Last night I had the privilege to read with Zoë Miller at the excellent indie bookstore Malvern Books in Austin, TX, a town that I always loved when I lived here in Texas and that I like to refer to now as “Hot Portland.” (I call Portland “Wet Austin.”)
It was a great time, with lots of old friends and new friends come out to hear us read! And Malvern Books was an amazing host (they even filmed the readings!).
So, in addition to the incredibly generous folks hosting me for readings and book signings this week and next, a whole gaggle of kind bloggers out there are hosting me online as well.
That’s right: I’m on a blog tour.
(Let the links begin!)
I began on Hagridden‘s release day with an interview with author Ally Malinenko (whom you might remember from my interview of her several weeks back). We had a great conversation, and she asked some intense questions! I, of course, was longwinded in my replies, but I hope you find out some interesting things about Hagridden.
The next day we got the double-whammy of a blog post by author David S. Atkinson as well as his review of Hagridden at InDigest.
And today, while not formally part of the blog tour, my television interview on McMinnville, Oregon’s Arts Alive program is now available on YouTube!
And there’s more to come! Expect a handful of posts over the next few days (I’ll post another recap this weekend), and tomorrow I’ll post photos from tonight’s reading with Zoë Miller at Malvern Books in Austin. And then more blog tour posts all next week, as well as more pix from more readings….
And on we go!
To everyone who came out to the first Hagridden release party in Boerne, TX:
Old friends, new friends, family, teachers, community members — even a few aspiring young writers! I was so thrilled to see you all, and I had a grand time!
The library did a wonderful job setting up and promoting the event:
The reading itself went wonderfully, and I was so happy to see so many people there! Robin Stauber, the librarian who organized the event, said this was a bigger crowd than even Western writer Elmer Kelton brought in!
Afterward, lots of people bought books and lined up for signings, and I loved meeting every one of you!
But the biggest thrill of the night was seeing some of my favorite teachers, all three of whom are mentioned in the acknowledgements in Hagridden! These women, and so many other teachers, are such huge influences in my life, and I was honored that they came out to see me. =D
This evening, I’ll be at Malvern Books in Austin, so expect more photos soon. And I’ll be turning up elsewhere in the Hill Country all week. But if you’re not in the area, you can always order Hagridden online!
It’s finally here for everyone. Today, Hagridden joins the world.
And because Hagridden is officially out, that means you can officially have a copy. Maybe you’re already getting one from your JEN event donation (thanks!) or because you won the Goodreads giveaway (congrats!).
Or maybe you’re joining us for the release party in Boerne, TX. (If so, I’ll see you in the library at 6!)
But if you’re planning to order a copy today, you can buy one at Powell’s in Portland, either in the store or online!
You can also order one via Barnes & Noble!
And it’s at Amazon, in paperback or ebook.
Or you could always pop into your local independent bookstore and ask them to order a whole mess of copies!
You can find a full list of ways to buy the novel — and links to storefronts — on the book’s website.
However you get your book, make sure you add it on Goodreads. And when you get a chance, add an honest review there and on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Powell’s? Seriously, be honest — I’d like to know what folks think.
In the meantime, happy birthday to Hagridden! Pour a whiskey and let’s party!
Here we are. I am finished teaching my summer class; I will submit grades this weekend, just before I board a plane south to Texas. In a few days, on August 19, my first novel comes out.
But I’ve already held my book. I cradled it against my chest in the most absurd paternal gesture. I welled with tears. I was ridiculous. But there it was, the result of nine years from concept to book, five years from draft to book, one year from finished manuscript to book. And the book was there, not in pages printed from my computer or even in bound proof copy but the actual thing, cover and all. The smell of the binding glue still strong in the pages.
I only get to keep a few of those first books — the rest I’ve already signed and sent on to new homes, to people who supported the book event in Columbus or to the people who will eventually win the Goodreads giveaway. I sat in my living room, a movie on the tv and the lamplight over my shoulder, and I signed books. As if I was some author.
Someone asked me that in an interview recently. What does it feel like to be a published author? I answered honestly — the work is never finished, so I don’t know how to answer, because I’m not a published author, I’m a publishing author. Verb tenses matter. But if I’d been even more honest, I’d have simply stopped at “I don’t know how to answer.” It feels so surreal: I’ve been chasing the dream of publishing a novel since I was in 7th grade, writing chapters during Sustained Silent Writing Time in Mrs. Hoffmann’s English class. And now I’m about to be 38 years old (Hagridden and I will share a birthday) and Mrs. Hoffmann, my beloved teacher who so encouraged me in my writing, is driving for hours to be at the release party for my novel. I don’t know what to do with that. For all my daydreaming about what it would feel like and how I would react to it, feeling this moment is something I wasn’t prepared for. I don’t think you can prepare for it. I don’t think you should.
