Shelf Unbound June/July 2013

JUNE/JULY 2013

STORY AND SONG DAVID BOWIE MATT BELL AMANDA PALMER 68

SEPTEMBER 2010

what to read next in independent publishing

Lose the love of your life, the novel of your career and the direction for your future. What do you do?

Go fishing.

Fishing Lessons,

The exciting new novel from John Crawley Fishing Lessons, John Crawley’s 12th novel, is not about the act of catching fish.

It is about life. About love. About selfdiscovery. It is about believing in yourself and believing in others. It is about ignoring the critics and using your mind in following your heart along the Great Way.

John Crawley

Fishing Lessons is about never giving up.

“Crawley delivers his best yet. Something totally different from his pen. Never standing still, he never ceases to amaze one in his depth and variety; and Fishing Lessons is no exception.”

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Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and Lulu.com.

a novel

staff

Margaret Brown fo u n d e r a n d p u b l i s her Anna Nair e d i to r i n ch i e f Christina Davidson c re a t i ve d i re c to r Ben Minton c i rc u l a t i o n m a n a g e r Patricia McClain c o py e d i to r Marc Schuster c o n t r i b u t i n g e d i to r Kelly Bergh yo u n g a d u l t / ch i l d re n ’s reviewer

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contents

DEPARTMENTS

8

12

matt bell in the house upon the dirt between the lake and the woods rob roberge the cost of living

16 mary lambert 500 tips for fat girls 20

david bowie subject of a retrospective at the victoria and albert museum

22

graydon james excerpt from the mall of small frustrations

34

amanda palmer an interview with the legendary punk goddess

Photograph: Wildwood by Colin Meloy, Nicole Duennebier

4

a note from the publisher

24

excerpts

30

translations

32

novel thinking

58

middle shelf

60

afterword

62

poetry

64

staff picks

66

small press reviews

68

last words

69

contributors

On the cover: Heroes album cover shoot 1977 Photograph by Masayoshi Sukita Š Sukita. The David Bowie Archive.

a word from the

publisher

R

STORY AND SONG

alph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.” What else can be said after that quote except that literature, of course, does the same. In this issue we’re combining the two, story and song, with stories about songs and songs about stories and musicians who are writers and writers who are musicians and even a translator who fronts a Bulgarian folk band.

We’ve got interviews with Rob Roberge, guitarist for LA punk icons The Urinals, discussing his fourth book, The Cost of Living; poet and singer/ songwriter Mary Lambert, on tour this year with the chart-topping rap group Macklemore and Ryan; and punk goddess Amanda Palmer, whose latest critically acclaimed album inspired an art book.

The starting point for this music-themed issue was Matt Bell’s new novel In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods, which has a character that sings things into existence, among other of Bell’s feats of literary invention. If there ever was a book to startle your wonder, this is it.

I’m a big fan of the indie band site Noisetrade.com, my favorite place to discover new music. They share the same ethos as Shelf Unbound, and as such I’ve sprinkled some of their artists throughout the issue. Because who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto —is indie.

Margaret Brown publisher

Like what you read? Click on any book cover to purchase from an online bookstore, or click on the publisher website for more information.

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JUNE/JULY 2013

Photograph: Belinda Baldwin

BECOME THE MASTER OF YOUR MIND Discover your purpose driven life — your destiny

ForeWord Reviews BOOK of the YEAR Body, Mind & Spirit

The Author David Judd Nutting takes readers into a mental and spiritual world never before understood as he reveals the secrets and the creative power of the human mind.

Secrets To A Creative Mind—Become The Master Of Your Mind is a succinct Non-Fiction book that opens a new window to your inner self, the soul, and its discovery will awaken a fresh spirituality, which readers can use to tap into a secret world within themselves they never knew existed. Readers will learn Thought Talk, how to have a conversation with your subconscious mind to establish your goals in life and then to make all those goals come true. You will also learn about that neuro-empathic tingle, unique to each individual, which arouses true aesthetic pleasure. Discover the exciting trans empirical world of creativity that has been hiding from view. You can really become whatever you dream to be.

Secrets To A Creative Mind is a new awakening for all ages, especially young professional’s and a must read for all College and University students.

Nutting spent decades reverse-engineering his own mind to discover the inner workings of the human mind that no erudite scholar could ever imagine.

To view the authors designs and inventions like the first SUV-Jeep Grand Wagoneer and the Enstrom helicopter and a plethora of world famous video games plus many five star reviews.......please go to author’s web site:

W W W.SECRETSTOACREATIVEMIND.COM

Available: Amazon.com and B&N.com www.outskirtspress.com/bookstore (purchase 10 or more at wholesale price)

“A truly imaginative, unique page-turner that will leave readers wanting more.”

