Date:	2008-09-04 14:24
Subject:	Western Maryland Small Press Festival
Security:	Public
Mood:	recumbent
Music:	Razor Blade Fairy Tales by Hate in the Box

Hello!

Just a quick note to let everybody know we'll be at the Western Maryland Second Annual Regional Small Press Fair sponsored by Frostburg State University on Saturday, September 6. There will be a Raw Dog Screaming Press table in operation throughout the day, and we'll be participating in discussions (see below). I hope to see some of you there!

DETAILS

12: 10 in the Children's Room Writers Q&A: Sci/Fi fantasy writers Andy Duncan, John Lawson.

You can catch my wife, Jennifer, at 3:10 in the Children's Room Writers Q&A: Children’s Literature Brad Barkley, Jennifer Barnes, Charlene Haines.

LOCATION:

Washington Street Library
31 Washington St.
Cumberland, MD

Or, if you will be in the DC area that night, you can instead go to:
Spellbound @ Recessions,
The Quincy Hotel in DC
Book release party & signing for Donna Lynch's Isabel Burning

Date:	2008-08-31 06:39
Subject:	Writer's Edge 2009
Security:	Public
Mood:	restless
Music:	Razor Blade Fairy Tales

(posting this on behalf of my pomo peeps)

Please help pass the word that we are accepting applications for the fourth annual Fiction Collective 2 (FC2) Writer's Edge workshop, held March 19-21, 2009, in Cuernavaca, Mexico, at the Universidad International. This year, the FC2 Writer's Edge will be held in conjunction with the American Book Review (ABR) Writer's Conference, held March 16-18.

Sponsored by FC2 and ABR, the conference will feature workshops on innovative fiction, panels, a faculty reading, open mics for participants, and myriad conversations about experimental prose.

Below are descriptions for the FC2 Writer's Edge workshops, as well as a list of the faculty teaching them. For more information on both the FC2 Writer's Edge and ABR Writer's Conference, including information on how to apply, please visit the following URL:

http://fc2.org/edge09/edge.html

If you have any questions, please contact Lance Olsen, conference co-organizer and chair of the FC2 Board of Directors, at writersedge2009@gmail.com.

Matthew Kirkpatrick
FC2 Fellow
University of Utah


======

REALITY FICTION
Alexandra Chasin

Creativity, we may imagine, resides in the imagination of the new. It’s cheating to use found texts and other objects. Yet at the same time the body of already-existing texts and artifacts is a vast archive too fantastic to consign to the dustbin of literary (and extra-literary) history. In fact, there is already a rich tradition of literature that imports bits of the world. And those bits needn’t be limited to literary texts. Newspapers, songs, legal documents, textbooks from any number of disciplines, medical records, maps, photos, and other images—not only is it not cheating to use such materials, but it opens up a new set of possibilities for writing into, out of, and/or about the historical record. For writers interested in investigating techniques of representing and referring to the phenomenal world and its infinite pasts and presents—techniques of incorporating its material effects into fictional work—this workshop will offer examples of, discussion of, and exercises in salvage, rereading, quotation, recycling, imitation, cut and paste, (re)appropriation, repetition, reproduction, revision, parody, hoax, and other acts of unoriginality. In preparation, you may want to acquaint yourself with the following fictions: Don Quixote, Kathy Acker; “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” Jorge Luis Borges; A Humument, Tom Philips; Mumbo Jumbo, Ishmael Reed.


STEALING BEAUTY: “TRANSLATING” FROM THE SISTER ARTS
Jeffrey DeShell

“Mediocre Writers Borrow; Great Writers Steal.” —T. S. Eliot
“Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.” —Pablo Picasso

Writing is never done in a vacuum; it occurs always in context. Often fiction writing is provoked by contact with other art forms like painting, music and film. If composition is a series of decisions about what goes where, shouldn’t the translating of decisions from painting, music and film into narrative language be possible? And if it is possible, how can we go about it? Or, to start from the other direction: how can we weave our obsessions with music, painting and film into our fiction writing? The Greek word for this translating is ekphrasis (which usually refers to poetry), and in the contemporary world we often speak of allegory and mimesis. We’ll try to bracket the theoretical discussions and center our discussion on practical larcenous techniques. Participants are asked to bring a representation (postcard, photocopy, photograph, mp3, film, video, etc.) or actual object of something they’d like to translate into prose. Students may also wish to read Gertrude Stein’s portraits of Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso.


