Leo X. Robertson's Blog, page 13

May Interview – Rebecca Gransden

Great interview with a favourite writer of mine, Rebecca Gransden

Opportunity for Writers!...?

My good Goodreads friend Arthur Graham asked me the following:

“Any good throwaway ideas for a book, like something you definitely won’t be writing yourself? Also, can you write it for me?”

This is how I responded:

As usual, I started off trying to out-wit your response (“So essentially you want another book written that no one asked for/ will read?” was the best I came up with) but ended up settling on making a sobering point instead!

I’ll blog-post this also to maximise readership because as far as my experience goes, this is what I advise:

Any writer reading this should go sit down and write me a story called “The Acorn.” It’s as good a stimulus as any other. Calling it “The Acorn”, by the way, is non-negotiable. I’m a writer. I have convictions.

Writers have one week to do it. If the week passes and the story’s not done, bye bye. Oh, your kid, your dog, the connection wasn’t good, the idea didn’t come—do I give a shit? Bouncers outside Glasgow nightclubs told me the following when they spotted that I was clearly too drunk to let inside: “Try somewhere else.” (I say this to the writers, and it has the same implication: it won’t work here or elsewhere.)

If they write the story, they should then not just send me that story and think I should be thankful to have used any of their time at all, start blogging about it, ask me and others to like rate comment subscribe, no: that seems professional, but it isn’t.

They should wait a week, take another look at the story, see that it probably sucks, edit it if it’s salvageable OR write me a second story titled “The Acorn.” They should keep writing stories titled “The Acorn” until they have written the best thing they’ve ever written in their entire lives, just because some guy on the internet told them to!

Welcome to the creative process. Isn’t this how themed anthologies are formed? Isn’t writing more about grit, persistence, work, perspiration, than it is inspiration? Yes. Does a writer need to be an insufferable ponce in order to get a few words on the page? Talking about what she does, why she does it, what type of fucking pencil she uses, the difference she’s making? Absolutely not. Just get it done. Feed the muse anything and sit patiently awaiting what she gifts you (this is not poncery because it’s how the process actually works.)

Once you’ve spent a good deal of time discovering these stories inside you/ in the ether, about acorns, you realise, wow, so I could sit down any day and discover a story about anything?! Now you understand the importance of writing everyday. Now you’re hooked. Now you must. Now you are a writer. Because anyone can write a million-word novel without any restrictions on time or quality. Anyone can write A story titled “The Acorn” (I was going to say “a story about an acorn”, but it doesn’t have to be), but few have the tenacity to write five, ten, fifty, and pick the best. There’s no guarantee, even, that after fifty, any of them are good. (Unlikely, but possible.) Writers acknowledge this uncertainty, and write in spite of it. No one is asking us to do this, so we must impose the constraints on ourselves and take them seriously. Good writing loves constraints.

Okay so from here on out I start making up statistics to make my point. The statistics might even contradict each other, but this is a work of fiction: the point is the point.

For this anthology to exist, out of 10000000000 writers on this site, I’d need about 1000 to read this. That already disqualifies the project, but let’s assume they do.

Out of 1M words that get written for this project, we end up with 50k worth reading. This sounds wasteful, but it makes sense: we don’t know who’s writing what or why. 50k is miraculous. This is how we get it.

500 like this answer/post. 100 send me something. Pretty much all of them think I’m joking about them having to write even more than one story. I accept this not only because I have to, but because developing the abilities of writers as a result of this project is just a nice effect it could possibly have, but it’s not the goal. It’s a numbers game. I reckon 10/100 stories are good: I either get these from ten authors who’ve written ten stories or from a hundred authors who wrote just one each. What do I care? Despite how much writers complain about rejection, they do the bulk of the work themselves.

Of 100 authors, 50 send me something great. 10 send me something transcendent.

I encourage the 50 who were shortlisted. I’m sure I would love to sit and provide them detailed edits, find gentle, personalised ways to tell them to keep going, but who has the time? I’ll send them what I come up with. I don’t have to.

70 of the ones who didn’t get accepted send me bitter, angry retorts. But I’m a writer: it’ll take more than that to sully the experience. I can’t let it have me sitting around writing stories about narcissistic idiots just because they’re the majority. (Anymore!) Characters should be original, special, interesting. I’ll give these people no further attention. They don’t deserve it.

