I’ve been non-stop busy the past few weeks. I feel as though I’ve done nothing, as my to-do list never shrinks. But somehow, as I look back, all that I felt never happened, is done. Here’s a few things:

The wonderful Robb Olson and Livius Nedin at Booked Podcast did a full episode about my work, splitting time with my two newest books, I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin and As a Machine and Parts. The things these guys say, it makes me blush colors of red never before blushed by humans. Listen to the full episode now, and be sure to stay to the end to hear Mlaz Corbier say awesome things about my awesome socks.

Pablo D’Stair and I recorded another episode of The Velvet Podcast. We talked about one my recent tweets:

Being a writer tends to take a lot of the fun out of being a reader.

January 15, 2012 2:36 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@calebjross

Caleb J Ross

I hope to have the episode edited and posted within a week. As always, taking with Pablo is a true joy. I hope the listener gets as much from the episode as I got from recording it.

I’ll be reading in St. Louis as part of the Noir at the Bar series at the Meshuggah Café on February, 28th. The next day, I’ll be at the AWP Conference in Chicago just hanging out. Head over to the Facebook event page for more info. You should be there.

I will be reading at Emporia State University in Emporia, KS as the first guest for the Fall 2011 Visiting Writers series. I am quite excited to return to my university to participate in this event. I’ve attended many readings at Emporia State during my undergrad years, so to be the one at the podium feels damn fine. I’ve been told the reading will likely be in Plumb Hall, which can be found on this handy map of the ESU main campus.

I believe I will be visiting fiction writing classes throughout the day as well. And fingers crossed I have the opportunity to indulge in some of that fine Emporia cuisine that I miss so much.

Please come. It costs nothing to get in. We may charge you to leave, though, so bring cash or diamonds.

From CCLaP

The Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, or CCLaP, is proud to announce their latest local live event, a large-scale party to celebrate the release of their first four paper books this summer. An electronic publisher since 2007, CCLaP has been quietly releasing new special-edition, handmade “Hypermodern” paper editions of its four titles throughout the summer; and on August 10th the group will be gathering at the popular Beauty Bar in the Bucktown neighborhood for drinks, free food, and a half-hour reading from all four featured authors, as well as a few surprise guests. Beauty Bar is located at 1444 West Chicago Avenue, and the free event will take place from 7 to 9 p.m., the reading itself from 8:00 to 8:30. All four books will be for sale individually for $20 apiece; or for one night only, attendees can purchase all four in a bundle for only $50.

Books and performers being featured that night include the novella “Too Young to Fall Asleep” by SALLY WEIGEL, about a Radiohead-listening “emo” high-school student who volunteers for the Iraq War (originally published in 2009);“99 Problems” by BEN TANZER, essays about the mental intersection between running and writing (originally published in 2010); “Life After Sleep” by MARK R. BRAND, a day-after-tomorrow tale concerning a device that allows people to only need two hours of sleep a night (originally published this past winter); and “Salt Creek Anthology” by JASON FISK, a collection of linked “micro-stories” regarding four trashy couples in the far Chicago suburbs (published this summer).CCLaP’s “Hypermodern” series is an attempt to create special collector-worthy editions of all the center’s electronic books, reasonably priced yet expertly made; they feature handmade hardbound covers, including a color photo of the ebook’s original cover adhered to the front, external Coptic stitching, whimsical decorative endpapers, a special signature/provenance page for collectors, and a full Colophon in the back listing all materials used. CCLaP itself has been open online since 2007, and with a handful of local live events held in varying venues across the city each year; the center also produces a semi-weekly podcast, sells general giftstore-style merchandise, and publishes over 150 book reviews a year at its popular website. Among other accolades, it’s been featured twice at respected arts guide BoingBoing.net, and its blog is followed by almost ten thousand unique monthly visitors.

For questions or more information, please contact executive director
Jason Pettus at cclapcenter@gmail.com, or visit
[cclapcenter.com/events].

Listen to the full episode here.

Fresh from our own live readings, me, Ben Tanzer (You Can Make Him Like You), Ryan W. Bradley (publisher, Artistically Declined Press), Nik Korpon (Stay God), and Brandon Tietz (Out of Touch) have a sit down at Bourbon in Washington DC to discuss the hows and whys of author performance.

