Thursday, November 13, 2008

Unilateral suction of child into ex-glargennum passage, say goodbye

* If you are in Birmingham area by chance tonight (Friday 7:30 pm) come to Greencup Books for their Zine Music and Arts fest, it is going to be a big party apparently, with books and bands and booze. I am reading with local Atlanta mastermind Jamie Iredell as well as Todd Dills of the 2nd Hand and his wife Susannah Felts, T.J. Beitelman, and Al Burian from Burn Collector.

Kind of awesome to me to be reading with Burian having been reading Burn Collector on and off since I was like 18, and having seen his band Milemarker more than a couple times back in the day as well. Cool shit.

* The Fireman and the Caper by Justin Dobbs, I really like this piece by Justin, our dually written chapbook TWIN MOTHER is in design stages and coming on, it is chockfull of masturbation and molestation

* Sam and Shane have never eaten clean pussy

* SIR!, best new litmag debut this side of Lasverrunum, it has so many good people in it: Chad Reynolds, Noah Falck, Blake Butler, Ryan Walsh, Scott Garson,Mike Young, Juliet Cook, Brooklyn Copeland, Rauan Klassnik, Peter Berghoef, Elisa Gabbert, Carl Annarummo, Peter Schwartz, Zachary Schomburg & Emily Kendal Frey, Sean Kilpatrick, Julia Cohen,Charles Lennox, Shane Jones, Spencer Troxell, Brandon Hobson, Nicolle Elizabeth, Nathan Logan, and William Walsh. Massively excellent. My thing is a brief and random excerpt from WHERE AM I WHERE HAVE I BEEN WHERE ARE YOU, the 10 day novel and such.

* I am getting obsessed with finishing these lists now, and sent out about 25 subs today, which is more than I've sent out probably in the last 6 months combined. List sub blast will continue throughout the weekend most likely if I can keep the momentum. Submitting is hard. I need to hire Keith Montesano.

* Michael Ives is a badass, seriously

* Rewatched Lynch's short film 'The Grandmother' last night, hadn't seen it in a while, it is pretty jarring and different than a lot of his later stuff, there is a lot of use of animation and stop motion, you can watch it in parts on YouTube, if you haven't seen it, it's like 30 minutes, it's about a kid whose parents bark at him so he grows a grandmother out of dirt on his bed, here's part one:

* Something else I can't remember


Brian said...

Blake, I just sent a submission to LC but accidentally forgot to give it a subject heading. Sorry. Please read it anyway. Sorry I'm doing this on your public blog. I'll delete it later. Thank you. Godspeed.

Keith said...

Considering my current employer screwed me, I'm available!

But you don't need me.

Glad to see my bugging your ass has helped the world read more of those. A bunch are gonna get snagged.

And make sure you keep me updated.


it came through fine brian no sweat i look fwd to reading

keith is the boss

jereme said...

how in lucifer's throat cavity do you keep track of all your submissions?

i thought about writing a web app to submission track/realized i don't ever submit anything because i am a lazy piece of shit/went to bar/eye fondled chapman college girls/went home/beat off/wondered why i don't try to submit more so i can get college girl affections easy/watched adult swim/laughed at the giant milkshake

Keith said...

It's actually pretty easy once you find a system that works for you. I'm sure folks would scoff at my system, but others have spreadsheets and all kinds of weird wizardry going on.

The hardest part is gathering the email addresses of the journals who still have a piece of work, so you can contact them if it was accepted elsewhere.

Especially if an email gets lost and they end up wanting the same thing.

Or, in Blake's case, getting a rejection months after a story had already been accepted and published (/nor I think, right?)

Good stuff/

ryan manning said...

gawker linked


writing down each sub on one line with the date you sent and which piece in ms word is all i do. when i get answers back i mark the date returned and the response.

at the top of the list i keep an index of each thing i'm sending and where it is, so i can keep tabs on how many are where. pretty simple

sam pink said...

head-splitting feelings of inadequacy

Keith said...

Yep. It's all about finding what works for you. I make my stuff unnecessarily complicated I think. But it's my system. So anyone who doesn't like it can kiss my ass.

By the way, I got a form rejection from a place today after 8.5 months. Wow. And the journal isn't even that good, which is even funnier.

Keith said...

I meant it's not that good because I'd expect something like that from The Paris Review or The New Yorker, but not this journal.

I wasn't saying that because I think they should've taken stuff.


jereme said...


oh my god, such fucking rigidness

seriously though that is way too much work for me

i'm all about initial effort to automate all tasks

i was going to write an app to track submissions, autosend form reminders to editors, report metrics and some other stuff

it's all about the metrics

sterile and indifferent metrics

i wish i would feel less meaningless so i could be more productive

Matt DeBenedictis said...

The Grandmother can't be forgotten. No bathtub brewed liquor can blot out the memory of seeing The Grandmother. I love that piece. It's like first time sex without all the awkward conversation when it's over.

abje said...

my way is similar to blakes I think. an ms word doc, list each piece and where, but I group everything into three lists, accepted, rejected, and submitted. So I am always adding to the submitted list, then moving them to either the accepted or rejected lists. I used to write dates but not so much lately because I can always find the dates from the sent emails. I guess I never send snail mail submissions anymore.

BlogSloth said...

Tell TJ I said Hello.

BlogSloth said...

Are you ever going to publish?

Anonymous said...

Rad. Thanks duder. Also, Milemarker reference? Oh Lovitt Records. I remember driving around West Trenton in my friend's Buick back in '98 while blasting Bluebird or Four Hundred Years.