Category: Literary Matters

IWSG, March 2021

John Winkelman

I have recently joined the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, which I discovered through the excellent blog of author Jean Davis.

And as a newly active member of the group, this is my first IWSG monthly first-Wednesday question:

Everyone has a favorite genre or genres to write. But what about your reading preferences? Do you read widely or only within the genre(s) you create stories for? What motivates your reading choice?

That is a very good question. Two things motivate my reading choices: a diversity of reading, and that one book I just gotta read right now. And there are secondary concerns, such as books which have been sitting around forever, and when my mind is in a particular space in which it will only be satisfied by e.g. poetry or Russian literature. Or Russian poetry.

I take as my guiding star Karen Lord‘s advice to “read well”. Find the books which are good examples of the kind of book I would like to write and, well, read them!

That doesn’t mean everything I read is practice for something I hope to write. I am motivated more than anything by curiosity. In my library I have scores of anthologies covering a great many subjects and styles of writing. My day job is mentally demanding and I am happy to indulge in purely escapist reading as time and opportunity allow. For example, last summer I did a deep dive into the Forgotten Realms novels and read the first twenty or so Drizzt Do’Urden novels by R.A. Salvatore.

Then again this past October I participated in the Sealey Challenge and read 31 books of poetry in 31 days. And a couple of weeks ago, after almost three decades of attempting it and failing, I finally read the entirety of The Brothers Karamazov.

So what motivates my reading? Ultimately I think I read whatever it feels important that I read next. And that could be anything.

And on a tangent, this wide and varied reading habit helps me through bouts of writing block and imposter syndrome. Usually if I am reading something which is too close to what I am writing I start to compare the one with the other, and therefore reading something outside of that channel is a good way to reset myself, mentally and emotionally, so I can get return to the writing practice with a clear mind.

What motivates your reading? Let me know in the comments!

 

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Not Quite Normal, But Close

John Winkelman

February was unexpectedly chaotic, though the ups and downs seem to be tending upward, in part due to a steadily increasing outdoor temperature and amount of sunlight. The lack of a card-carrying white supremacist in the white house also helps.

Three books arrived this past week. On the left is Neeli Cherkovski‘s biography of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, released in 1979, when Ferlinghetti was 60 (!). I picked this up from Third Mind Books in Ann Arbor, which is an excellent resource for anyone interested in the Beats, as well as the Modernist, New York School and Black Mountain poets.

Ferlinghetti died this past Monday, at the age of 101. When I get get my head sorted out about this I will post an article or two.

Next is Anders Dunkers’ Rediscovering Earth: Ten Dialogues on the Future of Nature, (OR Books) a collections of conversations with writers and thinkers discussing what may be and what will be the state of nature and our place in it, going forward from here.

On the right is Cuba in Splinters, a collection of short fiction in translation from Cuba. This was an impulse buy from OR Books, which I picked up when I ordered Rediscovering Earth. My attention was probably primed because I was in the middle of reading Super Extra Grande by Cuban science fiction writer Yoss.

I spent the last week reading books in translation, and completed three more of my backlog of such books – Permafrost by Eva Baltasar (And Other Stories), Super Extra Grande by Yoss (Restless Books), and A Greater Music by Bae Suah (Open Letter Books). Now for a change of pace I am reading Starship’s Mage by Glynn Stewart, which I picked up last year at ConFusion. I’m less than 100 pages in, and really liking it so far.

In writing news, I am working on edits to a short story I wrote for a call for submissions for the Grimm, Grit and Gasoline anthology published by World Weaver Press. The story was not accepted, obviously, but I think it has promise.

This past Friday I had the great good fortune to spend some time talking the story over with Jason Sizemore of Apex Book Company. The opportunity was made available to supporters of the Apex Patreon, which I am and have been for a couple of years now. I met Jason at ConFusion back in (I think) 2016, where we spent a few minutes discussing the ins and outs and ups and downs of the publishing business. Obviously Apex is doing much better than Caffeinated Press ever did, but there were many similarities in the experiences of running our respective independent publishers.

