Most authors post a quick exerpt and expect you (the glorious audience) to be appeased with that. Not with my book. I want as many people to read it as possible, so I’m giving it away for free. You can read and download my book, chapter by chapter, at my website, ksawyerpaul.com.

No Chinook is my first novel. It took the better part of three years to write, and I’m really, really proud of it. Let me know what you think, and if you really like it, feel free to buy the book.

Thanks. Have a nice day.

Burbage (Muggle Studies teacher) dies on pg. 12
Hedwig dies on pg. 56
Mad-Eye Moody dies on pg. 78
Scrimgeour dies on pg. 159
Wormtail (Peter Pettigrew) dies on pg. 471
Dobby dies on pg. 476
Snape dies on pg. 658
Fred Weasley dies on pg. 637
Harry gets f*cked up by Voldemort on pg. 704
Harry comes back to life on pg. 724
Nagini gets beheaded by Neville Longbottom on page 733.
Tonks, Lupin, and Colin Creevy have their deaths confirmed on pg. 743

In case you’re wondering which ships won the titanic decade-long fandom pissfight, it’s Ron/Hermione with two kids (Rose and Hugo) and Harry/Ginny with three (James, Lily, and Albus Severus). So, up yours, Harmonians, not to mention any actual fans of this third-rate piece of trash series. I’m off to read the incredible wank that’s already occurring over this. Not to mention giggling like a little girl while doing so.

That being said, I’m not going to be that guy and answer the questions that Harry Potter fans have been waiting years for. That doesn’t mean I won’t answer any questions. I don’t think it is a spoiler to reveal that yes, people do die in this book, both good and evil. I don’t think it is a spoiler to say that there are several extraordinary and touching moments, be they battles or escapes or weddings or funerals (the order in which I wrote those events in no way corresponds to the time line in which they happen). The prelude to the finale was breathtaking to read in particular. There are many great moments and reveals which are staples of the Harry Potter franchise. Every question which needed to be answered was answered. Most of the fans will go home happy.

**This might be the one paragraph with a minor spoiler, but others might consider it major. I don’t think it’s that major.** And then there are people like me who aren’t too invested in these characters. While the exciting parts were exciting, there was A LOT of Harry Potter sitting around trying to figure out what to do. I don’t think I’m being sarcastic when I say about 250 pages could be called Harry Potter and The Quest To Figure Out What The Quest Is. I’m not talking about Harry finding clues and trying to decipher them, I mean him sitting around with his friends thinking about what to do. He learns a lot about Dumbledore and finds himself thinking about Dumbledore and wondering what Dumbledore was thinking and missing Dumbledore and hating Dumbledore. Harry’s old man fascination would have made for a brilliant eighth book written by Chuck Palahniuk. I realize the two had a very special connection but the story which unfolds about Dumbledore isn’t particularly interesting and doesn’t particularly pay off at the end. It concludes, but you don’t get why they devoted so much time to it. Between the sitting around and the wondering about Dumbledore it won’t just be the post-Midnight time frame which will be putting children to sleep tonight.

But besides that minor complaint there is certainly a lot to like about this book. Characters I haven’t cared for in other books and movies redeem themselves. As boring as the slow parts can be, it brings a realness to the quest which should take a long time. Lessons are learned, sacrifices are made, kisses are exchanged, battles are fought and lives are changed. By the way, the epilogue is brilliant. Last time I saw closure provided like that was the Six Feet Under finale. It’s not like the Six Feet Under Finale, not to spoil it but we don’t find out how everyone who survived dies, but the same sense of closure is obtained.

It’s a good book. I think it will make a better movie than book, but it’s a fun read. There will be better reviews on the site in the next few days from our legion of Potter fanatics, but the long journey to the final few chapters is well worth it. Remember that by using Bit Torrent you are stealing from JK Rowling’s pocket, and she needs the money.