I ought to be posting the requisite plugs, the links to the website and the Facebook page and the Goodreads giveaway, the reminders about the release date and upcoming events as I go out on book tour and blog tour. And sure enough, I’m hyperlinking some of that text you just read, because it’s my job.
But I really just wanted to step back for a moment and look at this thing we’ve done. Me and all the folks who helped get the book here. To breathe it in.
People keep asking me if I’m excited about my book tour. Or nervous. If I’m ready for the readings. If I’m eager to do book signings. I don’t know what I am. I am all these things. I’m nothing at all. I’m a man who wrote a novel, and here it is.
How amazing is any of this?
This summer, one of my primary writing projects has been composing new short stories related to my Civil War novel, Hagridden. Each story involves a minor character or two from the novel, people who have some important moments in the book but are definitely supporting characters to the main narrative; in these stories, those folks get their own narrative.
Today, Bartleby Snopes published the first of those stories, “What Have You Done to Deserve Such a Halo.” It concerns a relatively well-off farm wife, Catherine Stone, whose husband has gone to war and might never return to her.
In the novel, she appears relatively late, surrounded by other war wives. Here, she has the story almost all to herself . . . until a mysterious figure invades her home in the nighttime.
More Hagridden-related fiction is coming soon, gang! And the novel itself will be available August 19! Or, if you’re impatient, you can sign up for a chance to win a free copy in our Goodreads giveaway!
As of today, we’re exactly one week away from the official release of Hagridden, gang! And to celebrate, Columbus Press is getting the party started early: they’re giving away three free copies of Hagridden, signed by me!
All you have to do is head to the giveaway page, click the “Enter to win” button, fill in your info, and you’re in the running!
The giveaway lasts all week, and since the fun of Goodreads is that it’s literary social media — the whole point is to share the books we’re reading, especially the books we’re excited about — do your fellow readers a favor and pass the word along!
And if you get a copy — through the giveaway or otherwise — do me a favor and write an honest review of it? I’d love to see what you think!
One of my favorite pastimes on the Internet is reading writing advice, even when it’s bad.
Take “The Worst Muse,” for example: a Twitter account that spits out intentionally terrible (and therefore hilarious) writing advice:
You're right. The world DOES need another novel about an aging English professor's affair with a nubile young co-ed.
— The Worst Muse (@WorstMuse) July 6, 2014
Remember: one culture per alien planet. More than that, and you're just showing off.
— The Worst Muse (@WorstMuse) July 23, 2014
Kill your darlings, then immediately bring them back as vampire sex ghosts.
— The Worst Muse (@WorstMuse) July 14, 2014
Sometimes it’s merely funny, a good way to pass a few minutes on Twitter, but occasionally, it’s a biting reminder of the traps we all too easily fall into:
Pourquoi débourser pour un pro quand Google Translate est gratuit? Ce n'est pas comme anyone'll connaître la différence.
— The Worst Muse (@WorstMuse) August 5, 2014
(I have totally used that shortcut — though I turn to experts or native-speaking friends in revision.)
Go ahead. Spell out that accent phonetically.
— The Worst Muse (@WorstMuse) July 26, 2014
(Something anyone who sets a story in the South is always wrestling with.)
Have another drink.
— The Worst Muse (@WorstMuse) August 1, 2014
This last one reminds me of a great interview between Edward Stafford and Hemingway:
My wife needled him. “Is it true,” she asked, “that you take a pitcher of martinis up into the tower every morning when you go up to write?”
“Jeezus Christ!” Papa was incredulous. “Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You’re thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes, and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he had his first one. Besides,” he added, “who in hell would mix more than one martini at a time, anyway?”
Of course, taking a break for a drink — or any kind of breather — in the middle of writing isn’t always a bad idea. Or so Gayle Towell writes in her quick “Ten Second Writing Tip” for Blue Skirt Productions:
The best way to handle a scene that has you stumped is NOT to sit and beat your head against it until it comes out right. [. . .] The key is to trust that the scene will come to you when it’s ready.
It’s all about patience, gang. You can’t rush good writing.
But for all my insistence on patience and aversion to strict routines, I do love a plan to get a writing project started. And I do need to get started — all summer, I’ve been trying to get going on my next novel, and while I work on it from time to time, other projects keep stepping in and taking over my writing time. Which is why I enjoyed the Terrible Minds post about “How to Push Past the Bullshit and Write That Goddamn Novel.”
For me, a lot of this routine plays on one of my biggest pet peeves: the idea that writing is just putting words on paper. I’ve had many people, several of them friends, tell me, “Writing is easy. You just put a few words on the page every day and before you know it, you have a novel!”
Actually, no, you don’t. What you have is a very, very shitty first draft, as Anne Lamott puts it.
