Shelf Unbound June/July 2015

JUNE/JULY 2015

COLLABORATIONS COLLABORATIONS CHRISTOPHER ROBINSON AND GAVIN KOVITE CAROL GUESS AND KELLY MAGEE CHRIS ADRIAN AND ELI HOROWITZ ANDY WARHOL AND JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT 1

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

www.mikewaltersnovels.com

“ “ ” “ ” ” The Outlaw River Wilde will keep readers who enjoy a story with an eschatological bent highly amused.

Red City Review

An excellent start to a smart and intriguing new series, The Outlaw River Wilde proves a memorable debut for Walters and certainly one deserving of your attention. It is highly recommended.

Book Viral Reviews

The Outlaw River Wilde is a fun novel to read. Likeable characters, quick pace, and a fun story. The book will make you laugh in spots and cringe in others. The author intertwines his love of Native American culture and a passion for the Pacific Northwest, primarily his birth state of Oregon.

Indie Author News

Amazon (5)

Goodreads (4.88)

AVAILABLE AT

staff

Margaret Brown fo u n d e r a n d p u b l i sh e r Anna Nair edito r i n ch i e f Christina Davidson c re a t i ve d i re c tor Ben Minton circ u l a t i on ma n a g e r Patricia McClain c o py e d i to r Marc Schuster c o n t r i b u t i n g e d i tor Morgan Siem c on su l ta n t , soc i a l me d i a

What to read next?

Sign up for a

FREE SUBSCRIPTION

to Shelf Unbound at www.shelfmediagroup.com.

Kasia Piasecka so c i a l me d i a ma n a g e r Jane Miller ac c o u n t i n g ma n a g e r For a dve r tising inqu ir ie s: c al l 2 14.704.4182 or e- mail m a rga ret@ s he l fm e di agrou p.c om For editor ial inqu ir ie s: e- mail m a rga ret@ s he l fm e di agrou p.c om or write to Shelf U nbou nd, P O B ox 852321 R ich ard s on, TX 75085

Photograph: from Basquiat, The Unknown Notebooks, The Brooklyn Museum, New York, brooklynmuseum.org.

Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

what to read next in independent publishing

june/july

contents

DEPARTMENTS

8

War of the Encyclopaedists interview with Christopher Robinson and Gavin Kovite

18

With Animal interview with Carol Guess and Kelly Magee

28

The New World interview with Chris Adrian and Eli Horowitz

32

The Silent History interview with Eli Horowitz, Matthew Derby, and Kevin Moffett

52

66

Gun, Needle, Spoon interview with Patrick O’Neil Basquiat & Warhol a survey of new books about the collaborators

4

a note from the publisher

6

shelf media podcast

42

mystery

46

classics

50

sci-fi

60

excerpts

72

photo essay

88

my self-publishing journey

90

dystopian fangirl

94

indie author

96

poetry

98

on our shelf

100 small press reviews 102 last words 103 contributors On the cover: photo by Richard Drew, courtesy Associated Press.

Artwork: The Silent History by Eli Horowitz, Matthew Derby, and Kevin Moffett.

Gun, Needle, Spoon by Patrick O’Neil

What we eat is killing us.

The Perfect Food

The electrifying new novel from John Crawley A young man in Hebron, Nebraska mysteriously dies. Then another. And still another. Soon hundreds and then thousands are dying. And doctors do not know what is causing the epidemic, until one young research scientist becomes a whistle blower. His discovery threatens the entire food industry, the White House and even the halls of Congress.

The Perfect Food is about the ability of a very few individuals to buy their way to justice–to power and to opt out of accountability. It is what happens when we allow our government to be run by the rich and powerful with little to no voice for the common person.

w w w.johncrawleybooks.com Available at Amazon, iBooks, BarnesandNoble, and Lulu

a word from the

publisher

I

COLLABORATIONS

’ve been a fan of Carol Guess’ prose and poetry since reading her 2011 book of short fiction, Darling Endangered. When I learned of her new book of short stories written with Kelly Magee, I knew I wanted to feature it; thus began this issue’s focus on collaborations. In addition to Guess and Magee, we interviewed Christopher Robinson and Gavin Kovite (co-authors of War of the Encyclopaedists) and Chris Adrian and Eli Horowitz (co-authors of The New World). We also take a look at some famous literary collaborations, including the two cousins who wrote the Ellery Queen mysteries together and the guy who wrote The Gilded Age with Mark Twain.

And we survey a bounty of new books about famed artistic co-creators Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

I’m proud to announce that after three years as a finalist, Shelf Unbound just won the 2015 Maggie Award for Best Digital Magazine. I want to take this moment to thank everyone who has been involved with the creation and production of Shelf Unbound since we launched five years ago. Thanks to our staff and contributors, thanks to every author who has granted us an interview and to the publishers and publicists who have helped arrange those interviews. Thanks to our readers and our advertisers and to all of you who have helped spread the word about Shelf Unbound. It has been a great collaboration, and in celebration our August/September 2015 Fifth Anniversary Issue will be a special double edition featuring some of our favorite interviews and books from the past five years. In the meantime, enjoy this issue.

Margaret Brown publisher In the first Shelf Media Podcast, publisher Margaret Brown talks to author Matt Bell about his three books and about writing, teaching the craft of writing, and his forthcoming novel. She also talks to book reviewers David Rice and Michele Filgate about Bell’s most recent novel, In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods.

4

JUNE/JULY 2015

Photograph: Belinda Baldwin

S

My

Mothers

S

Dreams of

INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS AND REAL LIVES, THIS NOVEL IS THE ULTIMATE STORY OF FINDING IDENTITY AND THE DREAMS, REDEMPTION, AND LOVE OF TWO WOMEN – MOTHERS FROM THE OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE WORLD.

A Story of Love Transcendent

Joel L. A. Peterson “I was so impressed with this book we are awarding it to our Luce Leaders at a Leadership Reception at the Sri Lankan Mission to the United Nations. Congratulations to author Joel L. A. Peterson!”

–Jim Luce Founder of Orphans International Worldwide and The J. Luce Foundation

NomiNated for multiple

AWARDS AVAILABLE ONLINE & IN ANY BOOKSTORE. A portion of all proceeds will be donated to charity.

Find us on your favorite network!

W W W. DREAMSOF MYMOTHER S .C O M

In the first Shelf Media Podcast, publisher

Margaret Brown talks to author Matt Bell about his three books and about writing, teaching the craft of writing, and his

forthcoming novel. She also talks to book reviewers David Rice and Michele Filgate about Bell’s most recent novel, In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods.

6

JUNE/JULY 2015

feature

collaborations

Two young men’s lives diverge when one enters an MFA program and one is deployed to Iraq. Written by a poet and a military veteran, both millennials, this novel is more than a portrayal of war; it is a portrait of their generation.

Read this book: It’s going to be on many a “best of ” list for 2015.

8

JUNE/JULY 2015

by Christopher Robinson and Gavin Kovite Scribner simonandschuster.com

Shelf Unbound: How did you decide to write this book together, and what was your writing process?

Gavin Kovite: This is our first novel to be published, but not the first book we wrote together. We first met in Rome in 2004 during a study abroad program in poetry through the University of Washington. We became fast friends and, through a series of weird jokes, ended up writing a comic murder mystery based in Egypt during the excavation of the Suez Canal in the 1860s. We learned a lot about novel writing through that experience, and so when Chris came up with the initial idea for War of the Encyclopaedists in 2009, we were confident that we could write a decent book together.

Christopher Robinson: We’re friends first and co-authors second, so our writing process happens mostly as a byproduct of hanging out and talking about ideas together.

We came up with most of the characters, scenes, and basic plot arcs through casual chatting—we

shared an apartment in Brooklyn during the first year of writing the book. After that, I’d formalize it all in a spreadsheet and we’d divvy up chapters based on characters. We’d then edit each other’s work back and forth so many times that it’s now difficult to remember who wrote what sentence.

Shelf Unbound: Your two main characters communicate with each other through occasional edits to a Wikipedia entry they created about themselves. It’s a great concept—how did you come up with that idea?

Robinson: On the simplest level, the Wikipedia conceit allowed us a convenient way to switch from 3rd person to 1st person, providing tone and pacing variation for the reader and allowing the reader more intimate access to the characters as they speak with their own voices, unmediated by the narrator. Wikipedia also anchors the story in 2004, in the early years of the new millennium

UNBOUND

9

(which was defined not just by the post-9/11 wars, but by the rise of social media, smartphones, and crowdsourcing). As the central symbol in the book, Wikipedia does a lot of work to set War of the Encyclopaedists in a particular moment in time and space, setting work that is complemented and completed by the highly specific details of character speech, cultural allusions, and so forth.

Kovite: At that time, Wikipedia still had this start-up feel. The whole idea of an ur-reference curated by the lay public invoked both skepticism and starry-eyedness about the future of society. It was kind of like blogging—back then, it seemed like every other person had a blog (I had one, in Iraq), and blogging seemed important and new, as if every blogger could become some minor celebrity. Since then, the mass of information posted on the internet has both made the internet (and especially Wikipedia) more useful, and also made each individual content contributor more

10

JUNE/JULY 2015

small-time and anonymous.

Wikipedia is also a good metaphor for the proliferation of factual information in general. There seems to have been a period of time in the 20th century U.S. where there was more or less a central political and factual narrative—people could debate about what facts meant but in the main were relying on the same basic factual inputs due to the lack of alternative sources of news and information. Nowadays, people can get their information pre-filtered, though Fox or MSNBC in the mainstream, or even from more ideologically filtered sources like The Drudge Report or Alternet.

It was always the case that people from widely different places could rely on widely different “facts,” but now Americans in the same city or neighborhood can get entirely different versions of “truth.”

This is epistemically disorienting.

It makes us reevaluate our relationship with “truth” and thus complicates our political beliefs (for those of us who are at

struggling, at least, to be aware of the biases inherent in the various information we consume). The rapid proliferation and democratization of knowledge creation, through Wikipedia, and through the Internet in general, gave us more access to knowledge than we’d ever had and yet made us more skeptical of received knowledge than we’d ever been. It was a fundamentally new thing for humanity’s relationship with knowledge. And it happened in the early 2000s. We wanted to capture transformative moment.

Robinson: But perhaps most importantly, having Mickey and Hal correspond through Wikipedia edits to an article about themselves (which is an abuse of Wikipedia’s function and policies) is a perfect encapsulation of the emotional dynamic between the two young men, who are very close but also emotionally distant; the only way they can really share emotional content with each other is by veiling it with silly Wikipedia entries, ostensibly about abstract subjects,

like “Betrayal” and “Used Goods,” and written in a formal diction that is itself a kind of emotional armor.

Their correspondence through Wikipedia is a sophomoric act of vandalism that is also an emotional reaching out to each other as well as an intellectual investigation into the larger forces that are steering their lives.

Shelf Unbound: In addition to Hal and Mickey, you also created two interesting and carefully drawn female characters, Mani and Tricia.

How did you want to use Mani and Tricia to develop the story?

Kovite: The novel definitely started out focusing more on the male characters, with Mani and Tricia being more bit players. As the writing progressed, we shifted our focus to the women for a few reasons. We didn’t want to make the book a male-centric bromance— we wanted a specific, but not gendered generational story. And the women were both inherently

UNBOUND

11

interesting characters—the itinerant artist hiding from her parents’ expectations and the brilliant but naïve social justice warrior putting real effort into making the world a better place. There was also the challenge of it—male and female characters are the same in basic ways but are also different in specific and interesting ways. Writing women in romantic and sexual contexts with our male characters was all sorts of fascinating—hopefully we got it at least sort of right.

Robinson: Without Mani and Tricia, War of the Encyclopaedists would be half a story, not only because women are half of all people (a little more actually) but because we wanted to draw a convincing picture of a particular generation at a particular moment in history.

Hal and Mickey really encapsulate the cynicism, the dependence on irony, and the yearning to escape it that characterize the millennial generation (or rather, the Oregon Trail Generation, a more specific term we find apt to these characters).

12

JUNE/JULY 2015

Mickey and Hal also embody a certain listlessness, malaise, a simultaneous lack of purpose and search for purpose. Mani and Tricia are searching for purpose, too, but they are doing so in some fundamentally different ways. Tricia is driven and dedicated to improving the world around her—an idealist , not a cynical existentialist like Hal or a reluctant pragmatist like Mickey.

And Mani, who is not an aspiring critic (Hal), a warrior (Mickey), or a social justice warrior (Tricia), but an artist—she, out of all the characters is the most optimistic and embracing of her own purposeless subjective experience. She pushes onward not knowing where onward is and not caring or fearing that she doesn’t know. She embodies a deep thirst for self expression as an end in itself.

All those qualities-- the cynicism, the idealism, the pragmatism by necessity, the need for self expression as a kind of oxygen—they are defining characteristics of this generation, to our minds.

These aren’t particularly female

Death and depravity in the world’s most livable city!

There are pedophiles on the prowl and the police are seeing red.

Enter the garrulous gumshoe, Paddy Pest, and his gorgeous girl-friend, the stunning spy-girl, Stormy Weathers. Heroes come in all shapes and sizes and this discount detective will keep you laughing all the way to the last page. If you can guess the final outcome, you’re hotter than a preacher’s knee.

Award-winning Aussie humorist, Gerry Burke, does it again.

Check out all his hilarious characters on the gallery page of his blog. The world needs another hero like never before.

WWW.GERRYBURKE.NET UNBOUND

13

traits—the idealism, the selfexpression—but in the broadest sense, we weren’t thinking of Mani and Tricia as female characters who bring a female element to the story but simply as characters who bring added emotional depth and complexity to the plot. While young men and women are trying to save the world, make their mark, or just make it to tomorrow without killing themselves, they are also thinking about romance and sex. A cast of all men or all women would thus be lacking an essential element of realism.

with it. It was still there, probably, hibernating.” But in the next paragraph Mickey is thinking of asking Tricia for a date, and the tone seems hopeful. Why did you decide not to bring PTSD specifically into this novel?

Kovite: Because not everyone who serves in a combat zone comes back with PTSD. I didn’t. Most of the people I know didn’t. While it’s good that there’s popular awareness of the potential psychological effects of traumatic experiences such as military combat, my sense is that it’s overemphasized—that there’s Shelf Unbound: A number of the some kind of assumption that novels written about the wars anyone who’s been in combat or in Iraq and Afghanistan shine even deployed has emotional issues a big light on PTSD. I think you of the sort that makes it difficult to hint at it in these lines: “The function in society. That’s just not easy definitional categories had the case, and the assumption that all fallen away. Maybe that’s what or most veterans have some kind of allowed Mickey to see himself debilitating mental disorder makes it outside of the roles he was more difficult for vets to get jobs and accustomed to filling. A naked reintegrate into civilian life. When version of himself that had no I was interviewing for jobs at New use for anger, no relationship York law firms in 2008-9, the main

14

JUNE/JULY 2015

THE FIGHT OF THE CENTURY IS OVER WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT HOW PRIZE FIGHTERS LIVE?

