TNBBC's The Next Best Book Blog

Review: Taft 2012

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:15:00 +0000

Read 1/15/12 - 1/23/12
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended
Pgs: 249
Publisher: Quirk Books

Think a fictional book featuring a political figure just isn't your bag? Think again! Jason Heller smacks the White House on its ass and makes it his little bitch in his recently released debut novel Taft 2012.

This sweet little satire starts with Taft's unexplained appearance on the muddy White House lawn in 2011, where he seems to have just awakened from a 100 year deep sleep. After multiple tests confirm that this is indeed our twenty-seventh president returned intact and unaged from god-only-knows-where, Taft is reluctantly ushered into the twenty-first century - wireless telephones, airplanes, social media, state of the economy, Twinkies, and electronic golfing. Once the public catches whiff of Taft's presence, he soon feels the familiar rush of celebrity. Die hard supporters quickly create The Taft Party - nostalgic for the way things used to be, for the old, honest, American values - in the hopes of pushing "Big Bill" into the presidential elections once again.

The book is made even sweeter by short chapters paired with creative news and media coverage in the form of TV transcripts, news articles, book excerpts, secret service entries, and even a fictional @taft2012 twitter stream. It helps that Jason wrote William Howard Taft as this immensely lovable, slightly bewildered man who simply cannot understand the sway he still holds over the public, 100 years later. I mean, how often do you read about a character you kinda wish you could have met in real life, right? Taft felt real and down to earth while still managing to exude this sense of worldliness about him. I would love to snag a cup of coffee with the guy and pick his brain on the pros and cons of America then and now.

A political premise with some sci-fi thrown in for fun... Taft 2012 is a cleverly enjoyable, never gimmicky, read for readers of the left wing, right wing, and no-wing persuasion alike. It's an equal opportunity novel and I recommend you pick it up and give it a whirl. If you manage to grab a copy soon, you might still catch the man behind Taft 2012 in the Author/Reader Discussion taking place right now over at TNBBC. If you're unsure, why not hop on over to the discussion now and see what our readers are saying about it?

Still not enough for you? How bout feasting your eyes on these book trailers?

Did I mention how extremely timely the novel is? With the new presidential hoopla going on in the "right here and now", how can you NOT want to read this book? And with all the #ows and #sopa news, why not consider the potential old school, back to basics mentality that only a 150 year old president could bring to the table?

For more info on the book, you can listen to Jason Heller speaking to the book on Twenty-Twelve and also on this NPR interview . And check out this Taft 2012 Campaign website to whet your appetite even more.

The Larry Closs Blog Tour Kick-Off

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 11:30:00 +0000

Welcome to the very first stop on the Larry Closs Blog Tour!

I am thrilled beyond words to introduce you to Larry and his stunning debut novel Beatitude. Here's a little secret...It was my fear of this incredibly poignant, beautifully complicated novel going unnoticed and unread that instigated this blog tour. As I cracked the cover and began reading, I realized I was holding a book that had the potential to slip between the cracks... to fade away before it had found its chance to shine. And I panicked.

Published through Rebel Satori - a very small, virtually unknown press - Larry found most of the marketing, publicity, and (believe it or not) galley printing, falling onto his shoulders. It was Larry's review pitch that alerted to me to the book initially. Had he not pitched me, Beatitude would very likely have slipped right by me as well!

And therein lies the rub when publishing with an indie, right? If you guys know me at all, you know how obsessed I am with small presses and the amazing literature they continuously crank out. Awesome books with unique stories that appeal to specific sorts of readers. But these publishers also tend to have smaller wallets, which translates into limited funds, which translates into a limited reach. As of today, Larry has not yet toured to promote his novel, which released back in October. So I took the reigns, took action, and decided to launch a tour of sorts for Larry, to help spread the word about Beatitude and get his book into the hands of more readers.

I am so happy you decided to pop in and check it out! And I am extremely grateful to Emmet, Mandy, Patrick, Jenn, Erica, and Tara for offering up their blogs as additional stops. I am also immensely grateful to Larry for his enthusiasm and willingness to work hard behind the scenes to help us prepare for what you are about to see.

We have a great tour planned for you. So kick back, relax, and let us woo you and wow you with all things Larry Closs! For starters, I'll be sharing Larry's thoughts on what being indie means to him and how his unfailing devotion to this novel finally paid off:

By Larry Closs

Let’s be honest: Every author dreams of writing a book that’s groundbreaking and edgy and yet so insightful that it’s immediately signed by a major agent, snapped up by a major publisher with a huge and highly publicized advance (after a fierce bidding war) and simultaneously translated into a dozen languages. Naturally, the book debuts at No. 1 on the bestseller lists, and the combined sale of the movie rights and your screenplay adaptation earns you six figures (seven, anyone?). Then you start envisioning which A-list actors will play your protagonists on the big screen and who you’ll thank in your Oscar acceptance speech. Best of all, you’ll finally have enough money to ditch the day job and do nothing but write. Well, write and travel.

And then there’s reality.

You devote every spare minute for years working on your first novel, as pure a labor of love as there ever was, for both you and the family and friends who kindly endure draft after draft after draft as you agonize over every little detail. Final manuscript in hand, you research literary agents and start at the top. “I write a little like the guy who wrote No. 3 on the New York Times Fiction Bestseller List,” you tell yourself. “Who’s his agent?” But his agent isn’t interested. So uninterested, in fact, that all you get in response to your carefully crafted query is an email form rejection, with “sincere apologies and regrets” for sending an email form rejection. As you work your way down a list of a hundred agents and your inbox overflows with sincerity for several months, maybe several years, you have three choices: 1) Allow the rejections to convince you that your book really isn’t any good and banish it to a dark corner of your hard drive; 2) Damn the rejections because you still believe in your book—and then self-publish; 3) Skip the agents, change course and go directly to the publishers—the independent publishers.

I wrestled with No. 1, considered No. 2 but ultimately chose No. 3, because I still sought the validation that self-publishing doesn’t always provide. After much research, I arrived at Rebel Satori Press. The name struck a chord—a Zen revolution!—and the catalog of titles seemed to share my sensibility as well as an interest in the Beat Generation writers—Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs—who figure prominently in Beatitude. I queried the publisher, Sven Davisson, who asked for an excerpt, then the full manuscript. Six months later, he sent me a contract.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but though I had written a book and landed a publisher, my work had just begun. What does it mean to be an indie author? Here’s what I’ve discovered:

1. Literary Agent: When I told an author friend that Rebel Satori had accepted Beatitude, she said that I should get an agent. And that getting an agent would be easy. She was right. After all the rejections I’d received, I was shocked to discover that several literary agents were suddenly interested in representing me. Why? Because the book had already been sold, mitigating most of the risk. Why would I need an agent at that point? To help with the contract. I knew nothing about contracts. My agent helped me negotiate and retain both foreign and adaptation rights, the two most likely sources of any significant revenue aside from royalties. The agency receives a commission on those sales, but the agency has a dedicated foreign rights department and contacts in film and television that I don’t. It’s much more likely to sell those rights than I would be on my own.

2. Advance: What advance? Some things are non-negotiable.

3. Editing: With an indie publisher, you’re more likely to have final say on the final version of the manuscript, for better or worse. I’m a journalist, with many years experience as both a writer and an editor. Thanks to friend and fellow editor, Mindy Kitei, whose insightful advice helped me streamline the manuscript (“Yes,” “No,” “Ugh!”), my book was in very good shape with regard to structure, pacing and style. But having read great books from indie publishers that were undermined by rampant typos and grammatical errors, I hired a friend who’s a professional copy editor to review Beatitude. Taken aback by how many minor but irksome issues she caught, I realized that hiring her was one of the best investments I’d made.

4. Legal: Beatitude features lyrics from popular songs, excerpts from works by Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and appearances by real-life, living individuals, all of which required permissions, licenses, releases and, in some cases, fees. I made a list of everything potentially problematic and consulted with an intellectual property lawyer for advice on the paths of least resistance. Obtaining permission to reprint song lyrics proved to be the most difficult and most expensive. I discovered that you can use a song title but even a line from a song will cost you plenty. Fair Use does not apply. As a result, I edited out all but one lyric. Brief excerpts from Kerouac’s books and Ginsberg’s poems were less expensive, but I still needed to track down who owned the rights and get contracts for them. Getting signed appearance releases from people whose real names I wanted to use was also relatively easy, because I knew the individuals and, ultimately, because every character in Beatitude is presented in a positive light.

5. Galleys: Media outlets that devote coverage to books usually want a galley—an uncorrected advance copy of the book, often without the final cover—six to eight months prior to the publication date. This is especially true of monthly magazines, where editors plan issues three months ahead of time and will only review a book on or near the pub date. After that, it’s old news. Many indie publishers do not print galleys because major monthlies and mainstream websites are less likely to publish reviews of indie titles, so there’s no return on investment. Rebel Satori doesn’t print galleys. So I did, believing that I needed reviews that coincided with the pub date to ensure the book’s success and hoping I could impress where others couldn’t. I researched printers and paid to produce 60 copies of Beatitude wrapped in a plain white cover with Helvetica text. I sent nearly all of them to editors and writers at magazines, book-related websites, bloggers and NPR. How many reviews coinciding with the pub date did Beatitude receive as a result? One. One very significant review. But, still. One. Looking back, I’m not sure I would do it again.

6. Book Cover: While negotiating the book contract, I retained the right—and responsibility—to oversee the cover design. I’m not a designer, but I co-owned a communication design studio for seven years. I studied thousands of book covers and decided on the aesthetic I wanted—simple, bold, graphic. A friend put me in touch with artist Anthony Freda, renowned for his gallery exhibits as well as his award-winning illustrations for Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Esquire, The New York Times, The Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, Playboy and many others. Anthony and I hit it off immediately. He read Beatitude, asked what I had in mind and produced a cover that exceeded every expectation. Simple, bold, graphic. Fantastic. I was doubly fortunate to have another amazing artist, John Barrow, design the equally important back cover and spine, playing off Anthony’s illustration for the front and adding a whole other dimension, the ying to the yang. All the times I’d ever imagined what the cover of Beatitude might look like, I never imagined the incredible result. But, being an indie author, I was able to choose whom I wanted to work with and have input, two things that wouldn’t necessarily have happened at a mainstream publisher.

7. Marketing: Author website, book trailer, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google+, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble. I really should be tweeting.

8. Publicity: Unless you hire a publicist—even if you hire a publicist—you will spend every free minute for months, networking, emailing and calling to promote your book and convince editors and writers that it is more worthy of attention than the 50 other books that were published the same day. You have to steel yourself to the silence—the response rate is about the same as finding a publisher. The good news is that there are thousands of book-related websites and blogs and if you focus your efforts on those that focus on the type of book you’ve written, you can get coverage—a mention, an article, a post, an interview, a review. In all likelihood, however, you will spend as many hours getting that coverage as you spent writing the book.

9. Reviews: You want reviews. You need reviews. To get reviews—hopefully, great ones—you need to stand out from the crowd while treading the thin line between being persistent and being a pest. Confronted by a daily onslaught of new titles, editors have to make quick decisions about what they will and won’t review, many times based on industry buzz, news of a huge advance, a ubiquitous marketing campaign or a bio that includes the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (which seems to guarantee a book deal and instant gravitas). How to tactfully stand out as an indie author? Prior to the pub date, I sent a galley, then, in consecutive weeks, followed up with an email, a link to the trailer and a large jpg of the book cover. After the pub date, I sent actual books and hoped for the best. Sometimes I scored, sometimes I didn’t. But the times I did more than made up for the times I didn’t.

10. Spontaneous Cool: In “Like Other Guys,” one of two previously unpublished poems by Allen Ginsberg that appears in Beatitude, the Beat poet writes that he should devote his energy to poetry and stop messing around with music because he’s a “rock star, automatically.” So are you! Despite all the challenges indie authors face, one undeniable plus is that being indie automatically confers a counter-cultural cool that Knopf cannot.

Rock on.

