"ASK ME, UH-HO-HO, ASK ME"

Today here at the 'mouth, I have a very special guest. If you're like me, you've read her work for years in Bust and the like, so I am très heureux to present the one and only Janice Erlbaum and a very interesting way for you to win a copy of her book.

Janice Erlbaum is the author of Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir, and the Have You Found Her (Villard, 2008). She was a contributor to BUST magazine from 1994 through 2007, and has also written for NYPress, POPsmear, and McSweeneys.net. She is featured in the anthologies ALOUD: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Verses That Hurt, and The BUST Guide to the New Girl Order, and she's been written about in magazines including Poets & Writers, The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Elle, PAPER, Harper's Bazaar, Seventeen, the Daily News, and New York. She once kissed a girl on MTV. She now lives in her native New York City with her domestic partner, Bill Scurry, and their three cats, where she sometimes volunteers at a shelter for homeless teens.

Janice was kind enough to swing by and here's what she said:

Amy Guth: Tell us what you write, what you have written and how you do it?

Janice Erlbaum: I write a bunch of things: journal entries, blog posts, emails – endless fucking emails! – short stories, poems, and, so far, two book-length memoirs (Girlbomb, about running away to a homeless shelter at the age of fifteen, and Have You Found Her, about going back to that same shelter as a thirtysomething volunteer).

In the past, I’ve written a feminist news column for BUST magazine, jokes for my unsuccessful stand-up comedy career, slam poetry for my thank-god-defunct poetry group the Pussy Poets, blurbs about shopping for New York Press, and articles on subjects including female rapists and teenaged murderers for a magazine called POPsmear.

I generally start a day of writing by sitting down with my notebook and just unloading a bunch of crap – to-do lists, complaints, dreams, more complaints – then I turn to my laptop and open whatever document I’m working on, and go for two hours or so (sometimes less, never more). When I find myself stuck on something, I turn to my notebook and say, “What am I trying to say here?”, or, “What comes next?”, and I usually find myself writing the answer to that question. After two hours, I take a break, then come back to it for another two hour session, after which I sum up the day’s work in my notebook. Also, I work at a writers’ room in Manhattan, which helps tremendously – I get almost nothing done when I work at home, because of the cats and the internet and my general lack of attention span.

AG: That's a great ritual, Janice. I love the notebook; I do a variation of that myself. What grand things are next for you? What would you, we're talking dream gigs and adventures here, love to be next for you?

JE: A third book is what’s next – I’m writing about real-life experiences, AGAIN, but I think I’m calling this one fiction, just to buck the recent trend of people making shit up and calling it “memoir,” and also so I don’t have to apologize to my friends for writing about them (“What? That’s not you, that’s…a fictional character!”).

As for dream gigs and adventures, I’m a huge, screaming, crazy Disney World fan, and I’d love to find some way to write about Disney World professionally, some way that would afford me the opportunity to go as often as I wanted until I was sick to death of the place. I know I should say “travel the world,” or “explore space,” or “solve the problem of global resource disparity,” and I’d love to do all of those things. But first, Disney World.

AG: What Smiths or Morrissey song or lyric best sums it up for you right now?

JE: “Every day you must say/So, how do I feel about my life?”

So true, Moz! Every day, I sit down with my notebook and ask myself that very question, then spend the next half hour answering it. It’s the best exercise any writer, or any aspiring sane person, can perform.

AG: Thank you, Janice for coming by. Do visit again anytime. Now, dear readers, I have a very special treat for you! Remember how I said you could win a copy of her book. Indeed. Here's the scoop: we're going to play a little scavenger hunt game. Go find an image out in cyberland that represents the word shelter to you and leave the URL in the comments section. The cleverest, funniest, creative-est interpretation wins a copy of her book Have You Found Her. She'll send it right to your door. Am I looking out for you folks, or what? I have a copy, and it's wonderful, so don't flake. You'll kick yourself if you do. So don't.

Now, once you do that, you know what to do! Head over to Good Reads, then to Shelfari and then over to LibraryThing and claim and rate her books. Also, swing by her website and look at all of the wonderfulness over there, and check back often to see when she'll be where. And, when you hear that she is reading in a place near you, do whatever it takes to go show her some love and hear her read. You will be so very glad you did.

Want to be a featured author/writer type for this? Well, just send an email to me and I'll tell you everything you need to know.

"ASK ME, UH-HO-HO, ASK ME"

You guys, I have got a serious treat for you today! (Who loves you? Guthieroo, that's who!) Today, for Guthmantics, we have my two new BFFs, Scott Korb and Peter Bebergal, authors of The Faith Between Us: A Jew and a Catholic Search for the Meaning of G-d. Publishers Weekly said: "...questions of faith and G-d are actually what brought Bebergal and Korb together, initially through a correspondence related to their writings for various online magazines. No topic is taboo; amid their questioning of faith and G-d come tales of addiction, neuroses and ineptitude." Fabulous, delicious, down-to-earth meaty reading, my friends. (Ohh, dig the website, too!) I caught up with them and this is the scoopage they gave me:

Guth: Tell us what you write, what you have written and how you do it? (You guys know I like to ask that because I have such funky and specific writing rituals, myself.)

Korb: Writing Faith with Peter was a long, long collaborative effort. The book comprises ten essays, five by me, five by Peter. Joining these essays are ten transitional epilogues that work as if we’re finishing each other’s sentences. You know, something good friends do. While it wasn’t conceived of this way, Faith became primarily book about a faithful friendship between men. We keep each other honest.

Our process is to talk first. Or, over the years, talking basically just happened, wasn’t part of any process. One day we talked a lot about pornography. There’s writing about porn in the book. Another day, the day my stepfather died, we talked about that. There’s a lot about my stepfather in the book. One day I went to the doctor to learn why I have a facial tic. The doctor told me I have trigeminal neuralgia. I called Peter from outside the office. The book opens with an essay about that.

