My Review of Big in Japan by M. Thomas Gammarino

Somehow, someway, I managed to miss this little gem of a rock novel back in 2009, but luckily for all of us, it's still out there. The Rumpus today did me the honor of publishing my review of Big in Japan by M. Thomas Gammarino, brought lovingly to print by Chin Music Press. You might remember I chose this title as #17 on my Undisputed Top 20 Rock Novels of All Time list back in October. 

Give it a read!

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.

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Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie Distributed!!!

It's been five years since I called Nico Holthaus to ask if he'd direct the movie version of Stuck Outside of Phoenix.
 
I'm proud to say that movie is now available everywhere fine movies are sold. Here's a run-down of places where you can find it this holiday season--or any season:

Indieflix

https://indieflix.com/indie-films/stuck-outside-of-phoenix-43881/ 

Vimeo

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/32687 

Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Stuck-Outside-Phoenix-Brandon-Hannifin/dp/B016OZVIBY/ref=sr_1_1/ref=sr_1_1?_encoding=UTF8&keywords=stuck%20outside%20of%20phoenix&qid=1447872135&sr=8-1

There are plenty of other places too.

Unfortunately, I spent a lot of time waiting on Netflix, which I found out recently only comes to fruition when the movie sells well at Amazon first. No guarantees though. I misled some of you on that. My apologies.

Please enjoy the movie at one of the outlets above. There are many pirated versions out there that might lead you straight to viral hell, so watch out. 

Thanks to all who had a hand in making the movie. Very cool, surreal, dream-come-true on my end, and now it's out there forever.

Yours in laying down the law, 

Art

Watch Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie.

 

Stuck Outside of Phoenix from All Channel Films on Vimeo.

My Review of The Suicide of Claire Bishop at Colorado Review

One of the few downsides of Wordstock yesterday was I did not get a chance to meet Carmiel Banasky, whose fab The Suicide of Claire Bishop I reviewed for Colorado Review a while back. Do yourself a favor and introduce yourself to this one.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.

Buy Badge.

My Short Story "Tree Limb Chair" on Now Hear This

Hey, check out what happened to me.

Atim Udoffia Childers chose my short story "Tree Limb Chair" of all the stories in the world to perform at her show Now Hear This in Sacramento earlier this month. Here it is on YouTube. It's about the bonds that get formed in bands, and life, and how messy things get. What a surreal pleasure to get to hear one of your stories performed in this way, and musical accompaniment too boot! Think I'll watch it again. Thank you, Atim.

Here's the link. 

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.

Buy Badge.

Undisputed Top 20 Rock Novels of All Time - 2015

Two new entries made my list this year, including one in the top ten. The new entries are by Brian Costello (#8) and M. Thomas Gammarino (#17). You can read my review of Losing in Gainesville here, and my review of Big in Japan is forthcoming.

Enjoy the ride.

20 The Sound of Songs Across the Water by Rob Yardumian


19 The Cost of Living by Rob Roberge


18 The Last Rock Star Book, Or: Liz Phair, a Rant by Camden Joy


17 Big in Japan by M. Thomas Gammarino 


16 You Don’t Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem

  
15 A and R by Bill Flanagan


14 Saguaro: The Life and Adventures of Bobby Allen Bird by Carson Mell


13 Wise Young Fool by Sean Beaudoin


12 A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan


11 Wonderland by Stacey D'Erasmo 


10 Great Jones Street by Don DeLillo


9 How the Mistakes Were Made by Tyler McMahon


8 Losing in Gainesville by Brian Costello


7 The Blue Bourbon Orchestra by Carson Mell


6 The Wishbones by Tom Perrotta


5 Never Mind the Pollacks by Neal Pollack


4 Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta


3 High Fidelity by Nick Hornby 


2 The Commitments by Roddy Doyle


1 Banned for Life by D. R. Haney


Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.

Buy Badge.

