Daniel Rabuzzi & Kit Reed

We had a blast Wednesday with Kit Reed & Daniel Rabuzzi.  Kit read from”The Legend of Troop 13″ about feral girl scouts in the woods, while Daniel read excerpts from The Indigo Pheasant and Choir Boats.  Ellen’s photos of the night can be viewed here.

Source Article from http://www.kgbfantasticfiction.org/2013/05/17/photos-from-may-15th-with-kit-reed-daniel-rabuzzi/

FANTASTIC FICTION at KGB reading series, hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present:

	Kit Reed has two new books this season: Son of Destruction, her spontaneous human combustion novel, and a “best of” collection from the Wesleyan University Press: The Story Until Now– A Great Big Book of Stories, 35 short stories ranging from her first published short story to six new and previously uncollected stories from the 2000. Her collection, What Wolves Know, was a 2011 Shirley Jackson Award nominee
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	Daniel A. Rabuzzi is the author of The Longing For Yount series: The Choir Boats and The Indigo Pheasant. His short fiction and poetry have appeared in Sybil’s Garage, Shimmer, ChiZine, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Abyss & Apex, Goblin Fruit, Mannequin Envy, Bull Spec, Kaleidotrope, and Scheherezade’s Bequest.

Wednesday, May 15th, 7pm at

KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.)

http://www.kgbfantasticfiction.org/

Subscribe to our mailing list:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kgbfantasticfiction/

Readings are always free.

Please forward to friends at your own discretion.

Source Article from http://www.kgbfantasticfiction.org/2013/04/23/kit-reed-daniel-rabuzzi-may-15th/

Richard Bowes & Alaya Dawn Johnson

On Wednesday we had the pleasure of hearing two talented authors read for us.  Alaya Dawn Johnson read from her new YA novel, The Summer Prince. And Richard Bowed read “The Queen and the Cambion” from his new collection, The Queen, the Cambion, and Seven Others. Ellen’s photos can be seen here.

Source Article from http://www.kgbfantasticfiction.org/2013/04/23/photos-from-april-17th-with-richard-bowes-alaya-dawn-johnson/

Teenagers, meet Anne Frank

First off, I am not offended by the message Mr. Justin Bieber left in the guestbook at the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam.  If you haven’t heard, he wrote, “Anne Frank was a great girl, Hopefully she would have been a Belieber.”  Some people took umbrage of his statement, as if he were somehow belittling her whole experience.  But I see it, as crazypants as he is, as Justin sincerely wishing that Anne Frank had a different life than the one she had.  If anything, Justin has now made several million teenage girls curious about Anne’s life, which is a good thing.

I visited the Anne Frank house myself in 2000.  Amsterdam to me at the time seemed like this strange cross between Brooklyn and Venice.   I definitely recognized the Dutch influence echoed in New York, but the canals weaving through the streets were new for me. It was quite an emotional day walking through the house at 263 Prinsengracht, but what struck me most of all was how small the space really was.  I could not imagine having to live in that cramped attic with seven others, pissing and shitting in a bucket, having to remain motionless for most of the day, even if one had to go to the bathroom, for two years.  Anyway, most of you know the story.  If you don’t, I suggest you read her diary right now. I promise it will be one of the most moving things you will ever read.

Several years later, while in a coffee shop I frequented in Hoboken, a song came over the speakers.  I asked the young barrista, whom I had become friends with, “What’s this?”

“Neutral Milk Hotel,” she said.

Thus began a love affair with a band up till that point I had never listened to. How to describe Neutral Milk Hotel to one who has not heard them before? Jeff Mangum does not have the kind of voice that American Idol judges are looking for. In some ways his is the anti-voice.  When I first heard him, it sounded as if he were shouting and not singing.  It’s as if there is so much emotion trapped inside him he must cry to let it all out.  And still it comes in droves.  The music can at times be folky, then it explodes into metallic guitar fuzz, then you might hear a mournful jazz trumpet, accompanied by a New Orleans-style funeral procession.  Yeah, it’s complex, a virtuoso.

The first album I listened to of NMH was “In the Airplane, Over the Sea.”  Shortly after the album came out, Jeff had this to say:

Right before recording On Avery Island I was walking around in Ruston [La.] waiting to go to Denver to record. I don’t consider myself to be a very educated person, ’cause I’ve spent a lot of my life in dreams….And I was walking around wondering, “If I knew the history of the world, would everything make more sense to me or would I just lose my mind?” And I came to the conclusion that I’d probably just lose my mind. The next day I went into a bookstore and walked to the wall in the back, and there was The Diary of Anne Frank. I’d never given it any thought in my entire life. I spent two days reading it and then completely flipped out.