A particular blog in the internet states that, "Boxing is about more than just how many opponents you can knock out. It's not a way of life, but a way you view your life and the world around you." But how much do people understand about this perception? Do they have a concrete grasp on how boxers lives their life and those close to them? Author Pete Delohery provides a glimpse into the world of boxing and what life in the ring is like in his new book, Lamb to the Slaughter, a novel about love and courage, sin and redemption.

“Moving portrait of three men each damaged by a brutalized world….This heartfelt tale makes a powerful emotional impact.”

ALSO in Spanish:

“If you love boxing, you’ll love this

El cordero al matadero

book. If you don’t love boxing, you’ll

—Blue Ink Starred Review

love the stories and characters.

—Karsun

thing on my resume was a combat deployment, and this made for very awkward interviews; I felt that the assumption that I had some kind of PTSD was this elephant in the room, keeping me from getting the offers I wanted. I felt at times like saying, “Also, I’m not crazy, in case you’re wondering,” which is hard to say in an interview without seeming crazy. I don’t want to perpetuate that stereotype.

Robinson: Another reason is that PTSD narratives are almost by definition about the soldier, haunted by the trauma of what she’s been through: war. We wanted to explore not just the soldier’s experience, but the civilian-military divide.

Thus, rather than have Mickey psychologically scarred by his war experience, we focused on the misplaced sympathy of his friends, who worry about his physical and mental well-being, oblivious to what Mickey is fixated on: the death and disability of some soldiers under his command. Mickey’s emotional isolation from his friends upon

16

JUNE/JULY 2015

returning from Baghdad is not a result of his war trauma as much as it is a result of good-hearted but mistaken assumptions on the part of his friends. To us, this is a much more interesting dynamic to explore, both because it’s far more common, and because it’s a difficulty born out of concern rather than trauma, which makes it not about the distance between the civilian and soldier, but the attempt to bridge that distance.

Shelf Unbound: What did you particularly enjoy about writing together?

Kovite: Writing alone can be fun when the energy and inspiration is there, but when it’s not, it’s a suckfest of insecurity and thwarted selfdiscipline. With Chris, those fallow periods just turn into bull-sessions about where the story will go. As long as one of us is on, we both know where the story will go, so there’s always some kind of “writing prompt” happening that each of us can cling to.

A ROAD TRIP THAT WOULD CHANGE HIS LIFE...

Michael’s freshman year of college has not gone well either socially or academically. In 1969 failure from college or dropping out of school means the draft and possibly Vietnam. Michael desperately wants success, acceptance and popularity. He believes pledging a campus fraternity can help put him on the right path. As the final hurdle to get into the fraternity he must hitchhike 1500 miles over a weekend; a road trip which could save his freshman year and possibly change his life. The rides he gets, the people he meets and the obstacles he overcomes on his journey do change his lifebut in an unexpected way.

www.TomWascoe.com Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iBookstore.

UNBOUND

17

feature

collaborations

In beautifully rendered, deeply imaginative short stories, Carol Guess and Kelly Magee mine the depths of the parenthood while also exploring gender and sexuality.

18

JUNE/JULY 2015

by Carol Guess and Kelly Magee Black Lawrence Press blacklawrence.com

Shelf Unbound: How did you decide to write this book together, and what was your writing process?

Carol Guess: Kelly and I were having coffee together (we both teach at Western Washington University) when we decided to collaborate on a book manuscript.

My goal in collaboration is to challenge myself, to match myself with a writer whose skills are different from mine. Kelly is very good at narrative structure. She can actually tell a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I’m primarily a poet, always distracted by the musicality of language, by shaping sentences in service to sound. I wanted to apprentice myself to someone who could write The Short Story. What I had to offer was my poetic sensibility, my energy, and a wild imagination. By the end of the project, Kelly was finding her poetic voice and I was excited about writing short stories. So we schooled each other.

As for the actual writing process,

we worked in shifts, each writing the beginning of a story, then passing it along to the other writer to finish.

We rarely edited each other’s words, but sometimes we broke story starters in half, or moved the beginning to the middle or end of a story. The trick was to create the illusion of a seamless whole.

Kelly Magee: I had never collaborated on writing before this, but when Carol approached me with the idea, I was very interested.

She had done several previous collaborations, so she had a good idea about what the potential pitfalls and challenges would be, which was helpful in getting started. I’d been fascinated with fairy tales for a while (and still am), so I suggested something loosely based around that. She sent me a list of more concrete suggestions, one of which was people who become pregnant with animals. I knew right away that that would be my choice. I tend to write without having any sense of where I’m headed, at least at first, and that makes my stories surprising

UNBOUND

19

but often somewhat disconnected from each other. Carol is very good at conceptualizing a whole book, and I loved the idea of trying to do this particular topic from as many different angles as we could think of. It’s such a good idea that, even though the book is finished, I regularly get ideas for new ways to write about it.

The shifts Carol mentioned— trading story-beginnings/endings —happened once a week, so we wrote these very fast. I found it so freeing to be able to take a story only as far as the first thrust before passing it along, and then to get a story that I needed to complete. It was a tremendously energizing way to work, and we were able to step up that already-rapid pace later on. I am naturally the kind of writer who labors over a story for weeks and months, so to be producing a couple of stories a week seemed magical and wonderful.

a lesbian giving birth to a school of fish, and all manner of other plays with gender and sexuality. What interested you in exploring these subjects?

Guess: I realized after I’d finished writing With Animal that I began this project with my second novel, Switch, which was published in 1998. In that book, a butch lesbian turns into a cat purely for the thrill of experiencing transformation. I linked shape shifting to gender fluidity, implying that there’s something magical about the way humans play with gender and sexuality.

Writing With Animal allowed me to continue to explore the themes of transformation and boundary crossing. I see gender and sexuality as a continuum; why shouldn’t there be a continuum of human and nonhuman animal lives as well?

The book also demonstrates my impatience with the assimilationist emphasis of the contemporary American LGBT movement. I’m interested in all the radical places Shelf Unbound: You’ve got a man giving birth to a kangaroo, my imagination can go, and in the

20

JUNE/JULY 2015

NO-ONE IS REALLY WHO THEY APPEAR TO BE...

THREADS THE AWARD-WINNING

KAYLIN MCFARREN SUSPENSE SERIES McFarren, author of the novel “Flaherty's Crossing, has raised the bar for the erotic thriller. ”

- ForeWord Reviews, Clarion Review

ED THREADS

BANISH

Plenty at stake…erotic chemistry, “ dastardly villains, a lost relic, an

unusual setting and a touch of the supernatural. The full package of thrills and romance.

”

–Kirkus Review

.

n be deadly

...secrets ca

REN

CFAR M N I L Y A K

AVAILABLE NOW! KAYLINMCFARREN.COM UNBOUND

21

radical potential of sex/gender play and pleasure. Some of that has gotten lost as queers focus on marriage and military service.

I wanted to write about bodies, emotions, and physical sensations.

Magee: When talking about pregnancy, it’s nearly impossible to leave the body, and the gendered body, out of it, so I think that came up pretty organically. One of my personal ongoing projects is to complicate mainstream ideas about gender, sexuality, and family — probably because I come from, and have, a nontraditional family myself.

But then there’s the animal world, which seems to push the line between what is possible and impossible, and transferring that to human sexuality became an intuitive part of the project. So, like, it’s not true of the animal world that the female is always the one to give birth, for example; transferring the characteristics of various animals into human terms (and vice versa) presented endless narrative possibilities.

I am very much interested in

22

JUNE/JULY 2015

rewriting the “sexless mother” stereotype as well. I like complicated characters who want things they’re not supposed to want, and so I got inspired dreaming up unsanctioned desires for these mother/parentcharacters. I get frustrated by onesize-fits-all definitions of gender and sexuality, so I’m always most compelled by characters who are outliers, shape-shifters, and rebels.

Shelf Unbound: These stories portray parenting as heartbreaking and tragic. Do you view parenting that way?

Guess: That’s a tough question; thanks for asking. I had an abortion many, many years ago. It was very much my body, my choice; the right choice for me. But I felt sad at the time that I couldn’t live two lives: one life in which I was childfree and could explore my art and career to the fullest and one life in which I had a child and experienced that path.

The beauty of being an artist is that when life presents me with an impossible choice—a choice I

What happens when a Jewish Apache Indian investigates the murder of three Washington DC journalists and uncovers Brazilian mafia conspiracy?

TRUTH SEEKER

by J. Patrick O'Connor

An action based thriller sheds light on a Native American Intelligence Operative in author J. Patrick O’Connor’s novel, Truth Seeker. O’Connor delivers a brilliant book, based on true events that took place during his 20 years as a Intel Operative.

It depicts a Native American in a modern day action hero role, something completely unique in today’s day of storytelling.

In the book, the main character, Patrick Tyson, tribal name: Truth Seeker, the son of a Native American Indian and a New York Jew who met on a kibbutz in Israel, is pronounced brilliant and after completing his education accepts a position at a top Washington DC law firm. Little does he know what a dangerous future is in store for him when he leaves the law firm to join the highly secretive Intel division of the U.S. State Department.

Tyson meets, falls in love and marries the daughter of the chief of his division. A year later they have a son. Tyson’s missions take him all over South America, but with all the travel and secrecy, the marriage unravels amicably. Remaining friends, a few years later, Patrick’s ex-wife comes to him seeking help for their son and his new wife caught up in an adoption racket while trying to adopt a baby in Brazil.

What happens next is murder, mafia, government involvement and an attempt on Patrick’s life.

TRUTH SEEKER

J. Patrick O'Connor UNB O U N D 23

can only make once, a choice that will change my life forever—as a writer I can live that other life, too.

This is a comfort when I’m forced into a corner. So it isn’t that having children seems tragic to me, it’s that having a child represents a choice you can’t turn away from. There’s no going back. That’s what feels tragic to me. And I decided when I was still a child myself that I valued my time alone, my writing time, my independence too much to have children. But in another universe, I might.

Magee: Well, the easy answer is that stories about parenting which portray it as uncomplicated and blissful aren’t as interesting; trouble (heartbreak, tragedy) makes for better plot. But in real life, I absolutely love being a mom, and I think it is great fun. I wouldn’t have it any other way. My kids gave me ideas for some of these stories.

There is one about a sparrow that I wrote and wrote and couldn’t figure out how to end. So I asked my son what he would do if he had a story

24

JUNE/JULY 2015

about a woman who gave birth to a bird. And he suggested the ending that I ultimately used.

The hard answer is that yes, in addition to being wonderful and satisfying, of course parenting is heartbreaking and tragic. Every time your kids get their hearts broken, yours goes with it. Loving anything opens you up to heartbreak; and loving people since the time they were tiny and depended entirely upon you is a fierce and encompassing kind of love. My kids are still pretty small, but as they age I experience both the wonder and the heartbreak of watching them become independent beings, separate from me and yet still so connected that I feel their joy and their pain in my own body.

One of the specific tragedies I come back to again and again in writing is the difficulty in communicating across gulfs of age, or temperament, or, in this case, species. You know what you want to teach your children, but you have no idea how to do it; or you fear you

What if the clothes you wore carried ghostly fragments of your soul, and somehow those fragments got transferred to one who wore those clothes next?

The Woman in the Movie Star

Dress is the story of a young Native American woman who comes to Hollywood to escape her past. She finds work in a vintage store that sells clothes used in the movies. One day she discovers a way to transfer human character through these vintage clothes and uses this ability to search for love, identity and mooring.

But the threads of her past intervene like trip wires and complicate her quest, forcing her to look within her soul to understand who she really is.

“A page turner. Highly recommended!”

—San Francisco Book Review

“Spirited characters and dialogue make this an enjoyable read.”

—Foreword Clarion Reviews.

Available at

Silver Award Winner, Benjamin Franklin Digital Book Awards 2015

“Well-paced and fun...a highly readable novel about love, sex, Hollywood, and transference.”

—BlueInk Reviews

are teaching them the wrong things; or you fear you’ll never understand them, or they you. All we have is this strange, fallible system of language, and I loved the way these stories provided a vehicle for writing about attempts, and failed attempts, to communicate among family members.

Shelf Unbound: One of my favorite stories is “With Horse,” in which a woman gives birth to twin girls—one a human and one a horse. What was the starting point for that story and how did it come together?

Guess: Kelly started that story and I was so excited when I read her beginning! Brilliant. I spent a lot of time thinking about what the characters wanted. Ultimately I decided that the twist had to be that the human/horse twins would compete for their mother’s attention —but that their bond as twins would trump their bond as daughters.

Magee: I’m so glad you liked that

26

JUNE/JULY 2015

one! That was one of the earliest stories we wrote, and I was in love with the idea of extending the kind of medicalized conceptions/ births people really undergo to the possibility of animal children.

My pregnancies involved medical interventions, and somehow it made the process more mysterious to me instead of less. So in that way, it seemed like a natural extension of this idea that you might be able to have twins of different species. I was also drawn to the idea of the mother feeling excluded by the child-animal bond, and how that feeling might cause her to act out.

Shelf Unbound: What did you particularly enjoy about writing together?

Guess: Every time I got a new story starter from Kelly over email, I felt like I was opening a present.

Magee: The energy that came from the premise and the quick pace was definitely my favorite thing because it kick-started a writing habit that was in need of a kick.

a novel by richard wold

He’ll go through hell to find forgiveness...

Ever since he survived a suicide attempt, New York artist Stan Foster has not been himself. Plagued by amnesia and a head full of visions of death and destruction that fuel his ever-more disturbing work, he claws his way through a life he doesn’t recognize in search of his true identity. What he finds leads him to believe he is Satan, spit out from the bowels of hell to live among the mortal inhabitants of earth. Is he delusional, or is there truth behind this troubling revelation?

One woman can help him find out. Enter Abigail: lapsed Catholic, lonely city dweller, and psychiatrist with a heart of gold. Meeting Stan makes her question everything she’s believed about faith and humanity for so long, but she must overcome her own troubled background to offer him the redemption he needs—and ultimately wants.

2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, 3rd Place

www.stanthenovel.com UNBOUND

27

feature

collaborations

When Jane’s husband Jim dies suddenly, she is shocked to discover that his head has been removed by a cryogenics company.

The novel follows Jane’s grief and Jim’s attempts to let go of his past life and evolve into a future life, but at its heart this smart, moving, and often funny book is a portrait of a marriage.

28

JUNE/JULY 2015

by Chris Adrian and Eli Horowitz Farrar, Straus and Giroux us.macmillan.com

Shelf Unbound: How did you decide to write this book together, and what was your writing process?

Eli Horowitz: I had worked with Chris on his amazing novel The Children’s Hospital, and we had stayed in touch since then. The basic premise of The New World was something he had been chewing on for a while, but then we let the unusual format of the novel help determine the path of the story.

Shelf Unbound: This novel is kind of a hybrid—a sci-fi framework with existential themes, and a lot of humor as well. How did you come up with this combination?

