Hosho McCreesh's Blog, page 17

The CHEAPJACK STADIUM TOUR...

Well, May is going to be busy!

With the pandemic upon us, the PRINTER and the BINDER can’t even work in the same space, but bit by bit and piece by piece it’s all coming together! And while there are other pieces in different stages of ready TBD later, here’s is a list of the fun stuff we’ve already got planned leading up to the official A DEEP & GORGEOUS THIRST - UNABRIDGED AUDIO release:

5/5/2020
Underground Lovers hosts the official trailer release — it’s the what, who, and the when explainer for this drunken audio opus!
Also: the eBook goes live at smashwords

5/7/2020
PODCAST - TBWCYL w/ host Ben Tanzer chatting with Brian McGettrick, and Hosho McCreesh
INSTAGRAM STORIES: #adeepandgorgeousthirsttrap

5/10/2020
Man in the Gutter Interview: Memes
A Solemn and Sarcastic Trans-Atlantic Chat w/ Claudia Bierschenk

5/11/2020
Animated Drunk Poem - Read by Sean Lynch

5/12/2020
Man in the Gutter Interview - Papa
Man in the Gutter Interview: Bastien

5/13/2020
Animated Drunk Poem - Read by Chris Oxley

5/14/2020
Man in the Gutter Interview - Tina
INSTAGRAM STORIES: #adeepandgorgeousthirsttrap

5/15/2020
Man in the Gutter Interview - Sakesan
One for the Road w/ Joseph Ridgwell

5/17/2020
Animated Drunk Poem - Read by Russ Litten
Man in the Gutter Interview - Craig

5/18/2020
Knuckle Rap w/ William Boyle

5/19/2020
Man in the Gutter Interview - Nana

5/20/2020
Animated Drunk Poem - Read by Willy Vlautin
Man in the Gutter Interview - justin.barrett

5/21/2020
PODCAST: Downtown Writers Jam Podcast w/ Brad King
INSTAGRAM STORIES: #adeepandgorgeousthirsttrap

5/22/2020
More Bad Decisions w/ Josh Mohr

5/24/2020
LAUNCH!
TNBBC and HEFT PRESENT - A DEEP & GORGEOUS HAPPY HOUR w/ Lori Hettler and Ben Tanzer

5/28/2020
INSTAGRAM STORIES: #adeepandgorgeousthirsttrap

There will be some digital giveaways and other bits mainly via social media, so if you haven’t yet, you can find and follow via the icons on the bottom of this page. Otherwise, feel free to grab up a comfortable chair and knock a few back with us this May!

Publishing in a Pandemic...

Tesla trying to sort his pandemic book launch!

I joined a smattering of other writers in a chat about publishing during a pandemic over at THE COIL. The folks over at Alternating Current were kind enough to give us a platform, and as many of us are looking for new stuff to fill our eyeholes and earholes during these trying times, you are humbly invited to pop on over and give it a read! I talked a little about the forthcoming audio book, but mainly about compromise and the ever-shifting sands of “success” — at least by our humble standards here at the HQ.

On May 24th, 2020, A DEEP & GORGEOUS THIRST - UNABRIDGED AUDIO will be officially released. Physical copies will be available IN THE WEBSTORE and digital copies available via a GOOGLE PLAY and hopefully a host of other listening outfits too. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try music outfits, by god!

It’s all 146 drunk poems from the book, read by 37 different voices from Australia to Switzerland. It’s 3 and a half hours of drunken revelry — at least on the surface. It’s our latest ambitious offering — and if you are a member of the NOTIFY LIST, you might just hear about pre-sales and limited editions soon.

In fact, over the next month, you’ll likely hear a lot about this project, 7+ years in the making, with all kinds of cool folks pitching in to help make it a reality. So buckle up…it promises to be another fun ride!

CHECK OUT THE THIRST AUDIO PROJECT

Doug Draime...

I was really jazzed to discover that late, small press legend, Doug Draime has a website. Now people everywhere can continue to marvel at his terrific body of work. Doug was a truly interesting person, one who lived many lives, experienced the highs and lows and knew it all well enough to report back from the hard, sad, dumb, and beautiful front lines of the human experiment. He seemed driven by a deep need to push and constantly create and probably threw away more great poems than I’ll ever write. There’s no one label or box you can stick his work in, and he was ever restless as a creator and artist. I miss his emails, his insights…and I really miss seeing new poems pop up every few weeks. I am glad to know things are still churning, and if you don’t know Doug’s work — do yourself a favor and go read yourself some.

