We (don’t) have all the time in the world
September 7, 2010

We love it when people just say it:

“Screw not judging. I will judge. Not the nine-monthers, who may have their own reasons, but the truly unprofessional behavior I still see all the time in response to submissions. Here’s what I say, as an outsider, an interloper in the publishing/literary world: taking a year to respond with a form email that is two sentences long is not professional. That’s right. Rejecting someone in your submissions software but never letting them know? Not professional. Sending Xeroxed and chopped up quarter slips of paper for rejections? Totally unprofessional. Pretending you take shit from the slush pile all the time when really 99.9 percent of what you publish is solicited? Not professional. Sending rejections that say things like, ‘This was really pretty bad,’ or ‘yeah, didn’t care for this at all?’ So incredibly not professional.”

Essential reading: this blog post by Amber Sparks on the lengthy and often plain insulting response times from some literary magazines. Yeah, there’ll be some who say “Hey, don’t worry about it. Just move on. Submit somewhere else. Don’t get so hung up on response times. There are more important things in life.” There are. There are many more important things in life, but we all need smaller things to think about than the fact we’re all slowly choking ourselves to death in a haze of crazy pollution. So we worry, agonize and get angry about response times instead. Anyway, are we the only ones to notice that the kind of people who make the “lighten up” speeches are usually those who have moved on from the submitting game?

Look, to us, it’s simple. Beyond everything, response times are about one simple thing: showing some respect for your fellow writers. That’s it.

(Before putting up this quote and encouraging you to read Amber’s post, we obviously took a look at our own response times. We’re not bad. Sometimes we could do better — everyone could always do better — but any delay in responding is usually to do with mundane stuff like having to work for a living, not because we’re busy enjoying our supreme editorial power by sitting on a huge pile of submissions, laughing our asses off as we sip the freshly squeezed blood of a penniless intern.)

Subkillauthormishmashmachine
September 1, 2010

Like many magazines and journals out there, we’re saying goodbye to email for submissions. All that labeling and filing and finding stuff again was taking up precious time that should be used reading what you send us. So we’ve signed up with the excellent Submishmash, and all submissions will now be handled via killauthor.submishmash.com. Though we’d still encourage you to read our full guidelines before sending us your work.

Note the first: if you’ve recently submitted work using the traditional email route, you’ll still receive a response. The new system only kicks in from today.

Note the second: None of this affects yesterday’s call for a guest (almost) editor to write an introduction for the next issue. If you’re interested in that, then get in touch via our mail@killauthor.com address.

Guest (almost) editor wanted
August 31, 2010

So here’s a thing. An experiment. It might not work and there’s every chance nothing will come of it, but we want to try it anyway. Because if we can’t take a risk or two here, in the online literary journal that we run, where can we? (Rhetorical question. Don’t send answers.)

After initially deciding we weren’t going to do any kind of “letter from the editors” at the start of each issue, since Issue Five we’ve done just that. Hey, we change our minds; we’re difficult that way. We’re not going to claim that the introduction is essential reading, and many of you probably pass straight over it. It’s okay, we understand: you just want to get to the good stuff as quick as possible. We’re not offended. But if there are readers who go through each issue from beginning to end — in that old-fashioned way of reading that people had before the internet apparently shrunk all our minds — then we like the idea of providing them with a welcome, a glimpse of where our editorial heads are at right now, and a taste of what’s to come in the following virtual pages. It’s the polite thing to do. Our moms brought us up well.

We’re also anonymous, though. You’ll have noticed that if you’ve been paying attention. > kill author has deliberately chosen to go against the idea of having “personality” editors so that the focus can be on the work we publish. Which then makes us think: maybe we don’t need an introduction to each issue after all? Maybe it doesn’t fit with our big idea? (Again, rhetorical questions. Don’t raise your hands.)

Then we thought: guest editor.

Okay, not really an editor. Going through submissions, choosing what to accept and what to reject, running the site? Still a hundred per cent our job, and there are no vacancies. But a guest editor who gets an early preview of what’s in the upcoming issue, picks out a few personal highlights and offers a few of their own literary thoughts as a foreword? Yes, it could work. It might not. But it could.

We want to keep this as open as possible, so although we might approach one or two people ourselves, we’d really like you to let us know if you’re interested in being a guest editor (who’s not really an editor but just writes the introduction) for the next issue. If it works, we’ll keep the idea going — maybe not all the time, but occasionally. If it doesn’t work, we’ll act all embarrassed and then quietly forget we ever wrote this post.

This is open to anyone. You can be a writer who is in the next issue, or who we’ve previously published in > kill author, or who’s never featured here. Just as long as you can write between 700–800 words on (a) something a little literary-minded, even if it’s quite lateral (we like lateral), and (b) find a few good words to say about some of the material in the issue. Oh, and it helps if you like our journal too. Even if only a bit. We’re not against hearing disapproving views of how we operate, but if you blindly hate us and everything we do then move along because this gig’s not for you.

Here’s what to do. Send an email to mail@killauthor.com with a line or two telling us what you might like to write about in your guest spot. Put “Guest Editor” in the subject line, just so we tell those messages apart from submissions. And do it earlier instead of later, because we’d like to make a decision quite soon. Thanks.

Jack Boettcher on Elaine Chiew
August 27, 2010

Three poems by Jack Boettcher appeared in Issue Eight; here are his thoughts on his favorite piece from the same collection:

“The ‘Italo Calvino People’ of Elaine Chiew’s story are smarter than I am, and, like me, they’re really into Italo Calvino, and that makes me somewhat envious. But then I think about what happens to Italo Calvino People. I have always been interested in prodigies. Obviously, many people are interested in prodigies; as individuals, prodigies — or Italo Calvino People — confound expectations and deliver a little believable awe. But what makes Elaine Chiew’s story so remarkable is that it expands this obsession to a societal level. The outcome is somewhat more sinister, but the tone of the piece isn’t that dark — it’s like, well, the restrained horrors of the Italian Folktales that Calvino edited early in his career. I rarely use the word gimmick as a pejorative, and I think the story has a great gimmick going. Most of all, it reminds me that maybe it’s not the worst thing that my parents didn’t blast Pimsleur language tapes at me neonatally so that I could become the world’s greatest polyglot, as I’d always sort of hoped. Because a world full of polyglots sounds utopian, but you never know.”

Andrew Roe on Ryder Collins
August 26, 2010

For his choice from Issue Eight, Andrew Roe picks the story by Ryder Collins:

“This one knocked my socks off. That hasn’t happened in a while. So I was happy to have them, my socks, knocked off.

I like a good title. And ‘We Were Listening For The Shattering’ is a great title.

There’s also a rhythm and economy and confidence here that really works. So many quotable lines, but my favorite was probably this: ‘We were passing a new whiskey bottle around, except for Baby who’d lost her Nuk. She’d never get another, but we didn’t have the hearts to tell her yet.’

And this too: ‘The whiskey went round again and you were squeezing on me and it almost felt good. I almost forgot for a sec.’

Squeezing on me. Not squeezing me. That little change, that tweaked turn of phrase that surprises and delights — that’s the sign of a writer who knows things, things you want to know about.

I want to know what Ryder Collins knows.”

Death reviews kill
August 25, 2010

Among the growing number of lit-focused group blogs, We Who Are About To Die is probably our favorite, so we’re especially proud to have the latest issue of > kill author given such a great Quickie Review there today by Ani Smith. She says we’re like the “cool kid on the scene wearing dark sunglasses and making all the other kids go, whoa, who’s that guy?” (but then she hasn’t seen us sitting around in our underwear after a heavy night drinking gin, when we don’t look nearly so cool). Major thanks to Ani and WWAATD for the kind words.

Films that never existed
August 23, 2010

“The Ghostlight Project is a group of five artists working together to uncover fragments of old silent films that never existed. Every week begins with a film fragment, each artist then bringing a new aspect of the story to light on the days that follow, taking inspiration from the previous elements in a work of ongoing improvised collaboration. Until the week ends, and a new film is discovered.” [Via Warren Ellis]

Fantastic. Eerie. Fascinating.

Sabotage
August 22, 2010

Sabotage, the site that reviews “pamphlets, small presses, poetry and fiction magazines, manifestos, online journals, stapled pieces of paper, installation poetry,” has given its verdict on the latest issue of > kill author. Here’s what they said. A big thanks to Jared Randall for the really generous words — we appreciate it.

Now available on Vinyl
August 21, 2010

Gregory Sherl, who featured in the most recent issue of > kill author with four poems from his upcoming collection “The Oregon Trail Is the Oregon Trail,” has just launched Vinyl Poetry, a new online journal edited in collaboration with KMA Sullivan. The first issue features previous > kill author contributors Sam Pink and Thomas Patrick Levy, plus work from Jeff Mann, Melissa Broder, Sasha Fletcher, Ben Mirov and Joseph Young, among others. It’s good to see another publication choosing to concentrate only on poetry, and this looks like being one that you’ll want to add to your regular reading list right now.

Better (?) book titles
August 21, 2010

We love Better Book Titles. Because you’ve got to be irreverent and disrespectful about these things sometimes, haven’t you?

Matt Mullins on Gregory Sherl
August 15, 2010

Some poetry, as Matt Mullins reveals his favorite work from Issue Eight:

“Gregory Sherl’s ‘The Oregon Trail sold death without caskets’ is that rare type of poem that collapses worlds to make the world again, only to kill that new world and purposely leave it to rot. This poem pixelates like the chunky graphics of its throwback educational video game namesake. By which I mean you better stand back, way back in your mind’s eye, to get the full sense of everything that’s going on here: The process of game-play from which the poem-world unscrolls to imply some form of now and where in our electric age. The language and things of the trail itself, which make us forget that electric age and see a Nineteenth Century wilderness of wagon trains, drowning oxen, cracked axels, ditches filled with rattlesnakes, shot-dead bankers from Boston gone stiff two ways. Then the combination of these two worlds writhing around the poem’s spine, bending meanings into a third timeless place, a place where You and I push sick along the trail trying to make it from Independence to some better beyond, which is only better for its zombies and rotting meat. This poem is still teaching me things about gut-shot love shitting its pants. It’s telling me this is a game/this is no game. This is You and I with everything at stake in the here and now filtered through then and then some. This is that third world a poem can make, the one we know by a feeling and not a name. That place we can’t pin down but know exactly, as the words that prove we’ve been to this feeling before, when, ‘on a night too lonely for color, you find blood in places where blood should not be.’”

