It actually kind of reminds me of a Scooby-Doo chase sequence. The editors at Blue Square Press got a pretty awesome blurb from Brian Evenson. I'd say that's a pretty big deal. I can't wait to read this.
Oh, and I'm finally getting my copy of Rocket's from my parents' house. Oh boy, what else? The End of Faith is a pretty heavy book. I find myself re-reading passages a lot. Sam Harris basically states that religious moderates, "are, in large part, responsible for the religious conflict in the world, because their beliefs provide the context in which scriptural literalism and religious violence can never be adequately opposed."
That would be my rap name if i were a serious rapper and not just a drunken free-styler. I finished Brian Evenson'sFugue State this morning. I really liked it, but at the end I was left wondering, what is the difference between theme and redundancy? The stories in this collection are all pretty damn good on their own with some of them tying together, or at least feeling like they do later on. But I did feel, at the end, that I would've liked a little more variety thrown in. Especially towards the end, when I want to ride the common wave of the work as a whole while reaching to that next step to finish it off right. Paranoia and unreliability ooze from both "Fugue State" and the last story, "The Adjudicator". I got the same feeling from a lot of the stories.
There were definitely some gems, though. I would say that "In the Greenhouse" was the scariest story in there. Without the right pacing, I could see this story reading like an episode of Scooby-Doo, but Evenson knocks it out of the park. "Ninety Over Ninety" takes a step away from suspense and shows the reader a different kind of horror story: the publishing industry.
My final verdict is that I will read it again, but one story at a time, at sporadic intervals. The writing is very tight and can teach me a lot. But it needs a break. Up next is The End of Faith by Sam Harris.
There is also this:
Looks a little more practical to me. They're at least trying to show us things it can do that their other products can't.
So issue six of >kill author is fucking good. I especially like the poem "Upside-down" by Mark Neely. That's some smart shit.
And, after a writing hiatus, it appears that Craig Clevenger is back to work on his third novel. And apparently hanging out in Bolivia? If you haven't read any of his stuff, you should check it out. if you can find it.
Working a double today. Should be napping, but I'm not tired. I will be though. Probably halfway through my second shift.
Ingrid Rojas Contreras's manuscript, La Niebla, is in the running for Penguin's Breakthrough Novel Award for unpublished authors. Check it out. I'm reading it now. Pretty tight writing.
I'm noticing a trend in the way news/blog topics spread across the little community I've entered. A lot of said news/topics come from HTMLGIANT or The Rumpus. They then filter down to Bark, or The Barking (not sure on the actual title) or to blogs without multiple contributors (solo projects). So by the time I move down the line, the news is old and boring. If I post something that I find on HTMLGIANT, odds are, it's already been seen by the people that read my own blog. This being said, I am trying to swim ever deeper into the World Wide Abyss to find news or videos or something that hasn't been commented on 100 times already.
What's funny is I found out about Wizard People from HTMLGIANT and not Brad Neely's website.
So, if this works, you should be seeing a banner I designed for David Peak. If the next part works, you should be able to embed it into your blog? We'll see.
How this all started is, I was thinking about marketing. What goes into successful advertising? I figure there are a couple essential steps. The first step is to obviously promote the product. This is done with things like banner ads. Other tactics: graffiti (chalk or otherwise), email or text message campaigns, and contests put up by the publisher or author. Really it's about creating familiarity between the consumer and the...consumed? To do this, you want something, a similarity between all of it. I chose to keep the Red. Also the cover art. Now do this with another medium and another and repeat and repeat and repeat until people get curious enough to see what all the hoopla is about.
The next step would be to get people pumped about about the author. Products have logos, but what about people? Symbols. Freud had his cigar. Michael Jordan has the dunk silhouette. For David (unless he's changed drastically since moving to New York) there are two things.
That's right, a beard and a sweater. (By the way, part of me thought that Beard and Sweater Books would be a pretty sweet name for a micro press but this is cool too.) As much as it sucks to say, diluting a person to a handful of features makes them memorable. Drew Carey has his glasses and David has his sweaters. And a beard of the gods. You boil the person down until the person becomes the product and the product is just a companion you buy to get more of the person. I'm pretty sure once you turn the person into the product, that's when you start making butt loads of money. Then you release a jacket or a shirt that just has the above image (from here on out to be known as Peak by PeakTM) repeated like a god damn Louis Vitton bag.
Seriously though, Peak by PeakTM aside, pay attention to this guy. He kicks ass.
