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November 12, 2011

Ants: A Sibling Rivalry Press eBook Single

Longtime readers of this blog may remember a short story I posted a few years ago titled Ants. Ever the guinea pig for SRP, Ants has been polished, shined, edited, given a spiffy cover, and packaged as the very first Sibling Rivalry Press eBook Single. You can purchase it (for less than a buck!) from the SRP store and the file-type of your choice will be immediately emailed to you. It’s my Bryan Borland meets Chuck Palahniuk meets Dennis Cooper moment. Enjoy.

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June 30, 2011

On Publishing Loria Taylor: The Journey to SOB

I first laid eyes on Loria Taylor when she moved from North Carolina to my Arkansas neighborhood when we were both in the 5th grade. If one got their hands on our yearbook from those days, my photo would reveal a basketball-like chubby face; Loria’s would demonstrate a perm-gone-wrong. Still, though we passed in the halls, counted each other out of swing-sets, and shared some mutual friends, we wouldn’t form our own bond until the 10th grade, when Mrs. Matheny assigned us to stage a production of Julius Caesar for our English class. Naturally, I was Caesar and Loria was some sort of witch. The scene we were assigned involved ketchup as a blood-substitute. I was wearing a toga and socks: fashionable, if not entirely historically-accurate attire. When it came time to spread the ketchup around me in my key scene, when I was ready for my closeup, Loria intentionally aimed at my feet and ruined a perfectly good pair of socks and my acting debut. So I did what any fifteen-year-old toga-clad boy would do. I spit in her hair.

We’ve been friends ever since.

Flash forward a couple of years to the illustrious Senior Awards Banquet at our High School. We’d both taken Creative Writing and we’d both been awarded the title of “Most Likely to Win a Pulitzer.” But we couldn’t share what we both desperately wanted: the coveted Creative Writing Pendant (which was actually a plastic brooch etched with a tiny replica of a pencil). Because we were both unwittingly and unknowingly gay-men-in-training, Loria and I daydreamed of winning the Pendant, attaching it to our Calvin Klein denim vests and/or our National Young Leadership Conference T-shirts, and strolling through the local mall’s music store, where we’d fight over the sole copy of a bargain-bin George Michael cassette. (“He’s so dreamy,” Loria would sigh. “I’m going to marry him one day.”) Afterwards, we’d sit in the Cafe Court and sip Cokes while the winner of the Pendant would attract the jealous glances of passersby, a courageous few of which would approach and ask for an autograph. After all, by this time in 1997, Loria had written a story about a teenage girl smitten with a straight, English pop star and I’d completed a novel that read like a homoerotic Saved By the Bell episode. In other words, the stakes were high, and our reputations were on the line.

In the end, I won the Pendant.

Suffice to say, Loria was crushed. She locked herself in her room for hours, listening to George sing “Careless Whisper” again and again. To console her, I made a promise that when I became a famous writer with my own publishing company, I’d offer her a book contract with a miniscule royalty rate and multiple required speaking obligations. She would also have to let me make use of her swimming pool should, in her adult life, she have access to one.

Through her tears, she accepted my offer, and fourteen years later, I can finally announce that pre-orders are open for SOB by Loria Taylor.

I keep my promises.

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March 1, 2011

A Big Day for SRP

It’s close enough to call it a year. Last March 12, My Life as Adam showed up on Amazon.com, and soon after, I made the decision to transform Sibling Rivalry Press from a vanity operation for my own books into a legitimate publishing house. Since then, Adam has met with some success, and SRP has published anthologies and chapbooks (like Ocean Vuong’s Burnings), but today is special. Today marks the release of our first full-length collection since incorporating the company – Road Work Ahead by the iconic Raymond Luczak. He doesn’t consider himself an icon. But, trust me, he is. He came to prominence in the publishing world in 1990, when Christopher Street published “Notes of a Deaf Gay Writer.” Since then, he’s published more than ten books, seen his plays workshopped or performed in multiple countries, and won even more fans and critical praise with 2010′s Mute (A Midsummer Night’s Press). For his full bio, click here. He’s become a friend and mentor, and in our daily email exchanges, he’s schooled me on poetics and publishing. On March 26, we’ll officially launch Road Work Ahead at a familiar place for me, New York City’s Rainbow Book Fair, where Raymond will be performing work from the book.