The Bastard Who Last Cut My Hair

After 37 editors rejected this piece, Ian MacAllen was gracious enough to say yes, and now one of my favorite nonfiction pieces THE BASTARD WHO LAST CUT MY HAIR has a home forever at English Kills Review.

Read.

Enjoy. 

Have a sandwich.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Watch Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie.

 

Stuck Outside of Phoenix from All Channel Films on Vimeo.

Two Reviews, Six Novels You Need to Know About

I've been very busy lately reviewing books. This is because people send me books to review, so I read and review them. Anything else seems impolite.

Still, I have one rule about reviewing: If I don't like a book, I don't review it. This is partly because of the aforementioned polite thing, but there is also some logic to it. There have been about a thousand books published during the time it took me to write this sentence. If I don't like a book, I don't want you to know about it. I'd rather your bandwidth were taken up by books I'd like you to read, or at least by books that I would not not like you to read. Why would I bring a book I don't like to your attention? The current state of publishing takes care of bad reviews for us.

With that in mind, I've had a couple of reviews published online in the past week or three. First, my 2014 rock novel omnibus review was published at The Rumpus. I worked on this piece for the better part of a year. Names like D'Erasmo and Doyle are bandied about. Check it out.

Also, my review of Patrick O'Neil's Gun, Needle, Spoon came out a little while ago at Entropy.  Good stuffs.

To be clear, I do not, in these reviews, avoid stating what I don't like about these books. Any perusal of the links above will show that much. But if I'm reviewing it, there is something about it worth your attention to my mind.

That being said, feel free to judge my judging for yourself.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Watch Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie.

 

Stuck Outside of Phoenix from All Channel Films on Vimeo.

Like Coachella, but Pleasant

Do you want to have fun this Tuesday night in Portland?

Then come to The Whom's reading at The Corner Bar at 7:30 PM on 7/28.

The Whom features some of the most entertaining and well-published writers in town, and it seems like every one of them has a new offering out right now. Rebecca Kelley's debut novel Broken Homes and Gardens just came out in May, and Heather Arndt Anderson's second foodie offering, Portland: A Food Biography, was released to accolades earlier this year. Finally, writer/humorist/all-around PDX baller Mark Russell saw his first of a series of DC-released comics come out last month. Pretty ridiculous, yo.

The readings themselves will be short, engaging, and the perfect accompaniment to your $2 BEER!
 
In fact, should you come, you will be the first audience in the History of Man to hear the prologue for my Novel IV, which is called 19 Ways to Destroy Your Rock Band: My Life in the Convincing Fakes.

Think I'm kiddin'?

I assure you I am not.

Come! Bring a friend!

Art

P.S. $2 beers!

Watch Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie.

 

Stuck Outside of Phoenix from All Channel Films on Vimeo.

The Ten Reasons Why I'm Turning my Refreshments Memoir into a Novel

I have decided to turn my memoir-in-progress Nineteen Ways to Destroy Your Rock Band: My Life in the Refreshments into a novel. There are exactly ten reasons for this change.

 Reason #1:

Despite a few hundred folks within my circle, there is not much demand for a Refreshments memoir. I know this because I have tried to sell it. Many in the industry love the idea for my memoir outside the Refreshments aspect, which they don't care for because we weren't the Beatles. Solution? Take the Refreshments out.

Reason #2:

The finished, polished memoir is all of 48k. This is too small. The process of fictionalizing it has freed me up to explore ideas I would avoid if it were a memoir, which means I can get this thing to 60k, which is where it needs to be. No more novellas ever.

Reason #3:

I'm very intrigued by the recent-ish trend in fiction to write more or less straight memoir a la Knausgaard, Tao Lin, David Shields, etc. as novel. I call this Barely Fiction. It used to be you'd write fiction to embellish an idea. Now, many write fiction when they want to tell the truth. This is complicated, but it excites me as a writer.

Reason #4

This means I can have a novel finished by next year!

Reason #5:

It also means I can give One Star--what would become my fifth novel--the time necessary to make it wham-o.

