Finally got to meet the exceptional Edward Mullany last week here in Brooklyn, and he told me about his idea to launch a postcard series from Matchbook. Great idea. He’s already announced it on the site. Each card will have a literary work or a visual piece on the front, and a critical explanation on the back. I’ve really been enjoying reading the critical apologia that accompany the pieces Edward’s been posting on Matchbook.  Go here, give them 3 bucks (that’s a deal), and get art sent right to your old school mailbox. And send them work if you have it.

I forget to spread the word about the remarkable, short reading we have up at Apostrophe Cast right now. It’s Aase Berg reading and Johannes Goransson reading his translations of her work. (Credit to our friend Josef Horacek for recording this several years ago. It was his idea to post it – smart.) Listen here.

I’m trying to work up 100+ thumbnail drawings for my atrocity project in the less-than-a-week I have left of “Winter Break.” Generating new ideas so frequently can be difficult. Thankfully, I’ve discovered the reassuring background-drone of SOAP Net’s daytime line-up. Vintage Beverly Hills 90210 and The O.C. (One Tree Hill is too irritating to be background drone). It keeps me going.

"You know, I've never been a big fan of alternative music, but these guys rocked the house!"

Jason Chambers asked me to write something for the “When I Fell in Love” series of posts that they’ve been collecting at Three Guys One Book (my essay is also published at The Nervous Breakdown). I discuss three books that are important to me.  They are:

(I also did a drawing of cream being applied to an eyeball.)

Adam Robinson’s Adam Robison and Other Poems needs to get published. But for that to happen, a few more people need to buy the book. Would be a real shame if this didn’t happen. So make it happen.

Here’s the word from Narrow House publisher Justin Sirois:

As some people know, for the past year or so, I’ve been working on a series of 100+ short narratives that I call atrocities, set in a fictional city called “Baltimore.” I’ve kept them very close to the vest (except for presenting a few, perhaps unwisely, when I read down in Athens this past fall). I wanted to create the collection as whole, and to possess the whole world before I let it go. I felt that talking about it and sharing it would adulterate it in some way. Now, the writing is done, and the drawing has begun. To celebrate this, I’ve published a the first of these atrocities, a very short one called “High Hopes” in the Hippopants, a new journal of short graphic fiction. Sanaz and Stefan Kiesbye do an amazing job curating this journal, and it seemed like the right place to reveal even the smallest shadow of this project which has possessed me privately for so long.

Hopefully, the next few months will be filled with drawing, and I’ll be able to share dozens more atrocities when they’re all done.

Edward Mullany discusses The Complete Collection of people, places & things over at the Matchbook blog. I mentioned recently that this is one of my favorite new online venues. Edward’s reading of my book really impressed me. He even found the exact passages from Winesburg, Ohio that I rewrote in TCC. I appreciated this line about the book, in particular:

“One might argue that it is ‘difficult,’ or that it lacks gravitas, but the first criticism has nothing to do with the book’s artistic merit, and the second isn’t true.”

Read it here.

Just got my contrib copy of Pear Noir! (issue 3) in the mail. Really excited about this one. Go here to see the names. Just read Lily Hoang’s “Inivisible Women” selections. She reinvents Calvino’s cities. Really interesting to read someone doing a transliterative project like this, as I’ve been doing a lot of this recently myself, particularly with Bernhard. These pieces from Lily are really beautiful. I’m looking forward to seeing the rest.

The other reason I’m excited about the new Pear Noir! is that they did a great job printing my comic, “My Brother’s Shoe.” Not many lit. journals are very excited about publishing comics longer than ten pages, but they were kind enough to give me a nice chunk of real estate. And, as a comics artist, you always cringe when you first look at your work printed by someone else (especially when it involves a lot of gray tones like this one). They did a terrific job. Go get your copy of Pear Noir! here.

Got this in the mail a few days ago. Beautiful new MLKNG SCKLS with Conner Willumsen’s orginal sketch for the new cover. I love when I get originals that have pencil and visible white-out. I’m also glad to see that more talented artists than me draw on cheap paper too! Planning on giving this some good wall real estate. (Thanks, Justin.)