I was equally delighted to find that Doug’s terrific short story, “Joe’s Smoke & News” is now FREE over at smashwords. It was published by mendicant bookworks — which put out a handful of great little yarns some years back, including THIS ONE (wink!).

GIFT CARDS + A FREEBIE TO THE NEXT 5 ORDERS...

As a way to help us out, the folks who manage this website have made GIFT CARDS (typically a paid service) available from now until September. So from now until then, we’ll have them in 4 different amounts in our store.

If you’ve got someone you’ve wanted to introduce to the HQ, or if you know you’ll be in the market for some future goodness, now is a great time to grab up a gift card. They never expire, and are good for any and everything we carry.

And as a way to support a few of the places I admire (in this instance it’s Two Dollar Radio), I’m offering up an additional freebie to the next 5 orders over $10.

Stay safe out there!

A Deep and Gorgeous Sample over at Soundcloud

Just what is it I’m yammering on and on about this time?

Here’s a safe-for-work sample…a few drunk poems read by a few different voices (so you’ll know when the poem changes).

Now you know what you’ll be getting into when the A DEEP & GORGEOUS THIRST - UNABRIDGED AUDIO launches in a couple months.

Words, Artwork, and Animation...

One of the best things about the small press is the community we can find there — often times a wide-reaching and vast array of talents and ideas. Our friends over at Alternating Current Press have worked diligently over the years to build up and support writers of all stripes, giving home and voice to an entire ambitious stable of talent. So when they come knocking, I always do my level-best to deliver. Above are two covers: the first, Jennifer Roche’s 20 is a sparkling and prescient collection of erasure poems using Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as source material. I was lucky enough to do the interior art — pen & ink + watercolor quadtychs of seafaring imagery that, like the book itself, leaves behind only hints of the larger original. The second cover, as you’ll see, was one I got to blurb. Larry Beckett’s Wyatt Earp is an astonishing accomplishment that was exhaustive in its historical truth and honed down to an exquisite, razor-sharp vision as rich and full-blooded as any film. Both are worth a look, and if you’re headed to AWP, can be found at the Alternating Current table or any events they’ll be part of.

Then there’s this:

It’s a sneak-peek at the 4 forthcoming animations that will accompany the A DEEP & GORGEOUS THIRST - UNABRIDGED AUDIO release.

Helluva Decade...

Pictured here are the various editions of a few of the highlights from the last decade. It seemed to be a good time to take stock — remind myself of the victories. I imagine it’ll be hard for me to top this — poetry, short stories, a book of letters, and my first novel — so I thought I’d take this opportunity to thank the editors and publishers who took a chance on the bigger projects over the last 10 years.

Jason Behrends of Orange Alert Press, Bill Roberts of Bottle of Smoke Press, Ryan Bradley of Artistically Declined Press, and Pete Lally of Pig Ear Press. I also managed to place some work with Johnny & Giselle Brewton’s BAGAZINE and a couple of offerings from Michael Curran’s Tangerine Press, as well as a re-release of two out-of-print titles with Matthew Ward’s Mary Celeste Press and a new imprint from Bill Roberts, Ternary Editions. I sure can’t thank each of them enough for believing in my work.

With the release of Chinese Gucci, I also started my own DrunkSkull Books, and with a cache of ISBNs under my arm, I will likely look to self-publish the occasional new title from here on out as well

And while I’m giving thanks — let me thank each of you reading this for your interest and support over the years. Your support of writers, small presses, and.artists makes the whole dang thing possible and that means more than you know to me.

3 Anniversaries...

This time of year is always special for me. It brings with it 3 separate personal anniversaries:

It’s been 35 years since my mom left the hospital following her first cancer remission — a tremendously important thing for my entire family. Her Life Day is always worth celebrating.

It’s also been 20 Years since my very first acceptance. It’s hard to believe I’ve been stalking the wilds of the small press for two decades now.

And last but not least, it’s been 1 year since the release of my first novel Chinese Gucci.

To commemorate these 3 high-water marks, use the code 3ANNIVERSARIES between now and December 1st to take 30% off everything in the STORE.

Nothing Small About It...

The Reverend Kane has included me among 10 Poets You’ve Never Heard Of But You’re Going To Love — which is awful of him, and feels great to be wedged in among that talent.

I know I probably sound like a broken record when it comes to the small press, but I thought I’d give a little glimpse into why I feel it has so much to offer readers. What follows are a few small press books that, for me, stand out for either their content, their production, or both — as evidence of just some of what the small press can do that the larger presses either won’t or can’t.

I first stumbled on Albert Huffstickler’s work in the late 1990s, when diving head first into as many small press magazines as I could get my mitts on. Poem to poem, and magazine to magazine, his was one of the very first otherwise unknown names I began to recognize as consistently great. I can’t remember if we ever appeared in the same magazine, but I never missed one of Huff’s poems if I saw his name among the contributors. This book, Why I Write in Coffee Houses and Diners: Selected Poems seems to speak to everything Huff loved: people as poems, diner coffee, a warm plate of grub, a few cigarettes and delving deep into the human mysteries of love and of sadness. His lines are profoundly exact, and ring like a centuries-old church bell.

Another early discovery was the tough-nosed yet deeply-felt struggle and strength of Anne Menebroker’s work. She was in a lot of my target magazines — places I tried with early poems — and there was always something so steady and maternal about her lines, and a down-to-earth sense of no bullshit about her work. She was just rock-solid poem to poem. This book, Tiny Teeth, collected loads of work from Wormwood Review — a true titan among the small press scene for decades — and I jumped at the chance to have so many poems gathered together in one spot.

Mike Kriesel’s Feeding My Heart to the Wind is, like haiku-poets of old, razor-sharp and sweeping, with compact poems covering an array of rural, Midwestern experiences with a piercing eye and open heart. To top that all off, the production by sunnyoutside — letterpress covers, saddle-sewn — showed me that a book need not be huge to read huge. I was honored to eventually land a manuscript at sunnyoutside, and shocked to share a press with such amazing writers.

Quiet as a press, with books only landing occasionally, yet when Centennial Press does one up, they really shake the branches. Like Huffstickler, William Taylor Jr’s poems were (and are!) great every time I ran across them and when this book was coming out, I was really excited. And when it landed on my doorstep — even more so. The beautiful card cover and thick, rich paper stock along with typesetting that paid attention to every detail, I realized that the limits of design — so often forced by cost — sometimes just need to be ignored. I knew Centennial to have a strong base in graphic design (their Anthills magazine was proof positive), and it convinced me that finding professional design help was a must. I love everything about the book, and have even given away a couple copies.

It was with Rebecca Schmejda’s Cadillac Men that I witnessed a giant artistic leap, convincing me that not only did she have laser-focused collections in her, but maybe a novel too. Rebecca asked me to do some cover art, and NYQ Books (associated with the poetic torch-bearing New York Quarterly) was nice enough to use my atmospheric (if slightly imperfect) work. The book, while traditionally produced, felt like a high-water mark at the time…with pro-level distribution and a proud feather in both Rebecca and my respective caps! The cast of characters is riveting, and the anger and compassion for each in turn is unblinking.

And last, the project that is most responsible for my approach to small press projects and productions, the project that destroyed Bill Roberts’ wrist — but was worth it! — as Buddha smiles by Charles Bukowski. Bill, and his then-new Bottle of Smoke Press, letter-pressed 20 individual baseball-card-sized broadsides of Bukowski poems who, in 2003, was a towering figure in the small press. Using a Kelsey 5”x 8” hand press, a mere 2000 impressions later this masterpiece was complete. Click through to scroll through each, and marvel at what a single artist is capable of when determined to do something gorgeous.

Not all of these books can still be found, but if you ever do happen on them, I certainly recommend giving them a shot. Maybe you’ll be inspired to dream bigger yourselves — but even if not, you’ll have some damn fine poems to revisit over and over.

The GORGEOUS Vocal Talent...

Here’s a little teaser highlighting the terrific collection of vocal talent assembled for the A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst - Unabridged Audio project.

I honestly can’t thank each and every one of them enough — so if you see them before I do, thank them for me!