Reason #6:

I've always had a problem with being a little ahead of the curve when it comes to, ahem, market readiness. I released Stuck Outside of Phoenix, set in 1990, in 2003. My second, Ghost Notes, set in 1995, was released in 2008. My third, Badge, set in 2000, came out in 2014. That's really too soon on all three accounts for enough people to feel nostalgia for these eras. This change would put my Barely Fiction effort, set 1993-1998, out in 2017-18, and would have One Star, set in 2005, out in the 2020s. This all makes more sense to me.

Reason #7:

Everyone reads my novels like they're memoirs anyway!

Reason #8:

It allows me to skip the baggage of having to write about real people, giving me just enough cover to make the book more interesting.

Reason #9:

Did I already mention that no one wants to publish the memoir?

Reason #10:

I'll take truth over fact any day.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art


Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.

Buy Badge.

What I'm Up To: Part I

As we patiently wait for Netflix and Satan (Amazon) to add Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, I thought I'd string together a blog or three about what I'm writing these days.

First, I'm very close to finishing the screenplay version of Ghost Notes, which is now called Flake. I've been working on this off and on for years, and I finally feel like it's ready. I'll be putting the finishing touches on it in the next week, and sending it out to the folks who might be able to do something with it. If you're curious, the way forward is to read Ghost Notes, my second novel in the great chain of novels that will become ten.

Also, I'm taking a chapter a week of my novel-in-progress One Star into my writers' group The Whom. (We changed our name to The Whom on a whim, and no one bothered to protest. Incidentally, The Whom members Rebecca Kelley and Heather Arndt-Anderson both have had books come out in the last few weeks. This group gets it done, and it's all good.) One Star brings back Hote from Stuck Outside of Phoenix as he navigates the world of tribute bands in 2005. Don't expect this anytime soon, but know it's coming.

I have a five-book omnibus review on 2014 rock novels coming out soon at The Rumpus, and I also wrote a 6,000 word essay on my youth and R.E.M. that has got to find a home somewhere. I'll keep you posted.

Finally, I haven't mentioned my memoir Nineteen Ways to Destroy Your Rock Band: My Life in the Refreshments. Its plight is a bit of a longer story, so I'm going to write up that blog next week for you.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art


Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.




Buy Badge.

The Rules of Your Novel

I never post Internet-y pieces anymore, but let's change that with this one about the making of Badge.

“No more Woody Allens ever,” I declared. No, I wasn't trying to rid the world of accused sex offenders. I was making the rules for my third novel.

For simplicity’s sake, I’d reduced the number of possible male protagonists to two. First, there are the Woody Allens: nervous, over-read, over-thinking, probably-very-skinny guys who second- and third- and fifth-guess every move they make. Woody Allens can’t do anything as simple as go to the grocery store without wondering, Is the store open? Do I have enough money? Will it be crowded? Will the milk spoil before I drink it? Then on the way home, Did I spent too much money? Was the checkout clerk hitting on me? What does it all mean?

The second type in this far-too-limited-but-still-somehow-useful-to-me paradigm are the Clint Eastwoods. These are characters who operate from simple, manly codes and don’t stop to think about what they’re doing before they do it. A Clint Eastwood goes to the grocery store, munches on a tomato while strolling the aisles, punches a customer who looks askance at him, and beds the checkout clerk. Both of my first two novels featured a protagonist who takes days to do something as simple as get out of town. For my third novel, the main character would be a Clint Eastwood and not a Woody Allen.

I set off writing about Badge, an aging rock guitarist and recovering alcoholic who fistfights, plays the ladies and gets in innumerable conflicts because of it. Being a ruminative guy myself didn’t help my Clint Eastwood-making tendencies—Is this line going to offend someone? Is that face pummeling okay? What’s my mom going to think?—but I fought against the tyranny of my own better instincts. I wasn’t trying to create a character who wins good citizenship awards; I was trying to create a compelling one. Badge didn’t give a damn, and neither should I.

