Win a copy of A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny

Roger Zelazny's 1993 novel A Night in the Lonesome October is perfectly suited for a Spooktober read-along.  The book, which is split into 31 chapters, is a mix of humor, horror, mystery, and fantasy.  It’s considered by many (from Kirkus to George R. R. Martin) to be Zelazny’s best novel, and there is a tradition among its fans to read the book, one chapter a day, each day in October.

That's why I'm giving away a paperback copy to one lucky Quivering Pen reader who'd like to join me in reading the book, which has just been re-released by Chicago Review Press.  Because we're already partway into the month, I'm making this a short-leash contest: it closes at midnight on Oct. 10 and I'll get the book in the mail the next day to the winner.  Read below for more details on the book and how to enter the giveaway via Rafflecopter.

Loyally accompanying a mysterious knife-wielding gentleman named Jack on his midnight rounds through the murky streets of London, good dog Snuff is busy helping his master collect the grisly ingredients needed for an unearthly rite that will take place not long after the death of the moon.  But Snuff and his master are not alone.  All manner of participants, both human and not, are gathering with their ancient tools and their animal familiars in preparation for the dread night.  It is brave, devoted Snuff who must calculate the patterns of the Game and keep track of the Players—the witch, the mad monk, the vengeful vicar, the Count who sleeps by day, the Good Doctor and the hulking Experiment Man he fashioned from human body parts, and a wild-card American named Larry Talbot—all the while keeping Things at bay and staying a leap ahead of the Great Detective, who knows quite a bit more than he lets on.  Boldly original and wildly entertaining, A Night in the Lonesome October is a darkly sparkling gem, an amalgam of horror, humor, mystery, and fantasy.  First published in 1993, it was Zelazny's last book prior to his untimely death.  Many consider it the best of the fantasy master's novels.  It has inspired many fans to read it every year in October, a chapter a day, and served as inspiration for Neil Gaiman's brilliant story "Only the End of the World Again."

Here's what Kirkus Reviews had to say about it: "Narrator Snuff, a guard dog who performs complex thaumaturgical calculations in his head, has many duties: to keep various Things firmly trapped in mirrors, wardrobes, and steamer trunks; to accompany his master, Jack--he of the magical blade--on weird collecting expeditions into the graveyards and slums of Victorian London; and--for a single hour each night--discuss the day's goings-on in human speech.  Snuff's neighbors include: Jill the witch and her familiar, Graymalk the cat, with whom Snuff forms a friendly alliance; Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Frankenstein, Dracula, a werewolf, and a satanic vicar.  The witches, detectives, doctors, vampires, etc., along with their equally industrious familiars, trade information and scheme for advantage as the full moon of Halloween approaches; at that time, a magical showdown to decide the fate of the Earth will occur...Sparkling, witty, delightful: Zelazny's best for ages, perhaps his best ever."

Chicago Review Press is hosting its first annual read-along to celebrate the book's re-issue.  If you'd like to join in on the fun, follow Chicago Review Press on Twitter and the hashtag #gooddogsnuff.

CLICK HERE to enter via Rafflecopter

Trailer Park Tuesday: Neverhome by Laird Hunt

Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.

Unless you're allergic to Civil War novels and/or luminous prose, you'll be adding Laird Hunt's new novel Neverhome to your reading list after watching this short, gorgeous video.  Perhaps you've already bought the book; maybe you've even read it; and chances are you agree with Paul Auster when he says "its sentences seem to rise up from the earth itself.  Laird Hunt had me under his spell from the first word of Neverhome to the last."  Likewise, I was held spellbound by this trailer which uses period photos, music and voice-over narration in ways that would make Ken Burns green with envy.  Everything comes together perfectly in the all-too-short minute we spend getting teased about Neverhome, the story of a farmer's faithful wife who leaves her husband to don the uniform of a Union soldier in the Civil War.  I haven't had the chance to read the novel, but it's edging higher in the To-Be-Read pile, thanks to its well-crafted sentences--from the opening "I was strong and he was not, so it was me went to war to defend the Republic" to the one highlighted in the trailer: "He sent me a thimble of dirt in that letter and asked me to swallow it so I could remember him and our good home."  I don't know about you, but I can't wait to taste the rich earth of Laird Hunt's words.