Sometimes I question whether I’ve made the right decision in forming SRP. It’s a lot of work, and then there’s the pressure of wondering whether I can represent these authors in the manner they deserve. Luckily, people like Raymond, Ocean, Theresa Senato Edwards, Jessie Carty, Saeed Jones, Kevin Simmonds, Loria Taylor, and Steven Reigns have been willing to take a chance on me, and they have been patient as SRP has grown. This morning, when I woke up and saw the excitement over Road Work Ahead, I knew I’d made the right decision. Watching Raymond’s latest promotional clip (for the poem “Jules”) gave me chills. These are poems that deserve a home, and these are books that deserve to be read. There’s no turning back now, folks.

And that’s fine by me.

Road Work Ahead, thanks to Ingram, our new distribution partner, is available everywhere (that’s right – everywhere. Your bookstore down the street can order and stock it). You can, of course, get it directly from SRP. You’ll want it after you check out Raymond’s clip.

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November 12, 2010

Less Fortunate Pirates: An Introduction

In one month and eight days, it will have been a year. A trivial milestone to acknowledge when the real markers are things like the first time we took my mother to a restaurant without him. My first self-prepared tax return (he was an accountant). The first big decision I had to make without his counsel. The first Arkansas football game. The first Thanksgiving, which will happen in a couple of weeks. How to have a family meal without his jokes, his eagerness to try anything I cooked, his hug goodbye, his insistence on paying for the groceries I’d bought? How to acknowledge my complete and utter fear of taking the reigns as turkey carver?

Last Thanksgiving, we talked over the pros and cons of self-publishing. We decided together to publish Adam in the manner I did. A year later, Adam sits at #1 in its sales category on Lulu, appeared as #1 on Amos Lassen’s Best Books of 2010 Lambda list, and opened the door for me to build Sibling Rivalry Press (complete with a storefront that went live yesterday). I’m a publisher now. People put their careers in my hands. Ocean Vuong’s first chapbook launches Monday.

Has all of this really happened within the space of twelve months? My dad’s death. Adam‘s entrance and subsequent dance, Lethe picking up The Hanky Code, Ganymede Unfinished (which is Number 9 in Lulu’s Top 10 GLBT Books, meaning two SRP books are in the Top 10). I’ve become friends with Gavin Dillard, my literary-hero and the man whose anthology A Day for a Lay: A Century of Gay Poetry changed me to the core, and he’s talking two SRP projects, one as author, and one as editor. My journal Assaracus debuts in January, and apparently it’s got buzz, y’all. I’ve been to New York City twice and made dear, real friendships there. I’d never been before this year, and now it feels like a second home. I say these things not with ego – but with amazement. I’m doing what I love. I’m happy. These are the things I’d want my father to see.

While building the foundation for Sibling Rivalry Press has taken much of my time and has taken me away from regular blogging, I’ve been dedicated to poetically chronicling the-year-that’s-been. I’ve still been writing, and I’m extremely proud of what’s shaping up to be Less Fortunate Pirates: Poems from the First Year Without My Father. This book will be my gift to him, and to anyone who’s lost a parent. To anyone who’s known loss in any regard.

I’ve not yet decided how to bring Less Fortunate Pirates into the light. I can always publish it through Sibling Rivalry Press, but something tells me the book needs another path. I have to listen to those voices. They’ve not led me astray before. The manuscript isn’t complete yet – and won’t be until December 20, the anniversary of my dad’s passing. After I write that final poem, I’ll make a decision on how to move forward. I can tell you that these poems are the strongest I’ve ever written. They are for my father, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Memorial Day

It is Memorial Day again. The neighbors
fly a flag from their front porch. Our family

visits, my in-laws, my mother. It dawns
on me I no longer can use the word parents

in the present tense. These are our holidays
now. My husband cooks hamburgers

on the new grill. The onions I chop for salsa
sting my eyes. When it is time for dessert,

I put out too many bowls, one too many
spoons. After the meal, we play badminton

in the backyard. As the sun goes down,
I clean the grill before the charred meat

sticks to the grates. It is the beginning
of summer. I smell like a grown man.

I’ll leave you with how the table of contents for Less Fortunate Pirates is shaping up, which will give you some idea as to the content and context of the book. A couple of you have read earlier versions of the manuscript and have helped me along the way. I love you for that. Some of you will recognize a few poems that have appeared at vox poetica or on the blog.

I’ve never written something that rips me apart before. These poems rip me apart, then put me back together. I can’t wait to share it with you.

