Normally, the term “illustrations” makes me feel mildly ill. The word seems to mean “redundant pictures.” So I don’t usually do them. People will often call my drawings, especially those that accompany my prose, “illustrations,” but-at the risk of coming off as a pretentious prick-I don’t think the term is accurate. My drawings are meant to do something different than the words. Augment, not repeat, or even interpret. They develop together as a single piece, not with one subservient to the other (and to me, “illustration” implies images in service of text). Many writers have asked me to illustrate their work, and I’ve always refused. But collaborations, collaborations involving image and text, is a different story. This is where the drawings and text grow from and build upon each other. I’m not so interested in taking someone” manuscript and adding some drawings. It’s most exciting when anyone involved can introduce anything – sometimes I’m writing, sometimes drawing, sometimes both. That’s some of my favorite work. The first time I did this was when Kristen Iskandrian and I created our comic “5 Cats.” Johannes G. and I have been chipping away at a project like this for years (that will realistically continue for years more). Tim Wood and I do all kinds of stuff like this, with absolutely no strict definition of medium. Catherine Kasper and I created a book this way. Working with J.A. Tyler for the last few months has been a real headspin, sending my drawing off into some truly ugly places (we’re in the homestretch on this project that we’re calling Glimpse, and we’re pretty excited to show it off).

But some people, other than me, can illustrate. And do it well. Really well. Like the refined and talented Joshua Korenblatt. So when he asked me to illustrate Elyse Lightman’s essay “The Birdhouses” for his journal /One/, it was a challenge I couldn’t refuse. And Elyse’s images are so crisp and vivid, it was a comfortable place for an illustration hack like me to start. Check out her words (and my pictures, in service to those words) here.

This amazing new online journal was just brought to my attention. It’s called Hippopants, and the editors, Sanaz and Stefan Kiesbye, describe it as a journal that offers “short works that make text and art collide in inventive ways.” Basically, the exact thing I’ve been waiting for.

Just looked around a little and I was taken unaware by this piece called “Bobby and Sammy Book” by Dave Van Patten. Really fun and creepy with these coarse and garish watercolors (just the way I like them). The artist describes it as a ‘Children’s Book for Grown-Ups.”

BlazeVOX has just release Goro Takano’s beast of a novel With One More Step Ahead. Goro is a Japanese write who writes in English, and is very emphatic about the fact that English is his second language (it even says it in his bio). But he’s certainly spent his time studying the language (they even gave him a doctorate for all that study), and he’s turned out one hell of a book. Goro’s approach to English from alien origins, and, moreover, his approach to the structure of the novel from this place, creates a disorienting and completely new reading experience. This thing feels like a big fat, softcover textbook in your hands and is well worth the bills.

Here’s my blurb from the book’s back cover:

“The words in Goro Takano’s With One More Step Ahead seem to try to fill ahole, a void left behind by the abdication of self-image, of nationality, or identity. these words create a novel that exhibits the formalistic daring of John Barth while telling a story in a non-native tongue that, like Vladimir Nabokov’s English, creates a language more volatile than any written with ingrained mastery. Ultimately, the words never fill any hole. Instead, they take us deeper and deeper down to a dark and disorienting place that continually excites the reader with its threats and possibilities.”

I’m going to read some comics and some stories at Freebird books on Sunday. Come if  you can. I’m hoping I’ll be in a good mood, which largely depends on Darrelle Revis’s ability to make it a long day for Old Man Manning.

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Kevin Huizenga just posted this incredible cover for his new book, The Wild Kingdom (should be showing up in the spring).

Another cool thing at his blog: he’s posted links to a complete, new Glenn Ganges story called “A Postcard from Fielder.”

The new issue of The Collagist is up and Matt Bell hangs his tirelessness out for all to see with another tough-looking issue. John Madera contributed an incredibly thoughtful review of The Complete Collection of people, places & things, and I’m grateful for his particular ability to read. He writes about my book:

“…this book is something altogether different: a deeply moving narrative unmoored by conventional storytelling, one that, among many other things, involves one man’s neurotic collecting and another man’s attempt to recapture that collection.”

And:

“The whimsical world of The Complete Collection of people, places, & things is a purgatory of pop cultural detritus, a subversive invention, a memory, a dream; it’s also a world that unravels as Woods ultimately unmasks nostalgia as a kind of necrophilia before using the husk of its remains to ingeniously invert and pervert the yearning of fan fiction.”

Book is available for the buying, right here.

For me, Steve Dixon, as a man and writer, defines sincerity. If you question the literary value of sincerity, read a Dixon story. Edward Mullany just published one, “Wife in Reverse” (the shortest one that Steve has ever written, apparently), up at the excellent Matchbook (I just found this site – strong set of short pieces, all with authors’ critical comments). It’ll wake you up better then two shots of Windex right up each nostril. Easily one of my favorite of the many, many things I’ve read from Dixon.

Then, a month or so ago, Fantagraphics, that beast of comics, announced that they’d be publishing a 900+ page volume of Steve’s stories. Fantagraphics is one of my favorite presses, but I had no idea they’d started publishing prose fiction. Seems like a great match.

And Steve is, of course, working on new book. It’s called His Wife Leaves Him. It just feels good to know that his work is as vibrant as it ever was.

(If you’ve never read his one piece of “critical writing,” be sure to check his “essay” on Thomas Bernhard from Rain Taxi, published about 12 years ago. I think this is what turned me on to Bernhard in the first place.)

“Wait. I was supposed to get surgery or I wasn’t supposed to get surgery.”

Marvin K. Mooney has found a place on the web. So hopefully he will be able to find his rightful place in the literary pantheon. Go here to explore.

Go here to read his story in Abjective.

I took this snapshot of the first dance: