by john | Feb 2, 2010 | Writing
So I know there are a lot of writers that read this, and I hope a few more will as well. The Red Dirt Review, Charlotte’s latest and greatest literary magazine, or at least the one that’s mine, is now open for submissions. I’m looking for the best of the South, and the best of the friends of the South. If you’ve ever lived in the South, been drunk in a ditch in the South, driven 14 hours each way to hang out in a bar in Greenville, SC, or owned an album by Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson or Johnny Cash, you qualify.
Send me your best poetry, short fiction (1,000 words or less) or short nonfiction (same deal) and as long as it doesn’t suck out loud, I’ll print it in our first issue come March 1. And since you’re obviously someone of discerning taste or you wouldn’t be reading here, I have the utmost faith that it won’t suck out loud. Send submissions to editor@reddirtreview.com. I need stuff by February 14th to make the March issue.
by john | Feb 2, 2010 | Real Life
It’s 5:40 AM and I’ve been up for two hours. That’s about the epitome of suck in my life, as I am the furthest thing from a morning person. At least the waiting room has wi-fi. My father-in-law just arrived with Suzy’s aunt in tow, beginning the phenomenon that I’ve never understood – the waiting room congregation. I understand the principle – you want to show your support for the person having surgery, and be there in case the family member that has to be on site in case of emergencies needs anything. And in case of emergency surgery, it makes more sense to me. Then there’s the chance that something tragic, or at least exciting. will happen.
But I’m not a morning person and the thought of spending the day trapped in a hospital waiting room is bad enough, much less having to spend it making small talk with my in-laws. It would be okay if this were June, far enough from the holidays that we might not have seen each other in a while, but it’s February, pretty much guaranteeing that we’ll have nothing to talk about.
Add that to the fact that I’ve got a $2 million project that goes to bid today, and I’m not a happy camper. And I’ve got a cold, which makes me nothing but grumpier. Obviously my disposition will improve by the afternoon, once the bid is out and Suzy’s surgery is completed successfully, but for the next few hours I’d much prefer to just put on my headphones, watch a few episodes of Sons of Anarchy, and wait for the day to move along.
by john | Jan 29, 2010 | Writing
and all this shit happens!
First, J.D. Salinger kicked, which I found a little sad despite my first reaction being “J.D. Salinger was still alive?” So even though I didn’t know he was still alive, and only found out about it from blogs, I still worry that with him gone there’s no one left to carry the torch for authors who wrote one massively successful novel and then never wrote another book (also known as the Harper Lee Fiction Award). I’m also a little concerned that disaffected youth will now focus on sparkly gay vampires instead of wandering around saying “fuck” a lot. And that’s just not right.
Then I miss Lady GaGa day on Facebook because I actually spent most of the workday working, goddammit. Not that I had a thing to wear for Lady GaGa Day, or would, but you know, it’s the principle of the thing. Something perfectly deserving of mockery and I missed it. Fuck.
That “fuck” was for you, Holden.
Then just as I pitch a big bitch fit yesterday about wanting to change the paradigm of submissions and literary journals and the lack of relevance of poetry in today’s world, I get an acceptance letter for a poem that I write especially for Just Do It, but submitted to cc&d on a whim, and they took it for their May issue, which is pretty badass, because that makes two acceptance letters in one month, which I think is a pretty good hit rate for most writers. I keep waiting for the bottom to fall out, because everybody I talk to says “You’re going to get rejection after rejection after rejection before you ever get anything accepted” and I’ve gotten two pieces accepted in my first month of submitting seriously, so I keep either waiting for the other shoe to drop and for me to either wait a year to get anything else accepted, or to realize that most people that write poetry suck. But it’s probably a mix of both, because I do think that a lot of poets suck, and likely do a crap job of figuring out where to submit their stuff, so because I know I’m not great but I’m better than a bunch of the truly suck-ass writers out there, I can at least submit my stuff to places more likely to accept it.
Damn that was long. Fuck.
Fuck off, Holden, that random profanity was all mine.
by john | Jan 28, 2010 | Real Life, Writing
This is one of those boring posts where I don’t really have anything to say but write a blog post anyway to spew forth the crap in my head and maybe lessen the load on my sinuses a little. I’m spending the last few minutes of my workday avoiding work because I’m at that point in my workload where I feel trapped and know I can’t finish any projects so I don’t want to start on any of them because what’s the point I can’t finish any of them anyway. So I’ll just blog and pretend like I don’t have too much shit to do and not enough time to do it in. So here’s what’s up in my world.
I’m planning on going over to the Green Rice Gallery in NoDa tomorrow night for a reading hosted by the good folks at Iodine and the Main Street Rag. There’s an open mic afterwards (why people insist upon calling it an open mike when there’s never been a “k” in microphone confuses me) and I’ll probably read something and pimp my book a little. Good/bad news on that front – I’m down to only a couple dozen out of the initial print run of 100 copies, so the books have moved a bit. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I probably gave away two dozen over Christmas to family, so I’m still not 100% sure if I lost money on the deal or not. The other downer is that to continue promoting my work, I’ll have to order more, and I’m kinda broke right now, so I need to figure that out.
And the reason I’ll need more copies is that I booked another reading, this one in late March/early April at the Literary Bookpost in Salisbury. They have a Saturday Salon series, and I sent them an electronic copy of my book to look over. They responded affirmatively, so now we just need to settle on a date. That, along with my stuff at Story Slam and an appearance in the February edition of Just Do It at Theatre Charlotte will keep me pretty bust for the foreseeable future. I think we’ll do another Carolina Writer’s Showcase at Story Slam in March, and I have another couple of ideas that I’ve been cogitating on that I wanted to get some feedback on.