Jennifer Spiegel on Frank Hinton
August 14, 2010

Here’s Jennifer Spiegel with her take on her favorite piece from Issue Eight:

“I just liked the title. ‘You Enjoy Myself.’ I had to take a closer look. Then I saw that Frank wasn’t even the author’s real name, and that Frank was a girl. After that, I noticed that Frank lived in Nova Scotia, and I once had a roommate from Nova Scotia.

The story. Well, the thing that truly, really, earnestly sucked me in is that it’s remarkably similar to my own story. Has anyone noticed that? Will Frank hate me for saying this? I read it, getting a little nervous about porn on the web, but ultimately found it moving, rich, and subtle. (There is no porn on the web in my story). But Ms. Frank took a day, a seemingly ordinary day with deceptively simple — though utterly engaging detail — and rendered it extraordinary. I am especially drawn to stories with a keen eye for authentic detail (emphasis on ‘authentic’) and this story breathed, if you will, of it: from the anti-perspirant in the armpits (gross!) to the the mold on the fried egg sandwich (gross!), from the potatoes cold in the middle to the magic of this line: ‘He decides that his true story is worthy of fiction.’ And then the end is soft and meaningful. I don’t know what I mean by ‘soft,’ but I felt that way.

I like something funny and authentic that means something too. This story was funny and authentic, and it meant something too.

It just dawned on me. Maybe Frank IS my old roommate.”

Literary advertising writ large
August 13, 2010

Nick Newcomen loves the work of writer Ayn Rand, and thinks it has a huge amount to teach us. So that’s why he decided to travel 13,328 miles across 30 states to write a message to the world about her, using his car and a GPS tracking device as a kind of virtual “pen”. The results, when viewed on Google Earth, look something like this:

We’re not great Ayn Rand fans, to be honest — let’s just say our political views are a little different — but I guess you’ve got to admire his dedication to his favorite author. Or wonder if he’s a little bit crazy.

David Backer on Elaine Chiew
August 13, 2010

David Backer offers his thoughts on Elaine Chiew’s “Italo Calvino People”, his favorite piece from Issue Eight:

“Good stories make little new file folders in my head, places where I can organize ideas. This (hi)story did that for me. It helped and continues to help me organize experiences like this: While heating up some polenta leftovers, I asked a friend if he wanted some. He looked horrified. I asked him, ‘What’s the problem?’ He said, ‘I didn’t think you were into the whole placenta-eating thing.’ I told him I wasn’t, that I’d said ‘polenta’, and he proceeded to tell me about the current trend of parents eating the mother’s placenta after birth, an ancient tradition meant to enhance the upbringing of the child. This made me think of ‘Italo Calvino People’. The next day I asked another friend where the band Spoon originated. We were sitting in her living room. She said, ‘I don’t know, my computer’s not on.’ Each clause, the first and second, were said in the same breath, connecting her knowledge with access to a computer. This made me think of ‘Italo Calvino People’, too. Now when I encounter something eerily predictive of our collective fate I think of ‘Italo Calvino People’. I find this very helpful. Thanks, Elaine.”

Edmond Caldwell on Frank Hinton
August 12, 2010

Below, Issue Eight contributor Edmond Caldwell discusses his favorite piece from this latest collection of words:

“I feel dirty just saying this but I really enjoyed ‘You Enjoy Myself,’ by Frank ‘Not Her Real Name’ Hinton. Actually I feel dirty even thinking it because I felt dirty reading it, really, really dirty, like bad dirty, but in a good way, like I’d been really naughty and needed to be punished, maybe by being read a bedtime story like ‘You Enjoy Myself’ by Frank Hinton. All the books on proper story etiquette say you shouldn’t begin a story with someone waking up in the morning, but ‘You Enjoy Myself’ started with the main character waking up in the morning, or near enough anyway, ass up in the air and about to wake up in the very next paragraph. Then the same etiquette manuals tell us that under no circumstances should you describe a character by having them look in a mirror, but Frank Hinton totally makes it work. There’s other violations of good story etiquette, too, like how come there’s no ‘hook’ in the first paragraph, no clear conflict right off the bat, and making the character a writer (even a frustrated one like Yem) which is a huge no-no because then only another writer will like your story and even then probably not, and also making the main character unsympathetic and someone the reader can’t ‘relate’ to (Yem is revolting). I like stories that make me question what a story is, but this one made me question why a story is, especially this one. It violated so many things that it made me feel violated, in a good way. It enjoyed me.”