Fresno Undercurrent talks about a truly novel idea, the Noveltown Review, and more from our interview with Jessi - By N.L. Belardes

Fresno Undercurrent writes about the Noveltown Review

Big thanks to the Fresno Undercurrent for their interview with Noveltown about our new magazine, followed by Jessi Hafer’s article in the June 2007 issue of the Fresno Undercurrent, “A truly novel idea: New literary magazine debuts in Bakersfield.”

Jessi wrote:

I sat down on a Sunday afternoon to flip through the Noveltown Review...due to the relevance, quality, and variety of the Noveltown Review, it is an easy publication to read from cover to cover and a hard publication to forget.

Jessi and I discussed blogs, magazines and more. She had this to say about our magazine as a tool that can reach new markets:

In deciding to expand beyond books and blogs, Noveltown Publisher N.L. Belardes explained, ‘We were ready to impact literary culture with a specific focus…but since we promote ourselves outside of the literary sphere, that means we could take our magazine anywhere too. We’ve been inside the Rabobank Arena during Bakersfield Condor hockey games, promoting our literary magazine.’

Just as an Internet blog can be read by any type of audience; I think it’s that go-anywhere and approach anyone attitude that makes the Noveltown Review so exciting. Belardes continued, ‘With the right support, key networking, and an added dose of MySpace nowadays, you can take creativity and community-building to a new level.’

You’ll hear a lot more from us about the Fresno Undercurrent. We’re big believers in supporting a Central Valley and an L.A. scene, not just Bakersfield.


There's a fold because we got it in the mail...

Here’s a portion of our interview that isn’t in the Undercurrent:

Jessi: What's in store for readers in future issues, and when will the next issue be available?

Noveltown: We want to keep future issues of the Noveltown Review as diverse and exciting as we find the entire literary world. Our next issue comes out in late August and will feature a racier theme. Spring issues are always going to feature contemporary literature. The fall will have a hefty dose of non-fiction, and the winter: young adult/contemporary fiction.

Late summer is a nice time to expose readers to the raw side of literature, in this case, the Brutalist movement out of London. We’re billing it as “Brutalists in Bakersfield” but what that really means is we’re helping give Brutalists a voice here in America and back in London (We’ll send more magazines there too). Although there are online entities out of London like Scarecrow, 3:AM Magazine, and print entities such as Social Disease and Wrecking Ball Press, we want to get some of these writers in print for more exposure.

The Brutalists are a loose collection of creative folk including the likes of Heidi James, Tony O’Neill (formerly of Brian Jonestown Massacre), Lee Roarke, Ben Myers and Matthew Coleman. They really penned their own literary movement and have been reviewed in the Guardian recently. And so I say “Brutalists in Bakersfield”, because as editor of the magazine I strangely find my own raw writings might just be a little Brutalist as well. Who knows, maybe there are some Brutalists in Fresno as well.

The literary world wears two faces. Every issue features articles on commercial publishing as well as those on the Indie literary spirit. We’re also happy to provide crossover with articles that talk about what’s hot on lit blogs. Believe me, it does get controversial out there. We’ll provide a dose of it.

Noveltown is also excited about our new flash fiction projects with colleges and universities. Future issues will see our involvement with creative writing programs from around the country as we feature short student works out of UCLA Extension Program, UC Riverside Extension Program, Rutgers University and more.

New to the Noveltown team is Rafael F J Alvarado. Rafael is one of two Co-Poetry editors. We’re really looking for our multicultural poetry section to grow by leaps and bounds. Rafael Alvarado’s experience and expertise with poet groups across America makes him a valuable resource to the magazine. He is being joined by Outlaw Bible of American Poetry editor S.A. Griffin as co-editor to help bring existing and emerging poets into the Noveltown Review.



Jessi: What gave you the courage (if that's the right word) to want to do this and to know that you would make it work?

Noveltown: Believing in yourself is key. That’s where courage plays in. You have to be courageous to take any creative idea from thought to action. You never know for sure if anything is going to work. But with the right support, key networking, and an added dose of MySpace nowadays, you can take creativity and community-building to a new level.

We started with a print book and music. The magazine couldn’t possibly follow until we developed some kind of online following. Whether readers like our blogs or not, we developed a following that is up to 4,000 unique visitors per day.

With the idea of the magazine we simply wanted crossover. Really, the form and function of a print literary magazine as a marketing tool to help make people aware about literature and that Noveltown is unique to itself. A print version of ourselves is a marketing tool, just as our blog Paperback Writer is, only with 99% literary content as opposed to the blog’s 25%. People who read our blog know they can find hard news, music, Op Ed pieces on a wide range of topics. But not the magazine. We were ready to impact literary culture with a specific focus… but since we promote ourselves outside of the literary sphere, that means we could take our magazine anywhere too. We’ve been inside the Rabobank Arena during Bakersfield Condor hockey games, promoting our literary magazine.

And so far the Noveltown Review has worked because our first issue has all but disappeared. It has been to England, Japan, Fiji, Germany, and all across the United States. We’re proud to be in places like Book Soup in Hollywood, Russo’s Books in Bakersfield and City Lights in San Francisco. We’re even a part of a mystery writers conference in Texas. It’s a free magazine, except online you pay a few bucks.

I think people want to see literature in print form, and since we’re a Central Valley entity, I think people in this big valley are really curious as to what we Central California valley folks can cook up. And so the Fresno Undercurrent shares in such success because of a natural curiosity about us. I hear the Undercurrent is now including literature. That’s a success for us, because we’d like to think we played a tiny role in helping a Fresno newspaper see the value in offering literature to the Central Valley.

And such cross promotion is good. You’ll see Noveltown fully supporting the Fresno Undercurrent because we share a vision in a valley that doesn’t have a strong literary presence in the world of literature.

I bring this up because it’s through such vision sharing that Noveltown can work. You’ll see us partnering soon with some projects with EditRED.com out of Europe. They have an entire literary culture they’re building with thousands of members already. We’re going to help them on the grassroots level. And it will be good for them too. One of their fearless leaders is Alan Emmins. He’s a writer who literally spent 31 days on the streets of New York as a project to learn culture from a varying perspective. His book 31 Days has been a hit in Europe. He brings such passion and energy to a business that focuses on community spirit.

And so we give credit to blog readers and entities like the Undercurrent, EditRED, and a lot more. Noveltown is a community. But that community is tapped into many communities who share similar visions.

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Saturday, June 16, 2007. You can leave your response.