Unsolicited Press releases A FEW SMALL STONES by Marilyn Katz, March 20, 2018. Sadly, last winter we lost Marilyn, but her family and our team decided that the best way to honor her would be to carry out publication.
The linked stories of A FEW SMALL STONES follow Alice and her extended immigrant family in 1940s New York City as they cope with the upheavals before, during and after World War II. The stories show the pain of separation and the guilt of survival, the price of upward mobility, and the ultimate disintegration of family. In one story, the sexism of the period devastates a brother and sister. Another examines the city’s racial divide, and still another takes us to a rally on the beaches in the summer of 1940 and the violent conflict between neo-Nazi isolationists and those who wanted to enter the war against Hitler and prevent the annihilation of Jews. Marilyn Ogus Katz was an author based in New York City. Her stories have been published in numerous journals, including the Tupolo Quarterly and Hadassah Magazine. Her short story, Life List, was a winner of Writer’s Digest best short shorts competition in 2015. Katz served as the Dean of Studies and Student Life at Sarah Lawrence College for almost twenty years, and continued on as consultant to the president. March 20, 2018 marks the release of James LaMontagne's MERRICK, a poetry collection. Joseph Merrick was fond of quoting from and Isaac Watts’s poem entitled “False Greatness:” Were I so tall to reach the pole, Or grasp the ocean with my span, I must be measured by my soul, The mind’s the standard of the man. Merrick, better known as The Elephant Man, was a man of dignity who lived his life from the inside out. These poems seek to inhabit that life and to discover that inner landscape of dignity living in the midst of depravity. James LaMontagne studied creative writing at the University of Massachusetts. He worked in Montana as a logger and worked as a church-planter in Massachusetts. He lived in Texas and Connecticut. He currently lives in South Hadley, MA and works for a Hospital in Connecticut. He loves jazz and has been playing bass for over 30 years. He and his wife, Karin, have 4 children. His poems have been published in many small press magazines. He can be contacted on Facebook and Instagram The collection can be purchased on our site and anywhere else you could possibly imagine! If you loved this, you can read more about Sam Love on his bio page. His book, Cogitation is available here. On March 20, 2018 we will release MERRICK, a short collection of poems about Joseph Merrick (The Elephant Man). The author, James LaMontagne is brilliant. To celebrate the release, we would like to share an interview with LaMontagne so you can get to know him better. If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make?
Walt Whitman. Indian food. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? A blank page. I takes lots of notes, so everyday I have something to work with. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? Emily Dickinson. I live fairly close to her home and grave and visit her often. What books are on your nightstand? Janos Pilinszky - Selected Poems Paul Celan - Glottal Stop Traci Brimhall - Our Lady of The Ruins Anders Carlson- Wee - Dynamite Javier Zamora - Unaccompanied Where do you get your ideas? What inspires you? From Jazz. I often write with jazz playing in the background. The phrasing helps with my phrasing. From a word phrase. From interesting lives. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? ! Its has a prophetic forces to me What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? Last of The Mohicans What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? My notebooks Why do you write? The first 5 words that come to mind. Go. To give voice to my imagination If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? Don’t drink! If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make?
I would love to cook dinner for Christine de Pizan, an amazing French feminist writer of the late fourteenth century I am particularly fond of her Book of the City of Ladies, which imagines what the world would be like if women ran it. As Christine was a pampered lady of the French court, I would need to make something à la francaise, because she probably wouldn’t like anything else. I think I would make a cream of lettuce soup, followed by a duck in orange sauce, finishing with a tarte tatin. (And yes -- I DO know how to make all that. I had a job years ago translating at a cooking school in Paris that catered to American students. They paid me and gave me cooking lessons. I have an intermediate certificate in French cooking from the now-defunct Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne.) What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? Years ago, I used to revise while sobbing. I usually write first drafts with gusto and confidence, sure I have written something amazing. Then, after a time, I return to the first draft and realize it is just a stinking mess. This used to bother me, but now, I acknowledge how bad I am before I become better. I combat my dread of realizing I am not yet better than Shakespeare ever was by admitting to myself that not even Shakespeare was Shakespeare in his first draft. As the novelist Camus said, “Ecrire, c’est récrire” -- to write is to rewrite. This is just the job of the author in all genres. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? Like many female avid readers, I fall in love with male characters authored by women. Without endorsing the glaring political problems of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, I used to have a massive and dysfunctional crush on Rhett Butler. Luckily, I realized that I did not so much want to be with Rhett Butler as I needed to acknowledge that in some measure I AM Rhett Butler. I am an eccentric Southerner (transplanted from Brooklyn) with suspicious Yankee ties. I dress well. I swagger. I am unapologetically unconventional. I might be brave to the point of recklessness. And frankly, my dear…. I do retain a love for Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac -- probably not the actual historical figure -- but the man who could win a sword fight while composing a poem with an envoi? That’s what makes me want to shout at Roxanne that she should forget the pretty boy soldier and respect the man who ghost-wrote him. But I forgive her. There is no way she could have understood in a society that demanded virginity from brides that a very big nose might be a sign that something else was out-sized as well. What books are on your nightstand? Currently, I have a scholarly edition of The Confessions of Nat Turner (the historical document, not the Styron novel), Tracy K. Smith’s utterly brilliant collection Life on Mars, Derek Harriell’s Stripper in Wonderland, Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward, Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff (Don’t judge me! If this book is wrong, I don’t want to be right), The King James Bible, and Alison Pelegrin’s delightful collection Water Lines, of which I just published a review. I tend to read a lot all at once. I only finish about eighty percent of the prose books I start. If the prose is too provocative of grief or fear, I get a little like that Friends character Joey and want to put the book in the freezer. Right now, Ward’s novel is breaking my heart. It may end up in the freezer for that reason. Where do you get your ideas? What inspires you? I get my idea in portions, rarely as a whole. For instance. I wrote a series of poems called “Tribulation Lyrics.” I started from the premise that if one reads the Book of Revelation as a whole, one sees events before the return of Jesus at a distance comparable to the one from which satellite photos might be taken -- big-picture, impersonal perspectives of the masses’ experience during tribulation. I first asked myself how one might express something in a first-person lyric that couldn’t see the big picture in any meaningful way, where the person was in the middle of living through a difficult time on Earth. I wondered what that would look like. I had the negative example of the Left Behind series, which writes about what could be the most interesting topic in the world but finds itself understandably overwhelmed with trying to fit all things in Revelation into the series -- I frankly think it’s poorly written, for all the money it made. So I gave myself small Revelation assignments: The first one was, “if you could leave a note right before getting raptured, what would you say?” The second was, “if someone found evidence of a missing person that might have been raptured, what would he or she say to the police?” For the first of these two, I thought about who might find the note. I decided it would likely be someone trying to hotwire a nice but abandoned car. For the second of these two, I decided to incorporate the trope from traditional Catholic hagiographic studies, where a sign accepted of sainthood is a dead body smelling like flowers. I decided a housekeeper would be a likely 911 caller, and I made her smell unidentified roses. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? The question mark is the most productive punctuation mark and is hence my favorite. All of scientific inquiry depends on it. I read a great deal of religious literature, and I love how in the Talmud (which I have only read in translation -- no Aramaic, alas ) the method of inquiry is almost always to answer one question with another question. I note that God doesn’t answer Job out of the whirlwind at the end of Job with answers but with questions. I read once from Elie Wiesel that while humans disagree with each other about a great many things, our questions unite us. Therefore, I applaud the question mark as the unifier of the human race. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? Not surprisingly, my high school assigned Moby Dick, and by chapter 3, I wanted to have that stupid white whale eat them all. I just found Melville’s prose pompous, phallocentric (though I didn’t know that word then), and boring. I got in trouble with my English teacher. She saw me scribbling during her Moby Dick lectures in a way that didn’t suggest I was writing down what she said about the book. She thought I was passing notes. She made me stand up and read to the whole class what I was working on. I was toward the end of writing an 18-page paper on how all of Tennessee Williams’ female protagonists resemble his mother as he describes her in his memoirs. After class, she spoke to me kindly about why I wasn’t reading Melville as assigned, and because she was so impressed with what I was writing about Williams, she let me turn in that essay in lieu of a Moby Dick paper. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? I would like to thank the world’s supply of Diet Coke. I am shamed by those who claim that the current president’s eccentric and hostile tweets are fueled by his overconsumption of that soft drink, but I manage to keep my Tweets grammatical and polite despite an excessive consumption of that product. Don’t take my word for it. Follow me @annebabson and see for yourself whether or not I make up stupid nicknames for my political adversaries or ever end a Tweet with a single word sentence -- “Sad.” Why do you write? The first 5 words that come to mind. Go. You might read and understand. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? Never fall so much in love with the booming sound of your own voice that you drown out the soft and improbable voice of irrational inspiration. What literary journeys have you gone on? Lately I’ve gotten back into audio books. I do quite a bit of driving, and it’s nice to have something other than the radio to listen to. Librivox does a pretty fantastic job at providing public domain content. The journey really ends up being one of listening to books I haven’t read in ages (or perhaps never read). What is the first book that made you cry? Not to sound overtly masculine, but I don’t remember a book ever making me cry. I have been deeply affected by books before – two that stand out to me are Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. More recently I had a rather visceral response to several of the scenes in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Does writing energize