The increased reading and the access to a professional editor have me feeling reinvigorated, and warmth and sunlight are always energizing. It’s time to get writing.

A Break in the Flow

John Winkelman

This past week was one of those rare stretches of time where no new reading material arrived at the Library of Winkelman Abbey. That’s fine. I have more than enough unread books and magazines laying around to last me a decade.

Now that I have finally made it to the end of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Giorno’s Great Demon Kings, I have turned my attention to shorter books, which is easy, because I can count on my fingers the books I own which are longer than The Brothers Karamazov.

For the past five years or more I have had subscriptions to the catalogs of various publishers of books in translation, which means for the past five years or more I have accumulated these books much faster than I have read them, and at this point I have well over a hundred works from Open Letter Books, Deep Vellum, Restless Books, And Other Stories, Two Lines Press, and Ugly Duckling Presse awaiting my attention.

In the past couple of years, as my lifestyle and available spending money have fluctuated, I have allowed my subscriptions to all but And Other Stories and Two Lines Press (and possibly Restless Books – it’s difficult to tell sometimes here in the Covid Years) to lapse. So now I have these shelves full of books sitting around unread as I slowly accumulate books from other places, and now I find that I need to archive some of the books on the shelves. As I only archive books I have completed, now is a good time to work through the backlog of these translated books.

In the past week I have finished three books – The Imagined Land by Eduardo Berti (Deep Vellum), Party Headquarters by Georgi Tenev (Open Letter Books), and Lion Cross Point by Masatsugu Ono (Two Lines Press). I am currently reading Permafrost by Eva Baltasar (And Other Stories), and hope to get in one more book before the end of the month. This is easy when the books are only 100 to 130 pages long, and at most 50,000 words, making most of them novellas or very short novels. For contrast, The Brothers Karamazov is approximately 364,000 words.

In writing news, I haven’t written anything new in the past week beyond some journaling, but I am beginning a round of edits for a couple of short stories which I hope to have in shape for submission by the beginning of May.

On the whole, the world is not necessarily a better place than it was a month ago, but some of the worst parts of it are gone, and sometimes a lack of bad things can be as energizing as the presence of good things. Selah.

The Turbulent Uncertainty of Ordinary Days

John Winkelman

 

Right now I have two small recently-fed orange cats soundly asleep on my lap. The comfort derived from this state of being stands in sharp contrast to a week of chaos in the immediate, local, regional, and national levels, as the banshee/specter/mummy hybrid which is 2020 refuses to let go of the flow of history and is increasingly infecting 2021 with its fatal toxins. We can only hope that with the turning of the Lunar New Year things will start to look up.

An interesting mix of reading material arrived this past week at the Library of Winkelman Abbey.

On the left is the new release from Two Lines Press, Rabbit Island, which was written by Elvira Navarro and translated from the Spanish by Christina McSweeney. This specific book came in a subscriber-only boxed editing wrapped in white faux-rabbit fur. I love it!

Second from left is The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter, which I ordered from the best bookstore in Grand Rapids, Books and Mortar.

Third in is David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years, also arriving courtesy of Books and Mortar. I ordered this after receiving from Semiotext(e) The Making of the Indebted Man and Governing By Debt, both by Maurizio Lazzarato. This line of study follows the recent forays into the varying aspects of carceral capitalism, and the racist roots, trunk, branches, twigs, leaves and fruits of America, from its first day to the eternal now.

On the right is the January 2021 issue of Poetry Magazine, which arrives a week after the February 2021 issue of Poetry Magazine. Such is the nature of the postal system here in the 2020s.

In reading news, after six weeks (and about 30 years) I finally finished The Brothers Karamazov. This is a big deal because I have attempted to read it at least twenty times since my first Russian Studies class back in September of 1990. The farthest in I made it before 2021 was about a hundred pages. I guess my attention span is finally long enough to tackle 800-page books written in the 1800s.

