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Diamond released a bunch of year end charts yesterday including the top 1000 comics and GNs. I may load those up at some point but here are some charts that won’t make headlines. First a piece count:

Title counts

BTW if you wonder, like every normal human, just who the heck is Eaglemoss, Comics Alliance has the answer.

And here are manga, small, and indie publishers.The difference between small and indie is explained here.

Top 100 Manga:

Top 100 Indie Comics

Top 100 Small Publisher comics

Top 100 Indie Graphic Novels (yes Pantheon is an “indie.”)

Top 100 Small Publisher graphic novels

Wayne State University Press publishes a series titled Made in Michigan that has published many quite enjoyable story and poetry collections. This month sees the publishing of Strange Love, a collection by Lisa Lenzo (her second, the first won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award (University of Iowa Press).

I've had the pleasure of reading the first two stories and realizing that they're linked--a divorced, single mother, Annie, raising her daughter, Marly, (8 in story one, 12 in story two) in what seems to be in the SW Michigan area. So far both stories have delved into the idea of looking for love--the first, "Still Life," with Annie considering following up on personal ads to find somebody to date, while "Aliens" has Annie come to the realization that Marly has added sexual activity to her lifestyle.

Both are great stories--they're subtle, they sneak humor in when you're not expecting it, they don't have a BIG moment smacking the reader about the head three or four times--they don't need to.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing where Annie and Marly head in the other seven stories.

A short little story collection, Karate Chop by Dorthe Nors (translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken) from Graywolf Press is full of short gems. Stories that might seem like they'll be cute or simply slide toward the dark or weird.

"The Duckling" begins:

Alongside the big farm, dad ran a duck farm, and because he was a clever man he earned a lot of money from it.

A story called "The Duckling" starting off that way--how dark can it get? Well at some point the dad gives the daughter who narrates the story a duckling born somewhat unhealthy, giving her a chance to raise it. Her thought is to put it in a bowl lined with a towel and put it in the oven to keep it warm. Perhaps not so surprisingly it dies. In a nice upswing however, they have a nice father/daughter moment burying the duckling together.

Another story, "Female Killers" has a married man staying up after his wife has gone to bed and he starts wandering the internet. He ends up looking up various female killers and maybe the only thing stranger than the facts that start to pop up about the killers is the thoughts that pop into the man's head about the female killers--they're odd, they're scary--they're inspired writing. He worries for the son (given up at birth) of the serial killer that will one day find out her name and find there are over 200,000 hits for her on Google; he thinks of chimps killing bush babies with spears they've made when put in the position of being hungry.

Nors' stories are short, but not quite what I'd consider minimalist. They have big ideas and just get to them quickly. It's a very entertaining collection and one you'll read in a day.

The first book from the folks at A Strange Object, Kelly Luce's short story collection, Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail is a wonderful little object.

It is filled with ten stories, all of which had been previously published in journals such as The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Crazy Horse, and others.

Luce brings a great sense of imagination to her stories but doesn't stop there with the great and interesting ideas--she then follows up with observations on how people live and might react to such ideas and perhaps it's the combination of having lived both in the United States and in Japan for some time that gives her a slightly unique perspective.

The story "Reunion" begins:

Over the course of that interminable weekend after Jun died, Asian lady beetles overtook our place in the shadowy Tatsuka-cho. Orange, winged bodies coated the ceiling and left yellow stains; carapaces crunched underfoot against the bathroom tile. The air smelled like rancid walnuts.

It's an opening that has me pushing forward for sure--we know somebody has died, and the odd scenario of so many beetles taking over that they're crunching under the narrator's feet as she (we find out) walks in her apartment.

The protagonist moved into a room that her next-door neighbor offers her--her own husband having recently passed away himself. He had been a vacuum-cleaner designer and there were parts strewn throughout the small apartment she offered to the protagonist. One in fact almost looked like a person the way it's puffed up bag stood, like the torso of a human, sitting atop an odd assortment of feet.