But the conversation that started us thinking about the book was the one that involved Peter asking me -- after we’d talked around the issue -- whether or not I believed in God. The book as a whole answers that question. In short: No. In long: Yes, a lot.

The process goes this way. We write an essay. We send that essay to the other person. We edit each other’s essays. From this point we diverge. I send my comments to Peter. Peter graciously incorporates my suggestions (to a point) and in a week or so has a finished essay. It’s smooth. Peter doesn’t even bother sending me my essays back any more. First, he calls. He tells me the essay needs work, often with the structure or my focus. I tell him to read it again because clearly he hasn’t read it carefully enough. He tells me he’s read it twice. I tell him to read it again. He does. He calls me the next day with the same comments. I disagree and yell at him. We get off the phone. I sit for two days thinking I am right and Peter is wrong. I reread the essay the following day and realize that Peter is right and I am wrong. I rewrite the essay incorporating Peter’s suggestions (to a point). In a week or so I have a finished essay.

After our editor offers her suggestions, we both have much better essays.

Bebergal: Scott has laid it out pretty well here. I can say that we both had our moments of being very protective of our writing, as if certain sentences and ideas were precious little kittens the other was trying to smother with a pillow. But even when we both agreed on certain things, our editor would see them and be appalled. That was the most humbling part of the process. At one point, after delivering some material, our editor said “I don’t really know what to say.” She said this not with excitement and enthusiasm, but as if someone had just smothered a kitten.

I do believe that if it wasn’t for Scott I wouldn’t be half the writer I am today. He has taught me so much, especially about slowing down and really reading over my work carefully. Scott loves words and sentences, and the way they work together. I get caught up in the intoxication of an idea and an image, and I often forget to make sure my expression of it is as clear and concise as it can be.

It will be a shock to begin our next larger projects mostly independent of each other.

AG: What grand things are next for you? What would you, we're talking dream gigs and adventures here, love to be next for you?

Korb: Another book that I can’t talk about. And I was supposed to be getting married. I can’t talk about that either. I can say that I’m taking my first hunting trip over Thanksgiving with a friend who is a vegetarian. He wants not to be so we’re going to kill a deer (we hope). I used to be a vegan. There is an essay in the book (excerpted in the current Gastronomica) that talks about that. A former ascetic, I used to consider my veganism a kind of holy eating -- or not eating. I was wrong. (We learn in the book that I was basically wrong about my whole life of religious disciplines.)

Bebergal: There’s also another book in the works for me, an extension of sorts of one of the chapters in The Faith Between Us. After that, I want to work on some fiction, specifically a reimaging of the fantasy novel in which a child find his or her way from this world into another through some kind of portal; a rabbit hole, a wardrobe, a looking glass. I am spending some free time building little solar power robots based on BEAM theory. But mostly I am trying to come up with new adventures to have with my son Sam. Not sure hunting is on the top of this list, but if Scott comes back with a warrior's glint in his eye and blood streaks on his cheeks, maybe I'll be inspired to take my son someday.

AG: What Smiths or Morrissey song or lyric sums it up for you right now?

Korb: Obviously, it used to be “Meat is Murder.” But that’s clearly not it now. “Girlfriend in a Coma” has always been a favorite. But since I’m the Christian in this book, I’ll have to say “The Boy with the Thorn in His Side.” Bebergal: Well to be honest, I never listened to the Smiths. They were a little fey for my taste, which at the time consisted of nothing except for hardcore punk. In 1984, when the first Smiths album came out, I was listening to the new Minor Threat record, Out of Step. And of course, Bad Brains’ Rock for Light had been in steady rotation. So if I may, I will have to choose a little more broadly from this era. After we finished the book and sent it to the editor I felt a little like the 7 Seconds song “Clenched Fists, Black Eyes,” but then the next day, after it had sunk in, I am reminded of the Freeze song, “Idiots at Happy Hour.” But since I’m the Jew, I’ll go with Bad Brain’s “Rally 'Round Jah Throne”

Thanks, Amy.

Thank you, Scott and Peter. Come back anytime. Now, readers-my-darlings, you know what happens now. Head over to GoodReads, Shelfari and LibraryThing and befriend them and the book. And, be friends over on Jewcy, too, if that's your bag. And, add their website to your list of daily online reads and check back often to see what they're up to. And, go pick up a copy or ten of their wonderful, beautiful book. It's one of those books you'll read and then think of a handful of people who you'd like to give a copy to. So, by all means. And, for crying out loud, when they're at an event near you, butts in seats!

"UNITE AND TAKE OVER"

Well, kids, despite a tornado or four, falling trees, workers with chainsaws working to free smashed cars, and city-wide flooding, last night at The Fixx was great fun!

Both Adam Levin...

...and Wendy McClure...


...braved the end of the world weather and brought the funny and the awesome. Unfortunately, my camera got a little temporarily botched en route, so I deeply regret that I can't offer you any new photographs, especially since everyone looked smashing. (And, I would have liked to offer further proof that I own more than one skirt.)

Hopefully, Wendy and Adam will be around here on Bigmouth soon for an installation of Guthmantics, but in the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for happenings from either of them, as they are both talented and delightful.

In other news:

Fish can be assholes. Speak with Gary at The Fixx. He showed me last night post-reading that a tiny, pretty orangey fish killed/ate his baby's mama (thus earning the name "OJ") and is now trying to eat a giant black Oscar fish peck by peck. Fish can be assholes.

Schwartzy has a very funny piece up at Six Sentences.

My final post from my guest spot over at Jewcy is up. Thanks to Jewcy and and all its Jewcyness for having me over. I am honored to have been in such great company.

"ASK ME, UH-HO-HO, ASK ME"

Hey gang, ready for more? I thought you might be. Well, you are in luck because today we have a very special guest here on Guthmantics, Antoine Wilson, author of The Interloper, a book I have just, just, just begun reading and am already enjoying quite a bit.

