Her Charmed Life

I met Missy Kulik at an indie media conference where I was doing a DIY Books seminar. I picked up a couple of her comics and we’ve kept in touch ever since. Her first book, Personal Charm, was self-published in June: or as the copyright page more originally puts it, “First Pressing June 2005.” We chatted by email about her book, which has its roots in ten years of zine making.

Pitch-Perfect Pseudohaikus

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Posted December 29, 2005 | Comments (0) |

The Artist of Urban Exploration

Almost ten years ago, at the Imperial Pub at Dundas and Yonge, Jeff told me about his plans for a new zine. Quite different than Yip, his humor zine, it would be about exploring off-limits places. I was concerned about having such a narrow focus for a whole zine. I suggested he give it a broader theme, relegating the exploring to a column or subsection. “You could call it Sneak,” I said, brainstorming other sections for scams and other naughtiness.

Out of spite, Jeff (AKA Ninjalicious) published twenty-five issues of Infiltration, a zine about going places you weren’t supposed to go. And next week, his definitive book on the subject — Access All Areas: A User’s Guide to the Art of Urban Exploration — is being launched in Toronto, to the dismay of lazy security guards everywhere.

Newsflash: Novelist Loves Novels

As a life-long reader and an indie publisher it’s a little obvious, but having a good book on the go really increases my quality of life. Most recently it’s been John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids, a great book about a post-apocolyptic Britain being terrorized by, erm, walking plants. (Wyndham, who preferred the term “logical fantasy” to describe what he did, manages to make his ridiculous Dr. Who-class monsters a plausible threat in the book. Can’t speak for the movie versions, which look as hilarious as you’d expect.)

But back to the quality of life issue: there’s something about a continuing narrative that is as soothing and enjoyable to slip into as a bath. I notice that I miss it in short story collections, for instance. I have to work at getting into the next story, while a good novel draws me back of its own accord. Occasionally I find a writer’s sensibility is engaging enough to pull me through a collection, as was Kelly Link in her wonderful (and now free!) Stranger Things Happen.

I finished Triffids this morning, and I’m on to The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman. If you’re a little Pottered out but want a fantasy fix, Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is highly recommended. Feel free to add your own good reads to the comments.

Scurvy Not Covered By Medical

I met Nicholas Johnson at a Seattle zine fair nearly a decade ago. He was peddling Shark Fear, Shark Awareness at the time, and through a mail correspondence I kept up through his zine projects that were engrossing accounts of his time as a sperm donor (Burning the Ancestral Chi) and an ESL teacher (Kongju-si: Letters from Korea). His fast and trashy vid making was a big inspiration to my own initial forays into making little movies, and he actually wrote a DIY article for this site.

Big Dead Place (Feral Press, 2005) is his latest and greatest project to date. Nicholas spent the last couple of years living in Antarctica, doing the joe-jobs that keep the research labs based there functioning: washing dishes and compacting garbage. I knew from the couple of e-mails that he’d sent that his stories about the place would be hilarious and fascinating: what I didn’t expect was how deftly he would weave together the historical tragedies of Sir Robert Scott’s bungled exploration with the bureacratic tragedies of bungled room assignments. Populated by lewd characters and outlandish scenarios, it nonetheless ignores the easy targets in favour of putting forth a journalistic work of depth and craft.

I shot him a couple of questions via e-mail.

Angry Young Spaceman 5 Years Young Today

On May 3, 2000, I had the Toronto launch for my second novel and the first No Media Kings book, Angry Young Spaceman. I then set out on my first book tour ever, taking the train across Canada with alien exhibit creator Sandy Plotnikoff to spread the word of teaching English on other planets.

The first printing has been sold out for a while, but happily Peter at The Beguiling (and organizer of the much anticipated Toronto Comics Arts Festival) snagged a box of the US edition for me. They’re not in mint condition—heck, they’re 5 years old after all—but to make up for that, the first 45 people who buy one will also get one of the remaining “TEOOP Program” nametags I gave out at the original Canadian launches (click thumbnail at left to zoom). Also, their names will be entered into a draw to get the full colour, 3x4ft. laminated poster of the lovely cover art by Mike Brennan.

Mmmm-mmm!

While I rarely found myself sitting beside friends in classes where the teacher decided to place us in alphabetical order, I do find myself in exceptionally good company in the “M” section on the bookshelf. Three of my favourite authors are Alice Munro, Haruki Murakami and China Miéville. If you don’t already know them, come meet my neighbours!

RoommateFromHell.com

When Kate discovers that her roommate identifies as a demoness, she figures it’s too sacrilicious a secret to keep to herself: she tells all on her blog, roommatefromhell.com.

This is the basic gist of my new book, An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil, a tale of the urban occult told entirely through Kate’s entries. Starting today, I’ll be posting one a day to the faux roommatefromhell.com blog until all 88 entries (the whole book) are up. After that I’ll be writing a spinoff story based on how the poll on the site goes.

The tiny pic to the left is taken from Patricio Davila’s work, as are all the shots on roommatefromhell.com. He has a real eye for seeing the blessed and the beautiful in the city’s rituals.

Feel free to add your comments. I’m curious to see how people read this blog version of the book.

Returning Your Bucks to the Library

A lot of readers first encounter my books through the library. Unlike some misguided writers, I think this is awesome and I want to encourage this. So if you want to support an indie press and the public libraries in one fell swoop, I’ve set up an option to donate a book of mine to the library: I’m calling it the NO MEDIA KINGS, YES LIBRARY BLING Drive.
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Posted July 15, 2004 | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0) |