Bud Smith's Blog: Bud Smith , page 21

GIVING AWAY 12 SIGNED BOOKS, SEPARATE TITLES, ONE WINNER

Here’s the deal: Tonight, on this I’m giving away 12 signed copies of 12 books. I mean, it’s not all me– Jessica Anya Blau, Robert Vaughan, andMeg Tuite are playing along, and want to mail you SIGNED books. All you have to do is comment or share this post via Facebook or Twitter. (I’ll look around to see who comments on the shares too.)

One winner will be picked randomly by my neighbor, who is a nudist opera singer. I’ll show him a list of names and he’ll pick a peep from the list. I’ll announce the winner tomorrow around noon.

The 12 books …

Bud Smith:

1. Tollbooth

2. Everything Neon

3. Or Something Like That

Jessica Anya Blau:

4. Summer of Naked Swim Parties

5. Drinking Closer to Home

6. The Wonderbread Summer

Robert Vaughan

7. Addicts & Basements

8. Diptychs + Triptychs + LIpsticks + Dipshits

9. Microtones

Meg Tuite

10. Her Skin is a Costume

11. Domestic Apparition

12. Bound By Blue

Wanna get 12 signed copies of 12 goddamned great books? Shout out down below. I’m going bar hopping in the east village with Spout and Spout’s sister.

Word!

Tollbooth, Or Something Like That, and Everything Neon

if you click on is blurry button down below, you can pick up all three of my books, signed and shipped for $30. That’s the novel Tollbooth, the short story collection Or Something Like That, and the poetry collection everything Neon. Thank you!  

Cyborg Wife

Ann came home from the market, with a gun for a hand. I’m not sure the model.

“What’s the deal with that?”

“Truth is I’ve been eyeing it for a long time and I never liked my left hand. It does other things too, watch.”

The gun hand folded open, it was now a shiny metal rake that she used to scratch my back.

I made the soup without carrots, and didn’t mention that they were the main ingredient on the list.

The following afternoon, she was late again, I didn’t think anything of it, until she walked in with half her face robotic. She claimed her new eye could see seven miles.

“Ann!”

“Oh, don’t. Just don’t!”

Who am I to judge? I’m on the verge of dying my silver hair.

One night in May, she shot a spider with the gun hand. It was in the corner of the bedroom, descending a silk thread, towards my mouth in the dark.

I woke screaming. Smoke drifting in the bedside lamp light. Ann explained away the need for middle-of-the-night gun shots, and the cat scared half to death. I thanked her, honestly thanked her.

Who would want a spider in their mouth?

I re-plastered the bedroom wall. Accepting her changes. Love is not static.

My legs are now motorcycles. She sits on my shoulders and we take the curvy roads, laughing again like newly weds.

Listen to Me Read 10 Poems on the Radio

Last night, I was able to read a bunch of poems on the radio, Live From Cheeseburger Nebula, listen to it here

It was a 35 minute reading or so, but we talk a little about some other things.

Here’s the poems I’m read

**new stuffs

1. Poem Written While You Cut My Hair

2. Astral Projection

3. Elsewhere

4. Purple Gel Tab

**poems from Everything Neon

5. Your Changes Have Been Saved

6. Lightning Box

7. Love in The War Zones of the Wild

8. In My Building

9. Summer

and at the end of the show I read another new one called “Rock”

It was nice for a change to do a reading, I’ve been doing a lot of the interview show aimed at other people.

My Writing Process

“My Writing Process” is an ongoing series in which authors “tag” each other to answer some questions about their work.

Christopher Allen and Robert Vaughan have asked me to participate:

They’re both great authors, you should check out their books.

And now, the questions:

1) What am I working on?

My first full length collection of poetry, Everything Neon, just came out from Marginalia. It’s a batch of love letters mostly to my wife and to NYC. I’m also doing some rewrites on a novel called F-250, that is coming out this summer from Piscataway House, the same people who did my previous novel Tollbooth. F-250 is very loosely autobiographical, more or less written with a specific year and specific time and place in mind that I lived through. It’s slightly more grounded in reality than anything else I’ve done. I’m excited to see it put out, most of my writing is very cartoonish, this is not.

