Weird Western Anthology

So, continuing the theme of the last couple of posts, we actively had to pick and choose which anthologies wouldn’t get the temporary axe. One “planned” one has survived, and is staying around. Scheduled for Halloween, 2010, Dead West (a place holder title) will be actively seeking 13 short stories from the Weird West. This is one of Scott Colbert’s projects, and the guidelines can be read here.

Briefly Bizarre goes on Indefinate Hold

When Scott and I started this press, we had the rudimentary plans for the books we wanted to do in 2010.  Real life, however, always has a way of mucking up plans.  Queries come from writers one wouldn’t expect, and plans have to be altered to fit reality.   Briefly Bizarre was the first Bandersnatch Book Scott and I talked about.  Basically, we wanted to channel the enthusiasm for twitter and “hint fiction” into prose poetry.  However, something happened over the last two months that made us reevaluate what we can and can’t do, in terms of our limited amount of money.

Basically, when the press was being put together, Death In Common still had a contract at Daverana Enterprises — that book even went onto Amazon.com twice.  Then, the circumstances regarding that book began to fall apart, and Daverana eventually released the rights.  They also released the financial obligations to the contributors to that Anthology.  So, when Death in Common became a Bandersnatch Book, the contributor copy obligations also became a Bandersnatch debt.   At first, Scott and I thought we can just cram it in and make due.  The truth, however: sometimes you can’t create a new slot for a book, and to accommodate, another book’s slot needs to get temporarily axed.

Briefly Bizarre, by the nature of it’s contributor guidelines, was going to carry a substantial debt at first.  Given the 100 words or less design of the prospective pieces, that meant the Table of Contents was likely to balloon outwards, with a large number of contributor copies mandated.  Scott and I knew this when we were initially planning the press.   However, in a recent number crunching session, we realized that taking on Death in Common’s contributor copies would make doing Briefly tougher to do.

So, it’s in the best, that the book be put off to 2011.  We still would like to do it, but we can’t.  It’s also why we can’t take on any new books.  Our calender became filled rather quickly, both with contracted books and the prospective writers we are currently talking to.   Sure, not all of our 2010 books have been announced yet.  But trust me, good things are to come, but sometimes, good things come with unexpected expenses.

Tentative Schedule

Scott and I spoke last night on the need to make some sort of schedule. This is not permanent and is subject to change. Here goes:

Dec. 2009

J. Bruce Fuller’s 28 Blackbirds at the End of the World

Jan.  2010 

Death in Common: Poems from Unlikely Victims.

Feb.  2010.

Wrath James White Vicious Romantic

T.M. Wright The People of the Island

_____

So, there are a few variable to throw in there.  The Ezra Pound Chapbook, for one.  The Cranach Chapbook hasn’t even been started yet.   We may be contracting a weird western, but we’re waiting on the details to develop.

Death in Common, Barcodes, and ISBN Numbers

Any allegation that Death in Common is keeping, or is trying to keep, Daverana’s ISBN number and barcode is patently false. Once the rights were returned, an explanatory email went to the book’s contributors explaining that Daverana’s ISBN was going to be retired, and that the book, once reformatted again, was going to be made available exclusively through the company website. Once contributors receive the copies they’re legally entitled to, Bandersnatch will explore making the book available through online retailers. However, it should be noted that Bob Freeman has already removed the Daverana logo and ISBN number from the rebranded cover.

Wrath On Poetry

Wrath James White lays out his thinking, in terms of the book he’s writing for Bandernatch. You can’t link to individual posts on his blog, so the entry being referred to is titled “In Verse.”

Wrath James White and Poetry

Bandersnatch Books is proud to announce:  we’ve gone to contract on a poetry chapbook with Wrath James White.   The book currently is yet to be titled, and it will be out in Feb. of 2010.  It will display a strong influence from Japanese and Asian Formalism.

Wrath also has a forthcoming piece in Death in Common: Poems from Unlikely Victims.  Fans of his thoughtful-but-very-brutal fiction will not be dissapointed by “The Last Cabbage Patch Doll.”   It’s visceral, but with heart.  This poem, much like the work to be featured in his forthcoming chapbook, relies more on a spare sort of free verse, where the focus stays on evocative image.  And if you know Wrath James White’s work, “evocative” might  be an understatement.

3 Chapbooks By T.M. Wright

We have gone to contract on three stories by horror veteran T.M. Wright.   Each will be featured as it’s own chapbook featuring an afterword by Australian film maker Mark Savage.  Wright’s approach to fiction is instructive, as he himself has admitted on several occasions that he prefers character over plot.  It shows, as much of his fiction strikes a reader as nuanced, psychologically accurate character studies.  More information will be provided on an individual basis, as each chapbook is prepared for publication.

J. Bruce Fuller’s 28 Blackbirds at the End of the World

The hosting at bandersnatchbooks.com allows for a blog function, but it’s so damn clunky and not-user-friendly that I think eventually there might be greater use of the Bandersnatch wordpress placeholder that Scott and I threw up a few months back.  So, the site gets a simple news page.  For the time being, further explanations will go here, I guess.

Scott and I have a goal of books baring ISBN #s, bar codes, and amazon availability.  However, that’s a project that has to be worked towards.  In the mean time, the simple process of putting books together needs to be mastered first, and so to that end, we decided to cut our teeth by doing ISBN-less chapbooks that would be sold off the website for the time being.

The first of such chapbooks is J. Bruce Fuller’s haiku/senryu/renga-like sequence 28 Blackbirds at the End of the World.  I first interacted with Fuller through his small poetry journal Shantytown Anomaly.  I had written a turzenelle entitled “The Godheart’s Graven Idol,” and he accepted it for publication.  From there, that little repetitive poem (featuring infant sacrifice!) seemed to capture attention in the science fiction poetry community, to the point where it received a Rhysling nomination, and it eventually won and went on to be republished in the 2009 Nebula Showcase.  However, I’m not the point of this post, however — just felt the need to sort of explain a little bit of the back story, in the name of full disclosure

At the time, however, I didn’t know much about the SFPA or the Rhysling Awards.  I do know that my membership has long since lapsed, and that needs fixing.  At anyrate, the following year, I received the Rhysling anthology and read through it, and that’s where I first came across Fuller’s 28 Blackbirds.  I found myself charmed by it’s quirkiness, but it also struck as more than a string of “scifiaku”  (the journal that originally published it was Scifaikuest, from Sams Dot).  The way I read it was like looking at a little photo album, where all the snapshots featured blackbirds in an apocalyptic setting.  Also, it struck me as a fun homage to Wallace Stevens and his Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.

Okay, so flash foward to know.  Scott Colbert and I decide we want create our own press, and we want to start by doing chapbooks.  Fuller’s 28 Blackbirds struck me as a perfect project to take on, especially given my inclinations when it comes to poetry.  First, there’s a grander conceptual nature to the group of the poems — this is not a random selection of haiku that Fuller wrote and threw into a chapbook.  It’s a deliberate sequence.  The only thing that I’d hoped for, however, when I pitched fuller was that I could only do that particular poem as a chapbook, and no others.  28 Blackbirds was originally published without page breaks, as lots of haiku strings/renga usually are.  I was hoping to go back to my “photobook experience,” separating each poem out onto it’s own page.  So I pitched Fuller, and I pitched Scott, and both became interested, and so here we are.  Bob Freeman has done an awesome cover, and hopefully, Bandersnatch should have this out by the end of the month, or the beginning of december.

Death In Common Released from Daverana

Daverana Enterprises recently released the rights to Death In Common: Poems from Unlikely Victims, and we will be publishing that anthology instead.  Death In Common was envisioned as a conceptual anthology where submitting writers shared the story, but added their own twist.  Taking a cue from Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology, the book explores the lives wrecked by an shadowy serial killer who dumped each of their bodies in his basement.

Writers included in this anthology are Wrath James White, Monica O’Rourke, Christopher Conlon, Michael Arnzen, Steve Vernon, Mark McLaughlin, and many others.   Bob Freeman provided the cover art.

Currently, the book is being reformatted, and will only be available to purchase via the Bandersnatch website.

Ezra Pound Anthology

Among our current projects, we are soliciting shortish imagist based poetry for These Apparitions: Haunted Reflections of Ezra Pound.  Writers currently accepted into the project include:
Marge Simon

Barry Napier

Louise Bohmer

Joe Nazare