I spent a few years getting Badge in shape, and in 2009 I passed the novel on to its first beta reader, my friend Andy, a bushy-bearded potter in his sixties. Andy and his wife Gina were both big fans of both my first novel Stuck Outside of Phoenix and my second Ghost Notes. Andy was excited to read it, and the pair seemed like the perfect candidates to try out Badge early on.
 About a month later, I met Andy to discuss the work.

“It was . . . interesting,” he said, handing the manuscript back to me.

“Great,” I said, picking up he didn’t like it at all. “Did anything jump out at you that you thought needed work?”

“Well, there was one thing. Not me, of course. Gina mentioned that … you know … the curse words could be toned down.”

This surprised me. As much as Badge drank and fought and fucked, I’d never thought his language would rub anyone the wrong way. I didn’t remember monitoring swear words in my earlier novels. I write about rock musicians. Can you imagine Keith Richards saying “shucks” and “golly”?

I ignored the specific criticism, but I couldn’t get past the broader, vaguer one that Gina and Andy, loyal readers of my work, didn’t embrace Badge. I resolved to give the novel more attention, and to get more opinions. I gave it a complete revision and joined a writers’ group, submitting a chapter of Badge each week.

The group was led by published author Karen Karbo and consisted of ten or so people I didn’t know—mostly women ranging in age from forty to sixty. These folks had no problem with Badge’s language, but they pointed out many specific problems with the story and its characters. “Is this the same singer who was in Chapter Two? She was sassy then and seems docile now.” “The end of Part One is too early for them to jump in the sack. Can you stretch out that tension longer?” “Badge’s ex-wife falls a little flat. Can you give her some attritute?” Some expressed mixed feelings about Badge himself. He was a unlikable at times, maybe misogynistic. All this was exhilarating and frustrating. At one point, sick the criticism, I blurted, “They’re just words,” which led a fellow member to say, “Did you just say, ‘They’re just words’?” Her point was clear. Words are the whole game.

It became important at this point to explore my own feelings about Badge, which as a Woody Allen type wasn’t hard at all. Did I like him? I certainly empathized with him, an older guitarist struggling to keep his music dreams alive while staying sober and remaining present in the life of his ten-year-old son. Still, I knew Badge crossed some lines of appropriateness, especially when it came to his relationships with women. At one point, he suggests that his girlfriend had to stay in line or she’d see the back of his hand, going so far as to clap loudly, startling her. He leaves his son behind in Albuquerque while he tours the country in a rock band. There are scenes where Badge and other musicians chat about the backsides of famous female singers. I reminded myself that many great novels violate moral codes—Lolita; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Rabbit, Run. Was Badge too rough to be a good protagonist, or were my readers squeamish? In the end, I felt Badge might not be for everyone, but he wasn’t going to become a Woody Allen on my watch.

In late 2010 I started submitting Badge to agents and editors. Some expressed interest, but ultimately no one wanted to take on the novel. One agent, with whom I’d built some rapport over the past decade, specifically didn’t like Badge, calling him a controlling “Henry Higgins type.” None of the other agents seemed impressed with him either. Was I wasting my time trying to publish a novel with a jerk for a protagonist?

I joined another writers’ group and after a few months passed Badge around to three members. I bought pizza one night and the four of us discussed the novel.

I guess I wasn’t surprised when two of them found Badge unsympathetic. One wrote “You lost me here” in the margins when Badge was being particularly domineering with his love interest. Another didn’t like Badge’s attempts to manipulate the woman who was going to have his baby. My Clint Eastwood was coming off like Don Draper without the charm. It was time for a change.

Without altering the plot, I toned down some of Badge’s more controlling moments. As his love interest moves away from him for another man, I made him less angry and more awestruck. I made him less controlling with the woman having his baby, and I modified his more edgy rhetoric. I saw all this as bending my “no Woody Allens” rule without breaking it, a tip of the cap toward empathy without (hopefully) losing the soul of the novel.

Again I submitted Badge to agents and editors, and I received no offers. Out of ideas, I hired Karen Karbo to give Badge one more read-through. Karen had always liked Badge, and had given me good feedback on the novel in her group. I passed it on to her, and we met to discuss it.