Follow Larry Closs: Website, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube

**Be sure to join us tomorrow over at ...I Can Stay, where the amazing Emmet hosts Day Two of the tour**

Review: badbadbad

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:30:00 +0000

Read 1/2/12 - 1/14/12
3 Stars - Recommended to readers familiar w/ genre
Pgs: 237
Publisher: New Pulp Press

"Roleplay is a dangerous game when you don't know who you are."

Truer words have never been spoken when used to describe the sticky situation JAG finds himself in. Recently abandoned by his wife and infant son, Jesus "JAG" Garcia finds employment as webmaster for First Church of the Church Before Church's online blog by day, while by night he plays the role of God for a bunch of fetishist he locates via an online sex site called Fallenangels.

Yes, you heard me right. Fetishist. Women who want a "daddy" figure to come and spank them, or reenact a rape scene, or go to town with a box full of toys. And as JAG loses himself to this dark and dirty underworld, creating different identities to match what each of these girls need, he begins to slowly lose himself and things start falling apart at the seams.

Interestingly, the book is written as a sort of "tell-all" from JAG to his estranged little brother. JAG details the events that led him to this sad and dangerous lifestyle, while also preparing us for what we know is going to be a story that does not end well for our kinky minded main man.

If you can stomach the coarse, sometimes raunchily described, sex scenes, you might agree that Jesus Angel Garcia's pulpy, fetish filled transmedia novel is a great example of what print publishing can be - because it's a book with online extras. Jesus has created multiple documentaries that draw from some of the themes within the book: Fear, Self Destruction, Sexual Morality, among others. Delving into an anonymous population of streetwalkers, authors and writers, husbands and wives, Jesus catches in-depth honest reactions to these words, these specific human conditions and tendencies, on film. What do you fear most? Is it death? Is it losing everything you love? Is it something tangible, something living and breathing, or something abstract? What is the most self destructive thing you have ever done? Was it something you controlled or something you had no control over? These documentaries confirm just how fucked up and unique each life is.... I enjoyed the way these mini-films complimented badbadbad's storyline, pulling you out of the chaotic web JAG weaved for himself and proving that real people go through these same or similar things too.

It also comes with it's own soundtrack. While I am not personally a fan of the type of music that he uses, it does appear to hold some influence over the book's style and cadence.

All in all, badbadbad is a true multimedia experience that helps hesitant digital readers like myself bridge that e-gap comfortably. To be honest, I wish more print books came with online extras to enhance the reading experience.

Check out books like Empty the Sun by A Barnacle Book (musical cd accompaniment), The Recipe Book (musical cd accompaniment, free app) by Black Balloon, and The French Revolution (free app) by Soft Skull to see more examples of multimedia print books.

Larry Closs Blog Tour is Gearing Up

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:02:00 +0000

TNBBC is at it again. Oh yeah, that's right, we've gone and organized ourselves another amazing little blog tour! We're ushering in the new year with a big loud bash across the blog-o-sphere to celebrate debut author Larry Closs and his incredibly passionate and poignant novel Beatitude.

Beatitude is one of those books that everyone should be reading, and I'm on a mission to make that happen. As are these fine bloggers, who have joined forces with TNBBC to spread the love in a variety of clever and unique ways over the course of the upcoming week.

Allow me to introduce you to the wonderful bloggers who have taken the time to contribute to our tour:
(Mark your calendars. You really don't want to miss this!)

Sunday January 22

TNBBC

The Larry Closs Blog Tour kickoff starts here with an On “Being Indie” guest post by Larry Closs

Monday January 23

Emmet of ….I Can Stay

Review: Beatitude

Tuesday January 24

Mandy of Mandythebookworm’s Blog

Two Roads Diverged: How the Beats did and didn’t inspire Beatitude

By Larry Closs

Wednesday January 25

Patrick of The Literate Man

Interview: Larry Closs looks at the Beat Generation Boy’s Club and the sometimes obscure line between friendship and love.

Thursday January 26

Jenn of The Pickygirl

On the Town: An Instagram album of scenes from Beatitude

By Larry Closs

Friday January 27

Erica of BookedinChico

Only in New York: The bright lights and big city of Beatitude

By Larry Closs

Saturday January 28

Tara 0f BookSexyReview

Interview: Larry Closs explores the Beats’ dark side, the most natural painkiller and whether a writer or a reader makes a novel gay.

Sunday January 29

TNBBC

We end up back here for the Blog Tour Round Up, with links to each of the participants blog tour posts.

I hope you will join us back here this Sunday for the kick-off and take part in the celebration of Larry Closs and his debut novel Beatitude. In the meantime, to tide you over, click on the links to follow Larry and learn more about him and his novel: Larry's Website, Facebook page, Twitter page, and YouTube page.

YesYes Books on "Being Indie"

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 11:30:00 +0000

On "Being Indie" is a monthly feature that will be hosted here on TNBBC. We will meet a wide variety of independent authors, publishers, and booksellers as they discuss what being indie means to them.

Meet KMA Sullivan, owner and publisher of YesYes Books.

I accidently stumbled across her amazing publishing company a few months ago and it' s been true love ever since. (And I'm not just saying that because one of the YesYes poets, Nate Slawson, premiered a previously unpublished poem here a few weeks ago.)

KMA Sullivan's poetry has been published (or is forthcoming) in Potomac Review, The Nervous Breakdown, Gargoyle, > kill author, diode, and elsewhere. She has been awarded residencies at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in creative non-fiction and from Vermont Studio Center in poetry and is the co-founder and editor of Vinyl Poetry. Today, she defines indie in her terms, while giving you a taste of YesYes Books has to offer....

YesYes Books

The essence of Indie publishing is independence. And so we are free to publish always and only the work that keep our minds and hearts alive. For YesYes Books that means poetry and prose about sex and love, connection and despair, longing and living.

I want to smell the sound of you eating

My thighs, spread

Like warm apple butter

-from Heavy Petting by Gregory Sherl

We look for words that challenge and sooth; that make us cry and laugh and sweat and search for our partners so we can get busy. Life is a fucking shitstorm. At YesYes Books, we want to read words that are not afraid to live right in the middle of the tornado. And so that’s what we publish.

THE DRUGSTORE IS A VOLCANO

My pills are blackberry kissing.

My pills are tiny fish exploding

in the morning.

It's 1989 again every where

I look. My name is Bank Teller's

Red Button & I am happy

for lightning bugs & De La Soul

so happy my boundless affection

is not lost it's all right my boundless

affection is only bleeding.

I wish your knuckles.

I wish your alligator teeth

your barbed wire love a universe

where stars explode into congregations

of birds.

I wish your fists & exploding birds

& bruises on my lungs.

I wish your goodbye hand

was a derringer muzzled

into my gut.

-from Panic Attack, USA by Nate Slawson

But with freedom comes responsibility. Since Indie presses are small in size in terms of manpower and capital, we need to make up for that in quality and innovation and commitment so that we earn the trust our authors place in us. As a result, we seek the highest physical quality for the books YesYes produces. We use McNaughton & Gunn for printing. We obsess over paper choices. We seek cover art that can live as art by itself as it also engages in conversation with the poetry that lives inside. We want people to want to touch and hold our books and feel pleasure even before they crack the spine.

With freedom also comes the ability to take risks and think in new ways. At YesYes Books we have a strong commitment to innovation. This shows up in who we publish. Our first three print books are the first full collections for each author. We are also pushing forward a number of poets in our Poetry Shots and Frequency series who do not have full books out yet such as Phillip B. Williams, Ocean Vuong, and Dana Guthrie Martin. We are pairing them with well-known voices including Bob Hicok, Dorothea Lasky, and Ben Mirov.

We Mark Time with Ceremonies

They roam. They build moats.

They build fierce men named Marcus

and quote them until we grow tired of listening

to quotes by men named Marcus.

They build women whose cunts we bedazzle.

We gather at the cunts but avoid

the anuses. But the anuses are free,

they tell us.

We aren’t listening.

We are living like cats now,

maximizing our time in the sun.

We are poets. We are all poets.

Poets is all we are or ever were.

-forthcoming POETRY SHOT by Dana Guthrie Martin

Innovation also shows up at YesYes Books through our attention to the electronic landscape. YesYes has been hugely blessed by the crazy work ethic and brilliant brain power of Thomas Patrick Levy. Not only is he a poet to swoon for (check out his chapbook Please Don’t Leave Me Scarlett Johansson and his forthcoming I Don’t Mind if You’re Feeling Alone), he is a dynamite web developer and designer. We are about to roll out the first of three electronic-based poetry initiatives and we can’t wait to share!

To finish, how about one more spot of life in poetry.

from 30 30

I expect a bat to replace the bumblebee trapped between the window’s outside side and its smudged inside. This bat would not need to transform, would be content with its bat-self, it’s wide expanse of wing dependent on its knotted sternum, it’s small smashed face perfect in this weathered light.

-forthcoming POETRY SHOT by Metta Sáma

AudioReview: Millennium People

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 03:32:00 +0000

Listened 12/22/11 - 1/9/12
3 Stars - Recommended to readers familiar with genre
8 CD's (approx 9 hours)
Audiobook Publisher: AudioGo

The middle class residents of Chelsea Marina are rebelling. Tired of being squeezed, they are influenced by neighbor Richard Gould to make a stand - by refusing to pay their mortgage and heating bills, smoke bombing random pedestrian businesses, and setting fire to their homes as the police come to evict them.

Meanwhile, David Markham - this story's emotionally detached narrator - learns that his ex-wife was killed by a bomb that exploded in the Heathrow Airport Baggage carousel. Desperate to uncover the people behind this seemingly meaningless act, he pretends to join Gould's movement in the hopes of sniffing out the truth. It isn't long before David finds himself slowly being pulled under by Gould's charismatic speeches and unarguable charm, and becomes a part of much more than he initially bargained for.

At the heart of JG Ballard's novel is a theme that eerily mirrors the recent #OWS picketing that took place in New York City (and other strategically placed pockets throughout the country) - a group of middle class people who have grown tired of being abused and bled dry by the government. Wanting to be noticed, wishing to be taken seriously, both groups - our posh residents of Ballard's Chelsea Marina and our peaceful protestors of OWS - find creative and increasingly aggressive ways to communicate their unhappiness with the way things are being run and the decisions that are being made.

OK, I am about to share a little secret with you. You have to promise not to let this little confession come between us, alright? I am about to tell you something that may forever change your opinion of me, but I need you to try really hard not to let it... ok?! You promise?

I admit to being your typical GenXer. I love to talk a good game when it comes to the way this country is flushing itself down the shitter, like so much vomit and diarrhea. But I prefer to keep my nose out of the political scene and I will never do anything about the things I don't like because (1) I find politics and political thinking to be a bit boring, and (2) it all just seems like too much friggen work. I mean c'mon, they refer to my generation as "slackers" and for good reason. Most of us just don't want to be bothered. Or, perhaps more correctly, we don't know how to be bothered. We don't know things to be any other way, honestly. As we were coming of age, this country was already heading full speed towards the brick wall. Things have been falling down around our ears for as long as we can remember, and we're kind of OK with that. Or, at least, that's what we tell ourselves.

Thank god for the Gen Nexters - that digitally equipped, emotionally upset generation born into social unrest. These guys have some bite to go with their bark. They are scared for their future and are not afraid to rip it from the hands of those in power. My pathetically copacetic generation could learn a thing or two from these guys.

So, here-in lies my issue with Millennium People. The middle class residents of Chelsea Marina definitely belong to my generation, so I find it a bit difficult to believe that these characters have agreed to not only take economic matters into their own hands and attempt to affect change, but that they do so willingly, together, in the way that they do. I suppose it is possible that the GenXer's of the UK (in which this novel is set) demonstrate behaviors that are the complete opposite of their US counterparts... Then again, once I look back at how the book ended, I kind of see that JD Ballard agrees with me on this one. So perhaps my issue is null and void?

Beyond that, I felt the story moved at a rather slow pace. Now, I should admit here that I am reviewing this novel based on the audio version of the book, so the pacing of the story could actually have been impacted by the audiobook's narrator, David Rintoul - who, if I'm being honest, sounded quite bored and emotionally unattached from the whole thing. Perhaps if I had read it in print, I could have better controlled the pace of the novel, increased the speed at which things unraveled? Rintoul has this soft, sighing sort of voice that - even when reading a scene in which things are happening quickly - fails to fully convey the panic.

