Mark Brand and Davis Schneiderman get all Life After Sleep at the Big Other.

Most definitely have the CCLaP, the other, literary one, on the brain this week, much more on all that soon, and so really excited to see good, old friend, TBWCYL, Inc. favorite and This Podcast Will Change Your Life podcastee Mark Brand talking Life After Sleep with new friend and more recent TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Davis Schneiderman at the Big Other. Please do take a look and please do enjoy some excerpt. Please. Thanks.

Davis Schneiderman: Describe where the idea for Sleep emerged from, if you can…

Mark Brand: I first started piecing together Life After Sleep in 2007, shortly after the birth of my son. I was working 50+ hours a week in a medical office and was sleeping only 3-4 hours per night. As all new fathers do, I eventually came to accept that this is typical life with a new baby at home, but at the time it felt to me like I was the lone astronaut on a rocket to Planet Insanity. I had also always wanted to write something that pulled in some of my knowledge of medicine and the hospital/clinical environment, but I hadn’t really come across an idea I liked enough to make that happen.

By chance, I stumbled across an article in Discover magazine called “How to sleep 4 hours per night.” The article made mention vaguely of TMS technology and the potential side effect it has of putting people straight into REM sleep. My first thought was THAT’s what I want for Father’s Day, and my second thought was this would make an awesome short story. So I sat down over the course of a few weeks and wrote a short story that eventually became the “Dr. Frost” section of Life After Sleep. His section initially was a standalone short that I really liked and got some good reactions to from readers, but I just felt like I hadn’t done enough with the premise, and that there was so much more to say there about sleep and work, and it seemed to grow more and more relevant and alive in my head with each passing year. So I floated the idea to Jason Pettus, my editor at CCLaP Publishing and he liked the idea and told me to run with it. I went back and added Max and Lila and eventually Jeremy to make it more one large work.

Aside from just pure plot cleverness and a giant pile of subtext and not-quite-pointed statements about what I think people would do with a technology that allows someone to have 6 or 8 more hours in a day, (and not a few medical inside-jokes), I wanted to capture some of that experience of just being absolutely flat-out exhausted for an extended period of time. Things start to get wonky, you start waking up not knowing what day of the week it is and you realize you’re at work and you have no memory of having breakfast or driving there, that sort of thing. And in the middle of it, especially if you’ve got a new baby at home and you’re so mentally tied to two different and equally demanding facets of your life, you start to feel really bitter and fatalistic about it sometimes. I tried to grab onto that emotion and show the characters just full-on in the path of that oncoming wrecking ball.

Bad boys? Word.

Along with the endlessly magnetic Victor David Giron and Mark S. Brand, both This Podcast Will Change Your Life podcastees, here and here, respectively, we were recently invited to read and talk books at the quite wonderful Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore out in the Forest Park. Along with getting to meet owner Augie Alesky who quite rocks, we also had the chance to talk with books blogger Helen Kossler, who also rocks, and who has decided to collectively deem us as writers of "bad boy books." That is first, for us anyway, and that is awesome, so big thanks Helen for that. For the rest of you, please do take a look, please enjoy some excerpt and please feel free to comment on which celebrity referenced below might be matched with which "bad boy" author.

"All three of these guys have intense day jobs and personal commitments with wives and children but they long for the days when they were footloose and fancy free. Their longing seems almost comical to someone old enough to be their mother. I mean I want to shake them and say, “Welcome to the rest of your life! Responsibility isn’t glamorous but it beats the alternative, which is to be a slacker forever.” These are the literary equivalents of Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn and Matthew McConaughey. Charming but still wondering if Peter Pan had it right."

This Book Will Change Your Life - Life After Sleep by Mark Brand.

Life After Sleep is the new novella by TBWCLY, Inc. favorite and This Podcast Will Change Your Life podcastee Mark R. Brand. It is also the new joint from CCLaP Publishing, which means, first, that 99 Problems is officially archived, which we're okay with, really, because not only has it been a good run, but we are quite geeked about Life After Sleep, which we are certain will change your life; and second, that the brain trust at CCLaP has asked our team here to write a "Passing the Torch" essay for the CCLaP site as they seek a gentle transition from one book to the next. We in turn would like to share a slightly tweaked version of the essay here as well, which we hope is cool with you? Great.

There is the belief that we should temper our reaction to things, that caveats are required, and biases should be identified, that it's okay to love something as long as we explain how and why that love may be impacted by the personal, by history and preferences. But we would rather not take that approach to things. We suppose this eliminates any hope we have of being perceived as any kind of legitimate critic, but being a critic has never been the goal. In fact our primary goal is to embrace the sheer fanboyness of our day to day existence and not be so embarrassed by our exuberance for the things we love and that which we have any kind of personal association with.