My First Time: Wendy J. Fox

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands.  Today’s guest is Wendy J. Fox, author of the short story collection The Seven Stages of Anger, winner of the 2014 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction.  She holds an MFA from the Inland Northwest Center for Writers and has contributed to numerous literary journals, including Washington Square, The Missouri Review, The Madison Review, The Tusculum Review, PMS poemmemoirstory and ZYZZVA.  Her non-fiction was included in Tales from the Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey (Seal Press), a #1 English-language bestseller which was recommended by National Geographic Traveler and featured on The Today Show.  Wendy lives in Denver.  Click here to visit her website.

My First Book

In 2001, I finished my MFA at Eastern Washington University (now the Inland Northwest Center for Writers).  This is pretty easy math, but I’ll do it anyhow: 13 years ago.  It’s not such a long time, in the trajectory of a life, but it’s not nothing, either.

I think I was actually pretty realistic about what getting an MFA meant.  I knew it wasn’t going to lead directly to a book contract, and I definitely didn’t think it would help me get a job, but I was also young and hopeful, and I wasn’t ready to face anything other than the gentrified poverty of being a grad student.

Once I matriculated, I gave myself three years.  I thought, Three years and I’ll either get a book published, or if I don’t, I’ll go back for a Ph.D.

But the three years passed.  I did some things.  I taught at a community college, and then I took a job in Turkey and moved away (there is no context here—I did this for no reason other than that I could), and then after two universities in two very different parts of the country, I came back to the U.S. and started working at a construction company where I learned a lot about HVAC.

I was at the three-year mark by then, but the book had not been published, because there was no book; I had not written a book.  The Ph.D. program had not happened, because I had only applied to one place, halfheartedly.  I was still writing, reams of pages and many scrawled notebooks, but it was all in an unfocused way.  In this time, it was hard to finish anything, to give it any structure.  I think my writing life mirrored the rest of my life.  There was some sense of urgency to be productive, but there was no sense of what that meant or of where it might be going.

So, that three-year deadline passed without much feeling, maybe because I hadn’t defined any consequences for it.  I think the idea of three years had seemed like a very long time when I first thought of it, but it zoomed.  After, I went into a period where I changed houses and apartments pretty frequently, and I saw shows constantly—music, art exhibitions, drama—but I also wasted a lot of time mooning around or in bars.

Yet, when I thought I could put a shape on the pages, I worked.  I kept sending stories out, even though the publication list was growing beyond slowly.  Around 2006, I made a weak attempt at going to library school—hell, I thought, I like books, why not—and I got in, but I also had just gotten an offer for a job at a software company.

I followed the paycheck.

Surprisingly, going corporate helped.  There were a lot of meetings.  There was a lot of travel.  There was a sheer avalanche of email and the black holes of conference calls.  It required organization to not be buried completely in false busyness, and it required some attention to being judicious—some might say selfish—about time if I was still going to carve out any hours for the writing life.

But under the pressure of corporate commitments—the necessary discipline—the pages started to shape.  I wrote a novel, which is still unpublished, and I wrote a second novel (that too, unpublished) and with the failure of the novels, I leaned on stories as a way to make progress.  I collected the published ones and then just the ones that I liked the most into several different versions.  After some tries, I made it onto a shortlist that I mostly ignored.  It was a “short” list of ten.  Ten seem like a lot.  I figured I had no chance.

“Plus,” I told my mom, “They put me at the bottom of the list.  So, you know…”

It took me a few days to realize the list was alphabetical by first name, and in the absence of any Xavier, Yolanda, or Zachary, Wendy was the last.

Then, a week later, two missed calls on my phone from a number I didn’t recognize.  Me, irritated by the audacity of telemarketers in the middle of my workday.  How did they get my cell number?! I wondered, but I listened to the message.  A publisher.  Call us back, the man said, We have a question about your manuscript.

The question was whether or not I could clear my schedule for an October launch.

The volume is slim, 124 typeset pages, but it changed everything.  That old three-year deadline actualizing very, very late, but at least finally reconciled, and the issue of the thirteen years that have passed since finishing the MFA, (at least partially) accounted for.