*** out of five.

9. While the three remained friends, it was difficult to hang out while they built temples for their Lord Voldemort.

8. Street lights, people, oooooooooooh. Don’t stop

7. The Fliggid Motapoy chased Harry around the gluesornopety tree until they both vomited.

6. Although Voldermort was considered evil and Harry good, they all went to Hell because they’re all witches.

5. But Hermione couldn’t choose between Ron and Harry because her head was no longer attached to her body.

4. Severus Snape floated back to the ground, turned his back to Harry and farted mightily.

3. The meaning of the scar was finally clear: Voldemort gave Harry AIDS.

2. “MATURIO”, yelled Harry, and his readers over 18 suddenly realized they should be reading something written for them.

1. Harry Potter was shot, blown up, nuked, and the little parts of him that were left were eaten by Acid Ants. The kid is dead, okay? Leave me alone.

The periods that seem most loved by American literati seem to fall mostly between 1800 and 1950, with foci on the English writers of the 1800s, the modernist movement, and Hemmingway. The masters with which I am most familiar fall in the latter categories, modernism and Hemmingway. As much as they are studied, I often wonder how much they’re really understood.

It’s a very different thing looking back. Looking back, what was made in the 1920s is old, and all works from this period are classics. Classics are stories which have influenced many and have been read by legions. Classics seep into culture, and become institutions.

But to understand the masters, we cannot look at them through the lens of history. The lens of history turns men into historical figures. Historical figures are distorted versions of men. Specifically in this case, it can be easily forgotten that these were not people who were making classics. These were people who were searching for the cutting edge.

They did not do what was old, what was safe. They did not write with the respect of the world. Rather, they earned the respect of the world gradually, over great time, through what they wrote.

To understand the difference, we must look at the forgotten writers. My best example of a forgotten writer is one who is paradoxically remembered, though for the life of me I don’t know why. He SHOULD be forgotten, and yet we are often forced to read him during the purgatory of high school. His name is James Fenimore Cooper, and he wrote Last of the Mohicans, among other stories. He was wildly popular, and perhaps this is from where his lasting fame comes.

I can only refer to him as the Jerry Bruckheimer of his day.

The last of the Mohicans was nothing more than the literary equivalent of a blockbuster. The prose had no luster or interest. The story followed the exploits of a scout and to “noble savages” seeking to save beautiful maidens from “vile savages.” There is no attempt in the novel to be factual, consistent, or, really, artistic. If you don’t believe me, ask Mark Twain.

You can read what he had to say about Last of the Mohicans by clicking here–http://users.telerama.com/~joseph/cooper/cooper.html — To an article in which one can sense the annoyance and confusion of an actual writer as he ponders the fact that a hack such as Fenimore Cooler managed to be considered so good by his audience. I recommend it, it’s actually very funny. Here’s how he opens:

It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English Literature at Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and Wilkie Collins to deliver opinions on Cooper’s literature without having read some of it. It would have been much more decorous to keep silent and let persons talk who have read Cooper.

Cooper’s art has some defects. In one place in “Deerslayer,” and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.

This is probably the most kind section of the whole article, by the way.

Can anyone say: Tom Clancy? Thomas Harris? (That’s the unskilled author of “Hannibal”) It’s the exact same thing today. For god sakes, and I know because during a quite dreary period I was reduced to reading it, Hannibal’s “plot” featured a villain who planned to exterminate his enemies using a breed of vicious man-eating pigs he raised especially for that purpose. That’s right. Man. Eating. Pigs. I think this was supposed to inspire fear and suspense, but it may have been one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read.

And they made it into a film. For the love of god, man eating pigs.

Who is popular now, as well as the majority of writers, are not likely to have any focus in history, because we don’t remember those who followed convention, as the vast majority of instantaneously popular authors do. We remember those who created conventions, and they were almost always embraced only in the community of artists, if even that, at least for a long time.

Hemmingway writes of hunger, extensively, in “A Movable Feast.” He says that one shouldn’t even look at the great French impressionists’ work unless one is hungry.

Why? Because the painters were hungry, that’s why, hungry in a way that became a way of life. Because their paintings weren’t selling. And Hemmingway knew this because he was hungry too.

People were reading James Fennimore Cooper, and people were reading dime novels, books with western settings about romantic outlaws and noble sheriffs. Hemingway, a future icon, was building a body of work.

It took Joyce over ten years to get a publisher for Ulysses. If there ever was an old master, it was Joyce, and no one would even print him. Why? He rewrote the rules. He had, for example, extensive scenes that took place in bathrooms while the protagonists were defecating. This was simply not done. I won’t even get into his crazy prose.

