First 200 Tweets From Twitter Novel "Small Places" - By N.L. Belardes

Now you can read the first 200 tweets from the twitter book "Small Places" (twitter.com/smallplaces) in order. It's actually the first seven chapters.

One.

Pre-Twitter: Stand by for first transmission. This is the fiction novel, "Small Places." The story will begin shortly... 05:31 PM April 25, 2008 from web

Twitter 1: I’ve grown to like small places. I like bugs, bug homes, walking stick bugs, blades of grass, ladybug Ferris wheels made out of dandelions.

Twitter 2: I like puddles, segments of reflections in dew and the parable of the bagworms I once made up. I’ll tell you later.

Twitter 3: On the other side of my apartment window is a dirty grey compartment of Central California sky.

Twitter 4: It's right there; just on the other side of a wall, through a piece of glass, through an unopened doorway, even beneath cracks in the floor.

Twitter 5: Endless grey corporate sky. Above valley cities, cubicles of dirty air. I can see the grey, can practically taste a chunk of cottony smog.

Twitter 6: I tie my shoes. No great mystery about this cul de sac. Southern valley catcher's mitt of mountains harbors the worst air in the nation.

Twitter 7: Just read the headlines in other cities. You won't necessarily read it here in this all-American city, though everyone around here knows it.

Twitter 8: What else can I do but shut the door behind me and start walking? I don't have a goddam car. And yes, it's because I'm not well paid.

Twitter 9: The grey skyline doesn't tower too far above wide, empty streets. From several blocks away I can see Buildicon Enterprises.

Twitter 10: Buildicon uses a four-story bank as its home base for product development, marketing, tech support and shipping.

Twitter 11: I see a line of ants on the sidewalk. They seem to be walking to Buidicon. I imagine them taking my place, in cubicles, hardly working.

Twitter 12: Boxy, the structure looms above the dirty horizon. Lines of ants spill into gutters and cracks. A leaf is carried with them like a stretcher.

Twitter 13: I imagine myself falling down exhausted, shrinking, lying on the leaf and carried into the darkness of small places.

Twitter 14: I'm not thinking about Mulani, not right now anyway. I pass a school auditorium, looks like a Lego. It's haunted complex is ripe with ghosts.

Twitter 15: When I get near Buildicon I stare up. The windows are dirty, dusty. I walk through the parking garage to the foyer. Bankers, lawyers pass.

Twitter 16: Then I see faithful Buildicon workers--all people like me who infest this building. I silently curse the elevator. The doors open. I step in.

Twitter 17: I beg for this to not be the time I get stuck as it chugs toward the third floor. "Please, not me today. I didn't eat a hearty breakfast..."

Twitter 18: Elevator sickness... Are there rooms ants hate, that grubs detest? A type of wood chamber for a termite--a moment when a cocoon is a prison?

Twitter 19: "I don't care if I get stuck in the elevator. As long as you do my work." That's what Mulani, a true time-managed Buildicon employee, says.

Twitter 20: Such kernels of truth are nothing a Rolex after five years of faithful employment can fix. The doors swing open. I walk toward marketing.

Two.

Twitter 21: Perfectly compartmentalized sits endless cubicles with computers in each, all cozily networked, each with a chair fit for lumbar support.

Twitter 22: On each desk rests pictures of Buildicon's idyllic families, all non-management: husbands hugging wives, children with perfect white teeth..

Twitter 23: Cork boards are filled with exotic faraway images of Modesto, Fresno, Van Nuys and California City--the desert town that never grows.

Twitter 24: Desk cities: Kleenex boxes, staplers, tape holders; endless stacks of paper dotted in red ink. Burger King toys that can light up and spin..

Twitter 25: At my desk now thinking about Frederick Taylor. He's the bastard from yesteryear who was so efficient with his hard-on for time management.

Twitter 26: How much time did he waste picking up shovels? The average Joe will always find a way to dig a hole and dog work at the same time.

Twitter 27: It's what all of us clockwatchers do--we are humans and not automatons. I sigh. It's another day at the office...

Twitter 28: So I just wrote an email to Mulani. I realize she hasn't been efficient in relationship with her asshole husband. Note: look up fungible.

Twitter 29: He's a semi-pro soccer player who just spent more than a year overseas screwing God knows how many South American prostitutes and bimbos.

Twitter 30: You'd think missing the birth of his kid would've pissed off Mulani. Or his lack of phone calls…

Twitter 31: Or his once-in-a-blue moon insincere jests of marital love (just after brothel moments). A clear indication of an inefficient marriage.

Twitter 32: There's so much more. But my point? You're right. There's no efficiency anywhere. So I spilled my guts in an erroneous work-related email:

Twitter 33: ...I guess there's always some idiot Jodie Foster around who develops feelings for the monster, knowing full well the man ate brains...

Twitter 34: Pondering: If sex were efficient it would take two seconds. We would all be monkeys, humping, then eating leaves and worms and lazing about.

Twitter 35: So Mulani took it from me for hours in our three, count them, three non-work related escapades. Efficient? No. Time consuming. Yes.

Twitter 36: Taking a break that's supposed to only last an hour and coming back sweaty, smelling like your sexy workmate, that's an efficiency problem.

Twitter 37: I compromised my integrity. I hoped she'd say, "I'm leaving him. I love you," then hold my hand and see the great waterfalls of the world...

Twitter 38: That's the web of adultery: inefficient babbling of one gorilla to another while pumping on an ass, eating leaves. I'd make a great monkey.

Twitter 39: When people are at work, do they think about work, or are they thinking about sex, blowjobs, touching, caressing, lunchtime shenanigans?

Twitter 40: Lollipops are the oral dose of sexcapade medicine that's legal in the workplace. I'll take a red one.

Twitter 41: Why does the company secretary keep a copious supply of lollipops on her desk? Company prez says, "I need a form." She licks her lips. They’re doing it.

Twitter 42: And so the candy, the lollipops, they keep workers working along with their abstract naughty thoughts... Enough. I have to go to a meeting.

Three.

Twitter 43: Of the eight people in the meeting room who appear to be in a state of cryogenics, three of us seem worse off than the rest.

Twitter 44: Vishnu rolls his eyes as if slowly awakening from a month of freezing-tube paralysis. There’s no hope for him.

Twitter 45: His karmic voyage to a land of the sleep gives him a strangely peaceful look as if he's an all-wise half-listening webmaster from New Delhi.

Twitter 46: I glance at my watch. He's at least thirty minutes from point of consciousness.

Twitter 47: Mulani is half-Chinese, a valley girl all the way with her pigtails and bubblegum chewing. She's lost to the marketing manager's monologue.

Twitter 48: In her wide-eyed state she concocts a plan to make it with Michael Jordan. She's knows kissing me put her at only 2.5 degrees of separation.

Twitter 49: How do you break into 'no' degrees of separation? I wonder with her. At least we're brainstorming. "He's old," I said at lunch yesterday.

Twitter 50: She set me straight, said Joan, our project coordinator, is in lust with Sean Connery. "And he's at least three times Michael Jordan's age."

Twitter 51: Is my heart rate in the low 30s? As our marketing manager “Blahs” I think about the Giant Root Borer, the largest beetle north of Mexico.

Twitter 52: Our marketing manager's name is Milt Butterlink. He's the proud bug-like corporate embodiment of a big dumb B-movie monster bug.

Twitter 53: Never before has such a re-animated corporate dialogue risen from such a cramped meeting room insectoid. He is what Buildicon emulates.

Twitter 54: Milt Butterlink: As I fall asleep, this is the man who has prepared pages of notes simply to unravel the mystery of the color orange.

Twitter 55: "Team, we'll get a new color though I know you're attached to your tangerine polos. Orange is an out-of-fashion corporate color faux paus."

Twitter 56: Milt Butterlink was beginning to look more wooden, like a stick bug. Like five stick bugs all wrapped into one, with large pine cone hands.

Twitter 57: He's got big grey eyes and large lips; his cheeks puff out above a weedy sidewalk of chest hair that springs up through his v-neck.

Twitter 58: His hands don't look like flesh at all but dry and wood-like (pine cones), as if unfinished, stuck onto his body: lost boy bug monster.

Twitter 59: God only knows what he does with those hands in the Greenhorn Mountains, where he commutes from everyday and lives with his wife and two small children.

Twitter 60: He's probably digging a tunnel to nowhere with those bare wooden hands like shovels. Very time efficient. Very Frederick Taylor.

Twitter 61: Today Milt passes out another document. In case you didn't know, he's the one who puts us in our cryogenic state every Tuesday.

Twitter 62: There are always two boxes of donuts that we inject straight into our bloodstream so we can crash at just the right moment of diatribe.

Twitter 63: I imagine myself in the middle of the conference room table--the donut my life preserver. A current of normalcy pulls me out of the room.

Twitter 64: I wash ashore where marketing is of the cowboy and jeans 'no bullshit' variety. Mulani senses my imagination and showers me with smiles.

Twitter 65: Back to semi-reality, Milt pushes papers in front of us. Always scheduled at 11 a.m., our weekly meetings never start until lunchtime. Why?

Twitter 66: Reason No. 1: Milt sends an email to the entire marketing department at 11:19 a.m. stating, "I want you all to be freakin' superstars."

Twitter 67: Reason No. 2: Meeting has been delayed because he needs to discuss, er, micro-manage magazine ad designs with me, Joan and Mike Neversmith.

Twitter 68: Why is it important to tell you? Because this happens every day, five days a week, blah blah weeks per year. Every single grey cubicle day.

Twitter 69: Milt Butterlink is always second-guessing himself, his intentions, his copywriting, his morning coffee flavor, but not always in that order.

Twitter 70: I imagine a small place in a bug colony. Milt, with no feelers would try to lead us to the productivity room. We'd end up eaten by birds.

Twitter 71: Milt only uses ideas he steals for his own. He passes those straight on to the company president. That would be the enterprise level.

Twitter 72: Milt's Document: "Caterpillar Marketing Plan: Budget and Style for Buildicon's Gadgetary Future." Milt has an excitable look on his face.

Twitter 73: It's an energy no one in the room draws from. His eyes twinkle with nonsense as he leans in to let us know he is working on a major project.

Twitter 74: "This is the most important document to come out of Buildicon. Any leak, our competitors could destroy what is noble and true about us."

Twitter 75: I look at the document. It's gobbledy-gook can't be interpreted. I suddenly imagine caterpillars crawling out of Milt's ears.

Twitter 76: I sketch an image I know he thinks are notes. If I can stay awake long enough to finish I might put it in a frame and hang it above my desk.

Twitter 77: "Is this a marketing plan that crawls all over you?" whispers Joan. It could be a real insecticon Buildicon modicon. I keep drawing.

Twitter 78: "Ha! You guys are all geniuses and yet you're not getting the picture. I don't mean caterpillar in the insect sense of the word," says Milt.

Twitter 79: He thinks we're all idiots because we didn't attend NYU or have lunch at the World Trade Center before it blew up.

Twitter 80: “They’re not cultured,” he says to the prez behind our backs. “They’re small timey, loosey goosey and flashy pants non-extraordinaire.”

Twitter 81: He just wants us to be freakin’ superstars like him. This man who supposedly once made chocolate macaroons with the likes of Bo Derek…

Twitter 82: This man who claims to have single-handedly invented all Adobe products, and who once walked on the moon in a G-string Soviet flag--he was looking for some Cosmonookie.

Twitter 83: Milt: "What I want to tell you is we are like tractors. We're not bugs. Everyone here plays a vital role in unearthing our marketing core."

Twitter 84: All I can gather is I'm some kind of marketing backhoe operator and I need a hard hat to withstand Milt's dense communication methods.

Twitter 85: I'm starting to lose consciousness again. Vishnu looks fish-like. His eyes roll and bulge. The gills I imagine on his neck twitch and gasp.

Twitter 86: Milt: "Let's get to advertising." Micromanaging his creative team means we don't create a piss in the toilet. He doesn't realize this...

Twitter 87: So he begins to criticize his own advertising tag lines, “I want you all to know that too many catch phrases can make you sound like a real trinkydink kind of a company.”

Twitter 88: I write furiously in my notepad. I've been putting together a book of senseless micromanager quotes and Milt has just laid a doozy on me.

Twitter 89: It's right up there in the cloudy angelic fields of marketing nomenclature: "A trinkydink kind of a company." I'm almost jealous.

Four.

Twitter 90: Guy: hair stands on end, metal glasses on a long pale nose, faded Hawaiian shirt and book, "Massage Mataphysics" tucked under scrawny arm.

Twitter 91: He follows me. I get a hot dog and he's reading that book. I'm in a cafe looking for a muffin with more than two blueberries. He's there.

Twitter 92: The next day I see him just as the Winona Ryder look-a-like girl behind the coffee counter says: "My boyfriend has a catheter."

Twitter 93: She continues: “It’s a skateboard injury. The skateboard stood straight up on him in the half-pipe and he injured his dick. Want the usual?”

Twitter 94: I grimace and notice Kramer reading the same book and finally realize he works less than I do. He must be an extraordinarily agile downtown business escape artist. How can I get away with more?

Twitter 95: I want to become efficient as such an expert corporate Houdini. Alakazam! Alavamooshka!

Twitter 96: I can't get away from time: 8-hour day, 1-hour lunch, two 10-minute breaks, boss comes in at eight, I come in at seven. I'm a bug. Stomp me.

Twitter 97: Second day in a row: "...catch phrases make for a real trinkydink kind...," Milt's glazed eyes stare wide-eyed at a sleepy marketing group.

Twitter 98: His dark brown hair is a mess. He's wearing yesterday's Benetton sweater with multi-oranges, greens, blues, purples. A dull Japanese beetle.

Twitter 99: His lips are swollen, while his cheeks puff out, boyish, chipmunky. They're reddened because he slept outside his mountain cabin.

Twitter 100: Milt attempts to write copy. The ad design shows a metallic gizmo with Ethernet cables like tentacles: "Your Autolink Connection Solution."

Twitter 101: He's re-written the ad copy five times. Each revision is as though he hasn't written the previous copy. Does he think we wrote it?? Nuts.

Twitter 102: Maybe he imagines we're mutinous trinkydink catchphrase sailors. I can see the grimace on Mike's face as Milt sits behind him and banters.

Twitter 103: "OK Mike, let's look at this really super cool design. I mean, you're really a genius. This is what we need! It's what I was thinking!"

Twitter 104: Two seconds later: "Let me show you what I would do. I mean, this is a little too goo gah. You should have caught this bad vibe idea."

Twitter 105: "Well yeah, we could use a little less of the trinky and the dinky," Mike grimaces, realizing he doesn't understand his own words.

Twitter 106: Milt nods in agreement as if Mike finally understands the manager's enlightened marketing lingo. "Exactly. So make the changes," Milt says.

Twitter 107: I'm bored with the nonsense of micromanagement and wander to the bathroom to wash my face. I wonder: Is this everyone's mad corporate dream?

Twitter 108: Just as I demand to the mirror that I wake up, the bathroom door opens. It's Glen from Tech Support. "Fancy meeting you here," he says.

Twitter 109: "You know, it's funny how you can only take so much of work before you have to get up from your desk and attempt to piss it away," he adds.

Five.

Twitter 110: Mike stares into an outdated MAC G3. He downloads a Prince tune because we think a boyish secretary looks like she starred in "Purple Rain."

Twitter 111: Our desks share the opposite walls of a low-wall cubicle. We can see each other working. This is the part of the ant colony where the mandibles are made out of NERF.

Twitter 112: Mike's got a contract the rest of us don't have making him immune from the daily grind. Truth? He never has to attend marketing meetings.

Twitter 113: Jealousy: Mike's strange anti-meeting immunity idol that he wears around his neck. It's a secret "Survivor" clause he can't talk about.

Twitter 114: That doesn't stop me from harassing him each day. And it doesn't keep him from showing off his imaginary idol and thumbing his nose at me.

Twitter 115: He pretends to take it off and wave it at me. I think hateful thoughts. He grins. Would he eat rat poop on "Survivor"? Of course he would.

Six.

Twitter 116: I've been here six months. I do nothing. It comes down to setting the mood. Ask yourself: "What can I do my first three weeks on the job?"

Twitter 117: I brought four axioms for a better work environment and for better all-around 'inefficiency' when I first arrived at Buildicon.

Twitter 118: Write these down, but not necessarily in this order. No sticky notes please.

Twitter 119: 1) How to increase sexual tension in the workplace. 2) How to woo the corporate crowd with a tasty salsa. 3) How to have fun at work and not feel guilty about it. 4) The ‘three week’ rule.

Twitter 120: Number four: Fake incredible work ethic. Act busy even if paying bills online. Company prez should see you stay five minutes extra each day.

Twitter 121: Number three: Laugh. It makes people think twice about your state of mind. Believe me, work laughter is impossible to achieve for most.

Twitter 122: I'll get back to number two. Number one occurs with relative ease and is contrary to every corporate code ever written in the post "me" age.

Twitter 123: The idea is nothing is serious. So statements become flirty, bombastic, sexy, overly offensive, sexually humorous, odd-gestured signals.

Twitter 124: Mulani pretends to be a victim, though really she is just as strange as Mike and I when it comes to increasing sexual tension at work.

Twitter 125: Example: Mulani walks up to Mike's desk: "Can I see the report?" Mike: "Not sure I wanna share unless you're blindfolded." Mulani: "OK."

Twitter 126: And then she rolls her eyes right after licking her lipsticky red lips and walks back to her office. It's an hourly routine. So we cope.

Twitter 127: Example: Mike: "Got the plotter to work. Says it needed less suckage." I reply: "Who would have thought anything would need less suckage?"

Twitter 128: Mulani and Joan both roll their eyes and tell us we're sick. Truth? They would be bored if it weren't for our sexual tension statements.

Twitter 129: Same phrase by Doug in shipping? Forget it. Mulani prefers jokes from non-creepy guys. Besides, these are matter-of-fact axioms to live by.

