Category Archives: Non-Fiction

Stop Drinking and Start Tasting: The 21st Century Man’s Guide to Whiskey

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[Originally published January, 2012 at Manarchy Magazine]

Childhood doesn’t last forever, and though the memories may be fond, you probably haven’t sipped juice from a box in longer than you can remember. Why is it, then, that the average adult’s taste in alcohol rarely evolves beyond those first pivotal experiences in college?

If all you know about whiskey is that it can be either shot from a glass or drowned in dark cola, then it’s time for a reality check, because your taste in liquor is the grown-up equivalent of sippy-cups and safety-scissors. Continue reading →

Please allow Steve Erickson to tell you about Warmed and Bound

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Front cover design

The book is called, Warmed and Bound : A Velvet Anthology, and among such notable writers as Craig Clevenger, Stephen Graham Jones and Brian Evanson, you’ll find a short story of my own. For a complete list of authors, click here or go to the official site (which looks hauntingly like my own, and that’s awesome).

Steve Erickson has written up his take on the collection in the form of a foreword, so here’s a little taste of that.

 The writers of the Velvet are contemporary fiction’s most effective and least self-conscious aesthetic guerrillas and obliterators of “literature,” vaporizing arbitrary distinctions intended to tame a spirit that needs neither distinctions nor quotation marks.  The result is fiction at once conceived from high artistic intent and executed with depraved populist energy.

Warmed and Bound : A Velvet Anthology will be available on Friday, July 22 on Amazon both in print (15.95) and as an eBook.

You can “like” the book on facebook and stay up to date on the release either here, on twitter @WarmedAndBound, or on the official website.

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© MMXI

Blogging as Writing

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This is a guest post by CalebJ Ross as part of his Stranger Will Tour for Strange blog tour. He will be guest-posting beginning with the release of his novel Stranger Will in March 2011 to the release of his second novel, I Didn’t Mean to Be Kevin in November 2011. If you have connections to a lit blog of any type, professional journal or personal site, pleasecontacthim. To be a groupie and follow this tour,subscribe to the Caleb J Ross blog RSS feed. Follow him on Twitter: @calebjross.com. Friend him on Facebook: Facebook.com/rosscaleb

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There is a quiet debate taking place regarding the validity of blogging as an honest and measurable (as in word count) form of writing. The debate is so quiet, in fact, that I just made it up for the sake of this post. Can fiction writers count blogs as butt-in-seat time? Does blogging offer any benefit to the novelist? I ask this question here because, as you likely know, Mr. Jacques has established quite a history of churning out fiction as blog posts. A history I envy. But what if the post isn’t story? What if the post is standard blog rambling, like this one seems to be?

On the sentence level, sure, blogging helps the fiction writer. On the narrative level, probably not.

Okay, I admit, I’m reaching for support here. Over the past few months the only writing I’ve done is for this blog tour. For someone who has written at least one sentence of fiction, building toward a novel or story, almost every day for the last 10 years, blogging feels like a cop-out. But should it feel that way?

I didn’t want to believe it, but it’s true: promotion takes just as much time as, if not more time than, actually writing. When I set out to organize this blog tour, I assumed a few hours each week would be plenty to allow for the emails, the phone calls, the quick mention here and there, all the tedious stuff necessary to make sure people are aware of my book. A few hours each day is more appropriate.

Anyone have any ideas to help me change my perspective?

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© Caleb J Ross MMXI

Warmed and Bound : Table of Contents

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I’m re-posting this from the official Warmed and Bound news blog, just to help get the word out.

The whole project is shaping up to be fantastic, so here are some highlights right out of the gate. First and foremost, an excerpt from Axel Taiari’s Death Juggler is being released along with this official list. You can find that at the bottom of this post or over on the official blog.

The next thing to point out is that some of the authors who made the cut are heavy hitters that many of us in the anthology have been drooling over for years now. Stephen Graham Jones, Brian Evenson and Craig Clevenger top that list for me. To check out each of their bios, just head over here.

And I don’t know if it means anything, but my story hitting the list just ahead of Clevenger is really cool. I like the proximity.

Table of Contents

Death Juggler by Axel Taiari
Click-Clack by Caleb J Ross
The World Was Clocks by Amanda Gowin
Mantodea by Matt Bell
All the Acid in the World by Gavin Pate
Crazy Love by Cameron Pierce
Chance the Dick by Paul G Tremblay
Soccer Moms and Pro Wrestler Dads by Bradley Sands
Take Arms Against a Sea by Mark Jaskowski
This Will All End Well by Nik Korpon
Midnight Souls by Christopher J Dwyer
The Tree of Life by Edward J Rathke
The Killer by Brian Evenson
Headshot by Gordon Highland
Inside Out by Sean Ferguson
Laws of Virulence by Jeremy Robert Johnson
Bruised Flesh by Craig Wallwork
Bad, Bad, Bad Bad Men by Craig Davidson
Three Theories on the Murder of John Wily by by J David Osborne
The Road Lester Took by Stephen Graham Jones
My German Daughter by Nic Young
What Was There Inside the Child by Blake Butler
Seed by Gayle Towell
They Take You by Kyle Minor
The Redemption of Garvey Flint by Vincent Louis Carrella
Blood Atonement by DeLeon DeMicoli
The Liberation of Edward Kellor by Anthony David Jacques
Act of Contrition by Craig Clevenger
Say Yes to Pleasure by Richard Thomas
The Weight of Consciousness by Tim Beverstock
If You Love Me by Doc O’Donnell
Touch by Pela Via
Love by JR Harlan
Practice by Bob Pastorella
Fading Glory by Brandon Tietz
Little Deaths by Gary Paul Libero
We Sing the Bawdy Electric by Rob Parker
In Exile by Chris Deal

And here’s that excerpt like I promised.

It’s all laughter and nervous giggles until the bombs explode for real. Then the audience’s mood short-circuits fast as a brain stroke: a boom louder than staccato lightning strikes eardrums, a body skyrockets into the air, screams zigzag through the big top, people trample over each other for the swiftest way to the exit.

—first page, opening to Axel Taiari’s Death Juggler

If there’s one thing I love, it’s a good opening line. I can’t fucking wait to read Death Juggler.

So stay tuned here, or just bookmark the official blog, for further updates as events warrant.

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ADJ MMXI