To those stuck gazing backwards at the historical ideal of an author, reinventing the rules is synonymous with breaking them.

(Please note, Cooper wasn’t good enough to reinvent the rules. In my view Twain is correct in his opinion that Cooper just broke them, not out of intent but because he lacked basic skill.)

And this is what gets lost in history: the writing we venerate as classical was not at all classical. It was cutting edge. Avante garde. Way out. Unappreciated, in many cases, unnoticed, undistributed. These people suffered in their youths, worked day jobs (a collection was taken by Hemmingway and others to get T. S. Elliott out of an life as a bank employee) and often died broke, perhaps after achieving notoriety, perhaps not. These people wrote poems in their bedrooms and never went outside. These people longed for the attention of a world they felt should have loved them, and often didn’t get it until they were in the ground and perhaps another life.

The old masters were young masters first.

They bucked convention, which means they disregarded the styles of THEIR old masters, instead searching for their own. The Zen Buddhists have a saying, which I have heard at two intensities: 1) if you see the Buddha walking down the road, run away; 2) if you see the Buddha walking down the road, kill him.

It seems a paradoxical statement, and it is. But with enough thought, as with all Zen koans, it opens like a flower.

The way to enlightenment cannot lie through another. The Buddha must be ignored, once his teaching are understood, because to follow the Buddha past a point is to forever lock yourself in an inauthentic journey. And the old masters must also be ignored, as they ignored the masters before them, once their lessons are understood. Because mastery is a solitary journey. It cannot follow in another’s footsteps. We’d all do well to remember this, in my strange little world.

What I’m trying to say is, we literary types need to focus on today.

That said, here’s the lowdown as fairly as I can paint it despite my life status identification with the author. Single fun loving journalist for an alternative paper in Chicago finds love and reconciles a married life with his indie sensibilities, and so far we’re only a half step past the character of Rob from High Fidelity. Then again, we’re still in the prologue.

From there we have impending and real time parenthood to adjust to. Adjusting comes slowly for our hero. I’m not one to judge parents much since I know there are several paths to the role of compromised fatherhood we all reach. Trade offs will happen. But I will admit that while I find Neal funny and loving in his way, others will see a self-absorbed child trying to raise a playmate. Drugs and anarchy are tough to give up, it seems, once you’ve decided you are a rock star in a journalist’s body.

Neal (and this is a first person account; no obvious attempts have been made to fictionalize this life) takes stabs at purging his cult-hero dreams by quenching them, civic involvement and change via relocation, but in the end — not to give anything away — you wouldn’t call him monumentally changed. He’s just added a love for his son to a lifestyle/mindset that seems firmly entrenched despite the addition of Baby Bjorns and pre-school waiting lists.

If you are looking for a read that other indie-minded people will likely pick up for vacation or beach reading, this is one that will be brought up in casual conversation and is pretty easy to get through. If your looking for a view into parenthood for future or present comparison, there are some laugh out loud moments that are only deepened by self-identification. If you are looking for the meaning of life, this is not your book. I haven’t found that book yet (sorry, fans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).

Five questions for discussion:

What examples of contradiction regarding anarchy mark Neal’s parenting style?

What forces are at play in the discussion about Elijah’s circumcision?

What responsibility do parents have to expose their children to the opportunities of a city vs. the relative safety of the suburbs or country?

Does being indie imply rejecting generic pop culture? Can you “get” the Sex Pistols as a three year old?

How would you rate Neal as a husband?

Get future editions of this column and others by Gregory Wind via e-mail.

You render a world, fall into it, and take a prose camera with you.

But enough about that! “Where’s the payoff?” You’re wondering. “Is this guy ever going to do anything but yammer about writing novels? I don’t write, so that last paragraph is meaningless! What’s in this post for me?”

…Ok, made up phantom reader of my mind, you have a point. This week, I’ll review an absolute masterpiece that as far as I can tell is horribly underappreciated. And—get this—it’s FRESH. We’re talking first half of the first decade of the twenty first century fresh. (You are thinking: “wait, doesn’t a book have to be really old to be a masterpiece?” Silly phantom reader.)

