I Fail

I'm not a great blogger lately.

My worst year of rejections to acceptances continues. But on Friday the fantastic poet, Kristen Orser posted THIS about me on her blog and it totally made my day/week/month. If you don't know her work by this point you better get on it.

You Are Jaguar was released yesterday. We also have an audiobook now. You can get the book HERE and the audio or combo deal HERE. David and I had a lot of fun putting this all together and we hope you will give it a read or listen and share your thoughts. It's pure poetry for poetry's sake. We love words and whatnot. And stay tuned, for some potential giveaways of the audiobook!

Also go HERE and listen to me read another excerpt from Code for Failure!

Tanzer Blog Tour Day, aka Tanzathon

Hey, you know that dude Ben Tanzer? Of course you do. Well, he's celebrating the awesome New York Stories by having a massive blog tour. We (you reading and me writing) are a part of that. Pretty awesome stuff, huh?

When Ben asked me to take part I said yes without hesitation, even having no idea what to do. I told him as much and he said we would stew on it. So we did. Then he emailed me and said "why don't you do what you do best and design an alternate cover?" And I wrote back "I can do that!"

Here's what New York Stories looks like:



















It is an awesome handmade book, like all the books from CCLaP. Gorgeous as ever. For my version I wanted to do something different. These sorts of opportunities are a chance for me to "play" with designs, and I like to emulate styles of bygone eras of book design. I thought about what Tanzer might dig, and since he's like a brother to me I thought I might have a decent idea. I started thinking about the Penguin paperbacks of the 70's. Then I just started playing, throwing objects up on the screen, manipulating shapes, changing colors, deleting objects, adding new ones, layering objects. There was a ten minute stretch where I thought, "crap, I've got nothing." Then, all of a sudden, things started looking like they were coming together, each new piece seemed to fit with the last. Here's the result, and I must say I'm digging it quite a bit. I hope you will, too:



If you haven't already, I highly advise checking out New York Stories (it's on sale during this blog tour)!

Mobilize!

Music loving friends, you've seen me mention Mutts here before. They are an awesome band from Chicago, and their leadman, Mike and I go back a bit further to when he was playing in a band with an old high school friend of mine. Mutts work their tails off with various jobs and at making music. In two years as a band they have given away over 12,000 cds and downloads. GIVEN AWAY. As a band with no record label who do everything on their own, they have never shied away from making their music free. They are awesome guys making awesome music they describe as "ragtime death metal."

Now they need the listener's help. They have started a Kickstarter to help finish funding their new double album. There are just 3 days left and they are getting so close. If you can help, please do. These guys are worth it, not just in their musicianship and experimentation, but also in their work ethic.

So, Check out the KICKSTARTER, listen to some of the previews of their new songs over in the UPDATES tab (I can't even decide on a favorite, they are that good), and please consider helping these guys continue to rock.

Audio/Visual

Yesterday was my one year anniversary at my job as a shipping & receiving coordinator. It is now the second longest job I've had, behind the two years I spent running the childrens bookstore. Bukowski had this to say about shipping/receiving jobs: "When you didn't know how to do anything that's what you became--a shipping clerk, receiving clerk, stock boy."

I did a reading on Friday and got some poor video footage of it:




I let my three year old "sing" over an instrumental track I'd been working on and sure, I may be biased, but it's pretty badass. He's got a fictional band he talks about called, JUNK MAIL. Seriously considering making an album with him:

Junk Mail song, "Poetry" by Ryan W. Bradley