Then again, I read Anna Karenina back in the mid- 1990s.

I am also close to the end of John Giorno’s Great Demon Kings, and will likely finish it on Monday. The writing is a little uneven, but the story of Giorno’s life is fascinating, and his view into the art and writing scenes in the fifties, sixties and seventies is both remarkable and valuable.

With these books out of the way, I think I will read short book for the next couple of months. Like, nothing longer than about 250 pages. And given the density of Dostoyevsky’s prose, one Brothers Karamazov if equal to about a dozen of any novel written in the past 50 years.

In writing news, I have written drafts of a poem or two, which is the most creative work I have done since early November 2020. Feels pretty good.

Thick Books for Cold Nights

John Winkelman

Last week felt like the first normal week of 2021. I had no family drama or cat drama, though we had Pepper fixed and after a day of withdrawal from the Ketamine which is used in cat sedative, she was back to being her usual sweet self, although with a bare belly and a shaved foreleg (for the i.v.) which makes her look like she is wearing an UGG boot.

It was a pretty good week for reading material here at the Library of Winkelman Abbey. Four new founts of information and entertainment arrived during the first genuinely wintry cold and snowy week of the season.

On the left (ha!) is the latest issue of Jacobin, a magazine which has only increased in importance since America’s slide into being a corporate fascist state was slowed slightly by the election of Joe Biden.

Second from left is the latest issue of Poetry, a magazine which has always been important, as poetry has always been important, as the inaugural poem, “The Hill We Climb” by Amanda Gorman, clearly demonstrates.

Third is The Cybernetic Hypothesis, a text by contributors to the leftist journal Tiqqun, from Semiotext(e), a publisher (and group) known for writing material which caused noted coward and fascist bootlick Glenn Beck to wet himself in terror at their mere mention.

On the right is Son of a Liche by J. Zachary Pike, which is the sequel to the wonderful Orconomics. This one is self-published, as was the first which won the Self Publishing Fantasy Blog-Off in 2018.

In reading news, I finished Isabel Wilkerson‘s Caste: The Origins of our Discontents and it left me with much the same feeling as Matthew Desmond‘s Evicted, Sheldon Wolin‘s Democracy, Incorporated, and most certainly Michelle Alexander‘s The New Jim Crow. Which is to say, again, that feudalism was never overcome, it was only rebranded.

I am approaching halfway through The Brothers Karamazov and maintaining a comfortable pace to complete this behemoth of a book before the first day of spring.

Now that I am done with Caste, I started (the late) John Giorno‘s memoir Great Demon Kings, which is a fantastic window into the art, poetry and nascent media scene in New York starting in the mid 1950s. I am a little over a third of the way into the book and enjoying the hell out of it. One note: the subtitle is “A Memoir of Poetry, Sex, Art, Death, and Enlightenment”, and the sex is front and center, and very graphic.

In writing news, my mind finally feels clear and I am ready to begin. I just need to come up with some ideas.

Another January, Done and Gone

John Winkelman

(Poe approves of genre fiction and books in translation)

Here we are at the last day of the first month of 2021, and wow, did it feel like 2020 would never end. Up until inauguration day we seemed to be in some sort of eternal November 3, which I suppose made President Biden’s first day November 78, or something.

But the transition has been made, less peacefully than hoped but about as peacefully as could be expected. And with the slow lengthening of days it does seems as if a weight has been lifted from the world. A small victory when measured against the existential crises of the COVID pandemic, global warming, and the slow worldwide morphing of capitalism into neofeudalism, but we take what we can get.

Two new, somewhat-ordered collections of words arrived at the Library of Winkelman Abbey in this past week.

On the left is the latest release from And Other Stories, Permafrost (in the snazzy subscribers-only cover), written by Eva Baltasar and translated by Julia Sanches.

