Nik Korpon is Daddy Cool. And KICKSTARTER love.

For real. Here. Lovely. Yes. Not to mention some Korpon excerpt.

"This is my first foray into YA, though I felt obliged to keep it creepy with my creatively-titled story, The Ghost Train, which is about a ghost train that steals kids and takes them into the Neverafter if they cross a certain point the tunnel. There are some carnies and other weird things thrown in for good measure."

Writer In Residence. Day Twenty-Eight. And more. Way more. Really.

Here. Here. Here. Here. And here. And on and on and on.

These Things We Loved in 2011 Will Change Your Life.

We're not sure we felt especially blown away by much in 2011, but that shouldn't be confused with not endlessly encountering, absorbing and consuming things we loved. Nor should it ignore the fact that there was still much exuberance to be had, case in point, The Artist, and that for us it will always be about exuberance, searching for it, finding it, and reveling in it. We should also add, not surprisingly we suppose, that our search and consumption of art and exuberance is particularly related to and focused on books. Because it is always about books, first and last, and always will be. And yet, it's not only books, just mostly and as always, lovingly so at that.

You may not know it, but people still write novellas, we still read them and this was a quite fine year for them.

The Mimic's Own Voice/Tom Williams, Life After Sleep/Mark Brand, Old Ghosts/Nik Korpon, Nothing or Next to Nothing/Barry Graham, In Great Company/Michael Seidlinger, A Shiny, Unused Heart/J.A. Tyler.

Collections, short stories, flash fiction, absurdist, hyper-fiction, any or all of it.

Sex Dungeon for Sale!/Patrick Wensink, Prize Winners/Ryan Bradley, Carry Each His Burden/James Goertel, Songs of Vagabonds, Misfits, Sinners/Ken Wohlrob, Don't Smell the Floss/Matty Byloos, Normally Special/xTx.

Television shows that got in the way of reading, thinking, and sometimes sleeping, but ultimately made us very happy.

Justified, with a big nod to Margo Martindale, Friday Night Lights, we are still grieving and Louie, painful, and full of fear, isolation and confusion, but always funny, and knowing.

Television shows that have been better at some point, maybe even during their most current season, but still showed moments of awesome pain, humor and terror.

Rescue Me, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Modern Family, The Killing and Walking Dead. 

The one benefit to the new season of Mad Men being delayed due to contract disputes.

We started watching Breaking Bad. Most kind that. 

Novels by rock stars, music, not literary, though arguably literary as well.

alt.punk/Lavinia Ludlow and The Failure/James Greer.

Novels by handsome bearded men.

Birch Hills @ World's End/Geoff Hyatt and Freight/Mel Bosworth.

Novels by "daddy-cool" writers near and far.

Fathermucker/Greg Olear, The Bee-Loud Glade/Steve Himmer, Fight For Your Long Day/Alex Kudera and Sophomoric Philosophy/Victor David Giron.

In a maybe not so great year for movies, movies we still dug.

Marcy Martha May Marlene, Moneyball, Young Adult, Margin Call, Drive, The Artist and Hannah.

And movies we still hope to see.

50/50, Take Shelter and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Sports memoirs we read, which were as much about life, as we know it, and as we would like it, as sport.

Cardboard Gods/Josh Wilker and Chasing the Runner's High/Ray Charbonneau.

Book we suspect we did not read because we thought we might get discouraged about our writing, this being an semi-annual category of sorts, with previous selections including Radiant Days by Michael FitzGerald and The Failure by James Greer.

Volt by Alan Heathcock, which we will no questionably read in 2012. Promise.

And other books we intend to finish or start in 2012. For real.

B-Sides and Broken Hearts/Caryn Rose, Solace in So Many Words/Ellen Wade Beals, Nothing/Blake Butler, American Masculine/Shann Ray, Pulphead/John Jeremiah Sullivan, Half a Life/Darrin Strauss, Three Ways of the Saw/Matt Mullins and Out of Touch/Brandon Tietz.  

Indie publishers we are not so objective about overall, but are doing really good things regardless of how we may or not have benefited from said goodness.

Artistically Declined Press, CCLaP Publishing, Atticus Books, HOUSEFIRE Books, Curbside Splendor, Deckfight Press, Mendicant Bookworks and Main Street Rag.

Podcasts both established, and getting there quickly, we obsessively listened to.

WTF with Marc Maron, see Michael Showalter, Christopher Titus, Dave Foley and Laura Kightlinger especially, and Other People with Brad Listi, Darrin Straus, Ben Loory and Edan Lupicki in particular. Total goodness. Totally.

Music, so incomplete, but a lot terrificness nonetheless, for sure.

21/Adele, Undun/The Roots, Bon Iver/Bon Iver, Who Kill/Tuneyards, Sigh No More/Mumford & Sons and Relax/Das Racist. 

Poetry, which we believe we generally do not read enough of, though we probably can't say that's an accurate statement this year.

Emergency Room Wrestling/the dirty poet, A Soft That Touches Down & Removes Itself/David Tomaloff, Piano Rats/Franki Elliot, Haunts/Laura Cherry, Redneck Poems/Rusty Barnes, What I'm On/Luis Humberto Valadez and A Patchwork of Rooms Furnished by Mistakes/J. Bradley.