Antoine Wilson, is the author of the novel The Interloper, just out from Handsel Books/Other Press. (Check out what the LA Times Book Review had to say about the book, eh?) His work has appeared in The Paris Review and Best New American Voices, and he is a contributing editor of A Public Space. He lives, writes and surfs in Los Angeles.

Guth: Tell us what you write, what you have written and how you do it?

Wilson: I just published my first novel, The Interloper, which means I've been cruising around reading and promoting. It's kind of astounding, really, to talk to people about something I finished thinking about, in a deep way, about a year before publication. I mean, there was copy-editing, of course, but the Promethean stuff was all done. So I'm in this sort of strange place right now where people are dying to talk to me about the book and I'm up to my neck in another project.


I'm getting better at that sort of thing, sure, but wouldn't it be rad to have a book come out the day after you finish writing it instead of the year after? (Yes it would!) As far as writing rituals, I try to keep a daily schedule. I typed it up recently and posted it on my office door, as a touchstone. I believe in the power of routine. Probably because routine doesn't come easily to me.

My typical writing day consists of drinking too much coffee, re-reading (and tweaking) what I've been working on, and circling the computer like a dog circles his bed. After that I type until something minor distracts me, which usually leads to a chain-reaction of distraction and self-abnegation. Followed by circling the computer, and the whole cycle repeats. Three or four cycles like that and I'm done for the day. (I can relate, my friend)

Guthieroo: What grand things are next for you? What would you, we're talking dream gigs and adventures here, love to be next for you?

Wilson: My wife and I are expecting our first child August 30. So that's pretty grand. And I've got my dream gig right now, working on the next novel. As far as adventures go, I wouldn't kick a good surf trip out of bed.

Guthie: What Smiths or Morrissey song or lyric sums it up for you right now?

Wilson: Hang the blessed DJ/because the music that they constantly play/it says nothing to me about my life.

(Isn't that the truth?)

Well, many, many thanks to our special guest, Antoine Wilson, for stopping by. Dear Antoine, please come back anytime and keep us all posted on what you're up to.

Now, dear readers, you know what to do! Run, do not walk, out into the world (actual or online) and get a copy of The Interloper. Then, head over to Good Reads, then to Shelfari and then over to LibraryThing and claim and rate The Interloper. Also, swing by Antoine Wilson's website, look at all of the wonderfulness over there, and check back often to see his latest. And, for crying out loud, if you hear that he is reading in a place near you, get yourself to that reading.

Want to be a featured author/writer type for Guthmantics? Well, just send an email to me at amy@guthagogo.com and I'll tell you everything you need to know.

"ALMA MATTERS"

Hey kids, today's very special guest is a a wonderful and talented woman I met and read with at the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, and author of a book I absolutely fell in love with, please welcome my friend, Margaret Sartor.

When I asked her for a bio to use here, she wrote: "It’s an odd thing to try to write a bio, I think…what parts do you pick out to tell? This then: I teach at Duke University. I have the most amazing and tolerant husband. I have two children who are both extremely smart and funny. (I know everyone says that, but my case, it’s true.) I have two cats and an above average dog. I adore the movies of Alfred Hitchcock, the poetry of Emily Dickinson, “This American Life,” and mid-century modern design. I hate housework and practice T’ai Chi. I am hopelessly serious. I believe that compassion is a kind of power and kindness may be the one virtue that can save us all — if it’s not already too late."

See why I love her to bits? Right? Well, let me tell you a little more about her.

Her most recent book, the acclaimed and bestselling Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets, and Growing Up in the 1970’s, was selected as a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year, a Washington Post Book World’s Best Memoir of 2006, It was a finalist for the SIBA Book of the Year Award and chosen by “O” The Oprah Magazine for its 2006 list of “What To Read This Summer.” Miss American Pie tells a compelling, frank, and frequently humorous story, delving into the same emotional and geographic territory that Sartor has been depicting in photographs for almost two decades. Her photographs of her family have appeared in a number of photographic books, including In Their Mother’s Eyes by Martina Mettner, The Spirit of Family by Al and Tipper Gore; and A New Life: Stories and Photographs from the Suburban South, by Alex Harris and Alice George. Her work has been published in periodicals, including Aperture, DoubleTake, Esquire, Harpers, New Yorker, The Oxford American, and The Washington Post Sunday Magazine. Her prints are in the permanent collections of The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Mead Art Museum, Birmingham Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, and the North Carolina Museum of Art, as well as several private collections.

As an editor, Sartor has published three books, including: Gertrude Blom: Bearing Witness, edited by Margaret Sartor and Alex Harris, and What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney, edited by Margaret Sartor with co-editor Geoff Dyer. What Was True was chosen as one of the "Top Ten Photography Books of 1999" by the Village Voice.

Sartor has been a guest curator for exhibitions at the International Center for Photography in New York, The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She lives with her husband and two children in Durham, North Carolina.

Feel like a slacker yet? She'll do that to you, but the thing that I really love about her the best, is that will all of these accomplishments and with so very much she could and should be bragging about, she's easily the kindest, most humble and most authentic person you'd ever want to meet. And, If you've never heard her read, you, my friend, are missing out. So, let's chat her up a bit...

Guthieroo: Tell us what you write, what you have written and how you do it?

Sartor: My most recent book is Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets, and Growing Up in the 1970s. The title pretty much says exactly what it is. It’s a memoir of growing up based on the actual diaries, letters and notebooks I kept as a girl. To read Miss American Pie is to enter my head, my very subjective view of the world (love, sex, God, family, friendship, etc.) as I grow from age twelve to eighteen. It’s the story of a self-conscious, lonely, pissed off, frank, confused, and curious girl as she bumps and sashays her way towards being a young woman. In truth, it’s a book I never deliberately set out to write, but once I started it, once I transcribed and began editing my adolescent diaries — and even though the process sometimes felt similar to bleeding through my fingertips — I was compelled to finish it. Because I knew that only by finishing it, could I figure out what the essential story of my growing up really was. Let me put it another way: at a particular moment in my life, a few years ago, right around the time I realized that, biologically speaking, I was “middle-aged,” something clicked, and I knew that in order for me to move forward, I first needed to look back, back at those outrageously prolonged years of what we call adolescence. (My father would have called this urge of mine a need for Proper Perspective.) And that was the moment I thought about the diaries.