Less Fortunate Pirates: Poems from the First Year Without My Father

Instructions on How to Approach the Bereaved
Walnut Lake
Christmas Day
Social Network Obituary
The Moment I Read Walt Whitman to Three Hundred People
My Companion Piece
Coincidences and Synchronicities
Saturdays Before My Birth
The Day I Break the First Commandment
Recalling A Last Conversation Between Father and Son
Dream Journal, 26 December
The Night I Laugh Inappropriately
Your Birthday
Valentine’s Day
The Lady Chablis
The Day I Kiss Science Goodbye
Car Crashes Are My Family’s Cancer
How Your Explorer Ended Up in the Lake
Dream Journal, 30 December
On Being Intimate in the Company of Ghosts
The Day a Man Asks My Mother on a Date
The Day I Run the Little Rock Marathon
The Nights I Think of My Brother
Dark Horse
The Day I Pack His Things
Mergers and Acquisitions
Introducing a Grandson to his Grandfather
The Day I Find My Father’s Lost Wedding Ring
On the Significance of Dark Horses
Phantom Limbs of Family Trees
Reasons My Father Did Not Commit Suicide
A Study on the Grieving Habits of Humans
Memorial Day
The Days I Believe in Ghosts
There’s Talk of Selling the House
Long Division
In the Doctor’s Office Waiting Room
Father’s Day
Father’s Day II
The Night I Fight with My Husband
The Day I Start My Business
The Fourth of July
The Morning I Stare at the Water for Hours
My Birthday
The Day We Do Not Choose Your Headstone
The Day I Return To My Wanton Ways
Arkansas Post and Other Battles of the Civil War
The Day the Fair Comes to Town
The Day My Mother Says She Wants to Move
The Words We Choose
The Day I Cross the Bridge
Two Examples of Many Instances
The Day Tears Explode Like Bombs
The Night My Marriage is Saved
Watching Inception at the Movie Theater
August 25: The Morning I Call the Psychic
August 27: Two Days After Mary
My Father’s Hanky, Left Pocket
The Afternoons I Sip Herbal Tea
How to Grieve
The Day Arkansas Plays Alabama
The Day Cemeteries Change
Acceptance
Swale
Ancestory.com
Apples and Oranges
How to Carve a Turkey
Spared
Thank You Note
What I Want You to Know

16 comments

September 11, 2010

News and Notes and Inappropriate Touching

My poem “Watching Brokeback Mountain in Little Rock” has been nominated for Best of the Net through Shape of a Box. I watched from the sidelines as Stephen S. Mills and Jessie Carty celebrated last year, and now I get to go to the party! I’ll bring the cheese dip!

I just this week learned how to properly pronounce the name of Sibling Rivalry Press’ new gay-themed journal, which we’ll/will be putting out in January. Assaracus. Say it with me. Ass-uh-RACK-us. I picked the name to honor John Stahle and Ganymede, since Assaracus was Ganymede’s brother, according to the magnificence of Wikipedia. And see? Sibling Rivalry Press. Brothers. It just works. We’ve got a fantastic lineup in place so far for the first issue, and submissions are still rolling in. Gritty elegant. That’s the feel we’re going for. Assaracus will focus on a small number of gay poets, with multiple pieces by each poet. The goal is to keep it affordable and create something that will showcase the diversity within the queer writing community.

Sibling Rivalry Press has signed its first author for a 2011 solo project – stay tuned. We won’t be mute about it for long! (Yes, that’s a hint)

We’ll be headed to New York City on Thursday to prepare for John Stahle’s memorial gathering on Saturday. I’ll be reading from Ganymede Unfinished - pieces John selected himself by Digby Mackworth Dolben. I bought a new suit today.

Matthew Hittinger wrote a beautiful tribute to John that’s posted at LambdaLiterary.

Somewhere in all of this, I’m finding time to write new poems for Less Fortunate Pirates: Poems from the First Year Without My Father. As I’ve joked before, this manuscript might was well be titled Therapy. I feel like it’s the best stuff I’ve ever written. Not sure how I’ll go about bringing it to the world, or when, but you’ll be the first to know.

Also, let me just say this: Holy crap. If you’ve read this blog for a while, you’ll know that things just sort of took off for me I guess around March. I am so thankful and appreciative for everyone who has opened doors for me, everyone who has commented on my poetry, given me feedback, bought my books, supported My Life as Adam, supported Sibling Rivalry Press, and cheered me on. Not for one second is any of this lost on me. Sometimes all you can say is thank you.

So thank you.

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Tag: Writing