Malarkey Over Everything
It is probably really nice to be proud of a place, like Chicago. If I was from Chicago I would think it’s the greatest city in the world. When I heard the new pope was from Chicago I would have posted “Chicago over everything!” The place I’m from is not cool or interesting. I often say I’m from the armpit of Missouri and that tends to be acceptable. It sounds natural, and in fact for a while I had the location of Malarkey listed as Armpit, MO, on twitter, and an archival librarian emailed me to verify if that was a real place.
I went to Chicago last month, for the first time other than passing through since a trip for college visits when I was in high school. I went to a poetry reading and got to meet Adrian Sobol. We got off the bus a little early to walk around the campus of Loyola University, where I was supposed to go to college until I lost my mind and switched to a small Catholic college in Kansas so I could play baseball, only to quit the team and lose my scholarship about a month in. Good times. And I met up with Zachary Kocanda at a pizza place. We talked about books and our lives and Chicago and pizza and Malarkey and King Ludd’s Rag. One of the stories from the last issue is an excerpt from Ryan Napier’s book (which I think is still looking for a home if we have any big time editors reading), Nicely Done. Zach mentioned that he was initially against the idea of accepting an excerpt, but he started reading anyway and quickly changed his mind. That has happened to me before. The transition from I can already tell I’m not going to like this into holy shit this is amazing is such a nice feeling, and this is a reminder that we have to give things a fair shake: people, books, experiences, foods. I ordered thin crust pizza because my kids were with me, but I wish now I could go back in time, back to Giordano’s, and order the deep dish, and when my kids complained I’d just say listen, we have to give things a fair shake.
There is a new book in the world. It’s by Craig Rodgers. If you preordered and it didn’t arrive yesterday, it will probably hit your mailbox today. The book is called Detective Novel. I describe it like Raymond Chandler crossed with Kafka mixed with McCarthy plus some Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud for good measure. Christina Pfeiffer calls it “10/5” and “Best book I have read in 2025.” Today only, unless I forget to change the price tomorrow, you can order Detective Novel for only $10, plus shipping, from our website. It will be signed by the author and come with a couple stickers and a copy of the twenty-third issue of King Ludd’s Rag, featuring stories by Ryan Napier and Lyra Meurer. I’m also including below links to the book from Asterism, Bookshop, and Amazon, as well as a link to buy the ebook directly from us for $5. Two things to note: the shipment to Asterism was delayed, so the book is marked out of stock. That shipment should get to them on Monday though. If you order via the Bookshop link below we get a little affiliate bonus. It’s not very much, but not very much is more than nothing at all.
I think it’s Amazon Prime Week. Like many of you, I’m sure, I hate Amazon, and it really bothers me to have our titles listed in their store. It’s very difficult to avoid them, though. If we want Bookshop to be able to carry it, we have to let Amazon carry it, too, because Bookshop only distributes through Ingram and we don’t have a way to select who gets to carry copies for retail. Anyway, Bookshop and a few other Amazon alternatives like to offer free shipping this week, so there’s another reason to buy Detective Novel via Bookshop. We can’t offer free shipping entirely, but we do offer free shipping on orders over $45, with code POSTOFFICE at checkout. We also have 50 t-shirts left from the Kickstarter. While it would be nice to sell a lot of them, because that would be money that can be put entirely back into operations, offsetting costs of some of the titles that don’t sell as well, we’re also happy to give a t-shirt away to new book club members. So if you sign up for the book club you will get an email from me asking hey would you like a free t-shirt and, if so, what color and what size. There are currently three ways to sign up: 1. Patreon 2. Paypal subscription 3. Pay up front via our website. Gosh it would be nice if we could run monthly subscriptions straight through our website and not have to go through Patreon and Paypal, but we’d have to pay twice as much for our Squarespace plan, so for now this is what we’re doing. It does work. I have a nice big spreadsheet that I keep up to date with subscribers from all three platforms. We get a lot of people who stay on the book club year to year, and I think it’s because they like helping out a small press but mostly the books are cool. They show up in the mail and it’s a nice reminder that there are people out here making art, making literature, not for clout or big paydays or praise in The New York Times but just because they love it. Craig Rodgers will probably never have a book picked for Reese Witherspoon’s book club but he has said he’s going to keep writing books until he’s no longer allowed to do it, and I believe him.
So I may not have a place to be proud I’m from, but I have people I’m proud to know and to work with. Malarkey over everything.
Join the Book Club!