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 Lewis, Mason Johnson, Matt Rowan, Jacob Knabb, Dave Housley, Jason Behrends, Leah Tallon, Anna March, Victor David Giron, Jason Pettus, Nathan Holic, Ryan Bradley, Lavinia Ludlow, S. Craig Renfro, Greg Olear, Adam Lawrence, Nick Korpon, Lindsay Hunter, Matty Byloos, David Masciotra, Mel Bosworth, Brenda Brown Browne, Tim Frederick, Hosho McCreesh, Byron Hatfield, Lori Hettler, Patrick Wensink, Gina Frangello, Nick Ostdick, Pete Anderson, Paula Bomer, Brandon Will, J. Bradley and the Knee-Jerk crew.

"Has some weird type of understated elegance that turns this novella into a road map of the soul." My Father's House gets The Nervous Breakdown'd. And likes it. A lot.

Not unlike TNBBC's The Next Best Book Blog, The Nervous Breakdown has been a most kind supporter indeed of our work, and continuing this pattern of awesomeness, they have some most kind things to say about My Father's House as well. Big hugs to the always sublime Nik Korpon and the whole crew at TNB for their kindness, and drinks, many certainly, when next we meet. Now, how about some excerpt? Word. 

"Though the overall tone is a much more somber one than Tanzer usually brings, there’s a gutting insightfulness to My Father’s House. The characters are flawed and fumble through life, relationships, jobs. They make poor choices and they hurt each other, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. Even when they lie, though, whether to themselves or each other, they’re still telling a version of truth. Their truths are beautiful and painful and sometimes hard to accept, but they’re ones that keep us going, day after day, until the day we’re not." 

This Book Will Change Your Life - Old Ghosts by Nik Korpon.

We are thinking about dread. Wallowing in it really. We recently riffed on dread during Short Story Month 2011 as we talked about some of the short stories that crushed us during the last year. We were struck that when read short stories especially, we want to be punched in the gut, be it with humor or pain, and in that riff we focused on the pain. Which got us thinking dread, which is where we find ourselves today having finished Old Ghosts by Nik Korpon, a book which we might have loved for being set in Baltimore alone, yet is so much more, neo-noir, or something post-apocalyptic possibly, but is most definitely full of dread from start to finish. And we clearly dig the dread, need the dread, and there isn't pain here necessarily, and to that we say fine, it isn't needed here. Because here's the thing, you can't run with the wrong people, do the wrong things, and then just disappear and start again, all full of love and happiness and possibility. It doesn't work like that, it can't work like that, and thank God for that. And for the Korpon, who writes, sparsely, and effortlessly, doesn't get lost in fantastical flourishes, and is always telling story, always moving forward, and always pushing us to the end, where he finally offers a glimmer of hope and allows us a moment, though only a moment, to believe the dread has passed and we can catch our breath again.

Some most generous The Nervous Breakdown self-interview and excerpt.

The fine crew at The Nervous Breakdown has already been most kind to You Can Make Him Like You with a much appreciated review by TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Nik Korpon, and they are now running both an excerpt and a Self-Interview, and yes, that does mean Interview Sundays are back. It also means big thanks to the sublime Gina Frangello for pulling all this together. Now, what does it mean for you though? It means enjoyment. We hope. And excerpt. For sure. So please do enjoy, and please do excerpt, and please do keep being you, because we love that about you.

Is it true that you have an amazingly small carbon footprint?

It is if that's not an euphemism for something else.

No, never, this is a family site.

Word. Why do you bring this up then?

I think its good to open with some humor, and maybe even empathy, its more endearing and draws the reader into the conversation. More than that though, I was thinking about some of the commentary on my new book You Can Make Him Like You, which I am supposed to hype, yes?

Totally. Be subtle maybe, don't look desperate or sad and don't be too grandiose despite the initial reviews, but yes hype, must hype.

"The Catcher in the Rye for those who read Catcher when they were Holden's age." You Can Make Him Like You gets tnb'd. And likes it. A lot.

Big, humbling and overwhelmed thanks to Nik Korpon and The Nervous Breakdown for their killer review of You Can Make Him Like You. It left us feeling quite warm inside. And a little weepy. Drinks on us, for sure, when next we cross paths.

"Comparisons to High Fidelity--the film, specifically--are bound to turn up, and they aren't inaccurate. There's the Chicago setting, the good clubs, good bands, good films. But You Can Make Him Like You is, I think, the book High Fidelity could've been, wanted to be. Where Rob Gordon uses all of the references to deflect real life in High Fidelity, Keith fluently speaks pop culture, uses them as a means to find his way through the process of becoming an adult and a father."

Impress Me With Your Live Skills, Author. Velvet Podcast Episode 14 goodness.

Quite thrilled we were, and are, to have participated in the ongoing goodness that is the Velvet Podcast, in this case Episode 14, Impress Me With Your Live Skills, Author, where TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer got to talk live readings with the stellar crew of Caleb J. Ross, Brandon Teitz, Nik Korpon and the Ryan W. Bradley. Big thanks to Caleb, and yes we are quite Caleb this week, feels good, for organizing this and now we encourage you to go enjoy some Velvet Podcast action, who knows it just might change your life. A lot.