Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 196

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live, quite Hammon and so Barbie.

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live and so freaking tight. We have a new poem The Last Barbie by Cameron Dezen Hammon, which we are way excited about, and, (almost) as always, photo action from Adam Lawrence, music curation from Jason Behrends and stopgap 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, and art, and video, yes, video, and combinations there of. And most finally, its that time of March, do you feel the madness?

Delusion. Facebook. Manipulation. Sadness. Dreams. The Social Network. Obsession. Millenials. Privacy. My Kid Could Paint That. Isolation. Catfish.

You Can Make Him Like You is all Orange Alert Podcast and in your face. Okay, maybe not in your face, that seems strong. Definitely podcast though.

It's true You Can Make Him Like You is Orange Alert Podcast and we are digging it. Big time. And most appreciative.

Artistically Declined. Antlered Birds. And the opporunity to win a signed copy of You Can Make Him Like You? Yes, all of that.

From the home office of
"If there's one thing we learned at AWP beside the fact that people love the new logo, it's that people want that awesome antlered bird to have a name. Well, now's YOUR chance to name the ADP bird and win a signed copy of Ben Tanzer's You Can Make Him Like You at the same time! Email your name and address to artisticallydeclined[at]gmail[dot]com along with what you think we should name our mascot/logo/icon. The winning name will be chosen by Ben Tanzer and ADP and announced on April 1."

Cool, right? Totally, so please do hit that, or this, if that's you preference.

This Book Will Change Your Life - alt.punk by Lavinia Ludlow.

Travel. Read. Travel. Read. Rinse. Repeat. And in the case of alt.punk by Lavinia Ludlow, don't just rinse, scrub, a lot, compulsively, until your skin is cracked and peeling off. But in a good way. There are so many things to react to in Ludlow's debut novel, Hazel, the protagonist's rampant germaphobia, which at times left us feeling nauseous ourselves, a first for sure; the endlessly raw, and wrongly creative sex; the crushing, or is it, numbing drug usage and alcohol abuse; the commentary on mental health, music, and all things female; the snapshot of life on the road as a groupie, or is it girlfriend, of an indie band, but even with all that going on, there was a line near the end of the book that we responded to in particular:

"He peers up at me with bloodshot, shitfaced eyes. His belt tightened around his right biceps, there's a live syringe teetering between the pads of his jittering fingers, and a cigarette dangles limply in the corner of his mouth. "When did you start smoking?" I ask.

And we responded to this because somewhere in that passage is the essence of the whole story, a story that may or may not represent an entire incredibly over-educated and politically astute generations' ennui and lack of opportunity, lets call them Millenials, but regardless, is certainly a generation that seems to know all too much, and be all too jaded, yet still gets hung-up on something comparatively mundane if they consider it evil or corrupt, something we would add that has rarely slowed down most members of Generation X. In this passage its heroin use, and in another it could be something like fisting, yet somehow that's all fine enough, but cigarette use, now that's disheartening. There's a lot to explore there, here, and there's a lot to explore in this book, a debut novel in all the ways great debuts can be, like a brain dump that not only introduces just the right amount of flair and confidence and mastery of language, but still somehow also becomes a window into a slice of the world you don't quite know enough about, if you even quite knew it existed quite like this in the first place.

Lauryn Allison. Bam.

TBWCYL, Inc. favorite and newest BFF Lauryn Allison bringing it live. Bam. Way bam.

There is J.A. Tyler sophomore novel joint. And there is promise. Maybe the best promise. Ever.

Long time TBWCYL, Inc. favorite, This Zine Will Change Your Life contributor and This Podcast Will Change Your Life podcastee J.A. Tyler, yes that one, has a new joint out from fugue state press titled A Man of Glass & All the Ways We Have Failed and he is so confident in the words contained therein you he has made the best promise ever, seriously, ever, and we love him all the more for its awesome ballsyness. Is that how you spell that? Anyway, check it out:

"If you don't like my book I'll write you another book on the inside of that book. Order it, read it. If you don't like it, ship it back to me & I'll write a new book for you on the inside of that book. Yes. This is how much I believe in these words."

Did we lie? We did not, so hit it, because doing so just may change your life.

We are eBook. Well, Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine is eBook. And we are excited.

We are happy to report that all the releases from Orange Alert Press have been re-issued as eBooks with a portion of the profits going to charity. This is quite cool and sure to not just change our life, or your life, but countless lives as these books quickly race to the top of digital bestsellers lists everywhere. Was that grandiose? Good.

"Definitely the best thing I've read by Ben Tanzer." You Can Make Him Like You gets Outside Writers Collective'd. And likes it. A lot.

Big Andre the Giant hugs to Caleb J. Ross, yes he's all over the blog this week, for his really humbling review of You Can Make Him Like You over at the Outsider Writers Collective and Press. Drinks on us, and yes, massive hugs, when next we meet.

"This is one of the best, if not the best, depictions of the transition from empty childlessness to fatherhood I've ever had the opportunity to experience. Tanzer has succeeded in imbuing every interaction, every situation, every political pot-shot with the metaphorical acceptance of fatherhood. The point being, simply, that to be a father means to be changed, whether you want to or not."

The Walking Dead. Finally. Yar. Big yar.