Under a Black Rainbow

It's an interesting image to have in your head, the patriarch taking his last breath while either readying himself for slumber or readying himself for his own kind of war on the day. Two disparate ideas at odds with each other and yet equally viable. While I hate saying it, I think my father had given up on fighting against the day a long time ago. After combing through the scattered bits of life left behind in written form and reminiscing over the several thousand conversations with him over the years, I think he was ready for release. I think he was finally fatigued by his earthly fatigues. To be found sitting upright, though. That's an image I don't think I'll ever shake. For the entire body to keep itself propped up appropriately, only to be found like that hours, or even a day or two, later is...it's strange, even by my standards. It's something I can't stop playing in my head because it's so bizarre that it feels like something I would've ...

A bit of a click-baity title as I can neither confirm nor deny that to be true (unless I'm going purely off of book sales). But I've also had good conversations with local friends who *have* been reading the book and letting me know what they think of particular stories, which is great. I love having those conversations because readers don't always get that face to face time with authors. I think the chats are as fun for me as they are for others. But, if I'm basing this assumption off the metrics of the interactive parts of the book, a better way to say it would be "people aren't interacting with the book." This is both disappointing and unsurprising. Rob and I had this conversation well before the book came out this past May. Would people know how to interact with the book? Was the technology we embedded in the pages well-known enough that the majority of readers would simply know what to do? Would they even care? The overwhelming results and co...

I try to avoid submitting completed stories to the same publications over and over again unless I really like the publication. The Poydras Review is one such publication. The first time I had something published by them, it was "Racking Focus," a story from the most recently published collection, back in September of 2015. They appreciate the quirkiness of my style (and that of other writers), so I tend to like submitting new stuff to them. It's nice when that particular kind of strange aesthetic is embraced at the linguistic and narrative level. Recently, my story "Into Dust" was published on their site. It's from the collection currently in progress and it's something of a good initial barometer for just how weird things will get in Under a Black Rainbow . It's just weird enough to be unsettling, but also tame enough to make the unsettled reader wish for that level of normality once they reach the middle of the collection. You can read ...

Back in the early 2000's, I began a love affair with vinyl and DJing and turntables and gigs in dark, nasty venues and big, loud clubs. And I enjoyed the hell out of it, collecting over 5,000 records during my 9 years pre-San Francisco doing it. It took me several weeks to get rid of all of my records before moving to the west coast, and it's a decision I still regret today. Not so much because of the financial value of the records, but instead for their sentimental value and their playability. Because of the hours I spent looking for those records, both online and in person at record stores that no longer exist here in Kansas City. And it's weird to think all four of those places are gone now, having been replaced by newer upstarts and used bookstore bins. And this past weekend, I went record shopping with my friend Shannon. I kept a few records from my old collection - some original Miles Davis, some old punk records, some picture discs that go for entirely too ...

The Stove-Junker Little Feather Books, Inc.  Released 4/21/2015 350 pages *     *    * My dear friend and author, Surya K. Kalsi, has released the audio book version of his debut novel, The Stove-Junker . The book itself is beautifully written; it is dark, it is lovely, it is haunting. It is one of my favorites from the last several years and not just because I know him and am fortunate to call him my friend. The writing is incredibly strong; the story, completely engrossing. Surya and I come from two different styles of writing. Where I am more firmly on the experimental/surrealist side of things, he comes from a more grounded school of maximalism. His literary heroes make up some of the greatest foundations of literature: William Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy, William Maxwell, so on. The authors that paint a detailed scene rather than throw color every which way upon it. So, too, does my friend paint a story in great detail. So...