3 of the ones who didn’t get in thank me for my time and say they’ll read and promote what we end up making. I encouraged 50 in the hopes of catching these 3 writers in my encouragement net. These are writers who were almost there and will make it next time. Or the time after. Or the time after that. Or the time after that. Providing the next rounds of rejections don’t break them. They might.

I send edits to the remaining 10. If these anthologies take off, I’ll have the right to be a bit more strict about what I accept, and won’t accept anything that even needs editing. A few fight me on the edits. Sometimes that’s what writers do, sometimes it isn’t. We must have convictions without being dickheads.

I make us a book. We get disheartened because it takes six months longer than we expected, but it gets done eventually. Writers are patient.

Of the 10 who sent stories, 7 get as far as telling their friends and family, though I begged all of them to do it. Why am I the one doing the begging? This is as much their opportunity as it is mine. Whatever: I accept it. Someone has to do it. At least if it’s me, I know it’ll get done.

The 3 others, despite me having informed them of the competition they eliminated, are too shy, don’t want to bother anyone—and they won’t. 5 of them thank me for my hard work. 4 get actively involved in marketing.

Would I have a story in this book? Interesting question. If I decided “yes”, I would write and write until I had a story whose quality I felt was undeniable and then send it to those other writers to see if they agreed. I think the point is, if I decided “yes”, I would do anything to make it happen; if I decided “no”, I would do something else.

3 of us go on a tour. We are The Acorn. Who’s to say this doesn’t turn out to create a wonderful book anyway? Still doesn’t mean it will sell, necessarily. We just have to decide whether or not that was really the goal. If it doesn’t sell. It might! You might say that’s what makes it exciting. I say, you might as well see it that way, because either way, that’s how it is. A writer would choose to see it as exciting, just as a committed partner might choose to stay with their loved one, year after year, after the initial spark of ignition has faded and now she must decide, year after year, if it’s worth continuing to stoke the engine. Half of all marriages fail? I would’ve thought 90%. But that’s no slight on marriage. If anything it’s a testament to the robustness of marriage, because whether or not you’re intelligent, you can make it work—sometimes.

If we get frustrated, we just need to remember our pretty cool origin story. G asked R for a writing idea. What they did next will shock you.

Assuming 1000 people who are prone to calling themselves writers read this:

You think I’m not serious? PM me for an email address to which you will send your acorn stories. This single step of active participation has eliminated 90% of the writers. (Writers aren’t lazy, don’t make excuses, but most of the ones who call themselves “writers” do, are.) Those of you who get in touch, you have one year’s worth of weeks to write a great acorn story.

You won’t. You might not participate because you don’t know who I am: fair enough. You might succeed elsewhere, but if you haven’t participated because all of this sounds like too much hard work, I doubt it. If you are inclined to retorting bitterly and angrily to rejection—either through an email you actually send to an editor, or one you just write in your head—it’s either out of confusion, because you don’t know about the above process (if so, I hope this helped—keep at it, mate! Be one of the 3 this encouragement reaches!); or you do know about it, and you know you’re the one holding yourself back. I thought you were passionate about this. So did you.

Don’t get in touch just to tell me this was useful. That’s why I wrote it. Go write something else. In so doing, help me to survive with very little indication that I’m making a difference, let alone a positive one. Writers need this training. Also, I stopped caring what people thought about me long ago. I think that’s dangerous and exciting. Stating it outright might make me sound unlikeable. It might qualify as “telling.” But you’re a writer in my flock: we respect one another. You assume I was aware of these writing principles a priori and decided to go against them; you realise it would be inappropriate to point them out.

I’m away to write something else. Excuse me. After that, I’m gonna play Zelda: Breath of the Wild, until my eyeballs melt, as is my wont, after the work is done.

Losing the Plot with Harry Whitewolf!

This episode’s guest is Harry Whitewolf, highly prolific fiction(ish) writer, poet, and children’s author with his Mr Wolf moniker! We talk about the indie sphere, writing when inspired, and the relationship between writers and their influences.

Check out Harry’s already impressive output on Amazon

And keep an eye out for his upcoming collection, Indie Poet: Thirty Poems From My Thirties!

If you’re a writer, reader, editor, someone with something to say, you think you’d make an interesting guest? Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me at losingtheplodpodcast [at] gmail [dot] com. I look forward to it!