The reader finds out that Jun had just given the protagonist the news that he was finally divorcing his wife--that soon they'd be able to be seen in public together, that their relationship would become more real. She reminisces a bit about their first time out together, a fair and losing at the three shell game over and over--the evening that they first kissed. The next door neighbor leaves her to her new place alone and after an interaction with the human looking vacuum-cleaner, the protagonist apparently falls into a dream beginning with:

...and a barker called out, his voice like a hook:

One night only, for sale at cost, everything you've ever lost!

And at this point she notices a stuffed animal on the table--one that she lost when she was a very young girl, it had fallen off the back of her mother's bike and even though she'd made her mother re-trace their steps close to a dozen times, it was never found. She places money on the table and takes the stuffed animal. She then sees other things she's lost over the years--socks, hair ties, a boot--and buys them all back. It's a strange scenario and seemingly adds a little more to the imaginiative side of Luce's writing. However she ends it in a powerful manner:

The last table held just one thing, a fist-sized, crimson lmp that shivered and thrashed like a fish out of water. I stared until it became a red blur. No price tag. My wallet was empty anyway. I turned away, my arms full and an empty feeling in my chest, a feeling like three shells and a realization--no ball, there never was a ball--and listened for a voice, any voice, to bring me back.

Having read the bulk of this small collection I'm happy to say that Luce continues doing this--finding new and interesting scenarios to dig her way into being able to write about every day ongoings. Not only having something to say, but doing so in an interesting way that maybe hasn't been done before. She definitely had me more than willing to start each new story just as soon as I finished the prior one.

And because a) I skimped out on Poetry month in April and b) I'm always happy to find a way to link to Hobart, here is a Chicago Cub Sestina written by Ms. Luce.

Maybe it's just me, but there some publishers that I don't think you should be allowed to celebrate Novella Month if you're not willing to mention them. One is Mud Luscious, but I'm saving the for later in the month as I hope to have it coincide with something else. One that makes perfect sense to me to mention is Melville House Press. For one thing, they have a whole series of books titled "The Art of the Novella." There's also the "The Contemporary Art of the Novella" series that includes fabulous work like The North of God by Steve Stern.

If I understand properly, as somewhat of a rebel press, they have an affinity for this somewhat of a renegade art form, and I'm very happy that they do. I've picked up and read a fair amount of the titles, both classic and contemporary and never felt slighted once.

They do many other great things over in that little blue house, but when I think of them I usually think of novellas first.

Oh, that Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, always thinking, those two.

Thank goodness, because this one’s a doozy.

Technorati Tags: Advice for Writers, Dean Wesley Smith, ebook gift cards, ebooks, Epublishing, indie authors, indie bookstores, indie publishers, Kris Rusch, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Publishing, Writing, Writing Advice

A couple of slim packages were in the mailbox this afternoon.  One from Magic Helicopter Press contained Jen Gann's back tuck, a collection of sixteen stories that I believe are all three pages or less in length.  I actually don't remember if I knew it or not but per the back page it's a limited edition first printing, with this being number 25 out of 75 copies.  I'm always a little curious if those are mailed out in order--does that mean that after maybe an author copy and publisher copies that I was the 25th person to order a copy? It's really a nicely put together chapbook with a harder stock of paper for the cover, nice end pages inside and then the stories laid out very well with some images occasionally popping in as well.  For $6 it seems like a bit more than a nice job.

I also received issue 13 of The Quarterly.  Once this latest rash of purchases I've made all arrive I'll have the first 25 issues of this pretty incredible journal.  This one had a surprise or two in it.  It opens with a story by Tim O'Brien and he's just not somebody that pops into my head when I think of this journal.  There's also a story by A.M. Homes that I'm trying to remember if I've read before.  The issue also includes some newer favorites from other issues of The Quarterly like Patricia Lear and Michael Hickins.  There are also a couple of poems by John Rybicki!