But that’s the point. It doesn’t matter how hard you work at it or how long you mull it over or how much you tinker as you go — in the end, your first draft is always going to be your first draft. The trick isn’t in writing a good first draft, it’s in writing a draft at all.
And this routine is an excellent way to get shit on the page. And I like the no-nonsense way it expresses that. As much as it rankles me when non-writers talk about writing as though it were easy, I do love when writers remind me that, actually, this is the work, and it’s not that hard to put the work in.
And then there’s my favorite advice article from the past week, Kevin Meyer’s “Ten Rules for Writing Dialogue.” At its heart, the article isn’t really about dialogue so much as it’s about that grueling work of editing in general:
If you want to be a successful writer, you can’t let little things slide. Most people who have been writing for a while have good instincts. A writer knows when she’s written something a little ham-fisted or lazy, but recognizing those places isn’t the hard part. Coming back to it to fix it, to take that opportunity and hammer it into something unique, that’s what’s difficult.
The list he comes up with isn’t ground-breaking in the sense that none of us has ever encountered these rules before. In fact, a lot of them feel like common sense. As Meyer writes, “Most people who have been writing for a while have good instincts.” But they’re excellent reminders, and, best of all, Meyer illuminates them through clear, direct explanations and some killer examples from his own work.
I’m going to list his rules here as a reminder to myself, but don’t just glance over these and think you’ve got it — go check out his article and see how he breaks these rules down. It’s great advice.
The August issue of Jersey Devil Press is our special “Legendary Creatures” issue, and gang, it lives up to the name!
Never mind that we have classics like a Sasquatch and a mermaid and a Skunk Ape and a Gorgon and a Green Man and more than one dragon. Set aside the fact that we even have gargoyles and a basilisk and a feathered octopus (!) and more than one dinosaur and the xenomorph from freaking Alien! None of this is all that surprising — we’re named after the Jersey Devil, for crying out loud. These things are our bread and butter.
No, what makes this issue amazing is that it’s our first issue to include poetry since we open to gates to verse, and the poetry we’ve been getting? Damn, you guys — this is some great stuff!
And that our content editor, Laura Garrison, has done a killer job arranging all these creatures, all this prose and poetry, into one hell of a cohesive whole. Yet we’re always moving, in out out of the sea, from monsters to tricksters to legends, from dragons to dinosaurs to gargoyles then backward, to more dinosaurs and then a dragon slayer. We open with a monster retiring and close with monster babies, a new generation to keep us all going. It’s a tour de force, Laura’s editing work on this one!
And that we have such amazing cover art by painter Mike Stilkey, whose work has gone viral and is eating up the art world! We’re so thrilled to work with him on this issue, and we’re proud to share his work with our readers!
So enjoy the issue, gang. And then spread the word. This is how legends get born!
I don’t know if it’s just Jung’s collective unconscious or if we’re all slaves to social media, but I’ve noticed a trend lately in people posting lists of publishers.
Like the “7 Chapbook Publishers” on Authors Publish, which includes the always-excellent Black Lawrence Press, my pal Maragret Bashaar’s Hyacinth Girl Press, and (best of all!) sunnyoutside press, home of my own chapbook, Box Cutters. That last one is worthy of special attention because, starting yesterday and only for the month of August, sunnyoutside is open for submissions! You can find their guidelines here.
For (sometimes) larger books from amazing indie presses, there’s also the “Ten US Presses That Don’t Play by the Rules,” in Dazed & Confused Magazine. It’s an incredible list that includes not only the obvious, like Coffee House Press and the celebrated Publishing Genius, but also lesser-known heroes like Spork (home to Zachary Schomburg’s From the Fjords as well as the first home of my friend Amy Temple Harper’s Cramped Uptown) and Oregon’s own Artistically Declined Press (who has published Ben Tanzer and Hosho McCreesh, and was the first press to put out a book by the now ubiquitous Roxane Gay).
I’d sure like to see Hagridden‘s Columbus Press on a list like this soon — I don’t know that I’d call them “rule breakers,” per se, but I’ve had a fantastic experience working with them, and they sure know how to throw a literary party!
Dazed and Confused also has an excellent list on “the next generation of American lit mags,” which (like all these lists) isn’t nearly thorough enough! (What, no Jersey Devil Press?) Still, it starts off as strong as any list like this could, with the triple-whammy of Hobart, Gigantic Sequins, and The Atlas Review, and after a few names new to me, they round out the list with Slice and Everyday Genius! That’s an exciting list of lit mags, folks, and if you’re not reading them yet, start!
In the meantime, stay tuned for the August issue of Jersey Devil Press, because I’m REALLY excited about this one! Legendary creatures, the new addition of poetry, and a cover I am all-caps GEEKING OUT over! It’s a beauty. 🙂
Samuel Snoek-Brown