Twitter 130: Back to number two. Early on at Buildicon, Mike said: "You've only worked a week and you're already stinking up the office with that salsa!"

Twitter 131: It's such moments where I'm most calm. I stood next to a big bowl of my salsa. I calmly handed Mike a tortilla chip. He raised an eyebrow.

Twitter 132: Mulani then stepped from her office. Two eyebrows went up as Mike dipped. He took a bite. He chewed. He double-dipped and that was that.

Twitter 133: Mulani smiled as she tasted the salsa. Soon afterward I couldn't keep middle management fingers from greedily grabbing food from my desk.

Twitter 134: Everyone stopped by but the corporate prez. He's kind of like one of those weird beasts in Star Wars than can't be swayed by the Force.

Twitter 135: This Force was a salsa I swore, "I will never share such a guarded secret with others." Ten days later I posted the recipe on willieboy.com.

Twitter 136: By the way, in regards to the fourth workplace axiom, after three weeks of exceptional behavior, slack to your heart's content.

Twitter 137: I buy an ant farm and name all the ants inside after me. I call them my collective consciousness. They're all named Willie. I talk to them.

Twitter 138: I take the ant farm to a coffeehouse. I get a mocha, smile at the ants, read the paper and feel like God spinning planets on his fingertips.

Twitter 139: What else can I do but bring the ant farm to work? Workers come, stare into the little cubicles of sand. They wander off. I feel giantish.

Twitter 140: Soon I come to work and the ant farm is filled with water. The ants float hopelessly, lifeless. Milt walks by, winks. I stop bringing salsa.

Twitter 141: Milt is in his Benetton sweater attire, probably bought at the Cusack Movie Collection auction from High Fidelity. He oozes seedy Hollywood.

Twitter 142: He declares himself a big fan of Japanese samurai movies. He currently reads, "Samurai Stories and Other Decapitation Romances." I hate him.

Seven.

Twitter 142: Most jobs are about nothing. The corporate world is no savior from that. I mean, what are we but a slowly drowning ant farm, anyway?

Twitter 143: I have a college degree, a marketing background that you can't laugh too hard at. But I make a mere 34K per year. I don't even have a car.

Twitter 144: I don't make as much as my cab-driving father did back in the 1970s. He didn't have a degree. So where's the money? At Buildicon?

Twitter 145: Not in this job where ant-killer Milt Butterlink gets 110,000 clamshells per year. Now I think I need to explain my take on advertising...

Twitter 146: Advertising. It's what fills sports stadiums, magazines, computer games, TV shows about nothing. It's a numbing new take on dish soap.

Twitter 147: Can you feel orgasmic about advertising? Sure you can. It gets ladies and gents to wash in adorable new ways and makes you coo and googoo.

Twitter 148: It's about interactive thinking. We need subliminal Buildicon messages that spin heads like soap bubble carousels in mindless playability.

Twitter 149: Ad creation takes enlightenment about the corporate world. A true mystery, yes.

Twitter 150: I work in a corporate world where everyone thinks I'm weird. No mystery there. Though I don't think my dead ants thought I was weird.

Twitter 151: Milt wants me to think up an ad concept for Buildicon's wireless recordable transmitter devices. it's for industrial data, like evil robots.

Twitter 152: I'll think up copy for an ad, sure. This industry is so C3PO. We help protocols speak to each other. He was a protocol droid. We translate.

Twitter 153: We can buildicon that gizmo. We can help protocols speak to one another. Only like C3PO I can't help but feel impending doom when I think.

Twitter 154: The day I saw boxes filled with pink sponge packaging I stared in wonder at the little rectangles. Here was my temporary answer to fun.

Twitter 155: Most corporate folk consider 'fun' a ludicrous non-serious detrimental work behavior. Creative marketing people are freaks who live for fun.

Twitter 156: Fun: more than just ballgame beer. Sorry to offend you simpletons. Fun is a complex process often meaning hyperfocusing on the mundane.

Twitter 157: There is something inherently appealing in a block of pink sponge. In and of itself it has no real value other than as a packaging product.

Twitter 158: You stuff them into empty spaces in boxes. They fill voids. Yet I see living shapes. I decide the sponge rectangles will make nice puppets.

Twitter 159: I suddenly want to create diorama of pink packaging corporate puppets, not merely for my entertainment, but for all bored Buildicon workers.

Twitter 160: What do you think if you see pink packaging sponges with faces: felt-pen grins of asinine pondering and surreal cartoonland pontifications?

Twitter 161: Mike and I design a character in this pink sponge puppet named Blockhead Joe. Much of his story is simple. He marries Airhead Pam.

Twitter 163: Blockhead Joe and Airhead Pam have a grand wedding. They appear on a sitcom. He cheats on her. She cheats on him. They have baby larvae.

Twitter 164: We put up a 'Free Larvae' sign. They're made out of packaging popcorn. We draw faces on them so each one is unique.

Twitter 165: Glen quits his job in Tech Support and takes his larvae to Mississippi. I soon get an email: "We're here!" I never hear from him again.

Twitter 166: Airhead Pam gets murdered. Some of the larvae turn into spawnlings that are Styrofoam, half sponge. Blockhead Joe gets framed.

Twitter 167: Blockhead Joe gets kidnapped. The ransom is twenty bucks. Body parts begin to arrive. How do I get away with this you might ask?

Twitter 168: I have no idea how I get away with this sponge show other than the four workplace axioms I defined earlier. I'll do some real work tomorrow.

Twitter 169: 2 am: I dream about my dead ant farm. I am inside it, lost. There are no ants to show me the way, only plastic walls and hulks of dead ants.

Twitter 170: I split open a dead dried ant and make a sort of shaman costume that I wear while I explore. I commune with their dead consciousness.

Twitter 171: I find a room with ant eggs stuck to the walls and ceiling. One is cracked open. Black lifeless eyes stare out at me. I am them.

Twitter 172: In my shaman ant dream I grow thirsty. I use two broken antenna as divining rods. I dig and water springs out. I wake up having wet the bed.

Twitter 173: Milt's eyeballs are nearly touching the new ant farm I brought to work. "Where are the ants?" he asks. "I just mail-ordered them," I say.

Twitter 174: He seems more impatient than me about the ants arrival: "When will they come?" Me: "Any second now." Milt stares for minutes on end.

Twitter 175: I finally get the ants and dump them into the ant farm. They spread throughout like they'd just been on vacation and start digging tunnels.

Twitter 176: I watch the ants watch me. I think they can see me. They gather at the plastic walls. No wait. It's the dead fly I put in there. Nevermind.

Twitter 177: After lunch I see the ant farm is a complete wreck. All the sand walls have collapsed. There's no movement. A Post-It reads: "Earthquake."

Twitter 178: Milt walks by. He doesn't look at me but snickers to himself. I follow him to the bathroom where I can hear him laughing insanely.

Twitter 179: Today is like yesterday only worse. I walk up to Buildicon where a bum pisses on a tire in the parking garage. Thank God I don't have a car.

Twitter 180: I say: "Don't you have a goddam outhouse? Or a newspaper? Or a friend to piss on? Cause you're pissing me off!" He laughs in my direction.

Twitter 181: I snap out of it as Buildicon's self-imposed beauty queen, Kira de Frito passes by. She builds spreadsheets that Mulani has to fix.

Twitter 182: She talks to Brazilian product buyers, perhaps about lingerie. She's the Wicked Witch of the West Indies, kind of dark, with a hook nose.

Twitter 183: Kira de Frito slinks by in a jaguar of an outfit, very catlike, with tight black pants and cleavage you could put a pineapple platter on.

Twitter 184: By the copier Mulani tells me about Kira de Frito's crisis: "I will not suffer this one alone. She has to dance for her husband." Me: "No!"

Twitter 185: Me: "He can't?" Mulani: "Nope." Me: "So she dances a jig each night before they salsa?" Mulani: "Every night." Me: "Horrible!"

Twitter 186: I mean, don't get me wrong. Shake it don't break it. "But that's not all of it," Mulani says. I run the copier again to buy more time.

Twitter 187: Mulani: "She's only clothed from the waist up, a corset." Me: "Right now?" I look. "No, you idiot. When they you know," Mulani says.

Twitter 188: As I sit down at my desk I suddenly realize that if Buildicon is the social heart of Americana I'd rather be in Brazil with Kira de Frito.

Twitter 189: I want to be carrying around platters of pineapples, wear an oversized cabana shirt, and see Kira scream "Carnival!" in her coconut bikini.

Twitter 190: I'd rather it be Mulani than Kira de Frito. Let's eat, let's dance, let's get away from the color grey in a seaside town filled with color.

Twitter 191: Except there will be copacabana boys by the hundreds. I can't bear the thought of losing Mulani to a pineapple plate distributor.

Twitter 192: "Ay!" I yell. "Is there no justice?" Mike looks at me. I don't think he cares that I yelled. He's busy designing a robotic ad for Buildicon.

Twitter 193: Me: "Do we have to sing a musical?" Mike: "Yes. Can we make one up?" Me: "Of course. I don't know any actual words or tunes. Do you?"