Lastly, perhaps the most exciting item.  This was also in the Magic Helicopter Press envelope as they are a publisher that participates in the Mudluscious Press Stamp Story program.  The story they sent me is by Elizabeth Ellen and it begins:

I have trouble sleeping in open spaces, I say.

There you go, even more reason to pick up one of Magic Helicopter's great chapbooks.

Book Review 2011-001
The Mimic’s Own Voice by Tom Williams
April 2011 from Main Street Rag, 97 pages
(This Arc sent to me by the author)

Tom Williams’ novella, The Mimic's Own Voice, is short enough to gobble down in a single reading. I don't advise that though. While I was enjoying the book quite a bit when I was forced to stop a little less than halfway through. When I'd had 24 hours to think about it before finding the necessary time to pick it up again, I found myself thinking about aspects of the story that I hadn't really been focusing on while reading those initial 40 or so pages.  Having these thoughts rolling through my mind as I read the rest of Williams' story in a second sitting allowed more aspects to jump out at me and I was able to realize just what a nice job Tom Williams has done in this, his first book.

For one thing, in a relatively short space, Williams gets his reader thinking about race and identity (the protagonist comes from a mixed family racially), as well as our current culture and how we view the famous, and last, but not least, he is able to sneak in some views, satirical in nature, about academia.  And he does this all through a unique combination of an autobiography (written in second person), and a fairly omniscient narrator's look at how the autobiography is viewed, as well as how the author of said autobiography was viewed during his life.

"Myles's manuscript, housed now at The Pratt-Falls Center, Dr. Greene's home institution, excited layman and scholars at first, for all suspected it had been written for publication. Yet no contract exists among Myles's papers (and, as the reader shall see, he was quite the saver), nor can one be found in the files of any publishers. This increased speculation that a bidding war for its rights would take place, though after the manuscript's seventy-three handwritten pages were initially read, no offers, save for the Pratt-Falls's, were forthcoming. From its curious usage of second person, to its enigmatic opening and closing lines, "Your name is Douglas Myles . . . . They never really listened," it does not divulge entirely his secrets, while it raises mysteries all its own. Still, there are a host of details which offer, for the first time, a definitive glimpse into his early life."

The author of the autobiography is Douglas Myles, the mimic of the book's title.  A fascinating idea by Williams, to use one whose entire celebrity was based on his ability to use other people's voices as a mouthpiece for the ideas presented in the book--seems like a mighty unreliable narrator to me, allowing the reader to decide for his or herself as to what to come away with.  Myles was a mimic long after the days of mimics behind popular; comics had become observational, seemingly allowing everything to potentially be funny.  Myles however had a talent perhaps beyond simply copying voices he heard, at times even speaking out in another's voice before having heard them speak, or what their response to a question might be.

Williams' writing itself has a flair to it--the combination of almost academic phrasing with the second person nature of the autobiography that definitel

Many thanks to Jeremiah Chamberlin (see much more of his work at Fiction Writers Review), and Poets & Writers, as JC spent a good 4-6 hours talking to Steven Gillis and myself awhile back and put together a really nice article on the forming of Dzanc Books, how it all works and what our big goals are.  If you have any interest in the early days of either the EWN or Dzanc Books, or what exactly makes the amazing Steven Gillis tick, it's well worth your time to read.

This would have been a Source of Lit - The Postman! post seeing as there were two packages from different locations in the mail today, but they both sort of have the same origination.

The first package arrived direct from Spork Press.  It contained the very cool chapbook they've created, a collection of Dan Beachy-Quick's poems, Overtakelessness.

The other item arrived from Hobart, but also came from Spork Press.  It's the special edition of Hobart 11 that the people behind Spork bound by hand with an awesome new cover.  There were only 20 of these made and as of last week, Aaron thought he was down to about 10 or so.  Jump on it now (by the way, it's a great issue).

Earlier this month, Brian Foley's post over at HTMLGiant.com alerted me to The Song Cave, a publisher of limited edition chapbooks.  The first issue was limited to 50 signed and numbered copies and sold out, and the three subsequently issued chapbooks have seen their counts upped to 100 copies (again signed and numbered).  

