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McSweeney’s has created a book trailer for the imprint’s latest title, “That Thing You Do With Your Mouth” by Samantha Matthews and David Shields. The title, which is due out on June 9th, 2015, is Matthews’ story of sexuality and trauma, told to Shields. You can read an excerpt here.

The executives behind McSweeney’s hope to raise $150,000 on Kickstarter. The funds will go towards several projects in the pipeline: new issues for the company’s magazine and literary journal, the continuing operations of  a humor website and a culture podcost, and a great number of books. We’ve embedded a video about the project above.

Here’s more from the Kickstarter page: “Last fall, we announced that we’ll be moving toward nonprofit operation; that shift will be a big step toward sustaining our work for many years to come. But to keep our projects going and our lights on in the near term, your support in this moment is essential. By backing our upcoming undertakings, you’ll be keeping our corner of independent publishing alive through a pivotal period—and, of course, you’ll be getting some pretty amazing stuff from us and our exceedingly generous community of writers, artists, and friends.”

Welcome to our Kickstarter Publishing Project of the Week, a feature exploring how authors and publishers are using the fundraising site to raise money for book projects. If you want to start your own project, check out How To Use Kickstarter to Fund Your Publishing Project.

The  2014 Brisbane Writers Festival had an inspiring launch on Thursday night when author/publisher Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, What is the What – about the lost boys of Sudan) told a full tent  about the genesis of McSweeney’s publishing company and its 826 Valenica Writing Centres. The tutoring behind these pirate, […]

Technology-induced complete loss of zen means only one thing: retreating to the stationery cupboard and re-reading some fave books. I’m too time poor to revisit whole books, especially after spending over six hours yesterday trying to get a PDF to a readable stage on my iPad Mini. It’s an issue I blogged (read: ranted) about yesterday and which I still haven’t been able to, for the record, resolve.

My happy-place happy medium then will have to be McSweeney’s, Dave Eggers’ genius of an online journal. It will specifically have to be the following four entries.

The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do

The title itself guarantees that every doubt-wracked writer will click on the link in the hope of finding snippets of writing-tip gold. And horrifying, vaguely hysterical chuckling-inducing gold snippets it indeed contains, not least:

Think of your laptop as a machine like the one at the gym where you open and close your inner thighs in front of everyone, exposing both your insecurities and your genitals. Because that is what writing is all about.

For the record, I wrote this blog wearing pants. Many thanks to Judi for making me aware of this guide’s existence.

Interviews With Hamsters

McSweeney’s has truly mastered the Onion-like art of delivery hilarity completely deadpan. Case in point, realistic-sound interviews with hamsters:

There’s really only so long that a hamster can sleep each day, you know? […] I like to groom myself, and others, of course. But I’ve often got a spare ten minutes and once you’ve read the newspaper lining the cage, you’ve got to do something with your time, right?

and

It’s the one time that I get to think, just for myself. Between the repetitive motions and the squeak of the bearings, my mind just kind of goes blank, and I don’t worry so much about everyday things: will we get fed, where is the cat, has someone pooped in my corner, you know? Stuff like that.

From The Complete Guide to the Care and Training of the Writer in Your Life

I discovered this one only recently thanks (or rather, no thanks) to McSweeney’s dangerous rabbit hole of Suggested Reads, which lurks just below the end of its stellar articles. It yields such gems as:

The arrival of a baby can be a joyous experience for the entire family. However, [… writers] can find it difficult when a new member enters the ‘writer’s group’, especially if the new member is perceived as being of higher status or as a drain on writing time and resources. Never leave the writer alone with the baby. Ever.

I’m Comic Sans, Asshole

Then there’s my favourite favourite, I’m Comic Sans, Asshole (belated warning, there’s a bit of coarse language and innuendo contained within these entries).

It opens with:

Listen up. I know the [sh%t] you’ve been saying behind my back. You think I’m stupid. You think I’m immature. You think I’m a malformed, pathetic excuse for a font. Well think again, nerdhole, because I’m Comic Sans, and I’m the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes [f&%king] Gutenberg.

