What follows is a brief round-up of various writing and drawing I have out this month and some news about forthcoming books and such.
But first, it's the...
15th ANNIVERSARY OF FOLLOW FOR NOW:
In February of 2007, with the help of several of my friends, I self-published my first book, the interview anthology, Follow for Now: Interviews with Friends and Heroes. Patrick Barber did the design (inside and out) and Adem Tepedelen did the copyediting, both of whom I worked with at The Rocket Magazine in Seattle in the 1990s. Other contributors include Mark Dery, Erik Davis, Tom Georgoulias, Brandon Pierce, Paul Barman, Paul D. Miller, and John Brockman, and the list of interviewees is too long to put here. It's really quite good!
To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the first volume, if you send me your receipt for the purchase of a paperback copy of Follow for Now, Vol. 2 from punctum books, I'll send you a signed copy of Vol. 1! Get all 80 interviews! Two decades of thought from minds of all kinds! If you're still not convinced, here's more about Vol. 2!
SEEDS TOSSED:
I have a few pieces written and drawn on pages floating around this month and a few more coming up!
I have a story about hip-hop in 1981 in the new issue of Pulp Modern. The piece gave me an opportunity to correct some mistakes I made in my book Dead Precedents and in subsequent interviews. Pulp Modern is edited by Alec Cizak, and this one also includes pieces by Misha Burnett, Jeff Easterholm, Anthony Perconti, Ronin Heck, Scotch Rutherford, Robb White, and the baddest poet, Tia Ja'Nae.
I have another security-envelope collage in the new issue of Phantom Kangaroo. Phantom Kangaroo is the product of the magical and multitalented Claudia Dawson, and Issue #26 also includes words and images by Bernardo Villela, K. Johnson Bowles, Olga Gonzalez Latapi, Melissa Cannon, Ilaria Cortesi, Jason Brightwell, MJ McGinn, Amy Young, Anna Shirshova, Priyanka Kapoor, Barbara Candiotti, Steph Amir, Gareth Branwyn, Rebecca Davis, Alex Thayer, Donna Dallas, Zack Rogow, and J. Campbell.
I have an illustration coming out in the April issue of [Alternate Route]. Founded and edited by Michael Starr, [Alternate Route] is a quarterly independent literary magazine, and my drawing is from a dream I had about a crow taking a multiple-choice test. I'll send a link when it comes out.
I also have a short story coming out in an as-yet-unnamed anthology for Malarkey Books. I'm really excited about that because Malarkey has been very supportive of my writing the past couple of years. They published an excerpt from my next non-fiction book, Escape Philosophy: Journeys Beyond the Human Body (coming this summer from punctum books; see below), and the prologue to my novel-in-progress, Hope for Boats (no idea yet when that'll be finished!).
DELAYED BUT NOT DETERRED:
Up next is the edited essay collection Boogie Down Predictions: Hip-Hop, Time, and Afrofuturism from Strange Attractor, which has been pushed back to a May 10th release due to global supply-chain issues. I am hopeful that the world will finally let this book come out then though. Here are more details, including the table of contents, back-cover blurbs, a nice review from The Wire Magazine, etc. The list of contributors on this thing is staggering, if I do say so myself! Hold tight!
MOST METAL MERCH:
As I mentioned above, Escape Philosophy: Journeys Beyond the Human Body is coming out this summer from punctum books. What I didn't mention is that I am hand-screening T-shirts and back-patches of the cover image that Matthew Revert and I did! Pictured above is my test print. This might be my only book project where such Metal merch is appropriate, so I'm going all out. I'll let you know when they're available.
ONLINE AGAIN:
I just built a new website for my media-theory book-in-progress, The Medium Picture. It's full of excerpts and book-adjacent essays. I'll have an announcement about this one soon. In the meantime, check out the website!
ONE MORE THING:
My friends Patrick Barber, Craig Gates, and I have been working on a new zine called discontents. The sticker above was designed by Craig and I (I did the Thrasher knock-off logo; He did the drawing and the final layout). The pilot issue includes writing by Cynthia Connolly, Peter Relic, Andy Jenkins, Spike Jonze, Fatboi Sharif, Timothy Baker, and Greg Pratt, artwork by Zak Sally and Tae Won You, as well as work by Patrick, Craig, and myself. Subjects include Ceremony, Unwound, Tony Rice, Hsi-Chang Lin a.k.a. Still, Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown, Crestone director Marnie Elizabeth Hertzler, Coherence director James Ward Byrkit, and others. More on this project as we wrap it up. Soon!
ICYMI:
Also, in case you missed them in all of that, I have three (3!) new books out:
Follow for Now, Vol. 2: More Interviews with Friends and Heroes (from punctum books)
Fender the Fall (a sci-fi novella from Alien Buddha Press)
Abandoned Accounts (poetry collection from First Cut)
I think that's about it, besides a couple of things I can't tell you about yet...
What ch'all been doing?
Thank you all for your continued interest and support! It is appreciated.
Hope you're well,
-royc.
http://roychristopher.com