And the stories—stories I wrote on airplanes and in waiting rooms, at many different desks and on many different patios, stories I wrote as a lifeline out of corporate life and stories I needed to put down to simply process—I am prouder of this first time than of anything.

Sunday Sentence: The Ploughmen by Kim Zupan

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.

“Don't be fooled by that smile, Val, or him being an old man.  You've seen those hands.  He could squeeze juice out of a stove log.”

The Ploughmen by Kim Zupan

Visions and Voices: "Hawk" and "Arm"

I'd stared at the painting for more than three months, willing the words to come.  They were there--the vowels and syllables and sentence-patter--but they were tantalizing me, dancing just out of reach.  I was certain I'd eventually touch them.  It was just a matter of time.

Trouble was, I'd run out of time.

I was on deadline to provide a short piece of prose to go along with the painting, "Fox Hawk: From the Lost Ornithology Series" an acrylic on wood panel by Christine Martin, as part of the Visions and Voices exhibit for the Imagine Butte Resource Center.  They were already starting to hang the other artwork and accompanying texts at the gallery in uptown Butte and, as is typical of my procrastinating self, I was The Lagger.  The story was there--waiting to be touched, within my grasp, tip of my tongue, etc.--I just needed to set aside some time and write the damned thing.

(I should note that at the time I didn't know the title of the painting or the artist's name.  I think it worked out better this way, remaining totally ignorant of Christine's artistic vision and intent.  Only this morning did I start browsing through her online gallery in which she marries skulls with living bird bodies.  It's a fantastic and beautiful hybrid of life and death--something my words could barely begin to touch.  If you want to see more of Christine's work, visit her at Deviant Art or her Etsy shop.)

So, hours before deadline, I returned to my copy of the painting, printed on 8x11 paper, and stared at the body of the hawk, topped by another creature's skull and standing in the center of a burst of sunrays.  This was the Vision, I was the Voice.

Death.  Isolation.  Predation.  Release.

Sometimes, you begin a story with a sense of feeling and let the plot and characters flow from that genesis.  Such was the case with my Visions and Voices project.  I had a hawk, I had a skull, I had that brilliant burst of sun whose rays looked like trails up to heaven.  I pictured a woman trapped in a remote location somewhere in Montana.  She's unable to move--broken legs, maybe? weak with starvation?--and she's in a stare-down contest with a hawk.  Death is imminent for at least one of them.  I thought about a finger of wind ruffling the beautiful mottled feathers on that bird's breast.  I thought of that woman's life ebbing away.  And then--

CLICK!

The words fell into place like the tumblers of a lock about to be opened.

I typed a sentence: In the end, it was just her and the hawk.  And then I typed another and another....

*     *     *

Here's how the Visions and Voices project worked: the Imagine Butte Resource Center invited local Montana visual artists and writers to contribute a single piece of art--painting, poem, sculpture, or whatever--and then each person could choose something from the opposite medium which inspired them.  It was the artistic equivalent of picking sides for dodge ball in junior high gym class, except it was much more pleasant.  I'd contributed a short-short story called "Arm" (mainly because it was the first piece of fiction I'd ever written about Butte, Montana) and now it was up to me to choose from among the visual works.

Christine's painting immediately spoke to me.  Back in June, I didn't have the broken, starving woman or the hawk hunched on a tree branch staring hungrily at her, but I had something.  Inspiration wasn't yet fully formed--it was still just a nibble at the back of my brain--but that's how stories begin, isn't it?  We feel the tiny bite of ideas and wait for the words to come.  Sometimes, it's a flood; and sometimes, it's a trickle that takes three months to fill the catch-basin.

Last night, during the monthly Uptown Butte Artwalk, my wife and I attended the reception for the Visions and Voices exhibit.  I was anxious to see how another artist (Christine Martin, the same person--either by coincidence or design--who'd painted my hawk) would interpret my somewhat bizarre story "Arm" and I wanted to see the hawk painting in person for the first time after months of staring at a blurry computer print-out.  "Fox Hawk: From the Lost Ornithology Series" was smaller than I'd imagined it would be, but also more beautiful with its earthy browns and golden sunburst.

