Daddy Cool Holiday Special there is.

For real. And for a mere $8.00 through December 15th at that, yo. We know, right?

This Book Will Change Your Life - Here Comes The New Joy by the John W. Barrios.

The John W. Barrios is ephemera and love, and while biased we are, in so many ways, to read Here Comes The New Joy is to know the pain, and yes, joy of its author, someone we call friend, even if in fact we've never met in person, shared a cup of coffee, or had any actual contact that might otherwise constitute connection. That the Barrios' opening essay The Quick And Sick Of Life, in what is otherwise a poetry collection, will break your heart in 10,000 ways is a given. That we will be drawn to that which is more prose than poem, take The First Time I Lied for example - though do note our most subjective bias, as this lovely, haunting, terrible piece appeared in Daddy Cool - or The Stuffed Version Of Himself, is also mostly always a given, does not minimize the head-butting power of The Poet At The Podium or New Mexico, 1970-Something, much less the fragmented poems that litter both the landscape of Here Comes The New Joy, and what we assume is Barrios' psyche laid-bare for our consumption. Because they are all of a piece, life and its odd mixture of joy and pain, and pain and joy, and how it all becomes mashed together. At least for Barrios there are words, intricate and blown-up, a gift not all have at their disposable when it comes to their need to escape their own vulnerable brains, much less change their life.

This Book Will Change Your Life - Rabbit Punch! by the Greg Santos.

"There is no happiness like mine.

I have been eating poetry."

- Mark Strand, "Eating Poetry"

Travel. Read. Eat poetry. Happiness. We do not read enough poetry and every time we do, we say that here. There are poets we love. Jason Fisk. Though he claims he is not a poet. Laura Cherry. Seth Berg. BL Pawelek. Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal. We read them because they are so interesting, and aim so high, and because we are so biased, because we know them, publish them, and love them. And the Greg Santos is no different. We read him because when we first met him he wrote about the Hulk, and we loved that, because of his humor, and his use of pop culture. And here we are again, reading, and traveling, and eating poetry, in this case Rabbit Punch! by the Santos. Which again, we are biased, because we love him too, and because we are shallow and excited to see Hooray from This Zine Will Change Your Life and The Great Hoarder from Daddy Cool included in the collection. But it's more than that as well. Santos delights in language as he riffs on the "Macho Man," Paris Hilton and zombies, the work is full of joy, and when we read him we are happy. So, we do hope you will hit the Rabbit Punch!, as it will surely change your life, and we do hope you will suggest other poets we can eat, because we have a lot of love to give, we are happy to be happy, and we are really fucking hungry.

Daddy Cool is Kindle. Totally.

Here. Here. And here. All of it. Everywhere.

These Books Will Change Your Life - Vampire Conditions by the Brian Allen Carr and I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying by the Matthew Salesses.

Do books hang together, or do we make them hang together? It's true that we know the Brian Allen Carr and the Matthew Salesses in a small press, internet sort of way, emails, Likes, cyberstalking, the usual stuff. And that we admire their work, their ongoing productivity, and the quality they bring to it. It's also true that we solicited them to submit work to the Daddy Cool and cool they were. We even set out for AWP in 2013 seeking copies of Vampire Conditions by Carr and I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying by Salesses, but didn't do so with the sense that they had to be consumed at the same time. And yet we have consumed them together, and now have to ask: do they hang together? We suppose they do for all the reasons we sought them out in the first place. They are written by peers, if not outright colleagues, of a piece and time period, small press, dad authors who are carving out a place in a field of clutter. Quality clutter certainly, and there's that word quality again, but clutter none-the-less. There are just so many books, and please don't tell us publishing is dead, ridiculous that, and so many good books at that. But it's more than all this, or at least an extension of it. Both writers are creating worlds all their own, which may be the same as finding their voices, but they are distinct, and it is exciting, and they surely hang together for this reason alone. 