Horowitz: This combination was at the core from the early days, but the book’s digital origins helped bring this to the foreground.

We imagined it as a single path traveled three times, a story being retold and reinterpreted. This led naturally to a range of tones and styles, because we had this

built-in prompt to view the central narrative from new angles.

Shelf Unbound: Over the course of the novel, you really dig into the good and bad of this couple’s marriage. What interested you in exploring a marriage?

Horowitz: I think we were particularly interested in how any relationship evolves over the course of its existence, and also beyond its existence—how you try to make sense of a relationship after the fact, a process that can feel almost like storytelling. You’re structuring a narrative, choosing what scenes to emphasize, seeking a coherent understanding—looking for a story that makes some sort of sense as you try to move forward into whatever’s next.

UNBOUND

29

Shelf Unbound: The last 53 pages (in my e-book version on my phone) have the couple’s marriage vows in italic, repeated page after page and then slowly fading out. I thought this was so cool and brilliant. Where did the idea for this ending come from?

Horowitz: Because the novel originally existed in a digital format, we were on the lookout for any potential tools that might be unique to that format. In this case, the way that a digital book is unconstrained by physical limitations—for example, a definitive ending—meshed well with the concerns of the story, the tension between the past and the future and the eternal present.

Shelf Unbound: What did you particularly enjoy about writing together?

Horowitz: From my perspective, it’s just the obvious: Chris is a tremendous writer. I don’t know of anyone else with his unique perspective of imagination

30

JUNE/JULY 2015

and ambition and craft and humor and moral urgency. He’s got a crazy set of skills, obviously—writer and doctor and chaplain—and he brings all this to bear in his fiction.

From his perspective...I respond pretty quickly to emails, maybe?

I guess I’m honest without being entirely intolerable, and I try to integrate the concerns of the author and the reader, which can be useful for a writer as focused as Chris.

F

“An engaging, quirky, utterly unique heroine... Subtle magic woven into nearly every line, as coincidence and confusion come together into what might be termed the wisdom of time, spirit, and love.”

or a quarter of a century forty-fiveyear-old Zinc has worked as a caretaker for a wealthy old man, living in a small casita on his ranch in New Mexico. She doesn’t make much money, but she has the old man, her dogs, and gorgeous views of the mountains.

She is basically a very content recluse who doesn’t invest much time thinking about what she might do if her circumstances change. So when the old man dies suddenly, and his daughter all but throws her off the property, Zinc is forced to reinvent herself—and quickly.

With a touch of magical realism and a collection of offbeat characters, Schweighardt’s fifth novel explores the thin line between life and death and the universal forces that connect all things.

—Magdelena Ball, CompulsiveReader.com

“Schweighardt populates her modern-day odyssey through the southwest with fascinating, quirky characters thrust into a complex (and hilarious) web of emotional turmoil, poignant misperceptions, and downright lies. As laugh-out-loud funny as it is thought provoking.”

—Julie Mars, author of A Month of Sundays: Searching for the Spirit and My Sister, and the novels Rust, Anybody Any Minute, and The Secret Keepers

Available at

WWW.JOANSCHWEIGHARDT.COM

UNBOUND

31

feature

collaborations

The Silent History

by Eli Horowitz, Matthew Derby, and Kevin Moffett

I

originally read The Silent History in 2012 on my iPad, as geeked out as Wired and Buzzfeed were about the eerie Ira Glass-narrated trailer, the cool design of the app, the interactivity (readers can post “field reports”), the serialized storytelling, and the story itself – a futuristic novel of a generation of children who cannot speak or understand language. Following is an interview with the authors and developers conducted by FSG Originals in conjunction with The Silent History being published in paperback as a novel last year.

—Margaret Brown FSG Originals | Fsgoriginals.com Thesilenthistory.com

32

JUNE/JULY 2015

UNBOUND

33

FSG: Unlike most books, The Silent History started as an app. How was it conceived? And what were the goals of putting it out as an app?

Eli Horowitz: The general trends in ebooks just seemed like a missed opportunity. We were losing lots of things that make print books special, but we weren’t getting anything in return—mostly gray shadows, plus the occasional gimmicky plot. I was curious what it would be like to imagine a novel that was designed specifically for these devices—what new storytelling possibilities would emerge.

Matthew Derby: By the time he brought me onto the project, Eli was pretty far along with the basic idea. My personal goal for the project was to create something in digital space that had the heft and breadth of a work of literature. In most cases, electronic literature suffers from a surplus of writing talent and a deficit of technical know-how, or too much technical proficiency and not enough rigorous storytelling. This was a rare opportunity to work with friends on a project that held the promise of satisfying along both of those axes.

Kevin Moffett: I was oblivious to many of the technical aspirations of the project early on. I knew about the site-specific element, the fact that there would be pieces of the narrative only accessible to those who visited the locations where they were set, but I didn’t know how this would shape the storyline itself. My main goal was to challenge my own assumptions about writing and publishing, and to shake myself out of the mini writing funk I

34

JUNE/JULY 2015

was in. The collaboration and the release of the app did just that.

FSG: So, there are three authors on the spine—how did that work? Did you work together on everything or did different folks field different plot lines, characters?

Derby: Eli had a basic set of characters identified when he contacted Kevin and me to help him bring the story to life. He had us each pick a few of the characters and take a crack at rendering little vignettes that would help us understand who these people were. There was a father who’d abandoned his silent kid and a hyper-devoted “supermom” who was hell-bent on getting the best for her children. And I thought, “why not reverse the roles?” Wouldn’t it be interesting to see how a single father contends with a daughter who can’t speak? And how would a mother contend with surrendering her silent son?’ So I wrote the first testimonials for Theo and Nancy, and a lot of what’s in the final manuscript is actually from those initial sketches.

Meanwhile, Kevin sketched out a bunch of the other recurring characters, and very quickly we had our first volume pretty well carved out. From that point forward, Eli acted as the story runner, setting up the daily, weekly, and monthly arcs (because we were releasing the story serially over the course of six months, we talked about the story arc using calendar time), and Kevin and I would act as stewards for the characters, independently writing their entries through each volume, with the three of us coming together at

UNBOUND

35

the beginning and end of each volume for planning and review.

It was pretty intense. I’d work up a rough draft of a character’s testimonial in the morning, send it to Eli, and he’d have detailed feedback for me that night. I’d wake up the next morning, revise, and send it over to him, and he’d review and send feedback. Rinse, repeat. Almost every day for two years. It was like a sort of boot camp—grueling and exhilarating. I shed a lot of bad writing habits in those years.

Horowitz: I was so lucky to end up with these two. At first I was going to have dozens of collaborators, which proved to be dumb and impossible, so then I was going to have none, which would have resulted in a crummy book—and then Matt and Kevin emerged, which saved the day.

FSG: The book is presented in a series of testimonials—what kinds of options did this structure create, or limit?

Derby: The main advantage of the testimonial format was that it provided a handy framework for telling a story about people who can’t tell a story themselves—at least not in a manner we “talkers” would understand. It’s also a familiar form for historical narratives, which we very much wanted to emulate.

But it became increasingly difficult to create the sense that the testimonials are being spoken in real time as we moved along the timeline of the story. Once the plot started to heat up, we had to drop a lot of the nuanced language that we

36

JUNE/JULY 2015

were able to use in the first volume. I think this was a necessary move—it just made things more challenging as time went on.

Moffett: To be honest, the testimonials allowed me to write more quickly.

They’re about fifteen hundred words, just long enough to finish a pretty crummy one in a day of writing. On these first drafts, I did none of the agonizing over sentences that I usually do while writing stories. That came later, during revisions number one, two, three.

Horowitz: The testimonials’ original purpose was to make the multiple authors a strength, rather than an inconsistency we tried to paper over. But another important effect was that it forced what could have been an abstract, sprawling epic to stay firmly grounded in voice and character.

FSG: Was there research involved in making the silent epidemic feel real? Either in medical terms or in terms of the societal response?

Derby: We did quite a bit of research. I remember that the first few months of the project were almost exclusively about trying to determine what a silent child’s life would look like. What could a silent child do without language? Was thought even possible without language? We had to answer these questions before we could write the book we wanted to write. So we read a lot. The work of Oliver Sacks, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, and Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct were all primary texts. Susan Schaller’s A Man Without Words—about

www.nemoteenoon.wordpress.com

The recent discovery (by physicists) of the “God Particle”, a particle that imparts mass to all other particles, tends to support Noon’s mind particle theory. According to his hypothesis, if God might be a single particle and you and I are made in God’s image, then it stands to reason that we, too (each of us Earthlings) might be a single particle, albeit temporarily trapped inside a burdensome, vulnerable body or brain-body pair.

He delineates how all past, present and future Earthlings will be rich, famous, brilliant, good-looking, etc. forever, starting at some time within the next 50 to 100 years. Also, how everyone could get a turn, sooner or later, to be God is touched on, in a preliminary way.

a deaf man who doesn’t learn how to use sign language until adulthood—provided the clearest insight into how a community of people without language could survive and communicate.

Horowitz: I talked to pediatricians, neurologists, linguists. Initially the research focused on language and mind, but it became much more diverse than that: non-verbal communication, diversity and disability and community, brain plasticity, Northern California communes of the ’60s and ’70s, motels of the Midwest, etc.

FSG: Why did you choose this kind of epidemic?

Derby: I think it gets right to the heart of something essential about the human condition. Did we create language or did language create us? To what extent are we human without language? My sister Margaret, who passed away when I was in high school, was born with multiple severe disabilities. She never learned to walk or talk. I never had any access to her mind, except through her movement and her facial expressions—I couldn’t know her thoughts, and she couldn’t express them—at least, not in a way I could understand. But what were her thoughts? What did she dream? I’ll never know. But whenever she appears in my dreams, the thing that is most shocking about her presence is not that she can walk or put on her own clothes or drive a car, but that she talks to me. There is something about hearing her actual voice in my dreams that just wrecks me. And that primal desire for the sound of a hu-

38

JUNE/JULY 2015

man voice is, as far as I’m concerned, the catalyst for everything that happens in The Silent History.

FSG: Did you always have in mind that The Silent History might become a book?

Derby: I don’t remember us ever talking about a print version. I was invested in the project almost exclusively because it was a digital endeavor. That just seemed like a really exciting space to explore. But now, there’s this beautiful print book, a thing you can throw down the stairs and use as a coaster and maybe even read occasionally, and you never have to recharge its battery. So this is much, much more than I could’ve imagined.

Moffett: I always hoped it would be a book. I loved the process of conceiving the story for an app, but I’m excited to be able to possibly reach a new crop of readers with the printed version. Including my wife, who read the first volume of the book on my tiny iPod and decided to wait until the book came out to read the rest.

Horowitz: For me, it was important to entirely see the app as the main event, rather than an add-on or marketing ploy to accompany the “real” book—which is a common pitfall of these projects. So the print book never really occurred to me until much later—a very nice surprise.

FSG: Were there any surprises or interesting conversations about how much it needed to change (or not) to transform into a novel?

Derby: I think we were all very surprised by how extensively we’d paced the book

What if, After Thousands of Years, Satan Is Tired of Playing the Bad Guy. Now He Wants To Come Home, Settle Down, Get Married and Raise a Family. Were Will He Live? Who Will He Marry? Most Of all Who will Take over His Throne of Power?

His First Born is His Daughter, Is the World Ready For Lilith?

Lilith

by Melvin Abercrombie

All 20 of Melvin Abercrombie’s books are available on Amazon.

E-books are $2.99 and Paperbacks are $6.00 plus postage

for digital reading. We knew we wanted to create a novel-type experience that could be read on a single subway ride every morning, and I think we really nailed that pacing. But with print, where nothing is preventing a reader from tearing through a hundred pages or more in a single sitting, the structure we’d set up seemed less than ideal. So we removed some entries and cut/merged a few others to create a more satisfying arc for longer reading sessions.

Moffett: Though the pacing did need some tweaking from app to book, I think it was always a novel, a sustained and satisfying narrative. Though episodic and sprawling because of the testimonials, the general story arc is definitely novel-like. It’s just sleeker now, from about 160,000 words to about 120,000.

Horowitz: The process of adapting it was organic with the larger concerns of the project: understanding that different formats require different kinds of storytelling. So the bookification felt like a worthy challenge.

FSG: Would you do something like this again?

Derby: Absolutely. My plan is to publish all of my future work on a different platform. I’m writing my next novel in Unity.

The novel after that will be composed entirely of living room furniture.

Moffett: Me, too. After I finish what I’m working on now, I’m going hunting for another project akin to Silent History. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to having fun while writing.

40

JUNE/JULY 2015

Coming Soon:

The Pickle Index Eli Horowitz describes The Pickle Index, coming out this October from Farrar Straus Giroux and Sudden Oak Books simultaneously as an app, slipcased hardcover, and FSG paperback, as “our most ambitious experiment yet.” Stay tuned …

Rather than a

“how-to” book, this is a

“why-do” book.

In 1956, Molly Brown Koch

began leading parent groups for the Parent and Family Life Education program of the Baltimore County Public Schools and the Parent Education program for the Baltimore City Public Schools. Molly gleaned the wisdom that came from the experiences of the hundreds of parents from all walks of life she met in and out of her groups and put it into her Mom’s Choice Silver Award book, “27 Secrets to Raising Amazing Children.” At the age of 87 she is still leading her KEEP THE CONNECTION WORKSHOPSSM for Parents and Other Caregivers based on her book.

Molly also writes a monthly column, Family Matters, in Baltimore’s Child Magazine. She has been recognized

by Women’s Day magazine and the State of Maryland, among others, for her service to families. Married for over sixty years, she and her husband, Bill, have raised three amazing children of their own. She continues to listen to and learn from everyone she meets.

Email Molly to purchase an autographed copy. mollybkoch@gmail.com $12.00+ $4.00 shipping and handling

www.keeptheconnection.org

www.mollybkoch.com

“Molly Koch is wonderful! Using her warmth and wisdom she conveys practical ideas for raising amazing kids. She nailed it— moms and dads have to get back to that glorious thing called instinct.”

—Michele Borba, Ed.D., author of 12 Simple Secrets Real Moms Know and Parents Do Make a Difference “Rather than preaching parenting ‘skills’ Molly talks about ways of being and attitudes of the heart and draws on her own experience and that of others for practical, real-like examples. She enables parents to realize and value the potential they have within them—f or parenting and life.”