On the right is the December 2020 issue of Dreamforge. This is, alas, the last issue of Dreamforge which will be released in print format. Due to the state of the world and the instability of any and all methods of delivering physical goods to physical addresses, Dreamforge is switching to a digital-only format called Dreamforge Anvil. This is ultimately a good thing, as to do otherwise would likely doom them to going out of business. And there is enough of that going around right now.

In reading news I am well over 200 pages into The Brothers Karamazov, which is about four times farther than I have ever made it in before. I hit my stride a week ago and expect to be able to continue reading a chapter or two a day for the duration. So far I like it. I really, really like it.

I am a little over 100 pages into Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of our Discontents, and it is becoming increasingly apparent that feudalism was never dismantled; it was merely rebranded, and swapped ownership of property for control over capital.

In writing news, there isn’t much to report, other than that I am preparing things today to be able to re-start the writing habit first thing tomorrow morning. The many and varied deadlines are approaching and it is past time I released some work into the wild.

Funk and Fugue

John Winkelman

With the inauguration now in the past the world exists in the consensual illusion of having returned to something like normal. That is absolutely not the case of course, and it will be a long time before we even have an idea of what normal looks like. It certainly won’t be what things looked like on this date four years ago, or even one year ago.

On this weekend in any other year I would be at ConFusion right now, hanging out with old friends, meeting new friends, talking about reading and writing and past cons and publishing and not getting published, and drinking and carousing and enjoying being in the company of good, smart, talented people.

Of course ConFusion is cancelled for this year, and I think ConFusion 2020 was the last normal thing I did before lockdowns began last March. I miss the experience terribly, but it is not as bad as it would be if it were going on and I was not there.

Right now I am sitting in the waiting area of a hospital, waiting on test results for a family member who is in poor health. This is part of a process which has been ongoing for some years now, so while it is not unexpected, it is also not a thing which could be predicted in any meaningful way.

Thus even though the exceptional chaos of the past four years is over, we are still awash in the ordinary chaos of daily life here in the cyberpunk hellscape that is the mid twenty-first century.

Anyway.

It’s been a quiet week for books here at the Library of Winkelman Abbey. One book arrived – War Stories, an anthology courtesy of my subscription to Apex Book Company.

I am almost done with Democracy, Incorporated, and am about 120 pages into The Brothers Karamazov. I plan to round out the month with short stories before I pick up another book to follow the Wolin.

Writing is still going nowhere, though I can feel the knots in my mind loosening up and the creative juices beginning to flow again.

In the absence of ConFusion for inspiration I will need to rely on the mundane chaos of the world.

2020 Just Won’t Let Go

John Winkelman

Just when you think you’re safely out of 2020, the eldritch, cyclopean terrors of the time rise up and pull you back under. More about that in a dedicated post.

Not a lot to report for this past week. Work has been keeping me busy, and at any given time during the day I likely have a small orange cat asleep in my lap, which is the exact opposite of motivation to be productive.

Two new books arrived this week. On the left is the new hardcover version (Kickstarter exclusive) of Dyrk Ashton‘s fantastic Wrath of Gods, the second book in the Paternus trilogy. On the right is Arkady Martine‘s A Memory Called Empire, from my most recent order from Books and Mortar.

In reading news, I am almost 100 pages into The Brothers Karamazov, which puts me at just under 15% of the way through the book. I am also less than 100 pages from the end of Sheldon Wolin’s Democracy, Incorporated, and I am no longer either angry or sad when reading. Now I am just taking notes.

Still not a lot of writing happening here, though I feel like some could happen at any minute. Yup. Aaaaaany minute.

Maybe once I get caught up on my sleep. So, sometime after 2035.

Hitting the Ground Running in 2021

John Winkelman

We had a great start to the acquisitions process here at the Library of Winkelman Abbey. The first full week of 2021 saw six new books arrive.

On the top left is Box of Bones, by Ayize Jama-Everett and John Jennings, from a recently-completed Kickstarter campaign run by the ever-excellent Rosarium Publishing.