Which brings us to Life After the Sleep, the new book by Mark Brand which is being released by the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography. Mark Brand is a friend. We have read together and edited one another's work. Mark Brand is also quite attractive, and we, like you are drawn to attractive people, that's just evolution so please don't fault us for that. Mark Brand writes science fiction, love the science fiction, always have, and that's not changing.

Further, CCLaP has released two joints of ours and we are indebted to them for that. CCLaP's director Jason Pettus and TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer have also drank any number of beers together and we greatly appreciate his discerning and critical eye, even when we disagree, which isn't often, but it happens.

Hello, Requiem for a Dream. What the fuck?

But we digress.

We are also drawn to any author that matures with his work and grows more nuanced as his vision expands, as well as, any publisher who understands what he likes, yet continues to try and capture that like in as many disparate ways as possible.

Which also brings us to Life After Sleep, a book by a maturing, and yes, dammit, attractive writer, being published by an ever evolving publisher, and our unabashed excitement by all facets of this project, none of which should diminish the work itself, a comment on who we are now and where we might be, but still remains grounded in all things recognizable as real, work stress, PTSD, family dynamics, and mostly, finally, sleep, how we get it, why we need it, and what happens when we can't find it, something else I am terribly biased about, but as we said, we are not critics, we're are fanboys, and we are all fan when it comes to this book and all it represents.

Rooney. Frangello. Brand. Eggs. Literature. Madness. Breakfast With The Author.

Breakfast With The Author, Episode 2 from Mark Brand on Vimeo.

This is too good, and we're not just saying this because TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer appeared on Episode 1 of Breakfast With The Author. Really, we're not, just take a look, and see for yourself. Go ahead. Nice.

This Podcast Will Change Your Life, Episode Thirty - One - Sci Fi Coats and Iron Heels.

Yes, excited we are, there is new This Podcast Will Change Your Life, Episode Thirty-One - Sci Fi Coats and Iron Heels in fact, starring none other than TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Mark Brand, Sci Fi auteur and author of the Red Ivy Afternoon. So, yes excited we are, and we think you will be too. It might even change your life. Might. Yes.

"Nuanced, unpretentious, and without fear." 99 Problems gets Vinnie the Vole'd. And likes it. A lot.

Vinnie the Vole, a.k.a., TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Mark Brand has written a super thoughtful and much appreciated review of 99 Problems, continuing a trend of reviewers focusing less, though not entirely ignoring, on the running and writing elements of the collection and instead finding a thread with as much or maybe more meaning to them, in this case the push and pull of wanting to be a "good" father even as we want to be everything else as well, in this case a runner, and writer, always searching for the creative spark. Many thanks bro, and for the rest of you, some excerpt.

"Admiration and pity are muddy emotions to pair with each other, but that’s exactly what this sort of narrative demands. Today’s Good Dad is an object of both. Beneath this is the place inside a real man where the static builds between how life is, how life should be, and the synapse of human nature that the creative sparks fly across. 99 Problems is that spark; nuanced, unpretentious, and without fear."

"This book was one of the best things I've read so far this year." Repetition Patterns gets Vinnie the Vole'd. And likes it. A lot.

We are most happy to let you know that Repetition Patterns got a really thoughtful review today from Chicago writer, fellow upstate New Yorker and TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Mark Brand and we most appreciate it. Please do take a look, please enjoy the below excerpt and definitely look out for our upcoming review of Mark's science fiction novel Red Ivy Afternoon. Cool? Cool.

"Anyway, for every father I know of young children, and every couple I know who grew up when I did and has seen the world change the way Tanzer and I have, I thought "this person really needs to read this book." Technically, it's like biscuits and gravy; understated, rich, and satisfying. The metaphorical subtext is present enough to color the whole thing beautifully the way some great indie films manage to do. You read it and you can't exactly put your finger on it, but you need little encouragement to devour it. Writing about my generation, the generation neither firmly Gen X nor Millenials but rather something more like "Garbage Pail Kids" where our first movie at the movie theater wasn't Star Wars but rather E.T. or The Return of the Jedi, is nothing new, but I've rarely seen it done this well, and usually when it was it was in the form of a screenplay."

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.

So hit it.

Weigel. Tanzer. Brand. Fisk. Hodges. CCLaP. There will be reading.

It's true. The fine team at CCLaP is holding its first ever literary event and it is centered around the theme of urban decay and urban renewal. The line-up is quite stellar and we expect much fun to be had by all. We also look forward to seeing you there, so thanks in advance for coming out, we feel special, and loved, and what else can you ask for really? Nothing.