—Sr. Margi Savage, SSJ, Coordinator, Marian House III

MYSTERY

Ellery Queen: The Art of Detection

by Francis M. Nevins

O Perfect Crime Books perfectcrimebooks.com 42

JUNE/JULY 2015

ne noon during the late spring or early summer of 1928, two cousins in their early twenties met for lunch at an Italian restaurant in midtown Manhattan. Over a spicy antipasto one of them—later neither could remember which —mentioned that he’d seen an announcement in the morning Times about a $7,500 mystery

novel writing contest sponsored jointly by McClure’s Magazine and the publishing firm of Frederick A. Stokes. By the time they’d set down their last cups of coffee, the cousins had not only decided to enter the competition but had devised the nucleus of a plot. “It was a lark,” Frederic Dannay recalled 51 years later. “We had no intention in the world of doing

THE

WEAVER SERIES

BOOK ONE

CHIMERA Released 7-14 BOOK TWO

CHANGELING Released 9-14 BOOK THREE

VECTOR Released 12-14 BOOK FOUR

PHOENIX Released 4-15

A secret society of evolved human beings travel an alternate plane with their minds to explore the universe and encounter other sentient life.

www.VaunMurphrey.com

Ebooks on Amazon.com Print on B&N.com and Amazon.com

“T

here was nothing remarkable in either the physique or the manner of Inspector Richard Queen.

He was a small, withered, rather mild-appearing old gentleman. He walked with a little stoop and an air of deliberation that somehow accorded perfectly with his thick gray hair and mustaches, veiled gray eyes and slender hands.

As he crossed the carpet with short, quick steps Inspector Queen was far from impressive to the milling eyes that observed his approach from every side. And yet, so unusual was the gentle dignity of his appearance, so harmless and benevolent the smile that illumined his lined old face, that an audible rustle swept over the auditorium, preceding him in a strangely fitting manner.”

—from The Roman Hat Mystery by Ellery Queen 44

JUNE/JULY 2015

more than one book.” Lark it may have been but they took it dead seriously, working frantically on evenings and weekends and holidays over the next several months, writing in the one cousin’s office or the other’s or wherever they could get together for a few hours, pushing themselves to complete the manuscript before the contest deadline of December 31, 1928. “I remember Manny Lee had to go to a wedding in Philadelphia during the time that we were writing it,” Fred Dannay told a Playboy interviewer in 1979. “And I had to go with him, to the wedding of a complete stranger, just so we wouldn’t lose the time it took to get there and back on the train.” At times they were tempted to scrap the project but by then, as Dannay put it during a visit to the San

Diego campus of the University of California in 1977, they had reached a point of no return “where if we stopped all the work would be wasted, and it seemed that it would be reasonable to go on and finish it.” They completed the manuscript on December 30, 1928, turned it in on the following day—the last day entries could be submitted—and, as Fred said at the University of California, “sat back with a sigh of relief to await the outcome.” That was how Ellery Queen was born, as the detective (and detective novelist) within the novel and as the joint pseudonym of the authors.

From Ellery Queen and the Art of Detection by Francis M. Nevins, Perfect Crime Books, perfectcrimebooks.com. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

When

Tumor is

the Rumor and Cancer is the Answer

Oncologist/cancer survivor, Dr Kevin Ryan MD FACP COL USAF (ret), Professor of Medicine understands the intense experience of having cancer and impact on family, friends, loved ones as well as concerns of death, suffering, and loss of control and dignity. No diagnosis causes more anxiety.

The questions are overwhelming. The unparalleled comprehensive book “When Tumor Is The Rumor and Cancer Is The Answer” covers the entire journey: suspicion until final outcome.

All reviews have been 5/5 and it is endorsed by a former Surgeon General and the head Of Cancer Treatment Centers Of America.

They concur a book for cancer patients and loved ones must teach how to marshal internal resources, conquer natural fears and ultimately learn to become cancer survivors.

Available at

www.whentumoristherumorandcanceristheanswer.com

www.drkevinryan.com

CLASSICS

Charles Dudley Warner The journalist and author co-wrote The Gilded Age with Mark Twain

C

harles Dudley Warner (1829-1900), author, critic, and editor, is best known today for his collaboration with Mark Twain on The Gilded Age (1873). Born in Plainfield, Massachusetts, on September 12, 1829, Warner worked on his guardian’s farm from ages eight to twelve, an experience that informs the memoir Being a Boy (1877). After graduating from Hamilton College in 1851, Warner, hoping to restore both his health and his fortune, joined an engineering corps surveying lands in Missouri. After returning east, he married Susan Lee (1838-1921) in 1856 and received a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania two years later. He practiced law in Chicago before moving to Hartford and beginning his journalistic career in 1860.He was a founding member of the literary colony at Nook Farm, whose members included Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain.

Warner’s principal contributions to journalism are his editorship of the influential newspaper The Hartford Courant and his exploration of the essay as a genre. In 1861, he assumed the editorship first of The Evening Press and then of The Hartford Courant, later consolidating the two papers. During the Civil War, Warner contributed essays and sketches to the Courant, consciously choosing, according to Annie Adams Fields, to focus on lighter domestic fare that would distract readers from the conflict. This series of popular editorials, later collected as My Summer in a Garden (1870), established Warner as an essayist as well as an editor, one whose genial manner and mildly humorous style recalled the work of Washington Irving. Backlog Studies (1873) continued this tradition, being “a kind of apotheosis of home” that nonetheless prefigured some of Warner’s critical preoccupations.

“Sign me up for Kathleen Baldwin’s School for Unusual Girls. It sucked me in from the first few pages and kept me reading until late into the night. Kathleen Baldwin has created a completely original—and totally engrossing— world, full of smart girls, handsome boys, and sinister mysteries.”

—Meg Cabot, NYT - USA Today bestselling author of Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls and The Princess Diaries “Spellbinding! A School for Unusual Girls is a beautifully written tale of adventure, intrigue, and romance that will appeal to every girl who has ever felt different. I loved A School for Unusual Girls...a true page-turner!”

—Rachel Hawthorne, NYT bestselling author of Moonlight series and Trouble from the Start “A School for Unusual Girls,” by Kathleen Baldwin, is enticing from the first sentence...

Baldwin has an ear for period dialogue as she draws us into this world of sharp, smart young ladies who are actually being trained and deployed for the British war effort by the mysterious headmistress, Miss Stranje.

It’s speculative historical fiction, with a trace of steampunk inventiveness” —New York Times Sunday Book Review 2015 JUNIOR LIBRARY GUILD SELECTION (CURRENT TRENDS HIGH) PUBLISHERS LUNCH 2015 YOUNG ADULT BUZZ BOOKS 2012 MARLENE WINNER YOUNG ADULT CATEGORY

KathleenBaldwin.com

Award Winning YA Historical Romance “Georgie’s budding attraction to a young viscount associate of Miss Stranje is all flashing eyes and clashing wits à la Lizzie and Darcy... romance readers who prize both brains and valor in a heroine will be pleased to make Georgie’s acquaintance.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“’W

ait, Nancy, wait—let me finish—I’ve been secretly bailing and fuming with this grand inspiration for weeks, and I must talk or I’ll burst!

I haven’t whispered to a soul—not a word—have had my countenance under lock and key, for fear it might drop something that would tell even these animals here how to discern the gold mine that’s glaring under their noses.

Now all that is necessary to hold this land and keep it in the family is to pay the trifling taxes on it yearly—five or ten dollars—the whole tract would not sell for over a third of a cent an acre now, but some day people will be glad to get it for twenty dollars, fifty dollars, a hundred dollars an acre! What should you say to’ [here he dropped his voice to a whisper and looked anxiously around to see that there were no eavesdroppers] ‘a thousand dollars an acre!’”

– from The Gilded Age

by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

48

JUNE/JULY 2015

Beginning with Saunterings in 1872, Warner also published nine travel books, some of which focused on Europe and the Middle East. Many of his books were first published as essays in the major literary journals of the day, including The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and Scribner’s. His editorship of the American Men of Letters biography series, for which he wrote the initial volume, a biography of Washington Irving, cemented his reputation as a biographer as well as an editor.

In addition to the genre of the familiar essay, Warner was successful as a critic and novelist. His essays in social and literary criticism generally favored social and literary reform, albeit of a limited kind. As a literary critic, he succeeded William Dean Howells as the writer of the influential “Editor’s Study” column for Harper’s from 1894-1898, and his judgments in the column, as in his books The Relation of Literature to Life (1896) and Fashions in Literature (1902), sought to elevate Americans’ taste in literature. After writing the satirical novel The Gilded Age with Mark Twain, Warner examined the rise and fall of a great family fortune through a trilogy of serious novels: A Little Journey in the World (1889), The Golden House (1894), and That Fortune (1899). Achieving popularity during his lifetime but not the enduring critical respect given to figures like Twain and Henry James, Warner died in Hartford on October 20, 1900.

—Dr. Donna Campbell, Washington State University, http://public.wsu. edu/~campbelld/amlit/warner.htm

sci-fi

WALKING THE LABYRINTH Our associate editor Marc Schuster on writing

The Greatest Show in the Galaxy: The Discerning Fan’s Guide to Doctor Who with Tom Powers Tom answered the door in gold tights and angel wings. When he showed me inside, every room was filled with junk: marionettes, model spaceships, painted rocks. I might not have minded so much if not for the fact that this wasn’t even Tom’s house. It was his parents’ house. Tom was thirty-seven.

The two of us were working on a quasi-scholarly volume on the long-running science-fiction series Doctor Who. Though our deadline was fast approaching, the manuscript was only halfwritten—my half. Tom, it turned out, was an idea man. He’d call me on the phone and talk for hours on end about minutia related to the series. Meanwhile the clock was ticking, and our book was not getting closer to being finished. Or so I believed.

For Tom, however, our collaboration was like walking a labyrinth, a fascination of his that made its way into our book when he noted that where a maze includes its fair share of dead-ends, a labyrinth serves as an intricate path leading to an inevitable center. To him, this distinction meant everything.

Regardless of my own assessment of the situation, we weren’t hitting dead-ends or falling into traps. We were walking together toward something inevitable.

So, yes, our collaboration was maddening. But it was also fun and took us both in directions we might not have expected. And, ultimately, our collaboration made me party to a different kind of thinking—the thinking of an artist, the endless meanderings of a wandering mind, the flights, perhaps, of an angel.

50

JUNE/JULY 2015

2015 Beverly Hills Book Award Winner: Legal Thriller Category 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist

L

ike all children, Ruby and Annabelle were born free of racial prejudice. One dark-skinned and one light, the two met in 1935 and quickly became best friends.

Many decades later, Annabelle is shocked when called to testify in the murder trial of Ruby’s brother Freddie. Inspired by the classic story of Ivanhoe, Freddie had created a childhood alter ego called the “Black Knight,” who vowed to fight injustice in the world. But now, to Annabelle’s dismay, Freddie finds himself facing the death penalty.

“this fine book offers well-drawn, human characters and logically flowing action, all written in a striking style...A must-read story of relationships, prejudice and bravery, and a vivid paean for justice.”

—Kirkus Reviews “...a twentieth century law and order fable...”

—Clarion Review “With interesting characters and a unique premise, Justice for the Black Knight quite astutely tackles the topic of racism, combining the best elements of legal thrillers like The Firm with the exploratory tone of subtle but powerful works like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” —Red City Review

Justice for the Black Knight is the dramatic story of a 1981 trial, where Annabelle and Ruby reach back into the past to prove that Freddie is a hero instead of a villain. It is an inspirational tale of friendship extending beyond the borders of race, which also takes an exciting and realistic look at the process of obtaining justice through the judicial system.

Available at

memoir

In riveting, luminous prose, Patrick O’Neil details his slide into drug addiction, incarceration, and eventual recovery.

Dzanc Books | dzancbooks.org 52

JUNE/JULY 2014

Shelf Unbound: You achieved early success as tour manager of influential punk bands such as Dead Kennedys, but then your heroin addiction led you to robbing everything from banks to a bakery. You eventually recovered and have been sober for 14 years. What made you want to tell your story?

Patrick O’Neil: Like most writers, I write what I know. And in the beginning I was writing these short essays about past events that were actually true stories, the type that I would tell friends. Of course I thought these stories to be somewhat normal, like everyone has robbed a bank, right? I guess it was sort of my method of survival, downplaying the reality of just how crazy my life had been. But then the reactions I would get were not just “oh, cool story,” but more that people were interested in how I survived through it all— from drug addiction to incarceration— and lived to tell the tale. That’s when I realized I had an obligation to tell my story. You know, not like some cautionary tale of redemption that would make a corny afterschool special or an episode of Scared Straight, but more a depiction of the resilience of the human spirit. I started out as a sensitive 17-year-old kid in art school that was into punk rock and heroin, and twenty years later I was a hardened criminal doing time with no future.

It has taken me years to get back to being somewhat closer to that sensitive kid, and if I can do it, then hell anyone can. Or at

least that’s my theory.

Shelf Unbound: You recount the horrific events of your life directly, seemingly uncensored. Yet you reveal little emotion for the most part. Is that your writing style or your personality or what?

Patrick O’Neil: Ouch, it sort of hurts to hear you say I “reveal little emotion.”

But I can see where a reader might get that. I am after all writing about events that happened eighteen or more years ago. It is not exactly like I just experienced them and the resulting emotions were fresh. And to be fair, I was loaded on heroin for most of those events, a drug that totally deadens your feelings, so yeah I can see where there’s a sense of detachment. Yet when writing memoir we all tread the fine line of being overly self-indulgent, incredibly self-obsessed, while breaking all boundaries for selfexposure. Yes, it’s all about me -- ha! But a memoir writer should also stay somewhere comfortably within the perimeters of “show not tell” and I am, as you said, recounting “horrific events” so I do trust the reader to understand that said events were not cherished moments, but rather the memories that still haunt me. Oddly there were times while writing where I’d wonder just who that person was. Not a split personality mental breakdown kind of wondering, but more like, how and why did I ever think armed robbery was a good idea?

Because there is no way in hell I would do

UNBOUND

53

memoir

half the things now that I did then. My self-centered obsessed addicted drive had me thinking and behaving in ways that were just not rational. I made insane decisions, I acted impulsively regardless of consequences, and then years later when I removed myself from that lifestyle and mindset I am literally left looking back as if viewing someone else’s life. Well, someone else’s life that still haunts me.

Shelf Unbound: I was particularly moved by your amends letter to Jenny, a fellow addict who was your girlfriend and living with you at the time the police busted in to your house to arrest you for robbing a movie theatre. “I am sorry for how fucked up it all got and for the way it all ended. I feel incredibly guilty for taking you down the road that I was on. You didn’t deserve to be that messed up and strung out. I’m sorry I introduced you to the needle.” Did writing this book feel like an extension of that, of making amends to whoever was impacted by your addiction?

O’Neil: Absolutely. There was a cathartic element to just getting these memories down on paper, and putting them to rest. With Jenny, after the cops kicked in our door and dragged us off to jail, I took full responsibility for everything and the police let her go and then I was incarcerated for years. I never saw Jenny again after that. And here was

54

JUNE/JULY 2014

someone that was in my life and we were very close, partners in crime you might say, and then we weren’t. Years later I’m writing and re-experiencing all these memories and I was overwhelmed with guilt, shame, and regret. At the same time I’m in recovery. I’m making actual amends in real life. I’m paying back stolen money, I’m admitting to friends and family “the exact nature of my wrongs,” and I’m cleaning up the “wreckage of my past” as best as I can. Yet, at night when I laid my head down to go to sleep I was bombarded with waking dreams reliving every horrific event—a greatest hits of painful and disturbing memories—this of course was great for gleaning material for the memoir, and I had a notebook by the bed and would jot down cryptic scribbles and descriptions. But it wasn’t until I actually typed the memory out and took responsibility for it, including the affect it had on the other parties involved, that I was able to fully accept and forgive myself and those around me, as well as ask for forgiveness—and when I did this I found the memories were no longer haunting me.