Meanwhile, Carr may be visiting the same terrain as Cormac McCarthy, and it may be lazy to draw that comparison, but place is place is place. Still, Carr is creating his own version of it, and arguably represents a new generation chronicler of this already well-tread territory. A world where there is the violence and desperation we know, but also one all its own. One filled with teachers and life on the fringes, special needs children, and dead babies. It is gothic and it is dusty and the culture South of the Border endlessly mingles with the world of Southwest Texas. But it is also Carr's world, and it is continually expanding, with each sentence, each story, and each new book. Salesses exists in a whole other world, one focused on identity, bastard children, family, mixed-race relationships, and culture, old, new, foreign, and domestic, seeking connection, battling confusion, and trying to create a new, cohesive world all its own. Salesses goes even further though with I'm Not Saying, which via its novel as flash fiction approach, seems to come from a twisty, whirring, whole other world entirely. Which it may be, because what else should we expect from this many intersecting influences? Ultimately, we find ourselves in worlds both old and new, that are as unique as the authors themselves, and sure to change your life.

These Things We Loved in 2013 Will Change Your Life.

It always starts with books, these posts, the year, our day, everything. And there other things, television, music, and movies. Though not enough, never enough. There are never even enough books. But here we are anyway, taking a moment to share what there is, and what there was, with you, now, totally.

Books by handsome men with facial hair, bearded, and otherwise.

The Map of the System of Human Knowledge/James Tadd Adcox, This Isn't Who We Are/Barry Graham, Here is How is Happened/Spencer Dew, League of Somebody's/Samuel Sattin, The Cost of Living/Rob Roberge, Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children/Dave Newman, Gripped/Jason Donnelly, Sightings/B.J. Hollars, We the Animals/Justin Torres, Gigantic Failures/Mark Cronin

Movies we are happy we got to see during a year that we did better than last year, but still didn't see enough to satisfy our movie Jones.

Before Midnight, Mud, Fruitvale Station, World War Z, Gravity, Dallas Buyer's Club, 12 Years A Slave, The Immigrant, American Hustle, Frances Ha

Movies we are happy we got to see because our children wanted us to.

Catching Fire, Iron Man III

And those we still hope to see.

Her, Stories We Tell, Nebraska, The Wolf of Wall Street, Captain Phillips, Springbreakers

Books published by Curbside Splendor that we quite dug and may have only been partially biased towards as we read them. 

MEATY/Samantha Irby, Zero Fade/Chris L. Terry, Tomorrowland/Joseph Bates

Books published by Artistically Declined Press that we quite dug and may have only been partially biased towards as we read them. 

Border Run/Shya Scanlon and A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst/Hosho McCreesh  

Books we had the pleasure to blurb and hope you have the pleasure to read.

Participants/Andrew Keating, Bad Kids from Good Schools/Michael Wayne Hampton, Why God Why/Matt Rowan, Commercial Fiction/Dave Housley, Blood a Cold Blue/James Claffey, sleep/David Tomaloff, The Last Great Halloween/Giano Cromley

Music, which we apparently listened to not much of this year, but we still listened to this.

Southeastern/Jason Isbell   

Music, we got to listen to live, which was way more than last year, that we quite dug. 

Ike Reilly/Schubas, Peekaboos/Empty Bottle, Killer Mike/Pitchfork 

Books by Chicago author Pete Anderson, because well, it's the Pete Anderson.

Wheatyard

Television shows we kept on watching, and we watched a lot of television this year, that got in the way of reading, thinking, and sometimes sleeping, but ultimately made us very happy.

Game of Thrones, Justified, Girls, The Walking Dead, Happy Endings, Mad Men, The Killing

Television shows we consumed because our older son said it must be so.

LOST

Television shows we finally started watching and consumed whole. 
 
Homeland, Breaking Bad

New television shows we happily consumed.

Orange is the New Black

Television shows from abroad that were not Downtown Abbey.

Top of the Lake, The Fall

Anthologies we gladly contributed to, and at times may have even edited.

Daddy Cool, Hairlit, Vol. 1, The 27th Mile, Multifesto: A Henri D' Mescan Reader (The Remix), Fried.Follow.Text., barcode

Collections, Short Story, and otherwise, by Chicagoans. And a novel.

