KGB Happenings

The latest issue of The KGB Bar's online lit mag features a feature article on Impetus Press. Check the link here.

Also in Impetus and KGB related news, Fires author Nick Antosca was featured as part of the Nick, Noah, Ned, Tao reading on Saturday night which was, apparently, a massive success. Keep an eye on the KGB website for the official review and pictures.

FIRES

Impetus Press is proud to announce the upcoming release of FIRES a novel by Nick Antosca. Right now, the tentative release date is December 31. Please also come down to KGB Bar on December 16th to the alpha-male reading of the century featuring Nick Antosca, Noah Cicero, Ned Vizzini, and Tao Lin. The KGB Bar is located at 85 East 4th Street New York NY 10003. Cross Streets:, bet. 2nd and Bowery. Web Site:, www.kgbbar.com.

With all four of these guys in the same room together, something just might explode. In any case, it will definitely be something to see. Special edition pre-release copies of FIRES will be on sale for a staggering discount. Go down for the reading and get one, and have Nick sign it for you to boot. Then smugly brag to your friends that you have it and they don't.

Hollywoodland Review and Impetus Article,

An article about the state of independent publishing ran yesterday in Las Vegas CityLife--featuring Impetus Press.

And here's a recent review of Jennifer Banash's Hollywoodland: An American Fairy Tale, in the KGB Lit Magazine.


Enjoy!

Chi-Town

By the time I landed in Chicago, I was pissed. I had just been raped of all my beauty products, and I was seriously annoyed. I sat waiting for Willy to pick me up, fuming in front of the doors leading to the cold-ass street, realizing that I hadn't even remotely brought warm enough clothes with me. Damn you, Chicago winters. Damn you all to hell. All of my annoyance completely evaporated as I climbed into Willy's car and was greeted to several sloppy, passionate kisses from . . . my dog, Sigmund--the greatest Beagle on the planet. I was only gone for four days, but God I missed him. We made out for about fifteen minutes in the front seat before he quieted down and headed to the back to sleep on top of Willy's jacket.

After we checked into our hotel, I was starving. Why don't they feed you on planes anymore? Cheap bastards. Not that plane food is so tasty or anything, but still. We decided to go to our favorite place in all of Chicago for soul food --Army and Lou's on the South Side. I LOVE Army and Lou's. Its the kind of place with white tablecloths and red banquettes, where, if you're lucky enoug to go on a sunday for brunch, you'll see hordes of older black ladies dressed to the nines--complete with big pudding-bowl shaped hats, ordering copious qunatities of fried chicken and wings, gossiping after church. They have the best fried chicken I have EVER eaten--anywhere, and the waitresses are awesome. We ate an amount hat could be called prodigious--willy had catfish, and I had the aformentioned fried chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, and coleslaw. I was seriously thinking about getting a side of macaroni and cheese when the waitress told me, in no uncertain terms "You don't want that." Huh? I blinked at her uncomprehendingly. But I'm still hungry, my inner glutton whined. "You don't want that," she continued, "because you won;t have any room for dessert." Everything became clear when she brought us a fucking BOAT of apple and pear cobbler, heaped with vanilla ice-cream. I'm not kidding--the fucking dish was a boat. Did we eat every last drop? Yes, sir, we certainly did. The kicker was, just as we were leaving, the Reverand Jesse Jackson walked in, sat down, and ordered chicken and collard greens. Willy and I sat there with our mouths open. Awesome. Fucking awesome.

The rest of the afternoon was spent shopping in Target, browsing in Wicker Park where I bought my poor Siggy a doggie T-shirt in American Apparel (he was shivering), and lounging around back at the hotel. I was so exhausted from traveling that we passed out pretty early. The next morning we met my friend Susie for brunch at a place called Deeleece on the North side. We got SERIOUSLY lost and were a whopping 45 minutes late. Since I hadn't seen Susie in about 2 years, I felt like a major asshole. She was really sweet about it though, and we had a great time catching up, while stuffing ourselves with eggs and bread pudding. Yum. We bummed around a bit before the reading at Myopic Books, and I had a glass of wine at Bin Cafe and Wine Bar--which is conveniently located right across the street from the bookstore. The turnout was quite good for a sunday night, and it was really comfortable and intimate--I felt like I was reading in someone's living room--but in a really good way. We met Adam Levin, who runs the reading series, and his girlfriend, who were both ridiculous amounts of nice. We're going to schedule Nick Anotsca and Christina TeBordo at Myopic in the spring, as its a great venue. After the reading, Willy and I headed to this amazing mexican joint Willy had read about in the paper that day, and proceeded to have the best mexican dinner I have ever had in my life--outside of mexico. This food was so fresh, so ridiculously well-prepared, that I felt like jumping up and down while I was eating it. But I was too busy moaning about how good it was for that kind of unruly behavior.