"No One Gives a Shit About Butte, Montana"
(poem by Justin Ringsak, painting by Jenna Radowski)

As I walked around the gallery, I marveled at what had come from our artistic intercourse ("when words and paint make love").  It was only a three-month pregnancy, after all, and now just look at the fully-developed art we'd raised.

Christine's "Reliquary"--a glass jar containing a nest, dried leaves and a small jawbone--is not necessarily what I thought would have resulted from my story "Arm," but I'm sure she was thinking the same thing about my short fiction spawned by her "Fox Hawk."  The draft of the story I turned in was raw, imperfect and quickly-written, but it was how I interpreted the painting.

Maybe "Reliquary" illustrated the withered dreams of the two couples in "Arm," the dessicated hope of ever getting out of a relationship which seems to have trapped them in Butte, Montana.  I don't know--that's just my layman's interpretation of the glass jar full of dead things.  What matters most in this case is how Christine felt when reading "Arm."  Her vision and my voice ultimately began with emotion, which we brought to concrete life, put on display, then sat back and waited for the audience to come to the gallery and, perhaps, feel something else entirely.

This was a fascinating experiment in artistic interpretation and I'm honored to have been part of it.

*     *     *

Hawk

In the end, it was just her and the hawk.

Marjean—broken leg, skin wooden from the cold, regrets logjamming her soul—leaned back against the boulder and tried to stare down the bird.  It was not working.  The hawk hunched on the pine branch unblinking, waiting its turn.

The bears, wolves, wolverines, chipmunks and beetles were just over the horizon.  They were coming.  But first, the hawk must have its dinner.

The wind fluffed its feathers, but the bird did not break its stare.

Before long, it would begin to work on her: small nips at first, then larger and larger bites, beak-scraping her skin until there was nothing left but a pile of bones and a gleaming, grinning skull whose only speech would now forever be the song-moan of wind through bone cavity.

The boulder felt good pressed against her back, like a granite La-Z-Boy.  Her only comfort in her final resting place.

Marjean looked down the hillside at the suitcase broken open, the money—what was left of it—fluttering in the wind like small green flags.  Marjean hiccupped another sob and went back over her list of If Onlys:

If only she’d never moved to Butte.  If only she’d never lost custody of her son and if only Gordon hadn’t been such a dick about it, draining her completely dry with lawyer fees.  If only she hadn’t been forced to go back to work—first at the Finlen, then at Pork Chop John’s, then at Wal-Mart, and on and on in an ever-downward spiral of jobs until broke-starving-desperate she’d hooked up with Skeever that one regrettable night in a squalid apartment at Silver Bow Homes.  If only she hadn’t liked it enough to stay.  If only Skeever, working his usual mindfuck, hadn’t convinced her to take the suitcase to Helena.  If only he hadn’t said, “Just this one time, baby.”  If only she hadn’t said yes.  If only she hadn’t passed that highway patrolman near Basin and, thinking he was U-turning in pursuit of her, stepped on the gas and sped faster and faster into the canyon.  If only she hadn’t looked in the rearview mirror—to see nothing was there after all—at just the wrong turn in the road.  If only that bend in the road had been less sharp.  If only the guardrail had been stronger.  If only the tires on Skeever’s never-reliable Chevy hadn’t slipped on the buttered gravel.  If only the car hadn’t tumbled through the guardrail and rolled like a log down the hill, scattering Marjean, suitcase and Skeever’s dope money every which way.  If only that bird hadn’t arrived so quickly, like it was summoned.  If only it would blink, godammit.

If only, if only, if only.

Marjean, life draining in a faster trickle now, looked from the money to the hawk and knew it was time.

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

Later, the hawk lifted first one foot then the other with a preparatory talon-flex.  It puffed its chest, spread its wings in a terrible feather-shake, rose into the air.  The hawk flew seven feet above the car, the body, the money-scatter.  It hovered there for seven seconds then the bird descended and began its terrible, beautiful work.