—Kirkus THE SULTAN OF MONTE CRISTO

THAT GIRL STARTED HER OWN COUNTRY www.thatgirlstartedherowncountry.com International Playgirl Zaydee finds herself in the midst of a crisis fueled by international intrigue, multinational corporate greed, and a convoluted legal system. Imprisoned for computer hacking, this brilliant jetsetter becomes an international media celebrity as she defends herself, an unknown girl labeled Princess Jane Doe, against unknown charges. With complicated and shadowy plots brewing, the book is lush and captivating and perhaps the best addition to the series yet.

“A truly imaginative, unique page-turner that will leave readers wanting more.”

—Kirkus

www.sultanofmontecristo.com For so many years, passionate fans of The Count of Monte Cristo have suffered a loss upon finishing Alexandre Dumas’ last words. It is a grieving of sorts that has long been unmitigable ... until now. The mysterious Holy Ghost Writer has penned The Sultan of Monte Cristo as a direct continuance of the story readers have long struggled against leaving behind. The Holy Ghost Writer seems a literary time-traveller: the swiftness with which he carries us straight into the 1800s is mind-boggling and a rare feat even in the best historical fiction writing. Excellent novel, and highly recommended!

—Peanut’s review

WHO IS THE HOLY GHOST WRITER?

THE BOY WHO PLAYED WITH DARK MATTER

In a world where caffeine is distributed only by terrorists and 1000-SPF sunscreen isn’t strong enough, scientists long for a discovery that will restore Earth to a greener state. However, the International Government likes to think it has everything under control, especially since it issues twenty to thirty new laws each day to keep its constituents current.

Six-year-old Zeddy, whose “IQ is off the charts,” soon finds himself racing to avoid capture when his physicist father, Zane, goes missing. His mother, Zadie, suspects that the International Military Police have taken Zane, but Nimueh, the ancient Lady of the Lake, believes that he’s in a parallel universe in a neighboring constellation. She also believes that young Zeddy, with a “brain that is exceptionally rare,” is the key to saving Earth.

Despite its part in the larger series, The Boy Who Played with Dark Matter makes a fine read all on its own, although a reader will most certainly crave the sequel to find out if Zeddy gets his father back.”

—ForeWord Clarion review

The mystery of the identity of the author is part of an international contest. The first person to discover the identity of the HG Writer, from the clues found in the Count of Monte Cristo sequels, will receive a reward of $2,500. Write to prize@ sultanofmontecristo.com in order to claim this reward along with letting us know the clues that led you to discovering the identity of the author. Should you wish your discovery to be known in the press, that opportunity will also be afforded. Those that already know the author or have worked with him/her will not qualify.z

feature

sound and fury

Soho Press www.sohopress.com

In the House left me with the literary elation of having read Faulkner. With his first novel, Matt Bell breaks new ground to construct a masterpiece.

— Margaret Brown Shelf Unbound: You’ve written an epic, mythic, tragic fable, but those words don’t even begin to describe the remarkable literary feat that is In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods. Where did 8

JUNE/JULY 2013

the initial idea come from and can you tell us about the process of building the story?

Matt Bell: I’m not exactly sure where the idea came from. In some ways, “idea” isn’t even the right word for

my process: I very rarely have them, at least in the way that other people seem to mean when they use the word. I rarely feel “inspired” by outside sources, rarely see something in the world that makes me think, “There’s a story there I want to tell.” Not never, of course, but it’s the rarer way into a story for me. What I usually do is to play around with language, trying to come up with a sentence that’s strong enough to suggest another, to make me curious in some way. The first sentence I wrote of what would become this novel isn’t in the final book, but it’s the husband describing his wife, and these “floating shapes” he sees within her, an image that didn’t make it into the book, but that in that first permutation suggested their children, which he claimed to want to coax into the world. So even though it’s the husband who narrates the story and whose actions dominate most of the book’s pages, it always began with him looking toward his wife, toward the family he wanted to have with her. That’s his truest aim in the novel, despite his many mistakes, and was from the first day of working on the book—although I couldn’t have articulated that then, or told you what would happen next.

Building the story was slow going, but it’s interesting to look back now at the first day’s work: A lot of what’s in the novel is already there, often in just a single sentence, including the fingerling and the foundling, the bear,

the wife’s singing, the dirt and the lake and the woods, the elements, and so on. In some ways, building the story was just learning more about those aspects by getting them down on the page, in scenes and fragments of scenes: The bear was in the story, but I didn’t know what the bear would do, what it meant to the narrator, and so on. So there was a year or two of continuing to write about these different characters and objects and ideas, trying to unpack whatever power existed the first day, and also to expand on it. It was a very discovery-based way of writing, especially in the first draft, and it took me places I never could have arrived at if I’d done more planning.