ANAEROBICIZE YOUR PROSE
Stephen Graham Jones

So one argument and I don’t necessarily disbelieve it is that punctuation is just a parasite that all it is is the side effect of writing words down in these lines that it’s just a clumsy visual approximation of the natural rhythms of speech that in prose fiction are pretty much exactly what’s supposed to lull the reader into a state where the story can work or or a better way to say it maybe is that that unbroken patter and burble and spike of words is what transports the reader not off the page but into it face first ankle deep and evermore. But yeah, sometimes a comma sure is nice, right? Here we’ll talk about this, both in terse, nervous, over-punctuated sentences we try to laugh off and in long unbroken fragments that wander and forget themselves and then find each other in surprising ways. And we’ll do some writing as well. And never stop


THE CALIFORNICATION OF HISTORY
Lance Olsen

Despite frequent (and frequently naïve) claims to the contrary, innovative fiction is neither necessarily ahistorical nor dehistoricized. Rather, it continually questions our culture’s suppositions about what constitutes historical knowledge, embracing the counter-intuitive recognition that texts are simultaneously self-conscious linguistic and formal systems shut off from the world and active participants in larger sociopolitical contexts. In this workshop, which will consist of mini-lecture, conversation, and two exercises, we shall explore the practical and theoretical joys, problemitizations, assumptions, and possibilities in engaging with the past(s)—“real” and imagined—inventively in writing. In preparation, you may want to acquaint yourself with the following fictions: Da Vinci’s Bicycle, Guy Davenport; History of the Imagination, Norman Locke; Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell; Nietzsche’s Kisses, Lance Olsen.


BORDER CROSSINGS
Lidia Yuknavitch

One of Gloria Anzaldúa's major contributions to United States academic and creative writing and discussion was the term mestizaje, meaning a state of being beyond binary (either-or) conception. In her theoretical works, Anzaldúa calls for a “new mestiza,” which she describes as an individual aware of her conflicting and meshing identities who uses these “new angles of vision” to challenge old ways of thinking, being and writing. The work of Guillermo Gómez-Peña concerns the U.S.-Mexican border itself, immigration, cross-cultural identity, and the confrontation and misunderstandings between cultures and races. His artwork and literature also explores the politics of language, the side effects of globalization, “extreme culture,” and new technologies from a Latino perspective. Unlike what might happen at an academic conference, as creative writers we will be “inhabiting the territory” of their texts, and moving through their language as citizens of an unnamed country with identities forming at a border of language and geography. We will push ourselves through two major writing exercises meant to reinvent identity stories. In some ways we will be deconstructing whiteness and the position of the “U.S.” writer. We will also create a blog that “performs” our “texts” as an extension of the workshop. In preparation, you may want to acquaint yourself with the following: Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Anzuldua; The New World Border and Dangerous Border Crossers, Gómez-Peña. You may also want to check out some of Gómez-Peña’s performance work at the Video Artist Database: http://www.vdb.org/

Date:	2008-08-28 05:06
Subject:	"Pay no attention to the man behind the zipper..."
Security:	Public
Mood:	sore
Music:	"Confusion" by New Order

So, I'm at my son's school yesterday for the brief trial class that gets the children acclimated to things. It's only an hour, so the parents are supposed to stick around (I think mainly they want you there in class your child freaks out). I do unusually well (for me) making small talk and such; it's important that school go well for my son, which means his parents have to make a good impression. Afterwards we get out to the car, I buckle him in, and as we're pulling out I realize my fly is all the way down. As it turns out, the fly on those shorts is busted. At least everything was "under wraps" down in "the region," with no "free range" action.

Date:	2008-08-24 16:12
Subject:	Isabel Burning in Booklist
Security:	Public
Mood:	accomplished
Music:	"Water to the Dead" by Ego Likeness

The debut novel of one of our authors, Donna Lynch, has gotten a rave review in Booklist. Now we know why so many libraries have been sending orders our way...I thought they had ESP or something...anyway, here's the review:

Isabel Burning.
By Donna Lynch.

Aug. 2008. 236p. Raw Dog Screaming, $29.95 (9781933293493); paper, $15.95 (9781933293561).

