The New York Stories is all Pungent Parlour and CCLaP Chicago Book Expo 2015 Preview at City Lit Books, yo.

Thanks to @cclapcenter, @citylit_books, @jason_pettus, @BenTanzer, @josephgpeterson & the rest of the readers for a great event last night!

— Chicago Book Expo (@ChicagoBookExpo) November 20, 2015

A CCLaP Quadruple Book Release Party and Performance Extravaganza photo podcast wrap-up thing.

There was CCLaP. Readings. Books. Photo action. Podcast. Take a listen. Enjoy. And big thanks to the CCLaP and the Beauty Bar.

CCLaP intersection spotlight thing Take One - Karen the Small Press Librarian.

With CCLaP's fourth anniversary rapidly approaching the center is receiving all sorts of well-deserved attention and adulation. In general, we couldn't be more excited about this, but we are especially excited because so much of the attention is coming from venues we quite dig, the first of which is an interview recently posted on the Karen the Small Press Librarian blog run by TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Karen Lillis. Now, how about some excerpt? Word.


How has the reception been for the e-books you’ve published so far? I’m not trying to single out your authors, but more to ask how you reached out and found an audience, and what you learned about how to find your readers in between Book #1 and Book #4.

When I talk to my friends who run more traditional basement presses about this subject, it looks pretty certain that in general terms, CCLaP is generating the same amount of paying customers from the ebooks as they are from their paper books, which as most people know is nothing to sneeze at but no great shakes either. The nice thing, though, is that since the ebooks are released under a "pay what you want" scheme, it means that our paying customers only make up around 25 percent of the book's total readership; and so if you're talking just about how many eyeballs the center's books are getting in front of, you can think of it in general terms of about three to four times the amount of a typical basement press. The biggest lesson I've learned so far about gathering an audience is that this stuff really does fall along traditional age lines to a great extent; so that is, whenever I publish a middle-aged author with a middle-aged audience, downloads of the electronic version are always smaller than a title by a twentysomething with a college-aged audience, even when that book will often generate the same amount of press and interest away from the internet. The adoption of ebooks is truly a generational issue, I'm slowly learning.

You Can Make Him Like You Beauty Bar release party video love.

Big thanks to the Jason Pettus and the whole crew at CCLaP.

This Podcast Will Change Your Life, Episode Twenty-Nine - The Situation.

Oh Caleb J. Ross, we hope you are pleased, there is new This Podcast Will Change Your Life, Episode Twenty-Nine in fact, "The Situation," starring TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Jason Pettus of CCLaP fame. It is a late night edition. There is Guinness involved. And we are fairly sure it will change your life. For real.

CCLaP Urban Decay/Urban Renewal reading podcast and photo madness. Let us rejoice.

We have done the CCLaP Urban Decay/Urban Renewal reading. The crowd was great, and very attractive, always a bonus, and the line-up was much fun, way stellar, and also attractive, definitely a bonus, and so we hope you will not only take a moment to visit both our new friends Mark Brand and Katherine Hodges and long-time friends and TBWCYL, Inc. favorites Sally Weigel and Jason Fisk, but also take a listen to the Urban Decay/Urban Renewal podcast which we have both linked to and embedded below. Finally, big thanks to our hosts at the Op Shop and to Jason Pettus, CCLaP's fearless reader and patron of writers and artists everywhere.

This Podcast Will Change Your Life, Episode Five - Robot Girlfriend Roundtable. Redux. And Re-Release.

Episode Five. Madness. Multiple Jason's. Tim Hall's. Guth's. And hot robot girlfriends. Its madness we tell you.

This Podcast Will Change Your Life - Redux and Re-Release.

