Last week we had a discussion about community and it became clear that the majority among us indie lit writers and publishers (that felt moved to comment on this blog) believed that writing and publishing with the indie lit community in mind may not be the primary goal, but was very important to keep in mind.

Since then, it’s become abundantly clear to me that the writing that we produce and publish, the stuff that all this wall head beating is for, is being marketed by us, right back to us. We are the audience and we are the producers. It’s created a very clear niche.

The positive effect seems to be that with each powerful story that we write, with each novella and journal we publish, we seem to up the bar for one another, making a decent training ground for us to hone our chops in the hopes that we may be able to graduate to the big leagues. However, some of us are fine just where we are, harboring no interest in publishing with, or on the level of, a major publishing house. A lot of those guys have fucked the publishing industry into the ground with their inability to adapt to a changing market, so why would you want to have anything to do with them?

The negative effect is that the more we write and publish toward each other, the more insular we become, the more splinter factions of style choices are created, the smaller the niches grow until it’s Writer A writing a story for the singular audience of Writer B and vice versa, ad infinitum, the literary version of a circle jerk.

The problem: We, as an indie lit community, aren’t connecting to readers. Independent film has had its boom, and was shortly followed by a boom in independent music. It’s time independent literature had a boom of its own.

There’s a prevailing attitude these days is that no one reads anymore. This is bullshit. Books haven’t lost their power to speak to people and there are folks out there who want to read, they just don’t know what to read. When faced with an overabundance of choices, a person is going to go with what’s familiar. That’s why the bestselling authors stay bestselling authors and why it takes a new author at least a $100k marking campaign to tap into that list. There are people out there craving the good words we’re producing but we’re nowhere close to reaching them. However, as indie publishers and writers, we don’t really have $100k to throw around on marketing campaigns. So what can we do to connect with readers outside of our immediate circle? Do what we’ve always done: start small.

1. People react most to word of mouth. Recommendations are how people make choices on what book they’re going to read next. Did you love The Adderall Diaries? Suggest it to a friend. Did We Take Me Apart change your life? Pass it on to someone you love and tell them that it means a lot to you. Do book trades. Promise your girlfriend that you’ll read the Harry Potter books she holds so dear if she reads A Jello Horse.

2. Ask your friend’s band if you can sell your book at the merch table at their show. If you’re book looks lonely at the table all by itself then sell other books you like. Contact us publishers, I’d happily send out a stack of mags if someone said they were going to sell them for me at a rock show.

3. Start an indie lit book club! Holy crap are book clubs awesome, sitting around a friends living room one night a month drinking wine talking about books. Damn good times, my friend.

4. And blog, people. For the love of god, blog. If you love a book, write a review. It doesn’t even have to be a great review, you don’t even really need to say anything more poignant than, “This is a good book. Here’s why. You should buy it.”

There’s people outside of the writing game who are looking for good words and they’re not finding them. Instead they’re going with whatever’s on their immediate field of vision, meaning books published by corporate publishing houses. Last week my friend IM’d me saying he wanted to start reading some novels so he bought Never Let Me Go. However he claimed he had a short attention span and thought short stories would be more his speed. I sent him links to AM/PM, SFAA and A Common Pornography (the HP version. Technically not an indie lit book, but definitely a gateway to it). He added them to his cart at Powell’s almost immediately. People have a fever, they need good words to cure them. You are the doctor. Prescribe them some good stuff.

As writers we can’t sit back and let the publisher worry about how this is going to get into the hands of readers and vice versa. This is something we love and no one’s going to market this stuff for us, so the onus is on us as writers and publishers to get it out to people who are going to react to it.

These are just some beginning ideas on how indie publishers and writers can connect to readers. If you have nay others please shout them out in the comments. We’re all in it together.

Digital designer, Judy Rush, offers insight into the realm of 21st century photo editing with real/fake. Rush pioneered the surreal aesthetic that’s been dominating the ad campaigns of Fortune 500 companies lately. real/fake shows the process, from digital editing software to old fashioned smoke and mirrors. It’s always interesting to see things get made. Is it just me or does it remind you of the writing process? You start with an image or a sound that captures your attention for wahtever reason and you try to create a world to give it some context. Strange that photographers and digital media artists have to rely on software to get their vision across. Sometimes it’s inspiring that all a writer needs is her noggin.

