Zues and the Sales stats

Just got the stats: 150 copies of Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea SOLD! Considering that selling 50 copies of a poetry book is pretty impressive, and that my initial (and ambitious) goal was to move 100, I'd say (ignoring all those 2-star reviews I keep getting over at Goodreads) Zues and the Giant Iced Tea is an ALARMING success!

On top of that, I may actually end up having a launch (albeit 6 months late...) in the fall sometime here in Toronto. I'll keep you up to date on that!

Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea trivia questions!

Hey...this is cool. I can make trivia questions about mine, or other people's, books! Now that's promotion I can get behind!

Try out the ones I made for Zeus! Never before have questions been so trivial! Can you get 100%? Can you get 5%?

Youch!

Wow, I never realized how good Goodreads is for stalking your fans! Too bad I found this out by getting my first Goodreads rating for Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea: 2 out of 5 stars! Ouch!

So I did some digging and see that this particular reader has set this book on the quality shelf among such peers as Wrestling Superstars II, I Was for Sale: Confessions of a Bondage Model and The Satanic Rituals: Companion to the "Satanic Bible". Zeus was rated lower, in this person's opinion, than Bomb Queen Volume 3: The Good, The Bad And The Lovely and Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection. Even poetry books by Jewel and Billy Corgan fared better than mine!

Oh well. At least it's nice to hear what people think! The reader is obviously a wrestling fan - I wonder if The Muscle pissed them off?

Onwards and upwards (or downwards!)

Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea Contest Winners!

Recently there was a Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea giveaway over on goodreads.com. Congratulations to Lisa, Rachel and Ina! I have sent forth three copies to the three corners of the globe (USA, Australia and India) with your names on it. Hopefully they will find you there to inform you of your mission: enjoy the book!

(Bonus mission - review the book! Extra points!)

Water in the Desert

I stumbled across this review for Game Quest the other day. It's always kind of delightful to come across reviews for my self-published work. Partly because I had no distribution model other than Amazon and my own site, so the chance of Game Quest being read, let alone reviewed, is very very small. Game Quest has kind of had a life of it's own. One of my first orders was to Abu Ghraib (yes, that Abu Ghraib - insert your jokes about my book being a good implement for torture due to its size, weight or content here) and though I've stopped promoting the book years ago, still sell ~3 copies a year on Amazon and the ebook version sells quite well - about 1 a month. Despite being the most daunting (for most people) of my books in both theme and size, it seems to have found some tenuous foothold in the underculture. Anyway, so it's extra great when you find out that someone read it and actually took the time to review the book. In this case it was particularly nice because I could tell that the reviewer engaged with the book, understood it on a deeper level and had some interesting things to say about the work.

I'm not sure what most author's motivations are for writing. Mine is a desire to communicate. I don't particularly enjoy the editing, the printing and, especially, the promotion that goes into translating a story from something cool in your head to something real on the page. All that effort is a LOT of work and the end goal is to present it to the world and hope to hear back from them on what they thought. I don't really care if it's good or bad (of course, good is preferable), I just like to hear what people thought to see how and if it engaged them. Reviews are my favourite part after coming up with the idea in the first place. It's like getting the chance to reread your book from the POV of a reader...and loving it, or excoriateingly tearing it to shreds. Which, in turn, makes the hardest part about being a small-beans author is you don't get a lot of that. But boy does that water in the desert taste good!

Incidentally, Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea also just got reviewed (huzzah!) by the University of Lethbridge Student newspaper, which you can read here.

ZATGIT: The Unveiling

Zeus Arrives!

Holy Excitement Batman!

Anticipation Builds...

What the crap is this stuff? Where's ZEUS?!?

Oh! Here it is!

I HAVE THE POWER!!!!

Hmmmm. Minimal spelling mistakes. Good, good...

Even babes like it!

Oh, the life of an arteest!

What is Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea about Anyway?

Baddest cover
for a book of poetry
ever?

You know, in my zeal to promote this book, the effort of nearly two years of my and other’s metaphorical blood, sweat and tears, I may have forgotten to mention what the book is actually about! While ‘buy it!’ is a very important message I want you to take home from me about the book, that is not actually all the book has to say. In fact, ‘what the book is about’ is one of the more interesting aspects of this collection, and one of the hardest things to determine in putting it together.

So what the hell is Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea about?

You know, ‘What’s it about?’ is an unusual question in the poetry world when I think about it. It’s not generally asked. When plugging your new book to potential readers ‘it’s a collection of poetry’ is typically more than enough to put off the inquirer's curiosity in your writing. Cue the “I don’t know anything about poetry” response and glazed over deer in the headlights of Robert Frost’s speedster ripping down the highway in the dead of night with a giant spinning bladesaw reflecting the moon on the front... For those who like poetry (and there aren’t many who believe that they do), the sad triumph of form over content in the poetry world precludes the importance of it having to be (or even actually being) about something.