*     *     *

Arm

As I was going into Wal-Mart, a man with a useless arm came out.  I’d never seen anything like that arm—a dangle-flesh, rubbery thing with no purpose.  It was like this three-foot flaccid glove coming off his shoulder.  Made me stop where I was, halfway in the door, and turn to look.  Even made me go blank for why I was there in the first place.  Julie needed mozzarella and oregano and I’d planned on picking up more beer and Oreos, but after seeing that arm, everything on the list went out of my head.  Jules and her half-made lasagna were waiting for me back at the house and she was probably getting more and more pissed by the minute, but can you blame me, man?  That arm, that arm.

That arm demanded you look at it flapping and turning in the wind coming down off the mountains around Butte.  And I guess that was the point—stare at the arm and feel a little bad about doing so.  That arm could have raked in a lot of money if the dude had a bell and a kettle.

He was with a woman, gabbing to her about a movie he’d seen last night for the third time.  Or maybe they’d seen it together because she was nodding and saying, Yeah, yeah, yeah.  She clutched a Wal-Mart sack.  I could hear its loose edges snapping in the wind.  A bag of fragile potato chips pushed up, trying to escape past the plastic handles.

The man wasn’t carrying anything in his good hand except a cigarette, which he used to stab the air and make his point about Harrison Ford.  He was really into this movie, man, and I could tell it would be no fun to watch anything with this guy because you’d miss important lines of dialogue when he turned to talk to you in order to make his point, of which he had plenty.

Read the rest of the story at The Provo Canyon Review, where the story was originally published.

Friday Freebie: The Drop by Dennis Lehane

Congratulations to Pamela Balluck, winner of last week's Friday Freebie, which included the following books: Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott; Auto Biography: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream by Earl Swift; This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett; A Case for Solomon: Bobby Dunbar and the Kidnapping That Haunted a Nation by Tal McThenia; An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist by Richard Dawkins; A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert "Believe It or Not!" Ripley by Neal Thompson; and Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life by Jonathan Sperber.

This week's book giveaway is The Drop, the new novel by Dennis Lehane.  One lucky winner will receive a paperback copy of the book, which is now also a movie starring Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace and (RIP) James Gandolfini.  Here's more about The Drop from the publisher:

Dennis Lehane returns to the streets of his acclaimed New York Times bestseller Mystic River with The Drop: a love story wrapped in a crime story wrapped in a journey of faith. The Drop follows lonely bartender Bob Saginowski through a covert scheme of funneling cash to local gangsters--"money drops"--in the underworld of Boston bars. Under the heavy hand of his employer and cousin, Marv, Bob finds himself at the center of a robbery gone awry and entwined in an investigation that digs deep into the past of a neighborhood where friends, families, and foes all work together to make a living--no matter the cost.

If you’d like a chance at winning a copy of The Drop, simply email your name and mailing address to

thequiveringpen@gmail.com

Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line.  One entry per person, please.  Despite its name, the Friday Freebie runs all week long and remains open to entries until midnight on Oct. 9, at which time I’ll draw the winning name.  I’ll announce the lucky reader on Oct. 10.  If you’d like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words “Sign me up for the newsletter” in the body of your email.  Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning?  Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter.  Once you’ve done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying “I’ve shared” and I’ll put your name in the hat twice.

One Perfect Ending

by Lee Upton

It’s a wonderful and rare event to come across a perfect ending.  Recently I discovered one: the six words that conclude “The Faber Book of Adultery,” the opening story by Jonathan Gibbs in The Best British Short Stories 2014.  I admire the story’s ending not only because it closes the narrative in a wonderfully gasp-worthy way, but because it’s a perfect little story in itself:

This can’t be what it’s like.

What precedes those words is a sex scene.  The story’s protagonist, an academic as well as a writer, views adultery as the overriding subject compelling the achievements of a previous generation of writers: Roth, Cheever, Updike, Yates.  Half stunned by a flirtation that’s turning into action, Mark edits in his mind each sensation as it occurs, as if he’s writing a story.  His actual participation in adultery unfolds not out of lust so much as out of curiosity, his desire to cannibalize experience for his own writing, and his naïve conviction that an earlier generation led lives infused with more sexual daring—and wrote better fiction as a consequence.

As Mark describes and mentally revises each hollow, predictable moment, experience curbs his faith in fictional depictions of adultery.  After all, what he’s experiencing bears no relation to those scenes of extramarital affairs in books.