I just bought The Passage. I still haven’t bought Witz yet, but I bought The Passage. It’s the most heavily marketed book in recent memory. It’s the publishing industry’s next great white hope. I had to see what all the hubbub was about. Usually I hate the idea of reading popular fiction. I’ve go no desire to read a Stieg Larsson book, and that’s for no particular reason other than it’s in the hand of every person on the train, on the shelf at every bookstore, on the front page of every bookstore’s website. I hear Stieg Larsson’s a good read, a storyteller guaranteed not to bore. I’ve got no other reason to dislike it other than everyone is reading it. If I was forced to read the Twilight books right now I think I’d seriously consider jumping out the nearest window.

My girlfriend wants me to read Harry Potter. I really don’t want to. I’ve got nothing against Harry Potter. I like the movies. I just feel like it would be a gigantic waste of time for me to jump into Harry Potter as I’ve got “more important” books on my to-read list. We’re doing an exchange. I’ll read Harry Potter if she reads something I choose for her. I haven’t decided what yet. Maybe Witz.

So what this impulse boils down to is that I think my taste is better than everyone else’s in terms of popular fiction. Either that or it stems from a fear of being perceived as one of the unwashed masses consuming the candy of the literary world. In either case, it’s a stupid impulse. You should just like what you like and not give a shit what anybody else thinks.

Do you hate books just because they’re popular? Where does the impulse come from? Is it jealousy that people are reading things that you haven’t written?

June 16th is the day we hoist a glass to the most linguistically crazy Irishman that ever lived, James Joyce. To celebrate, Annalemma alumn, William Walsh, has graced a handful of lit blogs with excerpts from his new collection based on the work of Joyce. William explains:

The book collecting all of these Joycean derivations is called Unknown Arts, and it will be released by Keyhole Press in February 2011. The title is inspired by Joyce’s epigraph from The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: “And he sets his mind to unknown arts.” It includes texts and poems cut from all of Joyce’s works, including the verse and his play Exiles.

Kick your heels up with a glass of Jameson’s, adjust your eyepatch, put that erotic love letter on hold for a second and enjoy your Bloomsday courtesy of Mr. Walsh. Take it away, Bill…

BLOOMING!
William Walsh
A text derived from Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)

It was too blooming dull sitting in the parlour with Mrs. Stoer and Mrs. Quigley and Mrs. MacDowell and the blind down and they all at their sniffles and sipping sups of the superior tawny sherry Uncle Barney brought from Tunney’s. The blooming stud was too small for the buttonhole of the shirt, blooming end to it. Sure, the blooming thing is all over. M Bloom you’re looking blooming Josie used to say after I married him well its better than Breen or Briggs. So lonely blooming.

Looking for more of a Bloomsday fix? William is getting a few other lit blogs in on the fun. Head on over to Big Other, Artiface, Keyhole, Letters With Character and The Kenyon Review for more.

Buy it here from Word Riot.

Nick Antosca’s second novel, a southern gothic ghost story with heavy echoes of Ray Bradbury, begins with the main character, Bram, driving into the gravel parking lot of a bar late at night and accidentally running over a dog. The dog is badly injured, its legs mangled, and Bram is put in the position of killing the dog to end its misery. But the dog crawls away before Bram is able to find a gun to dispatch it. Shortly after, he happens upon a set of a child’s bones and is soon visited by the ghost of that child, Adam Dovey, who begs Bram to help find the man who killed him so they can “get him.”

He introduces characters like Jacob Bunny, a reluctant child murderer, and uses an effective device to flashback to his past, to show the audience that while a man may do evil things, he may not be evil. He links Adam and Bram in a metaphysical way, and forces Bram to follow Adam out on his dubious mission to seek revenge on the man that murdered him.

Antosca quickly sets a metronomic rhythm for the book. He puts his characters in uncompromising positions, sets them on paths and watches as they try to negotiate their way through them. It’s a refreshing thing to see an author of his generation using these tools of storytelling with such a deft hand. It feels like most authors his age are content to delve deep into a character, to let the voice propel the story, or to get drunk on language in the hopes that it will lead somewhere. While his voice and language are strong and metered, the characters fully drawn, Antosca seems unsatisfied in letting these elements carry the weight of the story. He straps these storytelling elements into a fixed track towards conflict, unable to escape until they reach the end. The result is a novel that is immensely enjoyable to read and impossible to put down.

If there’s an area where the book leaves you wanting, it’s in the realm of cultural relevance. The world of Midnight Picnic is somewhat timeless, capable of taking place at any point in the last 50 years. There are no pop culture references, no mention of brands or companies, nothing to place the story specifically in one time or another. In doing so, Antosca makes the story accessible to an audience of all ages, but he robs himself of the opportunity to make any sort of statements or comments on the world in which he lives.

However, Antosca’s aim with Midnight Picnic is not to create a zeitgeist, but rather to tell a good ghost story, and in that regard the book is an incredible success. But something about reading a young author with this much talent, it begs the question as to why a ghost story grips his attention as severely as it does. For a generation that struggles so painfully to define itself, it’s unexpected to see a writer refuse to broach the topic in novel form. If anything, it leaves the reader poised with excitement to see what Antosca do next.

Buy it here from Word Riot.

(this was the first thing that come up when I Google-imaged “online writing community”)

Last week Darby Larson and I had a brief discussion over at HTMLG regarding Annalemma and its submissions policy, but that’s not what this post is about. Without recounting the entire conversation (it’s at the bottom of the thread, you can read it here), we got on the topic of community, to which Darby said:

“i come at it a little differently maybe as an editor, not so community-driven. i dont think of submissions as potential forgings of relationships or trying to help writers get better. just words for me. ones i like stay, ones i dont go away, not much else.”

This comment cocked my head a bit. Wouldn’t it be in your best interest to be community driven? Wouldn’t it benefit you in the long-run to forge relationships? That’s why communities are formed. So a group of like-minded individuals can work together towards a common goal. I was going to bring this up in the thread but it was Friday and the weekend loomed and I had steam to blow off. So I bring it up here now.

There is a very good chance that if you’re reading this you are a member of the online writing community. Let me ask you this: Are they just words to you? Are you simply interested in publishing wherever you can, regardless of the format? Are you working towards a goal that benefits your own interests of becoming a famous writer? Or are you publishing and writing with the community in mind? Do you wish the success of the places you publish? Wouldn’t that ultimately mean the success of your own writing?

The bad news: Sometimes when I read a novel or a work published in a journal, I ask myself if I’d publish it or not. Being somewhat lazy and mostly unmotivated to try unfamiliar things, I tend to read stuff that I’m pretty sure I know I’ll like, so most of the time that answer is yes. But sometimes, there’s a disturbing thing that happens when I pick up that familiar book, the one I’m 89% sure I’m going to like. I find myself saying no, I don’t think I would publish that.  This happened to me in the bulk of the Padgett Powell’s last story collection.

All Along the Watchtower is a three-part cacophony, two parts the ranting of a stroke victim, one part surreal morality tale. The premise is bizarre, spare and feels inconsequential: The narrator, enlisting the help of a nurse administering a constant stream of narcotics, is in search of a 50-pound Chihuahua. The language loops in and around itself, often going off on obsessive-compulsive tangents. It all makes for some tasty reading to the language aficionado, but at major cost to the story. Great writing is a balance of ample language dexterity and storytelling skills. When a piece tips too far in either direction I tend to question the purpose, and great writing should never leave you with that question. Great writing should state its intent. Whether or not it fulfills that is another thing altogether.

The good news: The first three stories in this collection are the embodiment of great writing.

The title character in the story Wayne is a study in what it means to be a modern southern man. Powell creates a compassionate animal in Wayne. Neither or gentleman nor complete shithead, he falls somewhere down the middle, living his life without expectation or fear, a concept that’s ugly on its surface, but so goddamn desirable at its heart.

Trick or Treat, is a small cross section of sexuality: A 12-year-old boy falling in lust with a 36-year-old housewife who may just oblige him. Two humans in probably the most sexually hormonal imbalanced ages a male and female, respectively, can find themselves in. It’s surprising this is the first time I’ve seen is as the stage for a story.

Scarlotti and the Sinkhole, another character study of a rural teen fuck-up with delusions of grandeur and the power that delusions have to change himself and those around him.

One indisputable fact is that Powell is a national (more specifically, a southern) treasure. I love language artists. They are people not only dissatisfied with repeating the same colloquialisms and stock phrases, but downright repelled by the idea. They make it their mission in life to test the limits of coherency, while trying to maintain a steady stream of connectivity with the reader. It takes a wild brain too, a thing Powell has in spades. A brain that fires through rapid cycles of potential and kinetic energy at all times, delighting you nine times out of ten, and one time making you question the mental stability of the brain’s owner. It’s something that’s so goddamn rare and such a hard thing to do that it blows my mind they aren’t given weighty government positions. If the sanest among us can’t handle the job, why not let the crazies have a go of it?

Holy crap there was about a bajillion readings this weekend. Fair warning: most of the photos in this post are people standing in front of a microphone and staring at paper. Nothing terribly interesting in the visual sense other than you get to see writers in an uncomfortable position, which is kind of interesting, I guess. But for the most part the photos are an excuse to talk about the events. And to prove that I was actually there and I’m not totally bullshitting you.