Lynch's alternate/indie-rock music career serves her well in this lyrical first novel about some unsettling supernatural secrets that might be better left concealed. Isabel is a solitary young woman who burns with inner fires of intuition that guide her during life-altering decisions. One such fire urges her to accept a housekeeping position at a sprawling estate owned by the reclusive Dr. Grace. Since neither has a wealth of family or friends, a bond quickly forms between the two that blossoms into an intimate relationship and the inevitable discovery of each other's darker nature. When Dr. Grace reveals his involvement in macabre African experiments focused on harnessing the soul's energies, Isabel's intuitive flame burns brighter than ever, warning her to flee his influence. Yet, once Isabel agrees to a bizarre experiment involving soul transfer, Dr. Grace's spell becomes overpowering, and his hidden knowledge even more gruesome. An imaginative blend of dreams, fertility rites, and arcane magic gives Lynch's story a deliciously gothic flavor that readers with a taste for more highbrow horror will find irresistible.
--Carl Hays, Booklist

Date:	2008-08-22 13:44
Subject:	I'm now your private dancer
Security:	Public
Mood:	crazy
Music:	"I Still Believe" by Tim Capello

Below are two videos of my reading at HorrorFind last weekend. Sadly, I don't think it captured the bit where I pulled dismembered doll legs out of my pants and handed them to people in the front row, or where I did my chair-spinning thing. Hopefully you'll enjoy it anyway. You will, at least, get to hear me doing a truly screwed up version of Tina Turner's "Private Dancer."

Date:	2008-08-19 11:33
Subject:	Defining Moment (video)
Security:	Public
Mood:	tired
Music:	"New Age" by Chrome

Below is a video from the Raw Dog Screaming 5-year anniversary party held at HorrorFind Weekend. This is Jennifer, the co-founder and managing editor, giving a speech...during which a posse of drunken savages crashed the party...

Date:	2008-08-14 10:37
Subject:	Come see me this weekend, I'll even feed you...
Security:	Public
Mood:	accomplished
Music:	Tidal Forces by Chrome

It's that time of the year again! HORRORFIND August is starting tomorrow, and I'll be there all weekend with a reading Friday night, and a room party Saturday night. Details below. And yes, we WILL have a six-foot sub again this year, along with drinks, chips, and home-made brownies. Eleven people from the RDSP crew will be on hand so come meet the authors, check out the five titles we have debuting there, get an RDSP T-shirt...and did I mention SIX FOOT SUB??? Hope to see you there!

August 15-17
HorrorFind Weekend
UMUC Marriott Inn & Conference Center
Adelphi, MD

READING SCHEDULE:

6:00-6:30 Ronald Damien Malfi
6:30-7:00 Adam Golaski
7:00-7:30 Donna Lynch
7:30-8:00 D. Harlan Wilson
8:30-9:00 Matthew Warner
9:00-9:30 John Edward Lawson
9:30-10:00 Michael A. Arnzen

Man, this pizza is really getting whack...

Date:	2008-07-22 14:06
Subject:	Tripping Through the Light Fields
Security:	Public
Mood:	hungry
Music:	"In the Light Fields" by Damon Edge

Does anybody want this last bite of pizza?

Because it's gotten cold, and I don't do cold pizza.

Seriously folks, this is an election year.

Just ask yourself what McCain and/or Obama would do with this last bite of pizza.

Been quite a while since I posted; due to recent events in my life I haven't been online much since September. This means I'm way between in my correspondence. to all waiting for a reply: I apologize, and you should be hearing from me soon.

In the meantime a lot of things have happened. For instance, A Child's Guide to Death is now available. This illustrated book is a collaborative effort between myself, Mark Sullivan, Dustin LaValley, and the multi-talented Darin Malfi (brother of author Ronald Damien Malfi). The reviews for this one have been twisted and hilarious, just like the book itself. This "children's" book is by no means for the young - strictly adults only, please! I'm happy to say you'll be able to catch the creators in person at Horrorfind Weekend in Adelphi, Maryland this March. More details soon.