In the top middle is volume 2 of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s A Writer’s Diary. I picked up volume 1 around 20 years ago, and I swore I had purchased vol. 2 at some point, but it is nowhere to be found and I suspect it was lost during a move or vacation or something. I had to buy this one used, as new copies sell for over a hundred dollars.

On the right is Kim Stanley Robinson’s newest book The Ministry for the Future. I am already 400 pages in, and it is magnificent! I have been a fan of Mr. Robinson’s work since I first read Red Mars over twenty years ago. The Ministry for the Future is more in line with his works like the Science in the Capitol series or even New York 2140, of which this could well be a prequel. Robinson shows his work and imbues his novel with a strong sense of hope, though hope born of difficult struggles and terrible loss.

The bottom row is the result of an impulse purchase made after I discovered The Russian Library series published by Columbia University Press. I have recently started following Read Russia, and they are in partnership with CUP to publish lesser-known (outside of Russia) Russian writers of the past 250 or so years; from the late 1700s to well into the 21st century. So far they have released about two dozen books, and many more are scheduled for the next few years.

On bottom left is Writings from the Golden Age of Russian Poetry by Konstantin Batyushkov, translated by Peter France. In the middle of the bottom row is Between Dog and Wolf by Sasha Sokolov, translated by Alexander Boguslawski. On the bottom right is City Folk and Country Folk by Sofia Khvoshchinskaya, translated by Nora Seligman Favorov.

(Yes translators are important, and they deserve as much recognition as the writers.)

So between these books, and Doctor Zhivago which arrived last week, and my slow but steady process through The Brothers Karamazov, I am in for an interesting few months of reading.

Speaking of reading, I am currently making progress in three books: The aforementioned The Ministry for the Future, the aforementioned The Brothers Karamazov, and Sheldon Wolin’s Democracy Incorporated. Cheerful stuff, here in the first full week of 2021, four days after an insurrection and attempted coup at the nation’s Capitol Building.

Assuming society still exists next week, I will post an update to my progress through these books.

Publication Announcement – Coffin Bell #4.1

John Winkelman

Today is a grand day! My short story “Occupied Space” was just published in issue 4.1 of Coffin Bell, a “journal of dark literature”. This my first unsolicited prose piece which has been published since, well, ever. I have had a few things published here and there over the years, but they were always requested in advance. So this is kind of a big deal for me.

“Occupied Space” started during NaNoWriMo 2018 as “Crossing Zones”, one of a dozen or so short stories I wrote in lieu of 50,000 words of a novel.

I submitted the story to several venues before and after sending it to Coffin Bell back in late January of 2020. Not expecting it to get picked up, I submitted my story at the $10.00 tier in order to receive editorial feedback. 2020 became kind of chaotic after January, and I lost track of my submissions until September, when I realized I still had one outstanding. I sent a note requesting a status update, and in early November I received notice that “Occupied Space” had been accepted.

The editors also sent their notes, which amounted to a couple of pages of bullet points which were immensely helpful even after the fact, because how we write one thing is generally, in a technical sense, how we write everything. The feedback helped me solidify some ideas I had been mulling, and now I think “Occupied Space”, rather than being a one-off story, will become part of a larger series or collection, or perhaps even the seed of a novel.

According to my trackers at Duotrope and The Submission Grinder, this submission had a response time of something over 250 days, but again, in 2020 I give everyone a free pass on everything. I’m just happy that Coffin Bell managed to stay open and in business during the Plague Times.

Reading through the Coffin Bell blog, I felt a strong sense of deja vu, particularly in this post about litmag financial transparency. Point by point I saw every problem, complication and decision we had made at The 3288 Review duplicated in another publication. I am sure if I searched the sites of a hundred other small magazines I would find 99 other posts or stories which echo this one. It isn’t easy to run a literary journal. It has to be a labor of love, or nobody would ever do it.

So please: read my story, and also read the rest of the stories and poetry in this and all the other issues. The work is beautiful and the pieces well-chosen. I will probably submit work to this venue again, after a cooldown period of a year or so.