Opening up and reading my adolescence diaries was like traveling through time, like finding an alternate self on the other side of the universe. It was, to say the least, unsettling. But short of hypnosis, I could never have found, in the recesses of my memory, my authentic voice as a teenager. The diaries allowed me to meet that girl I was face-to-face, so to speak. And as I began to edit the diaries, I began to uncover the events and experiences that shaped who I eventually became — which is say that I began to understand where I came from and why I am who I am.



The fact that my story seems to ring true for other people has amazed me and felt very gratifying, but I think the underlying truth of that is that adolescence, for any of us, is defined by certain essential struggles: the search for belonging, love, and identity. These struggles are, by turns, poignant, embarrassing, heartbreaking, and very often (at least from the perspective of adulthood) really hilarious. Growing up is difficult under the best of circumstances and it lasts a long time, but we’ve all been through it. We all went to high school. We all have family and friends and secrets. We all have wounds and I can only begin by describing my own.

Also, the 1970s were an interesting time to grow up: loud fashion, a burgeoning drug culture, the rise of feminism, the spread of evangelical Christianity, sexual revolution, the disillusionment of Watergate and the Vietnam War — all with a killer soundtrack.

I should add here that I am also a photographer and my pictures are all about the ties of family and impact of the past upon the present. These photographs have been widely published and exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the country. When I photograph or write, my interest is in real people and real events. I take infinite care to render life accurately, but in the end, it’s still only my version, my imperfect and partial view. This is something I learned from photography, that we can’t escape the partiality of our view. So, though I attempt to tell the truth, I am always aware that it is still only my story, my point-of-view, my truth.

LaGuth: What grand things are next for you? What would you, we're talking dream
gigs and adventures here, love to be next for you?

Sartor: I would like to write a second book, again based on my diaries. But, as with Miss American Pie, I don’t have a preconceived idea of what form that book will take and what it may finally say. I will sift through the diaries for the touchstones, the insights – and especially for the laughs (humor is a big part of how I survive life and that comes through in the diaries), but I know now, from the experience of writing Miss American Pie, that this process will be emotional. It will not be simple. Still, that’s the next step. It’s what I need to do.
And if it were my dream gig, then I would have to say that I would like to write my next book while living in Paris. I don’t think that’s going to happen — but I can dream about it.

Guthy: What Smiths or Morrissey song or lyric sums it up for you right now?

Sartor: Oh, I love Morrissey! (All hail Sartor) But lately I’ve been infatuated with Lucinda Williams’ new album “West” and also relentlessly playing “The Essential Leonard Cohen” — which completely knocks my socks off. When I think of Morrissey’s songs, what comes to mind is “Alma Matters.” It’s smart and wicked and I love the double entendre of the title. This song also speaks to a question I often get, and have trouble answering. The question is: “What the hell possessed you to publish your diaries?” So this song will do fine for me right now.

So the choice I have made
May seem strange to you
But who asked you, anyway?
It's my life to wreck
My own way

You see, to someone, somewhere, oh yeah ...
Alma matters
In mind, body and soul
In part, and in hole

So the life I have made
May seem wrong to you
But, I've never been surer
It's my life to ruin
My own way

You see, to someone, somewhere, oh yeah ...
Alma matters
In mind, body and soul
In part, and in hole

To someone, somewhere, oh yeah ...
Oh yeah ...
Oh yeah, oh yeah
Oh yeah ...

Guth again: Margaret, it was a pleasure beyond to have you stop by today! Thank you so very much and please stop by again anytime.

Now, dear readers, you know what to do! Run, do not walk, out into the world (actual or online) and get a copy of Miss American Pie. In fact, be menschy and get more than one because you're going to want to save one and give copies to people you'll think of as you read. Trust me. Then, head over to Good Reads, then to Shelfari and then over to LibraryThing and claim and rate Miss American Pie. Also, swing by Margaret Sartor's website, look at all of the wonderfulness over there, and check back often to see her latest. And, for crying out loud, if you hear that she is reading in a place near you, do whatever it takes to go show her some love and hear her read. You will be so very glad you did.

In the meantime, I'll be taping her words to my bathroom mirror or someplace, because I think they are words to live by: "I believe that compassion is a kind of power and kindness may be the one virtue that can save us all — if it’s not already too late."

Want to be a featured author/writer type for Guthmantics? Well, just send an email to me at amy@guthagogo.com and I'll tell you everything you need to know.

"ASK ME, UH-HO-HO, ASK ME"

Hey, groovy kids. Time for another Guthmantics installation. Do I love you guys to death, or what? Guess who I brought this time? Why, it's none other than author of Lucky Man, Ben Tanzer, who will be reading next week at the fabulous Fixx Reading Series, hosted by yours truly, that I just know you are going to attend because you've been seeing all of those very cool flyers all around town, right? Good.

After working for many years on stage and screen Ben Tanzer now lives in Chicago where he tends to his vineyards, shoots pool, dabbles in social work, anxiously awaits the release of High School Musical 2, and spends all sorts of quality time with his lovely wife and young sons. His work has appeared in a variety of magazines and journals including Punk Planet, Opium, THE2NDHAND, Monkey Bicycle, Wonka Vision, The Truth Magazine, and 20dissidents. His debut novel Lucky Man, which has been described by Time Out Chicago as "honest and often hilarious" and Williamette Week as "seems like a Rubik's Cube on acid" (love that!), was released by Manx Media this spring. You can and should check out his blog, too, This Blog Will Change Your Life.

Guthieroo: Tell us what you write, what you have written and how you do it?