Shelf Unbound: You spent a good deal of time in the Eighties’ punk rock scene. How did punk rock influence your life, and has it influenced your writing?

O’Neil: Punk rock was the perfect outlet for me at the time. I was fresh out of art school with a somewhat useless BFA

MYSTIC BY PETER LAMANA

“

This novel is a celebration of not just America’s famous pastime or military heroes, but the country’s uncanny ability to synthesize and unify.

—Clarion Review

T

”

he Civil War is finally over, and the survivors have returned to their lives to try to rebuild. There was very little time for rest and relaxation. Nothing can be truer for the people of the small country town of Mystic.

However, something has come to Mystic with the survivors…a game called “baseball”. With a faithful group of town leaders, a retired Judge, and several veterans, the town team forms, and a simple league with other small towns is established. Then, when captain of the Drummers contacts the Mystic team with a request to come to Mystic to play a fun exhibition game on the Fourth of July, the initial thought was one of reservation…the Drummers were a traveling team of colored players. To the people of Mystic, a town that sided with the Northern Union forces, the prospect of playing a colored “barnstorming” team was cause to celebrate a game that changed the town of Mystic forever.

memoir

degree in my hand. I was ill prepared to actually make a living off my art—fine art schools sorely lack preparing you for the real world of galleries, curators, and patrons—and I was stuck working in the same menial type of jobs that I had while supporting myself through school, while all the while seeking that elusive big break. So essentially there was no change and I was still a starving artist, which left me frustrated, disenfranchised and disillusioned. Plus, it was the Eighties; there was horrible disco and bad fashion and even worse haircuts.

Rock and Roll bands were huge parodies of themselves playing giant arenas and nothing felt fresh, or new, or accessible. Out of boredom I went to the local punk club to see a band from NYC, The Ramones, and I was blown away by their raw energy and in your face attitude. Finally here were others who were obviously feeling just as unfulfilled and detached from society as I was. And that’s when I discovered that there was a whole movement of musicians, writers, and artists creating whatever they wanted regardless of its “marketability,” all the while scorning the established status quo. I immediately felt a total camaraderie and immersed myself in punk’s “do it yourself ” approach and started creating what I wanted, not what was commercially viable, or mainstream. I think if anything has influenced me the most, it was that sense of rebellious freedom that punk afforded me. And as for in-

56

JUNE/JULY 2014

fluencing my writing, I strive to produce that same “in your face attitude,” accessibility, and immediacy that first attracted me to the small club band scene and creativity of punk rock in the Eighties.

Shelf Unbound: You’re a gifted writer. Have you always written?

Do you have a next writing project you’re working on?

O’Neil: Well, thank you very much for the compliment. No, I haven’t always been a writer. I was a visual artist first— an illustrator whose drawings led to movement, which led to animation and filmmaking—and it wasn’t until I was incarcerated that I really started writing and then considered myself a writer.

Prison was like the perfect “writer’s retreat,” if you can deal with the bad food, worse company, and intense moments of violence. But really mostly there is nothing to do, so I spent the majority of my time reading books and writing. When I got out I continued and eventually applied and was accepted to grad school and obtained an MFA in creative writing.

Now I teach at two Los Angeles colleges and continue to write on a daily basis.

My latest projects are another memoir, a precursor to Gun, Needle, Spoon, chronicling my former career as a road manager touring America with the punk bands Dead Kennedys, Flipper, T.S.O.L., and Subhumans—and a somewhat less ambitious project which has turned into a collection of linked essays on sex.

PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT

THE JOHN PILATE MYSTERIES...

“Great story, tight writing, and a wonderful ensemble of characters. It’s like re-connecting with old friends, and there is something comforting about that.”

— Eden Baylee, Author of Stranger at Sunset

“J. Alexander Greenwood offers a fresh take on the mystery thriller with his John Pilate Series…populated with flawed and neurotic—yet instantly-likable— characters who find themselves thrown into maddeningly entertaining situations. Greenwood writes fun, accessible fiction that leaves readers asking for more.”

— Jason McIntyre, author of On The Gathering Storm

COMING SOON: PILATE'S 7 Available Wherever Books and Ebooks Are Sold.

WWW.PILATESCROSS.COM

I

We’re All Doing Time

by Bo Lozoff

58

JUNE/JULY 2015

n the early 1970s, Ram Dass’s book Be Here Now, a “cookbook for a sacred life,” became popular in prisons, and he began receiving letter after letter from prisoners responding to the book.

The letters revealed that the prisoners were serious about finding a way of life that felt meaningful. They spoke of forgiveness, shame, love, kindness, compassion, fear, pain, struggle, loneliness and spirituality. Bo and Sita Lozoff helped Ram Dass answer the letters. After reading the letters for many years and visiting countless prisons, Bo felt called to write a book about living a spiritual life while incarcerated. This book, We’re All Doing Time, now in its 19th printing, continues to be widely read in prisons around the world. And The Human Kindness Foundation, founded by the Lozoffs, receives and responds to about

400 letters each week from incarcerated people and sends Bo’s four books for free to any incarcerated person who requests them.

Bo’s books cover spirituality from an inter-faith perspective.

His words are down to earth. He uses “real talk” and leaves aside elegance, yet is deeply compassionate and sensitive to the real pain and suffering of all people.

One thing that becomes clear after reading hundreds of these truly touching letters is that we’re all so very much alike. Whether we find ourselves in an actual prison or a metaphorical one, we each face circumstances that make us feel trapped —not free. And we all seek freedom in its many forms. Bo’s books are about finding freedom —spiritual, mental and emotional freedom.

—Morgan Siem

A NOVEL BY BILL HIATT

A little knowledge be a dangerous thing.

A lot of knowledge?

That can get you killed.

Taliesin Weaver pretends to be an

ordinary teenager, but he can remember all of his past lives and use the abilities of his earlier selves. With a little practice, he can even work magic. Unfortunately, Tal doesn’t have everyone fooled. Someone knows who he is—and, more important, who he was. Tal can’t identify this hidden enemy. All he knows is that the magical attacks against him keep escalating, threatening not only him, but everyone he cares about. To save them, he may have to risk everything...even his soul.

“Debut author Hiatt offers an engrossing coming-of-age story richly infused with ancient mythology and Arthurian tales...A fast paced, emotionally nuanced page-turner.”

—Kirkus Reviews “Hiatt weaves loads of action and adventure with just the right blend of humor to make this captivating read a grand success.”

—Literary Classics Book Reviews “...characters in this story dance right off the pages swinging their swords, fighting their battles, and singing their magic as though they truly existed....Please don’t keep me waiting too long for the next chapter in the lives of Tal and friends.”

—Ann Boling for Readers’ Favorite

Available as an ebook, paperback, and audiobook on

WWW.BILLHIATT.COM Watch the book video here.

UNBOUND

59

The Dead Lands

by Benjamin Percy

S

Grand Central Publishing hachettebookgroup.com

60

JUNE/JULY 2015

he knows there is something wrong with the baby. She has known from the very beginning. First there was the nausea that left her bedridden for weeks, dizzy and barely able to eat, chewing on cucumbers, filling up on spring water. Then the surges in temper, the blackening headaches. And finally a stillness inside her when there should have been movement— a fluttering, like the tail of a trout; that’s what her friends told her—so that she would twist her body and prod her belly until the child readjusted itself, assuring her it was there, it was alive.

They live in a windowless cabin high in the mountains.

Others live not far away, some near a spring-fed stream, others cut back in the woods. Together they form a village of sorts, happily isolated, wary of outsiders and change, fearful of the stories told by their elders, stories of an illness that causes a bloody cough

and blistering fevers, stories of missiles raining from the sky and cratering the earth, stories of scavengers with meaty breath and teeth filed into points.

Outside the snow is kneedeep. Before long it will be taller than her husband, taller than the cabin, and every day they will need to shovel a wide passage from their door in case they should be trapped, shrouded.

Sometimes she dreams the child is not a child. It is a grub, fat and white and segmented, with black eyes. It is a beast with tiny yellow fangs and tiny yellow claws, its body covered in fur as sleek as an otter’s. Or maybe it is a nothing, a dark spirit, a possessed vapor, and her body the house it haunts.

From the book The Dead Lands by Benjamin Percy. Copyright (C) 2015

by Benjamin Percy. Reprinted by permission of Grand Central Publishing, New York, NY. All rights reserved.

MOUNTAIN LITERARY WWW.MOUNTAINTOPUSA.COM

Limbo Life is idyllic for the Martin family until a drunk driver crosses their path and four-year-old Missy is killed in the accident.

The young girl’s parents mourn their daughter’s death in very different ways. Levi Martin internalizes his depression and heartbreak while Sherry projects rage towards the driver who destroyed her family and vows vengeance. In Levi’s mind all hope is lost so he takes off on a crosscountry road trip.

Mirrors in the Dark During a jaunt to Tijuana with his buddies in 1970, Randy “Scout” Monroe was looking forward to a day of partying while on summer break from college. After a few too many beers cloud the boys’ judgment, they consider a tempting proposal to buy drugs from some local teens. When the drug dealers turn the transaction into an ambush the results are catastrophic and Scout ends up in an illegal prison cell for the next five years.

From author William Graney...

A series of thought-provoking novels filled with serious dilemmas, humor, and love.

Connections between past are present are explored and the mystical side of life is frequently hovering in the background.

The reading experience is a journey filled with unexpected twists and turns.

Mountaintop USA As a comet is about to pass

by Earth, the people of who live in the town of Mountaintop learn that their location will be perfect for viewing the icy orb. The quirky residents gather together with their telescopes to gaze at the comet and have a party. To their surprise, the night will be illuminated by revelations.

Saving Grace When Grace Harridge turns fifty years old on New Year’s Day in the year 2000 she expects the upcoming new year to be as uneventful and lonely as those that preceded it but there are some unexpected surprises in store as she is about to meet the love of her life and face a terrifying threat from a serial killer.

Haints Stay

by Colin Winnette

T

Two Dollar Radio twodollarradio.com

62

JUNE/JULY 2015

he man then threw the curving knife with enough force to puncture Brooke’s advancing thigh, and as Sugar leapt toward him from behind, he dodged the advance and moved forward to recollect the knife from Brooke’s leg. Brooke howled for only a moment, then watched as the man moved away to make a safe distance between the three of them. There was blood at his mouth. Even more at his ear. He was staggering now, soaked in blood down the back of his shirt and pants. He appeared light and trembling.

Brooke and Sugar watched him like a wounded deer. He was nearly set to bleed out and they would have him. They waited and the boy watched and the fourth man glanced around the campsite to confirm that he had lost each and every one of his men. There were bloody piles and bundles gathered by the bedding. A low fire. The

woods were quiet until the man dropped to his knees. He held the knife out with both hands now, a bit of slobber at his chin.

“There will only be more men like us,” he said. He coughed and spat. “You will only kill and kill until you are overcome.”

Brooke stepped forward as if to offer himself up to the man.

“Would you like to stick me one last time before we finish you?” he said. He set his good leg out before their kill. He leaned back to smile at Sugar, who shook his head and plucked tobacco from his sock.

“Don’t be grotesque,” said Sugar, as the man plunged the curving knife into the bones of Brooke’s foot.

From Haints Stay by Colin Winnette, Two Dollar Radio, twodollarradio.com. Reprinted with permission.

All rights reserved.

N

B

N E W I N B O O K S

B E C O M E

A

B OO K

I N S I D E R

GET THE SCOOP ON NEW BOOKS Spend your time reading, not hunting for new books. We scour the web to find the best new releases in your favorite genres. We’ll send you just one email per week, chock full of the best new books.

SIGN UP

Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

by Julie Iromuanya

S

Coffee House Press coffeehousepress.org

64

JUNE/JULY 2015

he should have been prettier, he told himself. After all, his family had made a point of forgiving her poverty; her good name would do. She was tall by his family’s standards. Lean in a way that made wrappers and dresses appear ill fitting and silly. Still, her thinness was ideal for the blue jeans that American women wore. His father, who had never visited America but had watched every videocassette he had mailed him, had reminded Job of this. His grandmother had insisted her small buttocks would grow with the birth of their first child. She is still just a child herself, she had explained.

Ifi’s legs were bony and ridged at the knees, her face taut with strain around her eyes, as if she squinted furiously at everything.

She was also not as light skinned as his mother would have preferred, and her hair was not ideal. But, Job reminded himself, she wasn’t ugly.

Job sank down onto the toilet, striking his foot against Ifi’s bag and knocking the few articles of clothing, makeup, perfume, and jewelry loose. He began to place each item back in the bag, using the flickering light of the candle as a guide. Women with all their tools. Men didn’t have it as easy. If a woman was fat, thin, too dark, too light, too short, too tall, there was always something she could do about it. His sisters, Jenny and Florence, had used lightening creams for years, wearing tall heels to compensate for their short frames and even slipping cotton balls into their bras. When they went to their rooms at night, they were his plain sisters with ashy skin and acne, but when they reemerged, they were something new.

Excerpt is reprinted by permission from Mr. and Mrs. Doctor (Coffee House Press, 2015). Copyright © 2015 by Julie Iromuanya.

From Author

DAVID GRACE

DEATH

NEVER LIES

The federal bureaucrat charged with stopping the importation of dangerous materials vanishes only days before approving a new list of prohibited substances. Homicide detective turned Homeland Security Agent Greg Kane suspects that the HHS employee may have been killed to keep the new list from going into effect, but he has no idea who’s behind the crime, which chemical they are so desperate to import, and what they plan to do with it once they’ve gotten their hands on it.

David Grace is the author of fifteen novels, two collections of crime short stories and five collections of Science Fiction Short Stories.

Brief summaries of each of these volumes are contained on this site as well as links to E-Book sellers who sell these works as downloadable electronic books. Books are available in formats for Kindle, iPhone, Nook, iPad and other readers.

www.DavidGraceAuthor.com

Available at:

David Grace is the author of The Concrete Kiss, a Shelf Unbound Notable Indie Book for 2013

feature

art

©

Pr e

st el

,2

01

5

1

ARTISTIC COLLABORATORS

ANDY WARHOL AND JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

I

by Dieter Buchhart

n 1984, Basquiat began to collaborate intensely with Andy Warhol. The partnership was originally proposed by influential art dealer Bruno Bischofberger, Basquiat’s European gallerist. In 1984 and 1985, Basquiat produced fifteen joint works with Warhol and Francesco Clemente, and more than 140 collaborations with Warhol; these comprise more than one-tenth of Basquiat’s painterly oeuvre. [Keith] Haring describes the collaboration as “a kind of physical conversation happening in paint instead of words.” Basquiat accentuated

66

JUNE/JULY 2015

P.I’s and police fight crime. Exciting, riveting mysteries and detective stories of revenge and redemption. A homeless shelter director murders volunteers. Gangs run wild in a dystopian future. Widow of a neurosurgeon with Alzheimer’s seeks new life aboard a cruise ship. A transgender serial killer confesses...