Losing the Plot with Harry Whitewolf!

This episode’s guest is Harry Whitewolf, highly prolific fiction(ish) writer, poet, and children’s author with his Mr Wolf moniker! We talk about the indie sphere, writing when inspired, and the relationship between writers and their influences.

Check out Harry’s already impressive output on Amazon:

www.amazon.com/Harry-Whitewolf/e/B00DTFUT7C

And keep an eye out for his upcoming collection, Indie Poet: Thirty Poems From My Thirties!

If you’re a writer, reader, editor, someone with something to say, you think you’d make an interesting guest? Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me at losingtheplodpodcast [at] gmail [dot] com. I look forward to it!

Updated 2017 Robertson Publication Schedule!

I gave you a brief overview of stuff of mine that’s coming out this year, and then there were even more and so now I need to update it!!

- “Stabbing in a Lighter Darkness”, short story published by The Stockholm Review of Literature, here

- Ebook of “Bonespin Slipspace”, with Psychedelic Horror Press (due asap!)

- [Something Else] in something that I think is still secret that’s coming out in, uh, June? 

- “A Disturbance”, in Unnerving Magazine issue #3 (June?), alongside an extract of “The Grimhaven Disaster”, Unnerving-published novella (see later in list ahaha)

- “Levels for Sustainable Living” in Helios Quarterly’s Volume 2, Issue 2: “Redux & Progression”, in June, I think. This one makes me a semi-pro writer—I think! (A full-pro writer would know whether or not he is, ahaha)

- “Cool Kids” in Deadman’s Tome Campfire Tales (tentative title)—more on this later, but I’m lucky enough to be the one coordinating this (hopefully) pair of anthologies, due August!

- “The Grimhaven Disaster”, horror novella about a party at an abandoned nuclear plant, with Unnerving, due August

- “Brothers”, paranormal(?) novelette in Unnerving’s upcoming “Hardened Hearts” anthology, December

- Probably more, I mean it’s only like April. It should be a lovely summer! Even although I spent all that time working on summer books instead of bod.

Okay so look out for more announcements later this year and please consider signing up for my newsletter so you don’t miss anything! (Those of you who already signed up: thanks so much! I’ll send your bonus story soon :D)

They say to write every day, right, but I think I can just stop now xD Lol jk, ALL THE STORIES all the time!! :D

How do you stay motivated?

This was a super insightful question posed to me by my brother when I told him a little about trying to get stories published. It’s a good one and one without a simple answer, though I have a number of approaches that might work for you. I want everything I do to be open source because, I don’t know, I guess I think you can’t be a fiction writer without seeking to minimise instances of suffering anywhere around you. And also, if you were to read everything I’d read when I read it, do all the writing exercises and analyses I do, you wouldn’t end up writing the same thing as me—so when it comes to competition, neither of us have anything to fear. And that’s a perspective already!

Leo Party Principle

I explained this in my interview with A. Lynn Blumer on Losing the Plot, and my brother nicely coined it the Leo Party Principle. Say you go to a party with 200 new people at it, thinking of making new friends. How do you approach it? Firstly, you only have one evening to talk to them, so you have to conduct a friendship-triage: what is the likelihood that you and such-and-such will be friends? You don’t even have much time to conduct this analysis, so you’ll use anything at hand as a measure. If you’re lucky, you’ll come away from the evening with maybe two new people you’d like to see again. It’s not that you or anyone else you talked to later sent each other rejection letters, but you worked out what was and wasn’t for you, with an anticipated mutual benefit. Rejection is everywhere in life and simply more apparent in the sphere of writing. What you experience when submitting to journals, publishers or agents is what’s going on in life around you all the time, and just like what’s going on in the world, it’s rarely personal. Also, Sturgeon principle: 90% of everything is shit—and I’m pretty sure that applies to people. That might even be generously low!

What else would I do with my time?

That’s one way to look at what you’re doing. Maybe you’ve seen the film “Paterson”, in which a bus driver and amateur poet writes poetry every day but never shares it with anyone, suggesting the process in itself is reward enough. His wife on the other hand picks up new hobbies all too frequently, and is convinced she’ll be a star in no time. Neither is really right or wrong for their approach—the key is authenticity: what do you want out of this? You should find out what you want and be honest about it, hold yourself to a high standard and set goals accordingly. It’s okay not to “just be happy to be here.” It’s okay not to feel like you fit in any group that would have you as a member. Don’t kid yourself: do something about it. I enjoy what I get from the process, sure. That’s most of it, in fact. By the time a story’s done, it’s taught me everything I can learn from it, after all. But I can’t pretend I’m content with that alone.

