The Spark: The Inductor

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9.18.2015

A Conversation with Nolan Liebert
INTERVIEW BY LORI HETTLER

To celebrate Be Kind to Editors Month, Staff Interviewer Lori Hettler sits down for a conversation with author and editor, NOLAN LIEBERT. Nolan edits Pidgeonholes, a webzine of experimental and international writing. He writes short fiction and poetry that can be found littering the Internet in places like freeze frame fiction, Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry, An Alphabet of Embers, and elsewhere. Interacting with authors, both new and established, is important to him, so feel free to harass him on Twitter at @nliebert or at @pidgeonholes. You can read more about him and his work at nolanliebert.wordpress.com.

LORI HETTLER: We totally met on Twitter, like, a day ago. At the risk of sounding incredibly cheesy, do you hang out there often?

NOLAN LIEBERT: I hang out on Twitter quite a bit, sometimes as myself, sometimes as @pidgeonholes. I spend quite a bit of time catching up on writing news I’ve missed while busy with work or my family.

Darn those family people and jobs that keep us away from socializing online! What do you do for a day job?

I work in the IT industry, so generally, I spend days getting my wires crossed. During the school year, I also volunteer as a youth soccer coach.

IT and coaching soccer. And then you moonlight as Editor-in-Chief for Pidgeonholes Magazine. How do you manage the whole work/life balance?

I have a great support team. My wife, Sara, and our kids largely work and school from home, so the house is always in order. This gives us more time together to unwind when I’m home, whether it’s a hike on one of the many trails here in the Black Hills, or binge-watching Doctor Who or something on Netflix. Additionally, I have a great staff coming on next month at Pidgeonholes to help with reading, which should allow me more time to put together even more beautiful quarterly volumes, find funding to pay authors, and do some more writing of my own.

Ah, binge-watching on Netflix, everyone’s guilty pleasure! When was Pidgeonholes born? What literary gap(s) do you think it fills?

Pidgeonholes launched in January 2015, so we’re coming up on our one-year anniversary. A lot was weighed and considered regarding what gap(s) such a publication should fill. Ultimately, I wanted to publish works I felt were underrepresented—microfiction and micropoetry, experimental works, and works from international and diverse authors. I have a soft spot for micro works; we’re actually doing a feature on them throughout November. In such a socially-connected world, I find it incredibly important to publish works people can read on a tube ride or a smoke break or in the limited time they get to themselves at home, works that can be read quickly but digested long after. If there’s one positive thing Twitter has taught us, I would like to think it’s how to provide more impact in fewer words across a variety of subject matter.

Are you a writer, as well? Do you find your writing to be similar to, or much different from, that which you publish at Pidgeonholes?

I do write, a fair mix of poetry and fiction. For the most part, I would say what I produce is in the same vein as what I’m interested in publishing. Most of my work scattered around the Internet is short and experimental, and a lot of the work I currently have on submission deals with diversity issues. I’ve found during my editorial process that I’ve been able to connect with not just great writers, but great writers who produce work I want to read elsewhere, not just because it’s similar in style but because it takes risks. It’s important to me in both capacities, as an editor and as a writer, to support the other writers and small zines trying to make it out there. Structo had a great idea this month to require a photograph of a recently purchased zine, paper or electronic, in order to submit—as an editor, I think this is a great way to show solidarity within both the publishing and writing communities, and as a writer, I think this is a brilliant alternative to regular reading fees.

Sorry, that one got away from me a little...

I like that idea, too, not just from a “covering the submission fees” perspective, but because it shows they are familiar with your publication and they aren’t just submitting blindly on a wish and a hope. Would it be too weird to ask which piece or author you were most stoked to publish at Pidgeonholes?

Honestly, I’m most stoked when I learn Pidgeonholes will be someone’s first publication or acceptance. To be the one to give a new writer her break is an honor. Other than that, I’m thrilled to be publishing all the authors in our 90s Mixtape special volume later this month.

If you could solicit any writer, living or dead, to write a piece for the magazine, who would it be?

As for solicitations, that’s hard. To me, soliciting work can be a process that excludes so many writers. That said, I would love to have the opportunity to promote the works of people like Natalia Theodoridou or Vajra Chandrasekera, who I think have important things to say.

Tell me more about the 90s Mixtape special volume!

This is something I’m really excited about! Earlier this year, I put out a call for submissions inspired by 90s music. The response was overwhelming, and from well over 100 submissions, I chose ten stories, about the same length as a typical 90s album. The stories run from humor to social commentary, from literary to science fiction. Music has been something that has connected people across generations, and the music of this decade really affected Generation X and The Millennials, both. The represented authors range from their 20s to their 50s and hail from the US, Canada, and the UK. The volume is my way of trying to reconnect people in an age where we are so often separated from each other by politics and phone screens. The stories will appear on the Pidgeonholes website throughout September, alongside our regular publications, and will be released in a special volume for download and reading on Issuu at the end of the month.

Since it’s Be Kind to Editors Month, are there any editors you’d want to give a shout-out to? Was there one in particular who inspired you to start your own mag? Or one who’s doing something fresh or interesting that’s caught your eye?

I was originally inspired by Dino Laserbeam during my time reading for freeze frame fiction. I’m also a big fan of the work being done by Brian Lewis and Empire & Great Jones Little Press, who publish Spark: A Creative Anthology and Ember: A Journal of Luminous Things, and recently put George Wells’ Managing Editor’s chair up for a new venture, Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry. I’m excited to watch the growth and progress of a number of other zines, like the brand new Indianoa Review, the risk-taking Lockjaw Magazine, and the fledgling surrealist journal, Peculiar Mormyrid. So many great projects out there! Really. This is what Twitter is for—finding new things to explore constantly. I do my best to highlight editors and journals doing great things each #FollowFriday.

What’s your favorite—

Piece of short fiction written by someone else? Oh, wow... I read a lot of beautiful work. This year my favorite pieces have included the likes of Ani King’s “Conjugate ‘to be,’ using complete sentences,” or Alexis A. Hunter’s “Be Not Unequally Yoked,” or Natalia Theodoridou’s “Android Whores Can’t Cry.”