Neutral Milk Hotel

One thing about “In the Airplane..” is that it’s layered, complex, like any great work of art.  As I listened to the lyrics I slowly began to realize that most of the songs on “In the Airplane…” were about Anne Frank, some more veiled than others.  I started obsessing over this album, I mean really digging this album to the point of listening to it more than anything else I have ever listened to.  I remember one time while listening to the title track  while on line art a bank and thinking, “These lyrics are astounding.” The teller looked up at me strangely, because I was somewhere else that day.

I later read that Jeff Mangum had had a kind of nervous breakdown.  He had to stop playing.  I understood why.  How can one sing with such emotion, such outpouring of feeling, day in and day out?  But this made me sad.  One of the greatest American musicians ever was still alive and not playing anymore.

During this time I was working on my final issue of Sybil’s Garage, issue 7, a speculative fiction and poetry magazine.  In previous issues I peppered the pages with marginalia.  In issue 6, I had a love story between a woman from the future and her time traveling robot friend, who used the pages of the magazine to communicate.  It was loosely based on Gary Numan’s “Replicas.”

I wanted to do something similar for issue 7.  And so I thought: what if Anne Frank’s ghost had heard Jeff Magnum’s singing about her through the headphones of some teenager wandering through her attic?  What if, like any teenager, Anne herself fell in love with Jeff and his music.  And now, hearing that he had a nervous breakdown, she laments his withdrawal from the world, his suffering and more than anyone on the planet, she understands his pain.  And so I peppered the pages of issue 7 with messages from Anne to Jeff.  She quotes his songs, writes love letters to him, and begs him to continue making his music:

In Sybil’s Garage No. 7, she says to Jeff:

I wanted to keep white roses in their eyes too.  I wanted to run and dance and ride my bike down a hill. I wanted to sing at the top of my lungs and I wanted to make love to a boy. Can you make me a promise, Jeff? Keep plucking your silly strings.  Keep bending your notes for me. On and on and on and on and on…

Issue 7 came out in the summer of 2010.  A few months later, in December, Jeff Mangum played a surprise set in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and revealed to the crowd that he was thinking of playing out again.  Since then he’s even released new songs, scheduling live shows, and an album is supposedly in the works.

I would be absurdly presumptuous to think that Sybil’s Garage had anything to do with Jeff’s re-emergence. I doubt very much Jeff has even heard of Sybil’s Garage.  Still, I cannot but be astonished by the timing.  Maybe Anne’s ghost did reach out to him after all.  And maybe, in some small way, she touched Bieber too.  After all she was and forever will be a teenager.

If you care to read Sybil’s Garage No. 7, I’ve made it available for free here. 

I’ll leave you with “Ghost” from “In the Airplane Over the Sea.” I think the lyrics speak for themselves.

Ghost, ghost I know you live within me
Feel as you fly
In thunderclouds above the city
Into one that I
Loved with all that was left within me
Until we tore in two
Now wings and rings and there’s so many
Waiting here for you

And she was born in a bottle rocket, 1929
With wings that ring around a socket
Right between her spine
All drenched in milk and holy water
Pouring from the sky
I know that she will live for ever
She won’t ever die

Destination: nowhere

I remember reading a quote from Jorge Luis Borges.  He said that when he was a boy, his father told him that, “If you don’t like a book, throw it across the room.”  I’ve always thought that is a good philosophy.  Who wants to waste time reading a book we don’t like when there are so many good books out there that we would like?

I was reading a novel recently, which I had to put down (I did not throw it;  I might have broken something in our small apartment). The book came highly recommended.  I will not name the novel, since this is a small industry and I don’t wish to hurt anyone’s feelings.  But I thought I’d outline the reasons why I couldn’t continue.