Stay informed

In this article, written by Richard Thomas, he reveals his publication history and percentage of acceptances. Now that’s brave! For Thomas, someone who’s been writing as long as he has, the percentage seems a bit low to me. That must mean that what they say is true: rejection affects everyone at all stages of their career. His honesty helps you adjust your mental picture of an ideal future.

I recently wrote about having a panic attack on a plane and then getting to meet the captain because of it! He wanted to meet me to do anything to help his passengers from being afraid. He recommended me an app which shows you the G forces that the plane experiences during turbulence, so you can see that it’s never outside the range that the plane can handle. I think all of us have a fear of staying informed about things that scare us, but it helps to quantify, in real terms, what’s going on, rather than have our worrying imaginations take over. Duotrope is a good way of logging in your story submissions, and it will tell you how you’re doing compared to other users. If you’re worse, why? If you’re better, what did you do differently? How is it changing and what are you doing to change it? Be curious, take an active interest, quantify. This is rarer in authors than you might think. When I went to the Twisted50 awards ceremony earlier this year, I spoke to an author who said the project was great because there weren’t many institutions looking for horror stories. I was like whaaaaaaa there are so many! We’re all going to get rejected, but sway the odds in your favour by gathering info. That doesn’t mean choosing outliers, such as JK Rowling’s eventual success, as an indication that ANYTHING can happen. You want to know what’s LIKELY to happen and what you can control. Don’t sully your love of fiction by pretending this is a lottery or that there is not a single meritocratic element to it. Learn from challenges. Improve as a writer, certainly.

Do your job

Recently I’ve gotten a few rejections for a novella saying that editors were impressed (!!) by my work but didn’t think it was right for them. Cool, then I did my job, held up my end of the bargain, and didn’t waste anyone’s time. That I can control. These types of rejections, they say, aren’t really rejections at all; they’re indications that I have done and continue to do a good job, and that’s… my job! To do a good job. And I have a writers’ group to whom I send my stories, and they tell me how to improve them. Which means I have feedback, and an audience! Sure, on some days I daydream about self-publishing, which is wonderful because it means stories can be read by others, but I don’t think it’s the path I want in the future, so I stay focused and enjoy the taste I have of what publishing can offer—like an audience—as much as possible.

I mean, what is the point? On a bitter day, you can interpret this as: no one’s asking you to do this. But it also means: getting published isn’t everything, and writing isn’t about money at least for the authors I like. Famous people (ie, not me) will tell you it’s not what matters. So it must be about doing the best you can and securing the audience you can. You’re not wholly able to influence the opinions or abilities of magazines and publishers. They don’t look at you from an ivory tower. They might look at you from across a café. And think you’re cute! Hey, that’s an idea: if the writing’s not currently going great, what else are you good at? Take stock, reflect, rejoice. That’s always helped me. When I’m having a day of rejections, I think of something lovely I can do for my husband, like make a lovely dinner or take us out for a film, and then the day is back on track: I’ve supplied its necessary joy through alternative means. Recently I went through a super traumatic event involving tenants in my flat, and during this acute period, my family and friends made themselves extra accessible to me to ensure I felt as normal as possible. This is what support networks are for, and the pain you feel when pursuing your author goals is valid, and hardly brought about by much that you’re doing. Use your network and support it too: both will make you feel good.

What’s next?

Once one story’s sent off, it’s easy to get excited about the next story, which has the potential to be the best thing you’ve ever written. That’s actually quite likely! Every writer alive is still learning.

I won’t kid you

It’s an unfortunate thing. I currently have (I think) five short stories, four novellas and three novels (!) seeking publication, some of which have been passed around with various degrees of “possibly this is the venue” for over a year. How do you remain optimistic about stories when they take this long to find a home? I really wish I could find an audience for these pieces since I’ve worked on them so damn hard.