I have lived three full lives in the span of my 40 years and still, I feel like I know nothing, save for knowing that there is more out there for me to learn and know. I am a heart of gold wrapped up in tin foil, I am the one reaching out into the dark to see what's willing to come out and play. I am both the friendly shoulder and the cranky introvert. I'm the reader and the rager, the drunkard, the pervert, the lout, the absurd uncle, the writer with the strong opinions, the one willing to lend a hand when asked, I am a number of things contradictory to each other. I am a lifetime of learning music. The radio gave birth to the violin gave birth to the bass guitar gave birth to the turntable. I am the nasty bassline from a funk song, I am the looped drum break of the hip hop record, I am the buoyancy of house music, I am the nostalgia from the 80s one-hit wonders. I am the culmination of all the books I've ever read, each word another drop in the well of my own c...

Kansas City Library, Downtown KCMO I've been having an interesting summer. Really, the last few years have been a long bit of a hard education in terms of how I approach my writing, how I *should* approach certain aspects of the writer's life, and learning the ins and outs of publishing in general. Getting Individual Stories Published My grad school program was great at offering up two end-of-semester talks about "Life after the MFA." Many of these were about finding an agent and how you find gainful employment with a writing degree, other kinds of work out there for writers, etc. All good things to know and many of the writers on the panel gave great information. I don't recall, however, a panel that ever discussed the nature of publishing stories. I may have missed that discussion or it never happened during my tenure. Regardless, I have an incredibly arduous process for this now that's taken me a couple years to perfect and implement. It work...

Author Adam "Bucho" Rodenberger will read excerpts and play special audio bits from his latest short story collection, "The Machinery of the Heart: Love Stories."  There will be time throughout the reading for questions and commentary.  Copies of both his current book and his previous book, "Scaring the Stars into Submission" will be available for sale through the fine folks at Subterranean Books.  The event is free and will be from 7pm-8pm.  To RSVP for the event, follow the invite link on Facebook HERE .  Subterranean Books is located at; 6275 Delmar Blvd.  St. Louis, MO. 63130 314-862-6100 (194)

I just released my second collection of stories and I've been trying to approach the marketing of it in a more nuanced and specific way. When I put out my first book, I think I was just happy to have it out and didn't bother trying to create ads for it until months later when sales started to falter. Had I been smarter, I would've started those earlier AND put the book up on several Amazon and Goodreads giveaway platforms to get the book in the hands of other readers who are currently outside my advertising reach (i.e., we are not Facebook friends and they probably don't read my blogs or know who the hell I am). With this second book, I was more on top of things, having several giveaways planned for both platforms, ads bought on Facebook and Amazon, and a general advertising campaign blast through my regular posts on FB and Instagram. To be clear: advertising on Facebook and Instagram is garbage. When I did both last time, I got some 50,000+ people engaging with t...

There's this interesting thing that happens when people who are not writers talk to people who are. I imagine this doesn't differ too much in other endeavors where those of us (who are uneducated in what someone does) ask some pretty dumb questions or say some pretty dumb things. I have no doubt that I have been on the giving end of this to several people at several points in my life. If you're one of those people and you're reading this, then please accept my apologies for I did not know what I was doing.  Part of this is pure and innocent ignorance of what it is that we actually do, and that's both understandable and totally fine. Other phrases, as you'll see below, come from the kind of people that just expect you to do something for them without pay or because it's "what you do." These people are garbage and probably rarely ever pay an artist what they're worth. In all things, avoid them like the plague.  Understand that this ...

I have this personal philosophy that I tend to stick to pretty rigidly: your first idea is usually a bad one, so choose another...but maybe skip the second, third, and fourth ideas too.  This philosophy can be utilized to great effect in every creative field. But since I'm a writer, I'll only focus on how it helps my writing. The reasoning behind this is because sometimes a concept is so widely known that it becomes the first thing people think of when they hear a word or phrase. My next book is titled "Under a Black Rainbow," and it feels a little too on the nose (and just wrong, contextually) to do a cover with a rainbow that's colored in all the shades of black and white and everything gray between. What Rob and I have come up with, conceptually, for the next cover is infinitely more interesting and engaging and will definitely make people stop to really pore over the design before they even crack the book open. Think of your immediate first idea a...