Cult Classics Publisher offers these Kindle downloads at WWW.CULTCLASSICSPUBLISHER.COM

Basquiat and the Bayou

by Franklin Sirman Prestel | Prestel-usa.com

The Andy Warhol Diaries edited by Pat Hackett Twelve Books | twelvebooks.com

Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks

by Dieter Bucchart Rizzoli | rizzoliusa.com

The Trip: Andy Warhol’s Plastic Fantastic Cross-Country Adventure

by Deborah Davis Atria Books | simonandschuster.com 68

JUNE/JULY 2015

and replaced Warhol’s creations with his own visual elements: as Haring recalls, “Andy loved the energy with which Jean-Michel would totally eradicate one image and enhance another....They worked on many [canvases] at the same time, each idea inspiring the next. Layers and layers of images and ideas would build towards a concise climax.” While Warhol, inspired by Basquiat, returned to his painterly beginnings, Basquiat began to sample from his own collages using silkscreening.

The thematic horizon of the collaborations is broad; the works engage with every-day racism, encounters between different cultures and capitalist consumer society in a number of ways. It was a meeting of two opposites, two different world views: while Basquiat explicitly critiqued capitalism, Warhol seemed to embody the role of the artist as businessman. Warhol tore down all barriers between business and art, adopting the rules of industrial society, calling his studio “The

“JO IMAGINED SOME OF THE PEOPLE SHE KNEW FINALLY WORKING THROUGH THE MATRIX LEFT BY GENERATION UPON GENERATION OF UNCONSCIOUSLY PRODUCED SUBJECTS…” Written as a self help book for those on the fringes of survival, who are bullied, alienated and ostracized within their own peer groups, families and communities, Generational Matrix aims to help free these “fugitive kind” from the prisons of others’ and their own making.

Part I of Generational Matrix is the story of a girl, Johanna Bennette, who

is born at a time of family crisis and, as a result, becomes an outsider within her own family.

This refugee identity of circumstances follows Jo within most every social group thereafter.

Throughout struggles and self examination, Jo slowly finds her way to success as an English instructor at the college level after overcoming both mild ADD and borderline Dissociative Identity Disorder. Finally, she uncovers the truth behind her recurring nightmares, which began during another family crisis and against the backdrop of the debut of the Boston Strangler.

On her college journey, Jo discovers she has hidden talents while developing her best defenses against aggressive, insecure people, who, when they sense someone is different from them and, therefore, might someday rise above the madding crowd, try to hinder that person’s progress in life even at the college level. Hence, in Chapter 2, “Conform and Die,” Jo pulls an all-nighter in college to write her “Treatise” entitled “Some of the People, All of the Time” to be read the next day in her memoir writing class.

UNBOUND https://my.bookbaby.com/book/generational-matrix-part-i-surviving-the-onslaught

69

Jean-Michel Basquiat

by Robert Farris Thompson Rizzoli | rizzoliusa.com

Basquiat: The Notebooks

by Jean-Michel Basquiat Princeton University Press press.princeton.edu

A to Z Great Modern Artists

by Andy Tuohy Cassell | andytuohy.co.uk

Andy Warhol: A Biography

by Wayne Koestenbaum Open Road Media | openroadmedia.com 70

JUNE/JULY 2015

Factory” and giving the impression that he produced art on an assembly line. But did he glorify modern consumer goods in order to affirm the capitalist marketplace or to lambaste the represented and lived world of consumption? The image of Warhol as a star artist is now understood as a mask that, like his silkscreens, reflects the mechanisms of modern capitalist consumer society. Basquiat, on the other hand, clearly expressed his stance against capitalism in a number of the artists’ collaborative works.

Such collaborations became an exciting, critical dialogue between two greats of American art history. In 1985, however, following a devastating review of an exhibition of sixteen joint works at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery, Basquiat abruptly ended the productive collaboration.

From Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now’s the Time by Dieter Buchhart, Prestel * DelMonico Books, prestel.com.

Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

JUNE/JULY 2012

BEACH READS

SURF, SUN AND

SUMMER

68

JUNE/JULY 2011

what to read next in independent publishing

SEPTEMBER 2010

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2011

THE

Poetry After 9/11

what to read next in independent publishing

SEPTEMBER 2010

SEPTEMBER 2010

68

Street Photographer

IRAQ THE RETURN OF STEPHEN STARK

GEEK MYTHOLOGY

OCTOBER 2010

68

68

what to read next in independent publishing

SEPTEMBER 2010

NOVEMBER 2010

blows to the head

anti-twitter

speed vegan

SAMANTHA BEE 68

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

68

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

portland, oregon slut lulla bies

FEBRUARY 2011

THE ART OF CHARCUTERIE

KATRINA

THE GREAT FITNESS EXPERIMENT

BEFORE (DURING) AFTER

how they were found

ULYSSES SEEN

what to read next in independent publishing

68

SEPTEMBER 2010

JOA N JETT

TAXI DRIVER

Kael Alford

MIGRATION

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

SEPTEMBER 2010

Canal House Cooking

sharon pomerantz

68

68

JANUARY 2011

PAM GRIER

the end of baseball

Essays on Madonna

DECEMBER 2010

RISING FROM

Detroit Disassembled

Laura Dern

RENAISSANCE READS

what to read next in independent publishing

SEPTEMBER 2010

TOWARDS ZERO ENERGY ARCHITECTURE

IDENTITY

The Enlightened

BOY SCOUT BOOKS

Portlandia’s Indie Bookstore

what to read next in independent publishing

SEPTEMBER 2010

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2012

Vivian Maier

LEGO Lit

Suitcase Books

Orange Prize Finalist Kathleen Winter 68

Novel ties Literary Tattoos

Ed Ruscha The L Life

DECEMBER/JANUARY 2012

INSIDE

AUTO

MOBILE

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2011

68

what to read next in independent publishing

máze MERIT BADGES

68

what to read next in independent publishing

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

SEPTEMBER 2010

DECEMBER/JANUARY 2015

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2014

DORTHE NORS ELVIRA DONES CARMEN BOULLOSA

SHELF UNBOUND WRITING COMPETITION

AWARD WINNERS

1

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2015

1

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

APRIL /MAY 2011

APRIL /MAY 2012

KEVIN MORRIS JACK LONDON THE INSTAGRAM BOOK

SHORT STORY

SNAPSHOTS 1

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

Check us out on Facebook and join the conversation!

JOH JOHNNY NNY CAS CASH H

create dangerously THE WARBLER ROAD

68

SEPTEMBER 2010

Chanel, Astaire, Lindbergh, and other Twenties somethings

what to read next in independent publishing

68

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

gallery

art exhibit

BASQUIAT

O

THE UNKNOWN NOTEBOOKS n view through August 23 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, this exhibit for the first time showcases notebook pages that contain Basquiat’s early exploration of imagery that would be come iconic in his later large-scale works: teepees, crowns, skeletons. A catalog from Skira Rizzoli accompanies the exhibit. brooklynmuseum.org.

All images from The Brooklyn Museum, New York, brooklynmuseum.org.

Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

72

JUNE/JULY 2015

UNBOUND

73

74

JUNE/JULY 2015

UNBOUND

75

76

JUNE/JULY 2015

UNBOUND

77

BOOK SHELF The Vampire Girl Next Door

by Richard Arbib

M

ark falls in love with Sylvia, the beautiful, but quirky girl next door, not realizing that she’s a vampire who killed his last neighbor.

When Mark first meets Sylvia, he tells her, “You’re the girl of my dreams!” Sylvia smiles and responds with a warning—“Be careful what you wish for.”

“The Vampire Girl Next Door is a choice pick for one looking for a romance with a supernatural twist, highly recommended.”

—John Burroughs, Midwest Book Review www.thevampiregirlnextdoor.com

Available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

Paperback and all e-book formats available on author’s website.

Worst of All Evils

by Janet McClintock

J

oan Bowman joins the Constitution Defense Legion to fight a runaway government in Washington, D.C., but after working her way into a leadership position, she discovers the underground resistance group is as bad as the government it is fighting. Her only way out alive is to become a state’s witness, but betraying the group means betraying her mentor and lover.

Hottest Places In Hell (Series Book #2) will be released in 2015. www.janetmcclintock.com Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Deceived: A Sam McClellan Tale

by Laura S. Wharton

T

he beach life isn’t sunny for Detective Sam McClellan, not after he just lost his partner in a brutal killing. The truth pulls at him like an undertow as he uncovers an extensive drug trafficking scheme in the idyllic beach resort communities of North Carolina with the help of sassy sidekick Molly Monroe and tips from some shady characters.

Signed copies are available on author’s website. www.laurawhartonbooks.com Available at Amazon.

Legend of War Creek

by Randall Reneau

O

n August 18, 1882, Joe La Fleur discovered a goldbearing quartz vein near the headwaters of War Creek. Later the same day...he lost it. One hundred and thirty years later, geologist Trace Brandon re-discovers the vein, guarded by a skeleton with a flint arrowhead imbedded in a femur, and a carved wooden owl—admonitions not to desecrate hallowed ground. www.randall-reneau.com Available at Amazon.

BOOK SHELF The Hidden Hatred

by J. Mairy Dietch’

W

hen Africa is rarely considered to be concerned by homosexuality, The Hidden Hatred opens an exclusive window on a definitely universal phenomenom, a human distress too.

“A family story unlike any other...The novel’s exploration of small-town prejudice, along with its soap-opera-like tragedy and ultimately redemption is intriguinly original”. —Kirkus Review “The best thing about this book is Dietch’s style of presentation, of writing”. —Professor Michael A. Faia www.jmairydietch.net | FACEBOOK LINK Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Authorhouse.

Necessary Words for Writers

by Donna Lee Anderson

E

very business has its own vocabulary and the Publishing world is not an exception. When I went to my first writer’s conference I attended an agents panel.

Although I understood their words, I didn’t understand what was exactly meant when they said ‘send bios not resumes’ and ‘platforms’ are important. I wrote down these words and this became the first words of NECESSARY WORDS FOR WRITER…just what do those agents and editors mean?

Available at Amazon. www.donnaleeanderson.com

A Second in Eternity

by Gary L. Wimmer

A

Second in Eternity is the true story about the author’s intense and enlightening “neardeath” experience in 1977, an experience that changed his life forever and still inspires and empowers him to this day. A witty and insightful page-turner, this book challenges the reader to think outside the box about every facet of existence. www.lithomancy.com http://garywimmer.com/writer/eternity.htm Available at Amazon.

Th3 Simple Questions: Slice Open Everyday Life

by Jean W. Yeager

T

he author looked into his heart and asked three simple questions: “Who Am I?”, “Why Am I Here?” and “What Do I Want?”. The questions were like 3 Angels which sliced open everyday life and revealed bitter and sweet truths about life, men, women, prison, love, and the Human Spirit.”

See the website for reviews, sample chapters and chapter list. www.th3simplequestions.com Available at Amazon, B&N, and Kobo.

BOOK SHELF Longing for Normal

by Darcy Pattison “Pattison’s characters provide a reason to keep reading... A rare book...”

—Booklist Online 3/10/15

A

s the deadlines nears for Marj to sign adoption papers, Eliot finds it hard to hope. Somehow, he manages to unite an immigrant community and rebuild his family–using a simple sourdough bread recipe.

Children’s Book Council Hot Off the Presses Pick, March 2015

Click HERE to read a sample chapter at Mims House.

Available at Amazon, and iTunes.

Also available at these educational distributors: Follett School Solutions and Mackin Educational Resources

Screaming Divas

by Suzanne Kamata Trudy, Cassie, Esther, and Harumi from a punk rock band in 1980s Columbia, South Carolina. Together they are The Screaming Divas.

But will music heal them, or tear them apart?

ALA 2015 Rainbow List “A novel for the Riot Grrrl in all of us!” —MTV.com “Kamata’s sensitive prose shines.” —Kirkus Reviews ISBN: 978-1-4405-7279-1 $17.99 cloth – F + W Media/Merit Press www.suzannekamata.com Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Powell’s.

I Livia, the Counterfeit Criminal

by Mary Mudd I Livia, the Counterfeit Criminal proves false the popular notion that Caesar Augustus’ beloved third wife was a conniving dynastic murderess.

A much-needed corrective to a long tradition of Livia-bashing, this highly readable text belongs in the hands of history students and general readers interested in the foundations of our society alike.

—The U.S. Review of Books www.livia-drusilla.com Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and orders@trafford.com.

*

Promote your book in Shelf Unbound in our Special Advertising Section for Authors. Each issue of Shelf Unbound is distributed to more than 125,000 people in the U.S. and 62 countries around the globe. Our introductory ad rate for this section is $375/quarter page as seen here.

Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK SHELF A Current Deception

by Arleen Alleman

A

What Jennifer Saw

By Hal Schweig

W

murderer and swarm of yellow crazy ants invade an Australian cruise. A woman dies in Adelaide, passengers are attacked onboard, and ants inflict injuries as they struggle to survive. When the crimes hit close to home, freelance reporter Darcy Farthing uses her science and investigative skills to identify a master of disguise and world class hacker with a twenty-year vendetta.

hat Jennifer Saw was recommended by the Huffington Post as a mystery/thriller that fans of Gone Girl (the New York Times bestseller) would like. A 100% positive review from Kirkus Reviews concluded: “A gripping tale of suspense.” In the novel, festering moral decay beneath the golden surface of the most beloved family in a small Midwestern town leads to murder.

www.arleenalleman.com Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Xlibris.

www.halschweig.com Available at Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

Rendered

by Samantha Jacobey First in the new IRREVOCABLE SERIES

B

ailey Dewitt had a life most people dream about; able to be and do whatever she wanted. Then, she lost it all; the night her

parents died.

Dragged away from her home and forced into the care of her renegade uncle, Bailey must learn to play by a new set of rules—survival in the tiny prepper community of Lawson... www.samjacobey.com Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and Kobo.

Take Stock in Murder

by Millie Mack

W

hat do you do when you’re charged with murder?

Carrie and Charles Faraday have to answer this question when Carrie is charged with the crime.

Todd Barrington is a flirtatious playboy spending much more money than his brokerage salary pays. But who killed him?

Help the Faradays find the solution in this second book in the Faraday Murder series. www.milliemack.com Available at Amazon.

BOOK SHELF T

his book was written as a result of questions I had concerning the state of the church of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I read of all the miracles God performed in the Bible, and like Gideon (Judges 6:13) I asked the question, “Where has that God gone? Why am I not seeing that kind of power in my life?” After much prayer and meditation, God started to show me what was lacking in my life. I realized that walking with God was more than just memorizing Scriptures and learning formulas to get God to work on my behalf.