This is mostly the way I work, and has been for a few years now—but novelwriting made me much stronger at it than I was as a storywriter, in part because there’s so much more not to know.

I’ve been reading Robert Boswell’s great book of essays on writing, The Half-Known World, and in the title essay he describes a process that UNBOUND

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feels utterly true to me: He says, “I come to know my stories by writing my way into them. I focus on the characters without trying to attach significance to their actions. I do not look for symbols. For as long as I can, I remain purposefully blind to the machinery of the story and only partially cognizant of the world the story creates. I work from a kind of halfknowledge.”

This feels utterly true to me of all my work that succeeds, and I think accurately describes the kind of process I used to write In the House.

is that what makes a story go for me—and what is absolutely necessary in novel-writing—is that I accommodate almost anything that shows up in the early going. You have this initial seed you’re writing from, and you start to think the story is going to be one thing, but then something else shows up—say, a wife who can sing objects into being—and then you have a choice of either including that new thing or rejecting it. And what I’ve learned is that, especially in first drafts, it’s always better to try to put the thing in the story, and let it start generating new trajectories for story.

When a novel dies for me is when I wear out the initial idea before anything else appears to renew it. With In the House, there were any number of these sorts of generative surprises that showed up, often just in time, to recharge the book’s engine and get it moving again. Part of what makes them so surprising on the page, I Shelf: The wife has the ability to hope, is that they were a surprise to sing things into being—cups and me too, and, if I do my job right, they saucers, houses, even a son. It’s can remain a source of mystery and strangely wonderful and even wonder even in the final version of the believable in the context of the book. story. How did you come up with this idea?

Shelf: We last talked to you about Bell: Similar to what I said above, your book of small tales, Cataclysm I think that it just started happen- Baby, and your penchant for apocing in the story, and then it was a alyptic themes. How did exploring matter of letting it happen more, of this theme in novel length differ complicating the singing, of making from short story length? it riskier and more dangerous in the Bell: The length might be less the difstory. One of the things I’ve learned ference in this case than the reason

for the problems their world is facing: A lot of the fathers in Cataclysm Baby were confronted with situations that were completely outside of their control, and that they presumably hadn’t actually done anything to cause. Whereas in In the House Upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods, the husband and wife arrive in this little pocket place, which reacts more to their actions and the actions of other characters than to any sort of global or outside force. So if they’re living through a cataclysm too, it’s at least a much more personal one, for which they have to bear at least some of the blame.

Shelf: You recently quoted Faulkner in your blog, ending with his lines: “I prefer silence to sound, and the image produced by words occurs in silence. That is, the thunder and the music of the prose take place in silence.” How does this quote resonate with you?

Bell: It’s an interesting quote, isn’t it? I’m not sure I want to presume to know exactly what Faulkner meant, but what I find intriguing about it is what, exactly, it suggests to me about the silence: There’s on one hand the silence of the blank page, waiting to be filled with the sound of the prose, but there’s also the silence inside the reader, a blank that, once filled with the sound (by a combination of the writer’s prose on the page and the reader giving it voice by reading it,

even if only internally), also fills with everything else the sound carries: image, emotion, morality, ideas, and so on.

It’s an interesting way to think of the task of writing and of reading, and how the writer and the reader are working together.

Shelf: Thinking of music and In the House Upon the Dirt has me thinking of Stravinsky: inventive, dramatic, thunderous riffs on motifs. Do you have a musical equivalent that seems apt for the novel?

Bell: I don’t know if I have an equivalent, exactly, although of course the Stravinsky comparison is humbling and kind. I will say that two albums that were very important to me while I was working on the novel were Hospice by The Antlers and By the Throat

by Ben Frost. They’re too very different albums, of course, but they provided a lot of the sonic background for the writing of the book, especially early on. By the Throat especially affected me powerfully: It’s an album you can feel in the body, while you’re listening, and I aspire to write prose that has a similar sort of bodily effect on the reader, something powerful felt just below the level of sense.

Killshot

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feature

punk prose

Other Voices Books www.ovbooks.com

If author Rob Roberge were an indie band he’d probably be ... well ... Rob Roberge. The long-time guitarist for LA punk icons The Urinals, Roberge is also a singer, songwriter and occasional solo artist, but is perhaps best known for his searing fiction and bruising nonfiction. His latest book, his fourth, The Cost of Living, combines his two worlds into one: a dark (and often darkly comic) novel about a revered indie guitarist in the middle of a life he shouldn’t have survived; one filled with crime and punishment, alongside surprising moments of grace. We caught up with him in the middle of his book tour to talk about the crossroads of his work.