• I did not know what the protagonist(s) wanted — This may seem like a no-brainer, but if it’s not clear what the character(s) want, what her goals, desires, fears, needs are, then how are we supposed to care about this person?  The news media knows how to do this better than anyone.  When they interview someone, they always define him or her as wanting something.  “Mr. Smith was robbed.”  (He wants justice.  He wants his sense of security back.)  “I lost my house in Hurricane Sandy.”  (She wants her home back, her life back.)  “They’re taking away my guns.”  (He wants his weapons to feel safe.)  In fact, I would say this is the business of the news media, to evoke our emotions (to manipulate us into political points of view).  The news media would never say, “This is Bill.  We don’t know what he wants, but boy does he look cool in leather and a gun.*(see note)”  What I’m saying is, just as the media manipulates us into feeling a certain way, so must an author.  And, yes, it’s a manipulation.  Some writers are so deft we don’t realize we are being manipulated.  Oftentimes this happens on a subconscious level.  But think about your favorite book and about how her characters made you feel. Which leads me to my next reason why I put the aforementioned book down.
• The characters have no obstacles to overcome — By obstacles I do not mean physical objects, though they can often be.  Some writers seem to think that an obstacle is a gunfight every third chapter. Here’s the thing: these things are okay in and among themselves, but they do not make a story.  Obstacles, in fiction, serve to separate the characters from their goals.  If we do not know what the characters want, why should we care when a lion jumps out of the bushes that our hero must wrestle to death?  You are just building action scenes without real plot, and you might be better off writing a Hollywood mega-blockbuster than a novel.
•  The story lacks tension – Now this is a subtler point, but the most important.  Tension is not about merely confronting the protagonist with obstacles, tension is an emotion created in the reader when you separate a character from her goals.  Now, to make it interesting we should have an interesting goal.  If Mary’s goal is to get an ice cream cone at the corner, you may not draw the reader in as much as say a father trying to bring his son safely across a post-apocalyptic landscape.  (Though in the hands of a good writer, any goal can be made into an exciting story).  This is the reason why The Road works so well as a novel.  We know from the first chapter what the father wants: to bring his boy to safety.  The rest of the novel, every cursed fragment of the landscape, serves to keep him from his goal.  We are kept in a constant state of tension.  The Hunger Games does this exceptionally well too.  Katniss wants to survive, to protect her sister, and later, Peeta.  The other children in the games keep her from her goal.  We are kept in constant suspense.  Can you imagine The Road or The Hunger Games if we never knew what the characters wanted?  If they moved about their worlds with no purpose, having one dreadful encounter after another? Would you continue reading, or would you throw the book across the room in frustration? And my last reason why I put the book down:
• The story emphasizes weirdness, overly stylistic prose, or detailed description over plot — Please don’t misunderstand me: I love weird fiction, I’m a sucker for descriptive prose and intense world-building.  But when you substitute spectacle for plot, fifty-dollar words for depth, you are practicing the art of hand-waving.  All writing is a form of prestidigitation, of course, but if you have to pause every third sentence and describe why John the Ravenbeard cannot use his Axe of Jorengraad on the Third Wednesday after Pentecost because back in the Third Kingdom of Antiollope the Fish Princess found a Groaning Jewel on the Beach of Diamonds which must be placed in the Axe only by the light of a Summer Blue Moon before it can be wielded, well — you’ve gone off the rails, my friend, if you think this stuff alone makes a story.   Weirdness can work.  Stylistic prose can work.  So can intense description.  But they must not substitute for an actual story.

I would like to note that there are always exceptions to the above.  Short stories can often get away with ambiguity of the protagonist’s desires.  Some of my favorite authors regularly and deftly write stories that defy my list above and yet work.  But I can usually point out how, on a basic level, we discover what the protagonists want early on, and we are kept in a state of heightened tension by the obstacles preventing them from reaching their goals. But to write a novel with characters just hopping from place to place, with no clear goals, with one encounter after another, does not make an interesting story.

Of course, you may disagree with me, and I hope you do, since I am in the habit of being wrong more often than I’d like to admit.  But if you do disagree, or it you have something to add to this, please leave a comment.

* Note that, if the intent was to show us Bill’s *fashion sense*, then the message is intended, of course, to manipulate what you desire.  Men’s’ and women’s fashion magazines and fashion TV shows are  saturated with imagery intended to manipulate your sense of self and hence what you want.

FANTASTIC FICTION at KGB reading series, hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present:

	Richard Bowes is the winner of two World Fantasy Awards, an International Horror Guild, and a Million Writer Award. Recent and forthcoming short story appearances include: F&SF, Icarus, Lightspeed and the anthologies, Ghost’s: Recent Hauntings, Handsome Devil, Hauntings, Where Thy Dark Eye Glances, and Weird Detectives: Recent Investigations. His new novel Dust Devil on a Quiet Street will be published on Mayday from Lethe Press which also just reissued his Lambda Award winning novel Minions of the Moon. Also out this year will be two short story collections: The Queen, the Cambion and Seven Others and If Angels Fight.
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	Alaya Dawn Johnson is the author of the Spirit Binders series (Racing the Dark and The Burning City) and the Zephyr Hollis novels (Moonshine and Wicked City). The Summer Prince is her official YA debut, which Kirkus has called “luminous” in a starred review. She is currently working on her follow-up YA novel, set in an elite DC private school during a flu pandemic.

Wednesday, April 17th, 7pm at

KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.)

http://www.kgbfantasticfiction.org/

Subscribe to our mailing list:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kgbfantasticfiction/

Readings are always free.

Please forward to friends at your own discretion.

Source Article from http://www.kgbfantasticfiction.org/2013/04/01/richard-bowes-alaya-dawn-johnson-april-17/