Twitter 194: Mike realizes he doesn't know any musicals either, but we sing. He leads. Next door is the president's office. He doesn't say a word.

Twitter 195: He knows we're crazy. He's also happy because I know Margo in Orders just intercepted a fax that he paid $300,000 for a turbo prop.

Twitter 196: And that's OK, except now he's wearing goggles to work. He's happy we're bringing life to the land of grey. But now I call him captain.

Twitter 197: Up walks Kira de Frito. Dear me, did I forget to mention that she has a birthmark on her forehead? She's got that look in her eye again.

Twitter 198: "You do not like me," Kira says. I say in reference to her birthmark: "You're so retro Gorbachev." She doesn't get it.

Twitter 199: We battle with questions: "What did I ever do?" "You didn't like the song?" "Why are you so angry?" "Are you not a fan of musicals, Kira?"

Twitter 199: Kira de Frito once starred in a Brazilian novella. I never acknowledge her stardom. So she's overly sensitive. She bolts into Milt's office.

Twitter 200: "What's up with the colorful new ads?" I say to Mike. "It's like robots in dance gear." Mike: "It's our new look and feel." Me: "Rainbows?"

Twitter 201: Mike imitates Milt Butterlink: "Make Buildicon recognizable with color." He adds, "Milt can't choose one color so he goes with them all."

Twitter 202: Milt's door opens and out pops Kira de Frito. She bolts for her cubicle. "What's up her pineapple?" Mike says.

Read more "Small Places" at www.twitter.com/smallplaces

Nick 2.0 jumps to the 5pm newscast - By N.L. Belardes

Kinda weird to be on at 11am and 5pm. Who knows how long it will last? I think I'm up to around 53 segments. Anyway, here I am talking about the latest Nick 2.0 blog, "National Novel Writing Month Goal Fulfilled, What's Yours?" which plugs an article I'm working on about novel writing (NaNoWriMo) and www.thenervousbreakdown.com:

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.

Lauren Baratz-Logsted takes Noveltown into her world of Vertigo and beyond - By N.L. Belardes

Lauren Baratz-Logsted. Hers isn’t an easy name to learn or write. Call me a simpleton. Yet, if you said her name these days, I’d know exactly whom you were talking about. She’s a regular commenter on LitPark, a regular on myspace (She’s everywhere like a freakin’ ghost ninja), and a regular in the Noveltown Review with an article in the inaugural issue and a forthcoming article in our upcoming racier edition.

Her article, "The Working Writer: What Kind Of Writer Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?" is meant to help out writers who need the guidance to get successful. I know I need it. Who doesn’t need encouragement? I probably look forward to her next article more than anybody. On a personal level I’ve been through every emotion a novelist must face in the path of a hopeful literary career. I told writer Samantha Dunn recently, “Noveltown is built out of the lint of our pockets.” And so are most writing careers. It’s tough work. People like Lauren help us through the process of acceptance and understanding what it’s all about.


Baratz-Logsted's characters reveal the dark in all of us

It’s what you learn from people that matters. And some writers, well, they just ooze with wisdom. That’s Lauren Baratz-Logsted. I’m in dire need of picking her brain, cloning her brain cells, and injecting them into my own. I could use some of her writing prowess, her determination to succeed, and I’m guessing here, but some of her skills at being a perfectionist.


Hidden love of Lauren? Or primal fear?

I recently finished Lauren’s book, Vertigo. It's been getting mostly raves with a few dissenters on Amazon. Love or hate Vertigo, it’s masterfully written, a complete blend of historical fiction with erotic suspense. It takes skill to mimic culture and language, knowledge to provide historical detail, and ingenuity to delve such in a path of formulaic writing. Vertigo’s prim and proper language and spellbinding characterization of a corrupt novelist from yesteryear and his curious unsatisfied wife makes for a daring psychological journey into literary formula and storytelling.


A snowy day in the East...

Literary formulas aren’t bad. When done well there are purposeful twists within. They lead your mind down roads where the reader naturally stereotypes the outcome. If done well, as in Vertigo, then such works have the ability to set up and shock the reader’s own expectations of where a story is headed. Sure, there’s a formula in Vertigo. And Baratz-Logsted purposely strays. That’s a good formula story. Your mind goes one way, the story goes another. The reader gets fooled and thus should have a better time reading. Yet it’s still locked in a genre—the water rises along a yardstick of thought, drops, pushes back up in a swell of conflict, all within the range of the formula.

I won’t go on and on. Rather I’ll allow Lauren Baratz-Logsted to speak for herself.

Here’s Baratz-Logsted's interview with Noveltown:

Noveltown: How do you get away with writing both Victorian era fiction with erotic overtones and young adult novels? Aren’t you going to make granny librarians and young mothers angry at you?

Baratz-Logsted: To answer the first question, I get away with it simply by believing that if a writer is willing to work hard, and I am, she deserves to get the opportunity to stretch her writing muscles all over the place; that, and no one has asked me recently to change my name so they can “brand” me as a certain type of writer. As for the second question, I’ve been mostly lucky with granny librarians – oh, and by the way, as a former sort-of librarian, on behalf of all librarians everywhere may I slap you for that – and young mothers. I’ve also been very lucky with men, who mostly aren’t threatened by my books in the way some women are. I’ve had less success with ultra-conservatives, but you can’t please everyone and I perversely hope I never write the book that does. Honestly, if I don’t ruffle at least a few people, I’m probably not doing my job.



Noveltown: How do you tackle the idea of formula?

Baratz-Logsted: It’s an impossible question for me to answer and you’ll have to forgive me if I say I don’t think of what I do as writing to a formula. It’s publishers that decide how they’re going to market books, not authors. I write the stories I’m moved and excited to tell; the rest – how the book is positioned etc – comes after the writing. Here’s an example: a lot of my books are classified as Chick-Lit. If we classify these books as “contemporary fiction that addresses issues facing modern women, characterized by a humorous or satiric tone,” then I guess I fit the formula. But if you add the stereotype “in which lots of shopping ensues, people drink designer drinks and the heroine is searching for Mr. Right” then we’re going to be in trouble since my characters only go shopping when they need a disguise, they drink cheap wine and Diet Pepsi, and any romances are always subordinate to the main theme. There’s also never a clear-cut HEA (Happily Ever After), which is frustrating to readers who need a formula; indeed, nearly all my books are open-ended.


Lauren hanging out with her brother...

Noveltown: So what’s the story about your novel, Vertigo? Where did the idea come from? I mean, was the market hurting for historical fiction?

Baratz-Logsted: No, not hurting; in fact, I’d say it’s become a popular genre, particularly if there’s an erotic edge. The idea first came to me when I was vacationing in Florida in fall of 2000. I wanted to write a story about a woman trapped by living a life that she realizes has been more thrust upon her rather than coming from her own conscious choosing. That’s a common theme in my books: people making decisions by popular consensus who need to learn to be more active in choosing their own destinies. But Emma’s particular story – and I don’t want to give too much away here, but you’ll understand since you’ve read it – wouldn’t work if I cast it as a contemporary tale. Readers would naturally say, “Why doesn’t she just leave if she doesn’t like it?” Her story being set in Victorian times, such a choice is simply unavailable to Emma and so she must do, um, other things.



Noveltown: Who is Chance Wood? Could you fall in love with him?

Baratz-Logsted: In love? I don’t know. I do think Chance is a dangerously charming devil. And there was at least one fan that wrote a letter asking if I could arrange for her to have sex with him. Who is Chance Wood? For Emma, he’s the cause of her awakening, the catalyst for the realization that so much of her world is not of her own making…and it’s time to make a few changes.

Noveltown: One day you made a decision in your life about becoming a writer. Who was the biggest influence on that decision?

Baratz-Logsted: When I was 12 years old, in eighth grade, I had a teacher who liked one of my stories so much he made the class listen to it three days running. That was the first time it occurred to me that I might have stories to tell that people would want to hear. Twenty years later, I made the decision for myself to take my writing seriously. I walked out on a day job that came with full medical benefits, a decent salary, and four weeks’ paid vacation a year. I realized that life is too short not to pursue your dreams full force.

Noveltown: Who in your opinion has the ability to become not just a writer, but a novelist? What does it take? Wheaties? Ego? Tough knuckles?

Baratz-Logsted: All of that. You need belief in yourself and perseverance, the willingness to put one writing foot in front of the other even when all outward signs – say, in the form of rejection or if your mailman tells you that you stink – are telling you to just give up and eat a Twinkie. Oh, and if you have talent too, that’s a plus. I think most people when they first start writing don’t realize that most writers need to serve a long apprenticeship before breaking in. I wrote seven novels before my sixth sold. Since then, I’ve had seven books published with more to come. None of that would have happened if I’d given up after book five. There’s a message here, people: Don’t pull a John Kennedy Toole and kill yourself. Keep writing new books, keep dreaming big dreams.

Noveltown: You’re someone who markets herself on the Internet a lot. I have to ask... I hear about the disgruntled commercial writers out there. What’s your take? Are big publishing houses leaving their writers to market their own work? And if so, is self-marketing a bad thing?

Baratz-Logsted: I’m not disgruntled but I’ve certainly met my share of writers who are. It’s a tough business, not on the order of laying tar in Texas in August, but tough nonetheless. I don’t know if I’d say publishers leave their writers on their own to market their books, but it’s just the obvious business model that they’ll throw more efforts behind a book they’ve paid $250,000 for than a book with one less zero. The Internet has been a wonderful thing for writers like me and while I support conventional reviews, I’ve found the blogosphere on a whole to be more democratic. Very few print publications have paid attention to my work, although I’ve had terrific views from the ones I’ve scored. But by and large, I might as well not exist in those places; this despite the fact that I’ve broken a few molds that should make me notable to them: RDI changed their own successful trade-only business model to publish my debut The Thin Pink Line, which received a starred Kirkus, in hardcover, and I write in so many different areas, that alone should draw attention. But no. On the other hand, bloggers seem to have embraced the fact that I’m trying to do unexpected things with my books and that I have a lot to say about writing and the industry that might be of interest to their readers. In terms of self-marketing being a bad thing, I think that’s only the case if 1) it takes you away too much from the writing, which should be your main focus if you want to be a writer; or 2) there are aspects of it you don’t enjoy and yet you’re doing it anyway. I hear too often from writers who find their blogging or myspace efforts etc to be a burden. If that’s how you feel, don’t do it. Believe me, your lack of genuine energy for it will show. Instead, find areas of marketing you do enjoy. Or, you know, be Cormac McCarthy, indulge your hermit side, and then get picked by Oprah.

Noveltown: What’s your take on LitPark, The Nervous Breakdown and Noveltown? Are they three separate entities? Are they part of a whole? Are they a manifestation of too many rebels in the literary world…? Talk…

Baratz-Logsted: Can there be too many rebels in the literary world? Pshaw! LitPark is an amazing place where there’s a new theme every week and writers can come together in a safe environment to explore the ideas behind those themes. The Nervous Breakdown gives a lot of diverse writers a chance to stretch their creative nonfiction wings. As for Noveltown, well, that’s you, dear. Each place has it’s distinct personality and serves to scratch a different itch for those of us who love all these places.



Noveltown: What’s the Backspace Writers Conference?

Baratz-Logsted: It’s an annual conference with panels on writing literary fiction and various genres, editor panels and agent panels. It takes place over two days every year in New York City and I was on a panel there last year. Perhaps because of its location, it attracts more agents and editors that you normally see at these things. I can’t recommend it or the site that started it all highly enough to writers at every stage of their careers. This year’s conference takes place May 31-June 1, so if you haven’t booked already, go for it!



Noveltown: Talk us through a typical day in your life, and please, list here all the literary entities you’re affiliated with… and end with what’s next in your career. That should take up about ten pages, right? Oh, and thanks for talking to us today!

Baratz-Logsted: Typical day: Wake up early, clear up as much overnight email as possible and exercise for an hour before getting my daughter up for school; back to work at seven a.m. and work straight through until it’s time to pick her up at four. If I’m in the midst of a novel, sometimes I’ll write more at night too. In between the writing, I’ll do interviews like this one or email with my agent or network on behalf of other writers, pitching their work to agents/editors. I’ll also take breaks between sections and flit around at Backspace, LitPark, Noveltown, The Nervous Breakdown etc. If there’s time I’ll check out GalleyCat or Ed Champion’s Return of the Reluctant for literary news. I will make sure at three o’clock that I’m doing paperwork, so I can have General Hospital on in the background. In and around it all, I read-read-read, still a victim to the schedule I set myself in 2005 of 365 books a year.


Greg Logsted, writer of Sock Puppets in Love


Another bold writer in the family?

What’s next: Secrets of My Suburban Life, my second YA novel, is due out in January from Simon & Schuster and is about a teen whose novelist mother is crushed to death by a stack of Harry Potter books – when her father moves her to CT, she becomes embroiled in a sort-of mystery involving an online predator; my first tween book, also from S&S, is due out in March – it’s called Me, In Between and is about a precociously well-breasted 12-year-old who is conflicted by that fact; my next Chick-Lit book for RDI, Baby Needs a New Pair of Choos, is about the perils of having an addictive personality and is due out sometime in 2008. My husband Greg Logsted, if I may add, has his debut coming out in June 2008: Sock Puppets in Love, a tween book for S&S about a boy whose father died the previous school year and who is now faced with a gorgeous English teacher who has the eye for him. Finally, Houghton Mifflin just acquired the first four books in a series for young readers, which is being written by me with Greg and our seven-year-old daughter Jackie. The series is called The Sisters Eight and is about octuplets, the Huit sisters, whose parents disappear on New Year’s Eve when Dad goes out to the woodshed and Mom goes into the kitchen for eggnog. Phew! OK, I think I just exhausted myself. Thanks for having me, Nick. You’re a doll.


Order now: Vertigo.

The Noveltown Review literary magazine premieres at Mixer and LA Times Festival of Books - By N.L. Belardes

This was after the mixer event. Matt Munoz of Bakotopia enjoyed the free drinks.

We just started shipping the Noveltown Review (TNR) around the country and to the U.K. Meanwhile, spoken word poet, Rich Ferguson sent some photos from having attended the LA Times Festival of Books. He said there were "lots of people, lots of books, and lots of good times had by all."


Cal State Students with TNR at UCLA


LA Poets, Marie Lecrivaim and Rafael Alvarado


Jen Joseph, from Manic D Press

I asked Cindy Wathen about her time at the book festival. She said:

As the largest literary event in the nation, it's a mecca for writers and book lovers. My favorite speaker was Walter Mosley. He's amazing. I love everything about the festival. I wish more cities hosted festivals like this one.

The literary world is always in need of community-building efforts. That’s a big part of what our new magazine is all about.

One aspect I’ve learned since jumping into publishing both online and in print is there’s a spirit among literary writers, a camaraderie that is really healthy and inviting. Writers need marketing tools, outlets, and support. That’s the Noveltown Review's impact--to help writer's get the word out...

HOW TO ORDER: You can order the 32-page premiere issue of the Noveltown Review online for only $5.95. That includes shipping in the U.S. (Click here to order)

Here are samples from some of the Noveltown Review's entries followed by some photos from our recent mixer event at Benjamin’s Restaurant in downtown Bakersfield, and guest readers...

Fiction:

Susan Henderson: Ladybug - I was barred from school for the day because I’d been biting again. Whenever I bit, everyone would stop what they were doing, and my teacher would call, “Tillie, Tillie,” but I would keep pressing my teeth into the skin because I liked to see the mark...

Brad Listi: Christmas Day - MY FATHER’S FAMILY LIVED in an old petroleum town called Morgan City, an hour away from Plaquemine. We drove there every year on Christmas Day. Our route took us through the bayous and cypress trees, past field and plantation, over bridges, and along a levee. In its own way, a scenic drive. I never minded it much. I liked swamps. I spent the hour staring out the window, looking for alligators. I never saw any. Mostly I saw dead rodents on the side of the road, or an occasional crushed house pet. Sometimes I’d see pelicans or cranes perched on cypress stumps. They were bright white against the murk of the swamp. I wondered how they stayed so clean...

Conrad Romo: Clown Make-up - After the shaking stopped, we stepped out from under the safety of doorways. We climbed out of our beds and felt our way through the dark until we were outside. Power throughout the city had been knocked out. From my front yard I could barely see my neighbors, clustered together on porches, in driveways, in yards and on sidewalks. They were in various states of undress...

N. Frank Daniels: Taking the Hollows - New York loves people like us, was made for our satisfaction, the steaming guts of the world. When you were wandering the streets in a Lou Reed billowy haze, 15 dollar bags of blow that lasted through 20 tunnel visions and almost as many near-death experiences...

Articles:

Cindy Wathen: "Market Street: Navigating the Madness and Mayhem of Where to Submit Your Work" - Face it. All of us at one time or another have dreamed of writing literary fiction. We momentarily forget that genre fiction is more lucrative or that the slow, quiet novel is gradually dying and we dream the dream. We see visions of PEN awards or our pensive black-and-white photo appearing on a Poets & Writers cover. Then we remember how hard it is. We think about the difficulty, poverty and rejection potentially involved...

Robin Slick: "Psychotic Reaction: Blog Trips for the Worldly Writer" - All is not right with my world.For those who care enough to wonder why —okay, here it is. I apparently need a twelve-step program for blog addiction. Writing used to be the one thing in my life over which I exercised discipline. I woke up every morning at 5:00 a.m., a good two hours before the rest of the family, just to work on a novel in progress or a short story. The days were few and far between that I would ever stray from that routine...