S

While I was paralyzed from a spinal infection, I realized that some of what I had been taught in church were based on tradition and were not biblically based. During this period of time, God began the healing process. Through faith in the Word of God, I was healed physically, but, more importantly, God gave me the assignment to pass on to others what I have learned. I pray for all those who read this book: may your eyes and hearts be open to receive the message of God’s great love for you and His desire to lead you to your Promise Land.

“Great book documenting life on an Arizona cattle ranch in the ’50s.”

—Reader Jerry O. This and other books by Patrick H. Boles are available at Amazon.

*

Promote your book in Shelf Unbound in our Special Advertising Section for Authors. Each issue of Shelf Unbound is distributed to more than 125,000 people in the U.S. and 62 countries around the globe. Our introductory ad rate for this section is $375/quarter page as seen here.

Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

Keith E. Jackson, MF T

et on an Arizona ranch in the summer of 1952.

Rancher Jeff Dean is looking back at that summer. For baby boomers and others who wish they could have grown up on a western ranch. The novel contains true bits of history, cowboy etiquette, tips on handling horses, etc.

WALKING IN THE WAY DAY BY DAY

Summer on the P Bar J Ranch

by Patrick H. Boles

Walking in the Way Day by Day

by Keith E. Jackson, MFT WALKING IN THE WAY DAY BY DAY

A

uthor Keith E. Jackson realized Your Daily Guide to the Promise Land that walking with God was more than just memorizing Scriptures Keith E. Jackson, MF T and learning formulas.

This book serves to guide readers as they open their eyes and hearts as well as receive the message of God’s great love leading them to their Promise Land. This book has 365 readings, one for each day.

WARNING: THIS BOOK CONTAINS MATERIAL THAT MAY CHANGE YOUR PERCEPTION ABOUT GOD, YOURSELF, AND YOUR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS!

www.olcoutreach.net Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Authorhouse.

The Infinity Trap

by Ian C. Douglas

Z

eke Hailey bluffs his way into the psychic academy on Mars, searching for his missing father. Mindreading teachers and telekinetic bullies are the least of his problems. An evil archaeologist is searching for alien technology of immense power. After a Martian relic boosts Zeke’s brainpower, he alone can save humanity from a monster as old as the universe. www.zekehailey.com Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Waterstones.

BOOK SHELF Buck’s Tooth

by Diane Kredensor

B

uck’s situation is just silly enough for young readers, who worry about teeth and just about everything else, to laugh at, raising this above the many other books about self-acceptance that populate the shelves.

Lots of sight words, full-color cartoon illustrations, easy-to-read speech bubbles, humor, and lots of likable characters add up to a surefire hit. —Kirkus Reviews TRAILER LINK Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Simon & Schuster.

The Gift-Knight’s Quest

by Dylan Madeley

A

n unready Crown Princess, trying to outwit the conspirators who accidentally landed her on the throne. A soldier on a journey, who questions why a family long at odds with his own would summon him to protect their youngest and last. An empire’s fate in the balance. Welcome to a new and vividly imagined world. Immerse yourself. www.troubador.co.uk Available at Amazon, iTunes, Nook, and Kobo.

The Artist and the Lava Beast

by Maria G. Mackavey

A

lava beast becomes the catalyst for a tale about learning to accept natural developments. The beast—destined to be transformed from an energetic force into a cooled rock—learns to embrace change, not with resignation but with a sense of belonging. In this story, the theme of transformation offers potential teaching points for children ready for chapter books.

—Foreword Clarion Review www.theartistandthelavabeast.com Available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and AuthorHouse.

The Crystal Key

by T.L. Howard

T

he Crystal Key is an out-ofthe-box, fast paced, fantasy adventure, that offers readers anguish and excitement, softened with humor, in a uniquely engaging struggle between good and evil. Follow Mirah as she rides headlong to meet a destiny that will not only change her life forever, but the world as well.

www.tlhowardauthor.com Available at Amazon.

BOOK SHELF House of the Last Man on Earth

by Robert B. Marcus, Jr. and Ryan B. Marcus

C

Applied Biology: A Novel of Bipolar Disorder

by Jane Thompson One person can make a difference.

onvinced that his bizarre neighbor might be a part of a hostile alien agenda, college student Richard Johnson, along with one of his instructors and her brother, embark upon a soaring and treacherous journey through light-years of space and thousands of years to discover a terrible truth—mankind is being slowly and systematically exterminated.

n spite of suffering with manic-depression herself, Claudia fights the Nazi machine as it euthanizes the mentally ill in Germany. She refuses to accept the status quo as many of her neighbors do, and joins the few in the battle against a seemingly unstoppable tyranny. Being countered at every turn, Claudia finds aid and comfort in the French Resistance.

www.rbmarcusjr.com Available at Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

www.bipolarhandbook.com Available at Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

Selected Contemporary Native Issues in Canada—Personal Observations Made in the Field

by Eric John Large

T

his bold and honest account by a former First Nation Chief of the plight of the First Nations people of Canada outlines issues that impact them within the Canadian fabric. The author reveals the control legislation, policies and court decisions have on the Treaty Rights of First Nations such as education, health, development, and inherent rights to land and resources. www.ericjlarge.com Available at Xlibris, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and your local bookstore.

I

DRAFTED: The Mostly True Tales of a Rear Echelon Mother F**cker

by SPC-4 Andrew Atherton

N

ot quite twenty-six, a married philosophy student is drafted and finds himself immersed in a military culture for which he is neither well suited nor prepared. In Vietnam, he works at battalion HQ and sends home stories that reflect his awakening to the heroism and horror, tedium and terror, and the incompetence and banal cruelty of life in a war zone. www.blankslatepress.com/authors/andrew-atherton Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Indiebound.

BOOK SHELF ...Won’t Come Home

by Jeffrey Morris

T

Eleven Sundays

by Alonna Shaw

I

his stark bildungsroman follows Jake Preston, an American nomad from runaway teen addict, and alcoholic drifter into tenuous sobriety. Jake is forced to address issues he’s run from his whole life.

Facing these demons—loneliness, depression, desire to use—and staying clean, he ultimately confronts a family issue whose resolution will delimit the arc of his sobriety and adult life.

n a mystical fogcapped valley in Northern California, Annie, a Pop-Tartand espresso-fueled twentysomething crosses paths with an enigmatic souplady who runs a one-room B&B. These two women touched by tragedy forge an unlikely bond inspiring Annie to overcome her quarter-life crisis.

www.jeffmorris.com Available at Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

www.elevensundays.com Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Last Train To El Paso— The Mysterious Unsolved Murder of a Cattle Baron

by Jerry J. Lobdill True crime, western history, 263 pages, 50 images

A

cattle baroness’s pursuit of justice for her brutally murdered husband unveils a chilling truth and produces a mystery that endures for a century.

“Holy cow! You’ve uncovered a dynamite story!

I’ve just tried to call you in my enthusiasm, moments after finishing your book, but your voice mail is full.”

—Bill O’Neal, Texas State Historian www.LastTrain2ElPaso.com Available at Amazon and the author’s website.

“Beautifully written [...] A richly descriptive tale of grief and gratitude.”

—Kirkus Reviews

The Sadm Project

by Jim Gilliam

L

ike every man on his team, Captain Chris Holt has sworn an oath to defend America against all enemies.

Yet from the moment he enters the SADM Program, Holt never considers the possibility of a domestic deployment. Now, as he and his Army Special Forces team jump from their C-130 transport into the Texas darkness armed with a tactical nuclear weapon, he cannot help but wonder how many of them will survive their mission to terminate a disgraced, former Army germ warfare scientist. www.pointdeception.com Avaliable at Amazon and California Times Publishing.

BOOK SHELF

vel

IAN DOUGLAS ROBERTSON

Trinity eacher, Greek Greek which as also cessful have a ews as n stage tiating s to be ves the ptured

TURTLE HAWKS

versial in the tment debt, rs and nd-out apsing atened ve not reseen

Turtle Hawks

by Ian Douglas Robertson

P

ericles Pontakis, host of the controversial TV show Under World, is fighting a losing battle against corruption in Greek society. When his life starts collapsing around him, he decides to make a documentary about the threatened Loggerhead turtle, in the hope of saving both the turtle and his soul. However, the path to salvation is strewn with unforeseen obstacles.

Available at Amazon, and Authorhouse.

Yellow Crocus

by Laila Ibrahim

M

oments after Lisbeth is born, she’s handed to an enslaved wet nurse, Mattie, a young mother separated from her infant son in order to care for her tiny charge.

Thus begins an intense relationship that shapes both of their lives for decades to come.

With more than 4,000 five star reviews on Amazon, this story of love, loss and redemption is sure to be a favorite with fans of The Help. www.lailaibrahim.com Available at Amazon.

Blueprints of Sir Michael

by J. Moffett Walker

L

ondon, England, had planned to welcome the thirteen-times-Grammy winner and the “King of Pop,” Michael Jackson. He had chosen the 02 Arena for fifty performances, July 2009, and tickets sales had reached 1.5 million dollars. Worldwide fans were hoping too get a glimpse of him. The talented and sometimes controversial singer, dancer, actor, producer was accepting, candid but demanding.

The question still remains seven years after MJJ’s unfortunate death, who was this Garry, Indiana, African American male rich with talents? www.blueprintsofsirmichael.com Available at Amazon, and Authorhouse.

*

Promote your book in Shelf Unbound in our Special Advertising Section for Authors. Each issue of Shelf Unbound is distributed to more than 125,000 people in the U.S. and 62 countries around the globe. Our introductory ad rate for this section is $375/quarter page as seen here.

Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

View the Book Trailer HERE

#1 amazon bestseller “Butler evokes a sweeping sense of souls entwined by fate” —Publisher’s Weekly

A slow-building romantic novel that focuses on the vital bond between lovers.

—Kirkus

Can you handle the truth behind a timeless taboo?

THE LAST ENCORE, (Adult Literary Fiction), is a tale of unspeakable passion, excruciating pain and heartwarming hope, a sophisticated contemporary romance laced with mysterious interconnections of love, conspiracy, and fate. Inspired by true events, this controversial novel exposes a fascinating psychological phenomenon which has been kept secret until now. www. julia-butler.com | On Amazon and other retailers

Sparks

by Jake Kerr

T my self-publishing journey

88

JIUNE/JULY 2015

he challenge for the self-published author is to get noticed. There are a myriad of ways to do this, and none of them are easy. If you read my first essay you know that the path to self-publishing success in my mind is to create as many opportunities to get noticed as possible. So let’s look at some of my sparks.

As I mentioned last issue, I have the raw materials that you need—an ebook and paperback version of my book. Really, it is as simple as that. Using those assets, you can attack a vast majority of places that will potentially expose your book. I also have some other assets that I can bring to bear—I spent a large part of my life as a columnist, so I can efficiently write guest blog posts for book bloggers in exchange for promotion. I have a fairly significant network of important people that I know in the science fiction and fantasy genre, so they could perhaps help me, as well. So with these raw materials, I started to create sparks.

My first goal was to generate attention via book reviews and showcases. So I did a web search of middle grade and YA book bloggers. I ended up with a list of over two hundred sites. My experience has always been that personal messages have a better chance of getting answered than just a mass email, so I sat down and looked at each site and then sent out over two hundred personal emails.

As you might imagine, this took an enormous amount of time. Weeks, in fact. I was willing to commit the time, however, because when you are your own publisher, you need every edge you can get, and if my personal email generates a response when a generic email does not? Then I’ve used the time well.

The good news is that I was able to crack places that were closed or difficult to break into due to my personal efforts. Eric, the adorable reviewer from

thiskidreviewsbooks.com, was basically closed, but a personal email exchange between us led to him reviewing my book. You can read it here. Eric’s site moved the sales needle. On sites that were closed to reviews I asked about guest blog posts, and I wrote a few of those. Here’s one from Middle Grade Ninja.

But here’s the sad truth. I put dozens of hours and over one hundred dollars into this labor, and I ended up with about twelve reviews and features. The worst was a site where I mailed the blogger a copy of the paperback, but the review was a summary of the blurb, and then I saw the next day that Half Price Books was offering my book for sale in the town where the blogger lived.

As I mentioned, I also have a good network of relatively important friends. I sent a copy to Hugo Award winning SF and fantasy news site, Sf Signal, and they printed this. Nice! I also sent a copy to my friend Charlie Jane Anders at io9.com. She said she would get to it, but io9 hasn’t printed a review yet. I sent books to every major fantasy publication, all of whom know me. None of them reviewed the book. So your network can help you, but it is not at all a sure thing.

And this is an important lesson: You can’t let failure get you down. Persistence is the key to success, so while I sent out over two hundred emails, and I received responses from less than ten percent of them, and of those responses only one or two sites actually helped sell some books, I can’t count this as wasted effort, because I could not predict if one of those sites would be the one to light the fire. The same for my friends--you never know which one will make the difference, so you need to steel yourself for failure, while hoping for success.

One of the things I also did was create a landing site for the series, www.tommyblackseries.com. One of the reasons for this page is that I had also planned on doing some advertising via Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere. My goal was that the ads would go to this page. I’ll discuss those efforts in my next column.

about Jake Kerr

After fifteen years as a music industry journalist Jake Kerr’s first published story, “The Old Equations,” was nominated for the Nebula Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America and was shortlisted for the Theodore Sturgeon and StorySouth Million Writers awards. His stories have subsequently been published in magazines across the world, broadcast in multiple podcasts, and been published in multiple anthologies and year’s best collections. Tommy Black and the Staff of Light is his first novel, and is the first volume of the Tommy Black series. tommyblackseries.com.

UNBOUND

89

dystopian fangirl The Young Elites

by Marie Lu G.P. Putman’s Sons penguin.com

M

What to read next in YA dystopian fiction? Our intrepid fangirl Sarah Kloth reviews some of her favorites.

90

JUNE/JULY 2015

arie Lu has done something wonderful— taking Renaissance-era elements of kingdoms, aristocracy, and nobility and mashing them with her own unique spin to create a supernatural, yet realistic new world. The Young Elites is an edgy, dark, intense thrill ride.

The “Blood Plague” has swept through the nation. To most, the Blood Plague was fatal. And of the children who survived, many were left with strange markings. Adelina, for example, had black hair that turned silver and a scar where her left eye used to be. Adelina, now known as no more than a useless “Malfetto,” is a disgrace to her family and all of society.

However, some children infected by the Blood Plague are rumored to be left with more than just scars: There are rumors of children who now possess powerful gifts—The Young Elites.

Adelina now sits on trial knowing within minutes she will face her death. Rescued by a rush of wind, fire, and smoke, she awakes to find herself inside the Dagger Society, a group of the Young Elites who seek other survivors of the Blood Plague and plan to take what they believe is theirs—the right to rule. Her vow: “I hereby pledge to serve the Dagger Society, to strike fear into the hearts of those who rule Kenettra, to take by death what belongs to us, and to make the power of our Elites known to every man, woman, and child. Should I break my vow, let the dagger take from me what I took from the dagger.”