Tanzer: Lots of fiction and creative nonfiction - particularly parenting pieces the last few years, which not so coincidentally coincides with my becoming a parent; some quasi-journalistic stuff - interviews for example; a number of humor pieces more recently which I'm really enjoying; brilliant yet still non-optioned screenplays with my buddy Harley Grant; and novels. Wow, when you read this sentence as a whole it sounds terribly grandiose. That said, I hope to become more grossly grandiose as this interview continues, so I hope that works for everyone.

My fiction tends to fall into two areas - stories exploring different themes, people, or events growing up in upstate New York or any number of the irrational fears I have as an adult and parent - the loss of a child, adultery, accidental death, abuse of power, and on and on. While these stories tend to fall into two different settings, they all tend to grapple with one primary theme. I am very interested in what people struggle with and against and how they cope with these struggles. The fictional, and even some of the nonfiction, characters I write about, including myself, tend to focus on ways of coping that are fairly internal and not necessarily all that healthy.

The humor pieces are the most exaggerated and tend to focus on individuals who cope with difficult or confusing situations through rampant narcissism and delusions of grandeur, but even the journalistic pieces which tend to focus on artists and activists - the filmmakers Jibangus and Usama Alshaibi, the graphic novelist and publisher Steve Lafler, the activists Christin Hinojosa or the Saint Patrick's Four - are about people struggling against something. This might be war, the opportunity to create, rejection, or feeling like an outsider. This kind of struggle and how they cope with it isn't necessarily negative, and doesn't even have to involve great personal suffering, but I still find that all these pieces fall along a similar continuum that I find really fascinating.

Most recently I've been hyping and trying to support my debut novel, Lucky Man, which was released by Manx Media this past March. My publisher Steve Lafler, who I mentioned above, and I have been hustling to get the book out there and its been a lot of fun.

I'm also at work on my new novel Most Likely You'll Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine, and while Lucky Man is focused on four friends and how their personalities merge together and fall apart over the course of several years, the new one is focused on a couple that comes together quickly, implodes nearly as quickly and then tries to come back together again.

Tackling these different kinds of pieces has allowed me to meet any number of cool editors and connect with any number of great magazines that have been really supportive and so I'd like to take a moment and give them a shout. In doing so, I also hope people will pay them a visit and consider supporting them. In terms of fiction, there is The Truth Magazine, 20dissidents , and THE2NDHAND; my humor pipeces have landed with Opium and Monkey Bicycle; the latter of which I am particularly excited about; and with the journalistic pieces I had the chance to work with Clamor and Third Coast Press (and in both cases with the awesome Keidra Chaney), off and on with Punk Planet (Ohh, damn) for several years, and have recently become a staff writer with Wonka Vision which I am also very excited about.

Regarding how I write, I mainly have one simple rule - I have to write for a minimum of 30 minutes a day every day regardless of what I'm working on. I once read somewhere that 30 minutes should be the minimum, and being very rule-driven, this worked for me. I have relaxed this rule a bit on weekends since my second son was born last year, but not much. I also like to do the first draft of everything I do on a legal pad free hand. Beyond that I try not to be too precious or rigid about my writing and don't really feel like I can be. I have a full-time job and two kids and I write where and when I can - 5:30 in the morning before the kids are up or midnight after they are asleep, at my desk during lunch when I can, airplanes and airports, hotel rooms, coffee shops, whenever and wherever I'm free. I do tend to plot out the week in advance in terms when and where I think I will be able to write and loosely try to schedule it in my head. When it works it's quite thrilling and when it doesn't I scramble, but its still kind of thrilling, because I'm writing. I would add though, that if I ever have the chance to become precious about my writing I absolutely will. It will be the best of everything for me at that point, no expenses spared, no space too perfect.

Finally, I write a blog and while I'm not sure if this is writing or if anyone reads it, its also a lot of fun. It is first and foremost a blatant celebration of myself and Lucky Man, reeking of narcissism and unabashed self-love, and second an attempt at celebrating independent media and artists I hope will get more attention.

LaGuth: What grand things are next for you? What would you, we're talking dream gigs and adventures here, love to be next for you?

Tanzer: World peace is important to me for sure. But so is bringing sexy back, it's a big job and I want to support JT in anyway I can. I am looking forward to the Wham! reunion at Lollapalooza this summer because we haven't played together in many years and I really believe we are past the bitterness and petty disagreements that led to our split. I am still hoping that Diane Lane will return one of my calls, but this of course seems like a real long shot.



Beyond that, I am really enjoying the various opportunities that have been emerging for me recently and the creativity that comes with needing to hustle and try and sell a book very few people care about. The book readings, the interviews, obsessively cyber stalking myself and tracking my Amazon ranking, creating a video for YouTube, and writing my blog are things I hoped I would have a reason to do one day do and they're happening, it's really cool.

That said, I hope bigger and different opportunities continue to emerge as well, being invited to join you for the Fixx reading series for example was a nice surprise, (Flattery will you get everywhere with me) and I will be participating in Mortified this month which I couldn't be more thrilled about. These readings have made me realize that I would really like to perform, because I really enjoy being on stage, and maybe I will try and write a monologue. Who knows, anything seems possible right now, and I don't remember ever quite feeling this before. I would also like to learn more about filmmaking, especially the making of documentaries and object animation. I would also love the opportunity to try and adapt Lucky Man for the screen. And working on a graphic novel is probably my ultimate fantasy. I am hopeful that Lucky Man will draw enough interest from someone that I can get Most Likely You'll Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine out the door with a little less scrambling, though if it calls for tha, I'm game. I am going to write regardless, and I am going to figure out how to get the work out there. (Do you guys love that fucking delicious optimism from him??)

Ultimately though, I want to create more and have more time to do so. If I stay healthy I think this is inevitable, so if I have to wait until the kids are out of the house and I'm not needing to work so much, that's cool, that's what I'll do.

Guthaloo: What Morrissey or Smiths song sums it all up for you right now and why?

