bad, as we all know. But if you’re not a self-published author lamenting the state of self-publishing, or even if you are a self-published author who has a good cover artist, a good editor, a concise bio and a great back-cover pitch–and you invariably admit that all of these factors can make or break your book–who gives a shit about self-published authors with delusions of grandeur and terrible grammar?

To a degree, I think our feigned, or perhaps misguided, concern for these authors rest with a few key misassumptions:

1. Self-published authors want to publish for the same reason: to get published simply so they can say they were published. Doing so is offensive because it reduces the general clout associated with being professionally published. So somehow these authors are dragging the validity of publishing through the mud.

Truth: For discerning readers and legitimate authors, the validity of publishing is in the content. We’ve all read “A-list” and small press books that are shit. These authors are just as guilty for dragging publishing through the mud as the shitty self-published gang, except the A list authors are highly visible and the self-published authors fade into obscurity. Who cares if self-published authors brag about their self-published books? The people who matter, discerning readers and writers, know the difference between a good published book and a shitty one.

2. All authors actually give a shit about (or should give a shit about) their audience, so their shitty work is a failure:

Truth: For some, especially those who only want to be published so they can say they have been published, the contents of the book don’t mean anything. Much like the English undergrads who collect hundreds of books they will never be able to read simply to adorn a shelf with signifiers of knowledge, some authors see their book as a signification of their success. Not audience reception, not the contents of the book, not meaning, not story. Just the book itself. That’s the only validation those authors wanted. It’s pointless to try to appeal to them.

On a scale of blue to red, how much do the worst self-published authors care about your biting criticism?

3. Readers aren’t discerning enough to sort out the good from the shit, and therefore the shitty authors are taking sales from good, small-press authors because the unsuspecting readers are picking up the shitty self-published books. Or, maybe readers are discerning enough but they’d rather buy something cheap, so the “good” authors have to reduce prices to compete with shitty authors who publish at the lowest rate possible.

Truth: To a degree, the latter portion of this assumption is a reasonable concern. But people will pay more for quality work if you let them take a chance on you at a lower price, which is what most small press authors I know are doing. This is wonderfully proactive, and I hold all authors who give their digital work away for free from time to time in high regards.

Where do we go from Here?

I’m not a huge advocate of self-publishing if one is trying to become a best seller, or even a moderately successful author. But if you’re just looking to throw a few copies in a local store, donate a copy or two to your local library’s “local authors” section, have a few copies bound for family, and put the book online in hopes that a few folks will buy a copy, then go for it. If your cover is shitty and the book is riddled with errors, then I may not be able to get through it, but you’re not writing the book for me so it doesn’t matter.

Part of the problem is that a lot of critics of self-publishing are still trapped in this print culture understanding of author/audience relationships. But it’s not the same as it was twenty years ago, and it will never be the same. People can cast their writing out into the world, much like a message in a bottle. It doesn’t matter who the audience is, and an audience may never be reached, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t write the letter and give it our best effort in lobbing it out there, even if our best effort isn’t as good as the next person’s, even if our bottle is just an old Styrofoam cup and there’s a miserable curmudgeon on the next rock screaming “you’re doing it wrong!”

Closing Points:

1. We’re not going to stop self-published authors, no matter how shitty they are, no matter how much we piss and moan.

2. Readers can’t even stop shitty self-published writers. The worst of self-published writers are more interested in product prestige than reception.

3. It’s obvious from the tone that most take in their condescending posts and articles that few are interested in appealing to these people anyway.

4. If you frequent sites that bash self-published authors to validate your own career as a writer, I’m sorry. I really am.

Notes

* – It’s a bit shortsighted to draw parallels between the B-film industry and self-publishing without articulating a few nuances. Amazon is the key variable that complicates the parallel. In B-film, money is still a key factor in production and distribution. Without that, filmmakers are left with few resources and YouTube as a means of distribution. But Amazon has leveled the playing field for all authors in terms of distribution.

Is Expression A Hopeless Endeavor?

March 14, 2012 by bizarrojones

The description I give could easily be interpreted as an, albeit weak, attempt to emulate in words what was done in image here. But what I'm experiencing right now is way more beautiful than this picture, which makes my description even more disappointing.