Piece of short fiction written by you? As for my own work, my favorite pieces have yet to find homes. But, thinking about what’s out in the wild, I think “Oil and Cherries” is probably my favorite, along with my piece, “The Swing, Or How to Ricochet According to Sylvia Plath,” forthcoming in An Alphabet of Embers.

Place to get your editing on? I edit from the left side of my antique sofa. Usually surrounded by our family’s cats and with the dog snoring by my feet.

Word in the English language? My favorite word in English... Petrichor? I love the fresh rain smell, and think the phonetics here capture that complexity. Phosphenes? It’s nice to have a word to describe the lights we see when we rub our eyes. Lots of words invented over at The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

Word in any language? My favorite word in any language is probably “luftmensch,” a Yiddish term derived from the German words for “air” and “human.” Its translations range from “daydreamer” to “someone more concerned with intellectual pursuits than practical work.” This is tied with “hiraeth,” a Welsh term for a home you can no longer return to or that never existed.

Lori Hettler is our Chief Staff Interviewer and handles our interview series for The Inductor. Lori founded the book blog, independent press resource community, and book club The Next Best Book Club (TNBBC) in 2007. An advocate for the small press and self-publishing communities, she has been featured from coast to coast, in both The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. Portions of her reviews have been quoted for a number of books (most notably in the press release for Graywolf Press’ I Curse the River of Time, Red Hen Press’ catalog for David Maine’s An Age of Madness, and Heather Fowler’s Elegantly Naked in My Sexy Mental Illness). Formerly the Marketing Director for Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (CCLaP), Lori has now begun to take on freelance work under TNBBC Publicity. When she’s not curled up on the couch with a good book, you can find Lori on Twitter, TNBBC’s blog, Goodreads, and Facebook talking about it.

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8.04.2015

A Conversation with Megan Derr
INTERVIEW BY AMANDA JEAN

Our LGBTQ Director, Amanda Jean, sits down with author and publisher, Megan Derr. Megan is a longtime resident of LGBTQ fiction, and keeps herself busy reading, writing, and publishing it at Less Than Three Press. She is often accused of fluff and nonsense. When she’s not involved in writing, she likes to cook, harass her cats, or watch movies. She loves to hear from readers, and can be found all over the internet via her website, Facebook, and Twitter.

AMANDA JEAN: Tell me a little bit about Less Than Three Press’ inception.

MEGAN DERR: Samantha and I used to talk and talk about the kinds of books we wanted to see, some of the stories we’d like to see more of, that just never seemed to crop up anywhere. And we didn’t like that so many romance sites put such a heavy emphasis on graphic content. One day, Samantha said, “We should try,” and I said okay. Sasha volunteered to help us with the web stuff and eventually came on board as a full partner. We started out with serial fiction for a year, then slowly moved into ebooks and paperbacks, and we’ve been going ever since.

Is it difficult to wear two hats as both a CEO and a writer?

It’s definitely time consuming, and hard to switch off. I feel like there is always something I should be doing. Being a publisher sometimes makes it awkward to be a writer, in that I’m in a strange position where it would seem I’m abusing my power or position to push myself as a writer, things like that. But mostly, it’s fun. I get to see all sides of the business and can do a lot to help other writers in ways I wouldn’t if I were just a writer.

What’s your favorite book of all time?

It by Stephen King.

There’s been a recent push for diversity within the realm of LGBTQ publishing. Do you feel a responsibility to make sure that your stories—and the stories that you publish—represent more than cisgender gay men?

Way, way back when I first started writing and reading M/M, it was incredibly hard to find original work. Fanfic was easy, but I always wanted original M/M, especially fantasy. I would spend hours trolling websites, forums, places like Amazon, trying to find anything I could, settling for whatever I came upon. Growing up, when I read mainstream fantasy, I remember always hating the women because they weren’t right. And they were never the main characters, always just the extras to be the love interest.

I haven’t forgotten what that feels like, spending hours upon hours, days upon days, trying to find one single book that resonates. LT3 has the ability to help counter that frustration for LGBTQ readers, so we’re doing our best. I think it’s lazy and selfish not to try to help other people find the same happiness in books that everyone else is enjoying—especially in M/M, which was a tiny, easily-ignored genre not so long ago, but people were willing to step forward and take the same risks and chances that publishers like LT3 are taking now for the rest of the spectrum.

But now that they’re cozy and the M/M genre is solid, growing, and even flourishing, too many of the people in it hear, “Hey, how about the rest of the spectrum?” and just turn away, ignore us, or act like the issue doesn’t exist. And that’s disappointing. This entire community could easily help spread the love, through writing, reading, and reviewing, but most of them don’t.

When did your passion for reading and writing manifest?

According to my parents, I was pretending to read long before I actually could. I’ve been in love with reading, literally, for as long as I can remember. Writing was always a wishful-thinking sort of fantasy for me, but I didn’t really consider it was something I could try until college.

If given unlimited storage space, would you be Team Print or Team Ebook in terms of your personal library?

Ebooks. I have moved too many books in my life, across cities, states, and even countries, to have any romantic or nostalgic feelings for them. I prefer nonfiction in print because of the way I use them for research, but ebooks are the greatest things ever. You don’t have to move them, clean them, or worry about pulling one off the shelf and SURPRISE, THERE’S A SPIDER.

If you could nix an entire genre or trope—you never have to read it, write it, or publish it ever again—what would it be?

Gay For You. It’s a horrible trope, perpetuates the ideas that bi/pansexuality doesn’t exist, or that you have to have slept with a certain number of men and women to qualify as bisexual/pansexual. More often than not, in stories that are labeled GFY, it’s about a man who always thought he was straight, but realized he was gay, thereby erasing/invalidating all the women he’d ever had a relationship with, so in addition to all the hurtful bi/pan erasure and such, it also perpetuates the genre’s hatred of women. I would love to see that trope die.

What do you do to unwind?

Most of the time, I read. But I also play video games, watch movies, and I really like to bake, especially bread.

Finally, is there a difficulty to running a small press that you didn’t anticipate when you started out?

It is way more emotionally and mentally draining than I ever anticipated. Anyone in a highly public circle feels the pressure of always having to say and do the right things. The way we’re expected to have thick skins and ‘just deal’ with things, like nasty reviews.