This book is… *drum roll*

Lunar Park, by Bret Easton Ellis!!!

Yes yes, folks, one of the most talented American authors around today, albeit in prose at least a little demented. For those of you who heard about the hype and wrote him off, Ellis considers his biggest influence to be Hemingway, and it shows. Personally, I’d say Ellis is one of the few cases in which we see a love of Hemingway not transform into really boring prose: Hemingwaian writing is so stripped down, so raw, that if you aren’t telling one hell of a story you’re just might have a really dull work on your hands.

Because there’s no way you’re going to be better at Hemingway than Hemingway. Most times, its simply a futile pursuit with which my brethren can’t stop falling in love.

Well, our friend Mr. Ellis, he opened with fresh and shocking and interesting prose, at an embarrassingly young age, with “Less Than Zero.” In a time when cocaine use was even more taboo and frightening to our rabbitty little nation than today, Ellis crafted a story which on a narrative level mostly involved young rich producer’s children in LA taking large amounts of coke whilst drinking, smoking marijuana, and having gay, straight, and masochistic sex. On a topical level, I always believed this book to be about the unfortunate repercussions of a direction it could be argued America started going a while ago, and going there most intensely in Los Angeles. But most importantly, I always believed there was a topical level to Ellis, something his critics have long denied him. As his work descended in narrative into very, very dark narratives, often about or following the exploits of serial killers, Ellis was slammed repeatedly for his nihilistic approach, and it was assumed that this approach existed simply because the writer got off on it somehow. It was assumed Ellis was saying nothing.

While it is true that some of the scenes Ellis takes us into in his previous books have been so revolting that it can be hard to ask oneself “what does this mean?” It is certain in this writer’s mind that anyone who is brave enough to read Ellis and ask that question will get an answer. As we are talking about art, that answer may be different for every reader, but I don’t think it’s hard to imagine Ellis’s work as commentary on the world the way Ellis sees it. And in no other book is the relationship between the real and the commentary as beautifully clear and blurry as in Lunar Park.

It is a book that follows the exploits of it’s hero—Bret Easton Ellis himself, kinda— and his somewhat adoptive family through a surrealist narrative in which the impossible things that happen are twinged with horror. While the reviewers of this brilliant novel generally went: “Huh?” They did get one thing right, which was that they said as little about the narrative as possible. I will follow this, as in Lunar Park, the less you know about what is going to happen the better. But I can tell you this:

In as much as any book ever written can be said to be about a theme, and in that be immortal, Lunar Park is about the mistakes parents make. About how and why and how they feel.

Why does this make Lunar Park a masterpiece you say, phantom reader? Well, because to me a masterpiece is a book that illustrates a fundamental human truth in a visceral and real way, so that it is immediately resonant with the vast majority of people simply because we can all relate. And it does so in a way that is unique, specific, and beautifully rendered. With characters that are uniquely human and real, while at the same time beautifully designed in order to, on a different level, inform and elucidate the human truth which the master writer is illustrating. Points are also given for originality and cracklin’ prose.

Lunar Park does this all, and manages to be funny, to contain some brilliant asides on the nature of writing, to be incredibly interactive with both the reader and the world of literature, to be beautifully ruthless self-criticism of the author in a way that the reader can see but not necessarily understand, to be wrenchingly emotive, honest, to creatively and entertainingly mix genres, specifically classical literature and horror, to challenge the reader, to be ruthless and true and just all around awesome.

So go read it. If you don’t like it, write me and tell me why. I dare you.

And if you thought this critique was somewhat flat or just didn’t go far enough,

There is a light that never goes out.

Maybe I’ll say one more thing. MFA dropouts of the world unite.

Writing can’t be taught. Form can be studied, and discussed. Specificity of language and punctuation can be practiced. Areas of needed improvement can be spotlighted.

Listen, I’ll tell you a story: there was a Boy named Yain. Yain lived in a village bordered by a river and a deep, dense wood. Yain saw holy lights shining in his brain. His parents could not see them. The village elders couldn’t see them either. Neither could his friends.

One day Yain decided to go see the Shaman who lived in the mountains, for no one else could help him. So Yain climbed and climbed, and eventually reached the Shaman’s hut. He told the Shaman about the lights in his brain, and the Shaman said: “Yain, I tell you from experience: those lights will destroy you, burning in your brain like that. You have to get them out.”

“How do I do that?” Asked Yain.

“Turn them into something you love.”

So, Yain went deep into the woods. He couldn’t have told you why he went straight for woods: it just felt right. The Shaman also told him magic is nothing but an expression of your willpower, considered by others (without that willpower) to be impossible. So Yain focused, and he courted those lights in his head, and he reached his hands into the muddy earth below him, and he fashioned a horse. And the lights he put into the horse, and they gave the horse life. This was how Yain created the fastest horse in the world. This is how Yain became the dawn rider.*

…No, you are not supposed to take this story particularly seriously. It’s a metaphor.

Yain is the writer. The lights? Whatever drives us to write. The forest? Our subconscious. The mud? An Art-form. In this case sentences, prose. The family and elders and village, that’s society.

The horse?

The horse is the greatest ride in the known cosmos. Ask any writer. If we didn’t think it was the greatest ride in the cosmos, we wouldn’t be writers.

If you’re a writer and you’re reading this and you don’t know what I’m talking about, then for the love of god do the smart thing and forget this prose nonsense. Find sensible work.

And if you know what I’m talking about, and you really want my advice, then go on and build yourself a fast horse. Make it the perfect horse for you. (Yain’s has seven legs, three tails and a mowhawk.)

(You can’t teach a boy with lights in his head how to build a horse. Anatomy of horses can be studied, and discussed. Specificity of bone structure and musculature can be practiced. Areas of needed improvement can be spotlighted.)

If you don’t want my advice, you’re my brother, too in love with riding to give a f*ck what some other fool thinks about it. Aren’t you? This is where, like cyclists each independently tackling a stretch of burly asphalt, we give each other a hearty nod.

*In case you’re wondering, Yain never once explains the details of just how he made that horse to anybody, how he got the light in the clay. People think he’s being secretive, but the simple truth is, there aren’t words and it did itself. Yain rides through countless foreign lands, rescuing princesses, saving kings, feeding the poor and defending the wretched, and eventually returns to his village where he marries Olga, a 19 year old brilliant dreamer who bears him 60 daughters.

As I think of how I’d want to start my first post, the only thing that comes into my mind is these words, as sung by Morrissey in one of the most touchingly hopeless lovesongs around: There is a light that never goes out.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, I, a fiction ranger, welcome you to an island of thought.

See, there was once this lovely little art form:

If one were to boil it down, and encapsulate the whole thing in a phrase, perhaps “There is a light that never goes out” would make as much sense as anything. See, there was this art form, and it was storytelling. It was practiced by people everywhere, on every island and continent humans tread. It was every culture’s treasure. Their beliefs and struggles were in it, their joy and pain. And as the world changed, and humanity grew, so did it. It was about the birds and the trees. It was about houses and cities. It was about love and battle.

And it grew and continued, and as technology advanced became more individual: storytellers gained alphabets and printing presses, and eventually the ability to mass produce a story rather than tell it verbally. With these innovations, incredible works were made for hundreds of years.

And those storytellers who switched from verbal communication to text called themselves writers, and they wrote and wrote, until the world was full and libraries were vast…

And a different kind of person began reading it all, and these people, reading it all, began to utter some of the most deadly words a writer could ever hear: “Everything’s Been Done.”

I’m telling you a story, listen. These people, they were educated. They’d been to universities, and studied Naturalism and Modernism and Structuralism and probably even “Got diverse” by reading Africans and Indians and Myths, had read all the Russian greats and had read so many academic papers about the Russian greats and Naturalism and Modernism and Structuralism that this bad thing started happening, their egos began telling them that they’d read everything. That there was nothing left. And, believing this, everything new they found was subconsciously judged by what had come before. Everything was brilliant or derivative of brilliance. In the words of Joseph Heller, They knew everything about literature but how to enjoy it.