Performance is part of the author’s life. Many of us may prefer the romance of the hermit writer to the reality of the performing writing, but as the culture shifts to a system of ever-spilling minutia (Twitter) and increasingly fragmented media distribution channels (hundreds of TV channels, YouTube, Hulu, and on and on), the author is expected to play an active role in selling both his book and himself. Performance—live author readings—offers a unique opportunity to do both.

Listen to the full discussion over at The Velvet Podcast. Or you can subscribe to The Velvet Podcast via Feedburner, Podcast Alley, or iTunes.

Recently, I was kindly invited to participate in a panel on social media during the 2011 AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) conference in Washington DC. Joined by Tanya Egan Gibson, Dan Blank, Bethanne Patrick, Christina Katz, and moderator Jane Friedman, the panel succeeded in opening up and emphasizing both the possibilities and importance of social media in developing an author’s platform.

Having never before participated in an AWP panel (though I have attended many), I was initiated only from the perspective of an audience member. Knowing that an uninteresting topic coupled with boring presenters may drive the audience to mutiny, I came prepared to be as concise and witty (hopefully) as possible. Overall, I consider my effort a success. Of course, having the aforementioned panelists at the dais made failure near-impossible.

I’ve argued before that and author should openly embrace social media; the goal of both online social engagement and book-bound literary endeavors are the same: communicating on a human level. While naysayers abound, the consistent monologue about the form (such as this very AWP panel) seems to slowly be cultivating a more accepting and even more eager mindset.

Listen to the entire panel at The Velvet Podcast, here. Or you can subscribe to The Velvet Podcast via Feedburner, Podcast Alley, or iTunes.

Here’s the official description of the panel:

The Art and Authenticity of Social Media: Using Online Tools to Grow a Community. (Jane Friedman, Tanya Egan Gibson, Dan Blank, Bethanne Patrick, Christina Katz, Caleb J. Ross)

Social media is easy to disparage as meaningless socializing, undignified shilling, or time better spent writing. Yet sharing information online and having conversations with readers is critical to spreading the word about what you (or your organization) does. Online community building can help develop a long-term readership, plus open up new opportunities.

Only one day back from Washington DC and already I miss it. The city was wonderful, of course, but what really impressed me was how nice the citizens were. Everyone from CVS counter workers to street repair people went out of their way to smile and offer a hello. And I definitely don’t project a aura of respectability, so these people couldn’t have feared I was in a position to fire them.

One of the high points for me was definitely the Thursday night reading at The Velvet Lounge. So many friends, old and new, came out to read. The gathering and venue was small and intimate in the best way. Brandon Tietz, Nik Korpon, Michael Sonbert, Caleb J Ross (me), Jillian Weise, and Jesus Angel Garcia showed up, each with entourages and accumulated curiosities in tow, ready to make this event a memorable one. And that they did.

Click here to go to The Velvet Podcast where each of the readings are available to download.

Between February 2nd and 5th I will be attending the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) Conference in Washington DC. During this time I’ll be temporarily relocated.

Check often at the following places, where I (and a team of writers) will be reporting on the happenings at the conference all week. Be sure to subscribe to the blog, YouTube channel, and Podcast feed, and follow the Twitter stream.

My AWP Blog (www.calebjross.com/awpblog)

Expect summaries of panels and daily roundups of general goings-on

AWPtweets (http://twitter.com/awptweets)

As the majesty of Twitter has allowed and encouraged, expect disposable minutia here

AWP Channel (www.youtube.com/awpchannel)

While I would love to upload videos of every reading and panel discussion I attend, I assume AWP would have some copyright issues with that. So, expect instead videos of selected readings and perhaps a few quick interviews from the book fair floor. We’ll see.

The Velvet Podcast (www.thevelvetpodcast.com)

Because The Velvet Podcast isn’t something reserved specifically for AWP (as the above mediums are), expect interviews and discussions that cross from the academic focus of AWP to the noir-lit yet still intelligent focus of the Welcome to the Velvet forums. At least that is the plan. The Velvet Podcast tends to be pretty receptive of almost anything, so, I guess, expect almost anything.

Via a video posted on August 14^th, Franzen noted his “profound discomfort” in having to make promotional author videos, basically, to me, implying that any promotional discussion taken place off the page stands in contrast to the intimate nature of a novel…

I get that. In fact, I may even sometimes agree with that.  So I was glad when one of the audience members during the night’s reading asked a question that allowed Franzen to tangentially elaborate on his remarks (I post the abbreviated question below to show that Franzen wasn’t specifically addressing the above video, but instead a matter that relates to the video’s message):

Q: When the writer reaches a certain level of prominence, does the focus on the author’s personality threaten to overshadow the work or become an irrelevant distraction?