I’m also submitting around a novel called Teenager about a love affair between Kody and Teal that happens in the middle of a killing spree.

I also the host of an interview series called The Unknown show, which is live every Tuesday night at 7pm online.

2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I try write about characters who are grounded in reality, even if the world they live in is harshly unrealistic, cartoonish, overly surreal.

I don’t know if it’s different. At parties sometimes people ask, “What do you write?” and I say, “Coen Brothers movies with a little more poetry hidden in it.” That’s what I’m aiming for.

Mostly, I can say, I don’t shy away from crazy, but I try to write about regular-grade devotedly human characters who are very much alive in a world that may be wholly absurd, but they keep ticking along despite it. I write things that aim to be simultaneous funny/and not fucking around at all. Maybe, jokes that make you flinch, but the jokes aren’t really jokes …

3) Why do I write what I do?

I write what I do as a reaction to the absurdity of life. It’s hard to take anything seriously, and then as soon as you’re in that mode, a person can do whatever they want with it, ya know, without pretense.

I find life, even the thought of it, surreal beyond measure. Being alive is wild enough, now there’s the chance to create a world within a world and to populate it with characters who are up against a wall, trying to figure out what the hell is going on … that’s appealing to me because it helps me think about what this life is, what out society is, which way is up, which way is down.

4) How does my writing process work?

It changes. But mostly, my writing process is: an hour a day, however I can get that hour. Some days it’s more. But I’m a fan of “ticking away at it.” Generally my daily process goes like this for a week day: I write on my iPhone at my day job. I get a 15 minute coffee break at 9am and a half hour lunch at noon. At the end of the day, instead of fighting traffic, I sit at work for an extra twenty minutes or so and I write on the phone. This is how I do 90% of all my first drafts. In the evening, I try to sit down at my desk and do some editing the day’s iPhone typing. Do I always stick to this formula? No. Not at all. But, that’s generally how I go about my daily work week writing output.

:

Everything Neon books are here!

Everything Neon, my full length poetry collection of poems as love letters for NYC and my wife, Spout has arrived. I’ve got a box of books here on hand.

Marginalia did a beautiful job on this book. About 1/2 this pile is accounted for, but if you’d like to pick up a copy through me via paypal (or other means) message me. $12 a book, signed and shipped. Paypal to

budsmithwrites@gmail.com with your address noted.

Kevin Ridegeway, author of All the Rage, says:

“Bud Smith writes poems that punch you in the face, make you laugh out loud, fall in love and break your heart all at the same time.”

You can see more about the collection here

A Collection of Assorted Amazon Ratings for the Bible (New and Old Testament, unabridged)

5 stars: Great book! Very heavy. Really liked the gold leaf foil on the outside of the pages. Dug the tiny tiny print gave me a great excuse to use my magnifying glass that I got because I thought I would become a detective. Recommended!

3 stars: not into the wordiness of it, could def. have stood for some editing down. brevity is power, almighty.

5 stars: AWESOME

5 stars: RIGHTEOUS

1 star: can’t recommend this bc if all the typos. nice story, good characters, fantastic plot devices, riddled with spelling errors and incorrect syntax. #grammarnazidoesnotbrakeforgod

1 star: angels aren’t real.

2 stars: dumb but a cool addition to a library if you get the hardcover edition, which is easy to find for $1 at any flea market or thrift store.

5 stars: hallelujah, nuff said.

1 star: this book has aided in the genocide and oppression of billion of people spanning over 2000 years. Amazon won’t let me give zero stars. Shame on them.

3 stars: kinda in the middle on this one. Good story. The sorcery in it is pretty lame. But, I like the bearded people and all the animals. Also: Cane is a @!$&.

1 star: could not for the life of me finish this. Had to pretend with my book club that I got through it. Haha. Was under the impression that none of them finished it either but are pretending too. Oh boy.