Me and Robert Marshall, author of A Separate Reality

HAPPY ENDING READING AND NY.

I was not in the mood to go to NY. The week before the trip, I was seriously thinking about cancelling. I was tired, overworked, and was on deadline to get the first two chapters of my dissertation finished by the end of Christmas break. That being said, a quick jaunt to NY was really the last thing I needed. But, it was Happy Ending, a reading series I really admire, and the cherry on the cake of my trip was that I'd get to spend lots of time with one Mr. Nick Burd--otherwise known as my gay boyfriend or a.k.a the best host ever. Amazingly, there were no flight delays, and I landed at Laguardia a little before noon, grabbed a cab--after fighting profusely with a cab driver who refused to go to Brooklyn--much less Fort Greene--and was on Nick's doorstep within a half hour of landing. He was still stuck at work, so I sat on his stoop for around twenty minutes, waiting for him to stroll down the block. The weather was gorgeous--60 degrees and sunny. When Nick arrived, we decided to do lunch at ICI, an amazing bistro where all the food is organic, and I ended up having scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, a bagel and cream cheese, and lots and lots of coffee with cream. We mostly walked around Brooklyn for the rest of the afternoon, shopping, peeking into expensive-ass stores in Park Slope, and stopping twice--once for tea, and another time to split a cupcake--which, I lamented repeatedly was not as good as the one's from Magnolia Bakery. I love just walking the city with Nick--he pays attention to everything, and is constantly drawing my attention to something cool that I wouldn't have noticed on my own. Most of all I love that, when we hang out, its just so RELAXED. I've known him for a long time, and there's no bullshit. I can't wait until Nick finishes his novel, so I can come to all his readings and cheer him on. That's just the kind of friend I am.


By the time we got to the reading that night, I was NERVOUS as usual. I made a total ass of myself by walking up to a table filled with hipsters and asking which one was Amanda Stern--as I had never seen her picture. That went over well, and I blushed so hard that I thought my face would catch on fire--thank god it was darker than fuck in the bar. Of course, when I got home that night I Googled Amanda and pulled up a pic, and I've got to say, even if I HAD seen a photo of her, there's no way I would've recognized her--she's much prettier in person than in her photographs. She was really kind--especially after she found out that I suffer from panic attacks--and made with the drink tickets pretty quickly. Two weak-ass drinks later, I was still nervous as hell, and the place was beginning to fill up. Two of my favorite Impetus authors--Nick Antosca, along with Kate Hunter showed up to support me, so we sat and chatted for a while, and I had the pleasure of meeting the incomporable Ned Vizzini (who Jessa Crispin rightly refers to as a "dreamboat"). I chatted with Robert Marshall who was also reading, and bought a copy of what looks like his fine book A Separate Reality. After the band played a few songs, it was my turn to take the stage. Now, for those of you who have never been to Happy Ending before, the tradition is that before you read, you must take a public risk--and the act of reading doesn't count. Basically, you have to do something on stage you've never done before. So, I called Nick Burd up to the stage, and asked him to be my sperm doner if I don't find someone suitable in a few years. That went over pretty well, and everyone laughed. The cool thing was that, after taking the risk, I wasn't really nervous anymore. Before I knew it, I was sitting back down again, relieved.

Ron Hogan from Beatrice.com and Galleycat.com also showed up. I really like Ron--he's a sweetheart, and I was pretty touched that he came out to see me read. He was interested in the whole Jaime Clarke nightmare, so I gave him the story in broad strokes. I stood around and chatted for a while with Alix Strauss--who also read from her book The Joy Of Funerals, and Ron, and then Nick B. wanted to go and get chinese food, so we went to this absolutely insane place in Chinatown where the waiters largely ignored us, and we had to practically beg to get our check. It was fun anyway.

The rest of my trip was spent packing (Nick was moving the day I left), drinking with Nick, talking, and walking around NY so much that I thought my feet would fall off. I very much wanted to take Nick Antosca to dinner to discuss the upcoming release of his book, but he had zero time for me as he's living the jet set lifestyle. Typical. I shopped a lot at my favorite vintage store Hooti Couture, and Carol's Daughter--only to get all my body lotion and hair products purchased at CD taken away from me as I tried to get on a plane to Chicago that saturday morning. Bastards.