“The weird thing is, the way people think they know who you are is based on very little information…Obviously the point of that entire episode (referencing the infamous 2001 book club situation between himself and Oprah Winfrey), was not to teach one person, me, not to trust media representations of the actual personalities of people, but that is the lesson I took from it.”

“It’s not bad in the same way that it was bad when Hemingway and Faulkner became public figures because I think the culture wasn’t so distracted back then…The whole culture of selling has become personalized. I don’t think it’s all bad. The kind of frenzy and the kind of gotcha culture….and the opinions based fourth- or fifth-hand on something, that’s an artifact of our electronic culture, and probably bad. That’s what good books are supposed to be helping to resist.”

So on to Palahniuk, who seems to embrace the idea of a novelist performer. His events are the anti-reading, full of fainting fans, inflatable sex dolls, and morally questionable book inscriptions, on top of the reading itself. The performance has become the reading for Palahniuk fans.

What is the author’s role in performance-based book promotion? Should authors resist performance, forcing the reader (and the reader’s forum discussion, online book reviews, and, ahem, blog posts) to testify for a book? Or, should authors embrace the possibilities of our changing culture? Perhaps in the world of Kindles and Nooks, the author video will become to the new book cover, the new visual representation of a book.

Awkward Palahniuk handshake

And for no real reason, here’s a photo I took of Denis Johnson singing Bob Dylan songs at the 2004 Tin House Writers Workshop

From family, to Facebook, to forums, virtual and physical friends alike have been fantastic.

Below is an especially warming well-wish:

This day in history (courtesy of Mr. Nic Young)

Go to The Velvet Podcast site to hear all fourteen of the readers. While there, be sure to subscribe to the podcast.

Also, I posted about the AWP Conference as it was happening, over at the Denver AWP blog that I set up. Myself, along with a few other writers, posted about our experiences as they were happening. I’m sure more updates will trickle in over the coming days, as hangovers and jet-lag wear off.

(Anthony Smith, Brian Evenson, Stephen Graham Jones, Tod Goldberg, Mark Smith, Seth Harwood) Six writers of genre fiction who also teach and/or have graduated from university creative writing programs discuss how they approach genre fiction as a serious literary pursuit rather than as a lesser form of fiction. In addition, they discuss attitudes towards genre fiction in the university and how those attitudes have changed over the years.

I want to personally thank Mr. Brian Evenson for taking time out of his day to chat with me. He has made this fanboy quite happy. Be sure to visit his website for details about this amazing author.

Please, give it a listen. Subscribe via Feedburner, Podcast Alley, RSS, or iTunes.

Though technical issues had me cutting in and out through much of the discussion, and my voice had a space echo, all in all I had a great time.

Thank you, Vicki!

Click below to listen:

Caleb J Ross on Blog Talk Radio’s ASNYCNOW

I am perhaps more excited to see and meet these people more than I am to actually read some of my own work. That’s natural. I’m humble by nature. Humble and handsome.

The unwritten rule is that writers should read from something either freshly published or contracted for publication. For me, that would be my story collection, Charactered Pieces. But another, perhaps not entirely unwritten rule, is that when crowds and drinks are involved, the best type of material to read is work both funny and short. Charactered Pieces, though it contains elements of each, doesn’t contain any stories that would fit both of those qualifications equally enough to warrant the rapt attention of the audience (which I expect to be huge! You hear me! Be there or be dead!). The bar is high, as I’ve been to both Chuck Palahniuk readings (refreshingly interactive meets his morbid material makes for strange group of lit lovers, videos here, and don’t forget all the people who fainted during his Guts tour) and Dorothy Allison readings (the last, her 2009 AWP appearance which was followed by the only performance worthy of her opening, a performance from Mucca Pazza (this review calls them a ragtag band…they simply don’t know the wonder that is Mucca Pazza).

So, I’ve decided to write two entirely new pieces for the event. One involves my plea for corporate sponsorship. The other involves my plea for free beer. It’s a bit scary to debut something in front of a crowd of strangers, but I guess that’s better than waiting until a piece is printed before finding out it sucks.

What sort of material do you (or would you, if you’ve never been to a live reading) want to hear?