In essence MySpace sucks it. They bought imeem and our entire catalog of podcasts disappeared. Gone. Like really gone. After we recovered from the shock though, we thought maybe this is an opportunity, free stuff can be scary and more control would be nice. So, we connected with our new best friends at libsyn and we have now uploaded the entire series into a nice clean platform, with much bandwidth and the opportunity to access the iTunes universe, which is good when world domination is the goal. What does this mean for you though? Well, first off, it means This Podcast Will Change Your Life is back in business and better than ever. Take that MySpace. It also means that we have all new links, so if you have previously linked to one of these podcasts please make sure you are up to speed. Finally, we are just geeked to be looking forward after weeks of despondency and late nights, and so in celebration of our new platform and sunnier, less stressful, future, we have decided to re-release all twenty-two podcasts over the next two days beginning right now with Episode One, Walt Whitman Means Delicious, starring the Jason's, Pettus and Behrends, and the Ostdick, Nick Ostdick. Cool?

We got paid. And we are most appreciative.

In a galaxy far, far away, the fine team at CCLaP foretold the day when the Repetition Patterns money would be most bountiful and the rewards would be shared by all. That day has come to pass and so it was that this past Saturday night at the CCLaP Royalty Party the money flowed and it was most sweet. Most.

Money, money, money. And a CCLaP Royalty Payout Party this Saturday, December 5th.

CCLaP is rocking the Uncommon Ground this weekend and paying both TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer and TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Sally Weigel their first $100 in royalties for their respective CCLaP publications - Repetition Patterns and Too Young Too Fall Asleep. We suspect this gathering will change lives, and for the better, though please note that if it doesn't, drinks will still be drunk and money will exchange hands, so at a minimum, there will at least be some happiness.

Pettus. Bosworth. New stuff. Life changing stuff.

Hold the presses. Is that the right cliche? Let's say it is. And let's say that Jason Pettus and the crew at CCLaP have a new joint out - The CCLaP 100 - as does the always handsome and bearded Mel Bosworth - When the Cats Razzed the Chickens & other stories - and we are thinking that you may just want to order both. Like right now. Will doing so change your life? Maybe. So why not hit it? There you go.

Too Young to Fall Asleep by Sally Weigel.

As previously announced Jason Pettus and his minions over at CCLaP have a new joint out Too Young to Fall Asleep by Sally Weigel. As also previously discussed we promised to re-consume Sally's novel and then report back on it here, right here. And so to loosely paraphrase the always awesome Otis Day, let's hit it. Too Young to Fall Asleep takes something we all think we know, high school, and intersects it with something we don't yet understand, the impact of the Iraq War. What's unique of course, is that it seeks to accomplish all this, just as movies like In the Valley of Elah, Stop Loss and now The Hurt Locker have tried to do as well, by capturing the essence of living during a time of war while the war being explored is actually happening, no time to look back, no time to reflect. It's a big and awesome task, and Sally has jumped-in feet first, planting her stake in the still shifting ground, and establishing a precedent for all of the Iraq War literature that is sure to follow.

"The detail is beguiling." Repetition Patterns receives some kind words from The Short Review. That, and an interview.

We are quite thrilled, and most appreciative, to have received some very kind words about Repetition Patterns from The Short Review. They also asked TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer to do an interview and excerpts from both are below.

The review:

"Some of these stories might seem inconsequential. They're about tiny happenings or changes. People long for something, they grow up or move away. But the detail is beguiling, and often something dark or unusual is happening behind closed doors – the older sister who plays breathing games with the baby, the father who insists on giving visiting children a goodnight kiss, or the husband who sleeps with all of his neighbors' wives."

The Interview:

How did you choose which stories to include and in what order?

"It’s funny, I had the group of pieces I had written, and I had an order in mind, and then Jason Pettus from CCLaP got excited about publishing them, but still threw some out and re-arranged the order as he saw fit. I just sort deferred all that to him, which may say something about my desperation to be published. That said my understanding is that he draws on a Magic 8 Ball to make these kinds of decisions. Well, that and peyote."

CCLaP update, shattered hips, well-wishes and such.

We want to take a moment to give a big shout-out to Jason Pettus of CCLaP and wish him a speedy recovery. Jason was in a bike accident, shattered his hip and is currently recuperating at his parent's crib in St. Louis. He wants everyone to know that he's doing better and hopes to have the site up and running again in a couple of weeks. In the interim though, please feel free to visit his Facebook page for updates and photos and if you are so inclined please leave him a message and let him know that you're thinking about him. It may or may not change your life, but it will certainly enrich his.