The Temple of Air/Patricia Ann McNair, Decisions/Neil Kitterlin, Such Phantom/Rachel Hyman, The Blue Kind/Kathryn Born

Collections, Short Story, and otherwise, by non-Chicagoans. And a novel.

Shenanigans/Joseph Michael Owens, All the Roads That Lead From Home/Anne Leigh Parrish, Goodnight Nobody/Ethel Rohan, The Girlfriend Game/Nick Antosca, Understories/Tim Horvath, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe/Charles Yu

Memoir, or at least, Memoiresque, work.

Overthinking the Marathon/Ray Charbonneau, Crapalachia/Scott McClanahan 

Books by handsome men without facial hair, bearded, and otherwise.

The Infects/Sean Beaudoin, Fight Song/Joshua Mohr, Bones Buried in the Dirt/David S. Atkinson, Watering Heavan/Peter Tieryas Liu, Whiskey Pike and Turbo Tan/Jeff Phillips, Last Call in the City of Bridges/Salvatore Pane, [SIC]/Davis Schneiderman, Sad Robot Stories/Mason Johnson, Transubstantiate/Richard Thomas 

And most finally, there are many, many people to thank for this most rocking of years, and we are most definitely overlooking some, a lot maybe, and we apologize for that, here, now, but there you go.

Lauryn Allison, Mason Johnson, Matt Rowan, Jacob Knabb, Dave Housley, Jason Behrends, Leah Tallon, Anna March, Victor David Giron, Jason Pettus, Moeses Soulright, James Claffey, Nathan Holic, Ryan Bradley, Steve Lafler, Lavinia Ludlow, Rob Funderburk, Greg Olear,  William Walsh, J.A. Tyler, Ryan Singleton, John Barrios, Joseph G. Peterson, Tim Horvath, Cassandra Gillig, Michael Seidlinger, Adam Lawrence, Dave McNamara, Robert Martin, Mike Smolarek, Nik Korpon, Andrew Keating, Joseph Bates, Justin Lawrence Daugherty, Matty Byloos, Naomi Huffman, Brad Listi, Loren Kleinman, Michael Czyzniejewski, Myles and Noah Tanzer, Mel Bosworth, Benoit Lelievre, Emma Mae Brown, Tim Frederick, Todd Summar, Megan Stielstra, Hosho McCreesh, Kathryn Born, David S. Atkinson, Debbie Pritzker, Peter Schwartz, Jason Donnelly, Catherine Eves, BL Pawelek, James Yates, Brian Allen Carr, Seth Berg, James Goertel, Amber Sparks, Dan Coxon, Robert Vaughan, Jillian Lauren, Meg Tuite, Robert Duffer, Joseph Michael Owens, Carrie Lorig, Salvatore Pane, Sam Irby, Johnny Misfit, The Book Cellar, Michael Paige Glover, Jennifer Banash, City Lit Books, Judith Tanzer, Samuel Sattin, Kimberly Ann Southwick, Chris L. Terry, Ross McMeekin, Samuel Snoek-Brown, Mark Heineke, Mike Bushnell, Richard Thomas, Adam Tanzer, Patricia Ann McNair, xTx, James Tadd Adcox, Chris Oxley, Mellow Pages Library, Julia Borcherts, John Reed, NIU Press, Brian Gresko, Lori Hettler, Bill Hillmann, Don DeGrazia, Shawn Syms, Steve Karas, Cort Bledsoe, Barry Graham, Matt Micheli, Robyn Pennacchia, Jessi Lee Narducci, Matt Potter, Cari Luna, The Mooney's, Cyn Vargas, Russ Woods, Jeff Phillips, Steve Himmer, Sarah Lippman, Mikaela Shea Fowler, Giano Cromley, Zoe Zolbrod, Tom Williams, Joshua Mohr, Patrick Wensink, Mark Cronin, Davis Schneiderman, Ray Charbonneau, Gina Frangello, Rachel Hyman, Nick Ostdick, Scott McClanahan, Pete Anderson, the Tomaloff's, Paula Bomer, Wyl Vilacres, Brandon Will, the Knee-Jerk crew, J. Bradley, Jason Fisk, Pamela Erens

Daddy Cool is Limited Time Deal.