It subsequently moves on to oneliners such as:

‘While Gotham is at the science fair, I’m banging the prom queen behind the woodshop.’ and ‘I am a sans serif Superman and my only kryptonite is pretentious buzzkills like you.’

Happy (but hopefully Comic Sans-free) Monday, everyone.

The latest addition to our Reviews Section is joint review by Sarah 2 and Quantum Sarah on Alessandro Baricco’s Emmaus, which is translated from the Italian by Mitch Ginsburg and is available from McSweeney’s.

Here is an excerpt from their review:

Alessandro Baricco’s latest novel, Emmaus, centers on the friendship of four working-class Catholic adolescents and their shared love for a tragic, sexual young woman named Andre. The plot of the novel follows the trajectory of a classic loss of innocence story, but Baricco immediately complicates this definition. What distinguishes Emmaus from other narratives of this archetype is its ambiguous stance in respect to Catholicism and sin. It would be a grievous oversimplification to say that the boys live in a world of repression and then find truth, or that they are innocent, pure souls in childhood and are subsequently corrupted in adolescence. To the contrary, Baricco distinctly avoids this simplistic dichotomy of good and evil: the narrator and his friends possess constant awareness of promiscuity and violence, but they don’t label it as such.

Click here to read their entire review.

The winners of the first annual Indie Booksellers Choice Awards have been announced.

The following five books were selected by independent booksellers: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade Books), The Instructions by Adam Levin (McSweeney’s), The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel (Unbridled), Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes (Grove/Atlantic), and Wingshooters by Nina Revoyr (Akashic).

The five winning titles will be displayed in participating independent bookstores throughout the country. Comedian David Rees hosted the awards ceremony at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in New York City.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Nice movie poster, right?  Wouldn’t look too shabby in your local cineplex.  Well, don’t get too excited quite yet.  It seems that Sean Astin (a.k.a. Sam from the Lord of the Rings trilogy) is raising money to start production on this film, to be shot in Denmark.  Lowry reports on the process, though she is understandably leery since she saw what happened with The Giver film.  Which is to say, not much.  Thanks to Marjorie Ingall for the link.

There’s nothing like going viral to sell a book or two.  Though The Order of Odd-Fish by James Kennedy came out a good three years ago, thanks to the 90-Second Newbery film of A Wrinkle in Time it caught the attention of Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing.  And I like to write reviews, but I feel true green-eyed review envy when I read someone write a descriptive sentence like, “An epic novel of exotic pie, Götterdämmerung, mutants, evil, crime, and musical theater, Odd-Fish is a truly odd fish, as mannered and crazy as an eel in a tuxedo dropped down your trousers during a performance of The Ring Cycle.”  Geez, Cory.  Make it hard for the rest of us, why doncha?  In any case, you Chicago folks might want to attend Mr. Kennedy’s Odd-Fish Art Show to be held in a creepy old mansion.  He says of one room, “full of antique printing presses, priceless art, unclassifiable knickknacks, and so much garbage it’s like the trash compactor scene from Star Wars.”  He ain’t wrong either.

• For some reason I feel inclined to keep a close eye on children’s book apps these days.  I don’t know exactly why this is.  I just have a feeling they’re going to be more important than we initially expect later on down the road.  It’s hard to figure out what’s actually important and what’s just self-promoting dribble, though.  I mean, I’m pretty sure the new Kirkus App Discovery Engine is important, but it’s hard to say.  Monica Edinger, therefore, did me a bit of a favor when she presented her recent round-up of app news on her Huffington Post blog.  Makes for good reading.

• Recently Mr. Mo Willems had his picture taken.  It was not the first time.  It was not even the first time he’d been to that particular photographer.  But it was the first time I’d been made aware of the photographer Marty Umans.  Mr. Umans happens to have photographed quite a few children’s literary folks, including Mr. Mo, Harry Bliss, Raul Colon, Randall de Seve, and more.  You can see a whole host of them here.  Thanks to Mr. Mo for the link.

• In case you missed it, Travis Jonker does 7 Comments on Fusenews: Time to class the joint up, last added: 3/1/2011