This can’t be what it’s like.
We’re sometimes told that we read to allay loneliness, to create recognition.  We read a story and think an experience has been captured.  We think, Yes, this is what it’s like.  We might even think, A portion of my life is echoed in this story.  And yet, and yet…we may feel otherwise.  No matter what fiction depicts, we sometimes find ourselves saying, “This can’t be what it’s like.”  Our own experience is all so complicated.  Or, it’s all so uncomplicated.

Even taken out of context, the concluding statement in “The Faber Book of Adultery” resonates:

This can’t be what it’s like.
Only six words, each of one syllable.  Two contractions: “can’t” and “it’s.”  The words “not” and “is,” tucked in the pockets of those contractions.  Simple, quiet, nearly invisible verbs of being: “can,” “be.”  An unnamed referent.  The word “this,” like a finger pointing to something near.  Not like “that.”  No, “this.”  The close-at-hand.  That ending word: “like.”  The broken bridge to a comparison that isn’t stated.

The antecedent for this is “adultery”—and perhaps more.  And what is “it” in “it’s”?  What can’t adultery be like?  And the tone of the entire statement: disbelief?   Or certainty?

The story could have resolved into a brittle little social comedy, except that hovering at the periphery are children liable to be damaged by their parents’ infidelity.  The story’s opening paragraph mentions that, while the adults’ party is underway, children are sleeping.  In the final scene of the story—a story with many symmetrical moments—Mark edits his way into an affair while a child is still asleep upstairs, or presumably asleep.

The story contains plenty of more full-bodied sentences than its short final sentence, including this gorgeous one about drinking whiskey: “The taste of it spread, making his mouth glow, as if he’d been given a very gentle anaesthetic, or stung by a swarm of infinitesimal and ultimately benign bees.”  A depiction that rivals Kingsley Amis’s descriptions of hangovers.

There’s also the following comical wonder, for Mark is more aroused, after all, by his own efforts during the writing process than by the actual physical requirements of adultery: “He pushed even harder, hating himself, but wanting above all to find some way of expressing himself, his intentions, his delicate reservations, past history, world view, thoughts on the nature of signification, the problem of endings, Wittgenstein, Kelly Brook, the de Stijl movement, the novels of Michel Houellebecq and Chris Cleave, any or all of this.”

But for all that such sentences offer, the concluding sentence is especially convincing for its brevity, and for its air of wonderment mixed with disappointment: This can’t be what it’s like.  With those words the story has ended with a seemingly simple negation—preceded by an account of second-by-second sensory impressions so ultimately fine-tuned and yet banal that they would deflate the sexual ambitions of a goat.

The ending doesn’t just close the story; it holds the story in suspension.  For what is “This,” after all?  Although “this” surely must be adultery, “this” could also be the story we’ve told ourselves most recently about our own lives, or the story we’ve been reading.  Those final words suggest that the search for what a life is “like”—its shape, its meaning—can’t be exhausted, even by good books.  The ending is perfect because, in more than one sense, it doesn’t end.

Lee Upton is the author of The Tao of Humiliation: Stories (BOA Editions, 2014), and a forthcoming book of poetry, Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles, this year’s recipient of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Open Book Prize.  She is a professor of English and the writer-in-residence at Lafayette College.

Bookstore of the Month: Bookworks in Albuquerque, New Mexico

Bookworks
4022 Rio Grande Blvd NW
Albuquerque, NM
(505) 344-8139
Bookworks on Facebook
Bookworks on Twitter
Bookworks on Instagram

In 1984, Apple introduced the first MacIntosh PC, Michael Jackson's hair caught on fire while filming a Pepsi commercial, the Soviets boycotted the Summer Olympics, stonewashed jeans went on the market, and thousands of people went to their local bookstore to pick up a copy of George Orwell's forward-looking novel.

One of those bookstores might have been the newborn Bookworks in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Now celebrating its 30th anniversary, Bookworks has always been, as its motto proclaims, local and independent.  They are also dog-friendly, as Marketing and Events manager Amanda Sutton noted in her Bookstore of the Month questionnaire: “Bring in your pooch and get a complimentary doggie biscuit.”