Lauren Baratz-Logsted: "The Working Writer: What Kind Of Writer Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?" - When Nick first asked me to write something for Noveltown, it took me a while to realize what I now think he wants: writing tips, but not writing tips as in “How to Construct a Plot” or “How to Inject Humor into Your Serial-Killer Thriller” so much as writing tips on simply being a writer—going after that goal and hopefully having that career, or enjoying that career to the fullest if you’ve already got one. Toward that end I’m going to devote this space over the course of my columns to the entire arc of a career: getting started, juggling frustration and jealousy and success, dealing with agents and editors, networking, coping with success and failure…little stuff like that. Having spent eight years trying to get a book published, having had seven books published in the last four years, having survived six agents, having worked with four different editors in a single calendar year, and on and on… Well, let’s just say I feel as though I’m equal to the task...

N. Frank Daniels: "2006: The Year of the Lit Scandal" - The latest chapter in the ongoing O.J. debacle has been put to bed and now (temporarily anyway) sleeps with the fishes. Any serious writer must pause for at least a moment, in the wake of this latest lit-world catastrophe, and consider a few things. 2006 is, without compare, the year that Big Publishing took a fall. Never have so many scandals rocked the literary scene...

The Noveltown Mixer photos:


Cortnie and Gerhard Enns from the Dalloways give TNR thumbs up. Gary runs Met Lit Journal...


Rickey Bird of Hectic Films
and Aaron Novak of the Silence Club


Jason Sanders of Hectic films interviewed by Bako journalist


Brooklyn talks shop with The Ska King


Notice how Hectic Films is in every pic?? Seen here about to eat a Twinkie


Author duo of the book, Morning Coffee hang out with, oh, those guys again...


Famous Hollywood author at the event? Check out the book, Eve.


Too bad you didn't show up for free drinks... heh.




Chris Taylor took many of the photographs for TNR. Thanks Chris!




Polka dot Jen


Polka dot Cortnie


Oh yeah, there was one more reader recently of TNR: The Colonel.

You can pick up a free copy in Bakersfield at Russo's Books at the Marketplace, Metro Art Galleries, or order online (cost for online orders).
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You can read about Twinkie's experience at the event here...

Amy Wallen talks sugary goodness and her LA Times Bestselling book, Moonpies and Moviestars - By N.L. Belardes

Amy Wallen's new book is an LA Times Bestseller

I first met Amy Wallen online. Oh wait, that's the only place I've met her, other than reading her book, Moonpies and Moviestars. You know, reading any book is like stepping right into the skull of a writer. In this case, one obviously from the South, and one who has hit the streets of Hollywood with a notepad and eye for detail.

Let's face it, if you're in Bakersfield and you're a fan of the Paperback Writer blog, then you might know someone very much like, oh, let's say, a Texan, or an Oklahoman. And, you might have observed them having a starstruck opinion of Hollywood--a mere 100 miles south of Bakersfield. You know those people. They tend to have never even been to Hollywood. C'mon admit it. And yes, there are many exceptions to this rule.


Amy Wallen, with wings made of leaves

For those of you who don't know. Hollywood is south of the agricultural and oilfield landscape of Bakersfield, an area once filled to the brim with Joads-like immigrants of the Dust Bowl. Bakersfield has since grown a teeny bit more metropolitan, though I have to say, raised monster trucks are still a daily sighting in the land of Buck Owens.

Why am I bringing all this up?

Because if you're familiar with the South and with Hollywood, then you are more apt to get the comic humor and real-life dialogue from Moonpies and Moviestars. You'll just get it. Wallen's story in turn will appear less the stereotype and more, "Hey, those characters are people from my family." Or, "Those characters I swear live right up the street from me." Or maybe even, "That is me."


I don't understand this photo, but Amy sent it to me and weird photos are cool

It's not a long stretch from the good old Okie mentality that still permeates Bakersfield. The South has forever swathed its paintbrush onto Central Valley California culture. You can't escape it. You just live with it. Or you are it.

Amy Wallen's road-trip story is pure comedy, pure fun and a psychological Winnebago voyage through characters as strange as any dysfunctionally functional Southern nuclear family.

I'm not lying.

With that said, here's a fun Noveltown interview with Amy Wallen:

Interview:

Noveltown: Ms. Wallen, you have quite the tale you have spun. It’s kind of Southern, it’s sort of Hollywood. It’s a tour de force mystery comedy literary hijinks of what happens to a runaway. Yes, did I say funny? Funny seems to be lost in many people’s vocabularies these days. Yes, a funny book that hides serious issues regarding runaway children. Now, if you’d be so bold, please, allow the real Amy Wallen to comment regarding the idea of serious issues hidden in the comedy of your novel.

Amy: I love humor to tell serious stuff because it’s a great way to trick the reader into feeling the bad feelings. You get them to laugh hard, and then you drop a real sad doozy and they start to bawl because they didn’t have their guard up. But if you are writing a serious novel, then they are waiting for the doozies and they have steel mail over their hearts. It’s about getting people to be open to their emotions.



Noveltown: Moonpies… and Moviestars… Porkchops… and Applesauce… I’m seeing a connection here. In fact, I’m guessing your subconscious behaviors are rooted in a certain episode of The Brady Bunch, quite possibly indicating a hidden love for the 1971 version of Peter Brady. Now, I’d like to cut through the crap. Do you still madly love Peter Brady, and tell us how you named your novel and the process in doing so.

Amy: I had the hots for his older brother, Greg. But I wanted to be Marsha Brady, so maybe I have some weird incestuous thing going on inside of me. My original title was DEAD ARMADILLOS AND MOONPIES. I loved that title, but I guess the word “dead” sells to a different crowd than the publisher wanted my book to sell to. My agents came up with MOONPIES AND MOVIE STARS and I think it’s pretty damn good (can I say damn here?) with the alliteration and poking fun at a couple of themes running throughout the story.

Noveltown: Of course you can say, damn. Your book is on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller list and you’re going to be on a panel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this April. Please talk to us about your festival appearance in real terms. While you consider your answer, let me tell you I have talked considerably with my compadres here at Noveltown. We thought it would be a good idea to attend your discussion on humor dressed as Moonpies eating Moonpies. Sort of a… shall we say, cannibalistic sugary show and tell, from the audience perspective of course. Quite honestly, such a display would be meant to protest your work of prose art. And possibly to build from there, a step further, yes, as an ongoing exhibit at the Getty Museum. Your book would be suspended above an entire Moonpie carnage fracas like a swinging block of moony cheese.

Amy: Oh I’d love it!!! Please come!! There’s something quite ironic about MoonPies eating MoonPies since so many people tend to shun them. Or at least in California where they would prefer they were made with wheat germ or avocados. And if you can get some sort of carnage image that represents my book sounds quite intriguing. Don’t you love the word “carnage”? I suppose I’ll never get to use that in a title either.




I wonder if this is the only serious photo Wallen has ever taken?

The LA Times Festival of Books takes place Saturday, April 28 and Sunday, April 29.

I’m more than honored to be on the Fiction and Humor panel. I’ve attended as an audience member several times and it’s just so high energy, inspiring and stimulating to readers and writers alike. I’d be giddy as I frolicked around the UCLA campus to each panel. My panel is on Saturday morning at 10:30 am in Young Hall CS 24. Fellow participants are Allison Burnett, Merrill Markoe and Pamela Ribon. The moderator is Barbara De-Marco-Barrett. I hope I can contain my giddy frolicking.

Noveltown: We don’t mean any harm in our Moonpie protest and come to think of it, we don’t really have time to bother with sewing Moonpies onto our sweat jumpsuits. But I do have a question. What made you choose Moonpies rather than some other kind of preservative injected pastry or breakfast cereal for an obsession by one of your characters? I mean, consider your options: Ho-Hos and Hollywood, which really goes along with some rather naughty Hollywood behavior and risqué madam and star guestlists. Or Snowballs and Sin City. I won’t play with the humor there. So, talk to me, in a real way of course about your characters obsessions…

Amy: My grandmother owned a honky tonk on Highway 90 in South Texas. On the bar were two rounders, one with pork rinds and barbecue potato chips and the other had honey buns and MoonPies. I had honey buns for breakfast, and have to admit they were my fave, but MoonPies had a much better name. And there’s that old song, MoonPies and RC Cola.

You asked me about my characters’ obsessions. Hmmm. Well, one of them would probably have preferred to have been a book titled Snowballs and Sin City. She’s obsessed with men and having a good time. Another one is obsessed with cleanliness. Or she was during a couple of drafts, but I got tired of keeping her motor home clean when I couldn’t even keep my own house clean. And then there’s the narcissist of the bunch and she’s obsessed with herself. The little girl is obsessed with her Mrs Beasley doll (Remember Family Affair with Mr French and Jody and Buffy? Didn’t Buffy OD?). The little boy in my book is obsessed with digging the hearts out of roadkill. The roadkill has to be very fresh because he’s hoping to find a heart that’s still beating so he can hold it. Has it gotten weird enough yet? That’s probably the weirdest thing, and lots of folks wanted me to take that out, because they thought the little boy would grow up to be a serial killer. But I figured, he was being an angry little boy and if he did grow up to be a serial killer, well that would be another book to write, wouldn’t it?



Noveltown: Family Affair. Some of us at Noveltown to have to watch that because our sisters liked it. Barf. Oh the roadkill theme is magnifique! Perhaps a sequel where the obsessed kid grows up to be a weird writer guy... Speaking of weird writer guys, who is James?

