Friends! Interviews! Downloads! Compassion?

That may have been a lame play on words, though maybe not, we will definitely focus group that and get back to you. In the interim though, we came across two things we want to share with you from and about two friends and writers we are fans of. First off, Joshua Mohr author of Some Things That Meant The World To Me, which we recently riffed on here at the blog, has a great interview up at SFGate, very nice, do check it out, and second, Ken Wohlrob of the Love Book fame, also riffed on here at blog, has a new story, Job in Williamsburg, which we read some version of along the way, also very nice, that he is releasing as a downloadable e-book, the first apparently of monthly dowloads he intends to make available, so do check this out as well. We would add here, that both of these shout-outs do tie into this now ongoing diatribe of ours, books are not dead, and writers are not obsolete, but we do need to work it. Cool?

Six Sentences. Six Deaths. Ken Wohlrob. Goodness.

We of course have never had any qualms expressing our affection for any number of writers and Ken Wohlrob author of the quite fine short story collection The Love Book is certainly no exception. Today we wanted to take a moment to hype a newish joint of his, the kick-ass magazine-style Six Deaths which was posted on the equally kick-ass Six Sentences as part of the Six Sixes series. We know that this is a lot of Six, but don't be frightened by this. Nor should you be frightened by all the quality death going on here. Instead we recommend that you embrace it, the six, the death, the Wohlrob, all of it. Who knows it just might change your life.

Coolness and the Happy Bus. Oh, and Happy New Year. That's a lot of happy isn't it? It is. Though with a touch of sadness as well.

Friend and fellow author Ken Wohlrob is attempting quite a cool thing - releasing his story Happy Bus, from the most excellent short story collection The Love Book, as a free eBook for the iPhone, SONY Reader, Kindle and whatever else is out there on the electronic frontier. You can check it out on his website, and we hope you will, because it just may be the future of publishing. Now does this make us somewhat sad, we think so, but that may neither be here or there, we just like the feel of a book in our hands damn it. And yes, even as we write this, we do of course recognize that we eagerly participated in the e-release of Repetition Patterns, our short story collection from CCLaP Publishing, but what can we say, while we are quite proud of it, and are very much enjoying the experience, we are still conflicted about the state of media, all media, as we head into 2009. That said, we are way supportive of Ken, the dude can flat-out write, we want good literature to find an audience regardless of the means, and we definitely want this effort to be a huge and raging success however that is defined in this day and age. So, done, and Happy New Year.

Freebird Books reading love.

We had a most excellent time reading at Freebird Books in Brooklyn this past Sunday night and want to offer many thanks to the quite awesome Ken Wohlrob author of the quite awesome The Love Book for arranging the reading, and reading himself - see him actually reading below, for real; Peter from Freebird for hosting, now please go buy books there, and a lot of them; and to the various people who came out, including, but not limited to long-time friends Lisa and Laura, old, like many decades old, friend and This Zine Will Change Your Life compatriot Adam Lawrence, and new bestest friend Michael Paige Glover the wonderful and quite cool artist that did the cover for "Most Likely Your Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine," who we would add can be seen below with TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson and "Go Your Way..." author Ben Tanzer, who wants you to know that he cannot explain what happened to his hair in this particular shot though he thinks it has something to do with the failed Wall Street bail-out.

So hit it, Take Two.

The Love Book? Love it. For reals.

We recently had the chance to read The Love Book by Ken Wohlrob who we will be reading with on September 28th at Freebird Books in Brooklyn and we wanted to let you know how much we enjoyed it. There are just five not so short, short stories in this unbelievably rich collection, and while love may be the operative word here, we're not sure anyone would call them love stories, per se. Now that said, are these stories all about how love gets warped, lost, manipulated, sublimated, twisted, fetishized, tainted and occasionally celebrated? Yes, and more. And so do we think you should you read this collection? Yes, again, for sure, so, go ahead, please read The Love Book, it just might change your life.

Lucky Man love and one vast, albeit faux media empire's efforts to turn Lucky Man lemons into lemonade.

First off, we want to send out a big thank-you to our newest best friend and the author of The Love Book Ken Wohlrob for the quite awesome Lucky Man shout-out he gave us today at his blog. Many thanks, and drinks are on us for sure sir when next we meet, which you readers may want to note will be on September 28th when we get together to read at Freebird Books in Brooklyn. Please come out, won't you? And second, you may recall that Lucky Man's new, and now former, distributor AtlasBooks has taken the remaining copies of Lucky Man hostage and our kick-ass publisher Manx Media has been forced to reprint them. What we didn't know is that this would require a new ISBN number. Why is that important you ask, well, there are some who have been let's say less than happy with the Lucky Man proofreading, but we couldn't technically make any changes under the current ISBN number. Now that we have to get a new number however, we also have the chance to give it a thorough edit, which we are doing even as we speak. Pretty cool, right? Way.