Tanzer: I was a little conflicted about this, but decided to go with "And is it really so strange? Oh, is it really so strange? Oh, is it really so, really so strange?" I sort of envisioned everything that's been happening lately related to writing could happen, and that if I plugged away it would. But still, it's kind of hard to believe it is happening and its very strange. Hoping for things doesn't make them so, and even if I have gone after them, I couldn't be more surprised or appreciative.

Guth again: Awesome, Ben. Thanks a million for coming by. Well, kids, you know the drill. Get your butt out the door to The Fixx Reading Series on Thursday 6/28 and score a copy of Lucky Man (among others), or order it right from the publisher to support independent media. After you gobble it up, head over to Shelfari, LibraryThing and GoodReads and claim and rate, claim and rate, claim and rate.

Want to be a featured author/writer type for Guthmantics? Well, just send an email to me at amy@guthagogo.com and I'll tell you everything you need to know.

"ASK ME, UH-HO-HO, ASK ME"

Hey kids! Look! It's another installation of Guthmantics! Oh-la-la! Today's very, very special guest is poet, editor and publisher, Reb Livingston, author of Your Ten Favorite Words (Coconut Books, forthcoming), Pterodactyls Soar Again (Whole Coconut Chapbook Series, 2006) and co-author of Wanton Textiles (No Tell Books, 2006), her work appears in literary magazines and has been nominated for two Pushcart prizes. "That’s Not Butter" appears in The Best American Poetry 2006 (Scribner). She writes an occasional poetry column called “Crucial Rooster” at The Happy Booker. She and Molly Arden edit No Tell Motel, an online poetry journal devoted to meaningful and discreet poetic encounters, and the annual print anthology The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel. And, Reb is the editor and publisher of No Tell Books and, and, and co-curator of The Burlesque Poetry Hour, a monthly poetry reading series in Washington, D.C.

Diving right in...

Guth: Tell us what you write, what you have written and how you do it? (You guys know I like to ask that because I have such funky and specific writing rituals, myself.)

Reb: Primarily I write poetry. Also I blog and write the occasional goofy poetry column. Two chapbooks came out in 2006, Pterodactyls Soar Again and Wanton Textiles. My first "full-length" collection, Your Ten Favorite Words, will be published this fall from Coconut Books. That book stems from my psychic ability to discern a person's favorite word and use it in a poem.

How does she do it? I'm a little wary of the possible implications of such a question, not that I'm assigning any dubious intentions on your part. Lately I've come across a number of media profiles of supposed "super-moms" and these portrayals tend to be quite disingenuous. Unfair to their subject (from all the disdain generated from the airbrushed presentation) and cruel to the readers (who are working their asses off, yet are made to feel like unambitious losers). But here's my chance to break that vicious cycle. I am the married mother of *one* toddler. My husband is frequently away on travel, but when he's home he's very involved and doesn't expect a statue every time he changes a diaper. He lets me sleep in on the weekends. That alone gives me a better advantage than most. Also I have part-time daycare (two days a week). Yet still, I am completely overwhelmed combining my parent/family responsibilities with my writing and editing my magazine and running my poetry micropress.

So how do I do it? I stay up until 2 or 3 a.m. most nights, have a sloppy house and am forever behind on laundry. I don't prepare elaborate meals, in fact, I rarely cook. When my husband comes home I say "we're going out for dinner God damn it" and off we go. I write poetry late at night. I read submissions, put together galleys, edit manuscripts, blog and work on other projects during my son's nap in the afternoon and in the evening after he goes to bed. When the unexpected happens, the wrench in the schedule -- everything gets backed up, a real mess.

Usually I don't get around to taking a shower until 4 or 5 p.m. This is embarrassing when people show up to the door unannounced.

AG: What grand things are next for you? What would you, we're talking dream gigs and adventures here, love to be next for you?

RL: I have two readings at the end of May, one in Chicago, the other in NYC -- and then I'm off the reading circuit for the summer and will resume with a vengeance in the fall to promote Your Ten Favorite Words. I'll be all over the country hypnotizing people to buy my book.

This summer I'll be spending my time working on five new No Tell Books titles. The first to come out will be The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel - Second Floor, the follow up anthology to last year's Bedside Guide. The four other titles are single author collections scheduled to be out this fall: Shy Green Fields by Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Harlot by Jill Alexander Essbaum, Blue & Red Roses: Personations by Karl Parker and The Myth of the Simple Machines by Laurel Snyder.

I'd love to finish my next book this year too -- it's a grimoire inspired manuscript currently titled God Damsel. I'd like to be able to design the entire book myself -- inside and cover -- which would require a little design schooling on my part, I'm looking into courses now.

AG: What Smiths or Morrissey song or lyric sums it up for you right now?

RL: "Hairdresser on Fire" would be the obvious choice, but today I'm feeling much more "I Have Forgiven Jesus."

Guth again: Thanks for swinging by, Reb, my dear. I adore you and all you do! Anyway, folks, you know the drill by now, right? After you've read all of her work, add what you can to your LibraryThing and Shelfari collections. Go on, go on. Then, be a mensch and buy a copy or two or ten for your friends and lovers and BFFs and the next time you hear the fabulous Reb Livingston is reading near you, go show some love.

Want to be a featured author/writer type for Guthmantics? Well, just send an email to me at amy@guthagogo.com and I'll tell you everything you need to know.

"ASK ME, UH-HO-HO, ASK ME"

Hey kids, remember Guthmantics? Sure you do. Well, here is another edition for you. Not that this guy needs my friggin' help to sell books but, eh, here he is. You might remember him from such book jacket blurbs as my novel. Ahem.

Anyway.

Eric Spitznagel is a frequent contributor to magazines like Playboy, Esquire, Maxim, Blender, Harper's, Mean and Salon.com, among many others. He's a contributing editor for The Believer and the Website editor for Monkeybicycle. He's the author of six books, including one that's available in its German-version and features a cat on the cover for no apparent reason.