I did not anticipate how much more difficult that would be as a publisher, because it’s not just readers I have to deal with. When an author blows up at us over edits and declares we’re basically incompetent hacks who don’t know what we’re doing, when a customer regularly emails us just to list off his latest complaints, I’m not allowed to talk about any of that, not really. I have to take being snapped at by authors, talked down to by customers, and endure all the things that reviewers and readers say about every book we publish (or more often, I have to deal with the way they snub us because we don’t focus on the contemporary M/M that dominates the genre). It doesn’t matter what they say or do, or how wrong or out of line it often is, we have to be professional and deal with it.

And there are days that it feels like you can’t take one more person being snide, or questioning how you do things, or telling you that one of your editors is a moron, or one more rejection from an LGBT review site that claims to do the whole spectrum but only ever seems to accept M/M.

That being said, there are always emails from authors and readers who are so damn happy to see that we offer a home for the stories they want to write and read. At the end of the day, any frustration is worth it.

AMANDA JEAN is a publicist for Alternating Current Press and the LGBTQ Director for The Spark. She is also an editor (and writer) of LGBTQ romance, and when not wrangling manuscripts, she can be found watching space documentaries, looking at pictures of shoes, and attempting to read for pleasure. She has worked with Less Than Three Press, Torquere Press, Athgo International, The Typewriter, and the Seattle-based literary magazine POPLORISH, and has paid her dues writing dreary freelance content. Her latest project is coordinating and editing Silver & Gold, a queer May-December anthology published with Less Than Three Press, and it comes out in October of 2015.

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7.30.2015

A Conversation with Joshua Mohr
INTERVIEW BY LORI HETTLER

Staff Interviewer Lori Hettler sits down for a conversation with JOSHUA MOHR.

Joshua is the author of five novels, including Damascus, which The New York Times called “Beat-poet cool”; Fight Song; Some Things That Meant the World to Me, one of O Magazine’s Top 10 Reads of 2009 and a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller; and Termite Parade, an Editors’ Choice pick on The New York Times Bestseller List. His latest novel, All This Life, was recently published by Soft Skull Press/Counterpoint.

LORI HETTLER: How’s the daddy life been treating you?

JOSHUA MOHR: I dig being a dad! And I love the way it’s affecting my preoccupations on the page. I’m still writing about maniacs, to one degree or another, but now they have children, which is its own kind of mania. Mania begets mania? Something like that. My daughter expanded my real life, and her presence is in my fiction, as well. She’s making my world bigger in its curiosities.

I’ve often heard that… that fiction can’t help but be influenced by the author’s immediate world. And how cool is that? To leave a legacy of novels behind that ultimately tells the story of who you were and who you became. Do you ever worry about what your daughter will think, when she finally reads your books?

No way. I’m stoked for her to experience these wild narratives! I want her to use them as portals to burrow into me, understanding her father in ways I probably couldn’t articulate, but the books offer more information, context, and ultimately, understanding.

If you were forced to choose, which one of your novels would you say most closely defines or represents who you are (or were)?

I have two novels that are the most autobiographical, Some Things That Meant the World to Me and Damascus. I bled a lot for those books, but any fiction writer will tell you that each new project offers a way to talk about things in your life that are confusing. I’m drawn to things I don’t understand about myself. And if I’m using a fictional character to help me understand more about my world, there is always an element of memoir hidden under the freeing veneer of fiction.

I like the idea of using fiction as a way to answer questions about yourself. What things did your newest novel, All This Life, help you work through? Was it as cathartic a process as the others?

All This Life grew from the idea of a Virtual Detective Story. There is a missing teenage boy in the book, who still communicates with his dad via Twitter. So he’s missing on one hand, yet he’s “there” on another. I’d never seen a cat-and-mouse-type story play out in a digital sense, except in sci-fi conceits. This novel is realism, but it occurs on our two sacred planes, capturing our online and real lives. I think about these things more now, as a parent. My daughter is only two, so I don’t have to worry about it yet, but I am conscious of her relationship with technology. This book isn’t condemning technology at all. But it is posing this question: how can we use these two ecosystems, these two worlds to live the happiest life we can?

Does technology enhance our overall happiness, or merely distract us from it, though?

I do think that technology can augment our real-world happiness. That’s possible, although so is the other extreme: an online maw of loneliness.

I love the way you played around with social media and digital technology in the novel. And it so truly depicts the gap between those who had to adapt to online life Vs. those who were born instantly connected. Man, I remember the awesomeness of Nintendo after years of playing Atari, upgrading from WebTV to an honest-to-god computer, purchasing my very first pre-paid cell phone. Now it’s all toddlers carrying cell phones, PS4 online gaming, texting and tweeting at the dinner table, Facebooking, Pinteresting, vlogging! Are there any forms of social media you find yourself refusing to use?

Man, I don’t even know what half of those things are! Truthfully, I am pretty slow with the gadgets. I try to keep my attention on the blank page, although I use Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. That’s about all that I can handle, or I wouldn’t have time to write. I wouldn’t say I refuse others; I just don’t allow myself to try them because I’d probably like them too much. It’s a junkie’s paradigm. It’s the availability that I find myself resisting. Email and texts and whatnot, it’s very hard to disappear, even for a few hours. I miss the days when you could be unreachable, and it wasn’t that you were ignoring people, per se, you just didn’t know anyone was trying to get a hold of you. You were allowed to be by yourself. To think. To fuck up. To change. Of course, those things are still possible, but with that pocket-sized distraction machine, it’s increasingly harder.

It’s interesting that you mention how much harder it can be nowadays to disappear or to fuck up, because technology brings with it this complete lack of privacy. Anything you do, anywhere you go, smartphones and video cameras could be recording you. In All This Life, we witness the impact that taking something private, something that wasn’t yours to take, and posting it online for a million strangers to experience can have on individuals. Do you think technology makes us more aware of our actions, or more careless with them?

One of the characters in the book who posts content on YouTube “pirated” from people’s lives calls himself a Disaster Shepherd. And he’s obviously not alone—people scavenging others, looking for something dangerous or humiliating or titillating to get an online audience. I’m no better. Just this afternoon, I watched a clip of some crazy Thai guy putting fire ants on his cock. And I’m not talking metaphorical fire ants. You should’ve heard him screaming. Wow. It’s that curiosity in all of us, those sick voyeurs living inside, demanding we make those clicks, post those comments, upload the latest chum and fish for other usernames. That’s really what the book is about: Connection, in every contortion of the word. The computer creating intimacy between strangers, and yet it’s often an alienating kind of intimacy. All This Life is interested in how, in one way or another, we’re all Content.