Amy: I have no idea who James is. I was walking into Trader Joes grocery store one day and he kept pestering me to give him some change or to buy him some food, so I finally told him if he would push my cart, carry my groceries to my car and do an interview that sold a few million copies of my book, I’d give him a box of cereal, but only the kind with antioxidants because he has a horrible rash that runs up one side of his face.

Honestly, James Spring is one of the funniest writers you’ll ever meet. The sarcastic and insulting remarks just spill out of his mouth and pen (maybe those are just directed at me?). What I can’t figure out is how there can be so many brilliant editors out there, and they aren’t picking up his book and getting it out to the masses. www.crossingthegap.com The only answer is that they want to lose money. [Secret: I’m really sabotaging his whole book effort so that he won’t be more successful and quit helping me with all our great endeavors. But don’t tell. Shhh.]



Noveltown: What is James?

Amy: Def. 1 Noun. A type of beany that women in the 16th century wore to signify their chastity belt was chaffing. A kind of call for help.

Def. 2 Verb. Being an adroit writer while writing derogatory remarks on a friend’s myspace site. www.myspace.com/jamesrspring (he needs more friends and please feel free to post rude comments).


I took this photo last night. That's my kid. We were all at Zingo's after his punk band, Dirty Spanglish performed at Studio 99. Those of you who know this truck stop cafe on Buck Owens Boulevard will understand when I say Moonpies and Moviestars is like taking your family to Zingos...

Noveltown: San Dee-ahh-go. Oh that delightful should-have-been-a-prose character, Anchorman. Such delights. Tell me, what does San Dee-ahh-go and First Friday mean to you? Only the real deal please about literary San Dee-ahh-go…

Amy: This is a hot question in San Diego now.

Someone (I won’t name any names, but a semi-newly appointed UCSD writing program professor) called San Diego’s writing community a sweet-smelling rotting corpse. She took that from the city’s namesake St. Didacus and the history she read on Wikipedia. A non-Wikiality version is that St D’s corpse was never rotting—that’s the part that got him canonized— and while his body awaited burial he emitted this sweet smell.

I won’t say that San Diego is the place where miracles happen, but I will say that the writing community is as vibrant as the freeway center-divider oleander in mid-May, and when the night blooming jasmine is wafting through the evening air, you can get a little loopy. I suspect we have to be even more disciplined as writers because we have to tell ourselves that even though it’s 80 degrees, blue sky and the orange blossoms smell sweeter than old St. Didacus, we must endure the indoors and write. Isn’t there some kind of suffering involved in that?

Whatever the reason, suffering or bliss, San Diego has some truly witty, insightful, original and poetic writers, all of which can be witnessed the first Friday of the month at First Friday Open Mic Prose reading. www.firstfridayprose.com

I started the First Friday ongoing event almost 3 years ago now at the request of San Diego Writers Ink (a writing organization extraordinaire— www.sandiegowriters.org ). The monthly event has grown stronger and wittier every month to the point we are SRO now—50-60 folks reading and/or listening. Anyone who wants to share their writing finds their way there eventually. San Diego Writers Ink sponsors the event and provides wine and cheese. But it’s the writing of the attendees that brings the crowd. That, and my stupid poodle-in-the-microwave jokes in between pieces.

It is strictly prose, no poetry (I can tell when anyone tries to sneak it in and the rest of the evening that writer will be punished by my enduring sarcastic harassment.) I added the prose-only rule because so many opportunities exist for poets to read. Hell, a poet can stand on a street corner and read. But prose readers go to an open mic and they usually feel ostracized. It’s like folks are whispering behind your back, “What, no meter?, no rhythm? No intonation? No anger?” Plus, prose writers ramble on and on. That’s why I instituted the 3-minute rule, to shut them up. It works and so does the whole fete.

I’ve limited the readings to 3 minutes each. The regulars have nicknamed me the Time Nazi because you get my black satin, spiked-heel DSW Ferragamo Knock-off in the ass if you go over 3 minutes. It’s become a competitive sport in editing, and the writing and readings have become better and better because of it. We’re soon going to have to start urine testing to see who’s been snorting Strunk and White and shooting up Liquid Paper before the event. It’s full of laughs, fast-paced and exciting to see glimpses of the great writing coming out of San Diego.

We now record the evening and post the readings as mp3s on our website for readers’ moms to listen in and any and all to download and peruse at their leisure. We also have a myspace spot we’ve just started and are looking for friends and fellow writers.

All this to say, First Friday is just one of countless writerly goings-on in this city of spic-n-span. Neither our nifty smelling corpses or the sunshine and green lawns made possible only by the man-made sprinkler systems has made San Diego alive and real with a scene. We don’t need the smog and grit of LA or the fog of London or the sludge of the Hudson River to produce art. We’re like the Nike tennis shoe of writing communities—we just do it.

Noveltown: Or the dusty smog of California's Great Central Valley. Ahem...

It’s clear the Los Angeles Times is in love with you, that Moonpies, if alive with little sugary arms, legs and noses, would be in love with you too, and that we ourselves, might be in love with you… But only if you answer our final question in a most truthful and honest way. Discuss your future and your next delving into comedy.

Amy: Viking asked me to do a series based on the characters in MOONPIES. So, that’s what’s coming next. Same characters, same bat channel, same bat cave, but new batman. The main character will be the sister named Loralva that is a major character in MOONPIES. She drives a school bus in the 2nd book. It’s due out at the beginning of 2008. I also have a couple of more book ideas swimming around in my head. James says I can’t say that because it makes people throw up. But I’m itching to get many books down on paper and out there. All I can do is do my darnedest to be a really good writer and if it makes people throw up then they need to see a gastroenterologist.

Noveltown: Thanks for being a truthful, honest, and real author with a sense of humor… We do love you.

Amy: I don’t know about real. One of my main ingredients is “cocoa processed with alkali.” At least that’s what it says on the outside of my package. Baked at Chattanooga Bakery in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Total Fat: 7g which is barely even 11% of your daily value though. And I have a marshmallow filling, which puts the non-fluff ranking of truthful and honest at risk. I’m not a Trans Fat and admit that I prefer to stay saturated.

Robin Slick talks to Noveltown about Big Apple Books and Erotica - By N.L. Belardes

Robin Slick... Erotica or Chick Lit writer?

If I were to crown the most wickedly delicious queen in all of Philly, I would have to give the crown to Robin Slick. Why? Simple reason. Robin Slick has one of the most fabulous names ever for a writer. It’s not long, or drawn out, or overly flamboyant. It’s hip, urban, and has, dare I say it, sex appeal, in a nicely naughty way of course. You have to love the way the name rolls off the tongue.

Robin Slick’s real name? It’s probably something long like Yaminslickovich. Only Robin can tell. But would she? Though Slick writes on-the-edge fiction teetering, and often full on diving into erotica, she is as mysterious as her fiction. She spends time writing books, writing blogs, hovering around LitPark.com—not in a bad way of course—though I would say she lives up to her stylish name—a devilish comment here and there. She’s clearly a blog addict, as even admitted as much in an interview on Susan DiPlacido’s blog, “Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't be happier as a non fiction columnist. All the energy I used to pour into my writing at 5:00 a.m. every morning I now spend blogging.”

I know the feeling.


Get her book...

Slick self-labels her fiction as “Wickedly Delicious”. Oh it is. Her characters are both sexually conniving and humanly complex. She’s written several published books, including Three Days in New York City and Another Bite of the Big Apple.

How can Robin Slick and her erotic fiction be so mysterious? Believe me, there are mysteries surrounding Slick, her real life and her prose. Let’s dig right in…

Interview:

Noveltown: Robin, I read Three Days in New York City. It’s a story of a woman discovering more than she’s just unhappy with her TV twisted jock husband. She discovers her sexual hunger and her artistic self-center. I’ve read that you don’t really like the erotica label. Is this true? Because, if that book isn’t erotica, I don’t know what is. Straighten me out here.

Slick: Oh, okay, okay. If I’m forced to label the book, and I totally despise labeling, it’s erotica because of all the graphic sex contained therein, but since you’ve read the book, you know that said graphic sex was an integral part of the story and there was no way I could whitewash it. But because I also edit for my publisher and erotica is what they primarily publish, I know it’s not formula erotica because that stuff makes me cringe. I’m serious. When I sit down to edit for my publisher, I don’t get turned on, I get nuts. Where is the sparkling dialogue? The humor? The unique, interesting characters? Oh, right. This is supposed to be about sparkling, unique sex. Okay, yeah, I guess this novel I’m editing contains all that. Interesting. The ones that make me cringe the most are usually the best sellers because they are all sex and that’s what the readers who make up a good portion of my publisher’s fan base are looking for. But seriously, don’t you think Three Days in New York City is really is a chick lit comedy with a sort of warped baby boomer coming of age back story? When I was sending the book out to agents four years ago, I was told the same thing over and over again. We love this but it’s not marketable as is—either take out the sex and make it mainstream or market it as erotica. I was like, Huh? Why can’t it be both? But damn it, my timing was off. A year or two later, erotica suddenly became big business and if I were to sub that book now, I’d probably get a totally different reaction. Anyway, there was no way I could take the sex out of that book—besides, I think the some of the sexual scenes are laugh out loud funny and totally in line with the character/plot, etc. —so I was a rebel and decided to start subbing it myself to small, independent publishers. And that worked. Mundania/Phaze grabbed it, and it was a best seller for them. They came to me and asked me to write a sequel, which I totally never intended to do, and that book (Another Bite of the Apple) been in the top five rated erotic books over at Fictionwise for the past six months. And that’s got way less sex in it than Three Days, trust me.