I’ll re-tell you a different story, first told in a David Gemel book called “Morningstar.” They inform each other, so listen: The first vampire was named Golgoleth. He was a king and had two brothers, and ruled over his kingdom with wisdom and strength. He was curious and fascinated by the world. In love with it. And so he began what was in his mind a great quest: to understand it. Everything.

So these people, these educated readers, they didn’t create themselves but they had a contribution to the world as well, or so they thought: they would study this great form that they loved. They would write articles too, and teach the youth to see it as they did. And make a name for themselves, and spread ideas and books about their idols, in a parody of their idols. The writers, who were nothing anyway but parodies of god.

So, our educated readers go to graduate school.

Where all love they had of writing is stripped of them by a whetstone of overanalysis and speed-reading.

Novels aren’t art to them anymore. They’re homework, they must be solved and conquered. Intelligent things need to be said about them, to gain respect of classmates and teachers. The artist must be criticized because dethroning Immortals or wannabe masters is the best way to make a name for yourself.

And in the end, nothing is left but that. The joy of the kill. Of holding the writer up and saying: If he is worthy, then why? And if he is not, then why not?

Whole schools of thought evolve from these questions. And, because their careers and names depend on it, these educated readers, they go to war with each other over who’s Right about it.

Golgoleth, remember him? He’s dealing in some bad magic now. He’s gone far into the dark, his quest for knowledge is endless. He’ll do anything, he’ll destroy anything. He makes pacts with unclean powers, because they exist.

In the end, there’s only one school of thought left. Can you imagine it? If it snuffed out all the others, imagine what it had to have been like. It is big enough to encompass everything. It is vague enough so that nothing can contradict it. And, more importantly for them, they can argue endlessly about who’s right about it all, have drama in their lives and make themselves names. It’s dead enough to compartmentalize every beautiful thing that any writer ever wrote, from stanza to opus, to make a sentence by Shakespeare small enough to fit into one’s hand. (Was he a man? A woman? Was he a eunuch with dung in his hair and a penchant for abusing waterfowl?) With it, anything can be torn down. And it’s variable enough so that our educated readers, championing it, can all continue to squabble forever.

It is called postmodernism.

And the underlying principle behind it?

It’s rarely said, but in every discourse they have. Four poisonous words.

Everything has been done.

And with these words, the horrible change is complete. They no longer study the beautiful art. They study when, where, why, how, and by what tragic and twisted psychosis every little bit of everything was done.

After many years in strange lands on his quest for all knowledge, Golgoleth returns home to his kingdom. His brothers see he’s changed immediately. He tells them he’s found the secret to immortal life, and then he takes theirs. He doesn’t suck their blood, though he bites their necks. He sucks their innocence. They do not die, but become Vampires, as well. They are powerful, and Vampirism spreads through the kingdom unopposed. There is no answer, because it came the knowledge of everything.

It is now the postmodern age. Almost all seeking the art form are being educated at universities; at universities, they are indoctrinated with modern literary critique, postmodernism, modernism, structuralism, compartments, explanations for how and why and who and by what nasty subconscious urge. They are all influenced by exactly the same work, because everyone has agreed already which books are worth reading, and these books make up what is called “Cannon” and “Curriculum.” They are all taught by the people who went to school and had every beautiful thing about writing explained, every mystery picked at, until a suitable and tragically small explanation was found for it. “In this line,” the students hear sometimes, “Elliot is describing his marriage.” And is it true? Perhaps, probably, maybe. But if they were wise about it, perhaps they’d close the book holding the great poem, knowing that it’s richness and depth is impossible to contain but by the words Elliott already used, look up at their class, and simply say eight words that may be the poem’s anti-theme:

There is a light that never goes out.

I, who was once in the room with the students losing their love thoughtlessly, am a writer, and this is my island. I got a perspective and I got a voice, and I got a problem with how things are going for my art form. You may want to know, I attended grad school in a creative writing program for a while, but then got so sick of it I found I couldn’t continue. But having been there I assume that if I keep up this way, some educated reader’s going to take the opportunity to tell me I’m wrong about everything — they always do. And they might be right. However, in the end for a writer like me, there’s nothing but the courage to sit in front of a page and tell your truth, and let those bastards say — or not say — whatever they like. What is mine is the sound of my fingers on the keyboard. And this is all I have.

