This Podcast Will Change Your Life Artistically Declined Tweet hype.

Two of our favorite people, @BenTanzer & @HoshoMcCreesh in conversation. Doesn't get much better than that! http://t.co/6bGLiLZqun
— ArtisticallyDeclined (@BuckTweetADP) April 8, 2015

This Podcast Will Change Your Life, Episode One Hundred and Five - The Most Powerful Force In The Universe, starring the Hosho McCreesh.

So totally McCreesh we are. And so totally powerful it is. There is also podcast, not to mention drinking, poetry, New Mexico sunsets, and love, so much love. So do hit it, it just might change your life as it has ours. 

These Books from Artistically Declined Press Will Change Your Life - Border Run from the Shya Scanlon and A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst by the Hosho McCreesh.

Read. Read. Read. Holidays. End of the year. Compulsions. Escape. Read. And enough of that. We suppose we could mention our clear bias and endless subjectivity regarding the work of Artistically Decline Press, but what's the point in that? They have been very good to us and we love them, a lot, yes, done. But that would overshadow the fact that present company aside, the authors they've worked with are among our most gifted, diverse, and beloved. Ken Sparling? Roxane Gay? Fuck yes. And yes, we're using the word fuck a lot this week, but we're worked-up, yo, holidays, sleep, and so much good reading. It's da lovely really. Which we also suppose brings us to Border Run from the Shya Scanlon and A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst by the Hosho McCreesh. More gifted. More diverse. More beloved. All of it. And in both cases, work that drifts a foot from our normal reading head space - speculative fiction and poetry respectively - and places maybe we should vow, or resolve as it may be, to read more of in the new year? Yes? Yes. Because we've done not enough of either this year and it is rapidly coming to an end. So, looking forward, terrific, we will, and back, yes, we will soon as well, tomorrow. But for now there is the Border Run, a story of clones and government, and how things get corrupted. Maybe more so on the border, where so much is hidden and space is so expansive. And yet despite, or is it inspite, of all of this, the Border Run still comes back to family and love, and trying to discern what we really know about either, and how much we are willing to give of ourselves to make either work, when it is so much easier, to hide from these things, and ourselves. Something else that the border and the west and the space allows for if that is our wont. 

Then there is the A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst, which is so deep and so gorgeous, and also about love and family. But as memory piece. And drenched in alcohol. Always, saturated, and a celebration of sorts. Which is one of McCreesh's gifts as a poet, to be in motion and exultant at all times about all things. And the Thirst is about all things funny and sad, the dark edges always lingering, but never quite enveloping the moments. Or the life. His work too is about escape, into a glass, a bottle, or a bar, but even within that it celebrates life, and love, constantly, and lovingly, even if at confusingly at times, because life is confusing, whether you are inside, or outside, a bottle. And these are things that McCreesh and Scanlon share in their work. Escape may be a pattern, a trope, and a need, but there is love, could be love, will be love, and even when it's all so confusing, that possibility makes life worth living for. All of which is to say that we are biased towards love as well, and living, with pain, and escape and all the messiness contained therein. And with that, Happy New Year, yo, live it, fully, and with joy, knowing sorrow and darkness and confusion are there, always, waiting, but can be held at bay when we are watching for them, conscious, and living it, all of it. It being life, changed and otherwise, or more accurately, knowing what life is, so we can embrace all that it throws at us.

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live. All Drunk. And full of McCreesh.

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live. We have new piece, One bourbon, one Scotch, & one beer... 3 drunk poems by Hosho McCreesh, which we are way excited about, and, (almost) as always, photo action from Adam Lawrence, music curation from Jason Behrends and sequestration prose love from Pete Anderson. We hope you enjoy this edition and we appreciate all shout-outs and links. Finally, please note, we are hoping more of you will submit comix, and music, novel excerpts, and art, and video, yes, video, and combinations there of. And most finally, go Hawks, wow.

McCreesh. A Deep and Gorgeous Thirst. Artistically Declined. 2013. Yes.

We know, right? More. Here. And here. Word.

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

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

McCreesh. Something That's True. Mendicant Bookworks. Hit it.

Here. Totally.

We are having an Orange Alert book review moment. Part I.

More here. Or here. Really.

A double-dose of Hosho McCreesh.

We are big fans of writer Hosho McCreesh, see the quite fine Sunlight at Midnight, Darkness at Noon from the Orange Alert, and we think you should be as well. Did that sound pushy? Fine, because we believe that said fanhood just might change your life. So, what's the first step? Check out his new website, something you can do here, or here, and second, join us in reveling in Hosho's quite fine and crazily appreciated review of You Can Make Him Like You at the Goodreads, which has most definitely changed our lives. Big thanks Hosho and drinks on us whenever it is we get out to the desert you call home.

"Tanzer's best book to date, YCMHLY perfectly captures the Pop-infused wants and worries of both serious relationships, and having a first child. Breezy and entertaining, Tanzer delivers a weighty emotional journey, but one that never tumbles into melodrama--a very easy book to relate to and enjoy. "

There is Sunlight at Midnight, Darkness at Noon anniversary sale at the Orange Alert. There is also much goodness and rage. That, and a video. Bam.

Some much deserved Orange Alert Sunlight at Midnight, Darkness at Noon media love.

How cool is this, there is both an article in New City discussing the Chicago literary reading scene which nicely highlights among others, the work of the Jason Behrends and Orange Alert, as well as, an interview with Hosho McCreesh and Christopher Cunningham on the Kung Foox Art Collective blog where they riff on many of the topics - life, writing, and all that entails - that make Sunlight at Midnight, Darkness at Noon such an excellent and thrilling read. Good stuff, yes? Yes, now please take a look, it just might change your life.

Sunlight At Midnight, Darkness At Noon - The Cunningham/McCreesh Letters Volume 1.

Are we biased? Of course we are. Does that mean however that these letters aren't full of rage, beauty and ragged glory? It does not. And do we think reading them just might change your life? We do. So please take a look and then let us know what you think. Cool? Great.

the understory Pamela Erens and Oh Baby by Kim Chinquee. Good stuff. Really good stuff.

While we have been especially geeked to read two new books previously mentioned here, Stories by Scott McClanahan and Sunlight at Midnight, Darkness at Noon, a collection of letters between the poets Hosho McCreesh and Christopher Cunningham, we alas have not yet gotten our hands on them. That said, we have any number of books here at TBWCYL, Inc. headquarters that we have been wanting to read and so we took to the bookshelves this week in search of what might come next. As we did, it occurred to us that we have been reading a lot of books by dudes recently and while there is nothing wrong with that per se it seemed like it was time to mix it up a bit. Which we did after coming across the understory by Pamela Erens and Oh Baby by Kim Chinquee, two drastically different yet equally wonderful reading experiences.

the understory is a terrific novel and meditation on not just compulsion and isolation, but the role compulsion plays, good and bad, in the meditative life.

Oh Baby on the other hand is a collection of flash fiction and prose poems that seem to fall somewhere between shotgun blasts and song.

Both are like gifts that had been lurking right there before us just waiting to be discovered. We you hope you will discover them as well, because who knows, they just might change your life.

Check it out - Sunlight at Midnight, Darkness at Noon is coming soon from Orange Alert Press.

This is so cool, the new Orange Alert Press joint Sunlight at Midnight, Darkness at Noon, a collection of letters between the poets Hosho McCreesh and Christopher Cunningham will be out on May 25th and is available for pre-order now. Yes, now. So go ahead, order it, read it, feel good, change your life.