But the fact is that all collections are about something. Or at the very least, I claim Zeus to be about something. Why? Because I had to put it together. I had to have a reason for selecting, rejecting and aggregating the poems I picked from my treasure trove of gems, gold, fool’s gold, coal and acursed items. Zeus has a criteria, standards, a vision.

I articulate that vision fairly clearly (I hope!) in the short and entertaining (I hope!) intro to Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea, which you can read here (click ebook and read the 'Why Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea?' section). But before I get more into what Zeus is about I’d like to talk more about ‘aboutness.’

That collections of poetry, even random ones, are about something escaped even me until Zeus slapped me in the face with it. My first poetry book, Poetaster, pretty much falls into the random collection category. I was asked to submit something to Ekstasis and so I gathered all my poetry in a virtual pile and started picking out the stuff I liked best. It wasn’t until I started (struggling with) putting Zeus together that I realized Poetaster had a focus. It was an introduction: Hey poetry world – here’s me! It was about me and the best of the stuff I was writing about, thinking about and dealing with from the dawn of my first feeble attempts to Ekstasis asking me to submit. The collection is a bi-product of that era: forceful, sarcastic, bitter, ironic and optimistic. These poems about the death of my father, international travel, office jobs, the lameness of the literary scene portray an author who is alternatively confident, lost, self-assured, struggling and ready to tear the literary world a new one if only to get some fresh air into the joint!

Seriously, is this the part where you tell us what the hell Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea is about? Cause my time at the wash-o-mart is almost up and I gotta pick up my clothes.

So if Poetaster is about ‘me’ in the first era of my poetry writing, what is Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea about? Zeus is a radical departure from Poetaster. It is not about me, but about fiction - or rather poetry's take on story telling. I like to think of Zeus as a love letter from poetry to fiction. The poems in Zeus are complete stories in themselves (The City, or the Muscle), and sometimes they are snippets of stories from a greater, untold story - like peeking through a keyhole in a door: you get a salacious snippet of the action going on, but get to make up the rest for yourself (The Two Xs, Crash Landing). Others are individually sealed poems that, as they are read, build and build into a much larger and complete story (The Sultan Poems). Zeus is an ode to fiction, to narrative storytelling, but from the dreamlike mind of poetry.

The Making of Zeus (It sprung from my forehead!)

To be honest I had no idea what I was going to send to Athabasca Press when I was asked to submit. I thought it would be as easy as Poetaster – spend a few hours rummaging through my poems, put em into categories and ‘voila!’ But I didn’t just want to do more ‘random stuff from Leopold McGinnis’, and I wasn’t sure I had much left after Poetaster. I struggled for quite a while to find a thematic collection when I realized, like the nutty professor, that I had a number of poems that were not similar in theme but in format! Poetic experiments telling complete stories, or teasing us with pieces of them. I didn't have a lot of them, but as I started collecting, and expanding my definition of what counted as 'narrative' I found I had almost enough for a book! Thanks be to god! I fleshed that out with the Sultan Poems (which deserves a post on its own, growing like a cancer from 1 poem to 3, to 6, to 8, to 16 and, finally 19 to take up more than a third of the book!) and I had a unique and interesting collection that was definitely NOT Poetaster and definitely ABOUT something.

Of course, then I forgot to tell everyone about that part in my frenzy to get the world to pay attention. Hopefully this post makes amends!

Anyway, that’s the story, or at the least the story that Zeus is trying to tell, and overall I think poetry does an excellent job telling a story. I hope you’ll check it out.

Note: I hope to write more about the whole publishing process in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

It's a review!

Sort of. It's a paragraph, at least, by someone other than me telling you to pick up a copy! Check it out!

It's out now! Get your copy quick!

Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea is now out!!

Get it while it's hot!!!!!

Beware the Podcasts, Pod-cats!

So I just finished my second podcast. The first is about Salvation (perhaps you've heard of it?) and the second about Malls (also known as shopping centers). They were pretty fun to do, and both turned out really well (though they were a lot of work, especially sandwiched between school, a book launch and an upcoming vacation before book launch! yipes.)

So why do a podcast? Well, the simple answer is because my book publicist asked me to. You know, to whet your appetite for more poetry and get you drooling over the delicious release of my new book, Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea this March. (I plan on writing more about the publishing process here later as well.) But I hope to continue doing them even after the book, because they are a great forum for reading poetry within a philosophical and entertaining context. Also, I bought this BAD-ASS microphone on Boxing Day and I was eager to use it! If you're a poet interested in doing recordings, podcasts or readings, I HIGHLY recommend you get it. It's easy and does amazing recordings, records straight to mp3 and so much more.

Anyway, I've put up a sample of podcast #2 for your entertainment. It's me reading a poem called On the Trail of Ibn Battuta about a mall in Dubai. That poem also appears in Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea.

I hope the first podcast (Salvation) will be up in the next couple of weeks, with Malls to be out in mid to late February.

Enjoy!

Next up, a new video involving my fridge!

Zeus copy

Things are ramping up for the March release of Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea (3rd and final proofs to be done today!) AU Press has even got a placeholder up for the book, where you can get a sneak preview of the cover and read some of the promo copy for the book.

http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120186

Even buy.com is excited about it!

I've seen the full cover of the book (just released the other day) and it looks FANTASTIC! But you're going to have to wait until the launch to see that.

Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea Poster DESIGNED!!

Ok, I got it together and MAN does it look slick! It's bad that I'm more excited about the book cover at this point than the book in time, but slightly understandable, I suppose, after the innumerable man hours I put in over the holiday season proofing it (just print it already!) Anyway...look for some poster contests soon!

Now I've just got to find a printer...and someone to post them up on street posts ACROSS THE GLOBE!

Zeus Revealed! (and some publishing fun facts)

ZOT!

That's the sound of Zeus sending down a wonderbolt and making this the most amazing cover for a collection of poetry EVER!

Although, I suppose you could blame book designer Natalie over at kisscutdesign.com for the amazing cover design and idea, but Zeus probably wouldn't be very happy with that. Either way, I thank them both for their amazing work! If the hip cover makes even one person who wouldn't normally look at poetry pick it up and give it one quick chance, I'll be happy.

Why a giant Mexican, Zeus Word Voltron? The cover was inspired by a quote of mine from the introduction of my book, as listed on the kisscut blog here.

I'm excited to get into the process of ramping up promotion for the book... Promotion is something I've never been particularly good at - I rank it down there with clipping my toenails. It has to be done...but you could probably get away with not doing it for a long time...but you're really only hurting your pride. Wait...was that the metaphor I was looking for? Anyway, I'm not very good at it, and could use all the help I can get (especially yours, if you're excited about the book - tell your friends! Enemies! Local grocer!) Thankfully it's not just up to me this time: I had the chance to meet with the publicist for my book last week and she had loads of good ideas, so expect more on this blog (finally!), especially as I document this little book going from just a cool cover to a real live book out there on its own.

But for now, just imagine that giant robo-zeus shooting poetic laser beams into your eyeballs. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Now THAT'S poetry!

Zeus and the Word Voltron!

Voltron

So after a few months delay things are starting to roll again on my latest collection of poetry, Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea. Just a few days ago, in fact, I got an email from the designer who will be working on my book.

She had this crazy idea about putting a Voltron made out of words on the cover ‘with a zeus-like beard and possibly a mexican-like mustache, holding a beverage. Maybe inside a beverage?’ My first thought was ‘that’s pretty damn cool’ followed by ‘but how the hell is all that going to work together?’ So she sent me a sketch and I have to say it looks freakin’ awesome!

I’m really excited about it. Not only because it looks so damn good and hip, but how many other poetry collections have a giant Zeus Robot on the front with a Mexican moustache? Maybe only 2 or 3?

What I’m most excited about is how forthright it is in presenting what I really hope to say about poetry through my work – that it can be fun, hip, modern, interesting, funny, philosophical. Now this should not come as a surprise to anyone who reads, for lack of a better term, ‘underground’ or ‘alternative’ poetry, but to the general reading public poetry is seen generally as old, delicate and inaccessible. Publishers can get stuck too marketing to ‘poetry types’ because they are the ones that buy the books, however if you don’t break beyond that poetry never evolves, and we continue to accept and published the same poetry that still isn’t resonating with the wider world. I think that’s a disservice to the form, because before I started writing it I definitely fell into the category of ‘poetry is not for me, I don’t understand it, and won’t touch it with a ten foot pole except to mock its pretensions and phoniness.’

My point being, people DO judge books by their covers, and this cover promises to be cool and different enough that even non-poetry lovers will pick it up and crack its cover to see what’s inside. And if they read a couple of poems about Mexicans or robots I feel (hope!) they will see that poetry is bad enough to punch them in the teeth and buy them a beer afterwards. And even if they don’t buy the book that’s a success.

Of course, I could just be another deluded poet waiting for the ‘poetry revolution’. But, you know, we all gotta have dreams!

Look for more news about Zeus as it happens...