In other news...The Sound of Horror This anthology is now available! It contains my story "Tyranny of the Beat" (originally published in German/Italian for the European antho Masters of Unreality) written back in 2004. "Tyranny" follows two detectives loosely using their jobs as an excuse to descend into the underbelly of nanotech and grotesque death, by means of the underground club circuit. It takes place in the decaying future found in some of my other stories..."A Blight in the Darkness," "Truth in Ruins," etc. If you're looking for dark fiction that's a bit different, try this one on for size. Keep your eye out for more from this great new publisher!

The opening chapter of my forthcoming novel, I am the Decider, is in the new issue of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens. This issue is a free PDF download! The URL is http://www.absurdistjournal.com/pdf/issue7.pdf Take some time to order their back issues while you're there.

There's a lot more in the way of news, but I'll save it for the next update. Happy New Year!

If you happen to live in the Pittsburgh area stop in to visit us at the Zombiefest! I'll be at the Raw Dog Screaming Press table with Michael A. Arnzen, Ronald Damien Malfi, Dustin LaValley, Christopher M. Danaher, and Darin Malfi (who now has an RDSP tattoo!!!!). And don't miss the Zombie Walk on Sunday; they've got the Guinness record for biggest zombie walk every year, right at the mall where they filmed Dawn of the Dead!

The Bionic Teen: maybe.

Bionic Woman? No. Not even close.

And, what's even more painful is seeing the former Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, well established as an actor and convincing bad-ass, on the show but somehow not the lead. Huh?????

As for Albert: you're a long, long way from Twin Peaks, and in desperate need of Gordon Cole.

Date:	2007-09-27 14:03
Subject:	Good news
Security:	Public
Mood:	listless
Music:	with teeth by NIN

Recently found out my poem "Where the Heart Isn't" has been nominated for the Dwarf Stars Award, and will be published in an anthology. Many of you have heard the story of how I wrote that one in a dream. If I weren't such an isomniac my career would really be going places...

Speaking of which, The Sound of Horror anthology edited by David Montoya has been published. It's a horror antho based around sound/music/etc., and includes my story "Tyranny of the Beat", which is also going to be published in a German antho later this year.

On top of that, D.W. Green just accepted six pieces from me for the Twisted Twins calendar (five flash fic, one poem); I'll be the featured poet in a forthcoming issue of Doorways; an excerpt of my forthcoming novel I Am the Decider will be in the next Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens; my collaborative illustrated book A Child's Guide to Death is going to be released in October.

The biggest news is that I'm now literary director of an alt-culture site that's about to launch. I'll be posting regular updates about features, interviews, etc. In addition to the regular nonfic we'll also be publishing opinion pieces, poetry, fiction, a little bit of everything.

Here's an insane review of my collection from UK punk magazine Mass Movement...

A Pocketful Of Loose Razorblades - John Edward Lawson
(Short story collection, ‘Afterbirth Books’ (www.afterbirthbooks.com)

John Edward Lawson is probably a perfectly nice, balanced, reasonable guy who just happens to write hilariously soul-diseased paranoid horror fantasies like Ray Bradbury and Walter Tevis crossed with William Burroughs. Maybe the incubus of grotesquely irreverent creativity just happens to follow him around on his ordinary way and temporarily possess him to erupt with magnetic stories of anguished interiorised demon legions shrieking to get out of the tortured heads of his very badly disturbed characters. Maybe he’s the Nicest Guy on Earth who is only pretending to be a badder kind of brain-raping butcher boy than Shaun Hutson or James Herbert? Maybe, but if I ever see him crossing my street I’m digging myself a premature grave and staying there. JEL is the psycho motormouth from Hell; his characters terminally zonked out on sizzling psychological and psychic torment that is as mega-foul and macro-funny as his inventive twists of logic in their brain-clasmic adventures. It isn't easy to transfer the inner free-association mental ranting that most people experience under prolonged stress or exhaustion, but JEL does a brilliant job of taking us into a disrupted and disintegrating mind to explore their reality, and using this to provoke heartfelt vicious and really fun satire of the stupidities, indignity and grinding fakeness of the workaday world. JEL attacks the soulless and mindless with characters who might themselves be zombies or half-human poltergeists, but we really see through their eyes and feel their explosive worlds with them. 'Less than Lickable' and 'Why We Don't Do It In The Road' are both really effective and scarily funny stories about how far fantasy can go before spilling disastrously into reality, 'Consumable Leftovers' a real cringer in the best sense about an intelligent rectal parasite with human memories, 'Mouthful of Dust' a great picture of the alpha male's vamp-demon castration phobia made real and my personal favourite 'When We Wore Underwear' which is about the ultimate adult nightmare: the local ice cream truck, a purveyor of evil, contamination and obesity in already greedy, monstrous mutated children. Clearly at some drug-crazed period of his life JEL has been haunted, like me, by an ice cream-mobile resolutely churning out clunky-tinny perversions of 'Dr Zhivago' and 'The Godfather' and assorted other movie theme tunes and following him around just out of sight; waiting to pounce on unwary younglings. I identify with his primal scream completely. JEL loves his movies too and cleverly works the full canon of horror videos and obscure European lesbo-trash into parallel with his scenarios, giving a knowing nudge to the reader every now and then to let you know he is exactly in control before rounding off with a shock ending or smash-your-head satirical twist. His stories end often so unexpectedly or with just the right ironic kill-point that I laughed out loud many times. Or grossed out. Or both. 'APOLR' is all short stories, about half of them previously published in various magazines and I hope he is working on a novel to bring his twisted imagination to the full scope of cranium-crunching possibility that these ultra-freakout stories promise. Skullfuck me again JEL – I love it!