The wind drives clouds across a black canopy punctuated by stars. The breeze coming in through my living room window stings like winter, tastes like spring, and smells like summer. Trees dotting the horizon across the river are still dead, so the lights from my distant neighbors stutter inconstant through dancing branches. This is rural to the extreme, but the song that best encapsulates how I feel is called “Suburbia” by Matthew Good:

It’s not the lyrics. When I actually focus on those, this song is about something entirely different for me. But the music reminds me of all the things I describe above in a multitude of contexts. It’s a two-way phenomenon too. Sometimes I see, feel, or hear something and it reminds me of the song. Sometimes I hear the song and it reminds me of something I saw, felt, or heard in my past. “Suburbia” reminds me of the years I spent in nearby towns during the transitions between seasons. It reminds me of the subtle scent of cow shit, which you acquire an appreciation of when you come from the north country. It reminds me of the sun setting on distant bodies of water, and the fascination with nature my friends and I could afford when we were younger. It also reminds me of the nights my friends spent driving along the back roads in Gouverneur, or walking through the graveyards, picking up the plastic Virgin Mary statues that other kids our age scattered about. There was something incredibly tranquil about that.

What I’m getting at–by taking the longest route possible apparently–is that it’s weird how sounds, smells, sights, etc., accumulate connotations. It’s something we seem to just ride with. It’s part of what keeps life interesting. You throw on a CD or in today’s case an MP3, and it can take you in one hundred different directions. They say our taste buds change every time we eat something, I think the same can be said of any input we encounter. It changes our senses and perspectives.

The whole chain of thoughts also gets me thinking about how a single experience, consisting of all senses and a combination of emotions, can never be conveyed through art or any form of expression. Multimedia will never be able to emulate human experience, not in the foreseeable future anyway. Boil it down to a series of 1′s and 0′s. The code won’t mean shit to me. Every stimuli carries with it a vast array of connotations. You splice those together with other senses, emotional connotations of sensory input, the words we try to formulate to express that sensory input and emotional output . . . then the connotations of those words . . . The only equation I can come up with is that all of this = isolation. We’re completely alone in this world and all we can hope for are shallow intimations of full connection. But I think that’s the curse and blessing that drives artists forward. We’re hoping to find that perfect phrase that encapsulates a particular human experience or the perfect image that encapsulates how we feel about something. At best I think we find a means of expression that speaks to us as creators and viewers, but it likely speaks to the creator and the audience in a different way.

Worst case scenario, we continue to strive towards forging connections with others. How can that be a bad thing? Art is a win/win situation. Once you consider the inevitable element of loss and futility inherent in creation, you can begin to accept the blessing of ambiguity that expression affords us.

Recent and Upcoming Publications from Kirk Jones

March 3, 2012 by bizarrojones

Death Head Grin

I wanted to write a brief post about some upcoming publications, and some which were released earlier this year that I haven’t had a chance to announce yet. First, my story that was to appear in The New Flesh: Episode I will be appearing in Death Head Grin. The story sets in motion a mythos sustained in the book I’ll start working on very soon, so I’m really excited that this has found a home. I’m also really happy to start getting some longer material out there that people can access for free. I’d like to get more out by the end of this year, so people can gauge my evolution as a writer without having to sink any money into it. It’s honor enough that people spend time looking at my work online.

NEW FICTION IN TWO ANTHOLOGIES FROM STATIC MOVEMENT: Early last year I submitted a few stories to Static Movement. The acceptance rates there are pretty high most of the time, and they push out a lot of anthologies. I liked the idea of writing a few season-related pieces and submitting them to relevant anthologies. I also wanted to practice writing for specific anthologies, and Static Movement was a great place to give that a shot. Anyway, the anthologies I submitted to were released in January. The winter variant is below. It features a story about an old man who gets snowed in during a seemingly perpetual winter. It’s a tale which I hope captures the essence of a claustrophobia-inducing setting:

NEW FLASH FICTION ON BIZARRO CENTRAL: I’m honored to now have a second story up on Bizarro Central as well. While living at my current residence for the first two years, I often found myself out back snaking the septic. The pipe was bent and it led to all sorts of problems. But septic waste is kind of like a second home for me because I replaced septic tanks with my father for a summer. They say to write what you know, so I wrote up a brief piece on pipe obstructions, cranky old men, and a shit load of severed hands. Click the shoddy stock photo of a rubber hand below to read it.

I have two more publications to announce, but I want to wait until the editors announce the ToC’s before I say anything. I’m really excited about both, and I’m happy to be getting back into non-horror bizarro again as well. Keep stopping by, not for my obnoxious self-indulgent updates, but for future interviews with interesting authors. In the near future I’m hoping to interview Vince Kramer, NBAS author, death metal journalist, and action figure porn artist extraordinaire.

Curious George: Deviant Sociopath

December 4, 2011 by bizarrojones

Pictured above: Curious George. Don't fool yourself. Ichi and George are essentially synonymous.

In 1952, H.A. Rey released the third installment of the Curious George series: Curious George Rides a Bike. While on the surface Rey’s text appears an innocent exploration into the forays of a happy-go-lucky monkey, under the surface much darker themes lurk.

One such theme would be that of responsibility to society. Dostoevsky touched down on this theme in Crime & Punishment, but ultimately his 500+ page treatise on the subject is dwarfed by Rey’s unflinching exploration of the sociopathic mind in Curious George Rides a Bike.

In Rey’s text, Curious George acquires a new responsibility after disobeying the man in the yellow hat. Upon riding his bike outside the parameters established by the man, he is asked to deliver newspapers to local residents. Here we see Ray’s exploration of a dystopian society, not unlike our own, in which violating basic rules goes not only unpunished, but shares a positive correlation with reward. Such a twisted system is the precursor to the sociopathic personality which surfaces in Curious George.

But not all is lost. The plot seems to suggest that if and when a society reaches such a deplorable state, karma, or natural order, will set things right. This is a rare circumstance in which nature is depicted as a mechanism of control rather than a mechanism of liberation and potential chaos. George takes the newspapers from the boy, excited about his new task. But he quickly deviates from the parameters given to him yet again, and he crafts the newspapers into paper boats to float downstream. It is then that George is finally given his first taste of repercussion. As he follows the boats downstream, he runs into an obstacle to great for him to tackle, and his bike is destroyed.

Above: George, one hand soaked in blood, one in bile, about to engage in some satanic ritual, no doubt

George tries to ride the bike to no avail, sending a potent and counterintuitive message about social deviance and social mobility. George’s crimes result in immobility and loss of opportunity. This differs from classical works like Crime and Punishment, where upward mobility acts as the incentive for a crime. But Rey’s text requires a dynamic between man and environment that is more complex, for George is a monkey who seemingly has no motive for his crimes. He is deviant for the mere sake of deviance. The fact that his actions are attributed to curiosity is a testament to the ignorance of society, and their inability to see past the facade of a criminal mastermind. Upon closer inspection, one can see that George is actually child literature’s equivalent to Hannibal Lector, showing no remorse for his actions. But in a dystopian society where crime is rewarded, can we truly hold George accountable? How much agency can we attribute to our young protagonist’s actions? The answer comes only through self-exploration. And when looking in the mirror proves too painful, we can explore our primitive urges and darkest desires guised as an innocent monkey. We can laugh at our destructive impulses and eradicate all semblance of accountability. Each time we do, we must remember to thank Rey for his contribution to literature.

New Anthologies/Journals Featuring My Work

November 29, 2011 by bizarrojones

The last few months have been wild in the small press scene, particularly in the realm of bizarro fiction. Content for Mellick’s The Bible Pt. II is currently being reviewed. The NBAS 2011 titles were announced (I’ll be interviewing some of them soon). And BizarroCon just finished earlier this month.

Alas, accompanying the good is a little bad. Two highly anticipated anthologies, The New Flesh: Episode I & Technicolor Tentacles, were cancelled by their proposed publisher. My work was to appear in both, which I announced in a previous blog. Unfortunately, those works won’t be released for a while. They’re currently under consideration for other publications. If all goes well, they’ll be appearing online for free in the near future.

Speaking of The New Flesh, some of you may have noticed new material hasn’t been published on the page in a while. The editor, William Pauley III, is working on some new material (which I forgot to ask if I could write about here), but told me the site will be publishing some new stories in the near future. So stay tuned! It’s one of my favorite flash fiction sites.

Two collections featuring my work, which I haven’t had a chance to announce yet, are available now. Today, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens #10 was released (picture top left). This will be the last issue edited by Bradley Sands. Sam Reeve takes over in coming issues.

A Hacked-Up Holiday Massacre also hit shelves this month. This is my fourth venture with Pill Hill Press (two anthologies featuring my work will be released soon).

Last but not least, in the near future one of my works will be published in New Tales of the Old Ones, edited by Michael C. Dick and published by Knight Watch Press. The anthology will be broken into two volumes, and should be available soon. The stories revolve around the Lovecraft mythos. My story “Blood, Guns & Tentacles” is the first chapter of a book I’m currently working on. I hope to publish several of the chapters in anthologies and magazines, and follow up down the road (way down the road) with a novel that ties the chapters together.

That’s it for now. I always feel awkward about these self-promotion blogs, so I’ll be posting new content in the next few days so this gets pushed down. I’m hoping to hear back from several places in the near future, but I’ll keep these posts spaced out and consolidate announcements so the blog doesn’t get bogged down with this kind of stuff.

Happy Holidays,

The Plight of the Academian and the Author

November 7, 2011 by bizarrojones

Read Aeschylus yet? Have his works on your shelf? If you answered "no" to the first question and "yes" to the second, maybe it's time to reconsider your personal library. Considering the rate new and engaging books are coming out these days, ask yourself, when am I actually going to sit down and read his works? Just toss it.

Now that I have finally weeded out my book collection, I’m starting on my magazines and journals. I started with a year’s subscription of The American Poetry Review that I got back in 2003. I don’t think I can part with a single one of them.

I’m not an indiscriminate reader, not anymore anyway. I mercilessly throw away books or donate them to libraries at least once a month. My disdain for literature which didn’t apply to me started back in my undergraduate years, when the school, or one of the clubs, would host a book sale each year. I’d watch my friends scramble down after class and pick up as many of the “classics” as they could get their hands on. Anything with Aristotle’s name, or Plato or Socrates. We were English majors after all and we already had full collections of Shakespeare and all of the Norton anthologies with the greats. We had moved on to literary criticism, philosophy, and relatively obscure poets like Hart Crane, the poets we didn’t always hear about in class but heard about in passing or in interviews with other greats.

When I moved in with my wife, also an English major, we started boxing up our collections and tossing out the books we both had copies of. Three Shakespeare collections were reduced to one. A lot of required texts we read for class were tucked away in a closet in my parents’ house. Years later when we went through them, we realized most of them meant little to us. Neither of us cared much for American imagist poetry. The countless collections of literature that feature excerpts from classic greek texts, they just didn’t matter. If they did feature something important to us, we wanted the entire text, not a single chapter to sample the material. All of the texts that we promised ourselves we’d get to some day, like the works of Euripides, we knew in our mid-twenties what we didn’t know when we were in our late teens: there was no way in hell we were going to dig through all of the works our professors attributed value to.

I feel like most people hit a point early in their lives where they’ll come to the realization that they’re not going to read everything on their shelves, but they don’t. I’ve watched many a professor retire with three shelves filled with books they’ve never read. I’ve had the luxury of sorting through the collections of retired professors who then, at the moment of retirement, realize they’re not going to read most of the work and leave the books in boxes in a department common room for students to browse, so that they may continue the legacy of knowledge hoarding. I have watched cohorts slink away with bags filled to the brim with books they’ll never read. Screw that. I won’t be a part of it.

The value of these works diminished for me a long time ago. It used to pain me to say “no” when a colleague or cohort in my program asked, “hey, have you checked out Aeschylus?” It doesn’t bother me anymore. That’s not my focus.

I’ve learned, through the years of cleaning out texts which are unimportant to me, not to crack a book that I know I probably won’t read. The minute I do, I’ll convince myself I need to read it. The last time I did this, it was with Proust. The prose was elegant, so elegant and drawn out that after a few pages, I still didn’t have any notion of the plot. But the language. The language!

That’s part of the reason I’ll hang on to my subscription to The American Poetry Review from 2003. There’s some great material in those issues. Some of those folks can truly be called wordsmiths, even the folks who I don’t recognize by name. But there’s another reason: I feel sorry for most of the authors inside, all of which, at the time of publication, had probably convinced themselves that they were on the verge of making it big, at least as far as poetry is concerned. I look back almost ten years later, and I still don’t recognize 95% of the names in the July/August issue. I counted 30+ books advertised in that issue. I recognized perhaps one or two of those names, and those were the names of poets who had been writing since the 90s or earlier. Some of those books probably won a pushcart prize or some other notable award of distinction. I still have no idea who the authors are.

Perhaps that’s my fault for not being an integral part of the poetry movement in America. Maybe it is society’s fault for not attributing enough value to poetry today. Despite the culprit, maybe what I’m describing is symptomatic of the lives of many as writers, including myself. No matter how much exposure we work to give ourselves, we’re still going to die obscure authors known by few, relatively speaking. The question is, are you willing to accept that? Furthermore, why are you writing?

Most days knowing I’ll likely die an unknown author doesn’t bother me. I’m writing because I love it, and if only one other person enjoys my work, that’s good enough for me. I’m not writing to make a living, and I’m glad I’m not. I think that can be dangerous. I’m still motivated to expand my audience, but I find my motivation stems more from my desire to be remembered after I die than to be applauded for my works now. But there will be no marble bust made in my honor. My works won’t be tucked away in some monastery, hidden from the eyes of the general population for years before resurfacing and granting me the acclaim I once thought I might deserve. At best, they’ll grant me continued appointment at my job and I’ll garner a wider audience. Most days I’m alright with that.

But there are some days where I open an old literary magazine and see a plethora of names I don’t recognize. I wonder where those authors are today like I used to wonder what happened to the cast of Salute Your Shorts on Nickelodeon. I looked them up long before I started wondering about authors in these magazines and journals. Like most, they fade into the backdrop. I wonder if the old tapings of their shows bring them only a sense of longing and despair. Do they look back in disappointment at what they thought was going to be when they were in the prime of their career?

Ever wonder what happened to these folks? Some went on to do notable things in the realm of acting. Others just moved on. What're you going to do if and when it finally occurs to you that you're not going to be the next Sophocles, or the next Dean Koontz?

I think it is a pivotal point in the small press author’s career when we have these feelings of inadequacy, when the disparity between what we originally set out to accomplish and the reality of the situation hits us, and for the first time, we begin to feel unremarkable. It’s almost inevitable that most of us will feel this at some point. It’s what we do with it that counts.

This feeling has hit me many times over the years, but it never keeps me down. I doubt I’ll be doing anything different from what I am today, or was yesterday. I have come to terms with the fact that I’ll never stop writing, and I’ll never give up on publishing whether it takes me somewhere, or leaves me laboring over a manuscript in my moldy basement. One of my primary motivations has been to establish a legacy that will live on after I’m gone. I can’t imagine giving up on that while I’m still here.

So what are you going to do? Whatever our dreams are, are you going to move on to do something notable in the field you’ve always loved, or are you simply going to move on? I think the answer rests in part with why you’re doing what you’re doing to begin with.

Negotiating Multiple Roles in Publishing: Interview with Caris O’Malley

October 30, 2011 by bizarrojones

Here's the bulge shot for all my vert-viewers.

Caris O’Malley entered the world of small press publishing last year, with the release of his book The Egg Said Nothing, published by Eraserhead Press imprint, NBAS. As the first leprechaun to be published by EP, Caris has encountered a plethora of interesting reactions to his appearance on the scene. But more difficult than negotiating his identity as author/leprechaun, negotiating his roles as prominent reviewer on Goodreads (cycles through various rankings in the top 50 out of countless reviewers in the community. He’s one of the best, and if you check out his reviews you’ll see why) and published author have resulted in a few interesting scenarios.

Reviewing books, particularly the books of those in your circle in the small press world, remains a complicated issue for authors. Brutal honesty can hurt feelings and, worst case scenario, cut ties with fellow authors. At the same time, being generous to fellow authors can ruin one’s reputation as a reviewer. Out of all the friends I’ve made this year, no one had more at stake in this scenario than Caris, whose status as a high-ranking reviewer for Goodreads put him in a hot spot as a new author in the small press world. Did I mention he’s also a librarian with a taste for high-brow literature?

I had the opportunity to send him a series of predictable and dry questions and endlessly grill him for response, all for the express purpose of posting a bulge shot of Lucky (top left). Here is the result:

1. How long have you been reviewing books?

I’ve been actively reviewing books for about three years. In that time, I’ve reviewed every book I’ve read. Prior to that, I just wrote about the ones that struck me as notable- in either a good or bad way. I find that the process allows me to engage with the work in a way that reading alone doesn’t allow.

2. How long have you been working in the library system?

I’ve been working in libraries for about eleven years. I started out as a Page (book-shelving grunt work) and eventually got my Master’s in Library Science and became a fully-credentialed librarian.

3. Was The Egg Said Nothing the first work of fiction you had published? If not, could you tell us a little about your first acceptance for fiction?

The Egg Said Nothing is my first published work. Right around the time I finished with high school, I gave up on any hope of becoming a published author. It no longer seemed realistic, though it had been my dream since I was a small child. It was too fucking hard. After a couple of years in college, I got involved in a writing group and started to write for the sheer enjoyment of it, but never thought any of my work was any good. As such, I never submitted anything for publication. The Egg was the first thing I wrote that, in my opinion, had any commercial appeal.

4. Stephen King once ranked his roles in life, saying he was a father first, a husband second and a writer third. I think I have the order down on that, anyway. How would you rank the three roles above (reviewer, librarian, author). Or, would you say you avoid prioritizing altogether?

That would be really hard to do, since the three are so interconnected. Being a librarian, I am constantly surrounded by books. Being a reviewer allows me to engage with those books and influences my writing. Reading is my biggest source of inspiration. It’s like having a memorable conversation with a room full of brilliant friends. But if I wasn’t a writer, would any of that be so memorable? Would I be drawn to books to such a strong degree? I don’t know. I think I’d be completely lost without all three of those roles.

That said, if you made me choose, I think that being a librarian would find its way at the top. I’ve been trained to evaluate books; it’s my job. It only beats out writing because I have to spend a hell of a lot more time doing it.

Pictured: Caris O'Malley (actual size)

5. Have you asked local libraries to offer your book or other bizarro books to the public?

I have many times, but it’s never been too successful. There are three significant reasons why. Most of the bizarro publishers out there use Lightning Source for printing. It has obvious benefits of being economical and listing all of its printings in the Ingram catalog. Ingram, however, is primarily used by bookstores for ordering. Libraries have the ability to use it, but typically don’t. They do with another jobber called Baker and Taylor. Many libraries won’t order something if it’s not in the B&T catalog, which immediately puts most bizarro titles out of the running. I’d say that accounts for 90% of the bizarro requests that go unfilled at libraries. Secondly, libraries have to spend their money wisely. With the downturn in the economy, most libraries have had their materials budgets decimated. Because of this, every book purchased has to count. To select the best titles possible, library selectors use professional publications (Publisher’s Weekly, Library Journal, etc.) for recommendations. If your book isn’t in one or (typically) more of those publications (and bizarro titles tend not to be), librarians won’t be able to justify the risk in purchasing. Filling out the trifecta of disadvantage is the nature of bizarro fiction and, more importantly, the titles. Librarians are among the biggest censors of materials. If the book you’re requesting has “fuck” or “butt plug” in the title, there’s a good chance that it’s not going to be purchased. Sad but true.

6. Are there any bizarro books you’d avoid recommending for library distribution due to the extreme content?

Me? No. I believe in open access for all. It is not my place to tell people what they should be reading. People are intelligent enough to judge content on their own.

7. How has being a published author influenced your role as a reviewer?

I’m definitely more sensitive about what I write. I know that, especially in the case of indie authors, a bad review from me can hurt sales. That idea makes me feel kind of icky. Because of this, I tend to be very forgiving to the missteps of my small press peers. I’m not convinced that’s the best policy, but it’s what I’m comfortable with at this point in time.

8. You recently ran into a circumstance in which you were asked to alter and/or remove a review because it was not favorable. How did you respond?

In response to this particular request, I replied that I wouldn’t remove the review. I explained my position and that was that. To that individual’s credit, there was no further argument. S/he respected my position and I appreciate that. Because I tend to be so forgiving to indie authors, I was offended by being questioned on that single critical review. It made me reevaluate my stance on the issue and, probably, made me a bit more realistic. Books should stand on their own merit, I think. People can choose to be really, really nice in their reviews, but they shouldn’t feel any obligation to. When you write something for public consumption, you’re putting your ego on the line. You’ve got to be prepared to take a few hits if you’re ever going to get better.

9. You have had run ins with many authors as a reviewer. How have your relationships with fellow authors changed since your first novella was published?

I’m a lot less intimidated by them than I used to be. Which is good. I really like engaging with authors now. As a reviewer, there’s always this nagging apprehension associated with an author seeing a review you wrote of his/her book. Especially a bad one. It’s impossible to know who can take it and who can’t. I’ve been really lucky in that regard. I’ve given bad reviews to books and have chatted with the authors afterward. It’s cool. Taking the time to write an engaging review (which, really, isn’t hard) seems to be appreciated by pretty much every author. Even if you didn’t like the book, it says something that you took the time to figure out why instead of just riding that gut reaction. Because of reviews, I’ve gotten to talk with New York Times bestsellers, small press legends, and mass market romance writers among others. Hell, just today I was contacted by a guy who wrote a really fucking old pulp sci-fi book that I reviewed. That was super cool. People like to have their efforts recognized and, at its heart, that’s what reviewing is all about.

10. Assuming you do either of the things I am about to mention, which makes you feel worse: writing a negative review for a beginning author, or writing a kind review to avoid causing rifts/hurting feelings? (assuming you do either of those things).

I do both of those things and both make me feel like shit. It is awful to have to tell a new author that you didn’t like this thing s/he spent so much time on. That sucks. But, hopefully, my well-considered criticisms will help make that person a better writer. I know that’s what I try to do when faced with negative reviews of my own work. That second thing, though? That makes me feel like a fraud. And I’ve done it a lot. It’s so much easier to inflate a review because it helps you to avoid the altercation and, more importantly, not be responsible for any negative impact on someone’s career. A lot of small press authors really are trying to survive on their writing, something I don’t have to worry about. That sucks really bad. When I take that easier road, though, and do the nice thing for the author of the not-so-good book, it reflects poorly on me as a reviewer. Don’t get me wrong, every book has its audience. But you put your credibility on the line when you inflate reviews for friends. It’s just so goddamned hard not to.

11. Many authors have different methods for negotiating their dual roles as authors/reviewers. Mykle Hansen avoids giving star ratings for books written by people he knows and Carlton Mellick III generally avoids writing reviews, and has a well thought out philosophy on why he does so. Have you contemplated employing similar methods?

Carlton’s philosophy on reviewing is really smart and kind of excludes him from this discussion. As I understand it, he believes that a reviewer loses credibility once s/he becomes a published author. And, in many ways, I agree with him. When someone sees, for example, the authors on a press always reviewing books on that same press, it starts to get pretty obvious what’s happening. We all look to help one another, but our credibility is shit at that point. Carlton doesn’t review because he doesn’t feel a small press author should be evaluating his friends’ work.

Mykle’s philosophy, though, is more to the point where this conversation is concerned. His refusal to assign a star count stems directly from peer insecurity. Will this person get mad because I gave him fewer stars than I gave her? I think Mykle’s decision makes a lot of sense and it’s definitely a way to go. I, personally, am reluctant to do that because a star rating is important. On Goodreads or Amazon, it’s the first thing a potential reader sees. Five stars can really help a book sell, both on a per-customer basis and working the Amazon recommendation algorithm. So I really like assigning a lot of stars to good books. If I were to stop giving ratings to the books I didn’t like so much, it would still be very obvious that I didn’t like them. And that is a problem. It’s a really rusty, double-edged sword. Covered in AIDS.