And now for the shotgun round. Here are five quickie questions for you. What’s the worst—

Thing anyone’s ever said to you? A new lover re: my awful dreadlocks in college: “Do they always smell like that?”

Place you’ve ever crashed for the night? Dolores Park.

Thing you’ve ever tasted? Shame.

Piece of clothing you own? My pants collection is truly despicable.

Interview question you’ve ever been asked? I’m a teacher, so I know there is no such thing as a stupid question...

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7.19.2015

A Conversation with Ben Tanzer
INTERVIEW BY LORI HETTLER

Staff Interviewer Lori Hettler sits down for a conversation with BEN TANZER. Ben is the author of the books, Orphans, which won the 24th Annual Midwest Book Award in Fantasy/SciFi/Horror/Paranormal and a Bronze medal in the Science Fiction category at the 2015 IPPY Awards; Lost in Space, which received an Honorable Mention in the Chicago Writers Association 2014 Book Awards Traditional Non-Fiction category; and his most recent, The New York Stories, among others. He has also contributed to Punk Planet, Clamor, and Men’s Health, serves as Senior Director, Acquisitions for Curbside Splendor, and can be found online at This Blog Will Change Your Life.

LORI HETTLER: Let’s start this off with a bang. Are you a fireworks guy? I totally picture you, like, gathering the family in the backyard with some brewskies and a box of sparklers.

BEN TANZER: Am I fireworks guy? Well, based on your question, I would say yes, and no? Meaning, do I love good fireworks? I do. They’re loud, and I like loud, and there is explosion and it happens at night, mostly, and I like that, too, a lot, night and dark. Also, the colors—love color—and light streaking across the sky. There is a nice UFO vibe at times, and I’m quite partial to those, as well. But backyards, maybe not so much. Because I also like crowds and noise and people bumping into each other. I like watching how people react to what they’re watching. I’m a voyeur, unabashed—well, maybe slightly abashed. But I feed off of crowds and noise, and I like urban and beaches and crowds, always crowds; and when I think back to my favorite fireworks shows, I was on Santa Monica Pier as a kid, or the football stadium at University of Colorado at Boulder, or standing on the East Side Highway in New York City. So, backyards are fine, but they’re not quite crazed enough for what I need.

While our country celebrated its independence this month, you had something of your own to celebrate... the release of your collection, The New York Stories. I’ve been following all of the buzz since it dropped in June. Congrats!

Thanks so much, and let me stress that, while I in no way consider the release of The New York Stories tantamount to the country’s at-times-bloody fight for independence, it would not be inaccurate to say that the birth of The New York Stories was not without its own blood, sweat, and, yes—despite my overwhelming, and at times, near paralyzing, masculinity—tears. Granted, much of that was the result of paper cuts and the occasional loss of the Internet, but it was a battle—a nine-year battle I would add. I’m quite pleased with the results, and when people look back on its release centuries from now, as we’re doing this weekend regarding the birth of independence, I hope they will do so with the same awe and nostalgia that accompanies the Fourth of July. Especially given this past month and the country’s embrace of both the Affordable Care Act and gay marriage, not to mention the rejection (mostly) of both the Confederate flag and Donald Trump. All of which are things I am happy to credit both the President and the Supreme Court with, if they in turn will note that all of these events happened to occur at the same time of the release. Coincidence? You be the judge.

Well, do we know if The New York Stories has made its way into Politics and Prose? I hear Obama is quite the book shopper. We just need to sneak a copy into his hand during his next trip! And speaking of nostalgia, the first third of the collection was wonderfully nostalgic for me. If you remember, Repetition Patterns was my first Tanzer experience! It was also the first CCLaP title I’d ever read. (I feel like I should have had a cigarette after all those firsts!) But more seriously, it was kind of incredible to read Repetition Patterns again in sequence with your newer stories. It was like watching your writing come of age on the page.

With the President’s summer vacation looming, I can only assume that The New York Stories is being vetted for potential beach reading, even as we speak. Fingers crossed, yo. Meanwhile, while I don’t feel like I should condone, much less encourage, your smoking cigarettes—they kill from what I understand—I’m honored to be part of any first of any kind. I also appreciate the kind words and the support over the years. When I first wrote the stories in Repetition Patterns, I really hadn’t been able to get anything published, and I had this idea after reading collections such as Drown by Junot Diaz, When the Messenger Is Hot by Elizabeth Crane, and What We Talk about When We Talk about Love by Raymond Carver, that I should try to write a group of stories that felt like they were from the same time and place, and that maybe such a collection could open some doors for me. It didn’t happen quite like that, but my debut novel, Lucky Man, did, and when Jason Pettus at CCLaP got excited about it, I pitched him Repetition Patterns; you found it, and here we are. The possibility that I may have grown over time as a writer would be quite thrilling to me; that I might keep growing, however, is my goal.

I assure you my lungs are clean and clear and no cigarette has ever graced these lips, though I do appreciate your concern for my health! And speaking of health, I know you are quite the runner. As a man who never seems to have any downtime, how do you manage to make running a daily priority? Are there ever days you just veg on the couch and say, “Nah, not going running today”?

Great, I was being overprotective, and annoying, and I apologize for that. And I should preface the rest of my response by saying that I only run every day in my head, but I do a lot of amazing things there. I do try to run every day, however, just as I try to write every day, both of which don’t totally happen. I visualize the day as a series of slots or time periods, and outside of work and family obligations, I am constantly calculating what fits where, sometimes days in advance, with running and writing being the priorities. In taking this approach, there is a level of stress, but it’s not so overwhelming as trying to figure it out on a day-by-day or moment-to-moment basis. Still, any day I can run and write first thing in the morning gives me a sense of balance that carries throughout the day. On the other hand, if my calculations point to the unlikelihood of achieving either, or the sense that I know I won’t even want to try because of what is happening the next day or the one after that, and I know that in advance, then it is easy to take the day off, because I’ve planned it. The tension for me is seeing the plans fail to work out. Maybe I stay up later than expected and can’t get out of bed, or someone unexpectedly needs to be picked up or a kid or spouse gets sick. Because, at that point, it is in my head that I was definitely going to do it and I have to let go of it. I’m working on that. Which may not even be what you were asking about it, but there it is, my brains, or at least my anxieties, on the page and available for consumption.

