You’ve got roughly 15 hours before the deadline for Annalemma Issue Seven: Endurance closes for good. Deadline for submissions is at 12:00 midnight EST tonight. We’ll be closing submissions for the next week in order to get a breather. After that we’ll only be reading for online publication for a while.

If you want to appear in the print issue this is your very last chance for a very long time. Time’s a-wasting! Submit already!

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I’ve been working on some copy for a website for the last couple days. The purpose of the copy is to play the hatefully baffling SEO keyword Google ranking game. A game that I’m typically skeptical of (but something I realized lately about marketing and sales is that there’s rarely one golden goose marketing strategy that turns everything around for your business or project. The most successful strategies are usually multi-faceted plans that cover a lot of different media outlets. You’re don’t invest yourself into one book trailer and hope that goes viral, you spread yourself across many platforms, hoping to reach as many people through as many different outlets as possible. But anyway, keywords.)

The biggest flaw in Google ranking is that it doesn’t rank quality sites highest, but instead it ranks sites that contain highest concentration of the words you’re searching for. In a perfect world, only the best sites would have a high concentration of those words you’re searching for, but when you know how Google ranking works, regarles of your sites quality, you can jam your site with keywords to get to the top of the list.

Before posting this I searched “most prestigious literary magazine” “best literary magazine” and “most successful literary magazine” hoping it would take me to the site of a respected lit mag that publishes quality stories. Instead it took me to a few blogs talking about which mag was the best. Then I wrote the following paragraph hoping it would take this post to the top of the rank (it didn’t, not enough keywords):

Annalemma is the best literary magazine that has ever existed. There have been many literary magazines that have existed before Annalemma, but none as recognized and prestigious as Annalemma. In print and online, Annalemma is the most successful literary magazine that has ever existed. Annalemma is benevolent with the power and influence that it wields. Many people cower in fear at the accomplishments the best literary magazine in the world has achieved. Annalemma touches them on the shoulder and whispers, “Fear not, my child. You are in the presence of supreme good.”

Sorry about all that. Just trying to prove a point. I felt really shitty writing all that because it was something I knew wasn’t true. I won’t deny we got a pretty good thing going here but it can’t really live up to those claims. Which is my main problem with SEO: it’s an easy quality filter to circumvent. Not only that, but there’s so much emphasis placed on it in internet marketing. Ideally it should only be one part and parcel to your entire marketing strategy. I guess the thing that bothers me most about SEO is that it makes it easy to use language in an ugly way for selfish gain. Then it struck me. Most people attempting to write fiction use language in this manipulative SEO marketing style, without the intent of evoking any sort of image or emotion or connecting in a meaningful way with a reader, jamming their stories with words they hope will click on receptors in peoples brains that make them remember times when those now-empty words were used skillfully.

Words are such beautiful things, using them like this seems perverse.  But it doesn’t have to be that way. The challenge that faces you when playing the SEO game is the challenge that faces every person attempting any discipline of writing: use language in a beautiful way in order to accomplish what you need in times you live in.

If you’re waiting for the last minute to submit to Annalemma Issue Seven: Endurance, then you are very close. Deadline ends Friday, August 6 at midnight. We’re gonna try to read all of the outstanding ones over the weekend then make the call Monday.

The short list has grown into a shining stack of excellence, so if you were holding back with your best piece, now is the time to submit it. The competition has teeth.

Told in second person, Ablutions begins with the narrator “discussing” the regulars. A wannabe cop with Vitiligo, a dubious medium with a long grey beard, a South African ex-pat ex-male model, a former child actor bloated, bleach blonde and hopelessly warped by his childhood in the spotlight, a parasitic-yet-lovable crack addicted giant, characters that have nothing and no one in their lives more important than themselves and the seedy LA bar in which they spend most of their time. Through the lens of an alcoholic bar back, the narrator has brings the audience into the world of the bar just before his life and the lives of the regulars begin to spiral out of control. Jobs are lost, lives are threatened, prostitutes are hired, marriages are dissolved and horses are, without warrant, beaten and shouted at.

On paper, the premise of Ablutions looks like it was dreamt up by a young man aspiring to the romanticized archetype of the drunk writer: notes for a novel regarding alcoholism, spending one’s life in bars and drinking dangerous amounts of whiskey and consuming a brain-baking amount of drugs. At best, the premise feels like well-worn territory and, at worst, tedious and uninteresting to anyone over 21. However, DeWitt possesses the skills to transcend the stereotype: an annunciated wit that seems inherent to people from the northwest, an insight into the actions of addicts and the ability mold them into crystalline aphorisms that demand underlining.

Regarding the narcotics-addicted pharmacist woman who the narrator believes is actually a pre-op transsexual male, “She has asked you many times to walk her to her car or to the ladies room, and has asked to accompany you to the storage room, but you always say no because there are certain mysteries in the human world that you have never been curious about and here is one of them.”

The wisdom of an institutionalized drifter, “There are two types of people: Those who want to cry, and those who are crying already and want to stop.”

Regarding the narrator wishing a regular’s death, “Simon is staring at you, and now he knows for a fact something he has suspected for years which is that you have a streak of hate in your heart and that it is deep and wide and though you have hidden it, it is unmistakably uncovered now, and he will never feel that previously mentioned fondness for you again and you can see the words in his eyes as plain as day: I’m going to get you fired from here, mate.”

Most impressive about deWitt’s style is how he recognizes the importance of showing images rather than expositing. Describing a tall man the narrator becomes briefly obsessed with, “He is leaning against the wall of a convenience store and you see his wide hat and dark clothing and know he could cross the street to you car in two long strides and you think of him following you home and crawling through your front door on his hands and knees.”

