Number 3 Best Seller for the Week

Hey All!

Big news! Thanks to your support, American Scum was the #3 best seller for the week of the 7th – the 11th of June in Orca Books, Olympia.

Awesome. Let’s get back up that list!

Just dropped off some additional copies at Orca- go get them.

Random Book Related Thoughts

(Author type learning moments from FAQ)

1) So the book isn’t perfect…

…as any of you reading it will have surely noticed. True. So what? Does it still entertain?

Do the pages still bleed with food for your vampiric mind?

2) Do you (the author) believe in the politics of the book?

Do you (the reader)? I believe in them yes, I believe they exist in our minds. I hope to make you want to believe them, hate them, love them, disbelieve them and want to think about them more..and less. It is a fiction. To get at my personal politics/philosophy would be a much different (and equally as entertaining) conversation/book.

To paraphrase Whitman:

Do I contradict myself?

So I contradict myself,

I am vast I contain multitudes.

3)  What genre is it?

Activist-pre-post-post-modern-literary-poetical-fiction. It is a book, in the genre of words on paper- read it.

Please post additional questions for me- or for other readers. I’ll try not to answer all of them with a novel length reply.

That Feeling- An Excerpt from American Scum: (Why become an Anarchist)

The street is filled with caged and brooding men and women; eyes red and tired from lack of sleep, baseless and formless their fear can find no resolve; endless and cyclical, their work offers no respite. Time, relentless time, coils itself round their wrists and behind their thoughts. It is striking, fangs out, and coiling the endless loops of its hours round their necks, suffocating their lives as surely as this tie is restricting my breathing. It’s not the tie, like my dad used to say, it’s the collar. If you get the right shirt, he’d say, the tie is just dead weight.

Just so much dead weight, that’s the feeling I have now. Walking in  time with the others. My shoes clicking on the pavement, my socks falling down just that little bit. Nothing I am wearing quite fits me, and this is all about presentation. The maple trees that line the street in front of the courthouse are presenting the late days of spring, presenting our conquest of the forests, our belief in our dominion over the earth and her life. The air is still and cool. The sun’s angle is shallow as it falls between the multistory car park and the city park. I can feel the air deep in my lungs as I draw breath. Someone’s glasses glint the sun from across the street.

The mundane beauty of the scene lets me leave it for a moment. A moment long enough to remember why I’ve bothered to come down here in this monkey suit.

The First Reading- Scum rises to the top!

It is entirely their fault. When I woke up on Friday morning I was done with American Scum. The novel was dead to me. I was excited to get the reading done and be able to lay the book to rest- quietly and totally. I knew in my heart that everyone who showed up to the reading would probably still be my friend after what was going to be an unmitigated disaster. All the little oddities and quirks of my debut novel had grown massive in my mind.

I was suffering from an unpleasant and overwhelming cognitive distortion. This book is terrible, no one will get the joke, no one will see the beauty in such harsh words and bizarre notions. All I could do was go through with the reading and then walk away. Just walk away.

Then they came. About 30 of you. You laughed, you clapped, you did that nodding-sighing-mmhhmm-huhing thing people do at literary type events. You bought all my books. You asked me to sign them.

I read book. You listened, participated, asked interesting questions; you got it, or some semblance of it that meant something to you. I loved it.

Orca Books agreed to start buying the book outright. I’m ready to do readings in other cities. I will hold your friendly faces in my mind as I go out into the wilds of Seattle and Portland. Your support has rekindled my passion for my own work. I am indebted to you all. It took me until now (46 hours later) to come down from the high of performing my novel in front of such lovely and supporting people.

It was a blast. I didn’t even know everyone there! I read a few poems too, from my upcoming collection Overcome Through Constancy. This little book will be available soon (before the end of summer).

Thank you everyone who attended. Thank you Orca Books for being such a wonderful local book store. For those of you who still need to buy your copy, I’ll drop off some more copies there soon. For those of you outside of Oly, check out lulu.com (linked below).

Look out you enjoyers, American Scum has had its coming out party.

The Anarchist’s Letter

Attention all Governments and Peoples of the World,

 

    I hereby declare my independence from any and all nations. I live only under my own dominion. I peacefully and totally secede from the world of organized government. I disregard the notion of tacit agreement and do not believe that any geographical boundaries apply to my person. Though I do not believe we truly possess anything, to that which I have added work I have gained dominion. That which I have dominion over should be considered an extension of my self.

 

    Effectively, that which I own is to be considered as, though not limited to, my physical person. My firm belief that no person has the power to hold dominion over any other prevents me from being a member of your, or any, State. Because I do not believe in your collective or individual dominion over me, or my property, there is no need for this document save its use as a declaration. I do not write to receive your approval or recognition. I make no threats, as I have neither wish to harm nor for myself to be harmed.

    I am one of a number of individuals who have gathered together to live in absolute freedom. The land that we dwell on has no strategic value, and provides only enough for us to subsist on. We have nothing of any use or threat to you, your families, or your country as an entity.

We do not declare ourselves a new nation, but individuals with no need of citizenship.

We declare and claim the following truth as dependant only on our existence, and as a right, absolute and irrevocable: All people are born and remain throughout their life in absolute freedom, having total dominion over their person; said dominion shall not be infringed upon without the free consent of the infringed.

There is no authority over ourselves save ourselves.

 

We the undersigned declare ourselves, as individuals, absolutely autonomous: