Brian Alan Ellis's Blog, page 9
April 25, 2017
Dude, You Can Summon Ancient Spirits Anywhere: An Interview with Elle Nash
BRIAN ALAN ELLIS
Elle Nash is rad as fuck—for real—and she publishes Witch Craft Magazine—rad dot com—and is the author of a poetry chapbook entitled i can remember the meaning of every tarot card but i can’t remember what i texted you last night (Nostrovia Press, 2016)—rad title—and she’s tight with Chelsea Laine Wells and Elizabeth Ellen, two of my favorite writers/people—rad company—and she loves professional wrestling—hella rad—and she also used to give people spray tans for a living—apparently not rad at all but whatevz—and she was rad enough to answer my rad questions—pretty damn rad, overall.
BRIAN ALAN ELLIS: According to your website bio, you live in “the Ozarks” with your husband and some animals. I have no idea what that entails, though I picture you and your husband washing clothes in a creek while eating berries and meditating, perhaps summoning ancient spirits or whatever. Accurate, or no?
ELLE NASH: I’m eating berries right now, does that count?
BAE: Sure.
EN: We live in a town now—with a Walmart and everything!—but when we first moved here we stayed with some friends in a mostly off-grid home in the woods; they had electricity, but no plumbing. It was great. I had no cell service and felt kind of crazy about being so cut off, but damn it also made my mind rest easy
BAE: Hmm… I’m good.
EN: The Ozarks stretch from the upper east corner of Oklahoma, through northwest Arkansas and into southern Missouri.
BAE: *literally has no clue where those places even fall on a map*
EN: The whole area is absolutely magical to me and even in town we’re still pretty close to nature. We are currently debating if we want to buy land and build a place to live away from town or not, but also that means saving money, which is kind of a long process. Also, dude, you can summon ancient spirits anywhere. It don’t have to be in the middle of the woods.
April 19, 2017
April 6, 2017
April 4, 2017
Unicorns are Evil and Brian Alan Ellis: Get Lit With Leza Podcast
“I hope there is no afterlife. I would rather just not exist.”
Brian Alan Ellis
I ask Brian Alan Ellis the tough questions like “Do you think a handjob can be romantic?” and “What would your superhero power be?” and “Do you feel anything?”
On this very special episode of Get Lit With Leza
Check out BRIAN ALAN ELLIS ON HIS TUMBLR
And check out all his awesome books on his Amazon author page!
April 1, 2017
houseofvlad:
FREE download at Amazon.com! Limited time!
“[This...
FREE download at Amazon.com! Limited time!
“[This book] is the saddest, most hilarious (sadlarious?) thing [Ellis has] written so far.”—Gabino Iglesias, author of Zero Saints
“Zen koans mixed with equal amounts of doom and hilarity. Highly recommended…”—David S. Atkinson, author of Not Quite So Stories
“[This book is a] bizarre and hilarious inner thought monologue in the form of aborted tweets and pop culture worship poetry and half-cocked rants and dissected movie lines. Breaking structure and form, spanning fiction and creative nonfiction and satire and confession in the same line, utterly deconstructed and subtle to the extreme.”—Chelsea Laine Wells, editor of Hypernova Lit
“Super hilarious status update lit… I laughed out loud several times.”—Josh Spilker, author of Ambient Florida Position
“[Ellis] clearly has either a lot [of] issues or a sick sense of humor… [He’s] the kind of writer that uses whatever he can to fill pages and those pages are never boring. Just a lot of fun to read.”—Slap Happy Fun Time
“Like me (and some other super-chill badass motherfuckers), [Ellis] does not have an MFA or even a BA. He grew up in Florida where my father lived and where I spent a few days every summer so I feel like I ‘get’ [him]. LOL. Or maybe we’re just both full of shit. IDK. Who cares?”—Elizabeth Ellen, author of Bridget Fonda
“[This book] is a portrait of a youth built on bits and pieces of popular culture at a time where culture itself is spinning out of control. It could be the beginning of a literary revolution—a powerful and honest depiction of how we’ve all accepted alienation—or nothing at all. But it’s great.”—Benoit Lelievre, editor of Dead End Follies
“[This] collection of tweets, flash, think pieces, and other miscellanea really did it for me… and I advise that you read it whether you hate yourself or whether you’d just like a few laughs at the expense of some poor schmuck who ain’t afraid to admit what you won’t.”—Arthur Graham, co-author of Great White House 2: Billary Bites Back
“I’m at my gf’s parents’ and her aunt just picked up [this book] and read the cover and then the back jacket and made an awful face and then put it down and didn’t ask any questions…”—Tyler Gof Barton, co-editor of Fear No Lit
March 22, 2017
IF I WAS SMART I WOULD EITHER KILL MYSELF OR IMMEDIATELY BECOME A RECLUSE: An Interview with Elizabeth Ellen
Interview by Brian Alan Ellis
Soon after conducting this interview with author Elizabeth Ellen, I finished PERSON/A, her debut novel, and not only is it a great book but it’s also like a great French film. It’s Paris, Texas. It’s A Woman under the Influence. Its HBO’s True Detective meets Anna Karenina—I think; I’ve never really read Anna Karenina LOL—meets that one music video where Britney Spears overdoses in a bathtub. It’s about love, obsession, narcissism, marriage, delusion, pain, pleasure, art, life, addiction—it’s about you, me, things that transform, that come apart. Basically, Elizabeth Ellen should win the Pulitzer Prize and then immediately be beaten to death with it because she’s so good, so human, so completely fucked.
Brian Alan Ellis: I’m about a hundred pages away from finishing your novel, PERSON/A. I wanted to do this interview after I finished it but my deadline is approaching so I’ll just assume the main character murders Ian and then leaves Lee for Sadie and the two go on a cross-country Molly bender à la Thelma & Louise—accurate, or no?
Elizabeth Ellen: OMG that would be such a better ending! I bet you’ll be pretty disappointed with my ending after that, huh? Damn. I’m sorry. Even I want that ending now…
BAE: So disappointed…
EE: I started your novel last night and the Duckie scene in Pretty in Pink has always been one of my fav in movie history. Like the first time I saw that movie, in the theater, alone, at age 16, I rushed to the mall music store and bought a cassette tape of Otis Redding’s greatest hits and that led to me getting into Ella Fitzgerald, too, somehow. I was so enamored with Duckie, though. Gay, straight or bi, didn’t matter. (Me, I mean; gay, straight or bi.) Of course the James Spader character was a 16 year-old’s fantasy bad boyfriend, too. Only Andrew McCarthy didn’t do much for me, that I recall. Wait. Why are we talking about Pretty in Pink? Oh yeah. YOUR NOVEL reference. Wow. Way to make this all about you, BAE. Hope you’re happy.
BAE: “Hey baby, when I write, I’m the hero of my shit.” LOL Bukowski.
EE: I know, right? Bow down.
BAE: There are a lot of great passages in PERSON/A, like:
“It’s hard to say sometimes which is more shame-inducing, a man who never searches for you or one who never stops.”
“I find the shadows in a room, move into them. I can’t tell if I am a true narcissist or my own best company and what does it matter.”
“I stop masturbating if I think there is a chance I won’t stop crying. I won’t let myself come if I can’t stop crying.”
I dog-eared a bunch of pages on one of the copies I have. I read 85% of it while on the toilet, FYI.
EE: NOW you tell me… Well now I have to read 90% of yours SAME to one up you.
BAE: In addition to PERSON/A, you have two other books coming out this year, which I find both exciting and disconcerting, like, are you planning to kill yourself? Are these your last artistic statements? You pulling a Salinger? What’s going on?
EE: HAHA God, if I was smart I would either kill myself or immediately become a recluse, right? Obviously I’m a dingbat who for some reason insists both on living and living publicly. Someone asked me if the books are a trilogy and they actually kind of are, all interwoven, even though they’re a novel/stories/poems. I just had never referred to them as such, either aloud or in my mind. But now I’m going to start calling them that. So this is the trilogy and then maybe I’ll write whatever it is called when you have four books that all relate.
March 11, 2017
houseofvlad:
Official book trailer for FAILURE PIE IN A SADNESS...
Official book trailer for FAILURE PIE IN A SADNESS FACE by Brian Alan Ellis // Directed by and starring Michael Seymour Blake // Purchase book HERE!
March 7, 2017
voices • (b)OINK
Literary Yas Queen Meg Tuite asked me to write something about a strange travel situation I’ve encountered for BOINK zine #3, so I wrote about going on tour with a hardcore band in 2002, where I put my fist through a living room window and took a Polaroid with the dude in Tenacious D who isn’t Jack Black. Enjoy.
March 3, 2017
houseofvlad:
Now shipping paperback copies of FAILURE PIE IN A...
Now shipping paperback copies of FAILURE PIE IN A SADNESS FACE by Brian Alan Ellis internationally! Check the rates & order @ houseofvlad.bigcartel.com // e-book available on Amazon //
I will now ship paperback copies of FAILURE PIE IN A SADNESS FACE to your stupid fucking country, so party // houseofvlad.bigcartel.com //