—Mass Movement

Date:	2007-08-19 16:07
Subject:	Strictly non-kosher...
Security:	Public
Mood:	nauseated

Goat Penis

“Goat penis is gray and nondescript, with a rather bland taste but surprisingly crunchy texture.”

Jacob Weaver
'Strength in the Pot' (Gastronomica, Fall 2006)

Since we returned I've handled about 350 e-mails. There are still people waiting to hear back from me; I'm still working on it.

If you want to catch up with me in person instead of waiting, you can do so this weeked...I'll be appearing at the HorrorFind convention outside Baltimore this weekend. Info is as follows:

August 10-12, 2007
Horrorfind Weekend
Hunt Valley Marriott
Hunt Valley, Maryland

w/Donna Lynch
Ronald Damien Malfi
Matthew Warner

-Reading in Salon F with J.F. Gonzalez Saturday from 6-7 p.m.
-Release party Saturday starting at 8 p.m. with a six-foot sub, snacks, and drinks all night!

For some reason one of our recent releases, Vacation: A Novel by Jeremy C. Shipp, is consistently ranking around 2,000-4,000 in sales at Amazon.ca, and the sales numbers being reported by our distributor reflect this. As far as I know we've done no Canadian promo - heck, this one wasn't even out in time for WHC in Toronto. Whatever the cause, I suspect Jeremy will be relocating to the land of the maple leaf shortly.

In other news, I've evaluated 8 mss in the last few days, and there's plenty more where those came from...

This just in from UrbanDictionary.com:

Lawson (verb)
To invade the woman's anal cavity with ones penis.
I.E. "I gave her a lawson last night."

(file under "one to grow on" or, "is this my family's legacy???")

I always hated school. Even though I don't have to go anymore I feel a particular kind of glee when the summer comes around. To celebrate I'm re-reading Dr. Identity by D. Harlan Wilson. You can pick it up right now sale at Amazon for $10.17.

For a professor at Corndog University it's quite acceptable to purchase a robotic dopplegänger and have it teach your classes for you. But how does it reflect on your teaching skills when your dopplegänger murders the whole class? Follow the Dystopian Duo (Dr. Blah Blah Blah and his robot Dr. Identity) on a killing spree of epic proportions through the irreal postapocalyptic city of Bliptown where time ticks sideways, artificial Bug-Eyed Monsters punish citizens for consumer-capitalist lethargy, and ultraviolence is as essential as a daily multivitamin.

If you do nothing else today you gotta check out these "songs" on Arnzen's MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/arnzen

Audiovile is Michael Arnzen at his weirdest and, well, most vile. Known for his entertaining and over-the-top readings he now takes it one step further with the addition of some musical madness.

This is not so much an audiobook as it is an album of flash fiction, a truly unique experience. Most of the 16 tracks are taken from the ground-breaking short story collection 100 Jolts but the CD also includes some new material.

Audiovile is now available for pre-order here.

You can also bundle it with the expanded hardcover edition of 100 Jolts for a discount.