Do you think it’s worth $5 to attend an open mic reader’s night? I think there should be enough momentum among people to put one of these together monthly. Everybody, even the folks reading, pay $5 to get in. That covers the cost of running the building. If we get a good crowd, we make enough to keep it going. Otherwise, it’s hard to justify the cost of the lights.
The other idea I had is a poetry contest. Not like a poetry slam, where things have to be memorized, but a contest for the best poetry. I was thinking $10 to enter and there would be two prizes each month – an audience prize and a judges’ prize. There would be three judges – one from the venue, one from the audience, and one from a previous month’s winner. The entry fees would be split between the two prizes, and it would be possible for one person to win both, so either two people win $50 each, or one person wins $100. So do you think people would participate, and do you think people would pay $10 to watch it?
Those are ideas that I’m kicking around, in addition to writing new material and submitting like mad. I’ve sent submissions out to seven different journals, online and print, this month, and gotten one acceptance (The Dead Mule) and one rejection (Camroc). The rest I haven’t heard from, but it’s too soon for most of them. I’ve spent some time this week poring over The Poet’s Market, and am starting to develop a real sense of attitude for places that don’t accept electronic submissions. I mean, damn people, it’s the future, why waste stamps? So my new submission policy is to focus on places that accept electronic submissions, because that makes life easier on all of us. If it’s a really respected journal, then I’ll go for a mailed sub, but since a lot of those places also don’t accept simultaneous submissions, they aren’t necessarily the best venue for an unknown poet anyway.
And here I go getting locked into the paradigm I was complaining about not all that long ago. Before you know it I’ll be running off to get my MFA and start life as an English professor with a tenure-track gig just so that I can write more. I already have a jacket with leather patches on the elbows. Look, there’s nothing wrong with an MFA. There’s nothing wrong with being a teacher. But there is something wrong with the lack of relevance of poetry (and theatre, and real music) in today’s world. The more we look for the newest Twitter, or Facebook, or Farmville, or iPad, or whatever, the more we’re ignoring each other and the immediacy with which people are supposed to live life. So I’ll spend a little more time trying to buck the system and figure out how to get poets and poetry noticed, and maybe less time submitting to journals published by universities who don’t care about the world outside their ivory towers anyway.
(steps down off soapbox)
So now I’ve spewed the better part of 1,000 words without a coherent theme, so I’ll direct you to two awesome women who you should read EVERY DAY. But especially the linked posts, because they are teh awesome. Amanda Fucking Palmer and The Bloggess. Both of the linked posts moved me, one in a stand up and throw a fist in the air in solidarity kind of way, and another in a nod your head with tears dripping into your beard because you’ve been there and have the scars to prove it kind of way. I think you’re all smart enough to figure out which is which.
Now my workday is done, my Farmville strawberries are ready for harvest, and I’m gonna take my fat ass home for dinner. See ya around.
by john | Jan 27, 2010 | Music
There are a couple of new musical acts I’d like to talk about for a few minutes, one of which I discovered all on my own by looking for cheap boogie on Amazon, and one that I found wandering through my office. I buy a lot of music, and thus am looking for the best deals I can find, and I’ve found that there are a ton of bargains to be found at Amazon’s MP3 downloads store, where most songs are still only a buck, and they run specials on bunches of older stuff each month for $5 per album. Most months you can find at least one Avett Brothers album there, and I can usually find something I like. This month I came across one real winner – Roger Alan Wade‘s Stoned Traveler. I took a flyer on this one and honestly think it’s one of the best things I’ve bought since I got Bleu Edmondson’s Lost Boy album. Wade sings alone with his guitar on most of them, and the honesty in his songs is almost painful on some tracks. For anybody who likes Red Dirt music like Reckless Kelly or Bleu Edmondson, this album would be well worth it.
The second group I wanted to talk about are a bunch of local boys, fronted by Avett Brothers bassist Bob Crawford and David Childers, the lawyer from Belmont who also happens to be one of the best damned songwriters I’ve ever listened to. Period. He’s Darrell Scott level good, and I was bummed when I heard that he was hanging up his guitar to focus on his law practice because there wasn’t enough money in the music business for him. If there were any justice in the music world, David Childers and Gina Stewart would be millionaires and the Jonas Brothers would be playing for pennies, but there’s not. The Overmountain Men is the side project that Bob cooked up when he decided he wanted to play some gigs with David and his son Robert. Since I like Bob (and the Avetts) and I like David and his lyrics, I thought I’d wander down last night to the CD release party.
As did everybody else in the free world. Seems a cover article in Creative Loafing (the free local arts weekly) will bring a few folks out in the cold. And it was a little chilly last night. So when I got there 20 minutes before the band was supposed to start, the gig was already sold out. But I’m not exactly the faintest of hearts, and I thought the odds were pretty good that once the band kicked in, some of the kiddies that were there hoping this would be some kind of Avetts-in-disguise gig would leave. And while I was waiting, Bob came out with a stack of CDs and gave them out to those of us who (potentially) wouldn’t be able to get in to see the show. So I got the CD, but since I’d come out of the house (and you know how hard it is to actually leave after you’ve been lodged in the recliner watching Ingloriuos Basterds) I figured I’d just hang for a little while and see if I could get in.
It only took about two songs for the crowd to thin out enough for me to get in, and the set was pretty killer. They did most of the album, along with some stuff off David’s older CDs, and a few covers to boot. The crowd was into it, and the beer was plentiful and cheap, so I had a great time. My ears didn’t ring too badly after the show, which is the mark of a good sound tech, so I thoroughly enjoyed myself. So if you’re looking for some good new music, there’s a pair that I highly recommend. And for a bonus, the new Lady Antebellum album is better than any big-time country album has any right to be.