If I were to compare this book to a pot of water on the stove, it would most resemble that point where the water is poised to boil.. where you can see the little bubbles beginning to cluster at the bottom of the pot, but damned if they never actually break off and rise to the top in a roiling, chaotic foam.

I understand that this novel invokes strong "love it / hate it" feelings in its readers. When I finished the book, I scanned through the review on Goodreads.com and saw people who refer to it as a British "Fight Club" for grown-ups , liken it to Karl Marx's Revolutionary Theory, and then others who disliked it enough to put it down unfinished. It stirs up different triggers in different people. I don't feel bad that I didn't enjoy Millennium People because I understand that my reaction to it is based on my own personal feelings and experiences. I'm not criticizing the writing. I'm simply working through my own subjective baggage.

Indie Book Buzz: Coffee House Press

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:30:00 +0000

It's the return of the Indie Book Buzz here at TNBBC. Over the next few weeks, we will be inviting members of the indie publishing houses to share which of their upcoming 2012 releases they are most excited about!

This week's picks come from Tricia O'Reilly,

Publicist at Coffee House Press.

The Impossibly by Laird Hunt

(February 2012)

This is a dark, literary spy novel written in Laird Hunt’s unmistakable style. When first released in 2001, no one else was really writing this kind of modern, literary noir novel, where the dark, atmospheric, shadowy tone and unexpected plot twists of a traditional spy novel also infiltrated the style, structure, and language of the text in such innovative ways. For Laird, words and meaning are not necessary a straight and narrow path, and no where is his dexterity with language as strange and beautiful than in this, his debut novel. For the first time in paperback, and with a new introduction by Percival Everett, The Impossibly is Paul Auster meets Kafka meets Terry Gilliam’s Brasil and the result is a tense, funny spy novel that you will not soon forget.

Errançities by Quincy Troupe

(February 2012)

Quincy Troupe is truly a legendary poet. The author who helped bring the story behind of The Pursuit of Happyness to life and whose account of his friendship with Miles Davis in Miles and Me is also heading to the big screen has been writing soulful, bluesy poetry for decades and his latest is his most polished and powerful collection to date. One of my favorites is the long poem dedicated to Michael Jackson called “Michael Jackson & the Arc of Love,” which somehow manages to distill Jackson’s whole career, his cultural significance, unavoidable controversy, symbolism, -- his own conflicted, fragile soul — into one beautiful, and sad, poem. Always a lover of invention, Troupe took the title from the French word errance, which means ‘to wander,’ but the word errançities itself is something he made up as an “expression [he] felt more at home with.” And wander he does, through the sights and sounds of the New York City subway, through images of life and nature that inspire him—or vex him. The poem “What’s the Real Deal Here,” another of my favorites, is a great example of the latter, starting out as this kind of rant against media sensationalism and “empty-headed showbiz prevaricators” and ends with just one of the most beautiful images I’ve come across. Quincy is nothing if not surprising and this is great poetry—a fun and fascinating journey with a brilliant storyteller.

About:

Tricia O'Reilly is the publicist for Coffee House Press. She can be found maintaining the Press's Facebook and Twitter accounts. If you've seen Coffee House at conferences, festivals, or book fairs, there's a good chance you've seen her!

So what do you think guys? See anything that catches your eye? Which of these books are you most excited to see release? Help TNBBC and Coffee House Press spread the buzz about these books by sharing this post with others!

Indie Spotlight: Andrez Bergen

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 02:21:00 +0000

If you're anything like me, you enjoying hearing the story behind the story, the birth of the book.

When Andrez Bergen, author of Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, pitched me his novel, I was struck by the odd title. Hook. Which lead me to check out the description and existing reviews on goodreads. Line. Which then found me accepting the review copy he was offering. Sinker. Who the heck can pass up a story about a post apocalyptic sci fi/noir full of guns, kidnapping, and conspiracy?!?!

The icing on the cake? His willingness to take me behind the book, and tell us the story of how it all came to be. Today, I am sharing that story with you in the form of a guest post....

SMOKING OUT THE DETAILS OF

‘TOBACCO-STAINED MOUNTAIN GOAT’

I doubt it’s anything really to brag about, but Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat has taken half my life to complete.

Mind you, not Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat (the paperback that was published in 2011) per se, but the story to be told behind the rather wayward moniker and those new-fangled tobacco-stained covers designed by artist Scott Campbell.

This particular yarn is one that’s bubbled away since it surfaced in a short story I wrote in the late 1980s. That short story (now unfortunately mislaid in the midst of my dozens of house moves—mostly in Melbourne, but also in London and Tokyo) was about six hand-written A4 pages in length, and was basically the dream-sequence from the existing novel; in that original tale, however, it was anything but dream-like.

I can't remember the title of the short story (possibly ‘Il Desinenza’, which roughly translates as The Termination in Italian) though the current protagonist Floyd was still Floyd then; the weather was just as bad, he still fended off rain with a newspaper, and the joint influences of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out, and my ‘60s/’70s comic book heritage hung pretty obviously onto my coattails.

Back then, as the story wraps itself up, it’s a Controller—a Seeker’s nemesis already—who does the dirty work and affects termination. “Next time, shoot straight,” I recall penning as Floyd’s cynical quip while he cleans up the mess.

Somewhere en route along the past twenty-odd years it’s become Floyd whose aim and life is amiss, and we added about 200 pages into the mix.

I say ‘we’ because my erstwhile collaborator over the past three years of the novel’s gestation has been my editor Kristopher Young—the author of Click—who’s invested so much of his own ideas that the story has definitely shaped up as collusion.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, which I have a propensity to do; you may also have discovered that I tend to waffle a lot and use semicolons unwisely.

After the short story was written I shelved it for several years. The ideas continued fermenting somewhere in my coin-locker brain, until 1992 when I resurrected the romp while I was living in Richmond, in Melbourne (Australia), and extended it to a 162-page manuscript. I still have that version in a drawer next to my desk here in Tokyo—it’s all dog-eared and there’re different typefaces within the same tome as I started out on my mum’s electric typewriter, which of course ran out of ink, then graduated to my partner’s dad’s boxy, black-and-white screened Apple Macintosh with a dot matrix printer.

I remember scratching my head at the time, trying to nut out a half-decent title, and came up with We Are Not Afraid, We Serve. It always was a half-hearted moniker that lacked pizzazz. I was 27 at the time and I do cringe now when I look back at much of this.

But I was working a mind-numbing corporate job at an ad hoc government/private body called TAC Insurance, and it was there that I crossed paths with ‘Activities’ (real but semi-illegal video surveillance we organized of car accident victims doing aerobics and the like), plus the Guide to Deviant Apprehension & Containment was roughly modeled on the corporate TAC tome I had to learn by rote.

The book then sat on a dusty back-burner (in various drawers and boxes) for another decade. In 2001 I moved to Japan, and somehow got inspired to begin another version of the novel the following year, after copping a screening of Wong Kaw-wai’s In the Mood for Love.

Things had quite obviously changed since the short story and even the ’92 version. The Cold War was well and truly kaput and VHS had given up the ghost for DVD. I was living in a hugely influential foreign city (Tokyo) and had been working as a journalist over the past eight years, focusing on my two loves: movies (preferably innovative cinema) and experimental electronic music.

I’d also really found a personal footing in the noir-detective cinema of the 1940s and adored the way in which the hero, the femme fatale, the dialogue, the lighting, and a dark, fickle edge shaped proceedings. While I discovered the cinematic takes on The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man when I was a kid, I’d begun to immerse myself in the original novels by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, and these influences started seeping through the woodwork as much as the rancid rain.

After the 2002 version, I put the book on hold again until 2007. I was now the father of a daughter (born in 2005) and I think that experience has influenced proceedings—beyond the novel itself being dedicated to her.

I was also writing (on a colour-screen Apple laptop) for magazines with names like Geek Monthly and Anime Insider, the Internet was all-encompassing, and ‘geek’ culture—with all that this entails—had become inadvertently cool.

Other things, like virtual reality (such a big part of the ’92 manuscript) had fallen off the radar, and technology I created and thought somewhat cool in 1992—such as the MittMate hand-held PC—had become redundant concepts thanks to, you guessed it, current gadgets like the iPhone and iPad. To counter this I twigged that it may instead be an idea to reverse-engineer much of the technology and make it faulty and unreliable.

Towards end of 2007 I bit the bullet and started to farm out what I had—then Another Sky Press took on the project, and I had a publisher.

Truth was, however, that I’d only actually finished the first chapter this time around; over the next months I finished the revision, then set foot with Kristopher Young into the bumpy new terrain known as editing… which was only finished in February this year. Since both of us were busy with other projects, bill-paying work and our own family lives, I like to think that the editing process was an undertaking worthy of Ben-Hur.

Small things as much as major issues have popped in between the lines along the way.

For starters inserting Japanese kanji symbols into the novel became part of the 2007-2011 journey. In 1992 there was none, not even mention of Floyd's tattoo fuyu (winter)—probably because I didn't get that ink myself until 1994—but it was there in the 2002 manuscript. And only that. The rest came later.

Likely the kanji really settled itself in my brain when I watched over a dozen Akira Kurosawa movies within a one-week period at the beginning of 2010 (for an article to celebrate the centenary since his birth); in his films there’s often kanji dominating the screen all by itself and it’s powerful stuff even if you can’t understand what it says.

Floyd’s love interest Laurel scored her own sizable tattoo late in the book (sorry, bad pun). I’d always dug full-back tattoos in cinema—such as Robert de Niro’s in Cape Fear, Russell Crowe’s in Romper Stomper, and Kanako Higuchi’s ink in the final Shintaro Katsu Zatoichi flick—which is why Laurel ended up endowed with her own cheeky version.

Which is what the novel does try to hang onto throughout proceedings: a sense of cheekiness amidst the drama, quirky red herrings that reference my love of geek culture and cinema but do add something to the story, and a sense of historical revisionism that’s shaped the past 23 years of my life. God knows if any of it works, but for me the novel now is ten times better in 2011—because of these things—than it was as a short story in 1988.

Not that any of this means anything unless people outside my head space agree, and now I’m finding out if they do… so where in blazes has that darn tootin’ lucky rabbit’s foot got to?

Andrez Bergen

December 2011

http://tobaccostainedmountaingoat.weebly.com/

Preview 2012 Releases: Code For Failure and Radio Iris

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:16:00 +0000

There's nothing better, in my opinion, than getting a sneak peek at some of the books you are dying to see released... if for no other reason than the fact that it really whets the appetite and kicks the pining into high gear.

Two of the books I am really looking forward to reading in early 2012 just dropped previews today, and I am really excited to share them with you. And have I ever steered you wrong, oh reader?

The first is Ryan Bradley's Code for Failure. It's the story of a gas station attendant in Oregon who is hell bent on living life his way, even if it takes a Shiva-like path of destruction to do it.

You can listen to Ryan read from the first two chapters here.

Check out Code for Failure's Facebook Page for updates on the book, which releases March 27th under Black Coffee Press.

By no means second is Anne-Marie Kinney's Radio Iris. It's the story of a twenty-something daydreamer and receptionist for a company, whose purpose she is unclear of, where strange things begin to happen.

You can read a 13 page sample of the novel here.

The book releases May 15th under Two Dollar Radio. You can check out their Indie Book Buzz of the novel right here on TNBBC.

Two awesome indie books, from two wonderful indie presses. Go ahead, give them a look-see. I'd be shocked if they don't end up on your must-have lists......

Review: Girl With Oars & Man Dying

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:30:00 +0000

Read 12/31/11 - 1/1/12
3 Stars - Recommended to fans of experimental indie fiction
Pgs: 105 (eBook format)

One of the things I really love about indie lit is the occasionally strange and experimental format the stories come in. It takes a brave writer to kick conventional story writing to the curb and attempt to reinvent the way we read and perceive language.

In girl with oars & man dying, JA Tyler tells a story that isn't a story. It's a story that's more like a reflection. It's the not story of a man's reflection. It's a story that's not a story about the things that were, the things that weren't, and the things that could've been.

