Friday, February 27, 2015

Galatea Resurrects Book Prize Selection

Bombyonder is Galatea Resurrects' Book Prize Selection. That means if you review a book for the next issue of GR, you receive a complimentary copy of Bombyonder. 

More details here.

Thank you Eileen Tabios!

Monday, February 23, 2015

Bombyonder Excerpt at Berfrois


Berfrois published an excerpt of Bombyonder:
Does the bomb target their emotions? Could we make the enemy love us? Make them stop desiring what we don’t want them to desire and weren’t going to let them have in the first place? A massacre of want? Of needs? What exactly are we annihilating?
My father wasn’t specific, but aloof and silent, like my father. In those days I knew so little of my inherited gifts and precious curses. The gift was the curse and the curse was the gift. The gift arrived on a bomb and curse wrapped the gift in tinsel. After you swallow the gift it takes a while to digest, not everything easily makes its way through and what comes out can be a bit unsightly. That was the conundrum. What to do with all the unwanted, undumpable crap. It didn’t go away on its own.
What if everyone in my neighborhood stood on our roofs and shot down planes, behaving like goddamn sky terrorists, instigating the army to drop this kind of bomb on top of us? What exactly would happen to us as we stood shooting our guns on our roofs?
A nearby soldier claimed that the bomb would have to fall directly on top of someone to kill him. He claimed to have seen it happen in battle to a good man who deserved better and god bless his soul. But my father claimed that even if the bomb directly hit a person, the event would not kill, only change him. Now this change might be that the person wished to die and if the following chain of events led to death, well that’s another thing entirely and it would be unfair to pin such results on a perfectly kind bomb.

READ ENTIRE EXCERPT 

 Buy Bombyonder ($15 paperback; $7.99 ebook)

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Poemblots



The newest feature I'm working on at Queen Mob's Teahouse is called Poemblot.


Poemblot (as in inkblot) is where a general reader (i.e. someone who does not have an educational or professional background in writing or literature) is shown a poem and asked to offer an immediate impression. The reader reads the poem no more than twice and is not given any instruction on how to read it or information about the author. One of the purposes of Poemblot is to explore the different perceptions and assumptions readers bring to a text. The readers' full names will not be shared to protect them from rampaging, ego-bruised poets on social media. Instead we'll offer some basic background information and a representational photo provided by each reader as a framework for who they are.

There's two up so far: a poem by Brent Terry, a second by G. M.  Palmer and more to come soon.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

redux and unwritten



I have two new posts up at Queen Mob's Teahouse. The first one is a series of book ideas I have yet to write. Please don't steal my ideas. Thank you.

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The second post is a reprint from a post that first appeared elsewhere in 2010, but is no longer available online: Advice to (M)other(F)ucking Ho(A)rd(s) – REDUX.

I know it was popular and what people liked to read about, but aside from the occasional snarky tweet, I long tired of writing about publishing and pobiz in general. After a few years, I didn't haven't anything new to say. A lot has actually changed these past few years and I'm not even sure I have a firm grasp of what's going on at the moment. So I found it funny that a post that Jeremy Spencer wrote at Real Pants where he quoted from a post I wrote in 2011 got so much attention this past week. More attention than anything I've written recently. Clearly it's what people want to read about.

I might write about that in the near future. Thankfully I'm a poet and used to people not being interested in what I'm interested. Otherwise my feelings might be hurt.