—Tod Goldberg, author of the novel Living Dead Girl, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the story collection Other Resort Cities, and the popular Burn Notice series 12

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Goldberg: This is your fourth book, but like the narrator of the novel, you’ve also been touring the country for years playing in bands. What’s the difference for you, creatively, between spending a few years working on a novel vs. the rush of being on stage? Or is it not even comparable? And likewise, do you get the same emotional satisfaction from putting out a record as you do writing a novel or story?

Roberge: They have aspects that overlap. Like, after you record the basic tracks for an album—that’s very much like a full working draft of a novel. In a way, the work has just started. And the editing of a book, the series of revisions a book goes through ... that’s not so different from the overdubbing, the mixing and the editing of making a record. The music, though, is by its nature collaborative. There are a lot of group choices to be made. And, while writing a book is more collaborative than many people think— especially with your editor—a book is more yours than a band’s record is. If the band is a BAND and not a backup band for one person, there are a lot of choices that get made and you are always making compromises. Four band members would mix the same exact tracks into four different sounding records. The books? The final choices are yours and they have your name on them—for the good and the bad. If someone doesn’t like a chapter of your book, you can’t say, “Oh, yeah. The drummer wrote that.

I hate that one, too.”

As far as emotional satisfaction goes, the writing offers me a fair amount more. But that may be because I really feel like I’m a writer who happens to play music. I’d hate to give one up, but if one had to go, it would be the music.

That said, there’s nothing quite like the rush of playing music live—especially in front of a good sized crowd.

When an amp is really loud, you can just hit an open G chord and feel the air being pushed from the speakers and feel your whole body vibrate with the air and through the stage and into your sneakers. That doesn’t suck. And playing music is, quite simply, fun.

Cutting a record isn’t always a blast, but playing live and being on the road are great.

The rush of playing music is more primal, more vibrant than doing a reading. There are also fewer drunk women telling you how great you are at readings. Sad, but true.

Goldberg: One of the most telling aspects of The Cost of Living is the complex relationships between people on the other side of what might be called pleasant society—there really aren’t any good guys or bad guys UNBOUND

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here, just a series of people who are alternately fucked up and immensely passionate. There’s a chapter early in the book (“Money and the Getting of Money”) when Bud, the narrator, robs a grave with his friend Johnny Mo—Johnny’s grandmother’s grave, no less—and it’s a brutal chapter, but also shows the kind of strange sweetness that exists between two people suffering through addiction.

I’m curious about the process of writing this—taking a moment that could just be either straight black comedy or abject horror and instead making it a moment where the reader starts to feel empathy for people who might otherwise sort of sicken them.

Roberge: Thanks for the phrase “suffering through addiction.” I think that is part of that chapter, of that relationship, that matters a great deal to me.

Like the Wallace Stevens line about how grief unites us. Suffering unites us, as well. Or it can, at least. And, as you say, the details of what those two are willing to do (rob Johnny Mo’s grandmother’s grave for some gold to pawn for drug money) is ... well, clearly they are operating outside the boundaries of admirable behavior. But it’s very important to me that they are real.

That they are people with needs and love and hearts that long for connection. They don’t exist so that a writer can have a gross joke at their expense.

And writing that scene ... and scenes like it ... it becomes very important to me that the characters are not good guys or 14

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bad guys. They are people. And, like all of us at one time or another (though most of us manage to avoid grave robbing), they are very aware of the gap between who they are capable of being and who they actually are in that moment. That’s a terrifying gap, sometimes. It’s the stuff of regret and shame and insomnia and quiet personal horror. And that gap is, for me, where empathy often resides.

We’ve all fallen short of who we want to be. There are few things in life more difficult than acting in a way that you know is not you at your best. In fact, it could be you at your worst. And to know you’re capable of being a better person and still not being that better person? That hurts.

And the scene is funny. But I hope it’s funny in the way the world is funny—in that it’s a painfully absurd place that sometimes can only be processed with some laughter along with the pain.

Goldberg: I’ve been hearing a lot about diegetic sound in films and television lately and then it sort of showed up in your book, too: Bud is always listening to something and that music usually helps create the sense of the scene.

When you’re writing, do you even care if the reader knows the songs? Or are you thinking, okay, well, maybe they’ll go put on some Centromatic now, or find Plasticsoul for the first time and it will enhance the book after the fact?