It's a story about a man, lying in his bed, dying. It's a story about a man dying who pulls an Other from his mouth. It's a story about an Other who sits and waits for the man to die. An Other who thumbs the pages of the bible on the bedside of the man dying.

It's a story about a girl with oars, swimming in the blue, the girl who isn't. It's not a story of the girl who isn't, who could've been, but of her not father, the man dying.

(ok, I can't pull that off nearly as well as the author does. I should stop before I embarrass myself.)

What JA Tyler manages with girl with oars... is the unique ability to tell a story without actually telling the story. He messes with time and place, losing us in the past and present, in much the same way I would imagine a dying person might find themselves lost within the past and present, existing much of the time in that not-time with their memories, their regrets, their shames, and their sins.

There is a frustrating repetitiveness, an obvious redundancy, to much of what Tyler writes. As if he's saying "hey reader, are you with me? are you paying attention? this is going to mean something later. much much later. let me say it again because i don't think you're with me yet."

But going beyond the intentional repetition, what you have in your hands (or on your smartphone, as was the case here) is a complex contemplation of what death and dying would look like from within, without, and all around the dying person. A figurative skipping of the record, invisible hiccups of time where memories or horrible shames play themselves over and over again, where the dying mind gets stuck or decides to hide, while death patiently waits, watching for that last breath to leave the body so it can snatch you away.

Or, at least that's my take on it. Read it for yourself to form your own opinion. Don't take my word on it. I could have it all it wrong (though somehow I doubt it)!

Free Poetry I Think You'll Love

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:30:00 +0000

So yeah, I've always been a bit of a sucker for good poetry. Not the uber brainy stuff like Yeats, Whitman, or Frost ( I don't enjoy reading my poetry with a side of cliff notes ) but the more modern, angsty, love-ruined-me-for-everyone-else kind of poetry. The shit that holds no punches and comes at you all full frontal with junk swinging in the wind and vunerable-like. Have you read any of that lately?

Well, now you have no excuse! Two of the best poetry collections I have read this year are out online for free... and I strongly encourage you to take a look.

You may recall my very recent gush-fest over Nate Slawson and his collection Panic Attack, USA. His publisher, Yes Yes Books, has released an EP version on their site for your enjoyment.

Here it is in all its "touch you in places it shouldn't" glory.

I had the pleasure of reviewing Piano Rats back in August, before it published, and adored Frankie's "Tell it like it is" trash talking poems. Her ability to drop the F-bomb's nearly put me to shame!! Her publisher, Curbside Splendor, has recently released a mini-version of this collection on their website.

You can sneak a peek here.

As always, you can thank me later! Happy indie-reading!!

Book Giveaway: The Ruins of Us

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 14:59:00 +0000

It's 2012! And every new year should begin with a new book giveaway!

To properly ring in the New Year, TNBBC presents you with

The Ruins of Us

Author/Reader Discussion Giveaway!

We are giving away 10 copies to residents of the US and CANDA

in order to stimulate discussion.

Here is the Goodreads description of the novel:

More than two decades after moving to Saudi Arabia and marrying powerful Abdullah Baylani, American-born Rosalie learns that her husband has taken a second wife. That discovery plunges their family into chaos as Rosalie grapples with leaving Saudi Arabia, her life, and her family behind. Meanwhile, Abdullah and Rosalie’s consuming personal entanglements blind them to the crisis approaching their sixteen-year-old son, Faisal, whose deepening resentment toward their lifestyle has led to his involvement with a controversial sheikh. When Faisal makes a choice that could destroy everything his embattled family holds dear, all must confront difficult truths as they fight to preserve what remains of their world.

The Ruins of Us is a timely story about intolerance, family, and the injustices we endure for love that heralds the arrival of an extraordinary new voice in contemporary fiction.

This contest will run through January 9th.

Winners will be announced here and via email on January 10th.

Here's how to enter:

1 - Comment here by telling us why you would like to read this book.

2 - State that you agree to participate in the group read book discussion that will run from February 15th - 29th over at TNBBC on Goodreads. Kejia Parssinen has agreed to participate in the discussion and will be available to answer any questions you may have for her.

*If you are chosen as a winner, by accepting the copy you are agreeing to read the book and join the group discussion at TNBBC on Goodreads (the thread for the discussion will be emailed to you before February 15th).

3 - You must leave me a way to contact you (email is preferred).

Good luck!

Tell Me A Story: Nate Slawson

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 11:30:00 +0000

Welcome to another addition of TNBBC's Tell Me A Story.

Tell Me a Story is a monthly series that features previously unpublished short stories from debut and Indie authors. The request was simple: Stories can be any format, any genre, and any length. And many amazing writers signed up for the challenge.

Words cannot explain how thrilled I am to present you with 2012's first Tell Me a Story submission.

To kick off the new year, Nate Slawson is sharing a poem from his upcoming sequel to Panic Attack, USA (which was published by YesYes Books). He has also authored two chapbooks, A Mixtape Called Zooey Deschanel (Line4) and The Tiny Jukebox (H_NGM_N Books). He lives in Chicago where he teaches and designs books.

it’s fall and the atoms are smashing again

I walk into the wall because you are in another

room Little house where my head ruptured

O little house you taste aluminum It’s fall and

the atoms are smashing again I feel you longhand

in my brain vessels I keep running out of scissors

and I want to cut my life in half

I want to cut America’s hair O I am a lawn mower

on fire Wrap a copper wire around my neck

and call me Mr Microphone Sing me

our new loneliness I compose battle hymns

inside my head They are my head

Colors are falling things I am a falling thing

My vertigo is blackberry my blackberry

is a bloodbath my blackberry is where the love

comes from O little house I am becoming-

bathroom-floor I live on my face I wake up

hardwood-tongued and I am crying crying into

the lapel of my blue funeral suit.

I want to thank Nate for participating in TNBBC's Tell Me a Story. If you like what you've read, please support Nate by checking out his book and website. Help spread the word by sharing this post through your blog, tumblr page, twitter and facebook accounts. Every link counts! And be sure to check back with us next month for the next installment....

If you are interested in submitting your short story for consideration for this series, please contact me mescorn@ptd.net.

Review: The Second Most Dangerous Job in America

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 01:08:00 +0000

Read 12/28/11 - 12/31/11
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended
Pgs: 57

Steve Himmer sends me down memory lane with his upcoming "Atticus Shorts" eBook exclusive The Second Most Dangerous Job in America.

An ambitionally challenged college kid takes a job working the graveyard shift at a local convenience store. Idling passing the hours, he befriends a homeless coffee addict, pretends to not notice the pseudo celebrities who pass through the doors, and deals with all manner of porn-lovin', cigarette-smokin' riffraff.

The store's patrons tease him, berate him, throw change across the counter at him, and try to convince him to go out and party with them after his shift ends. He thinks up nicknames for the regulars - "Mayo Shirt", "Santa Claus", "Mr. Mâché" - reads books off the rack, listens to the Dead Kennedy's, and secretly despises his boss. It's a pretty realistic look at a dead end kid killing time at a dead end job, getting away with a bunch of nothing for as long as he can....

Himmer's story was so similar to my own convenience store days that it threw me headlong into remembering some of the most humiliating moments of my life.

Though the convenience store that I worked for during my freshman year of college didn't stay open all night long, I was oh-so-lucky to be scheduled for the weekday late shift - 7 to 11pm - forced to deal with all those last minute assholes begging to be let in at 11:01pm for a pack of cigarettes or a quick five bucks worth of gas. Shouting through the glass doors at them that we were already closed out for the evening, I'd have to put up with their hissy fits and death threats, keeping a finger on the phone incase they refused to leave the property. Usually there were two of us working, so there was some comfort in that.

I was never robbed and I don't believe anything was ever stolen - though I used to make late night sandwiches at the deli counter when things got slow and I got hungry... does that count? Oh, there was that one night when I was alone and the damn store alarm wouldn't set. After an attempt to call one of my co-workers for help ended with her husband yelling at me for calling so late and refusing to put her on the line, I said "fuck it" and left the store unarmed. Man, did I hear about that one the next day.

Then there was that time when one of our regulars came in and bought his lottery tickets, like he always did, and I punched up the numbers, like I always did, except this time I flip-flopped a number and he didn't catch it. Wouldn't you know his fucking numbers came out straight that night, and if it weren't for my screw up, he'd have won a couple hundred bucks? He was fuming the next day, demanding to get the money out of my paycheck, spitting his words over the counter at me. It took everything I had in me not to close the distance between us with my fist.

And there was this sad old woman who stopped in every Friday on her way home from work and bought ten dollars worth of scratch off tickets, and there she'd stand, with a quarter in hand, scratching away at those things, turning in every winner to buy more, until she scratched off the final loser. Sometimes she'd be there 5 minutes, other times she'd be there for an hour, waiting for her luck to run out. I never quite understood why she would do it, and she never seemed to hit anything big.

I nearly forgot about the creepy guy, as regular as they get I guess, who used to smile when he'd see me, and call me "Wonder Woman". He thought I bared a striking resemblance to Lynda Carter and would constantly try to convince me to come to work on my next shift dressed in an american bikini. I always wondered if he was married and what his wife would think of him, hitting on such a young convenience store clerk.

The worst was when my ex-boyfriend at the time (the man I would eventually marry) came running into the store to pay for the gas he had just pumped into his car. Still feeling sick over the break-up, I was making a sandwich for myself at the deli counter when I noticed him come in. As I braced myself to make small talk, a short hispanic girl walked through the door behind him, wrapping her arms around him and nestling her head against his back. I nearly threw up, right there at the counter, and threw my sad, uneaten sandwich straight into the garbage. Wanting nothing more than to go home and feel sorry for myself, my ass was stuck at work, worrying and fretting over where they had just come from and where they were heading to instead of counting out our drawer and stocking the shelves.

Just like the dude in Himmer's story, there comes a moment of clarity, a sort of epiphany, where you realize that tonight is going to be the last night that you're gonna put up with anymore of that shit. That you just don't get paid enough to deal with everyone's bad breath and bad attitude. That you're beginning to turn into someone you no longer recognize; someone with no energy, no enthusiasm, ; someone who's gone numb to the world.

Hmmm... I think my review of The Second Most Dangerous Job in America somehow devolved into a Lifetime Mini-Movie of my life. I digress.....

A TNBBC Twist on "Top 2011" Lists

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 19:30:00 +0000

Back in November, I released my Top Ten Indie Picks of 2011 to the BookPage.com. After watching all of the blogger buzz on Twitter these past few weeks, I started feeling as though I should create another 2011 book list, especially since I've managed to read seven books between the release of that November list and now. But I knew I just couldn't go through the stress of building a new one...

So, not willing to let all of 2011 go without a Best Of list, I decided to put a little spin on things. I reached out to a bunch of authors - all of them have appeared here on TNBBC in some way, shape, or form - asking them to share with us their favorite reads of 2011. I thought it would be really cool to see what they had been reading and enjoying this year....

The response has been overwhelming and I am so incredibly honored to share them with you today. And without further ado...

The TNBBC Author Series: Top Three Books of 2011

Chris Bauer

Three books from recent memory:

CHANCE by Steve Shilstone: My all-time favorite book. I re-read this one. Again. Baseball fiction. Great first person narrative from a self-prescribed teacher, poet and biographer of the greatest (fictional) baseball shortstop to ever play the game, Chance Caine. Many, many quotable lines. I identify strongly with one of them: "The thing I write will be the thing I write." Funny, tragic, with a twist or three. On a scale of one-to-five stars, I rate it as a 20.

GREEN GRASS GRACE by Shawn McBride: Funny, irreverent coming-of-age story about Northeast Philadelphia (PA), my roots, in the 1980s as told by someone who lived a lot of it. Here's a line the author gives us about Mike Schmidt, Hall of Fame Philadelphia Phillies player (sensing a trend here?), someone who our foul-mouthed thirteen-year-old narrator Henry Toohey doesn't like: "Mike Schmidt sits to pee." Then he goes on to call you, reader, "f***face." Hilarious and real. On the same star scale as above, an 18.

