003: Cut-up is Fun, but Burroughs Still Murdered His Wife

~ Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

First, COMPILATION.

"I'm sorry, the formatting on this poem about sexy car crashes is wrong, please fix."

When I got to ND 5 days ago it was about 97F. Right now it's 48F. High tomorrow is supposed to be 95F. Welcome back.

Can't say I'm thrilled with the news that the next issue of Fell is in the works. So much back and forth in both directions for years, and then once Warren falls on his own sword and loses his plush Netflix gig it happens? Sorry boys, no. I know it's partially Ben's baby, but just leave it. It's dead. Leave it. Buried alive maybe, but still buried. It's certainly A Decision. Hmmm do I support my partner and a dozen-plus of my friends or buy a comic by a serial abuser that has been vaporware for a decade? Ben's "we'll let the market decide" line is such a cop out and all he would have had to say was "Nah I'll pass, mate."

I feel like some part of me is going to vibrate off and break like a weak wing strut on a shitty airplane. Notetaking for later: "The friction of existence these days is enough to start a fire."

One thing they never told me about taking a diuretic to keep T levels down is that you'll sweat like CRAZY. Peeing a lot? Okay. That's nothing new. But I JUST took a shower and now I'm... damp. And not in a good way.
 
Second, SOUNDS LIKE A START FOR A COUNTRY SONG.
I do not live with a dog full-time, but I "have" a dog in the sense that my partner, whom I live with part-time, has a dog, and she's our dog. Our dog is an Australian Cattle Dog, or Blue Heeler, so she's a medium-sized, muscular, agile dog that's built for weaving around cows and nipping them for herding purposes. Until recently, our dog has been a city dog, meaning she got to play on the nice soft dog park grass, and spent most of her time indoors or doing short bursts of running in the backyard.

Now we're on the farm. The farm plot itself is what's called an eight of a section, which is to say it's a rough square that's an eighth of a mile on each side, which comes out to about 80 acres, of which about 40 is clear. (The rest is pasture and wetland from when there was a dairy operation on the land.) That clear 40 acres is extremely hard-packed sod, and North Dakota grass is notoriously sharp when it's dry. And it's damn dry right now.

So this poor cattle dog, with so damn much energy she spins in circles at full speed while I'm holding a tennis ball, with tender little city dog peets, has just brutally torn up the pads on her right paws from spinning and running and playing. And she will. not. stop. trying to play. This dog will run until its legs are stumps and thank you for the opportunity.

The lesson here is that even if you're built to do one thing and you absolutely love doing that thing, sometimes you have to take breaks.

Third, CONSUMPTION.
Not much going on this week as I've been unpacking.

- Been watching a lot of Jeopardy! on both Neflix and from the fam recording it on the Dish. (They have legit been recording Jeopardy! for timeshifting purposes since the Betamax days.)
- Currently reading Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski, and Louise Glück's Poems 1962-2012.

Fourth, PROMOTION.
This is the part where I talk about my book, A Void and Cloudless Sky, which you can order here. I edited galleys over the weekend.

For those who don't know how the publishing process works, especially for small-press genres like poetry, it goes something like this:

- pitch a book (in this case, you send it to a zillion publishers and contests, much of which costs money) and hopefully someone picks it up
- if they do, you sign a contract for an estimated publication schedule
- you send them the manuscript if you didn't do so to pitch the book
- they take that manuscript and lay it out in their publishing software according to their style
- you get a copy of that process called the galleys, and then you go through it and correct copyediting errors and layout mistakes (in my case, the largest discrepancy was a whole poem having its margins wrong and its positioning in the wrong place on the page, which is a big deal in the overall experience of the poem) with a literal red pen (usually)
- you send it back, and they (hopefully) make the changes
- this might happen a couple times
- they send you the final galleys, with the cover mockup and all that
- if approved, it goes to print and then distribution

So I'm now waiting for the results of that first round of galleys to come back. We're still, to my knowledge, on target for a mid-July release, but, as always, there will likely be some printing delays, so it's probably more likely that it will happen in August. I'm looking into lining up interviews and reviews right now. It's... slow going. At least as a first-timer. I hope this gets better and easier in the future.

Finally, THE OUTRO.
Not too far from here is what one might consider a ghost town. These are pretty common in North Dakota, but this one is special because of its name: Buttzville. The only other Buttzville that I can find with a quick Google is in New Jersey. Both make me giggle inanely.

I'm hoping there's a sign for this one, because I need to take a picture.