There's not a ton of information at the above linked to website.  There's a touch more on their Facebook page, where it notes:

The Song Cave publishes single poems in single volumes.

The editors are Ben Estes and Alan Felsenthal.

[email protected]

The three titles that are still available are Amanda Nadelberg's "Building Castles in Spain, Getting Married," Cyrus Console's "OK TONY," and Ben Lerner's "Topekan Ethos."  Although, if they are mailing them out in numerical order, the number of copies of the Nadelberg chapbook is pretty limited as #81 hit my mailbox a week or two ago.

These are really nicely constructed chapbooks - solid covers with flaps, inner leaf paper on both ends and then a nicely weighted off-white paper for the actual poem.  And I like the covers with their design that reminds me of a cross between a Lego construction and the Space Invaders video game (which probably doesn't say much for my own imagination).  It will be interesting to see where they go with this design as the possible colors to use dwindles.

As many who wander through this blog know, I don't know squat about poetry (just look at some of those "brilliant" questions to McLendon in the Unsaid series going on when it comes to the poems he's included), and so often find it difficult to comment upon poetry that I read.  I will say that I enjoyed all three of these - the Nadelberg with, to me, an interesting assemblage of what I believe to be a conversation within the construct of her poem; the Console had an interesting rhythm to the lines, seemingly heavily emphasizing the first word of each line; and the Lerner with some amazing use of repetition of specific words, especially in the first of the six sections the poem is broken into.

At five bucks apiece, the chapbooks again are really nice object, the poetry within is enjoyable, leading me to think The Song Cave is doing something worth your support.

A quick visit to the Coffee House Press website shows:

"Coffee House Press is moving offices, and we need to clear our in-house inventory.

50% off all sales through our web site!
Now through June 30!"

So, if you're looking for some incredible work - poetry collections by Ray McDaniel, short novels from Selah Saterstrom, the work of Laird Hunt, Brian Evenson's The Open Curtain, a novel I don't believe you can finish and not think about for weeks if not months, and many other incredible titles, and want to get more bang for your buck?  Head on over and start ordering - don't make those fine folks lug more boxes than necessary as they move across Minneapolis!

The University of Rochester's Open Letter Press sees its first catalogue released and with it, the names and information for their first six titles (beginning in September):

• Nobody’s Home by Dubravka Ugresic, translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursac;

• The Pets by Bragi Olafsson, translated from the Icelandic by Janice Balfour;

• The Taker and Other Stories by Rubem Fonseca, translated from the Portuguese by Clifford Landers;

• The Conqueror by Jan Kjaerstad, translated from the Norwegian by Barbara Haveland;

• Vilnius Poker by Ricardas Gavelis, translated from the Lithuanian by Elizabeth Novickas;

• The Sailor from Gibraltar by Marguerite Duras, translated from the French by Barbara Bray.

Having read a Fonseca story in the latest issue of Bomb Magazine, I'm really looking forward to this collection.  And the Gavelis gets a huge plug from none other than the Literary Saloon, so it's right behind Fonseca.

Be sure to visit the Three Percent blog post linked to above and click on the pdf file for the six covers - Open Letter immediately, with this group, jumps up there in my mind with Europa Editions and, of course, Dzanc Books, for stunning covers.

And what exactly is Open Letter all about?  From Director Chad Post's Letter from the Director:

"There are three primary functions of Open Letter:  to publish great works of literature in translation, to promote these works and cultivate an audience for our authors, and to provide students with opportunities to learn about the practical business of publishing.  The latter two have been going on for quite some time now, through internships and the Three Percent website ... "

In this show: A very thoughtful and thought-provoking discussion on young girls and the media, from the perspective of a father and teacher. Thanks to: Nathan Havner, Andrea of Just One More Book, Charles Cadenhead of the brand new Higher Ed Podcast, Anitra, all the participants in my Children’s Literature and Critical Literacy Trends and Issues classes. [...]