PATIENT ZERO by Jonathan Maberry: Jonathan had me with his two-sentence first chapter: "When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week, then there’s either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world. And there’s nothing wrong with my skills." Strong research, great action, zombies; the first of a three-part series. Again, same scale, 15 stars.

C.G. (Chris) Bauer writes horror, urban fantasy, contemporary and crime fiction. Loves baseball. A few of his beloved Philadelphia Phillies, real and fictional, have materialized in his work. Deal with it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ryan Bradley

Out of fairness I'll pick books I didn't publish this year, even though two of those were certainly among my favorites:

Once Upon A River by Bonnie Jo Campbell: Campbell writes without remorse, redefining heroines for the 21st century. This tale of one rural Michigan teen's travails as her family's river dynasty falls apart upon her father's death is as engrossing a novel as you'll ever read.

The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock: The title of Pollock's novel pretty much sums this one up. There is so much violence and dysfunction that you would think you might be turned off, but that's the skill behind Pollock's writing, you don't feel like you're reading that much violence or dysfunction, then when you're finished and you try to describe it to someone you have to step back and say "whoa."

Curse the Names by Robert Arellano: Arellano's latest novel was an end of the year addition to my favorites list. Think Hitchcock meets The Twilight Zone and you'll come close to this paranormal noir of a middle aged man coming to grips with his unfulfilling job and failing marriage.

Ryan W. Bradley is an expert in failure. His encyclopedia (aka novel) on the topic, Code for Failure will arrive in March of 2012 from Black Coffee Press.

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Larry Closs

Just Kids by Patti Smith: Patti Smith’s memoir of her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe illuminates a long-gone New York, capturing the potent zeitgeist of the 1970s, when the bohemian progeny of the Beat Generation made the Chelsea Hotel their headquarters and experimented with a volatile blend of pathos and poetry that exploded in punk. Holding the center of a swirling star-studded milieu that included Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Sam Shepard and Allen Ginsberg (whom she met in an automat when he mistook her for a young man), are Smith and Mapplethorpe, two artists who met by chance when they were “just kids.” Smith will eventually set foot on a stage and Mapplethorpe will snap his first Polaroid, but it is the evolution of their intimacy—from lovers to friends and beyond, spurred, in part, by Mapplethorpe’s fluid sexuality—that is far more fascinating. They grow together, they grow apart, but they never grow away.

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand: My taste in movies ranges from indies to Hollywood blockbusters and the same is true of my taste in books. Unbroken is definitely a blockbuster—a magnificent, mesmerizing, spellbinding spectacle that grabs you from the first page. It’s the true story of Louis Zamparini, a near delinquent teen who, in the 1930s, channeled his defiance into running and became the first Olympian to challenge the four-minute mile before serving in the Army Air Corps during World World II. Zamparini survived the crash of his B-24 in the Pacific and spent 47 days drifting in a raft with two crewmen only to be “rescued” by the Japanese and detained in a series of horrific POW camps under the leadership of Mutsuhiro Wantanabe, a psychotic and savage Imperial Japanese Army sergeant. A tribute to immeasurable resilience, Unbroken is also, ultimately, a profound testament to the redemptive quality of forgiveness, for both the forgiven and the forgiver.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson:I am a Mac, not a PC, so it was with more than a casual interest that I approached the biography of Steve Jobs to learn more about the genius responsible for the Genius Bar (or for green-lighting it, at least, as the book points out). The portrait that emerges is of a brilliant mind who married art and technology, Zen Buddhism and Bauhaus, to devise a design aesthetic defined by a playful simplicity of form and functionality. But the man who revolutionized personal computers, mobile phones, tablets, portable music players—indeed, the entire music industry—and also rescued Pixar was actually of two minds: Nurturing and loving one moment, imperious and petulant the next. Whichever impression proves most lasting, it’s impossible not to be awed. “I want to put a ding in the universe,” Jobs once remarked. He did.

Larry Closs is the author of Beatitude, a novel, and a New Yorker who often wanders far from home.

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James Goertel

PULPHEAD by John Jeremiah Sullivan: topped this year's flood of worthy books. His essays from this collection are so well-wrought that I believe there must be a novel lurking somewhere in the shadows of his syntax.

VOLT by Alan Heathcock: proved the short story is not only not dead, but alive and kicking.

Shann Ray's powerful short story collection AMERICAN MASCULINE, confirmed this.

I hope to see long-players from all three of these writers somewhere down the road.

Born in North Dakota, James Goertel spent twenty years working in television for ABC, NBC, and ESPN, among others. CARRY EACH HIS BURDEN is his debut fiction collection and was published in September of 2011.

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Steve Himmer

Abbott Awaits by Chris Bachelder: I reviewed this more fully at Necessary Fiction, but what I love about Abbott Awaits is it takes seriously fatherhood, marriage, the tedious chores of homeownership — life, in other words — in a way that’s honest and smart but also quite funny. But unlike so much fiction of the everyday, in which it’s taken for granted lives are interesting simply because they happen, Bachelder goes further than that: Abbott’s days are quotidian, but they aren’t in a vacuum because they’re also an exploration of politics, power, philosophy, paranoia... and probably some other compelling things starting with “P”. Bonus recommendation: David Barringer’s novel American Home Life (2007) explores suburban fatherhood in ways that are similar — and equally wonderful — but very much its own.

Treasure Island!!! by Sara Levine: I’m a big fan of novels with lovably unlikeable protagonists, and Treasure Island!!! has that in spades. Or in sails, maybe. As infuriating as Levine’s anti-heroine is as she wrecks the lives of everyone around her through attempts to follow the “Core Values” of Stevenson’s Treasure Island, the humor and humanity of the story — not to mention some very sharp questions it raises about gender roles, literature, community, and ambition — make it far more fun to read this nameless narrator’s days than it would be to spend one with her. Bonus recommendation: one of my favorite novels of last year, Marcy Dermansky’s Bad Marie had just as wonderful a lovably unlikeable anti-heroine, if you like that sort of thing, too.

City of Bohane by Kevin Barry: This one may be cheating, because it won’t be out in the US until March, but it was published in the UK for 2011 and that’s the edition I read. City of Bohane is a gang war story and a futuristic dystopian epic steeped in dialectic and slang to a degree I worry will alienate or at least frustrate American readers, which would be a shame. But what I really love about this novel is how powerfully it’s about more than violence: it’s as much a reflection on the lingering and residual histories of cities and people and places, and how those can be weights dragging us backward instead of foundations to build upon. And it’s also just a hell of a lot of fun to read. Bonus recommendation: For an equally imaginative and unique dystopian read — and one to make City of Bohane’s dialect seem a breeze — pick up Matthew Fitt’s Scots language cyberpunk novel But N Ben A-Go-Go (2000).

Steve Himmer is author of the novel The Bee-Loud Glade, and editor of the webjournal Necessary Fiction.

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Collin Kelley

Untold Story by Monica Ali : Monica Ali (author of the brilliant Brick Lane) brings

Princess Diana back to life in this Fringe-like alternate reality where the Princess of Wales fakes her death to escape the paparazzi glare. She has plastic surgery, changes her name, lives in a gated community in middle America, but she can't quite escape her past. It's funny, chilling and beautifully written piece of fantasy.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami: In 1984, assassin Aomame is stuck in traffic on a Tokyo freeway running late for her appointment to murder a man who has abused his wife. At the taxi driver’s suggestion, she gets out of the car and climbs down an emergency staircase off the freeway, which turns out to be a portal into a parallel universe. Is Aomame really in an alternate reality or is she a fictional character created by a projection by a young writer named Tengo, who fell in love with Aomame when they were children? With echoes of Orwell's 1984 and Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, it's a thrilling, elliptical and epic novel.

The Book of Men: Poems by Dorianne Laux: From a modern soldier off to war and a boyfriend who taught her how to drive to Mick Jagger and Superman, Laux's fantastic collection reveals men as human and mortal. The poems are playful, sultry, sexy and also elegiac.

Collin Kelley is an award-winning poet and novelist (his latest book is the mystery Remain In Light), who is secretly bionic and works for the OSI battling Fembots, Big Foot and secretly pining away for Col. Steve Austin.

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James King

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. I had no idea what to expect when I picked this up, but once I did, I couldn’t put it down. Vividly drawn characters, wonderful writing, lots of humor and poignancy. What’s not to like?

Day for Night by Frederick Reiken. I wouldn’t have heard about this book had it not been for Daniel Goldin, owner of Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee, who recommended it to me when I visited his wonderful bookstore. A memorable cast of characters that are all connected in surprising and mysterious ways. I got so engrossed in it I nearly missed the last call to board the plane home.

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. A toss-up here between this one and Jeffrey Eugenides’s “The Marriage Plot,” which I enjoyed immensely. But I’m going with Rachman’s book here… just because. His short-story approach to the lives of the characters and the newspaper that unites them is compelling and effective. His writing is nearly flawless, bringing his characters to life with subtlety and grace.

James King is the author of “Bill Warrington’s Last Chance” (Viking/Penguin). He lives in Connecticut with his wife, two children, and a beagle who cares not a whiff about dangling participles.

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Lavinia Ludlow

These three writers have story-telling abilities that breach the everyday mundane. With unique and engaging writing styles, they present honest tales of personal dissonance,

tragedy, and misery. Here are my top three picks of 2011. I thank all three authors for the amazing reads.

Damascus by Josh Mohr: Damascus presents a series of vignettes ridden with contemporary grit. Mohr’s unique and impactful writing style guides the reader through the burdens of cancer, an unlucky birthmark, avant-garde art, even war scars.

Knuckleheads by Jeff Kass: Jeff Kass has packed a ton of literary meat and wit into his charming tales which ping-pong between adolescence and adulthood; shattered dreams, immature dick-swinging contests, unbridled testosterone, stolen Pop Tarts, middle-aged dick-swinging contests, and sexual frustration.

Stories V! by Scott McClanahan: Stories V! consist of dark-humored and honest depictions of a boy migrating through childhood, adolescence, pre-pubescence, and early adulthood. There are dead baby jokes, pet relationships, perils of having to choose between watching Superman IV or attending a classmate’s funeral, health problems of intimate assortments, even a sex tape used as conversational lube.

Lavinia Ludlow is a musician and writer based out of Northern California. Her debut novel alt.punk is available through Casperian Books.

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David Maine

The best novel I read in 2011 was Jess Walter’s hilarious The Financial Lives of the Poets, which manages to marry artistic angst with drug-dealing farce on a scale that I haven’t encountered for quite some time. Matthew Prior is a poet whose web site isn’t as profitable as planned (big surprise) so he turns to other ways of making money. As in all the best comedy, there are dark, dark undercurrents here, and as Prior gets sucked in ever deeper, the reader goes along for the ride.

Another strong read was Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming, which upends traditional apocalypse fiction tropes by introducing a new disaster with each chapter. Structured as a series of loosely connected stories, the book shows our narrator coping with one disaster after another—climate change, plague, floods, breakdown of civil society and so on—while trying to maintain his essential humanity. The real story here isn’t the string of disasters, of course, but how human beings confront them.

The most enjoyable nonfiction I read was Mary Roach’s Packing For Mars, which details the history of the manned space program in a way simultaneously illuminating and hilarious. Hey, you may not think it’s such a big deal to use the toilet in zero gravity—but believe me, it’s important. Roach tackled such subjects as the psychological testing that weeds out would-be astronauts as well as the more mundane matters of food, drink and bodily waste. Through it all, her delighted (and delightful) voice carry the reader along on this, humanity’s biggest adventure.

David Maine is an old-fashioned pen-on-paper writer who tries out this whiz-bang technology thing.

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Amber Scott

Top 3 picks for me:

A caveat--Through IBC, I know a lot of authors and read them, too. So in choosing my absolute faves, I focused on the books with characters who feel real to me. Real enough that I would call them on the phone and ask them to coffee and have even thought of doing

so. #crazywriter

Rook by Carolyn McCray. I'm a huge McCray fan and not just because she's an uber cool friend. She is an amazing writer I learn from by reading. But Rook? In a word, swagger. Rook has so much swagger that I fell for him in that first scene as he played chess with a demon.