Bookworks is friendly to all types of beasts--from owls (found on the store's logo) to the two-legged species.  Even those, Sutton said, who come in and ask the booksellers to order something for their Kindle.

“We are a neighborhood-rooted ‘third place’ and love our long-time, loyal regular customers and all the new customers we attract to the store selling books in our community and at the 400 events we host each year,” Sutton said.  “Matching a customer with his or her perfect read is the most rewarding thing about being a bookseller.”

The store's website emphasizes the importance of partnering with local organizations, which is perhaps the secret sauce of its recipe for longevity:

Our recent event partners include ABC Library, the Albuquerque Public Library Foundation, the University of New Mexico English department, UNM's Women's Resource Center, Albuquerque Academy, the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History, Slate Street Cafe, Tractor Brewing Company, Flying Star, the Center for Spiritual Living, Planned Parenthood, and the Rio Grande Nature Center. Bookworks has been a literary meeting place in Albuquerque since 1984, from its original home in Albuquerque's Rio Grande Valley in the Dietz Farm Plaza where it was founded by Nancy Rutland, up to its present location owned by Danielle Foster and Wyatt Wegrzyn next to Flying Star Cafe in the Shops on Rio Grande. As a locally-owned small business, Bookworks pays taxes that support our community, pays wages and provides benefits to its Albuquerque employees, donates gift certificates and books to local nonprofit organizations, supports local libraries, and gives back to our community however we can, whenever we can.

Some of the store's bestselling titles include: Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, Great Tales and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.

Bookworks' main webpage is dominated by staff picks, like The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham, recommended by Pat: “Cunningham is a master of digging deeply into the may layers of creative angst.  In all four of these characters, he shows us the delight, despair, illusion and clarity of the creative process.  Whether it is dealing with art, fashion, or dying, his writing is profound, thoughtful and beautiful.”  Or, this one recommended by Emma, age 12: “Anton and Cecil: Cats at Sea by Lisa and Valerie Martin is about two cat brothers lost at sea.  As they try to find each other a prophecy becomes their only hope.  A hair-raising adventure, this is a great book for animal lovers and people who love adventures alike!”

So, the next time you're in Albuquerque, whether it's for the annual hot air balloon festival or just to sample some chili verde, be sure to stop in Bookworks and find an adventure of your own.  In the meantime, please visit the store's website and do your book shopping there instead of Amazon.  Bookworks can even help you figure out how to get the best stonewash for your jeans.


Bookworks is the featured bookstore all this month at The Quivering Pen.  By clicking on the links to books mentioned in this month's blog posts, you'll be taken to the store's website where you can purchase the book (or, better yet, several books).  The Quivering Pen is dedicated to supporting independent bookstores.

Trailer Park Tuesday: Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes

Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.

If I wasn't already maniacally interested in reading Lauren Beukes' new novel Broken Monsters, this book trailer would have sunk a rusty hook into my flesh and reeled me in.  I'm a fan of The Shining Girls, Beukes' previous novel about a time-traveling serial killer; so I was already standing in line for Broken Monsters.  In a series of images that look like the love child of David Lynch and David Cronenberg, the book trailer is as unsettling as the book's premise (and the dark, gnarled half of my brain loves it!):

Detective Gabriella Versado has seen a lot of bodies. But this one is unique even by Detroit's standards: half boy, half deer, somehow fused together. As stranger and more disturbing bodies are discovered, how can the city hold on to a reality that is already tearing at its seams? If you're Detective Versado's geeky teenage daughter, Layla, you commence a dangerous flirtation with a potential predator online. If you're desperate freelance journalist Jonno, you do whatever it takes to get the exclusive on a horrific story. If you're Thomas Keen, known on the street as TK, you'll do what you can to keep your homeless family safe--and find the monster who is possessed by the dream of violently remaking the world.

Broken Monsters is probably not for the faint-of-heart or timid-of-page.  But for those who lean closer to the screen when a man whispers, "I dreamed about a boy with springs on his feet," I think this will be the perfect book to put a chill in your October air.