David Peak reading at the Dogzplot “East Coast Doggystyle Street Campaign.” Best reading series title ever.

John Madera. I don’t know if you guys know this but John has the biggest brain I think I’ve ever encountered. His ability to retain knowledge astounds me.

Sahsa Fletcher brought it. I just found out about Sasha recently and damn if he isn’t one of the more exciting writers I’ve encountered in a long time. I just bought his book from MLP. You might want to do yourself a favor and do the same. Someone who also brought it was Barry Graham. Another book that is probably worth your time and money is The National Virginity Pledge.

And then shit got a little weird.

And then it got real weird.

OMG, I went to a poetry reading. And it was damn good. This is Jason Koo.

It was the Polestar Poetry Series put on by Melissa Broder, a woman who very much seems to have her shit together. Man, these photos really suck a lot of ass. I might as well have been taking photos from the bathroom stall. I get self-concious about taking photos at these things. Everyone’s very quiet and do you really want to be the dude up front with the wide angle lens and remote flash sprawling out on the floor to nail the shot? At a poetry reading?

Ladies and gentlemen, Adam Robinson.

Have you read his book yet? Why not? It’s probably the best poetry book I’ve ever read.

This is Matvei Yankelevich. He made up bar poems off the top of his head. I believe this is called “Freestyling.”

This is the standard pose poets assume when two or more of them are having their photo taken. There’s a photo of Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath in the same pose.

Page 15 is an Orlando-based nonprofit that offers free reading and writing education to Orlando public school students. It warms my heart to see my hometown investing time, money and effort to young writers. In a city that, at times, feels like it has a non-existent literary scene, I consider the mere existence of this program a triumph.

The new Hobart provides stark insight into the difference between publishing fiction in print and publishing it online. A hallmark of online fiction is that it’s short. It’s written and published with the mind that you’ve 50, maybe 100 words to hook a reader, after that you’d better keep a tight grip on their lapels for the other 900 words if you’re going to keep them reading to the end. There’s plenty of juicy celebrity gossip and cat videos out there to compete with, so you’d better not waste anyone’s time. This constraint can be motivating for a writer, but a lot of tasty storytelling elements can get thrown out the window when trying to whittle everything down to a palatable 1000 words.  Things like slow pacing and deep characterization.

The stories in The Great Outdoors issue of Hobart remind you why it’s rewarding to read a story in print. These stories turn down the volume to the outside world and take their time letting their horror and beauty unfold. They remind you that stories can be more enjoyable as a slow burning wick, instead of a buckshot blast.

Highlights:

4 Outdoor Apocalypses by Lucy Corin

Corin’s work in this issue kind of negates everything I just said as none of them are above 1000 words, but these four short pieces show a larger picture of a destroyed world. My favorite, Glass, moves fast: a new plant species that’s sharp like glass is taking over the world, infecting the world in its shards. Corin keeps her scope wide with this one, dropping in detail when she needs to and quickly moving on. It’s not so much cursory glance as it is showing the audience what’s important and nothing much else. I’ve lost my taste for apocalypse fiction, but Corin pulls out a beauty in the end of the world while many writers are content to wallow in despair.

The Fish by Patrick Sommerville

This one’s the prime example of how fulfilling a story can be when a writer takes their time. Ben returns to his hometown to visit his estranged mother who’s on the brink of death. He runs into Carl, a friend of his mothers who ran a successful fishing business until a Japanese executive suffered a horrible accident on one of his trips. Years later the two men are in different stages of disrepair: Ben is worried about being stuck in this town forever, and Carl is simply stuck, unable to recover and rebuild from the accident. The thing I love about this story is Sommerville never uses exposition. If there’s something profound that happened to a character, he’s going to take you back and show it to you in a scene, because it’s important and deserves more than a cursory glance or an offhanded mention.

The Lake by Becky Hagenstan

David, another broken young man, makes a trip out to visit his father, another shattered old man, who’s taken to living out in a cabin in the woods by himself after a series of defeats has caused him to withdraw from life. David goes out there on the pretenses of delivering a gun the old man kept in David’s basement. The old man claims it’s for shoo-ing away bears, but when David gets out to the cabin he soon learns it’s for a far more bizarre reason. In The Lake, Hagenstan shows how a father can disappoint a son and vice versa and that the only answer is to forgive and move on, otherwise the bitterness with consume you like a prehistoric beast creeping above the surface of the water.

Congrats to editor Aaron Burch. He’s compiled a damn fine stable of writers this time around, not surprising considering Hobart is one of the most reliable journals out there for quality stories.

Click here to buy.