Personal

Guy stuff.

An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Submissions: Know Your Market… and Medium

Spindle Magazine: A New York State of Mind
Spindle Magazine: A New York State of Mind

The most basic advice usually given to writers looking to submit their work to magazines or literary journals is to know the market, aka read the guidelines and pick up a few issues before wasting your time and the editors’ by sending something that’s totally inappropriate for a publication.

With the increasing popularity of online-only publications, it might be time to suggest another piece of not-so-basic advice, and that’s the importance of knowing your MEDIUM.

There’s a number of differences between writing for print and writing for the web, no matter the format or genre, because the former is much more contextual than the latter.

In a print magazine, each page is designed, and the articles on them are laid out, with an intent to establish a steady flow from page to page, to carry the reader from cover to cover so they don’t miss anything, including the ads. An issue may have a specific theme, or have a number of different departments, each with their own themes, that can act as a subtle prop for the articles, stories or poems to lean on. While an online publication can mimic many of the page design elements of print, an article, poem or story has to be able to completely stand on its own, as it may be accessed in any number of ways that have nothing to do with the context of the site that published it. (aka Google, StumbleUpon, Twitter, etc.)

Online, a title is arguably even more important than usual, but especially for Spindle.

(more…)

Continue ReadingSubmissions: Know Your Market… and Medium
An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Free Chapbook: Crazy White Devil

Download a free copy of Crazy White DevilIt’s been years since I created a chapbook.

Six, to be exact.

I released Selected Squares of Concrete — a de facto “best of” poetry collection of new, revised, never-before-released and old favorites — back in March of 2003, smack in the middle of the razor-thin slice of time between my return to the NYC poetry scene after living down in Virginia for a year, and my walking away from it again about three months later, more or less permanently.

I’ve wanted to create a new chapbook for a little while now, just for myself, to collect in one place the handful of newer poems I’d written over the past few years, for those random times I end up at a poetry reading and want to get on the mic. Like last night, for example, when I decided to check out my local poetry reading and had to dig through a pile of random poems, several of which were 2-3 edits old, to find something I liked.

It was interesting reading in a totally unfamiliar setting with only one other person I knew in the small audience, and there were a couple of poets there I would have liked to have had something to give, partly to promote Spindle, but also to establish myself in the scene since I’m a terrible self-promoter.

That’s when the idea hit me; an experiment in social networking: offer a free chapbook and see how big my platform, and what my social “reach” is!

(more…)

Continue ReadingFree Chapbook: Crazy White Devil
An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Random Reviews: Inkheart, Wanted, Chalk

We’ve been having a lot of Blockbuster nights since we bought the house last summer, while managing to catch whatever kid-friendly movies worth seeing in theaters whenever possible, and I’ve been reviewing a lot of them on Flixster but wanted to round up the most recent batch and post them here, including expanded commentary on a few.

Inkheart: Saw it tonight and loved it! A great cast highlighted by Paul Bettany and Helen Mirren, who lift Brendan Fraser beyond his typically solid leading-man performance, and Andy Serkis as a great villain; plus, an intriguing story combine for what is effectively an entertaining love letter to the power of the written word, writers, and imagination itself. It’s a little dark for some kiddies — India said afterwards that she thought it was rated R! — but I enjoyed it so much that I went and bought the book right afterwards and started reading it in the store.

Side note: This was the first movie I’ve seen Mirren in since those pictures last summer of her in a bikini and it was a little distracting for the first couple of minutes. Zoinks!

Black Snake Moan: Surprisingly poignant and touching; great performances from Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci enable Craig Brewer to fulfill the potential of his risky idea — the DVD extras are must-see — and Justin Timberlake does a solid job of not embarassing himself. The music, too, is amazing and I want the soundtrack which includes Jackson doing “Stack-o-lee”, one of the many songs that inspired the best graphic novel of 2006, Stagger Lee.

Wanted: Imagine, if you can, a mash-up of The Matrix and Fight Club, written by a roomful of monkeys with iPods and directed by the least talented monkey in the room, and you’ll get close to the total wackness that is Wanted. James McAvoy’s character and acting were lame imitations of Ed Norton in Fight Club, and the handful of kewl action moments were overshadowed by the sheer lameness of the script and, pardon the pun, threadbare plot. The comic book it was based on was similarly hacktastic, so it’s no surprise, but I expected a little better from Easy Reader. Morgan Freeman: You’re on notice!

(more…)

Continue ReadingRandom Reviews: Inkheart, Wanted, Chalk
An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

Spindle Update: We’re Back!

Spindle Magazine: A New York State of Mind
Spindle Magazine: A New York State of Mind

Can you believe Spindle “officially” launched just over a year ago?  Or that it has been 9 long months since we had a full update?!?

Of course you do because you’ve been anxiously refreshing the home page ever since, or triple-checking your favorite RSS reader in a desperate attempt to make some fresh new NYC-flavored literary content appear at spindlezine.com.

Oh, what? That was just me?

Well, anyway, MY wish has finally been granted as Spindle is finally returning with some great new poetry from the likes of Amanda Halkiotis, Lynn Patmalnee and Jon Sands, plus a new photo gallery from David King, and an inspiring (and timely!) essay from Peggy Landsman entitled “The Community Chorus”.
(more…)

Continue ReadingSpindle Update: We’re Back!
An arm with a tattoo: "I was made for the library, not the classroom."

The Return of Spindle (and a call for help)

Spindle Magazine: A State of Mind
Spindle Magazine: A State of Mind

When it comes to Spindle, I often refer to “we” but the reality is that it’s 99.5% me; I’m a control freak and have no shame admitting it.

Of course, that has a rather extreme down side to it, too.

I have a couple of poetry editors who are more like consultants whom I run poems that I’m on the fence about for a second opinion, but I read every single submission first — poetry, fiction, non-fiction, photography — and reply to every one of them myself. For a while, I was offering critical feedback on the majority of the rejections, but as anyone who has ever been an editor before, that’s a recipe for disaster on so many levels.

[Side note: Badly rhymed poems centered on the page make my eyes bleed and baby Jeebus cry. DO NOT submit such poems.  To me, or to anyone!]

Plus, I’m Spindle‘s sole webmonkey, posting all of the content and optimizing the Joomla platform, the latter of which often takes up more time than it should because I love the technical side as much as the creative side.

I sent out an email yesterday to everyone who’d submitted something last year and hadn’t received a response yet — or in some cases, who’d received acceptances but their work was never posted — explaining that we’d been on “unofficial hiatus since last Spring when I changed jobs and things only got crazier and further delayed when I bought a house, moved to New Jersey, and changed jobs again; plus the election, the crashing economy, blah blah blah. I’m not offering excuses, just context, to explain why you haven’t heard back from me yet.”

I knew I was way behind, but I was stunned to realize some of these submissions went back as far as February 2008! Ridiculous, and quite frankly, a little bit embarassing, regardless of the legitimate circumstances.

(more…)

Continue ReadingThe Return of Spindle (and a call for help)
Newer Posts
Older Posts