So do hit it. It just might change your life.

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."

"Outrageous!" Daddy Cool gets some Goodreads love. And likes it. A lot.

Really, really likes it. Many thanks to the Tim Frederick of Baby Got Books, and beers, brother, many, and on us, somewhere soon. Excerpt? Cool.

"Cool, daddy. Top shelf collection of dad/kid stories. My only reservation is that Myles and Ben Tanzer named their geek "Frederick."

"The End is the Beginning is The End - For Oak." Daddy Cool. The Seth Berg.

Daddy Cool is one the "7 Great Father’s Day Presents for Dads Who Like to Read" at the Babble and in some quite kind company indeed yo.

For real. Here. Totally. And big thanks to the Brian Gresko and Babble for that.

Fisk. Smolarek. Thomas. Anderson. Duffer. Peterson. Brand. And Tanzer. We are Daddy Cool release party. The Book Cellar. Tonight. Hit it. Yes.

"For fathers and sons (and the women who love them) everywhere." Daddy Cool get some Goodreads love. And likes it. A lot.

Is the review objective? Maybe? No. Who cares. Not us. We are most appreciative for the Corey Mesler. For his kind words. His contribution. And his endless Meslerness. Now, how about some excerpt? Cool.

"First class anthology put together by a first class guy, Ben Tanzer. For fathers and sons (and the women who love them) everywhere."

Fisk. Smolarek. Thomas. Anderson. Duffer. Peterson. Brand. And Tanzer. We are Daddy Cool release party. Saturday. June 8th. The Book Cellar.

And quite geeked we are. So please do join us. Bring your kids. Share this with your friends. Buy books. And change lives. Cool?

Daddy Cool is live. Retail. And happy to change your life.

Nice, right? We think so and we think you will too. So please do hit it, however, and wherever, that works for you. And thank you in advance for doing so, very cool of you. 

Daddy Cool (as modeled by contributor Myles Tanzer) is in the house.

We are Daddy Cool Title Page.

Check it. Daddy Cool Is Coming.

We are Daddy Cool Bullies No More! KICKSTARTER excerpt and it is most beautious indeed.

We are so beautious and we are so co-authors of Bullies No More! with TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer and son Myles. So please do hit that. Now, how about some excerpt of that excerpt? Word.

"There was a geeky kid named Frederick who lived in Bulltown. Frederick’s face was covered in freckles, moles, and warts. He had green, squiggly mad scientist hair. A bucktooth. And he was very pale.

Frederick always had schoolwork with him. Sometimes it was a book, other times it was homework or a study guide.

Frederick was the least popular kid in school and he knew it. People called him “dummo” and “stupido,” which didn’t make sense to him, because he was the smart one."

There is Dads & Families Daddy Cool interview.

It's true, we are talking Daddy Cool with the Bradley and the Duffer at the THE GOOD MEN PROJECT, it is most beautiful, and we are most appreciative. Excerpt? Yes. Done. Word.

GMP: Why are you enamored with dad writers?

Ben: I think it’s about seeking, or building, a sense of community when writing can be so isolating. Especially when you have a day job as I do that has nothing to do with writing. When you’re a parent, which can be a further disconnect. Community is so important, connection, reducing isolation, sharing, all of it, and seeking people who have something in common with you is such a big part of that. For me that’s dad writers, regardless of what they do otherwise.

Ryan: I ran a children’s bookstore for two years, and that was my real education in the medium. Until then I was really dismissive of books for kids. Then the deeper I plunged into fatherhood I realized nothing I write is appropriate for kids, and naturally I want to share my passion with my children. I wrote a middle grade novel for my stepson and then a short story (which will be in Daddy Cool) and I’ve bandied about some picture book ideas. I think the coolest part of the idea was that it was a chance for all of us to share our writing with our kids for a change.