Karen still liked much of Badge, especially some of the description of what it’s like when Badge plays concerts. She offered good ideas for moving sections around, simplifying scenes, deleting others that slowed the novel down. She understood that Badge was supposed to be a Clint Eastwood type, and didn’t mind his rougher edges. It was reaffirming to know I wasn’t alone in liking him, but I couldn’t deny the mountain of paper- and cyber-rejection I continued to pile up from submitting the novel. Something was still wrong with him.

At this point I started thinking about Badge’s parents. I’d stayed far away from mentioning them in the novel—nobody cared about a Clint Eastwood’s parents—but my character needed a new dimension. I knew all about Badge’s parents; I’d written pages and pages of back story to familiarize myself with his past. Bringing up mommy and daddy issues smacked of Woody Allen, but I ignored my reservations and got to work planting mentions of his parents in the novel. I referenced their breakup when Badge was eight, his father’s drunkenness, his mother’s support of his musical ambition. I even started the novel with a scene from the night his mom throws his dad out of the house, showing Badge, headphones on, disappearing into the music while they screamed in the other room. All of a sudden, it was clear why music meant so much to him—escape, protection—and why keeping it an integral part of his life well into adulthood was so important to him. My “No Woody Allens” rule had served me well enough for most of the seven years of writing Badge, but by this time sprinkling in some very non-Clint Eastwood elements made Badge come to life more than ever.

For the novelist, there’s nothing like a blanket rule to serve as a useful guide, or as a kind of motivation to get the words down. Still, there may come a time when those rules need to be tossed out for the sake of the story. In the end, we make the rules, so we can break them.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.




Buy Badge.

Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie is Ready for You!

Okay, so.

Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie is now Available for Your Video Streaming Needs.

Whenever you're ready to watch it, it's ready to be watched.

Forever.

Yes.

Happy.

Right now, it's available only on at Vimeo. I've bought and watched it there, and it works fabulously on my 2009 Mac. So, don't be afraid.

As I watched it, the one word that kept coming to my mind was...

Shocked.

I'm shocked it got done.

I'm shocked it's out there.

I'm shocked how much I like it.

I'm shocked how cool the music sounds.

I'm shocked this many people came together to create something this great.

I mean, they were characters.

In my head.

And now they walk and talk in front of me.

Imagine that for a second.

So, there's nothing to do but be thankful.

When everything is wrong.

And everyone's to blame.

And everything's the same.

You know, you never can tell.

Thanks, Nico Holthaus, and everyone who helped put this movie together. It's a great accomplishment for us, and now it's out there.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Watch Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie.

 

Stuck Outside of Phoenix from All Channel Films on Vimeo.

Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie Gets Distro!!!

I just heard from Producer Nico that the movie version of my first novel Stuck Outside of Phoenix has been picked up for distribution. This is fantastic news because it means you all will be able to see the movie soon. I don't have the full scoop yet, but here's what I know.

1) It's a done deal.

2) It will be available through online portals like Amazon and Vimeo.

More details to come soon.

Big thanks to Nico Holthaus for bringing this one home.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Watch the Movie Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix.

The John Updike Society Links my Last Two Pieces on Updike and DFW!!!

I'm so pleased to have had my most recent piece on John Updike and David Foster Wallace--not to mention my previous piece on these two authors--linked by The John Updike Society, which operates for the purpose of awakening and sustaining reader interest in the literature and life of John Updike, promoting literature written by Updike, and fostering and encouraging critical responses to Updike’s literary works.

Updike and Wallace are two writers whose lives and works become only more relevant to me as time goes by. They and their characters deal with equally compelling takes on consumerist culture, Updike's in love with what such a system grants us, Wallace's painfully aware of the underbelly of such a system. Big thanks to Cigale Literary Magazine and Word Riot for publishing these pieces. I loved writing both.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Watch the Book Trailer for Badge.







Buy Badge.