I like that you brought up anxieties. Many of your books’ characters seem to be working through anxieties of their own, as well. Do you find that fiction helps, as a way to process your own anxieties?

I’m glad to be of assistance. And I am really interested in anxiety, though particularly as a means for exploring how or why we act, or don’t. How does anxiety—among other things: fear, confusion, joy, ego, depression, envy—serve as an obstacle to being in healthy relationships or engaging in healthy behaviors? How do these things impact our ability to communicate with those we love, or might love, and undermine our ability to be as great, or fulfilled—that’s a lot of or, sorry—as we might have been. And the characters who struggle with those things are the kinds of characters I’m interested in writing about. Some of them, like the characters in my debut novel, Lucky Man, are much like I am, and others, like the lead characters in my novels, My Father’s House or You Can Make Him Like You, or the lead protagonists in a number of the stories in The New York Stories, especially the trio of linked stories—“Shooting Stick,” “No Nothing,” and “Vision”—run into situations I run into, but make decisions that I would not make. All of which is interesting to me. Now, does writing about anxiety help me to process my anxieties? Only slightly. Like running, it’s an outlet and a form of managing my anxieties. But it’s more like fertile ground for my writing than a way to process it. It’s calming, even therapeutic, but it’s not therapy. I don’t necessarily understand any of it any better, but I do get to wallow in it in ways that are productive and interesting.

I like that. Productive wallowing: you heard it here first! Now for the shotgun round. Here are five quickies, and then I think we are done, sir. If you lived in the fictional town of Two Rivers—

Who would you be dating/married to? So many good choices, which everyone will know after they read the book, but I will go with Alice from “God’s Work,” who might be quite loosely modeled on a woman I dated in high school.

Who would you be hiding from? I would so be avoiding Jamie from “So Different Now” who might be quite loosely modeled on a dude I was only too happy to avoid in college for reasons that may or may not be loosely related to some of the content in a story that is otherwise quite fictional.

Who would you be getting drunk with? Again, lots of good choices, but I will go with Pete, from the trio of stories mentioned earlier—“Shooting Stick,” “No Nothing,” and “Vision”—who shares my complicated relationship to dead fathers, even if my relationship with my own dead father wasn’t quite as complicated as his is.

Where would we be most likely to find you? I shouldn’t say Thirsty’s, but given how much time I spend in bars, I will just own up to it and move on to the next question.

Who would I be? Alice. She’s caring and funny, and possibly the least fucked-up character in the collection. She probably loves writers. And she may even favor wearing black. Seems right.

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7.15.2015

A Conversation with Nicole Kimberling
INTERVIEW BY AMANDA JEAN

Our LGBTQ Director, Amanda Jean, sits down with author and editor, Nicole Kimberling. Nicole lives in Bellingham, Washington, with her wife, Dawn Kimberling, and two bad cats, as well as a wide and diverse variety of invasive and noxious weeds. Her first novel, Turnskin, won the Lambda Literary Award for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. She is also the author of the Bellingham Mysteries and an editor at Blind Eye Books.

AMANDA JEAN: I remember hearing at Gay Romance Northwest that Blind Eye Books puts out a very measured amount of books each year, which is unusual for an LGBTQ press. Is that because of quality control, or something else?

NICOLE KIMBERLING: Well, there are a couple of reasons we have only a couple releases per year. The first is that, up until this point, we’ve been using offset printing, rather than POD, and so budgeting for that naturally limited the number of books we could publish. But also, I’m a very picky, very hands-on editor (It takes me three to six weeks to edit a book.), so I have to believe in a project pretty strongly to want to put in all that work.

I’ve heard through the grapevine that your editing is top-notch, and having read your writing, I know you’re no slouch there, either. How do you handle the workload for both?

Thank you! It’s good to know that authors speak kindly of me. Normally, I alternate doing editing and writing projects. However, during 2013-14, I had four important editorial projects, so between actually editing and running the day-to-day at Blind Eye Books, I didn’t get to write a story for a couple of years. And it frustrated me. I felt I might be losing my game. After that, I decided to go ahead and make more time to pursue my own creative goals, if only to keep myself sharp. LOL.

Blind Eye is also unusual for its exclusive focus on fantasy and science fiction. Is it difficult to market spec fiction?

It’s not as easy to generate big numbers of sales as it is in contemporary, because the pool of readers is smaller. But I’ve found it’s actually less work to make a spec fic piece stand out in the crowded marketplace. Partially because spec-fic worlds are usually pretty unique and, therefore, easy to differentiate from one another. Recently, though, I’ve become interested in mystery, so Blind Eye Books is going to launch a sister imprint called One Block Empire that will focus on mystery and contemporary stories.

Favorite music to write to? And favorite music to edit to, if it differs?

My favorite album to write to is Broadcast’s Tender Buttons. It kind of puts me into a trance, I think. :) When I edit, I’ll normally assemble a playlist for the manuscript to help me remember the mood or the various characters as I’m working on the piece.

You won a LAMBDA literary award in 2008 for Turnskin—did that change the course of your career at all?

Absolutely. Before that, I had no credentials whatsoever. Once I had the award, people associated my name—and Blind Eye Books—with quality fiction, so I was able to get access to things like reviews, appearances, and readings that I would have never been considered for previously.

I mentioned before that Blind Eye publishes a select amount, and its pool of authors is also necessarily small. What do you recommend to authors submitting to the slush pile that will help them get noticed—and in a good way?

I am average in most regards in that I want to see things that most editors want to see: Intelligible sentences describing likable, insightful characters who are directly engaging with the plot and driving it forward toward an interesting crisis and climax. I can be very put off by dismal, mopey characters who lack agency. One thing I’m always looking for is interesting locations in fiction—either real or imagined. I will always spend more time lingering over a manuscript featuring a complete secondary world (that is: not-Earth) than one that takes place in some American small town. Likewise, on stories set in places other than the U.S. or Europe. I would love to see a convincing mystery set someplace like Brazil.