Rogere: It’s a really cool question. But I think music operates in film and prose in a very different way. In films, it’s in the scene, as it were. The audience

Download the soundtrack here need not have any familiarity with it for it to have an effect. I think often, in film, it can annoy me, because it often tells you how to read the scene.

In prose, I think it operates in a different way. For one, it’s not auditory. Even if the reader is aware of the song or musician being named, it doesn’t “code” the scene or how to read its emotional content.

That’s up to the reader.

That said, the music I tend to put in my book is music I love ... and like anything we love in this world, we like other people to know about it and share the feeling. So, yeah … I think it would be very cool if people checked out Centromatic or Plasticsoul. I don’t know that it would enhance the book after the fact. But they’d have some great new music in their lives. And who doesn’t need that?

Goldberg: You’ve spent the last few years working on this book as well as a memoir, some samples of which appeared in the Rumpus not long ago, and both books deal with a lot of pretty dark aspects of a life in music and a life in words. What still draws you to both, even when the negative sides can be so profound?

Rogere: I think for me maybe the answer is in the question—that the negative sides can be so profound. Also, as a writer and a musician ... this is simply how I process the world and how I express my place in it, if that makes sense. The new novel and the memoir are, in some respects, companion pieces for me. They’re the most personal

The Soundtrack Since The Cost of Living has a fictional band releasing a record of sloppy outtakes and demos, I recruited some generous friends to do a record of sloppy tunes and demos. Everyone here except for me happens to be a very talented musician. However, with me around, this is often a record with more clams than the state of Rhode Island and more warts than a Newport Beach key party. It’s raw in places, but/and whether you love it or hate it, well, remember: it is free, after all.

—Rob Rogere things I’ve done and, as you say, they deal with some pretty dark aspects of life. Both deal quite a bit with mental health issues, along with a life in music and words. What draws me to these things? I think they’re the things that I can’t shake even if I wanted to. Also, there may be substantial negative sides, but they are also the two things (other than people I’ve loved/who’ve loved me) that have brought me the most comfort in life. You know ... my life in music and my life in words ... it’s plenty dark, for sure. But it’s still a love story.

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feature

this is...awesome

500 Tips for Fat Girls www.marylambertsings.com

mary lambert. 500 tips for fat girls.

Mary Lambert She’s featured on “Same Love,” this year’s Billboard 100 single off Macklemore and Ryan’s smash hit album The Heist.

She’s on tour with the group performing sold-out shows. She released her first book of poetry in January. Yet she still made time for an interview with us. Mary Lambert rocks.

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Shelf Unbound: You were invited by rapper Macklemore (Ben Haggerty) to write and record the bridge to the pro-gay song “Same Love,” which to date has been viewed more than 40 million times on YouTube and is a highlight of this year’s charttopping album The Heist. I cried the first (and second) time I heard your beautiful voice and beautiful words: “And I can’t change. Even if I tried.

Even if I wanted to. My love, my love, my love, she keeps me warm.” How did your association with Macklemore come about?

Mary Lambert: We had a mutual friend, Hollis Wong-Wear, and she did a lot of work on the album. She is sort of like a guru connector. She has been following my work for a long time and had booked me for a gig or two. One day she called me out of the blue and asked if I wanted to work with Macklemore on a song about gay rights.

It was about 2 in the afternoon and she said, “Ryan is going to send it over and can you come to the studio by 6 today ready to record?” It was nervewracking but I felt that this is where my career starts and how it should happen.

I was crying when they sent it because it was so much of my story. I’m a gay Christian and I had to come out in the church. I told myself and still do: I am the best person for this job because I know how to make this song vulnerable and how to make people see. Not that I have changed a lot of hearts and minds, but I think when people meet

someone who is as open as I am they maybe have second thoughts about homosexuality in general. The song was really close to my heart, and I knew I wanted to approach it from a point of love because Ben had already tackled the brain end of it and the technical side. If I am going to change someone’s opinion it’s going to be through their heart, and I wanted the chorus to be about love being universal and striking a chord with humanity, not just a certain group of people.

Shelf: You published a book of poetry earlier this year, 500 Tips for Fat Girls, in which you write about body image, rape, incest, homosexuality, childlessness, and love. I was deeply moved by your poems and by your unflinching honesty and self-exposure. I know these poems will heal others.

Did they help heal you?

Lambert: Totally. I think writing them is one thing but the real effect on me is performing them every night. It is more cathartic to reiterate these things. Writing them helped center me and made it clear what I needed to accomplish. But every time I perform them or say them out loud it is like a mantra. I probably perform “I know girls (bodylove)” three or four times a week and it still makes UNBOUND

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i wrote a book years ago and you weren’t in it my love, she keeps me warm in september, when you meet her it is not the proximity of your bodies that will determine your closeness it is how much of yourself you are willing to light on fire. when she rests the animal of her quiet lips against the nape of your neck say that you are ready for arson. when she says love, it will be an army of skeletons and teeth snapping to the floor it will reverberate the windows on their frames it will be the rusted ember of your heartbreak ending, she will know that you have changed chapters in the story for her you, with all of the minute details, and the obsessive calculating— learn not to plan anything, fall in love with her more every goddamn day and if she asks, light the whole fucking book on fire From 500 Tips for Fat Girls by Mary Lambert, www.marylambertsings.com.

Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

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Same Love Mary Lambert’s single “She Keeps Me Warm” will be released on iTunes in June. Learn more at www. marylambert sings.com. me cry. These are issues that you don’t just get over—they are a process.

Shelf: Your bridge on “Same Love” ends with you singing, “I’m not crying on Sundays.” Like you, I am a lesbian and a Christian, and I think I know what you mean in this line but wonder if you would spell it out.

Lambert: I’m glad you asked this because I think people are sometimes a little thrown off by the line. When I came out I was in the Evangelical church and I loved the church and the pastor and the people I went to church with. Then I fell in love with a girl when I was 17, and I couldn’t fight wanting to be with her. I figured, Well, I think I was born this way, and I know in my heart that it is not going to go away.

But what I can do, because I know

it is a sin, is to repent every day and apologize and ask for God’s forgiveness and maybe I will still be able to go to heaven. So every Sunday I would try to be present with the sermon and all I could do was cry and apologize to God, and I felt like it was the worst thing in the world. And then after about a year or so of being in church and crying almost every Sunday, I started doing research on theology that was eye-opening and I realized there are a lot of gay Christians out there and that the two can coexist and are not an oxymoron. I think that God will love me no matter what.

That was something I wanted to say in “Same Love.” A line I wrote that we recorded that Ben didn’t end up using was “my conscience is clear and I am good with God.” I am not ashamed.

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feature

fame Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh, editors V&A Publishing Victoria and Albert Museum www.vandapublishing.com

David Bowie Is

As Bowie celebrates his much-acclaimed new album The Next Day, a museum exhibition and catalog survey his career.

David Bowie Is, an exhibition of more than 300 objects from the David Bowie Archive that explores the artist as innovator and icon, is on view at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum through August 11. The following excerpt from the catalog accompanying the exhibit looks at the influence of novelist William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch) on Bowie.

O

n 28 February 1974, Rolling Stone published a remarkable encounter between David Bowie and Williams S. Burroughs.

Entitled “Beat Godfather Meets Glitter Mainman,” the event had been hosted in November 1973 by the American journalist A. Craig Copetas, who hoped to “develop a new interview style.” As published it took the form of a Q&A between the writer and the musician that, in retrospect, was 20

JUNE/JULY 2013

an inspired piece of positioning for both parties.

Searching for an exit from conventional pop stardom, [Bowie] needed another way of working and a different kind of public persona. Literary cachet offered the chance of a deeper, wider and more permanent cultural relevance, while Burroughs in particular had an impeccable avant-garde reputation and an image that was at once forbidding and forbidden, remote and culturally potent.

Photograph: Union Jack coat designed by Alexander McQueen in collaboration with David Bowie.

Photograph by Frank W Ockenfels 3. © Frank W Ockenfels 3

“The Stars (Are Out Tonight)” from David Bowie’s album The Next Day. Most of all, Burroughs had a technique that would enable Bowie to retool his entire method of writing lyrics and making music. During the early 1960s, Burroughs and his colleague, the painter and writer Brion Gysin, had developed the cutup as a method of visual and verbal reassembly that was equally applicable to painting, montaged artworks, calligraphy, tape manipulation and the word. It offered, in fact, a whole new way of seeing.

The cut-up had originated when Gysin sliced through a pile of newspapers with his Stanley knife while cutting mounts for his latest pictures.

He reshuffled the shredded newsprint and was fascinated by the way the chopped pictures and words created a new narrative.