The idea of notes for a novel may come off as lazy, as if the writer didn’t feel the need to flesh out the story or characters all the way, but instead decided to hand the audience a bunch of ideas and leave it up to them to piece it together. This isn’t the case with Ablutions. The notes aspect offer the audience the immediate intimacy of reading someone’s journal, as if the narrator immediately trusts us, and in turn, we must trust him to take us somewhere interesting.

When you spend lots of time in bars, drinking and operating under the delusion that you’re going to one day be the next Fante or Faulkner (a romanticized lush in your own right) you collect all these strange things that happen in bar culture as if they mean something, as if they can be used for your writing at some point. The drawback is that the things that happen in bars often only add up to a few anecdotes, some jokes, and maybe a good story to tell a stranger who drags a seat up next to you. However deWitt pulled something interesting off in Ablutions with these collections of abuse, of violence and self destruction: he painted a larger picture of pain and suffering and the depths of denial that human beings are capable of when they stop taking responsibility for their lives. DeWitt highlights the point that those are the moments that can come to define us as humans and he asks the audience this question: What kind of human are you? The kind that succumbs to the horror of your pain or the kind that propels yourself out of it?

While it would have been easy to sleep in, to stay in bed until noon watching TV reruns on the laptop, we decided to do something different with our day.

It was forecast to be the hottest day of July on record. And it was. And we had no shade. And no hat. And it was a spectacular display of sweating. Book covers baked in the sun. Vendors of iced products raked in cash.

But despite the oven-like conditions, books were sold and readers (heretofore unaware of the small press/independent literature world) were connected with. The best part was turning people on to books that we loved, to be able to say you will love this book, and have them trust you. It was cool to know that they are about to embark on a journey that’s worth their while and you were a part of that. And maybe they’ll have their eyes opened to all the amazing things that are happening with all of these presses. It was worth the v-neck sunburned received.

See you in a month, Brooklyn Flea.

Dear friend and Issue #4 contributor Sam Weller had a new book, Listen to the Echoes, released this week on Stop Smiling Books. My body is buzzing with nervous energy to read it. The Paris Review was gracious to host the release party.

The man of the hour was gracious enough to throw an invite in my direction.

There was a looping slideshow of pics from Bradbury’s house. Ray Bradbury’s got a globe of Mars in his home. Fucking Mars!

It was wild to walk around  TPR’s office. I felt like I was gonna brush up against some priceless artifact and accidentally break it, going down in history as that guy.

Even the bathroom’s got cool stuff in it.

Mr. Peak and one of the more sexual lit mag advertisements I’ve ever seen.

We were part of an ex-Chicago contingent showed up in support of Sam.

Sam is an amazing human. He believes in people. He believes in the strange and exciting work that they do. Even when they don’t believe in themselves. That is a rare thing to find these days. Consider yourself lucky if you’re in the position of being his friend.

The Paris Review! Come on! I’m sorry, this office was incredible. I won’t deny it, I was nerding out big time.

Thank you, Sam. And congrats!

We’re joining forces with a handful of publishing power houses this weekend to sell books at the Brooklyn Flea. Are you in the area? Come visit us and pick up some quality books. And why not grab a a corn dog and a vintage ottoman while you’re at it? See you there!

Were you aware that the deadline for the Annalemma Issue Seven: Endurance is less than a month away? It’s true. The short list is already expanding into a stack of truly humbling words. Some of you submitters out there have been trying to shoe-horn your old stories into the theme. That’s to be expected and we don’t fault you for it. Eh, maybe we fault you a little. But perhaps we were unclear with what we wanted.

If you want to read a hell of a meditation on endurance please read the following Dear Sugar column that has been making the rounds at a few different places. It will rock you to your bones. It will make you cry. It might even change your life. Everything good writing needs to accomplish. If you’re thinking about submitting in the next couple weeks, keep this one in mind.

We’re looking for stories that people will connect with. Stories that encourage people persevere when everything is telling them give up. The word ‘hope’ has lost some currency in the past couple years. That doesn’t mean we still don’t need it. Submit stories of light in the darkness. Submit stories of hope.

Consider this a non-sexual-slap-on-the-butt bit of encouragement. Now get to it and good luck!

The city of Chicago was up to a whole heap of bullshit, as mentioned a couple weeks ago. Not sure how it happened, but the Chicago Public Library stepped up and got the Gabriel Levinson’s bike full of books out of the garage and back onto the streets where it belongs. Raise a glass once again for Gabe and the CPL for keeping an undeniably good project going.

Read a good interview with Gabe here.

While it may not have been as cool as the reading that took place last week, the second edition of Soda Series, brought to you by Greg Gerke and John Dermot Woods, happened in Prospect Heights last Sunday. Holy crap did it have a good line-up. Matt Bell, ladies and gentlemen.

Matt read from his new story collection coming out on Keyhole later this year. If you’re a fan of Matt’s writing then you should start getting very excited because it is very, very good. He had a couple gallies to pas around. Mr. Peak and I fought for a copy with our teeth.

The inimitable John Madera. John and I got into a heated discussion over literature, which inevitably lead into a discussion about the meaning of art and, subsequently, to the meaning of life. Shit got a little deep and that was just fine with me.

I’m glad I went cause I got turned on to Jeff Parker. Jeff is a very funny man with very insightful things to say. And apparently he’s a skateboarder from Central Florida, which makes him nothing less than a King among men in my books. I bought his book and he wrote his favorite quote from T.S. Eliot in it: “Hello Mr. Death. How do you like your blue-eyed boy now?” So good.

I didn’t get a good pic of Amber Sparks, unfortunately. It was her first reading and she did a bang-up job. She got all high tech and read from her iPhone.

The writers in discussion. Thanks to John and Greg and all the writers for making it happen! Soda Series is swiftly becoming something very good to look forward to.