I’ve recently left Oregon for Los Angeles, so the slightly homesick and nostalgic part of me wants to know what your favorite part of living in the PNW is. You’ve set quite a few stories there, so it stands to reason it’s doing something for your creativity.

Well, the reason I’ve set stories in the PNW is mainly because of my process. I enjoy translating real people and places into fiction, so writing about where I live is the next logical step. But I will agree that the culture of the PNW is very forgiving to the aspirational artist. There’s a strange non-competitiveness that saturates the scene here that’s different than the vibe of other places that I’ve lived. Maybe that’s the reason there are also so many cults around here… :)

Do you have any projects in the works right now?

I’ve just finished writing a sequel to a story I wrote for the Irregulars anthology called, Cherries Worth Getting. This story also features NIAD Special Agent Keith Curry. It’s called “Magically Delicious” and will appear in a forthcoming anthology put out by JCP Books. I love writing that character, so I think I’m going to stick with him for at least one more story.

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5.29.2015

A Conversation with Sally Roundhouse
INTERVIEW BY TRAVIS TURNER

[CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE]

Our Blog Editor, Travis Turner, sits down for a spell with poet Sally Roundhouse. Sally currently teaches English at the University of Alabama while also pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing. Her work has been featured in Bayou Magazine and Caketrain Journal. When not writing/teaching/working, she has also been instrumental in organizing collaborative art events within the Tuscaloosa community.

TRAVIS TURNER: Discuss your creative process. What inspires you to write or what gets you started on a work?

SALLY ROUNDHOUSE: My writing tends to be a combination of language play and autobiography. Part procedural or conceptual, part confessional. The most important thing is not to be boring. I don’t want to bore the reader, and more importantly, I don’t want to bore myself, so I’m always looking for ways to switch up my writing process. In certain poems, I used a variety of procedures to get me started.

To write the “Future Daughter” poems, I used a bank of lines and playing cards. Early in the writing process, I glued the lines to cards, shuffled and flipped through the deck, and wrote down the lines as they came out. As I collected more and more language, I gathered the lines in a booklet, assigned each page a card number, and would then flip cards and choose a line from the page it brought me to. I stole a lot of the lines.

“Future Daughter”

Numerous and many-toothed Mable is serrated author by numbers, the roots, dirts, n’ dead. But where are the words for embarrassed, menstruous, industrial us, is Mable wetting her whistle a little with more of that loose-mouthed water? She’s in bad, she’s in terrible, morning is private and shameful. Needy, larval, breastfed Mable, undress your starling struggle. This ain’t no walk-a-thon, cancerous skin, I laugh as if my thighs aren’t thin. Now we’re somewhere lovely, Alabama, father our lather who art in feathers, any type of blight. It’s nothing the Noh stopped, sombrous snow, oh sky requires a layer of alters much to the relief of trees.

“Future Daughter”

“Feeling altogether dead nested in eucalyptus matters,” she said, “broment men again,” she said, “Cloppity-clop.” See, clop. See, snow stopped, all the daughter-piled Noh sopped, snorez loud as fuck on mountains forever splendid. Forever blends intoxicants. Now Meko, don’t you do that, which is tell me what to say, since I know someone who might cause complications. And maybe I shouldn’t have done the second one if my tongue’s about to rupture. Fuck them two-ton ushers. Fuck them new bush thrusters, for this is all they’ll ever say about sky.

To write the “Incantations,” I homophonically translated sections from “Future Daughter,” meaning I replaced words and phrases with other words and phrases that sounded similar or had some other association in my mind. I then homophonically translated the first translations, pulling words from dictionaries and other books, as needed.

“Incantations for the Cherry Bureau”

Orphan waffle, New Housekeeping, yours cycletronic
nauseates attic at Stonehenge, this-a-way, waffle
a bled. Innisfree U.F.O. greases archer
dove dell where nethermen were naked. Skewer tide
whip carcinogens. Trout cliff. Limp more mica, gaunt
kid. Heal the gulch. This alabaster retracts into
Christ-mist-trisquit-wrinkles. Awesome. Spite house in Maine.
Oh youth them hollow moon, a lass so gnarly, buffle,
brass, wreathes the soothsayer around green leaf gallop,
eyes the cute silken dude. Daffodil stains the do
under. Tank-o-amino, on-call, ahem, chapel.
Cave own rash pup. Hound inside a tingle.

I wrote the “Hello Skyline” poems using Jackson MacLow’s “Daily Life” process, which employs a 26-line bank, each line corresponding to a letter of the alphabet. I used this bank to spell out different words in the manner of an acrostic. The words I chose as seed phrases all came from my daily life, for example, the names of my migraine prescriptions, my dog’s name, my boyfriend’s name, etc. The lines I used all came from my notebook. Jackson MacLow was not about the ego (says he). I am all about my ego.

“Hello Skyline”

Say hello to the skyline
Hello skyline
Sometimes I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever said about Alabama
Say hello to the skyline
Asking people if they think you’re narcissistic has to do with you being narcissistic
I made myself cum in my sleep two times right next to you
I don’t want to be held responsible for your verbs
You just got stoned and took a Xanax
Asking people if they think you’re narcissistic has to do with you being narcissistic
I made myself cum in my sleep two times right next to you
Sometimes I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever said about Alabama
I made myself cum in my sleep two times right next to you
Linda, I’m sexually attracted to your son in this picture
I made myself cum in my sleep two times right next to you
No is never all I have to say
The bottom panel of the door to our bathroom is falling off and scrapes like a banshee on
the ground every time you open it

“Hello Skyline”

I lie in the crook of your arm and you play with my nipples as I jack both of us off
I made myself cum in my sleep two times right next to you
And I don’t want to fuck you when you come back from Tucson
I made myself cum in my sleep two times right next to you
When I take drugs, I feel like a goddamn supernova

How do you balance your time with teaching, work, etc.? How do you make time to create?

Since I’m super busy during the day (also have a job at a coffee shop, in addition to teaching and schooling), I usually write at night. People always tell me to prioritize writing—make it the first thing I do every morning—but I find I have a hard time writing for any sustained period when I have a long to-do list. I love to write at night, though. It’s way easier to just let loose and have fun and play around.

Do you find it easier to complete works in one sitting, or do you prefer to have multiple “irons in the fire”?