Adelina will have to learn to control and grow her abilities or she will be faced with more than

ss le d a h rs e sh li b u -p lf se , e Once upon a tim d e w ie v re s k o o b ir e th g in of a chance gett ked ic w r e h g n si a le p d a h a ll than Cindere . d e g n a h c s a h y r o st t a Th stepmother.

BlueInk Review: because every book

might not be a princess, but they all deserve a shot at the ball.

serious reviews of self-published books www.blueinkreview.com

just being cast out of the Dagger Society. “If I cannot pass their tests, then they will do to me that they must have done with the boy who could not control the rain. They will kill me,” she says.

She will soon have to battle herself in a fight between love, truth, and family. Adelina will make new discoveries not only about her powers, but also uncovering secrets from her past. Only one thing is clear: Adelina holds a gift, a power darkness that is not of this world.

“It is my turn to use. My turn to hurt.”

—Sarah Kloth

ALSO RECOMMENDED:

Legend

by Marie Lu G.P. Putnam’s Sons penguin.com

Matched

by Ally Condie Dutton Books for Young Readers penguin.com

The Fifth Wave

by Rick Yancey G.P. Putnam’s Sons penguin.com

92

JUNE/JULY 2015

COMPETITION Deadline 6.15

SPONSORED BY

FOR BEST INDEPENDENTLY PUBLISHED ART OR PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKDDD Foreground art magazine announces the Foreground Competition for Best Independently Published Art or Photography Book, sponsored by Blurb. Any independently published/ self-published art or photography book is eligible for entry. Entry fee is $40 per book.

The winning entry will be selected by the editors of Foreground magazine.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS

indie author

Joss Landry I Can See You josslandry.com

E

mma twisted her head side to side. She moaned, powerless to change her fate as an unfriendly force dragged her and pulled her along in spite of her protests. Her silent pleas weren’t caused by anything she found. Empty haze surrounded her until the long corridor began to take shape and revulsion beat a warning throb inside her head, the pounding in tune with her frightened heart.

Recognition heightened her fear. The lone light bulb dangling on its rope swinging left to right reminded her not to come any further as did the stench of rotting wood. An unseen force yanked her all the way in this time, making the moans and whimpers drifting toward her appear

94

JUNE/JULY 2015

childlike. She wondered if the cries echoing around her came from the room itself.

She struggled to turn around, to return from where she’d come. By now she realized this trip was a mind trap, her body uninvited to the usual nightmare. Yet she could not shake the weight of doom keeping her prisoner while it moved her forward. She peeked through tear stained eyelids and glimpsed a door which creaked as it opened slowly, revealing nothing more than a black hole she had seen before and from which she might never emerge.

From I Can See You by Joss Landry, josslandry.com.

Reprinted with permission.

All rights reserved.

ANNOUNCING

COMPETITION

for Best Independently Published Children’s, Middle Grade, and Teen Books.

Any independently published book in any genre in these categories is eligible for entry. Entry fee is $40 per book. The winning entry will be selected by the editors of Middle Shelf magazine.

In each of the three categories (Children’s, Middle Grade, and Teen), an overall winner will be named as well as five finalists. All winners and finalists will be featured in the November/December issue of Middle Shelf magazine.

The overall winners in each category will each receive a year’s worth of full-page ads in Middle Shelf magazine (rate card value $4,500). In addition, more than 100 books deemed by the editors as “notable” entries will be featured in the November/December issue of Middle Shelf magazine.

THE DEADLINE FOR ENTRY IS MIDNIGHT ON AUGUST 1, 2015.

DETAILS AND RULES CAN BE FOUND HERE

poetry

Two Thieves & A Liar after Jim Dine

by Neil de la Flor, Maureen Seaton, and Kristine Snodgrass Three pals etched and bonding, two laughing, one coy.

Jaunty, jauntier, and propped up with a stick.

The cat in the suit is almost invisible.

Is that Pinocchio’s brother?

The one next to the wolf wearing a top hat?

What did the dude in the cat suit steal? Anybody?

The wolf has really long hair like Snow White’s.

The boy’s shoelaces are untied, dangling.

Is the sky really that blue?

That little boy can’t be trusted.

Do you believe me?

I think their names are Imelda, Ida, and Lambda.

Everybody’s authentic and off-guard, like flowers.

I’d be proud to date any one of them.

From Two Thieves and a Liar: Poems in Collaboration by Neil de la Flor, Maureen Seaton, and Kristine Snodgrass, JackLeg Press, jacklegpress.com. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

96

JUNE/JULY 2015

JUNE/JULY 2012

BEACH READS

SURF, SUN AND

SUMMER

68

JUNE/JULY 2011

what to read next in independent publishing

SEPTEMBER 2010

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2011

THE

Poetry After 9/11

what to read next in independent publishing

SEPTEMBER 2010

SEPTEMBER 2010

68

Street Photographer

IRAQ THE RETURN OF STEPHEN STARK

GEEK MYTHOLOGY

OCTOBER 2010

68

68

what to read next in independent publishing

SEPTEMBER 2010

NOVEMBER 2010

blows to the head

anti-twitter

speed vegan

SAMANTHA BEE 68

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

68

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

portland, oregon slut lulla bies

FEBRUARY 2011

THE ART OF CHARCUTERIE

KATRINA

THE GREAT FITNESS EXPERIMENT

BEFORE (DURING) AFTER

how they were found

ULYSSES SEEN

what to read next in independent publishing

68

SEPTEMBER 2010

JOA N JETT

TAXI DRIVER

Kael Alford

MIGRATION

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

SEPTEMBER 2010

Canal House Cooking

sharon pomerantz

68

68

JANUARY 2011

PAM GRIER

the end of baseball

Essays on Madonna

DECEMBER 2010

RISING FROM

Detroit Disassembled

Laura Dern

RENAISSANCE READS

what to read next in independent publishing

SEPTEMBER 2010

TOWARDS ZERO ENERGY ARCHITECTURE

IDENTITY

The Enlightened

BOY SCOUT BOOKS

Portlandia’s Indie Bookstore

what to read next in independent publishing

SEPTEMBER 2010

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2012

Vivian Maier

LEGO Lit

Suitcase Books

Orange Prize Finalist Kathleen Winter 68

Novel ties Literary Tattoos

Ed Ruscha The L Life

DECEMBER/JANUARY 2012

INSIDE

AUTO

MOBILE

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2011

68

what to read next in independent publishing

máze MERIT BADGES

68

what to read next in independent publishing

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

SEPTEMBER 2010

DECEMBER/JANUARY 2015

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2014

DORTHE NORS ELVIRA DONES CARMEN BOULLOSA

SHELF UNBOUND WRITING COMPETITION

AWARD WINNERS

1

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2015

1

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

APRIL /MAY 2011

APRIL /MAY 2012

KEVIN MORRIS JACK LONDON THE INSTAGRAM BOOK

SHORT STORY

SNAPSHOTS 1

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

Check us out on Facebook and join the conversation!

JOH JOHNNY NNY CAS CASH H

create dangerously THE WARBLER ROAD

68

SEPTEMBER 2010

Chanel, Astaire, Lindbergh, and other Twenties somethings

what to read next in independent publishing

68

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

on our shelf

THE ACCIDENTAL ART THIEF

W

I

WOOL

was late to the game in reading Wool, widely written about as one of the most successful selfpublished books, but count me as a huge fan. I was completely transported by Howey’s imaginative sci-fi world and cared deeply for his complicated, well-drawn characters. Once you’re hooked you’ll want to read the entire Silo series. And look for the Ridley Scottdirected film adaptation of Wool coming in 2016.

—Margaret Brown Wool by Hugh Howey, Simon and Schuster, simonandschuster.com.

98

JUNE/JULY 2015

hen the elderly artist she has been caring for for 25 years dies, Zinc must find not only a new place to live but a new way of living. Set in Albuquerque, where the author lives, this charming novel has interesting characters and is filled with lots of local color.

Readers will find themselves cheering for Zinc and wondering what will become of the painting stolen by the “accidental art thief.”

—Anna Nair The Accidental Art Thief

by Joan Schweighardt, Paladin Timeless Books, paladintimelessbooks.com.

ALTITUDE SICKNESS

I

n this short memoir, Dremousis tells the story of her losing her longtime friend and sometimes lover Neal, an avid rock and mountain climber who died in a climbing accident. Her prose is honest and devastating, yet often funny. She delves into the psyche of people drawn to high-risk sports, weighing her support for Neal’s passion against her anger. I want to track down more of Dremousis’ writing after reading Altitude Sickness.

—Ben Minton Altitude Sickness by Litsa Dremousis, Instant Future, thisisinstantfuture.com.

The Association of Independent Authors (AiA) is a global not-for-profit membership organization representing, advancing, supporting and encouraging self-published (independent) authors. Our membership spans five continents, with directors based in the USA, Asia, Australia and South Africa.

The role of the AiA is to guide, educate, support, encourage and unite authors who have chosen to self-publish.

Our Body of Knowledge (BoK) is a comprehensive resource on all aspects of selfpublishing and running a small business—today’s authors must understand the business side of publishing (sales, marketing, promotion, legal and financial issues) and how to sell a book in a global marketplace.

Our vision is that independent publishing will be the preferred, first choice, for all authors.

Our mission is to create a culture of excellence, teamwork and professionalism in a community environment where sharing and collaboration benefits each individual member and independent authors as a whole.

Annual membership subscription (Associate, Member) US$50. Affiliate level is free. Come join us! (Mention promo code SHELF to receive an additional three months membership for the annual subscription of US$50.)

www.independent-authors.org

small press reviews Yoga for Freedom

by John P. Vourlis

I

n Yoga for Freedom, John P. Vourlis relates the experiences of twenty volunteers who travel to Nepal with an organization called the Imagine Foundation to raise awareness of child slavery and human trafficking in the area. Early on, Vourlis provides background information on the issue, noting that widespread poverty in Nepal “leaves children vulnerable to a form of indentured servitude known as the Kamlari system.” As the narrative progresses, Vourlis and his fellow travelers go from appreciating their mission in the abstract to fully embracing the work they’re doing. In addition to offering his own thoughts on this journey, Vourlis also brings in the voices of the other volunteers who took part. Indeed, what’s particularly interesting about the book is that it does offer multiple perspectives on the experience, thus underscoring one of the underlying themes of the book—that while everyone comes at life from a different angle, we’re all in it together and need to work with each other to make the best of it. Given the title, it’s not surprising that an interest in yoga unites all of the volunteers, but Yoga for Freedom is by no means an attempt to proselytize. Rather, it’s a heartfelt and realistic depiction Hometown Media Productions of one group’s efforts to bring hope to a poverty-stricken corner of hometownmediaproductions.com the world.

—Marc Schuster, www.smallpressreviews.wordpress.com

Shelf Unbound Contributing Editor Marc Schuster is the author of The Grievers, The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl, Don DeLillo, Jean Baudrillard, and the Consumer Conundrum, and, with Tom Powers, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy: The Discerning Fan’s Guide to Doctor Who. He is the editor of Small Press Reviews, and his work has appeared in numerous magazines and journals.

Marc teaches writing and literature courses at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania.

100 J U N E / J U L Y

2015

Self-publishing made simple— with the partner that puts authors first We know how hard it is to take a book all the way from an idea in your mind to a finished product in your readers’ hands. Which is why we believe you should have access to free world-class design tools that make book creation and design accessible to everyone.

We think you should be able to publish a print and ebook at the same time, from the same file. And we believe you deserve to have a choice of global distribution options—including one that lets you keep every net dollar you earn.

Make your next book with a partner that puts authors first.

Make it with Blurb. blurb.com

TANDEM

“

Every reading of a book is a collaboration between the reader and the writer who are making the story up together.

”

— John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars

102 J U N E / J U L Y

2015

june/july CHRIS ADRIAN is the author of The Great Night, Gob’s Grief, The Children’s Hospital, and A Better Angel. Selected by The New Yorker as one of its 20 Under 40, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.

MATTHEW DERBY is a writer and designer and the author of the story collection Super Flat Times. His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Believer, Guernica and The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories. He also works at a video game studio in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

CAROL GUESS is the author of thirteen books of poetry and prose, including Switch, Tinderbox Lawn, and Doll Studies: Forensics. Forthcoming Black Lawrence Press titles include How To Feel Confident With Your Special Talents (co-written with Daniela Olszewska) and With Animal (co-written with Kelly Magee). She is Professor of English at Western Washington University, where she teaches Creative Writing and Queer Studies.

ELI HOROWITZ was the managing editor and then publisher of McSweeney’s for eight years. The author of The Silent History, he is also the coauthor of The Clock Without a Face, a treasure-hunt mystery, and Everything You Know Is Pong, an illustrated cultural history of Ping-Pong, and his design work has been honored by I.D., Print, and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. He lives in San Francisco.

contributors

Remainder (forthcoming from Noctuary Press 2015), both co-written with Carol Guess. Her writing has appeared in Crazyhorse, The Kenyon Review, Indiana Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Passages North, Literary Mama, Word Riot, and others. She teaches in the undergraduate and MFA programs at Western Washington University.

KEVIN MOFFETT is the author of two highly praised story collections, Permanent Visitors and Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Tin House, American Short Fiction, as well as in three editions of The Best American Short Stories.

He is the winner of the Nelson Algren Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the National Magazine Award. He lives in California.

PATRICK O’NEIL is the author of the memoir: GUN, NEEDLE, SPOON (Dzanc Books), and an excerpted in part French translation titled: HOLD-UP (13e Note Editions). His writing has appeared in numerous publications including: Juxtapoz, Salon, The Weeklings, Fourteen Hills, Sensitive Skin, Word Riot, and Razorcake.

Patrick is an editor for the art, writing, and music anthology Sensitive Skin Magazine. He is a regular contributor to the recovery website: AfterPartyMagazine and a twotime nominee for Best of The Net. Patrick holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles where he is an online instructor for the inspiration2publication program.

GAVIN KOVITE was an infantry platoon leader in Baghdad from 2004-2005. He attended NYU Law and is now an Army lawyer. His writing has appeared in literary magazines and in Fire and Forget, an anthology of war fiction.

CHRISTOPHER ROBINSON is a Boston University and Hunter College MFA graduate, is a MacDowell Colony fellow and a Yale Younger Poets Prize finalist. His writing has appeared in many publications, including The Kenyon Review and McSweeney’s.

KELLY MAGEE is the author of Body Language (UNT Press 2006), winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize, and collections of prose, With Animal (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press 2014) and poetry, The Reckless

Shelf Unbound is published bimonthly by Shelf Media Group LLC, 3322 Greenview Drive, Garland, TX 75044.

Copyright 2015 by Shelf Media Group LLC. Subscriptions are FREE, go to www.shelfmediagroup.com to subscribe.

what to read next in independent publishing