Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 179

An Artistically Declined Press sure to change your life Labor Day sale thing.

Yes, wow, so awesome, through Labor Day, Artistically Declined has decided to take 25% off its backlist books, which includes not only You Can Make Him Like You, but a series of titles sure to change your life, to the river by Rose Hunter, Hush Up and Listen Stinky Poo Butt by Ken Sparling and Prize Winners by Ryan W. Bradley. It may go without saying that we think you should hit this now, like right now, but just in case it doesn't, why not hit this, like right now. Good work. And thanks.

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live. All full of baby. And Rowan.

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live. We have a new humor piece Bad Baby by Matt Rowan, which we are way excited about, and, (almost) as always, photo action from Adam Lawrence, music curation from Jason Behrends and awkwardly scheduled joint sessions of congressional prose love from Pete Anderson. We hope you enjoy this edition and we appreciate all shout-outs and links. Finally, please note, we are hoping more of you will submit comix, and music, novel excerpts, and art, and video, yes, video, and combinations there of. And most finally, holy rapidly approaching Fall action.

We Who Are About To Breed. The Tanzer edition.

We so enjoy the We Who Are About To Breed series and are thrilled that TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer has been invited to participate. Big thanks to the always stellar and massively attractive We Who Are About To Die for the opportunity, please enjoy some excerpt below and please do take a look.

5. Tell us something we don't know about you and being a writer-slash-parent.

I don't know if this interesting, but for a long time, much of my early life into early adulthood I don't recall being interested in being or doing anything beyond maybe being a good athlete and definitely trying to get laid. That took up much of the time and the space in my brain, though I did make room for insomnia, compulsively reading and running, and then later consuming massive amounts of alcohol and drugs as well. As that space cleared in my head, however, and as the drug and alcohol use lessened, I realized just how much I really wanted to write, that I had been sort of thinking about it for a long time, and getting started took awhile, years, but I got less scared and I got started, and just after I got started, my wife and I decided to have children, and that didn't take any time really, but in both cases, I ultimately went from nothing to something, quickly, and in both cases the experience and feelings related to the acts of writing and parenting and parenting and writing have been transformative. It's a new and different life, and that other life, had been pretty good, mostly, and happy, mostly, but this, this is better, better than better maybe, okay, much better, and just as cheesy as it sounds.

Are you feeling Untoward?

Because we are. And we think you could be to if you tried. We also think that doing so just might change your life. A lot. Also, if it helps we are going to podcast with Untoward's fearless leader Matt Rowan soon, like really soon, and that too just might change you life. But since you have to wait for that, for now, why not go ahead and pay the Untoward a visit? There you go. Feels good right? Of course it does.

This Book Will Change Your Life - Black Hole Blues by Patrick Wensink.

Club Sandwiches. Physics. And Kenny Rogers. That's a lot. Enough maybe. But that's not all. No, there's more, much more. As we read the Black Hole Blues by newest TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Patrick Wensink we thought about how we will sporadically bump into themes that somehow inch their way into a number of the books we're reading. This is unplanned usually. We think. But it happens. We can't remember when it happened last, but it did, and does, and here we are with the Black Hole Blues, a novel which has any number of wonderful things going on, but still had two things that especially jumped out at us. First, it is a tale of siblings, and sibling rivalry and old hurts, which reminded us of the new Barry Graham joint Nothing or Next to Nothing, and struck us as a theme we never write about, even think about really. Then there is the biopic thing Wensink has going on here, in this case that of a faux legendary country singer, which reminded us of The Mimic's Own Voice by Tom Williams and its use of the faux biopic, which again is a theme we never to think to write about ourselves. Yet there it is, right there, a whole history created just like that and right in front of us. Meanwhile, embedded in the middle of all this sibling rivalry, old hurts, Kenny Rogers and the whole biopic thing, there is a story about the end of the world, maybe, possibly, and something else, parody and satire and touches of magic realism, as guitars and tour buses reflect on the world around them. And look at that, again, stuff we just don't write, or even think about writing, which ultimately reminds us how wonderful it is to meet new writers and not only lose ourselves in their work, but find ourselves waiting in anticipation of what comes next. Assuming of course, that the world doesn't come to end before we have the chance to actually find out.        [image error]

A The Hold Steady A.V. Club Huey Lewis and the News mashup of great beauty, cultural resonance and near epic proportions.

The Hold Steady covers Huey Lewis & The News

Let the hype begin.

We will be Two With Water at Beauty Bar on September 11th. We will be reading from My Father's House. And the line-up will be most stellar. Quite stellar. Brandon Tietz. Lindsay Hunter. Richard Thomas. Gina Frangello. Muyassar Kurdi. Stellar. That. Geeked. Quite. Come. Please.

Ayiti. Roxane Gay. Artistically Declined. Pre-order fever. Catch it. Now.

Tremendously pre-order. And tremendously unfathomable to us that we haven't mentioned this until now. It's madness frankly and we will be talking to the marketing team here at headquarters post-haste. Very post in fact. And very haste.

"Subtly complex." You Can Make Him Like You gets Vol. 1 Brooklyn'd. And likes it. A lot.

You Can Make Him Like You is almost sort of having a week. And we are digging it. First the Wensink and today some quite niceness from the always stellar Vol. 1 Brooklyn. Right? Please do take a look, please enjoy some excerpt and Vol. 1 Brooklyn, drinks on us for sure when next we meet.



"At its core, You Can Make Him Like You abounds with empathy for its characters, at times in unexpected ways. His levels of self-deception make Keith a subtly unreliable narrator: for all that he's critical of his own behavior, his own worst aspects elude him. It's notes like this that help make this book a more subtly complex read than one might first expect."

NOUNS OF ASSEMBLAGE. HOUSEFIRE PUBLISHING. Now.

So now. And so geeked we are to have a piece by TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer included among the many, many fine writers in HOUSEFIRE PUBLISHING'S debut joint NOUNS OF ASSEMBLAGE. We think you will dig it. We also think it will change your life. So please do hit it. Nice.

HOUSEFIRE PRESENTS: NOUNS OF ASSEMBLAGE from Riley Michael Parker on Vimeo.