The prose is starkly elegant, channeling Raymond Carver - some much appreciated Ostdickian Repetition Patterns blurbage. And a quasi-update as well.

The great scholar, gentleman, and terribly unbiased Nick "The Quick" Ostdick has written some awfully kind words about Repetition Patterns on his blog In The NICK Of Time, which are much appreciated, while The Pettus has simultaneously decided it is time for a quasi-update at the CCLaP blog on the many wonderful things you might want to know about where things stand in the world of Repetition Patterns and all is has wrought at the time of its one month anniversary. We recognize that this is a lot of Repetition Patterns love to take in at one time, but we really and truly believe you can handle it, so go ahead take a look, yeah, you can do it. Nice.

All sorts of reasons to celebrate all that is the Time Out Chicago.

In a wonderful confluence of visionary, and dare we say, daring Time Out Chicago literary love, there are not one but two book-related highlights related to Time Out Chicago this week that we wanted to share with you. First, a most excellent review of BFF Tim Hall's new joint Full of It, many congratulations sir, and second, a sweet write-up on Jason Pettus and CCLaP's efforts to launch its electronic Radiohead-style publishing arm with the release of Repetition Patterns by TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer. Cool stuff all around and big props to Time Out for its support of the local independent literary scene. Many thanks.

Repetition Patterns - a story cycle by Ben Tanzer. Coming soon from Jason Pettus and CCLaP. Really.

To say we are geeked about this would be quite an understatement. This is a group of our early Binghamton-inspired stories that we had always hoped someone, some day would be interested in publishing as a collection and we are thrilled that Jason Pettus and CCLaP have decided to do so. We are also thrilled to let you know that in collaboration with Jason we have revisited and re-mixed them and so even if you think you have read them before we believe you will be in for a newly pleasant and stimulating reading experience. To learn more about this project please visit the CCLaP blog here.

Guest blogging, massive name-dropping and much love for the quite awesome J. Kaye Oldner.

J. Kaye Oldner of the kick-ass J. Kaye's book blog invited TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer to guest blog today, which he has done, and despite his great desire to endlessly and shamelessly feed his massive ego and talk on and on about his writing prowess and massive successes, we here at headquarters decided that it might be more appropriate to temper that a bit and focus on all of the wonderful writers, bloggers and friends, new and old, we have met, connected and re-connected with during the last year as Lucky Man has shown some legs and Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine has found a home and been released. Which is not to say we didn't take a moment to hype our awseomeness, or stroke our beloved narcissism, just that we thought we would cast the net a little more widely. So, many thanks and much love to J. Kaye, this was much fun.

All Ostdick all the time. Well, and some CCLaP too.

Generally bearded friend, blogger and fantastic writer Nick Ostdick is not only running a new edition of the quite entertaining 50 Word Story Segment on his blog this week, but it highlights the most awesome and widely published J.A. Tyler, who we are huge fans of here at headquarters and are most happy to remind you has been published in This Zine Will Change Your Life. Nick has also given "Go Your Way..." a nice shout-out this week as well, which is much appreciated, many thanks sir, as has the incomparable Jason Pettus at CCLaP who has always been and continues to be another good friend and champion of TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer. So, many thanks to Jason too, you are both peaches in our book, kind of sticky, yet sweet and terribly yummy.

Meet the Author - The Orange Alert Press interview.

Our most generous publisher and good friend Orange Alert Press has reached out to interview "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine" author and TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer about the new book, the Chicago literary scene and what the future holds for said spokesperson. We think you may find this interview interesting and we think you may even find yourself name-dropped, especially, though not only, if you happen to be named Elizabeth Crane. Of course we think a lot of things. That said, if you are so inclined you are invited to take a look at the interview on the Orange Alert Press blog. Will it change your life? It might. Either way though, we hope you enjoy it.