"All of these tales center around a fictional small town in upstate
New York, the sort of unimpressive geographical black hole that you hate
growing up in but don't ever seen quite able to escape. Maybe this
collection speaks so loudly to me because I'm from a town just like
Tanzer's fictional Two Rivers, New York, but I think the fundamental
truth of the place and its people is rooted in all of us; we grow up
thinking we know everything, and that everything is tragic, and we grow
old learning that the tragedy is what we've made for ourselves."
We are so podcast and so very Clayton Smith. We are also self-publishing, Dapper Press, Apocalypticon, Roald Dahl, Amazon, and free gift today from the Clayton Smith, if, when, you hit his website. We should add, that we are a mere five episodes away from Episode One Hundred, and we are interested in your thoughts and recommendations one who that guest could be. Most finally, This Podcast Will Change Your Life is on iTunes and we would greatly appreciate your efforts to rate the show there, something we recognize may not change your life, though it will certainly might change ours. Thanks.
Travel. Read. Rinse. Repeat. Reflect? We are on a beach and yes that makes us dicks. Which is to say we have been travel and read and beach since June, and work, yes, sure, but travel, and read and beach, rinse, repeat, all summer, and so we are dicks. The summer is over though, one last weekend of sand and books and such now behind us and the children back to school tomorrow. It may have been the busiest, if not, best summer in some time, and with each stop there was read. Slouching Towards Bethlehem in Los Angeles, Conquistador of the Useless in Philadelphia, Apocalypticon and Annihilation in South Carolina, and so many other books, and beaches along the way, including, but most definitely not limited to Where Alligators Sleep by the Sheldon Lee Compton. What struck us between train rides and books and so many drinks, is that a summer is comprised of moments, eating donuts in L.A. strip malls, listening to podcasts about Robin Williams while running on the beach, the endless Gin & Tonics, and that these pieces while wonderful in and of themselves, merge and twist into something else: a picture of something whole, nuanced, and full of details that make for a life lived. This too is what Compton has done with Where Alligators Sleep, pieces of flash and fiction, that linger in your brain, but then as a whole become something, a picture of what it means to be a man, full of violence, work, death, relationships, children, and what it means to be alive and part of the world. That Compton writes so descriptively, including passages like: "In two years I'll be gone. My end and your beginning. When you speak to people, any people,try to be polite. Don't look directly at them. Keep your tone soft and never let them see what you are, where you came from. It most likely won't help, but try anyway. And have a son. Teach him to hold his head high. Teach him to take it like a man. Teach him something, anything;" or stands so ably among his peers, especially the Appalachian writers such as Charles Todd White and Rusty Barnes, is merely a bonus, that his work may just change your life, is certainty.
@disneymyway1 I haven't read it yet, but @BenTanzer's Orphans is on my list. I feel safe vouching for it. His essays are terrific.
— Clayton Smith (@Claytonsaurus) August 28, 2014
There is vacation, and an isolated strip of beach and marsh and deer and fecund plant life, creeping everywhere, green and moist. There is death in countries far away, and much closer to home in militarized communities, as well as, suicide and disease. There is also read. Specifically, Apocalypticon by the Clayton Smith and Annihilation by the Jeff VanderMeer. These books were not selected as intentional efforts to illuminate the state of the world, much less our choice of where to travel. They were next on pile and they are beach reads. But they are also stories about nature, fear, and violence run amock. Apocalypticon is a Midnight Run for the dystopically inclined. Or, maybe The Road crossed with Some Like It Hot, sans the cross-dressing. All external banter and journey, but fucking A funny, even if built around disintegration, loss, and a sadness that cannot be fully faced.
On the face of it, Annihilation is somewhat its opposite in terms of approach. All internal search in terms of not just the protagonist's journey into her own insulated psyche, but the murky, self-contained, bio-hazard world she explores as well. Both remind us however, that the best speculative work is never very far removed from what we know: scared people do terrible things; there is an ongoing disintegration of family, even as we redefine what family can be; and the environment is morphing into something we cannot hope to contain, much less understand. Further, humor may be one of chief defenses against all of it, but we cannot deny that while we may prefer to avoid making hard decisions, there is a growing, and global, psychic rot of our own creation that we will not escape, unless we are willing to change the way we live, and begin to embrace the belief that the world deserves better.
And massively appreciated too. Excerpt? Word. "The essays in Lost in Space are raw, and not in the way that people like to talk about loud, discordant, thrashy music being raw. They're raw in the sense that when you read Lost in Space, you get the feeling Tanzer has feverishly scrubbed away any layers of gloss-over polish that might otherwise coat these recollections, leaving us with an extremely real, relatable, sometimes-wounded, sometimes-wounding look at his parenthood reality."
And so TWITCNOMICON 2014 it is. But what is it, you ask? Let us learn you:
Just follow all six of the writers below on Twitter (including TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer), and you can enter to win an insanely good set of 9 books, including:
A Chorus of Wolves by Alex Kimmell
The Key to Everything by Alex Kimmell
Lost in Space: A Father’s Journey There and Back Again by Ben Tanzer
Dumb White Husbands vs. Zombies: The Zomnibus by Benjamin Wallace
Apocalypticon by Clayton Smith
Pants on Fire: A Collection of Lies by Clayton Smith
Billy Purgatory: I Am the Devil Bird by Jesse James Freeman
Joe Vampire by Steven Luna
Joe Vampire: The Afterlife by Steven Luna
That’s right. Nine books for zero dollars. What are you waiting for, you reader, you? Enter now, below, yes, awesome, you. a Rafflecopter giveaway