My First Time: Mary Vensel White

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands.  Today’s guest is Mary Vensel White, author of The Qualities of Wood.  Mary lives and writes in Orange County, California, with her husband and four children.  Her short fiction has appeared in The Wisconsin Review and Foothills Literary Magazine.  Her first novel, The Qualities of Wood, was called “a haunting and provocative debut” by Christina Baker Kline (author of Orphan Train).  Mary blogs about writing and life at www.maryvenselwhite.com and is a contributing editor at www.litchat.com.  You can also follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

My Last First Time

A warm summer night, an Air Force cadet, and a showing of Gremlins at the local drive-in movie theater.  Or was it The Goonies?  I always get that mixed up.  Wait.  That’s not what you’re talking about, is it?  You want something about a more solitary endeavor.  All right, my first time was atypical.  It required concentration, lots of patience, and the determination to get through moments where I had no idea what to do.

—What?  I am!  This is about my first published book.  It’s also about my second first time, and the next, and this last first time.  Let me explain.

In 2010, I posted a portion of my novel, The Qualities of Wood, on HarperCollins’ site for unpublished writers, Authonomy.com.  I had written the book quite a while before that, prior to the arrival of the four children who kept me happily and otherwise engaged for several years.  I had gone through my stacks of manuscripts and had decided TQOW was the most likely to succeed.  And eventually, it did.  I devoted a good amount of time to the site, while dropping fishing lines into other ponds.  Interacting with the community of writers on Authonomy was a godsend, as were receiving and offering critiques, both of which improved my writing.  And when TQOW rose in the ranks to the site’s Editor’s Desk in early 2011, it was plucked with the promise of a review from a genuine HarperCollins editor.  The review came and was quite complimentary, even implied that the book was under serious consideration.  In the meantime, I had received an offer from a small publisher, which I turned down when HarperCollins offered to publish TQOW as the first release under its new Authonomy imprint.

The ebook came out in January of 2012.  The only tactile objects, I suppose, were the stand-up posters my husband surprised me with for my launch party.  But it felt like a publication in every other sense.  Up to that point, everything about my writing career had been online anyway.  It was exciting to see the book on Amazon, to read reviews and connect with readers.  I wrote guest blogs and articles, gave interviews, and reveled in my “first time” as a published author.

Then I ventured out.  I sat on panels at writers conferences and gave workshops.  I was invited to book clubs, another first.  Each experience expanded the gratification I already felt; each foray into this brave, new world was exciting.  And when my publisher announced in December that the book would be released in print in the summer of 2013, I was thrilled.

In April of 2013, a box of proofs arrived.  The moment was surreal and yet it also blurred in with my day-to-day life in ways I never expected.  I always thought it would happen with champagne and orchestra music; I think the box actually sat on our porch unnoticed half the day, as I rushed around, dropping kids here and there.  But the books were lovely—the vibrant blue of the first cover was beautiful, the feel of pages flipped under my fingertips divine.  First cover, you ask?  You see, shortly after receiving the books, the book’s publication date was postponed.  Because the novel was published by a UK-based imprint, they wanted to get it into the Harper360 system for broader distribution and a better chance.  Good news, but it meant more waiting.  In this case, another full year.

Fast forward to June 17, 2014.  I have received yet another box of even lovelier books, have answered more interview questions, talked to more book clubs and writers, and geared up for another release.  I am standing in our local Barnes & Noble, looking at my novel on the shelf.  Later that evening, I’ll have another launch in this very store, this time with a tactile object in my hands and a large group seated before me.  This was one of the best firsts in a prolonged series of firsts.  But it wasn’t the end.

I’m looking forward to more bookstores, conferences and book clubs.  I’m anxiously waiting for The Qualities of Wood to be included in our local Orange County libraries—this is the “first” I’m currently anticipating most.  And I think the best I can hope for out of this writing life is that there will always be another first, just around the next corner or over the next hill.  It’s like writing itself, which feels like the first time, each and every time you start Page One.

Sunday Sentence: An Untamed State by Roxane Gay

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.

Once upon a time, in a far-off land, I was kidnapped by a gang of fearless yet terrified young men with so much impossible hope beating inside their bodies it burned their very skin and strengthened their will right through their bones.

An Untamed State by Roxane Gay