Zeus delayed!

Yes, he got held up at the airport, and coffee got spilled on his brand new tunic, dammit, and then, well, you know they took issue with him packing his lightning bolts as carry-on. So he’s on the next available flight, which should arrive Spring 2011-ish.

That’s a ways away, sadly, but sometimes books take up to 2 years from acceptance to publication, so I’m still short of that. Its giving me time to work on new stuff, though, which is nice.

But there’s also some good news. A while I ago I mentioned that Zeus got overwhelmingly positive feedback from the reader reviews (Athabasca sends out manuscripts they’re considering to other published authors for their opinions before making a decision) and that I’d share them here if I could. Well, I’ve been given the ok to do so, so from now until the book is out I’ll put up some quotes.

Starting with:

‘McGinnis is funny, witty (he says he’s facetious and thinks he might go to hell for his Gandhi poem(…)I don’t think he will go to hell, at least not for this, and if Gandhi’s there then hell is a hell of alot different than we are given usually to think), but he’s not cynical. He has bite and performs irony right to the end, to a good end, which is to say it’s not all simply irony. The language (..) is crisp and witty and entirely appropriate to the narrative intent, its allegorical or logopoeic purposes.’

Athabasca University Press to publish my new book!

Yes! I have fooled another publishing house into believing my work is ‘visionary’*! Oh frabjuous day! Oh supercalifragilisticexpialidotious!

This is good news indeed! AU Press is a pretty good feather to have under your cap – not only are they one of the few academic presses in the country to publish fiction/poetry, but they are also very well regarded for the quality of their publications. It will be an honour to be part of their list. I’m fairly certain they have good distribution too, so you may even see Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea in a bookstore! Wild.

Actually, I received word sometime last week that the press had decided to publish my second collection of poetry, but knowing the small press, and considering my previous history, I didn’t want to say anything until the papers arrived and I had signed them for fear of jinxing it all. They still need to be signed off by the press, but…well, I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

I have confidence that they will go ahead with my book, though, because of the quality of the assessor reviews. Before accepting a book, AU Press sends it out to two or three experts in the industry (other authors, etc…) and asks for their feedback. Based on that feedback, they either accept the book, or ask the author to respond to the assessments and then make a final decision. In this case, though, they didn’t even ask me to respond…which is something of a literary slam dunk! Both assessments were VERY positive, and it was kind of surreal reading almost full essays on my work - a book that’s not even published yet. Weird, too, because I’ve never even had one essay written about any of my published work. Very cool experience.

Anyway, I’d like to post some of that here, but I’m not sure what I can and cannot share at this point. I’ll be talking with the fine folk at AU Press over the next few weeks to figure out how we go ahead…and give you some updates and maybe a few poems from the collection and what the reviewers thought, if I can.

*Yes, this word was actually used in one of my assessments! I’m going to inflate my head right now to maximize my ego before it gets popped.

Zues and the Giant Iced Tea submitted!!

So I bit the bullet and submitted my manuscript to the press yesterday afternoon with fingers crossed. Here are some wacky stats on the manuscript:

Title: Zues and the Giant Iced Tea

Length: 129 pages (but that's with lots of page breaks - they are poems, after all)

# of poems in the collection: 48

Longest Narrative: The Sultan Poems

Most Controversial poem: A Brief History of Gandhi

# of poems about luchadores: 1

# of poems about arms dealing: 2

# of poems about Mexicans: 3

# of poems about robots: 3

# of poems with an Asian or Middle Eastern flavour: 27

The Artist Worries about the Quality of his work!

As a perfectionist, this was difficult because I felt I could still review, tighten and improve some of the work included, particularly the Sultan Poems, which started off as 3 poems and I hoped to merge into a complete 'story' of about 6 poems. When I submitted it it was 19 poems!! Yikes. Ideally I could put them aside for a month and then come back to do some final tightening up...but at some point you just have to submit, and I was months behind. If they like the manuscript, I'll get the chance to tighten those up at that point.

The Artist worries his manuscript will be a Comedy at the Oscars!

As a worrier, I'm not entirely sure, at the end of this very long journey, that I have put together a manuscript that is right for the poetry series the press is creating. That's probably just me worrying. I really like the concept of the collection - they are narrative poems and I'm very pleased with the quality of all of them. But as such, they are much less personal than those in my last collection and, as most critics and reviewers are want to do, could be considered 'lighter, less serious fare' (although I think that's unjust.) I think I also consciously stayed away from the darker stuff this time around, because I have more range than that and wanted to explore these narrative type works. However, the ultra personal, dark poetry of Poetaster is what made them ask me to submit something. So, essentially, I worry that this is going to be like submitting a comedy for an oscar nod. It could be the most brilliant film ever made...but if it's funny then it doesn't deserve any awards. On the other hand, comedy's are watched by way more people.

The Artist posts a poem from the collection in celebration of its completion!

The Two Xs

Dos Equis

The two exxes

The dirtiest man

South of Al Hambra

And North of it too

He was born

in the desert dust.

No woman’s son

He was foreign to the ways of women

No man’s son

He was lost amongst his brothers

They called him Dos Equis

The two exxes

Nobody ever saw his eyes

under the wide brim of his black hat

His skin was cold to the touch

beneath his black vest

and jeans

and snake black boots

Dos Equis

He was given a life

without direction

without answers

When he signed his name

he signed an X.

Twice.

He was given a life

without direction

without answers

He was only given

Two Exxes.

What am I working on these days?

A friend of mine reminded me that, on my old site, I had a little box that listed projects I was currently working on, and asked if those had changed at all. Yes and no. I'm always working on multiple projects - some rise to the fore, some fall to the back. Some get completed, some get dropped, some never get out of the state of being worked on. Here are the ones that are receiving top attention lately:

1) Zues and the Giant Iced Tea: A new collection of Poetry, tentatively titled, for a local press. They've only asked me to submit something, so no promise of publication at this point, but I'm 97% done the manuscript and I'm pretty damned excited about it. It's a collection of narrative poems (ie, poems that tell a story, either individually or collectively) and, in a lot of ways, is a more mature collection than Poetaster

2) Newborn - my graphic novel. I haven't been able to work on this in almost 2 years, due to the craziness of my life. But in the last few months I've managed to get back on the wagon and am having a blast with it. I'm about 22 pages in right now...will probably be a couple hundred pages long at least. It's slow going, due to my work life, but I'm hoping to start revealings parts of it here as I proceed. Keep posted!

3) The Last Days of Naomichi Onada: I'm hoping to have time to finish my first final draft of The Last Days of Naomichi Onada, a full length narrative poem about a Japanese soldier stuck on an island in the Atlantic, who still thinks WW2 is going on, based on a poem I included in Poetaster, The Lost Orders of Onoda Hirou, based on a real story. For quite some time this has been my anticipated 'next publication', but invitations to put together poetry collections for publication keep trumping it. An embarrassment of riches, really, but this project edges closer to completion.

4) Other stuff. Other high priority projects that I'd like to, but aren't necessarily being worked on right now include another couple collections of poetry, a full length novel, and my father's novel, which is quite good, but just needs to be put into a final draft.

So...that's what's going on right now*.

*valid until September 2, 2009