I usually think I’m working on more than one thing, but they end up being the same thing or at least closely related in the end. I don’t do a whole lot of revision on individual pieces because my process includes so much collage and reuse of material that it becomes a type of revision in itself. I also don’t worry about throwing away half of what I write.

That being said, because most of the poems I write are part of a series, nothing ever feels done in one sitting. Even if I don’t plan on revising what I’ve produced, there’s always more writing on the horizon before a work is done.

Who has had the biggest influence either personally or professionally on your writing?

My work is hugely influenced by music. Rhythm and sound are central to a reader’s experience and often overshadow more traditional ways of meaning-making. Interestingly enough, I see the clearest impact of the lyricists and musicians I was listening to about ten years ago, when I first started writing poetry, on my own work, including MF Doom and Yoni Wolf, who was mainly working with his band with WHY? at the time.

Gertrude Stein is my first love. I read her for the first time about ten years ago, too, and her work, especially Tender Buttons, is something I always return to. I’m always surprised by how fresh it feels, though maybe I’ll tire of it eventually. Who knows. Writers I’ve encountered more recently who’ve profoundly affected me include Harryette Mullen (Sleeping with the Dictionary, Recyclopedia, and The Cracks between What We Are and What We’re Supposed to Be), Alice Notley (mostly her earlier stuff, like Waltzing Matilda), Bernadette Mayer (her sonnets are really great), and Hannah Weiner (Hannah Weiner’s Open House was my introduction to her work).

What’s something/who is someone people should be reading right now?

Sade Murphy—Dream Machine (Coimpress)
Sommer Browning—Backup Singers (Birds, LLC)
Sophia Le Fraga—Literally Dead (Spork Press)
Rachel McKibbens—Mammoth (Organic Weapon Arts)
Carrie Lorig—NODS. (Magic Helicopter Press)

Last indie work you read for pleasure?

I think all of the books above are indie books, and they were all read with/for pleasure!

Any advice for other writers on publishing/submitting work?

Some really good advice a friend gave me is to submit to the online components of small presses. If the people at the press like what they see, they may ask for more, and you’ll have the opportunity to build a working relationship with them.

Travis Turner is a Blog Content Editor for The Spark. He has taught writing and literature for the past ten years at several institutions of higher learning, including University of Alabama, Judson College, University of West Alabama, and Shelton State Community College. The southern Alabama Black Belt native writes both fiction and non-fiction with his work having been featured in various publications, such as Folio, Blinders, The Gambler Mag, Zouch, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The Manifest Station, Literary Juice, The Flexible Persona, The Succarnochee Review, Alabama Outdoor News, and The Sumter County Record-Journal. He loves spending time outdoors, black cats, billiards, and good bourbon.

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4.28.2015

A Conversation with Jeannine Hall Gailey
INTERVIEW BY LORI HETTLER

Continuing our celebration of National Poetry Month, Lori Hettler sits down with poet Jeannine Hall Gailey. Jeannine recently served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She is the author of four books of poetry: Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, and The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, just released from Mayapple Press. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, in Verse Daily, and in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, and Prairie Schooner. She tweets at @webbish6.

LORI HETTLER: While reading through a few of your titles, I couldn’t help but notice that your poetry, as a whole, is heavily influenced by science, fairytales, and Japanese culture. Though each of your collections might focus on one element in particular, the other elements always seem to creep their way in. Where do these influences originate from?

JEANNINE HALL GAILEY: I always say that people’s poetry reflects who they are, their secret obsessions, their personal language tics, all that stuff. If you want to stay private, don’t write poetry! Because it will all come out.

For me, as a child, I was obsessed with fairytales (I had a collection of Andrew Lang’s “color” fairy books – Olive Fairy Book, Crimson Fairy Book, and on and on – that I still treasure.) and was also really interested in “World” folktales – tales from Africa, Asia, Native American culture, basically anything I could get ahold of. I became acquainted with Hayao Miyazaki’s work as a child, as well, when I watched a somewhat-oddly-edited version of his movie, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. My little brother introduced me to the world of comic books, and later, when he minored in Japanese in college, tried to teach me a bit about the language and culture, as well. His Japanese professor became a family friend and helped me with the second manuscript!

As for the science part – well, when you grow up with a robotics professor father who takes you to RadioShack for fun, and who keeps robot arms and Geiger counters in the basement, you’re probably going to have something of an interest in science and technology. I programmed my first game in BASIC when I was seven, on a then-state-of-the-art TRS-80. I was always really interested in fossils, dinosaurs. I had a collection of “Safari Cards” that taught you how to categorize animals into different species. I mean, I think I was pretty much destined to be a nerd from the beginning.

So, when I wrote poetry as an adult, of course all these influences crept into the subject matter.

Let’s see if I have the order down right: Becoming the Villianess was published through Steel Toe Books in 2006; She Returns to the Floating World was published by Kitsune in 2011 and rereleased by Two Sylvias Press in 2013; Unexplained Fevers was also released in 2013 by New Binary Press; and this year saw the release of The Robot Scientist’s Daughter with Mayapple Press.

Yes. There’s a bit of a sad story behind the second and third books. The publisher of Kitsune Books, Anne Petty, passed away about eleven months after my second book came out, which was just tragic, because she was a real force for good, for intelligence, and for geekiness in the best sense in the world. So it was kind of the editors at Two Sylvias to release the book in a second edition, with all new art and a few minor edits, in 2013, so it wouldn’t go out of print permanently after the press was closed following Anne’s death. Unexplained Fevers had been accepted at Kitsune Books, as well, so when the press closed, I had to find a new publisher fairly quickly and was happy to work with James O’Sullivan at New Binary – which I found from a tweet by Margaret Atwood, of all things.

I had been in correspondence with Judith Kerman at Mayapple for some time before she published my latest book; a lot of my friends had had their collections published by Mayapple, I had reviewed books from Mayapple, and I really liked their cool notebooks, so we had written a little back and forth over the years before she became my publisher. It’s nice to have a good feeling about the people you’re publishing with, and I had that feeling about every single publisher I’ve had.

What has it been like, working with each of these publishers? Was there any one experience that really stood out to you during the publishing process?

All of my publishers have been great. I have to say it was wonderful to work with all of them. I will say that getting an advance – which happened for my second book – was pretty amazing. I’d gotten advances before (for a technology-related book) but never for poetry!

Were the poems written specifically for each collection, or did you create your collections out of poems that were already written?

I think it’s a little of both. You start writing poems, you kind of see how they fit together, then, once you have the idea of the book, you sort of start spontaneously creating more poems in the same vein. I rarely feel “finished” with a book – my editors will tell you I’ll be trying to take out old poems and put in new ones until the very last minute. But my books were all pretty tightly themed, and I seem to write about the same subject matter for a few years naturally, until it’s out of my system. Right now it’s apocalypses.

I went through a hardcore apocalypse phase myself at the start of 2015. I was gulping down the newest releases in that genre like nobody’s business! What is influencing your poetry to turn toward the apocalyptic?

Well, I often write about pop cultural trends, and television, movies, YA books... all of them have been full of apocalypses for the last few years. I wanted to look at why we are so interested in the end of the world - is our culture out of hope? Can we see it through a personal lens - i.e., what would be my own personal end of the world scenario? And of course, I like writing about zombies, vampires, viruses, and other scary apocalypse-triggers.

How long have you been writing poetry?

When I was ten, I started writing poems on my computer before school, so all in all, about 31 years. I got my first Poet’s Market when I was nineteen, and religiously sent out submissions for a while in college. I think I didn’t really get serious about literary publishing, though, until my late twenties-early thirties, a few years after I got my Master’s Degree.

What was the first poem to get picked up by a publication? How did it feel seeing your work out in the world like that for the first time?

I have a funny story about this, because three poems got picked up at almost exactly the same time, but because of the venues, they came out at three different times. A poem was accepted first at Seattle Review, but that one ended up long coming out after the other two; another was accepted at Beloit Poetry Journal, and that one ended up coming out first, and around the same time, another poem came out in an online journal called, Can We Have Our Ball Back?

Of course, I was thrilled, because Beloit Poetry Journal was one of my favorite journals at the time, Seattle Review because I had moved to Seattle recently and was happy to have a local journal take a poem, and Can We Have Our Ball Back because it seemed like a fun and hip place to be published, you know, outside the mainstream. When I decided to volunteer locally, Seattle Review was one of my first choices because of that support and publication, probably. (I worked on the board there for a couple of years.) It also led to me meeting the wonderful and charming Colleen McElroy, who became something of an encourager-and-mentor to me.

At the start of the new collection, in the author’s note, you mention that while fictitious to an extent, many of the poems in The Robot Scientist’s Daughter are based on your childhood experiences, growing up on the farm near Oak Ridge National Laboratories – where your father consulted on nuclear waste cleanup.

So much of the content in these poems – your familiarity with the Geiger counter; the way you speak of residual radiation poisoning in the snow, the cow’s milk, the wasps’ nests, the grass you chewed on; your obsession with studying the Latin names for diseases; returning to your childhood home to find it leveled – struck me as incredibly intimate. Was the release of this collection more or less difficult for you than those in the past?

Yes, this one is definitely the most “autobiographical” of all my books, so it is the hardest, for instance, to read from out loud. I think two people really challenged me, after years of writing a ton of persona poems, to kind of reach in and write more personally; Ilya Kaminsky, who, after reading my first two books, told me to find and create “my own fairytales” and Dorianne Laux, who challenged me while we worked together at Pacific University to write more from my own experience. It was interesting because it took a while for me to be able to write poems about myself, my childhood, etc.; I just didn’t think it would be interesting to others. You know how you always find your own stories boring but everyone else’s fascinating? That was definitely me.

You also mention in the author’s note that one of the reasons you wrote this book was “to raise awareness that nuclear research is never harmless” as well as to “tackle the pop culture representation of the atomic age” and “our attitudes toward science.” Do you think The Robot Scientist’s Daughter is achieving what you set out to accomplish so far?

I hope so?

As I am sure you are aware, April is National Poetry Writers Month - an annual project that began back in 2003 where participating poets write a poem a day for the entire month. Have you participated in NaPoWriMo before? What sort of impact do you think this project has within and outside of the poetry community?

I’m probably not the best example of the kind of poet who writes a poem a day. I probably write a couple of poems at a time every two weeks, and that has been the schedule for about seven or eight years, which means my writing flow just never worked with NaPoWriMo. But as a good poetry citizen, I love it when more people think, read, talk about, and write poetry!

Who’s your favorite poet?

I have a bunch! I would say I’ve probably been most strongly influenced myself by Margaret Atwood, Louise Gluck, Lucille Clifton, Dorianne Laux, and Denise Duhamel. I love a bunch of current poets – some of whom are also friends – like Matthea Harvey, Dana Levin, Kelli Russell Agodon, Annette Spaulding-Convy, January O’Neil, Sandra Alcosser… but I could go on!! (Oh, I left out men – so: Ilya Kaminsky, Jericho Brown, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Eduardo C. Corral…)

What’s your favorite poem?

Hard to say! I have a couple of favorites – “My Father in the Night Commanding No,” which I memorized when I was eleven. Dana Levin’s “Ars Poetica (cocoons)” and “Quelquechose,” Louise Gluck’s entire book, Meadowlands. “She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep” by Robert Graves. That poem by Dorianne Laux about the tooth fairy – all of Denise Duhamel’s Barbie poems. Lots of favorites!

Where would you most like to travel?

I would love to go to England, Ireland, and Scotland, since I’ve never been. I was an exchange student in France as a teenager and have been back once to Paris with my husband – I’d gladly go there again at any time. I’ve always wanted to explore the ruins of Ancient Greece, too. (You may notice the lack of tropical paradises: I am literally, much like a vampire, allergic to the sun, so no sunny beaches for me! It’s part of the reason I love Seattle and the Northwest so much!)

Where do you do most of your writing?

I’m a computer girl, so anywhere I can take my laptop! I do quite a bit of scrawling in doctor’s offices, since I spend so much time there. Also – any time you have to buy a car, bring something to write on. They always give you so much time to write at car dealerships!

What’s the one thing you are most afraid of?

I’m not crazy about rollercoasters, wasps, or spiders. So don’t take me to a rollercoaster park full of bees. And because I grew up in the eighties, global thermonuclear war (Any references to WarGames must be forgiven due to my age.).

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