Head Rush by Carolyn Crane. #istalkher The Dissullusionist series on the whole is such a brilliant premise and exquisitely delivered. Hypochondria becomes the heroine's super power. How totally cool is that? Plus Sterling Packard might still have my heart.

Nearly Departed in Deadwood by Ann Charles. Ann is awesome. She's my career coach. Sure, I wanted to like her books. But this one, simply stands out. I have jokes that I wish I could tell Harvey. I have the urge to lend Vi a certain shirt or dress. And Doc? Forget about it. Let's just say night swimming comes to mind. A lot of night swimming.

In between naptimes and dishes, Amber Scott escapes into the addictive twists and turns her characters take. She often burns dinner, is hooked on chocolate and still believes in happily ever after. She co-founded the Indie Book Collective and hangs out in The HOT Club, her secret Facebook fan group...well, secret sortof.

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Sonia Taitz

My top three books of 2011 are all memoirs. I'm putting one out myself next year, so maybe I'm obsessed.

LUCKING OUT by James Wolcott: No one can turn a phrase like the witty Mr. Wolcott, who has long entertained and illuminated us in the pages of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. His tale of making it in the New York of the 1970s is also honest, richly layered, and insightful.

MY LONG TRIP HOME by Mark Whitaker: Whitaker, who made a name for himself at Newsweek, and who is now president of CNN Worldwide, proves himself to be equally impressive as a memoirist. His elegant and poignant book tells of his biracial background, while also -- in true reportorial style -- illuminating large swathes of 20th century history.

[Sic]: A MEMOIR by Joshua Cody: We've all read cancer memoirs, but Cody's musical prose and brilliant musings make this book a literary and philosophical stand-out.

SONIA TAITZ is author of MOTHERING HEIGHTS and the new novel, IN THE KING'S ARMS. WATCHMAKER'S DAUGHTER, her memoir, will be published in 2012. She tweets @soniataitz.

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Ben Tanzer

I suppose that after all of the reading I've done this past year it's massively uncool of you to ask me to just provide you with a list of three books I loved. Then again maybe I'm just showing off and that's all I deserve. Still, I am a fanboy that has clear problems with limits and authority, something you clearly recognize, so I suppose we're all good. Really. Totally. Mostly.

alt.punk by Lavinia Ludlow: A story that may or may not represent an entire incredibly over-educated and politically astute generations' ennui and lack of opportunity, let's call them Millenials, but regardless, is certainly a generation that seems to know all too much, and be all too jaded, yet still gets hung-up on things that otherwise appear comparatively mundane, cigarette smoking for example, if they consider them evil or corrupt, something I would add that has rarely slowed down most members of Generation X.

The Mimic's Own Voice by Thomas Williams: It's almost a study at times, survey or assessment, a cataloging of humor and craft, a history even, but fictional, sort of, all of it, a world that you believe exists, could exist, did exist, may have existed, and clearly actively does in the vibrant and rich imagination of Tom Williams. There is also the voice, William's voice if you will, which makes the book something else as well, a reflection maybe, some kind of observation or commentary on what it means to be an artist of color in changing world where a lack of color still holds sway, but may, will, not, for much longer.

Emergency Room Wrestling by the Dirty Poet: A slamming collection of pieces, all vivid and so full of death, endless death, but less upsetting or overwhelming, than absorbing, fully absorbing, as life seems so unbelievably fleeting in these pages, a breath here, a brain injury there, then gone in a flash, a sad, sad flash, no time to react, because it's all done, all of it.

Ben Tanzer is -Writer. Co-founder of Wham! Benevolent overlord and spokesperson for TBWCYL, Inc., my massive and life-changing, albeit faux media empire.

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Rachel Thompson

FARSIGHTED by Emlyn Chand: @EmlynChand There are very few books I've read that keep me turning pages all night. FARSIGHTED is this kind of book. I was quickly drawn in from the first page; Chand's writing is descriptive, hypnotic. I knew to pay attention to the details but found myself so mesmerized by how the story unfolded I was soon lost in the characters. Bravo to her portrayal of a teenage Alex and his emotional turmoil--the fella has a lot going on! For those who felt he was rude, I say sure --- but he's also a teenager. Do you have one in your house? Do remember being one? Teens aren't sugarcoated candy gumdrops. Get real -- oh yea, she did. I thought he was fairly mature -- how he dealt with his mom, his protectives of her was beautiful and sweet. All of the characters were well drawn and each had their own distinct voice. The story flowed, I kept wanting to find out what happened next and I did not see the ending coming at all! My only issue with the book was that I wanted to know more about Dax though I have no doubt Ms. Chand made him a mystery for a very clear reason. Book Two, perhaps? Do yourself a favor and read this book. I can honestly say I thoroughly enjoyed it!

DREAMING IN DARKNESS by Jessica Kristie: @JessKristie This is a gorgeous book of poetry that reads like prose. I read it in one sitting. I honestly forgot I was reading poetry. Kristie writes with such honest, raw passion of relationships, love, sex, and longing, I kept turning pages to find out what would happen. This is not your mama's poetry. Kristie writes of the kind of love we all desire.

KISS ME QUICK BEFORE I SHOOT by Guy Magar: @GuyMagar Who doesn't want to read behind-the-scenes stories about Hollywood filmmaking, right? But this memoir is SO MUCH MORE! Magar's knowledge of film and TV should be a bible for anyone interested in learning about the industry. His interactions with actors, execs, producers, and crews are all covered here in fascinating detail, along with the making of some famous movies and TV series. He also discusses his own real-life love story, one we should all be lucky enough to experience. Which makes the sections on Jacqui's leukemia so heartbreaking. You have to read to find out what happens! This is one of the best memoirs I've ever read, hands down.

Rachel Thompson is the author of the #1 bestselling A Walk In The Snark and The Mancode: Exposed. She is cofounder of the Indie Book Collective, runs her own popular blog RachelintheOC.com, is a wife, mom, and misses sleeping. Find her on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, or anywhere snark is sold.

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JA Tyler

Gary Lutz's Divorcer: One of the greatest examples of well-crafted fiction, of words that have weight. Lutz is at his pinnacle in this latest collection from Calamari Press.

Manuela Draeger's In the Time of the Blue Ball (translated by Brian Evenson): Dorothy, A Publishing Project makes beautiful books and Evenson's translation of these fantastical and wondrous stories bring Draeger to English for the first time, and shining.

Yannick Murphy's The Call: To be admired for its innovative structure but also praised for its narrative and emotional toppling, this is a seriously glorious book that more people should be reading.

J. A. Tyler is the author of four books, including Girl With Oars & Man Dying (Aqueous Books, 2011). He also runs Mud Luscious Press.

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Now excuse me while I sneak off to add each and every one of these to my ever growing, near exploding TBR lists!!!!

Indie Book Buzz: Atticus Books

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 11:30:00 +0000

This week's picks come from Libby O'Neill,

Assistant Editor of Atticus Books

Three Ways of the Saw by Matt Mullins

(February 29, 2012)

Three Ways of the Saw is a gritty, blue-collar collection of stories that puts your face right up to the window of real life, with all its bitter humor and complexities, and doesn’t let you look away. I usually lean towards a novel over a short story collection, but this is one unlike any other I’ve seen. The first section follows a self-destructive outcast and only son of a blue-collar Irish Catholic family, the second zeroes in on some dubious characters dwelling on the fringe of society, and the third plunges the depths of longing and loss. I can’t put it any better than Cathy Day (The Circus in Winter) when she said, “Three Ways of the Saw is a collection that delivers. One to the Gut. One to the Head. One to the Heart. This book knocked me out.”

Kino by Jurgen Fauth

(April 17, 2012)

Mina Koblitz has never thought twice about her immigrant German grandfather or his brief career as a film director, which her family has shrouded in mystery. But when the reels of his first-ever silent film appear on her doorstep, she has to know more. Leaving her feverish new husband in a hospital bed, Mina flies to Germany to discover the legacy of her grandfather’s filmmaking under the Nazi party and ends up on a mission to redeem his name and life’s work. At its heart, this book asks us what true art is, what it’s capable of and what is worth sacrificing for its sake. If you have an interest in history (especially the Weimar Republic), film, propaganda, or have ever wondered at how little you know those people you call your family, I can’t recommend this book strongly enough.

About:

Libby O’Neill is Assistant Editor at Atticus Books and the Managing Editor of their weekly online journal, Atticus Review. Favorite authors range from Charles Dickens to Brady Udall and she can’t resist a good dose of sarcasm. She’ll take strong coffee and big dogs over tea and cats any day of the week.

How do I love Atticus Books? Let me count the ways... Nah, I suppose I don't really need to when you look at the books they are putting out in 2012.. huh? Go on. You know you want 'em too!

So what do you think guys? See anything that catches your eye? Which of these books are you most excited to see release? Help TNBBC and Atticus Books spread the buzz about these books by sharing this post with others!

Review: How to Build the Ghost in Your Attic

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:35:00 +0000

Read 12/27/11 - 12/18/11
3.5 Stars - Strongly Recommended to fans of Indie literature & poetry
Pgs: 77
Publisher: Rose Metal Press

Oh my aching head. Who would have thought that a short novella-in-verse would have given my brain such a workout?! If you're anything like me, you'll want to open this book armed with an online dictionary and wikipedia at the ready.

I stumbled across Rose Metal Press awhile back, during an aimless perusal of some indie websites, and was impressed with their distinctive titles and cover art. Sniffing around their catalogue, I really liked the look and sound of Shippy's How to Build the Ghost in Your Attic, and was pleased when RMP agreed to ship it over for review.

The poem tells the story of Isaac Makepeace Watts, a loner who rents out the attic space above his landlady's house. We meet Isaac the moment a roof-grazing cow named Yazoo comes crashing through his ceiling, disrupting a ... ahem ... private moment he was sharing with one of his comic books. From there, the novella takes us through a maze of trippy flashbacks into Isaac's childhood and seemingly unrelated current events that eventually lead him to the hospital where his ailing father is being held.

Doesn't sound too bad, right? That's because it's not. It's actually quite good. It's got this futuristic sci-fi feel to it while, at the same time, appearing to take place in a modernized version of Thebes - the ancient greek city. It contains one of the most fantastical casts of minor characters I have ever read: talking gorillas that have the memories of Alzheimer's patients implanted in their brains, a landlord who buries singing christmas cards in the ground to confuse the moles, a mystical bar singer that Isaac confuses for a sphinx, and Oedipus, of all people, who seems to be on trial in the background throughout most of the book.

For me, reading this full length poem was like looking into a fractured mirror. And I think that's a pretty apt description of Shippy's version of reality here too - fractured. Time seems to pass in its own way, edging Isaac along from moment to moment, buffeting him across the lines of past and present... which lends Isaac this sort of otherworldly feel. Perhaps this instigated the title of the book? Isaac, the ghost-man who lives in the attic, building a reality for himself out of his broken past and crooked, unclear present? Banging around upstairs, untethered to reality, until he's forced out into the world by a hungry cow...

While I immensely enjoyed the cheeky humor and somewhat stuffy (yes, I needed a dictionary) poetic language of this novella-in-verse, I am well aware that this book will not be for everyone. I suggest you test out some of Shippy's poetry, available online on his website, before jumping in feet first with this one. Though, once you do, I would love to hear your thoughts on it...

Review: Panic Attack, USA

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:50:00 +0000

Read 12/26/11 - 12/27/11
5 Stars - Highly Recommended / The Next Best Book
Pgs: 100
Publisher: Yes Yes Books

This is everything that poetry should be and never was until now. Honest and naked. Sensitive to the point of sappy but with a surprisingly hard core edge. Nate Slawson's words punch you in the gut with their beauty. They make you wish your boyfriend/husband/partner pined for you in such painfully raw and inspiring ways.

Wouldn't it be heaven if people actually spoke to one another like this -

"... is it wrong if I write your name on the soles of my tennis shoes.."
"I think we are becoming some kind of galaxy"
"... every morning I rasp for you..."
"Be invisible ink on the inside of my eyelids"
"I want a nuclear tongue so I can lick dirty words into the bottom of your feet"

This book touched me in places I shouldn't have enjoyed but did. I love its naughty, raunchy little heart. If Panic Attack, USA were a person, I would kidnap it and hold it hostage in my closet and make it whisper its dirty little poems to me every night.

