Sunday, January 31, 2010

Oh! Intermittent baby...

Ought Ten and I haven't forgotten you! Although if you were really a baby, dear blog, you'd be dead and I'd be in jail right now. Or on the lam. That's how neglectful I've been.

This big ether sea of Internets and you are just a tiny drop. How could I leave you alone so long?

You were riding the waves, counting the phases of the moon, watching the other blogs connect and re-connect with reader and writer alike. You didn't feel sorry for yourself; you're stoic, for a blog. You let the sea-salt air whip your face; you spied Ahab out there and tried to lure him in with porn-like words and nubile phrases.



It didn't work, but that's probably for the best. Ahab's got Issues, man.

Now you know how I feel, trying to straddle that line between self-promotion and writerly prostitution. Trying to ride that bucking horse of the writer's MARKET.

I won't go on a tirade about talent being ignored or about the corroding effects of capitalism upon art...that will just conjure up the guilt I feel for ignoring you, blog baby.

Plus, I like stuff. I'm not about to go all minimalist yet. I just bought a new pair of boots. Boots and roads are my fascinations. AMC played all the "Road to" movies a few nights ago; I remember watching them as a child.

The above paragraph, if you've been paying attention, was a very subtle plug for my not-yet published novel, Little pink babies. It's a road novel that’s got danger, sex, high speed chases, drugs, both Julie Browns (wubba wubba wubba), political espionage, bar fights, black-outs, black top, rain, sun, lost highways, lots of pop culture, gas stations, men in overalls, stuffed armadillos, random conversations overheard, a philosophical treatise on Pez dispensers, booty calls, big booties, boots, Greco-Roman allusions, and, of course, a baby.

So blog, here's my news (i.e. this is where I continue my shameless self-promotion by masquerading publications etc. as things you need to know):

I've just had two poems accepted in the shady side review.

I've entered Little pink babies in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. If you're an emerging novelist, you can enter, too.
Here's the link:  http://www.amazon.com/Breakthrough-Novel-Award-Books/b?ie=UTF8&node=332264011

The good editors over at Juked have nominated "Name game" for storySouth Million Writers Award.
Here's info on the award: http://www.storysouth.com/millionwriters.html
Here's a link to Jukedhttp://www.juked.com/

Thanks J.W. Wang et al!

And you, too, (well, not you, blog, as you're not quite sentient yet) can nominate stories for storySouth's award. See the rules on their website. This is not part of my shameless self-promotion. Nominate other writers; I mean it. Let other people know about those talented writers out there in the ether-sea.

Now here's a tune to walk you out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1D9hA1tWIw


Cause I sd so,
Ry

5 comments:

  1. "Name Game" is an amazing story. Post-drunked paranoia!! Dark flashes from the abyss of your unconscious!

    Okay, enough of that. But seriously, I got hooked right about the time the narrator says her hero is Hunter S. Thompson. There's a model American!

    I just found Juked tonight, and yours was the first story I read all the way through. I'm looking forward to Little Pink Babies.

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  2. Thanks, Meadorskier!

    Some day I will own an HST compound. There will be many large dogs and for fun, drag races, skeet shooting, moonshine making, and other wholesome American sport.

    A couple of years ago, "Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens," published a story of mine that ends with the ghost of Hunter S. dousing a hipster crowd with acid. Good times.

    Maybe I'll post some of it soon. (And no, this isn't a continuation of my mad self-promotion skills, it's my homage to HST...)

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  3. Ha... sorry about my anonymized Blogger account. It should display my name now. And sorry for that ugly typo (it should have read "post-drunken paranoia"). I was a few drinks down. To be completely honest, it was Wild Turkey!

    I went on a cross-country road trip last October and made a point to stop in Woody Creek. I chose not to trespass at Owl Ranch, but sometimes wish that I had (after all, he stole elk antlers from the cabin where Hemingway killed himself). I ate lunch at the Woody Creek Tavern at least! There are all sorts of tributes to HST in that place.

    He contributed to much of the first push that got me writing. As a person I probably don't live up to his legacy -- not yet, anyways -- except maybe as personified in the character Paul Kemp from the Rum Diary.

    Holy geze, thank you for pointing me to "Bust Down the Door..." It's exactly what I've been looking for! Cheers for the Internet. I live with "the absurd and surreal" a good portion of each day, either through experience or in my head.

    I'd like to check out your other story. It looks like I can order a back issue. I have complicated feelings about hipsters after my experience living in Chicago a few years ago. Also, I have a project called Supraterranean.com, sort of an experimental DIY magazine. If you have anything you don't plan on submitting to traditional publications, please consider sending it over! Just attach in an email to submit[at]supraterranean[dot]com. I'm trying to build it into a community just as much as a magazine.

    I'm getting my crap together to submit work to journals. But I'm still pretty new to all this. I made the questionable move of trying to approach this from the journalism angle (there's HST butting in again). Now all I want to work on is stuff like "Bust..." and Adult Swim.

    By the way, you may want to check out the Vimeo channel Tryptophanatic Netvision: http://www.vimeo.com/channels/tryptophanatic

    The guy who runs it will be blogging on Supraterranean soon.

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  4. Nick -

    I checked out both Supraterranean.com and Vimeo. Both cool. I left a comment on Supra but my avatar was decidedly male, so I guess I was cross-dressing. Like Marlene Dietrich in Morocco. Will submit stuff later after my avatar gets done with drag.

    "Bust" is cool and back issues are available from Amazon, I think. That HST story was the first one I got published. The editor of "Bust," Bradley Sands, blogs at Lawn Gnomes in Space. You might want to check it out.

    Some Internet places you might want to hit up (I mean submit to, this ain't no hustle, right?): Cricket Online Review, Smokelong Quarterly, JMWW, Pindeldyboyz. I just cribbed these off of Wigleaf's Top 50 flash fiction stories. Good luck and let me know how it goes...

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  5. Sorry about those avatars. I'll have to put in a unisex default avatar. I will look at those journals for sure. Thanks for pointing them out, and thanks for the support!

    I wasn't really familiar with the whole "flash fiction" thing until recently. In general I've fought against the recent trend of shorter writing -- it's particularly annoying in journalism. But straight-up fiction is also sort of a struggle for me. It was fictionalized first-person narratives that shook me first -- HST (like I already said), Kerouac, and (most recently) Henry Miller. Actually it seems that Miller might have the most lasting effect. But essays are definitely my comfort zone, which makes me want to bridge beyond them.

    I enjoyed the Amanda Blank link! The Hood Internet did a mash-up with her song and a Vega song. It was one of my favorite mash-ups ever. Their mixtape is free here: http://thehoodinternet.com

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