Closing:

There are only a few days left before the NBAS team finds out whether or not they have made the cut. Do us a favor and check out the 2010 series on Amazon. “Like” our books, join our fan pages, buy a copy of one of our books. To see O’Malley’s first work, click here.

Have a question for Caris? Want to make an observation about how you or others you know negotiate their dual or triple roles as author/whatever else they’re up to? Drop us a line in the comments section and we’ll sustain the discourse.

New Fiction Available on Flashes in the Dark

September 12, 2011 by bizarrojones

Hitchcock's Psycho often left horror to the imagination of the viewer.

Back in 2004 I wrote a paper in college exploring the evolution of horror in the film industry. The main premise of the paper was that major studios started including the gore and violence B films used to compete with mainstream horror, thus squelching the B film market. As a result, B films had to grow increasingly violent in order to compete with the mainstream, resulting in a discourse of gore and violence. It’s still happening today. I wonder sometimes where the line between tasteful and tasteless was, and how long ago we crossed it.

Pardon this momentary digression. A month or so back, Nicole Cushing wrote an article about horror writers who derive their inspiration from films. You can check that out here. The reason I mention her post is because what I tried to accomplish in my latest piece of flash fiction goes against the grain of her proposition. I have read my fair share of horror, but with “Sixty-Minute Sentence” I was responding to a phenomenon I stumbled upon while writing a college essay about horror films. By stumbled upon I mean found many people who had already made the observation relating to film I’m about to discuss. While this doesn’t make me a writer who doesn’t read, it definitely makes me a writer who can’t deny the influence of horror film on his work.

Hitchcock’s Psycho let the mind supplement the story. Instead of depicting violence, it was left to the viewers’ imagination. Today films like Saw leave nothing to the imagination. I think that’s a bit of a shame, but that’s probably the old man in me lamenting the sacrifice of the old for the new.

Essentially horror films did no different than the American prison system did back in the early nineteenth century. They started by leaving punishment within the walls of the prison to the imagination of civilians. Over time, however, civilians became exposed to what was happening behind closed doors. For some, the reality transcended their concept of punishment. For others, meh, it wasn’t so bad.

Depictions of hell follow a similar trend. They strike me as vague in The Bible. Punishment was left to the imagination of the audience. Today we have a clearer image of hell, one which is so tame for some that they want to become inhabitants.

Maybe there is a place for increasingly violent depictions of punishment and fear-inducing scenarios. If our mind can’t disturb itself, perhaps we need to seek out material that will disturb us. That’s not always my cup of tea. My mind takes me places that sometimes I wish I didn’t have to go. I don’t need anyone to take me to the darkest depths of the human psyche, so I stick with tame writing like that written by Stephen King, and I avoid the torture/rape/gore.

With “Sixty-Minute Sentence,” I tried my best to blend the old and the new. I give the reader a bit to chew on, paint a vivid picture of the punishment, but leave the reader to imagine the closing shot in their head. To go one step further, the form of punishment used in the story is a chemical which draws horror from the victim’s mind. So it is a brief exploration of show vs. leaving it to the imagination both in the context of horror film and in the context of the prison system. The victim is a prisoner who has committed terrible atrocities.

I can’t help but imbue my work with some semblance of justice. I’m kind of wimpy like that when it comes to horror, but it appears I’m not the only one. The more I look for places to submit the more I see resistance to violence against the innocent, particularly animals and children. I’m down with that. There’s enough evil in the real world and I don’t want to walk away from a story with a knot in my gut that reinforces the darkness I already see in the world. I gravitate more towards supernatural horror. That’s the kind of horror that makes my eyes water, that used to make me creep around corners to avoid poltergeists and monsters.

My latest really doesn’t work in the vein of what scares me, however. It’s my attempt to mediate the fine line between leaving nothing to the reader’s imagination and using the reader’s imagination to induce fear. The reader has the power to choose how disturbing or frightening the story is. This returns the power to the reader, or at least that’s what I hope it does.

Hope you enjoy.

You can read my latest at the link below:

“Sixty-Minute Sentence” by Kirk Jones, on Flashes in the Dark

bizarrojones

Category Archives: Writing