Sometimes they say yes

Sometimes they do. All you can do is to write as best you can and get as educated about the process, about magazines, about publishers, as you can. Don’t feel stupid if it doesn’t go the way you expected; you can never know everything, not even about your own work. You just have to do your best: that’s all anyone can ask of you. When you get hung up on it, when you get angry at institutions for holding you back from the fame and fortune you think will cure you, the problems lie elsewhere in your life. Forgive a family member. Stop writing. Look at a fucking tree. Then, once you’re ready, get back to work.

New Losing the Plot, with writer SS Haque!

This week, I chat to SS Haque: writer, Muay Thai boxer, extrovert!

We talk about the differences between poetry, short stories and novels; her love of Graham Greene; and why those who want to write full time should be careful what they wish for!

If you live in London, make sure and check out The Society Club in Soho on a Friday, and if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll see her perform!

Follow her on Twitter

Check out her Wordpress

Check out her stories

And some of her poems!

As always, if you’re a reader, writer, editor, anyone who wants to come on the show, or maybe you just have something you’d like to tell me: get in touch with me at losingtheplotpodcast [at] gmail [dot] com—always nice to hear from you!

The Robertson Quarterly Review

Not starting a literary magazine, no (with what time?!)—I just thought that title would be a good one for a blog post about the last three months and a bit.

Who am I!

Scottish process engineer living in Oslo.

Podcast!

Losing the Plot—I’ll be back to weekly episode format asap!

Upcoming publications!

This year:

- “Stabbing in a Lighter Darkness”, short story published by The Stockholm Review of Literature, here!

- Ebook of “Bonespin Slipspace”, with Psychedelic Horror Press (due asap!)

- “The Grimhaven Disaster”, horror novella about a party at an abandoned nuclear plant, with Unnerving, due August

- “Brothers”, paranormal(?) novelette in Unnerving’s upcoming “Hardened Hearts” anthology, December

So grateful for these opportunities for my stories to get out and into the world!

If you want to know more/want updates from me, sign up for my newsletter!

Those of you who sign up now will be treated to an exclusive story I wrote, called “Gash and Burn.” It’s about this Scottish process engineer who lives in Oslo and accidentally turns his flat into a Romanian brothel. If you wonder where I get my ideas from, well, this one, uh…

Recommendations!

Start with the ones I’m vaguely authorised to give!

Literary magazines: Unnerving, Clarkesworld, Apex, Lightspeed, Uncanny, The DARK, Nightmare, The RAG, Typehouse, Flapperhouse, DailyScienceFiction, EveryDayFiction, Deadman’s Tome. Most or all of these are available at their sites to read—the top writers today giving it their best, for free!

Books: I’m quite enjoying this one called “Pachinko” by Min Jin Lee. I’m not even halfway and already it’s spanned three generations of a Korean family from 1900 to WWII. Quite spectacular! Puppet Skin by Danger Slater will always be in need of new readers, The Sugar House Papers by Arthur Graham is similarly unmissable. Give me a shout if I’ve missed anything—brain fried by jetlag, nothing else coming to me at the moment.

Podcasts: Marc Maron, Joe Rogan, Anna Farris, Sam Harris, Jake and Amir, Jon Gabrus.

TV Shows: these I reckon are either in their latest season or will get another soon— Veep, Kimmy Schmidt, Broad City, Lady Dynamite, Rick and Morty, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Silicon Valley, Modern Family. I can’t see why it would be beneficial to have another season of these because the one we got was nicely conclusive: Doctor Foster, Fleabag, Marcella.

Films: Dude have you seen Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 yet? It has to be the happiest film ever made. So good. Watch it now. Also: Pandora. Just that one, I think. The Netflix one. Fucking incredible! When I was writing The Grimhaven Disaster I was researching nuclear plant accidents and I was like, why are there not more films about this? It’s terrifying and thrilling. I was excited to have found a niche but daunted by the prospect of having to stand alone with it. Well, Pandora has everything: nuclear accident, scientific accuracy, thrilling parts, unbelievably emotional parts… Like… it’s 10/10 from me.

Influences!

Mostly straight, white, male, American and dead. Occasionally not.

So the above is all you might want to know about me if you don’t really know me. For those of you who want to go even further, read on!

***

I just got back from my brother’s wedding in Osaka!

Osaka is ReALLLLYYY fucking far away! So far away. You can’t believe how far. You take this plane that’s basically a flying building and you’re in it for SOOOO LONG. It’s creepy. I don’t get it.

Anyways, the wedding was fantastic. We took part in a small ceremony in a temple in which my brother wore this samurai outfit and his wife was in a kimono, and at the end my sister served sake out a teapot. It was a really lovely day, and my brother’s wife is so cool: she made parts of her own wedding dress. Her family were lovely and laughing and chattering so much my brother almost got a headache with all the translation, because he speaks fluent Japanese.

We also went to Universal Studios and I ate cockroaches at a reptile café, where you can hang out with chameleons and that. I was too adrenaline-fuelled to even tell you what they taste like but they’re meaty buggers.

I had a panic attack on the plane home: ordinarily I’m not the best flyer but this plane was seriously huge and I was convinced, convinced we were all going to die. A lovely stewardess saw me panicking and said the same thing had happened to her in the past, but now that she flew everywhere she was used to it. She let me meet the captain who recommended me an app where you can see the g-forces the plane is experiencing during turbulence and said I’d never see the range of forces go outside what the plane can handle (-1 up to 2.5 Gs. That doesn’t seem that much, does it?? What do I know.)

The stewardess said it was nice for me to see that there is indeed a human at the front of this plane. Not to invalidate anyone’s kindness, but, why? Because “human error” is the best kind? He said that pilots had a safety mindset, that they had created a culture of expecting the unexpected. I hear those kinds of lines in my company all the time: it’s helpful but in my head I was like, Deepwater Horizon, mate. If it’s really unexpected, you’ll have no backup plan. This shit happens. I get that it’s unlikely it will happen to me, but it does happen.

Political discourse these days all seems to be about how emotions and isolated incidents cloud rational thought. All I mean is I’ll forgive you for being afraid of something. The only thing that kept me safe as a child on planes was that way that I didn’t understand that pilots and doctors etc. were real people. Like, that age when you think teachers sleep in the school because they only exist to service your needs? Well, it seems mature to drop as much of that attitude about others as is physically possible (some remains due to necessary compartmentalisation) but I kinda wish I had a bit more of it. When I don’t see others panicking, I think, ‘Firstly, what right do you have to feel safe ever?’ and also, ‘Do you believe yourself such a good person that you’ll be spared the rapture?!’ and then, ‘If so, do you think that matters to the universe?’

Flying is one of those few situations without a panic button beside it so you can just bail at any second. You can’t just freeze time and have someone gently lower you back down to Earth with a ladder; you are committed, with or against your will, and that alone, whether or not I’m panicking at the time, is enough to make me panic.

So that’s flying.

I went bald!

Because I learned a few days ago that I was going bald (through an unflattering photo of me posted on Facebook—check it out if we know one another!), and “going bald” is something I never wanted to do; I’ll either have hair or be bald. So I have a buzz cut and I’m working on a beard and getting in shape. These are the international rules of being a bald guy: the beard is so you have something to style still and so you can convince yourself that you’re not losing hair but it simply migrated; the working out is so you… I don’t know. I think it’s so you think, ‘My head’s cold but I can punch a wall!’ I’ll need to confer with others.

I’d be pretty happy with a less eventful, uh, year, even! If in fact the universe can hear us, it probably heard me complaining that I was writing loads but was afraid I didn’t have much more to say. So I got walloped with some whole new EXPERIENCE and I think the tank is full enough for a good while.

Until next time!

Wishing you the best for the remainder of this year!

New Losing the Plot with Horror Author Gary Buller!

Listen here!

Gary Buller is a Mancunian horror author whose latest short story collection, “Mechanisms of Despair”, was released by Deadman’s Tome on 1 April (no jk.) We talk about the creative process, submissions, and the thrill of watching horror films when you’re way too young for them!

Check out Mechanisms of Despair here.

Follow Gary on Twitter @garybuller

And as always, if you’re a reader, writer, editor, person with something to say? Get in touch with me at losingtheplotpodcast [at] gmail [dot] com — I look forward to hearing from you!

[Of course I’m still learning how to get this podcast off Soundcloud and onto your favourite streaming service—we am a small operation, though :D I’ll get on it!!]

New Episode of Losing the Plot, with A. Lynn Blumer!

This episode’s guest is A. Lynn Blumer, Co-owner of Pyre Publishing, which has produced the books N: Poems and Stories and N: Volume Two. We talk about the scourge of millennials, the craft of poetry and her ambitious attempts to publish an entire city!