or exhaust you? I’d say it’s a little bit of both. Some days it feels like you’re on fire, and coming off of a writing session is an absolute high. Other days it feels like a slog. Regardless, even a marathon session can eventually be exhausting. Those days that are a slog sometimes end up productive, simply because I feel like I’m grumpier with my own work. What are common traps for aspiring writers? Having worked with a lot of young writers over the years, I’ve noticed that a lot of folks feel compelled to get everything right on the first attempt. The big myth is that writing (and many other forms of art) is that everything falls into place in a divine fit of inspiration. It’s a myth, I think, based on the illusion that artists create. Our audience only sees the final polished product, not the endless drafts and struggles and cursing that preceded that final product. However, I also feel that it is a dangerous myth for practitioners, because it can lead to paralysis of the pen. Does a big ego help or hurt writers? I think a big ego can hurt anyone – especially artists. My conviction is that when an artist’s ego gets too big they are no longer concerned with quality and craft as they once were. There’s an illusion of the Midas Touch that comes with too big an ego. I think to be successful, to move forward and be a good artist, you have to keep a healthy awareness of potential failure. The easiest thing for a reader to do is to stop reading, and, I think, if you don’t preserve a healthy dose of that fear, you run the risk of lowering your standards. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? I don’t think so. There seem to be occasions when I’m walking through a bookstore that I’m momentarily overwhelmed by the number of things that I could read – but that’s more akin to going to a restaurant and trying to decide what to order. Did you ever consider writing under a pseudonym? I have, but only recently. I’m tinkering with a sort of YA dystopian story, and it seems to me that it would be better served (and better serve my other writing) if it were not connected directly to my primary work. This is not to say that I disparage such things. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? I think anyone can be a writer. I don’t think that emotion is necessarily key, so much as introspection and precision of thought. I suppose it’s a question of empathy. It seems that good writers are empathic people. I suppose it’s also a question of being a “sensitive soul.” One could argue that people like Hemingway and Woolf were successful primarily out of an awareness of their own vulnerability. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? I always wish that I had more writer friends. I have the great fortune, however, to work with a good number of writers through Seattle’s Writers In The Schools program. All of my writer friends humble me, rather incidentally, by being such fantastic writers. It’s easy to question your own skill when those around you are so profoundly talented. I don’t know if this is common for most writers, but I’m rather introverted, and have a hard time maintaining relationships, simply because I go off into my own little world. Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book? I would like each book to stand on its own; it seems to me that there will be an inevitable arc or connection between different works. I think of Hemingway or Atwood or McCarthy, all seem to have a clear progression of ideas. I guess I would also worry that, were I to focus on the entire opus, I would lose sight of the individual work. It seems to me that, in order to follow an authentic artistic development, one can’t try to plan too far ahead of the current project. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? Over the years I’ve spent a lot of money on developing craft. I’ve travelled to writing conferences, bought books on craft, attended lectures, and completed my MFA. Often I’m somewhat jealous of artists and musicians who have all sorts of physical tools at their disposal. However, I think writers are lucky to have simple artistic needs. We need only our minds. However, for my money the best investment has been pocket notebooks. I like being able to grab a little book out of my pocket and scribble down an idea or a line or a word. They become these little treasure troves for later. I’ve used a variety of these over the years, but, lately, I’m quite fond of Field Notes because they’re slim and relatively inexpensive. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? Umberto Eco for sure. I tried to get through In The Name of the Rose when I was at college. It wasn’t until a good seven or eight years later (at graduate school) that I read The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana and was struck by his cleverness. Which is not to say that Eco is merely a clever writer. I think he’s a writers writer. I think that he has tremendous range and technical ability. The fact that he has a great imagination doesn’t hurt either. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? I have vivid memories of my mother telling my brother and I that we weren’t allowed to use words unless we knew what they meant. This lead to a fascination with words and, on some occasions, scouring he dictionary for words I could use to insult my brother surreptitiously. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? One of my favorite books of all time is Don Delillo’s The Body Artist. It’s a short novel, and not one that many people have heard of. The opening sequence is subtle and slow, but so fantastically authentic. I reread the book about once a year, and have done so (more or less) for the past fifteen years or so. How do you balance making demands on the reader with taking care of the reader? I don’t think too much about the reader. Andrew Stanton has a great TED talk in which he discusses what he calls the Unifying Theory of 2+2. The idea is to make the reader work for “their meal” without letting them know that they’re working for it. The closest I come to really thinking of the reader is when I try to balance being too subtle against being too obvious. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? I’d have to say my spirit animal/mascot would have to be Boxer, the horse from Orwell’s Animal Farm. I’ve always identified with Boxer – his slavish commitment to the greater good. I feel that I’ve often approached writing the same way that Boxer approaches his role on the farm: I simply have to work harder. What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters? It’s rare that I could clearly identify a single character that is based upon a real person. Often the characters are such composites that I’m not exactly sure who the character is based on. That said, there is a character in a my upcoming collection This Endless Road who is modeled on my grandfather. It’s loose, but I definitely used him as a template. Sadly he passed away a while back. The character is, essentially, an homage. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? Hard to say. At present there must be at least three. One, my first novel, is really close to being finished. I’m hoping that after This Endless Road I can shift my attention to the novel. What does literary success look like to you? Any time a stranger says: “I really liked your story” I feel that I have succeeded. I mean, when it isn’t in the awkwardness of passing. I mean when a complete stranger comes up to me after a reading just to tell me that they liked it. When someone goes out of their way to give you a compliment it rings more true than anything else. I imagine I might be equally honored if someone took the time to come up to me and tell me how much they detested a particular piece of work. What’s the best way to market your books? I’ve tried most things – but I don’t know what works best. The one that I enjoy the most is giving copies of books to friends and acquaintances who I know read and read well. My colleagues, I feel, are the ones most likely to recommend my work to someone else, especially if they enjoy it. What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book? I research simultaneously. Often, in fact, I think I don’t really start researching until I have a couple thousand words down. I feel like I have to get the lay of the land before I find out what I need to know – otherwise I try and put in everything that I’ve learned, and it’s harder to be selective. How many hours a day do you write? Ideally I would write an hour a day. At present I work three jobs and have a toddler. I’ve been working mostly on editing my current work and pondering other work. In the meantime I read. Hopefully I’ll be able to remedy this soon. Two jobs seems like a cakewalk. What period of your life do you find you write about most often? (child, teenager, young adult) I think the period of say twenty to thirty is the age range of most of my characters. I don’t know if there’s a specific reason for that. I somewhat assume that the age I write about will shift as I get older. How do you select the names of your characters? I don’t have any specific sort of process. If a name doesn’t come to me at first I use a generic name as a place holder. Often as the story evolves a better name seems to fit. Otherwise female characters end up Sara or Anna, and male characters end up John or Alex. Why those specific names? No idea. If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? And if writing isn't your "day job", what are you currently doing to pay the bills? Writing is, at present, connected to the work I do to pay the bills. I teach English at a local community college here in Seattle, and also work as a private tutor. Until recently I was also a writer in residence for Seattle’s Writers In The Schools (WITS program). I made the tough decision to take a break from WITS in order to spend more time with my family and more time writing. For a period of about five years I worked as a bartender, and I would say that bartending was incredibly conducive to a writing life. Most people think it was conducive because of the interaction with patrons. Actually, it was simply the fact that I only worked four days a week and never had to take work home with me. What one thing would you give up to become a better writer? I’d probably give a up a good number of things if there was a guarantee that it would help me develop my craft. I wouldn’t give something up in a Deal With the Devil sort of way, because I’d want to actually know that I’d exchanged a vice of some sort for an improvement. I suppose pizza and beer would be sacrifices that I would surrender. What is your favorite childhood book? My dad signed us up for some sort of Disney Classics program when I was a kid. It seemed like we got a book in the mail every month or so. I loved getting those books in the mail (this was, by the way, way before the Internet). I don’t think the two books that stand out were part of this, but I also vividly remember reading to myself Black Beauty and the a children’s version of the myths of Hercules. Does your family support your career as a writer? I’ve been fantastically to have a family that supports my work. Both my parents encouraged my early writing and reading pursuits. I remember showing them stories I’d written in first or second grade. Thankfully there was never any pressure from them to pursue a specific path or career. My wife is likewise supportive – I can’t imagine a better partner. Our daughter, however, would rather I lie on the floor and play than write; perhaps one day she’ll become more supportive. Every year Smashwords holds a huge ebook promotion for an entire week. In 2018, it runs from March 4th to March 10th. We are participating this year and many of our books are FREE or heavily discounted. We are adding more of our books to the site this week so you can catch up on some reading. Promotional weeks like this are great because you get to read books that you may not otherwise purchase AND the authors get much needed promotion. To sweeten the deal, if you buy or download a book from Smashwords this week and leave a review (hopefully great!), then we will give you a coupon code to get a discount on a forthcoming book. Just leave the review and email us letting you know you've done it and we will take care of you! |
Popular Topics
All
We Support Indie Bookshops |