After years of silence (for no apparent reason) I just started talking with extreme journalist Brooke Geery today. Turns out she recently blogged about my blog, so in good form I’m blogging about her blog about blogging me. Blog.

Not sure if anyone who reads this blog is the same type of person who submits to the magazine. Regardless, figured I’d give this a shot anyway.

ANNALEMMA NEEDS CREATIVE NONFICTION

If you or anyone you know is in possession of any kind of CNF (essays, memoir, interviews) that you’re willing to have published send it ASAP to chris@annalemma.net.

The submissions department is currently drowning in short stories and we need some nonfiction to balance it out. Tell your story people! Your real story. It’s not hard. You’re already doing it. You’re just changing the names and calling it fiction. Keep them names in there! Dish about that time you and your cousin ot stuck in the UN and ended up as Chancellors to Belgium and subsequently caused an international incident when it was learned you only knew how to say, “Where is the H&M?” in German.

Let’s be honest. Your family was going to disown you at some point anyway. May as well make it happen on your terms.  Click here for more details.

Here’s a new feature that I’ll try to cram in every Friday wherein I talk about some hot new books I’ve got my hands on. So hot they are steaming. And there’s a lot of them and I’m unorganized so they’re in a pile. Here we go!

The Lost City of Z by David Grann

This book is fucking sick. It’s all over the place right now and there’s talks that Brad Pitt is turning it into a movie so I’m sure you’ve been bombarded with it on your most recent trip to Boarders. Don’t be try to be cool and pretend that you only go to the independant bookstore. We all know you’re a fiend for Barnes and Noble and their infinite racks of magazines. Anyway, I’m only 40 pages into this book and I’m hooked. It’s a real life Indiana Jones story of Percy Harrison Fawcett, one of the last Victorian explorers who was bound and determined to find El Dorado, the lost city of Mayan gold, deep in the Amazon rain forest. He disappeared and was never heard from again. Grann recounts Fawcett’s journey and even takes one himself, trying to find out what drives men to explore and why that drive can lead them to obsession and madness. Creative nonfiction book of the year, so far.

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano

I started a book club with some friends a few weeks back. We’re called the Hard Covers and I’ll talk more about that in a few weeks. We chose this as our first book. Why? Not sure. There was a list of books that we all wanted to read and this one had the coolest cover. Also, Bolano is credited with being one of the creators of Mexican literature and some of us in the club habla espaniol, so it seemed like the right fit. Bolano’s got an interesting story. According to the introduction in the hard cover edition he was one of those possessed writers who did nothing but read, travel the world on a shoestring budget and write his gosh darn dong off. And that’s really what this book is about. Travel, poetry (I know, I know), Mexico and writing. It starts off real good with steady pace and interesting narrator, but 125 pages or so in he switches to an unconventional form that can come off as annoying at first but once you sink into it, you kind of get what he’s doing, but it doesn’t make the form any more interesting once you know what that form is. Guess you just kind of have to stick with it. Kind of hard to explain. Just read it. It will teach you how to live.

Everything Raved, Everything Burned by Wells Tower

I first came across this dude after reading one of his stories in the most powerful lit mag in all the land. It was a good’n of his that they published so I bought his recently released debut collection. Lemme tell you. If you’re a story writer and you’ve been trying to get your stuff published for a long time to no avail, pick this book up. This is how modern short stories are written. Tower’s main strength is his characters. They’re real, fully-drawn people, not caricatures propped up by disingenuous quirks. Most of them are males careening into a mid-life crisis, coping with the stunted growth of their 20’s and 30’s and waking up to realize that they are nowhere close to where they thought they would be at this age. That, and vikings, apparently. I don’t know, I haven’t read that far. Long story short: good stories, this guy will win awards, hop on the bandwagon early.

That concludes this edition of A Big Steaming Pile of Books. Hope you enjoyed. And if you’ve got your own steaming pile nestled next to your bed or in between the couch and the end table, feel free to share in the comments below.

While the question of “why?” in regards to the Columbine tragedy may seem like kind of a duh question to you and I, author Dave Cullen and anyone else over 40 during the time of the incident were left scratching their heads to the skull and blaming the playstations and the Marlyn Mansons and trenchcoat mafias and other trivial distractions.