His latest books are Fast Forward (Manic D Press, 2007), a memoir of his brief career writing screenplays for the adult film industry, and The Hardest (Working) Man In Show Biz (HarperCollins, 2007), the autobiography of hirsute porn star Ron Jeremy. Yes, that's two books about porn in just one year, and yes, his mother is not amused (That's a lie. She is tickled pink.). He has a blog called Vonnegut's Asshole and, hello, he didn't know how to blog before I talked some sense into him. Anyway, I rag him, but really, he's a lamb when he's not bein' a douche. Just look at the blurb he gave me for Three Fallen Women, eh?

1. Tell us what you write, what you have written and how you do it?

Spitzy: I tend to write vastly different things at more or less the same time. It's an even mix of what I've been assigned to write by editors and what I'm writing just for myself, without any promise of compensation. You and I have discussed this a lot. It's an ongoing tightrope for writers to find that perfect balance between what will pay your bills and what needs to be written, because you have to get these words out of your head and onto the page. Just this morning, I put the final touches on an interview with Paul Rudd for Playboy, wrote a few dozen pages for my as-yet-untitled novel, finished a story for Daphne Gottlieb's upcoming anthology "Fucking Daphne," and tinkered with an essay for my blog about the time I touched a monkey on a Caribbean island. It's enough to make a guy feel a little schizophrenic. As for how I write it, that's usually left to chance. It depends on where the muse - damn it's elusive hide - happens to be leading me at any given moment. Trying to write something when you don't give two shits is a pretty hopeless endeavor. Deadlines help, of course, as nothing motivates me like an editor saying "We need this by Friday or you won't get paid." Otherwise, it's just about waiting for lighting to strike. Inspiration is a fickle mistress, and it can't be forced. Sometimes an idea will hit me at the least convenient moment, like while driving on a highway and realizing too late that the nearest pen is just out of my reach. Or after waking up at 4am and I'm still too disoriented to locate the notebook I thought I'd placed next to the bed. I've scrawled sentences on everything from matchbooks to bookflaps to my own skin. You can't tell yourself, "I'll remember this later," because you never will. The best ideas come in a flash, and they hardly ever leave footprints. Trying to remember an idea after it's left is like trying to describe a car accident. "It all happened so fast, it's kinda a blur. There was a loud crash and a lot of screaming and the next thing I knew I was lying in a ditch covered in glass." (Speaking of, here's a weird little piece of trivia-- I was on the phone with him, using my hands-free thank you, when I had my terrible car accident a few years ago. He heard it all and thought I was fucking dead.)

2. What grand things are next for you? What would you, we're talking dream gigs and adventures here, love to be next for you?

Spitzy: I don't have the slightest idea. I've had thoughts about doing something a bit more visual, along the lines of a graphic novel. There's a frustrated cartoonist in me that's been clamoring for attention. The only problem is, I don't have any actual talent for drawing. Granted, neither does Matt Groening, but I don't have enough hubris to think I could compete with "Life in Hell". I'm editing the dirty comedy issue for Monkeybicycle (which, by the way, counts amongst its contributors one Amy Guth), and I somehow convinced Sarah Silverman and Johnny Ryan to collaborate on a comic about her poop. Basically, she explains how each of her defecations are personally taken to heaven by the baby Jesus. I was so ecstatic by the end result that it just wet my appetite to do my own comic. I have absolutely no experience writing comics, and no clue what a Spitznagel comic would even look like - "American Splendor" but without as much cancer and self-loathing, maybe? - but I suppose the first step is finding an artist willing to help me. Other than that, my big passion these days is the Vonnegut's Asshole blog. It's the only thing I write that's 100% for me. Nobody is paying me to write it, and I don't even know if anybody is reading it. It's just a place to write things that are brutally honest, and sometimes reveal more about myself that I'm probably comfortable sharing. I started it last summer as an excuse to plug my last book, "Fast Forward," but it soon evolved into something a bit more personal. It became about trying to take these intimate and very raw moments from my life and look for the humor in them. As I'm the first to admit, it hasn't always worked. I've only pulled it off a few times. I wrote an essay about the anxieties of growing old that I'm pretty proud of, and I like a semi-recent post about childhood stories that become creepy and/or sad towards the end. Most of it is just comedy-for-the-sake-of-comedy. But occasionally I'll write something that's good enough and honest enough and painfully true enough that it feels like I'm really cutting deep into my veins and bleeding on the page. It's an ongoing challenge.

3. What Smiths or Morrissey song or lyric sums it up for you right now?

Spitzy: "Cemetry Gates," without a doubt. There's something about hanging out in a cemetery with an asexual vegetarian and discussing why Oscar Wilde is clearly superior to weepy romantic poets like John Keats and William Butler Yeats that just sounds like the perfect way to spend an evening. I also love how Morrissey mocks himself in that song while pretending to mock others. He rails against plagiarism, but then ignores his own advice and rips off a line ("All those people .... I want to cry") from "The Man Who Came To Dinner". How fucking brilliant is that? On the surface, he seems to be scolding pretentious writers who crib their material from more talented authors. But listen more closely and you'll see that he's really a hypocrite who can't practice what he preaches. I have a soft spot for satire that's so deceptively subtle. And like the best humor, he makes himself the butt of his own joke. It's easy to point out the worst in others, but it's a little more difficult to recognize our own flaws, and to laugh at our own absurd self-righteousness. I enjoy comedy that doesn't attack other people but looks inward and says, "Y'know, I may like to think I'm the moral authority of right and wrong, but it's painfully obvious that I've just got my head up my own ass."

Guth again: Thanks for swinging by, Spitznagel. Now go get a haircut, you damn hippie. Northern California (or "NoCali" as this dipshit has taken to calling it) has made you soft. Anyway, folks, you know the drill by now, right? After you've read his stuff, add them to your LibraryThing and Shelfari collections. Go on, go on.

Want to be a featured author/writer type for Guthmantics? Well, just send an email to me at amy@guthagogo.com and I'll tell you everything you need to know.

