Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 98

Lost In Space line edits now yes.

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live. All smiles. Not. And full of Pawelek.

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live. We have new fiction, when I could not smile by old friend bl pawelek, which we are way excited about, and, (almost) as always, photo action from Adam Lawrence, music curation from Jason Behrends and Cold War posturing 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, Cutler, please, thank you.

We are Sad Robot Stories by the Mason Johnson excerpt. And we feel fine.

The Dream

At night, Robot’s eyes glowed the same blue as his siblings’ while he was asleep in the plant. His random access memory did not disassemble itself in the same orderly fashion though. It unspooled chaotically, taking the freshest moments of the day and ripping them to shreds like flimsy sheets of paper, letting the pieces fall haphazardly to the floor and into a pile, where it would reassemble into shapes similar to the original, but wholly different. Like botched origami; a swan, but too phallic.

In short, Robot dreamed.

Days came back to him in no particular order: the plant, the cats, the frigid morning air at work before the humans arrived, something he only felt the prickling of when he was asleep.

One night, Robot dreamed of being chased by lightning.

The concrete monoliths of downtown kept him penned in as he ran. He was surrounded by his brothers and sisters lining either side of the street, their eyes dark, their heads down. He was not the only one running. Surrounded by his frozen brothers and sisters, Robot ran with hundreds, if not thousands, of humans.

Robot was the only robot among the running. The sky was turned-off-TV gray and the lightning was a tangled mess of intertwined blue and white. The thunder wasn’t deafening, but quiet, just loud enough of a POP for you to hear it get the guy runnin’ behind you—POP—or the girl next to you—POP.

It didn’t matter how fast you ran; the dark clouds took who they wanted. But everyone still ran.

Robot had a heart. Blood pumped through his wires. He felt the pads of his feet stinging on the concrete. He felt electricity going through him, but opposite of the life-giving paths it usually took. In a way that made him feel like he was cracking and breaking.

Should I be wearing shoes?

In the middle of the street, whimpering and refusing to move, was a mangy mutt similar to one of the dogs that composed a wild pack that lived around the plant. Robot stopped for a moment—aware that the rising hair on his neck was probably the lightning pulling him up—and he picked up the brown sack of shit that was a dog. Even though the dog was far lighter than his maximum carrying capacity, running with it felt like an impossible task. But he ran. He ran and he didn’t stop running.

"Tanzer has eviscerated pop culture." I AM gets Verbicided. And likes it. A lot.

So very much we do really. And so very appreciative we are to the Gabino Iglesias and Verbicide for the very kind words. Drinks brother, on us, for sure, somewhere, soon. Yes? Good. And excerpt? Cool. 

"While humor helps make I Am a great read, what truly makes it shine is that it combines hilarity with sadness and delivers all of it using a frenetic prose that takes on a variety of rhythms in order to adjust itself to the voice of every story." 

Irby. Terry. Bates. Olszewska. WORDS+MUSIC. Happening. Empty Bottle. September 5th. Coolness. Yes.

A The Place Where We Were Daddy Cool The Good Men Project Salesses thing.

Goodness. Quite digging it. Share. Post. Read. Buy. All of it. Excerpt? Cool.

"When I was growing up, I had one Asian friend. I can imagine my parents thinking about friendship analytically at first; I was adopted from Korea when I was 2 and a half and the adjustment was difficult. I worked with speech and physical therapists, unable to form English sounds and beaten down by disease and neglect. I nearly died from hepatitis. As I grew up, I stayed with this friend after school until my parents finished teaching. His house was a place where I could eat rice that stuck together, not what my Korean wife now would call “flying rice.” I’m not sure whether people realize that adopted kids think of themselves as the race of their parents—I must have been in elementary school before I realized I looked different from them. I felt both different and eerily similar to my Taiwanese friend, T., and his traditional—so it seemed to me—mother and father."

This Book Will Change Your Life - Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children by Dave Newman.

Is it enough to just say you love something, even if you're not entirely sure why? That yes, there are elements of said thing that speak to you, that seem to have been carved from your very brain, pain, frustrations and, joy, and yet so much of it is not you, your life, or day to day existence, that you love it at least in part just because it's so lyrical and flowing, humorous, and real. And god damn it you wish there was a better word than real? We think so, know so, yet, even as we write this, we also think that maybe that's all wrong. Because here's the thing about Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children by Dave Newman, we know what's it like to ignore our children, love our wife, struggle with cash flow, hang out in strip joints, and watch our friends make romantic decisions which seem so terribly suspect, but doing nothing about them. On the other hand, we know nothing about life as an adjunct professor, campus life, teaching classes, and dealing with students. But does that even matter? Because those things are merely scenery and currency. Feelings are feelings. Anger is anger. Love is love. Friendship is friendship. Sex is sex. Great authors write about these things in ways that ring true to the reader. Newman knows true. What it looks like. Its rhythm and flavor. And we hope you will take a look. It just might change your life.

There is Zero Fade Book Trailer. All Live Action and such.

And if that wasn't enough, there is more, so much more, here, so please do hit it, it just might change your life.

Wherein we engage in paternal patter, or palaver, if that's your thing, and FOUR FATHERS KICKSTARTER hype, with the Dave Housley at TNBBC's The Next Best Book Blog.

We really do. And we are very thankful for the opportunity to do so. Excerpt? Cool.

DH: Related to the question above, but something I've been thinking about a little as I edit my piece for FOUR FATHERS: what would you tell your kids if they were sitting down to read FOUR FATHERS? How old do you picture them being when you think about that (if, indeed, it's a thing you've thought about)? 

BT: I have thought about this, and what I would like to tell them is that they will see slices of our lives, sometimes mine, or theirs, and that these slices were spun into something else, things I was trying to figure out, and stories that people can relate to. It also feels like there is a subtext to this question about whether I think they will be offended or upset by what they read. Which I guess is the subtext to my answer as well. I don't think these stories as a whole will be upsetting. They reflect more poorly on the protagonist if anyone, though as I re-read them, they are mostly about confusion and how we communicate, feeling abandoned, coping, and the million small things I constantly think about. And from that perspective, my kids only play a small role in these pieces, significant, but small, despite the content. 

We are CCLaP Podcast 100.

Which means we get to talk Orphans, Lost In Space, I AM, The 27th Mile, FOUR FATHERS, and KICKSTARTER among other things. We also get to talk about a number of writers we quite love. And we are very appreciative for all of it. Word.