Are you curious? Don't be all sly and shy, you know you are. Do you wanna hear what's got TNBBC all hot and bothered? Here's a little taste... Nate reading some selected poems from this collection:

It's slam. It's ragged. It's dirty and delicious. And you need to get yourself a copy of it now!

Review: Baby Geisha

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:40:00 +0000

Read 12/10/11 - 12/26/11
3 Stars - Recommended to established fans of Indie Short Stories / Not as an intro book to Two Dollar Radio
Pgs: 144
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Release Date: Jan 2012

As a fan of independent literature, I find myself interestingly torn when it comes to the indie short story collection. Not one to sway undecided on the boundary of love or hate, I tend to have extremely strong feelings one way or the other once I finish reading them.

Baby Geisha, of course, refused to be a love it or hate it collection. It merrily bounced me back and forth over the fence, enticing me one moment - "oh, I love this!" - and turning me off the next - "wtf was that?!". I had the impression that Trinie Dalton's story collection actually enjoyed twisting my emotions like that. What a tease!

When I think about the book as a whole, certain moments within the collection pop into my head. The turtle kicking incident that takes place in the opening story Wet Look. Or the trip a woman and her terminally ill dog take up to Rip Van Winkle's residence in Escape Mushroom Style. Or the algae infested waters of a river where the self titled Perverted Hobo decorates the trees and bushes with women's panties. But these moments are disembodied... seemingly unattached to the stories they belong to. They float somewhere above the collection, tethered to it loosely, as if those moments are trying to outrun the stories they live in... to leave the rest of their words behind. Or perhaps, those moments I recall most clearly are simply too big to remain within the stories in which they were born?

Many of the stories have this elusive, slippery quality to them. They seem to dance just out of reach. Their meanings sit right on the periphery of your vision, you can sense it... you catch sidelong glances of it... but if you attempt to look at it head-on, it escapes you. Like the bodies of water that find themselves in the background of many of Trinie's stories, there is a sort of ebb and flow that lives within her words.

While Baby Geisha may have failed to make me love it completely, there were moments of sheer beauty within its stories that will stick with me for a long time to come.

Indie Book Buzz: Mud Luscious Press

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 11:30:00 +0000

This week's picks come from J.A. Tyler,

the founding editor of Mud Luscious Press.

Save 35% off the cover price by subscribing to the entire set of 2012 MLP titles in December! $40 nets you Gregory Sherl’s The Oregon Trail is the Oregon Trail, Matt Bell’s Cataclysm Baby, Ken Sparling’s Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall, and Robert Kloss’s The Alligators of Abraham, all delivered as soon as they are released across 2012 and with free shipping! Subscribe here: http://mudlusciouspress.com/books/subscribe/

The Oregon Trail is the Oregon Trail by Gregory Sherl

(January 2012)

The Oregon Trail is the Oregon Trail is the second full-length book from Gregory Sherl but the first to be thematically tied together as a complete narrative. The Oregon Trail is the Oregon Trail takes its roots in the language of the Oregon Trail computer game, popularized during the rise of computers and still throbbing online at facebook today, creating this mélange of poetry devout to fever and spoke-breakage, child #1 and #2, bullets and bison and fording rivers. Sherl is this new kind of poet who opens his heart on each page, and we are convinced that The Oregon Trail is the Oregon Trail will bleed as such for the duration of 2012.

Cataclysm Baby by Matt Bell

(April 2012)

Matt Bell is a meticulous writer and a charmingly careful promoter, which is the reason for the wide(ish) break between the release of his highly acclaimed story collection How They Were Found and his first novel(la) Cataclysm Baby. But the wait is so worth it, because now we are salivating for what Bell will bring, and what he brings in Cataclysm Baby is an apocalypse of failed parenting, failed children, failed births: the ripeness of violence gorgeously juxtaposed with the fragile and tender act of fathering, of mothering, of crafting a child who we hope will survive. Cataclysm Baby is going to floor readers.

Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall by Ken Sparling

(August 2012)

Originally published by Knopf in 1996, Ken Sparling’s debut novel was ill-promoted and only modestly circulated during its release. Years later, Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall gained the underground momentum it deserved – readers hailing it as a cult classic – but by then, the book was out of print. Now, with a brilliant new introduction by Sparling, this re-release of Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall is our chance to delightfully and with great fervor place this book back into circulation, giving everyone a chance to re-visit the daringly candid and beautiful start of Ken Sparling’s ever-rising literary career.

The Alligators of Abraham by Robert Kloss

(November 2012)

Brought to the head of the pack with the 2011 release of How the Days of Love & Diphtheria, Robert Kloss fans are longing to read what this new writer can do in full form, and we guarantee that they will not be disappointed by one letter of The Alligators of Abraham. Framed by the death of Abraham Lincoln and the unrest of post-war, alligator hissing haunts the leather hills and death-fires of The Alligators of Abraham, a terse and dense novel(la) wrapped in cover and interior illustrations from Matt Kish, the artist behind the Oprah-praised Moby-Dick in Pictures from Tin House Books. Robert Kloss will gut readers with The Alligators of Abraham, and we welcome you to the flaying.

About J. A. Tyler:

J.A. Tyler is the author of four novels, including A Man of Glass & All the Ways We Have Failed from Fugue State Press. His work has appeared with Black Warrior Review, Caketrain, Diagram, New York Tyrant, and others. For more info, visit: www.chokeonthesewords.com.

Ok, No fair! The Alligators of Abraham sounds absolutely fantastic and I cannot believe it doesn't release until next November! And hello, if you are not already reading Mud Luscious books, now you can see what you have been missing!

So what do you think guys? See anything that catches your eye? Which of these books are you most excited to see release? Help TNBBC and Mud Luscious Press spread the buzz about these books by sharing this post with others!

Audiobook Review: The Passage

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:30:00 +0000

Listened 11/15/11 - 12/21/11
2 Stars - Not recommended as an intro to the genre
Audiobook - 29 cd's / approx 36 hours

Readers, you have let me down. Ooh, how you have let me down. The buzz that surrounded this book at BEA10?? The rave reviews from people who claim to still be checking around corners and refusing to walk into darkened garages weeks after having put the book to bed?? What has happened to everyone's taste? Have books like Twilight and The Da Vinci Code left your brains mushy? Have I fallen down the rabbit hole? Am I too demanding of my literature??

Lord only knows how I made it through all 36 hours of this audiobook. I think part of it was the fact that I have an hour and a half roundtrip commute to work four days a week, and I was really sick of listening to morning radio. I think the other part me kept believing that somewhere, somehow, this thing had to get better.

For starters, where was the editor in all of this? In my opinion, Cronin had 3 or 4 books worth of material crammed together unnecessarily into this gigantic doorstopper, and the person who allowed it to see the light of day this way should be forced to edit chapbooks and flash fiction for the rest of their career - if only to prove just how much more powerful brevity can sometimes be.

The prologue itself should have been one book. Between the discovery of the initial virus; Jonas Leer and his obsession with the healing properties and seemingly ageless qualities of the virus; the government's attempt to secretly harness the virus for its own use by testing it on death row inmates; the kidnapping of little Amy from the convent; and the whole kit and caboodle going bad, you had a well rounded and thickly populated story that was also setting the stage for something bigger...bigger than bigger.. something epic. Something that the reader would have to wait for the next book in the series to read about.

Here's how I would have broken this sucker down: (If you haven't read the book, maybe you want to skip this next part until you have. I don't think I am spoiling anything so much as just talking a bunch of nonsense that you most likely won't understand)

Book I - The Amy, Lucy, Wolgast Years. Ending with a bang as Amy ran for the hills while Wolgast lay beneath the tree by the cabin, saying goodbye.....

Book II, to be released a year later, encompassing the Compound Years. The 80 year jump into the future, a world of new characters including Peter, Alicia, and Auntie, "all eyes" and "the sanctuary", and survival against the virals. Ending with the arrival of Amy, and virals staging their first organized full out attack on the wall...

Book III, released the year after that, bringing with it the chaotic aftermath of the big viral attack and the New Long Ride. Leaving the safety of the Compound to return Amy to the place she came from, searching for an answer, and hoping to find the army. And ending with Lacey in the mountain....

Book IV, The New Thing... the ultimate weapon against the virals...

I get the impression that Cronin had his heart set on writing an epic novel. You know, a novel that successfully spanned 100+ years, that ripped you out of the world you know and spit you out into a world wholly unknown and unknowable, that bridged the gaps between generations of peoples (the time before and the time of the survivors) who never knew each other but were directly impacted by the decisions of one another.

Yet for all he attempted to accomplish, he just managed to frustrate and alienate me. I felt completely disconnected from his characters after the huge jump that took place at the end of the prologue. Here I spent the first 14 discs or so building relationships with Amy and Sister Lacey and Agent Wolgast, only to have them completely taken away from me as I was thrust 80 years into the future and surrounded by a batch of strange new people I wasn't quite prepared to meet yet. And this seemed to happen again and again, awkward transitions from one place and time to another... though none ever as jarring as that initial 80 year leap.

Perhaps Cronin (or his editor) were not fans of those old sci-fi/fantasy novels like The Death Gate Cycle, novels that redefined "epic fantasy" with their intense world-building, character families, and in depth storytelling? In reality, it was one gigantic doorstopper of a novel that was free to roam and grow and tell its story fully and intricately over time... as a series. I can't help but think that The Passage should have done the same. What freedom Cronin could have allowed himself, what time he could have had, to play a little longer within each phase of his destroyed new world. To really dig deeper into the details.

(And before you jump all over me, I do understand that The Passage is the first of a three book series. I'm just saying that he should have broken it out into more parts... because god only knows how much information he crammed into the two upcoming novels....)

As if this wasn't enough, there were parts within the novel itself that didn't translate well into audio. Moments where, had I been the reading the printed book, I could have easily skimmed or skipped all together - such as the part where Amy hears the virals asking one question over and over again in her head. Who Am I? Who am I? WHO am I? Who AM I? WHO AM I? This one question, at one point in the book, must have been repeated for three minutes straight, each time with a variance in the emphasis and tone. I wanted to scream. Truly, I did. Then, towards the end of the book, Amy answers this question by saying aloud each and every one of their names. And there are a lot. Minutes and minutes worth of names being recited. With no end in sight, literally, since I was listening to it and couldn't rightly tell how much longer that nonsense was going to go on. Ahhhhhh!!

And strangely, Justin seems to have a thing with three's. Many times, throughout the entire book, his characters were want to repeat an expression three times in succession. "Who am I? Who AM ? WHO am I?" was one of them. Of course, now that I am trying to recall examples of what they were, I am drawing a blank (a friend and I were discussing this as one of the downfalls of audio vs. paper.. the inability to flip through an audio when in need of something to reference).

Oh, I could go on and on about all the things I disliked. I didn't really even touch on the narrator and the unattractive voices he gave his females. It was subtle but I detected an insistent whine and nag to them all that was not present in the male voices. Though I must say that whoever they used for the narration of Sarah's journal entries was perfect. I loved her voice. I could listen to her read forever....

Ahhh well, enough bitching and complaining for one post, yes? I'm still sore over the shitty ending.... perhaps it's best if I just let that part go???

A Place Indies Can Call Their Own

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 11:30:00 +0000

A little over a month ago, I happily stumbled across the debut of Consortium Books weekly Twitter hashtag chat - #indieview. For those of you who love independent publishing, this is the place you want to be every Wednesday morning at 10:30am EST. Trust me! Talk about a meeting of the minds....

Each Wednesday Indie publishers, authors, and book bloggers flock to #indieview in eager anticipation. Rachel Zugschwert, the woman behind the @consortiumbooks tweets and the hashtag's passionate host, chooses a new topic each week for us to discuss. Past topics ranged from what Independent publishers can do to increase their readership and reach, to defining what "Indie" means in today's publishing world, and most recently - how indie publishers and book bloggers can work together to support and nurture one another.

The conversations are always enlightening. Feedback and suggestions are always welcome. Rachel is open to participant requests when deciding on upcoming topics and she also posts a transcript of the entire chat each week for those who were unable to attend but wished to be able to see what took place. Though the weekly chats are scheduled for 30 minutes, on more than one occasion Rachel has encouraged the conversation to continue... because sometimes, once the collaborative juices get flowing,there is just no stopping it!!

I could go on and on about #indieview, but I thought you might like to hear more about it from its creator, so I asked Rachel if she would be interested in writing a bit about the hashtag for us. The following guest post explains where the idea for the weekly chat originated from, what she hopes it will accomplish and where she would like to see it go:

#Indieview started around a conference room table, something we thought might be the answer to the lack of an indie voice that we feel frequently troubles the publishing press. Certainly independent bookstores are lauded and supported – there’s #indiethursday and regular features in all the regular publications and e-newsletters. Bloggers link to Indiebound and Powells in addition to Amazon and B&N and that’s great. But what about the indie publisher? Who was speaking for – much less about – them?

Without an answer to those questions, we thought we could step forward to solve one of those problems. We certainly don’t claim to speak for indie publishers – they’re far too varied and unique for that. What we wanted to do was create a space where people could talk about the issues facing indie publishing, both good and bad. We knew that there were people out there who appreciate indie publishing, the same way there are people who claim indie music and indie film. We just had to find them.

So we started tweeting, Wednesday mornings at 9:30 central time. Just before the first chat I remember feeling very nervous – like I was about to go on stage for a one-woman show. Would anyone come? Would I be talking to myself or just my co-workers? Does anyone even care about indie publishing?

Of course they do.

A number of our publishers show up on a regular basis. Several dedicated bloggers (we love you!) show up week after week. We’ve had participants ranging from editors at major houses to authors and readers to indie publishers who we don’t represent – a major coup! Some really interesting debates have been sparked – are self-published authors “indie” the way that small press authors are “indie”? Who decides?

In short, #indieview has succeeded in ways that I don’t think we could have envisioned. We’re creating a space for discussion, which was our initial goal. But it’s turning out to be a force for change – something for bloggers and others to take it from Twitter into the real world with panel suggestions and BEA events – official or unofficial. The issues facing the publishing industry are scary, especially for indies: a single national chain bookstore, increasing homogeny among large publishers, Amazon’s price check app. We need to be able to talk about those issues as well as the fun ones, like social media and what we’ve read lately, in a public forum, and rally people to the cause of indie publishing. Who doesn’t want to be the one to have discovered the next big thing first? That’s where indie publishers and indie authors are – we’re what’s awesome before it gets big.

Rachel Zugschwert is the marketing manager for Consortium Book Sales & Distribution. She likes books of all kinds, and her goal in life is to discover the next big book - over and over and over again.

It's Good To Be FREE

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 23:25:00 +0000

Are you one of those horrible last-minute christmas shoppers? Been going crazy looking high and low for the perfect gift for that special bookish someone in your life? Well, look no further friends. Do I have the list for you!

Everything you see here is free, or as close to free as you're ever gonna get. It's ok. You can thank me later!!

1. M. Clifford put his incredibly timely novel THE BOOK on his website for free download; a decision he made after hearing about the forcible removal of "the people's library" at Occupy Wall Street. It's interesting to note the parallel there. A book, whose story is based on the fact that the government controls what everyone is reading, put up for free because of a library of books that was taken away from people protesting the government. Sure to appeal to the masses, THE BOOK covers taboo topics such as banning books, digitally altering texts, and underground black market libraries.

2. Rachel in the OC has put her book, A WALK IN THE SNARK, up on Amazon for free. If you like cheeky, sarcastic girl-humor, Rachel is your gal. I met this witty woman at the NYC Indie Book Event a few months back and love her to pieces, and I'm thrilled to see her book getting rave reviews. Everyone else is in love with her tell-it-like-it-is views on men and women, and now you can be too! Get it while the getting is free, will ya?!

3. Ugly Duckling Presse has put a large library of their chapbooks up for free. I just discovered this goodness last night via Twitter. If you are not familiar with chapbooks, they are low cost, pocket sized collections of flash fiction, prose, and/or poetry. It's a great way to sample authors and writing styles. Some are incredibly beautiful, while others are odd and make your brain hurt. Of course, if you like what you see, they have subscriptions to their 2012 releases available on the website. Happy reading!!

4. E-Fiction Magazine is another way to sample free, online short stories and flash fiction from a variety of authors. Doug Lance, the magazine's founder, prides himself in finding the freshest voices to give entertaining insights into human relationships. I've been known to download an issue here and there when I find time, and browse through the collection. Have you given it a try? You never know what you might find and fall in love with!

5. Indie Book Blowout's "12 Days of Christmas" Event is almost over. If you'll recall, we did a post on this right as it kicked off. All indie ebooks listed through them are marked down to the incredibly unreasonable price of .99 cents. How can you not want to download each and every one of those???

Give the (free) gift of a book this holiday season and discover your next best book or author while you do it!

Indie Spotlight: Michele Gorman

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:39:00 +0000

It's no secret that traditionally published authors sometimes take the plunge into self-publishing. For some, it's because they want to package and promote the book in a way that stays truer to their vision of the book. For others, it boils down to controlling the price of the book, the manner in which it will be sold, and reaping the benefits of every individual sale.

For Michele Gorman, the choice to self publish her novel Single in the City, which was originally published across the pond by Penguin UK, was a mixture of many things. I was extremely curious to hear all about it, since it seemed that the UK version of the book had done so well....

Here's her story:

Thanks so much Lori, for inviting me today to chat about self-publishing! It’s a completely different proposition than it was even 5 years ago, thanks to the rise of eBooks. And this is great news for both writers and book lovers.

Today there are lots of reasons for published writers to choose self-publishing. Maybe you’ve been with a big publisher and had a bad experience. Maybe you had a good experience but want complete control over the whole publication process. Or maybe you just have more faith in your book, and your audience, than big publishers do.

I was elated when Penguin UK offered to publish Single in the City. And I had a great experience with them. My editor was excellent, the sales team worked really hard and got my book into one of the UK’s biggest supermarkets and into every airport and train station book shop in the country. And my publicist was incredible. I definitely believe in the partnership between writers and great publishers but sometimes self-publishing is the right decision for a specific book in a specific market.

Penguin UK offered a global deal but my agent and I held back the US rights. This was because I wanted a US publisher for the book (Penguin UK and Penguin US are run independently each from their own territories). I wanted a US publisher to handle Single in the City on ‘home soil’ because Hannah, the main character, is American and her story about moving to London is seen through her rather baffled American eyes. I figured it would be a great fit.

Unfortunately the publishers we approached didn’t think that US chick lit fans would ‘get’ the culture-specific humour of a book set in London because many hadn’t been there. I reject this judgment. I have more faith in American women.

We don’t need to have experienced something in order to understand it. I doubt many women who’ve bought We Need To Talk About Kevin have a homicidal son, and no one who reads Jane Eyre today has lived in the 18^th Century. These books are read because women empathise with their characters’ feelings. Single in the City is about establishing a new life in an unfamiliar situation. Who hasn’t had the same cringeworthy feelings when moving to a new city, or country, starting college or a new job or trying to fit into a boyfriend’s family? And who doesn’t laugh when they hear about others who’ve been in the same boat? This is a universal theme, so I decided to publish the book myself.

It was a lot of work to get Single in the City ready for its American launch. I had to ‘translate’ it into American from British English, and while I was at it I figured I’d rewrite it too. I’m very lucky to have had a year of reviews from so many readers, which allowed me to see what they liked and didn’t like. For example several readers would have preferred less drinking … since that wasn’t an important feature of the story I toned it down (though we do like a tipple over here!). Hannah is also a bit more of a rounded character now, and I’ve deepened the scene settings to give a stronger sense of place – it’s a bit more descriptive. I also took out the footnotes that explained American/British differences (they were aimed at British readers to explain some of our more peculiar habits). Finally, and most fun, I got to design the new cover!

So it’s been a very busy few months, but rewarding, and I’m excited that Single in the City can now be read by an American audience. And I’m looking forward to hearing what everyone thinks, so please don’t be shy. Get in touch! You can send me an email through my website (www.michelegorman.co.uk) or send me a facebook friend request (www.facebook.com/michele.gorman3) or follow me on Twitter (@expatdiaries) and I’ll follow you back. I love talking with readers, so much so that I’ve hatched a plan for the next book. I’m going to write it interactively! I’m posting book excerpts on my blog (michelegormanwriter.blogspot.com) and asking readers for their opinions on storylines and characters. This is SO exciting for me so I hope many many readers will want to take part!

Finally, another exciting development for eBooks is Kindlegraph. Do you know about this? It’s genius - I’m able to inscribe eBooks for you! If you go to www.kindlegraph.com, sign in, find Single in the City and request a kindlegraph. My signed inscription for your eBook gets sent straight to your Kindle.

And if you’d like to give Single in the City as an eBook to your friends for Christmas or Hanukkah, you can gift one through www.amazon.com. I’m more than happy to inscribe their book too. Just be sure to tell your friend in the email that goes with the gift to go to Kindlegraph and make the request. You may even want to add your inscription to that email and ask your friend to copy that and paste it into the request (Kindlegraph lets you do that). Imagine being able to give your friend an eBook inscribed to say Happy Christmas Nicole, Your best friend Amy has sent you this book because you’re fabulous. We both hope you love it! All the best in 2012. Michele Gorman xoxo

Michele Gorman was born and raised in the US but has lived in London since 1998, and in 2006 she became a card-carrying Brit. Now she knows the words to God Save The Queen but still chokes up at hearing the Star-Spangled Banner. She studied accounting at university but never got the hang of debits and credits, to the dismay of several managers. Fortunately she realized early on that while her fondness for storytelling didn't foster confidence in her colleagues, it did prepare her for a life writing fiction. She is the best-selling author of Single in the City, her debut novel published by Penguin in the UK and abroad. In October 2011 she self-published the book in the US. She's blogging about the ups (and downs!) of this experience on www.michelegormanwriter.blogspot.com.

Indie Book Buzz: Two Dollar Radio

noreply@blogger.com (TNBBC Super Mod) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 11:30:00 +0000

This week's picks come from Eric Obenauf,

Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Two Dollar Radio.

Baby Geisha by Trinie Dalton

(January 2012)

Trinie Dalton is a writer of exceptional style and pizzazz that I'm absolutely enamored with. Publishers Weekly, reviewing Baby Geisha (January '12), compared her to Lydia Davis, Gary Lutz, and Ben Marcus, and I think that's apt. Baby Geisha is also exciting in that it represents a more grounded approach in the author's style. Bookforum dubbed this "an everyday fantastic." The stories range from the Coney Island ferris wheel, to the sloth-hugging parks of Costa Rica, to the Greek Isles, and are underlined by this author's wit and flashy voice.

Radio Iris by Anne-Marie Kinney

(May 2012)

Radio Iris (May '12) is just flat-out freaking awesome. This is a first novel by a writer named Anne-Marie Kinney that I believe folks will be talking about for years to come. The grace and authority for such a young writer is incredibly impressive. TC Boyle calls the book "a revelation, a whimsical, charming and beautifully observed novel about quotidian life." The story follows a socially awkward receptionist at a business whose function she doesn't understand (though she's overheard her boss refer to himself as "a businessman"). Her world goes topsy-turvy when her co-workers begin disappearing and a mysterious stranger appears to be living in the office suite next door. Steve Erickson called the book "a novel of unsettling humor and elusive terror, a piercing loneliness and the strangeness of the banal, and a hushed power that grows in volume before your ears."

About Eric:

Eric Obenauf is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Two Dollar Radio, an outfit he founded with his wife and brother. His writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, The Rumpus, Modern Fix, and The Huffington Post. He lives in central Ohio with his wife and two kids, enjoying the occasional competitive game of basketball.

Ok, I think I have found one of my Must-Have's for 2012... Doesn't Eric make Radio Iris sound absolutely amazing?!!

So what do you think guys? See anything that catches your eye? Which of these books are you most excited to see release? Help TNBBC and Two Dollar Radio spread the buzz about these books by sharing this post with others!