Mad To Live By Randall Brown

In 2008, Flume Press released a limited edition chapbook by Randall Brown called Mad To Live. It sold out almost immediately. Through the last few years I had always heard about the collection but never had a chance to read it because copies were almost impossible to come by. But everyone I talked to who had read it said it was amazing.

Before working with Randall on the Hint Fiction anthology -- his story the brilliant "Therapy Dog" -- I had only known him through the many rejections that was sent my way from SmokeLong. I think I may have read some of his work online at various places, but never had a chance to read his work together as a whole because, again, his collection had sold out. Fortunately, PS Books (a division of Philadelphia Stories) has recently rereleased the collection as a deluxe edition with "bonus tracks."

The other week at the Hint Fiction reading at the KGB Bar, Randall kindly gave me a copy of the new edition and I finally had a chance to read it over the weekend. And I'll tell you, dear blog readers, those people I talked to before? They weren't lying about how amazing it is. I knew from the very first story that this collection was going to be a keeper. How couldn't you with an opening like the one from "Little Magpie":

I find Maggie squatting on the kitchen floor beside the door to the garage. My eyes always go to her belly first, as if she swallowed a globe. There've been two miscarriages, both early. Never have we gotten so far. Then I notice she's picking something off the floor, putting it in her mouth. Get closer. They surround her. Hundreds of them. Ants. Maggie is eating ants.

A lifetime of sitcoms has prepared me for cravings -- pickles, hamburgers. Running out in the middle of the night for a pint of Haagen Daz Vanilla Swiss Almond. Strawberry Frosted Pop Tarts. But insects?

Maggie looks up. She removes the finger from her mouth. "Must be the baby," she says. Her hand follows the curve of her belly. "She wants bugs."

With the "bonus tracks," the new deluxe edition includes 22 flash fiction pieces that demand to be read again and again. I'm not joking. I've read some really great story collections in the past, and they're collections that I recommend, but very few do I feel I'll actually read through again. I immediately had this feeling with Mad to Live. Each story is so expertly crafted, characters becoming fully realized in only a page or two. Having read this book, it's no wonder that Randall is so well known for writing flash fiction. Not to sound overly cheesy, but Randall Brown was born to write flash fiction. And flash fiction, if it knows what's good for it, should be thankful.

P.S. Randall is the founder of Matter Press, which has recently published some great flash fiction and will open to submissions in the not-so-distant future.

Have I Mentioned Our New Friend?

Monday the wife and I brought home a new little furry creature. We left the store thinking it was a male -- at least that's what the prepubescent clerk with the braces and acne told us -- but when we got home we started to suspect it was a female. Yesterday I took him/her to the vet for a checkup (picture below) and even the vet isn't 100% certain at this point, as guinea pig genitalia, he claims, is too similar this early in the animal's life (only a few weeks old). Having stated that fact, he did relent that he was 99% certain it's female but won't know for certain for at least another month or so. Anyway, right now we haven't decided what to name her. My wife wants to call her Mohawk (Mo for short). I'm leaning towards the ever-ambiguous Charlie ... after the late great Charlie Sheen, of course.

Did you know guinea pigs eat their own poop? Neither did we until Monday night, when my wife was holding the guinea pig and it kept ducking down every half minute and started chewing something. Apparently this is called coprophagia, and it's a natural thing. Still, we need to teach her this isn't very ladylike. I mean, girls stop eating their poop come middle school, right? That's what I always learned.

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On a much more serious note, my thoughts and prayers are with the victims over in Japan. For those interested, here's the link to the Red Cross's donation page.

Priorities

Last week I sat down to write a blog post titled "The Day In The Life Of A Self-Published E-Book Writer." The entire thing was going to be made up of time stamps and how through the day the writer checks his sales, posts links on Twitter and Facebook, participates in twenty different message boards, and so on and so forth until the day ends. A lot of promotion gets done, yes, but what's missing? Any actual writing. In the end I deleted it. Why? Not really sure. Maybe because I felt my time was better spent trolling message boards (kidding!). In a perfect world, a writer would, well, write. But this isn't a perfect world, and most writers oftentimes find themselves becoming door-to-door salesmen. We learn that no matter what we write and how good it is, ultimately we need readers. And how do we find those readers? Why, by going to them, of course!

There's a quid pro quo happening with e-books that I find very disturbing. Basically, Writer A has a new e-book. Writer B says oh cool, I'll buy your e-book ... with the understanding that you'll buy my e-book too. And hey, most self-published e-books are inexpensive, so what's the harm? So Writer B purchases Writer A's e-book, and vice versa. But then Writer C comes along and says hey, I have a new e-book too. Writers A and B say oh cool, we'll buy your e-book ...

Well, you get the idea.

Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. Not if you acknowledge upfront that these aren't "true" sales -- "true" sales being from actual readers who have never heard of you before and are interested solely in reading a good book and not trying to get you to buy their book too. But the reality is that most writers write for other writers. Sure, there are some actual readers thrown into the mix, but unless you're hitting the New York Times bestseller list, your book is usually the one readers trip over to get to the new Nora Roberts.

What does this mean for today's modern writer? Even if you publish your book with a major publisher, there are expectations that you will help in the promotion of the book. Sure, your book will be sent to major review outlets, the publisher might put a few ads out online if you're lucky, but the day of the 6-city book tours are over for most of us. The mini Hint Fiction tour last November? Norton set those up for me, but the travel and other expenses came out of my pocket.

In the end, what should a writer's priority be? Again, in a perfect world it would be writing, but this isn't a perfect world, and if nobody is reading your stuff -- readers and writers alike -- then what is the point of writing in the first place? Yes, you can give me the usual BS about how you must write, how you need to write, how even if nobody ever read a word of your work again you would continue to write until the day you die, and that's all fine and good, but you have to be honest with yourself: being read by others is what we want. Yes, we write for ourselves (write what we like) but we also want others to like our work too. Does this mean we need to spend hours on message boards every day? Does this mean we need to constantly link to our latest e-book on Twitter and Facebook even though our friends and followers never change? Does this mean we should commit some violent crime and wear a tee-shirt with the cover of our e-book on it so when the police take us away and the press snaps our photo, people will see our tee-shirt with the cover of our e-book and think: Hmm, maybe I need to check out that e-book?

In the end, you need to do what works best for you. For some it's nagging at readers until they're worn down and buy whatever book comes out because they don't want to deal with it anymore. For others it might simply be a small announcement on Twitter or Facebook and nothing more. Maybe sales are great. Maybe they suck. Maybe they're so-so. This isn't a perfect world, no, but we should always be reminded of our priorities and that, as writers, our number one priority should always be to write. Nothing more, nothing less.

Hint Don't Die

It's been five months since the Hint Fiction anthology was released, and the concept of Hint Fiction still continues to thrive. Graphic design students at the University of North Texas created book covers based on stories from the book. I've included one, as seen above, but check out the site for a few others. More should be posted later in the week.

The Dutch have discovered Hint Fiction, and they seem to like it.

Two colleges are running Hint Fiction contests -- Palm Beach State and Penn State York -- which are open only to students. Still, pretty cool, no?

And, as mentioned before, the Columbia Art League plans to have their Hint Fiction exhibit ready for this August.

But that's not all. There are other Hint-related things being worked on right as we speak (figuratively speaking, of course), and I plan to share more news as it becomes available.