Bowie had long been fascinated by science fiction: the central premise of “Five Years”—the

first track on Ziggy Stardust—was that, in his own words, “the world will end because of lack of natural resources.” ... Having read Burroughs’ cut-up novel Nova Express to prepare for the interview, Bowie applied the technique to the words and sound of his next album, the darkly dystopian Diamond Dogs—a fusion of Burroughs and George Orwell. The cut-up, as he admitted later, perfectly suited his own fragmented consciousness, and it also enabled him to cut through the tangle of expectation and image that threatened to slow him down. It sped everything up. —Jon Savage

From David Bowie Is, Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh, editors, V&A Publishing, www. vandapublishing.com. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Photograph: (Top Left) John Rowlands © John Robert Rowlands, (Top Right) Design by David Bowie, film stills by David James. Courtesy of The David Bowie Archive 2012. Film stills © STUDIOCANAL Films Ltd., (Bottom Left) Roy Ainsworth, courtesy of The David Bowie Archive 2012. Image © V&A Images, (Bottom Center) Design by Kansai Yamamoto. Photograph by Masayoshi Sukita, © Sukita / The David Bowie Archive 2012.

feature

band books

The Mall of Small Frustrations

by Graydon James www.graydonjames.com

O

ur literary music festival is headlined by an excerpt from The Mall of Small Frustrations

by Graydon James of Graydon James and the Young Novelists. Of his band name, James says, “It comes from my first album titled ‘Goodnight, Young Novelist.’ It was called that because I had decided to focus on music and let my creative writing endeavors waste away on hard drives scattered around my home.” Fortunately for readers, James figured out how to multi-task. Find the band at www.theyoungnovelists.com.

“O

kay, let me ask you — you’re into girls, right? — what kind of music do you like?”

“Oh, right now I’m kinda into like older stuff.

Jackson Five and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles and —” “Okay, okay.” Chester held up a hand. “I didn’t ask for your life story.”

“Sorry.”

“Listen: you can’t like that music.”

“No?” “No,” he shook his head, closed his eyes like he was tired. “Girls don’t like that kind of music.

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JUNE/JULY 2013

You’ve got to like, uh, you know the Spice Girls and 50 Cent. Junk like that. Celine Dion.”

“Oh, really?”

Chester nodded sagely.

“My parents told me that I should be myself.”

“Hey,” Chester spun around angrily, his finger in the air, locking eyes with Jasper, “forget that.

That’s loser advice.”

“But—” “You’ve been yourself, right? I mean, you haven’t been anything but yourself. And how has that been working out for you? Hm?”

BURN THIS

A compilation of bookish bands discovered at Noisetrade. com. We hope you’ll visit, download, and leave ’em a tip.

THE STORYBOOK SINGERS: Long Live the Night SMALLTOWN POETS: Turn Around POSTCARD FICTION: Everyday Is Halloween FICTION FAIR: The Distant Glowing Lights READYWRITER: Neighbor YOUNG READERS: Boxcar WORDS IN WINDOWS: A World White THE NOVEL IDEAS: Back and Forth JESSE LAMONACA AND THE DIME NOVELS: Well Has Run Dry

“Well — ” “I don’t see girls hanging off your arms. Hear what I’m saying?”

“Yeah.”

“Being yourself is clearly not working. It’s bad advice, no offense to your parents. The you that you are is just not attractive to women.”

“Right.”

“So you gotta change. You try something new.

They say be yourself, well I say don’t be yourself.

Be anything but yourself.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Be the opposite of yourself. Try that for a while, and see how it works out.”

From The Mall of Small Frustrations by Graydon James, www.graydonjames.com. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Do Gay Guys Listen to Yes?

by Andrew Mellen

T

RECOMMENDS TO FANS:

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he point is, even at fourteen, I knew what gay was, what I was, and what was expected of me.

Sheltered, I wasn’t.

And while I appreciated a certain amount of Glam Rock artifice, it was Bowie’s alien Ziggy Stardust persona and Elton John’s suits and platform shoes that caught my eye more than feathers, makeup, and chiffon. I appreciated a good bend on gender but liked my men to look like me, or how I felt — somewhat attractive, struggling for authenticity, and possibly from another planet.

So when I went into the shop after hearing “Roundabout” for the first time, it’s no surprise that Rob pulled out The Yes Album. I had never heard “I’ve Seen All Good People,” or “Yours Is No Disgrace,” or “Starship Trooper,” and I was floored.

This was music that soared far beyond the catchy hooks and lyrics that had spoken to my angry, alienated soul in “Doctor My Eyes” or “Lady Stardust.”

The musical virtuosity of groups such as Yes, King Crimson, and Emerson,

Lake & Palmer was operatic and theatrical, and matched the scale of my youthful angst. Here were artists walking a razor’s edge between rock and roll, classical music, and performance art in a way that spoke to me.

Prog Rock not only gave voice to my longings but also literally transformed me beyond the pain that was so constant in adolescence. It was a late twentieth century version of the land “over the rainbow” that Judy Garland had sung so wistfully about thirty years earlier — beauty married to the geargrinding sound and energy of rock.