I stole pics from Robin's Photobucket. Is this Monty the wonderdog?

Noveltown: I was poking around at past interviews you’ve done and I read that you once received 500 emails for threatening to quit your blog, www.inherownwrite.blogspot.com. What particular book or event has caused such popularity? Or should I just start writing about sex to build my audience. Feel free to call me a shallow male.

Slick: Well, I’m pretty lucky because I can draw on my audience from many different places. When I first started the blog in 2004, my readers were about a hundred or so parents and kids from the Paul Green School of Rock Music because I spent the first few months blogging a novel I was writing about them following a two week west coast tour in which I participated as a chaperone for my own two kids, who were just graduating the program at the time. (I’ve since deleted those posts…see answer below).


School of Rock! School of Rock! One of these beautiful people is really Jack Black.

At that time, there was only one Rock School and it was in Philadelphia. Then they went corporate (argh) and they opened up something like thirty branches nationwide and I inherited all of those students and parents from all over the country who would google “Rock School” and find my blog. My big break came when the Picturehouse documentary “Rock School” featuring my kids was released internationally in theaters during the summer of 2005. I landed a bunch of readers who were not only movie fans but diehard Eddie Vedder/Pearl Jam, Jon Anderson of Yes, and Heart fans because my kids played with them at the movie’s premier parties – everyone who googled Pearl Jam or Yes, etc. found my blog because naturally I told little stories about having pizza with Eddie Vedder and posted accompanying photographs I’d taken. In 2006, when Adrian Belew hired my son and daughter to be his new power trio, I got a gazillion more readers from prog rock forum boards all over the world. My son, Eric, is also drummer for Project Object, a Frank Zappa tribute band featuring the original members of Frank Zappa’s band so then I got a strong Zappa fanbase visiting me daily and let me tell you, there are millions of them – who’d have thunk it? So combine this with all of my connections in erotica land – my readers, other writers, as well as all of my friends/editors from Zoetrope, which is a mainstream on line writing workshop sixty thousand strong…and well, it all just multiplied. And for the piece de resistance, when I thought I “discovered” Neil Gaiman and started writing about him…well…next thing I knew I was up to 10,000 hits a week. And then last month, I won fifth place in the Best of Blogs 2006 Award (www.inherownwrite.blogspot.com), diarist, and my numbers skyrocketed. But the million-dollar question is: Are any of these blog readers buying my books? God I hope so. My royalty checks have been decent at times so I’m hoping that’s the case. But it’s a struggle for me because I really do find I prefer writing about music and my kids’ careers a lot more than hawking my books. God I hate that part of the process—being a saleswoman, that is. I’m more of an oral person…err…I mean, word of mouth via people who have read my book is the sales method I prefer but then again, that’s me living in fantasy world, huh.

But yeah, last month was my biggest month on the blog ever—I had 125,00 hits between December 15-January 15. That’s Neil Gaiman territory, baby. Oh god, now I feel guilty. I really should be talking up my books more, as well as those of my friends. Note to self: At least do it weekly for Christ sake, you slacker you.


Does Robin kiss and tell? Does Monty?

Noveltown: OK, so I read more of your interviews than I probably should have. But you called your works in progress, Chick Lit. And then you went on to talk about how you pop open some wine and then add all the gooey sex to your stories when you write them. So really, you don’t write erotica, you write sex-revved chick lit? Either way, I read your work fairly quick. I had to know what happened. Call me shallow, again, please.

Slick: Okay, Shallow be thy name. Yeah, it’s true. I can’t just sit here at the computer stone cold sober and write about down and dirty, nasty sex. Masturbation, yes, sex no. (Why is that, she asked, holding her wrist in agony and wondering if she has carpal tunnel syndrome) So, like I said above, I really don’t consider myself an erotica writer at all. I like writing about twisted/contemporary relationships but since I’ve been successful writing about sex, I drink the wine, close my eyes, and go for it. But I think those days may be over—I’m currently writing a mainstream novel.



Noveltown: As I bestow you with a crown for being the most wickedly delicious queen in all of Philly, I have to ask, is Slick your real name?

Slick: Yeah. Well, it’s not my maiden name, it’s my married name. My husband is a cousin to Jerry Slick, Grace Slick’s ex-husband. It’s been funny to see how this has been whispered down the lane when I google my kids. I find everything from “Hey, Eric and Julie Slick are Grace’s grandchildren” to “their mother is Grace’s sister”. Pretty bizarre. And of course, oddly enough, David Bowie had a guitarist named Earl Slick… I’m not sure about this, I should probably hit Google, but I believe Earl came on board with David after Adrian Belew left. So poor Eric always gets confused with Earl. “Eric Slick plays drums for Adrian Belew? I thought he was David Bowie’s guitarist? When did he change instruments?” It’s all kind of weirdly incestual.

Noveltown: On to the subject of character development. How do you explore? You seem like a wanderer, like your main characters. I mean, you may sit still when you write your blog, but in reality it’s an exploration of your life and rock and roll, and of your mini-travels.

Slick: Oh, without a doubt my mini-travels and tours are the total basis for most if not all of my work. In my current still not quite finished novel—which is about a former groupie/hipster who struggles to come to terms with middle age and a faltering marriage when she reconnects a legendary guitar God from her wild past while accompanying and allegedly chaperoning her young rock star offspring on a tour across America—I directly drew from my experience from the west coast Rock School tour of 2004. Hence why I deleted the aforesaid posts in my blog—I did need to use some of that stuff in my current novel though I trashed most of it.


Monty, what are you doing?

Noveltown: And settings? How does you chose a setting like New York for your stories? Do you just say, “I want to write about New York?” Or what…

Slick: Err…I spend a lot of time in New York. And even living in Philadelphia, I’m a city girl (I live downtown), so I write about what I know. And frankly, I write what I personally would want to read. I know this is going to make me sound shallow (hey, we can be Mr. and Mrs. Shallow), but I could care less.

Noveltown: Last question: Are obsessions a part of your life and part of your stories? I mean, maybe stories are your obsession, but I think you’re a lot more complex than that.

Slick: Well, I’d be lying if I said I don’t get obsessions. And I’m an equal opportunity obsessor—I get fixated over everything from food to sex to music to certain authors living in Bakersfield, California. I mean, I’m not a stalker or anything, but once something or someone interests me, they kind of take over my brain and yeah, I need to write about it. Or them. Or him. Whatever. But do I need to be obsessed over something to write? Nah. Though…hmm…on second thought…my best writing comes from my various compulsions and at the moment, the well is dry. Maybe that’s why I’m currently in limbo.

Okay, that does it. Obviously I need a new obsession so I can finally finish my novel. Any takers?
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You can add Noveltown on myspace at www.myspace.com/noveltown

Booksquare asks: “Do Publishing Houses have a future?” - By Melinda Carroll

Do Publishing Houses have a future? It’s an interesting question. With the wider range of publishing options authors have, Kassia Krozer of Booksquare talks about the future of big publishing houses and how they will have to evolve to compete.

Kassia Krozer writes:

“Most books simply aren’t marketed, at least in ways that impact the reader. Most books are dumped on the market and told to sink or swim.

Publishers will distinguish themselves with editing and marketing skills. Editing, we have decided will gain new importance in the future world — an about-face from today’s bottom-line, shareholder driven model. In a world where anyone can throw up their work, it will be the good stuff (or the most salacious) that attracts a wider audience. We might chide today’s youth for their casual approach to things like punctuation and spelling, but complete sentences and words that are not one step away from initialisms will continue to matter. Good editing will continue to matter.

Marketing, too, will be an asset offered by publishers. As we all know, today, most books simply aren’t marketed, at least in ways that impact the reader. Most books are dumped on the market and told to sink or swim. This is an inefficient way to run a business, but that’s how it’s always been done in publishing, and only the future — that future with more competition and more at stake — will change this. Once committed to the notion of fighting to acquire and retain authors, we believe that publishers will find new and creative ways to market the books these authors write.

Publishers must, necessarily, adapt to new processes to grab an increasingly fragmented audience… We are not sure that publishers — the big entrenched ones — fully understand how to go about this. Time and again, they miss what’s going on, they lack the key ingredient of today’s online culture: authenticity.”

(Read the full article)

Krozer brings up good points. I think this is why more and more authors today are turning to Indie publishers like Noveltown. Indie publishers work more closely with their authors, pay more attention to editing and find creative ways to market books and reach readers. Books aren’t just throw