Kelbold and Harris weren’t exacting revenge on a society that scorned them. They were fucking crazy. End of discussion. It would seem in the light of even the most preliminary of evidence that this is a logical conclusion. Not so, says Cullen, who spends 432 pages explaining that the Columbine killers did it because they were (gasp) “psychotic”. No fucking doye, dude. What other breathtaking revelation are you gonna lay on us next? Michael Jackson has had plastic surgery? Bruce Willis’ character at the end of Sixth Sense was actually a ghost?

Anyway. This books seems, at best, a waste of time and money and, at worst, an exploitation. In spite of all that, the cover is still pretty cool.

I’d go so far as to say boarderline groundbreaking. Most big publishing house releases, when they try to go for stark and profound end up fucking it all up by putting a big ugly blurb on there or placing the authors name and credits in a conspicuous place. Not so for this one. Helvetica font floating like a ghost above a photo of the infamous school on an overcast day. A perfect execution of understatement, proving that not much is needed to solemnly remind the average American of the chilling and horrific act that took place that day.

Even though this little gem was a steady competitor for this week’s BBCDW, I decided not to go with something that took me five minutes to mock-up in InDesign.

This collection came out almost a year ago but it’s just popping up on my radar. The cover for the Justin Taylor-edited collection concerning the end of days has a look like it’s survived a 50 year stint in an underground fallout shelter. No surprise why this is viscerally appealing. Writers and lit types love old shit. Preferably mid century old shit. It reminds them of a time when novels and stories held greater sway with the average American psyche. Days before the Facebooks, days before every new product name was preceded by a lower case “i”. Don’t worry writers. Those days will be over soon. In fact, all the days will be over soon. Excellent work on facilitating the end of the world, Justin Taylor.

Hey y’all, big news in my neck of the woods today. I been keeping this one a secret for a while now but the cat’s out of the bag today.

It’s with great pleasure that I announce that my first collection of poetry is going to be published by Simon & Schuster this fall. It’s called “But by Then I Was Too Famous” and I’m really proud of it. Most of you who know me know that I’ve held adamant stances against most poetry and poets in the past, but that was all just a clever ruse to throw you off my scent.

So that’s the big news! It’s not a joke! Read all about it here.

Actually, this one probably falls under “Almost Good Book Cover Design of the Week.” The cover for Sana Krasikov’s debut of stories falls just short of sublime due to publishing house pressures to put a big ugly blurb from a wildly bestselling author conspicuously on the front. Also, that stock Adobe cursive font used for her name isn’t helping things either.

Regardless, this looks to be a good writer to keep an eye on. Check out one of her stories here. And have you seen a picture of her yet? Yowza! I gotta move to New York.

While scouring the webs yesterday I came across this video of recent contributor Joe Meno reading from his new book.

Joe has been kicking ass lately. Makes me feel like a proud poppa. Even though he’s seven or eight years my senior. And is my former teacher. And has published a bajillion more things than I ever have or will. And has met Salman Rushdie.

Proud poppa nonetheless.

This week’s entry is a little bit biased. I’ve known some of the Featherproof guys and gals for a little bit and Mr. Zach Plague had a novel excerpt in issue #3 (which is on sale btw).

Amelia Gray’s first book, AM/PM, is a semi-connected collection of flash pieces, one per page, each of them packing a huge punch in each paragraph. My favorite so far is an entry that tells of a PDF file that is a symbol for love. Keep an eye on this book and this author. Both are poised for blow-up status.

The aforementioned Mr. Plague is responsible for the pen-and-paper cover drawing. Simple, effective, charming, interesting, and accessible. Well done Zach.

So I’m in the midst of sifting through submissions for issue #5 and this process has compelled me to go on a bit of a tirade about the business of writing good stories. Seems that some of you submitters out there have forgotten some fundamental principles of good storytelling so I thought it would be in both of our best interests if we took a little trip to Writing Day Camp.

Here is what you are about to say:
“Who the fuck is this guy telling me how to write good stories? I’m already a good writer. I drink and I smoke and I read Chuck Palahniuk. End of discussion. I’m a fuckin’ writer.”

Take it easy. I promise you will get something out of this. And if you don’t then, well, you can punch me in the arm at about 40 percent. No, 30 percent.

Also, I wanted to do a “list” kind of post cause apparently they’re really popular with internet nerds and I want to drive up my hits. Tryin’ to make dat internet money son!
(ahem) Sorry. Let’s begin…