I’ve already been long-winded and it’s time for my bow. So happy trails, and think about it, maybe, sometime later today, or tomorrow. Will you? The Light that Never Goes Out, I mean.

It’s all any honest writer will ever ask of you, I’d say.

This week’s “Paper Cuts” interviews JoSelle Vanderhooft (read the review of her book, The Tale of the Miller’s Daughter).

Carla Lee: What is your opinion of working with a small press publisher as an author? How about as an editor, with the collections?

JoSelle Vanderhooft: I’ll be honest and say that it isn’t a path I would recommend for everyone. Writers who start out in small presses, or who work with them primarily even after establishing themselves, have got to do a lot of work promoting their own book, dealing with reviewers, and getting copies onto the shelves of local bookstores. Some authors love that, some authors can tolerate it, and others loathe it. If you’re in the last category, it’s probably not the best choice for you. But smaller presses give you a lot for your work: a close relationship with a publisher and/or editor who really believes in your work, more control (generally speaking) over the final product, and more often than not a book which just looks and feels more unique and special than a mass produced paperback or hard back. Which isn’t to knock bigger publishers at all, just to say there’s typically a difference in the book’s personality, as it were. I love small presses. I love the risks that they take, the quality of work they produce, and the talented men and women who keep them running. I’m honored to work with them.

The same is true for an editor working with a small press.

CL: Do you buy small press published books? What are some of your favorites?

JV: I hate to say that right now, I’m so strapped for cash that I’m not buying much of anything, including food. But when my finances are healthy, I do buy them. I am really excited by the work Eraserhead Press, Afterbirth Books and Raw Dog Screaming Press put out — a genre of mostly speculative writers who call themselves Bizarro. Their work is often raw, violent, profane and introspective in a way that reminds me of Franz Kafka’s work. It’s very powerful stuff, and I want to buy as much of their output as I can. I also really like the work that Prime Books does, and, of course, Papaveria Press! Basically anything that is risky, that isn’t afraid to offend or surprise or upset and be labeled pejoratively as “dark” is something I’ll check out, regardless of who publishes it.

CL: How long have you been writing?

JV: Officially, since I was ten years old, assuming we’re not counting all those re-hashes of Punky Brewster episodes I did to “entertain” my grandparents at age seven or so. Basically I was everything it wasn’t cool to be as an elementary school student in Utah during the ’80s: overweight, shy, geeky and most importantly non-Mormon. I didn’t have a lot of friends, did poorly in my class work and went home from school crying at least once a week because I was harassed and sometimes physically assaulted. Fifth grade was the worst, at least until a saint of a woman named Rosemary Hendrix entered my life. Yes, that is her real name because she’s a saint and I owe where I am now to her. Picture Miss Honey from Dahl’s Matilda with dark hair and a New Zealand accent. My class had her once a week for roughly two months for something called “change time”. This was when the teachers rotated to other classes to teach the students different subjects, basically to prepare the kids for the rigors of junior high and its seven different teachers.

Mrs. Hendrix taught us how to write fiction. But she did more than that; she did the best thing a teacher can do for a very young, very sad girl: she praised my work in front of the entire class. She showed that I had merit not just as a writer, but as a person. That was when I decided I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.

CL: Why do you write?

JV: It’s something between an impulse and an instinct. I couldn’t stop doing it and remain sane or healthy, and I don’t particularly want to. I’m happier that way and so is everyone around me, to say nothing of the inanimate objects within a five mile radius. But to be more specific, I think I write because I believe that most people are desperate, lonely, frightened and uncertain a good deal of the time. In a way I want to give a voice to that uncertainty and by giving it a voice provide, I hope, a little solace.

CL: Why do you rewrite fairy tales? The Tale of the Miller’s Daughter is a retold story, and you edited an anthology of retold fairy tales, Sleeping Beauty, Indeed. What is their draw?

JV: Fairytales draw me because I think they speak to the heart of what people flippantly call “the human condition”. There is something primal about myth and folklore that draws me: the blood smells a little stronger, the love burns a bit brighter and the stakes seem to be a little higher, if only because I think fairytales address the most basic of human hopes and fears. Retelling a fairytale for me allows me to dig my hands into that primordial soup that speaks about people at their most vulnerable and unguarded. I think this is the same reason that leads a lot of writers to return to old stories when working.

I should also be clear, though, that while a lot of my work is based in retellings of or original fairy tales, this isn’t all I do. I have a few fantasy novels on my hard drive waiting completion and revision that have nothing to do with fairytale. Lately a lot of my work has also been focused on a mythology of a different kind — that of the American West, and my home state of Utah’s place in that mythos.

CL: What made you want to work as an editor for collections of stories?

JV: Before I (re)turned to writing poetry and fiction, I worked in the theatre as a dramaturg, literary intern and frustrated playwright (is there any other kind, really?). Though I’m oversimplifying when I say this, a dramaturg has a lot of the same duties an editor does, particularly when working with new plays. She or he has to keep track of the script, making sure it’s free from such boogies as inconsistencies in characterization, structural problems, and torpid, cliched writing. Since I did eight hours of work on scripts each day and enjoyed myself far more than an unpaid theatre intern working 50+ hours a week should, I figured I’d have fun making work for myself as an editor after hours. I think it paid off well, as I now have another anthology in the works.

CL: Miller’s Daughter is being released in both a trade paperback and a hand-made special edition. What are your thoughts on this? Did you want both, or was it something the publisher suggested? Do you view the making of books as an art form?

JV: Actually, it was initially supposed to be a hand made special edition. Erzebet YellowBoy (the publisher) later decided to release it as a paperback, too. As a writer, I always want to get the book to as many readers as possible, so I am thrilled she decided to release it as a paperback, but I have no problems with hand-made, special editions, either. The Tale of the Miller’s Daughter is a very colorful, image-based book, so it’s thrilling to have a book with a case to match it. I absolutely view book binding as an art form. If the monks who created the Book of Kells taught us anything, it was that text can and should be beautiful, too.

CL: You freelance write for a newspaper as well as writing fiction and poetry, correct? Is it difficult to switch back and forth between the genres? How do you balance where you focus your writing efforts?

JV: Yes, I regularly work for several LGBT papers. So far I haven’t found it difficult at all to switch between different forms of writing. Sometimes, though it can be exhausting, because I’ve got to keep my attention on so many different projects and deadlines at the same time. Except when a deadline is approaching, I’m not entirely sure how I focus my efforts, either. When finances are a concern, I tend to focus on the project that brings me the most money — and sometimes that project isn’t writing. When they aren’t as much of a concern, I focus on the things that compel me most, the storis and poems that just have to come out.

CL: What are some of your current and future projects?

JV: I’ve got a lot in the hopper right now. Of course, there’s Owl Skin, my retelling of Donkey Skin that Papaveria will release in December. There’s also an as-yet unnamed series of four poetry/short story collections Papaveria will be releasing in 2007 and 2008. These will be themed around the four elements, with one book covering deserts, rivers, fires and storms. There’s also Tiresias Revisited: Magical Tales for Transfolk, an anthology of transgender re-tellings of myths and legends that I’m editing for Steve Berman’s Lethe Press. As far as academia goes, I’m also co-editing a collection of essays about representations of race, class and gender in the Harry Potter novels. There are also some other things in negotiation now, so maybe I’ll be able to announce some other things by year’s end, God willing.

CL: Finally, what kind of advice can you give someone considering submitting to a small press publisher?

JV: Get to know the press before you approach them. Just because they’re smaller doesn’t mean that they don’t get inundated with manuscripts, and you definitely don’t want to waste your time and theirs by sending them, say, your 200,000 word sword and sorcery epic when what they really do is publish collections of experimental short stories. People always tell hopeful authors to network, and I won’t break this tradition. These days with MySpace and Livejournal it’s easy to find the blogs of small press authors, editors and publishers and to read their thoughts on the industry. But there’s a key to networking, especially if it’s online. You can’t be overly pushy, or insistent. Always remember that while you need to be assertive and proactive, you are the one asking them for a favor, to read your work and consider it for publication. Make sure you’re humble and gracious, because nothing drives a potential publisher away faster than arrogance and cattiness. Other than that, obey their submission policies. They are there to help you.