Tollbooth Reviewed at PANK

Damn, I’m no good at this website stuff anymore. But I’ve been all distracted you see, because:

#1 the final proofs for my poetry collection Everything Neon, have been approved by Marginallia, the house from LA that’s putting it out. Release date imminent.

#2 I just got back a week ago from vacation in Seattle, which was also AWP, btw

#3 I’m wrapping up rewrites on a novel called Teenager, which I am going to keep hush until publication in 2015 …

But, some news:

Tollbooth was reviewed at PANK. I know, cool, huh? You can read the review here.

Review of Me Hailing a Taxi at 3 AM on a Tuesday, Drunk

* 2 Stars

I don’t do so well hailing this one as usual. It’s raining and everyone else that’s still out and awake in the city doesn’t seem as wet and drunk as me. For a little bit, I duck under a scaffolding on 2nd ave. and just wait. The headlights that come at me are blurry and wobbling and I wonder if I’m going to puke in the cab if I ever get it. A yellow car drives by and I step out into the rain with my arm up but it’s a yellow Ford Probe and not a cab at all, then, as I laugh at the misunderstanding, two cabs pass but they’re already full and with fare. The calculations begin: where’s the subway station? How far of a walk? What time will I get home via underground train, it’s running local, 4 AM? Ah shit, I have to leave for work by 5:30. For some reason for a few minutes I’m convinced I’ve lost my cellphone, a cliche drunken 3 AM move, and one that I never made in my prime, but this certainly is an off-night performance. Finding the phone in my inside jacket pocket (amateur!) I decide that 2nd Ave. is a lousy choice, so I walk underneath the scaffolding towards 3rd Ave. A series of overhangs make a good shield as I run from stood to stoop and aim for random trees to use their branches as cover from the storm. My theory, and compared to previous cab hailing theories of my can hailing prime–it’s a weak one, is that any cab I somehow hail will drive me home up the west side highway which is technically 12th ave. So, moving west of 2nd Ave. is a good move. But is it? I’m getting even more soaked. My feet are swimming. Ah! I spot a cab letting out a fare half a block up. I start to run. I basically push the lady in the purple coat getting out of the cab into a puddle, but not on purpose of course. Still, this is a sore spot for this reviewer. I apologize fifty times. She curses and slumps off. She’s drunk. Figures. These people. The cabbie doesn’t want to go uptown as far as I need, but I convince him that I’ll die on the streets and he’ll be responsible for my death and I’ll not only haunt him for the rest of his days. It’s a quick ride. He curses at me in a language I wouldn’t even know sober. The rain gets worse but he’s listening to Miles Davis so that’s nice. I make a note on my hand in blue pen to order the record online. When I get home, I throw my wet clothes on the hardwood floor because I don’t own the floor. I sleep for 1000 years.

Letter Written At The Beach

Dear Blank,

got your letter

it showed up all destroyed

the ink dying the ripped

pages blue

I spent the afternoon

scotch taping it back together

but once reassembled

(with only partial info illegible)

I took it to the beach

it was nice to read about blank

and how Blank and Blank

are succeeding in school

I didn’t do so well

right now, I’m fighting a war

with the Atlantic Ocean

on a Lady Smurf towel

and picking grits

of sand and seashell

out of Spout’s dark hair

I hope your pool is open

if it’s not, it should be

go into town and grab Blank

Also, I can relate to your blank

and blank feelings about sunshine

it’s effect on your garden

and it’s effect on your paintings

in the Florida room

becoming paler every year

my thoughts: good art

is made to disappear

a kite whipped up

into the sharp claws

of unsuspecting clouds

but if it bothers you still

move the paintings into the kitchen

just not near the stove

grease and smoke

ya know

but re: your blanks

on so and blank

things do grow

and things do improve

you just have to spend time

with what is most important

Blank, you’re correct

in your worry, your need

and your fear

I have similar fears

but they do lift as I rub

the suntan lotion in

and as I bop the blue beach ball

over to the children

in their sand castle kingdom

In short, I do hope you seek help with blank, before it becomes

something even heavier

than it is now

keep the shredded letter coming

Yours from Seaside, New Jersey,

Blank