"ASK ME, UH-HO-HO, ASK ME"

Welcome to another edition of, Guthmantics!, a new little feature I'm doing here on Bigmouth Indeed Strikes Again. Last time, we met up with David Gianatasio to kick things off and this time, it is my pleasure to introduce all of you to Jennifer Paddock.

About a month ago, I had the pleasure of meeting her at the Tennessee William/New Orleans Literary Festival when we sat on a panel together. She, let me tell you folks, is an absolute doll. Really. She's one of those people you're just glad you know, so easy-going and funny.

She's also the author of two novels, both from Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, A Secret Word (2004) and Point Clear(2006). I haven't gotten to Secret Word just yet (keyword: yet), but I have read Point Clear, and as I blogged about at the time, I really enjoyed it. It was, as I wrote in that post, calm, touching, sentimental and seemed familiar, like hanging out with an old friend.

These days, Jennifer Paddock lives in Point Clear, Alabama (I wonder if this place is as beautiful as it sounds in her book? Anyone?) with her hubby, author Sidney Thompson and is writing all sorts of things, such as a piece about Mobile she just wrapped up for the new magazine with a gorgeous website, Garden & Gun.

Güth: Tell us what you write, what you have written and how you do it?



Paddock: I’ve written two novels. My first is A Secret Word—it follows three Arkansas girls’ lives from age fifteen to thirty, two of whom end up in New York. It’s told from alternating points of view, so you get overlapping versions of the same story or one character gives new insights into the other characters that they couldn’t give themselves.

My second is Point Clear, which follows Caroline, who lives in New York but takes a vacation to Point Clear, Alabama, wanting to get away and possibly do some writing, but happens to be there during Hurricane Ivan.

(Guth again, just wanted to point out a section in Point Clear I really liked. I mean, there were several that I really loved, like preparing to hide in the hotel during the hurricane evacuation-- that cracked me up because I was thinking that's exactly as I'd do... and there are sections about living in New York City that were so perfect and I thought were such perfect ways to describe a day when you feel like New York City is too much, too something, ("...that the city didn't only wear you down every day but could uplift you and save you.") but these little sections about writing I had to share because they both made me say, aloud on public transportation, "Tell it, girl!":

"...that you had to give up things if you wanted to write. If someone asked you to a movie or for a drink, you would have to learn to say no, and not feel bad. To write you needed time, uninterrupted time."

"Listen to me," he said. "You'll have to disappear... months at a time and churn out words. It'll be like a word factory inside your head... You have to go inside your own world. People just don't get it. They'll think you're a weirdo...but you have to have your mind clear, and it's a state of mind-- almost like having a Holy Communion with yourself on a daily basis."

So true. So true. Anyway, back to Jennifer!)

As far as rituals, I like to write at home in my pajamas at about any time of the day. Probably I do best at night or just before sunrise, if I can’t sleep. I mostly write on a computer. I like to make outlines or character notes by hand. My favorite part of writing is rewriting. I’m very happy obsessing over a sentence and then finding a better rhythm. Mostly this happens by cutting. I love music, but I can’t write to it. My husband always writes to music, but I think it just gets in the way for me.

Güth: What grand things are next for you? What would you, we're talking dream gigs and adventures here, love to be next for you?

Paddock: I’m working on a new novel. I’m just in the beginning stages, and I’m learning that I fall into the camp of writers who shouldn’t talk about what they’re writing. I feel like I’ve been talking the story away.



My dream gig would be being on the set for the fantastic movie made from one of my books. Maybe as a consultant.

I also have this dream job of writing about tennis. I’m a huge tennis fan, especially clay court tennis, probably because I can’t slide on clay and really have it as a goal in life to learn. So I have this dream of being with all the other sportswriters at the French Open at a press conference with Rafael Nadal.


Güth: What Smiths or Morrissey song or lyric sums it up for you right now?

Paddock: Everyday is like Sunday

(I, of course, think this is an excellent song choice.)

Many thanks to Jennifer Paddock for swingin' by (...and letting me quote from her book. What? You thought I didn't get permission first?)! As for the rest of you, you know what to do. Scroll up, click the link and buy that book. I'd lend you my copy of Point Clear but what she wrote inside the cover is too funny to ever part ways with. So, getcher own. Support the woman, will ya? Then, you know the drill by now, right? After you've read it, add it to your LibraryThing and Shelfari collections. Go on, go on. Ohh! And everyone go be her friend on MySpace, too and stay in-the-know with her goings-on.

Want to be a featured author/writer type for Guthmantics? Well, just send an email to me at amy@guthagogo.com and I'll tell you everything you need to know.

"AS I LIVE AND BREATHE, YOU HAVE KILLED ME"

My legs are so sore from all of the sex that I had last night! And, by that I mean, I went to the pharmacy for envelopes, drank a glass of sangria and passed out early on my couch. Naw, my legs really are sore, but only from interval training/sprinting around my neighborhood the other day, and stepping off a curb like a dumbass and nearly spraining my ankle. So graceful, Guth, so graceful.

Anyway. My brain has been on a constant loop today of Mike Doughty's "Rising Sign", "Tijuana Lady" by Gomez and Andrew Bird's "Fake Palindromes"...why?

Lots going on today. Odds and ends, you know. Mail this here, email this here, drop this off, pick this up, write this, edit this, read this, call this person, yadda yadda yadda. Chicago has finally heard that springtime is here, so it's beautiful and sunny today. Chairman Meow is sleeping peacefully on the chair nearby in a tiny ball, I'm busting through my to do list, things are swell.

Just a reminder about the Bloggers Choice Awards. Pleeeeease vote. It'll only take a minute of your time. And, I was nominated in three categories, so you can vote your little heart out, if you wish. Here, I'll even give you the link to get you started. Just click right here and vote yourself silly.

How'd we like that Guthmantics feature yesterday? I thought it was pretty fun. I'm all about community-building activities, as you all know, I'm sure.