In space, they may not be able to hear you scream but they can’t hear you sob, either.

And as obscure (some might say pretentious) as those lyrics and their literary references may have been, they sounded enough like poetry to keep me searching for their meaning, which was certainly a welcome distraction from sorting out my own feelings at the time.

From Yes is the Answer and Other Prog Rock Tales, edited by Marc Weingarten and Tyson Cornell, A Barnacle Book and Rare Bird Books, www.abarnaclebook.com, www.rarebirdbooks.com.

Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

A well plotted, character driven human drama. Frank explores the taboos of today’s dysfunctional society with a unique sense of dark humor. A must read for all, young and old, who have struggled with defining the meaning and importance of love in their own lives.

— Terri Valentine, romance novelist

Sarah Morgan spellsU.S.big trouble for Jon $XX.XX FICTION Burns even before they meet. In a dream, the wayward slacker hears her crying out. In Sarah Morgan spells big trouble for Jon visions, he’s confronted by a demonic image Burns even before they meet. In a dream, the wayward slacker hears her crying out. from her extreme paintings.

In visions, he’s confronted by a demonic When the twopaintings. twenty-somethings meet image from her extreme When twenty-somethings meet at a attheatwo Michigan college, it gets worse. Sarah, Michigan college, it gets worse. Sarah, a aprolific is beyond gorgeous, but prolic artist,artist, is beyond gorgeous, but wild and maddeningly aloof. Ignoring the wild and maddeningly aloof. Ignoring the omens, Jon enters the fray and wins the brassy sirenJon (sort of), only to discover omens, enters the the fray and wins the secret past that has left her damaged. brassy siren (sort of), only to discover the As the darkness Sarah has rises up, she her damaged. secret past inthat left becomes unpredictable. Aaron, an As the in Sarah rises up, she analyst, studiesdarkness Sarah’s art and warns Jon of her precarious balance. Jon’s becomes unpredictable. Aaron, an analyst, own grip starts slipping and his life gets bizarre—more than usual,art that is.

But the studies Sarah’s and warns Jon of her lovers are linked in spite of themselves, precarious balance.

Jon’s own grip starts and they battle through Sarah’s ordeal until a great test is forced them.gets bizarre—more slipping and hisupon life than usual, that Witty and darkly comic, May Iis. Walk But the lovers are You Home, Sarah Morgan? tells of two linked in spite of themselves, and they lost souls, locked in different struggles, but mysteriously thrownSarah’s together to ordeal until a great battle through face hard lessons of life and love. test is forced upon them.

Witty and darkly comic, May I Walk You Home, Sarah Morgan? tells of two lost souls, locked in different struggles, but mysteriously thrown together to face hard lessons of life and love.

See other reviews on Amazon.com | ISBN 978-1-4582-0721-0 (Softcover) Frank savored every word before dropping it into exactly the right place. ... an abundance of finely-crafted textures, asides, and snappy one-liners that add layers of juicy stuff to this fascinating tale. Please plan to pause and reflect before dashing on. ... punchy commentary on most of the trenchant issues of our time.

UNBOUND … a literate feast of unbridled wackiness.

25

David Byrne never stops making sense, and in his new book How Music Works he makes fascinating sense of the art of music-making.

McSweeney’s interviewed Byrne on their publication of the book; we’ve excerpted a brief portion of the interview here, and it can be found in its entirety at this link: www.mcsweeneys.net.

RECOMMENDS TO FANS:

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McSweeney’s: You argue against the romantic idea that music or art emerges from some sudden upwelling of emotion within an individual. Instead, you make the case that music emerges from its particular social, cultural, or even architectural context. Was this something you always suspected, or did it take a while for you to get there?

David Byrne: I think I’ve come around to that position after many years, but it isn’t a new idea. In his book The Voices Of Silence, Andre Malraux points out that paintings became the dominant art form for many centuries because you could carry them around. This maybe seems obvious—you can’t carry around a gothic cathedral, after all—but I realized that the form and size and mediums that we work in are influenced by a host of factors, the very least of which is some traumatic personal event. So, while a songwriter may write a whole album about how their girlfriend dumped them,

the fact that they choose to convey that in three minute songs, with structures that are probably familiar, and using melodies and chord changes and sounds we find attractive or intriguing—well, a lot of our big creative decisions have already been made for us. That’s not to say the breakup didn’t fuel some part of the creative process—I’m just saying that most of what makes a piece of music sound the way it does has nothing to do with one’s personal life.

How Music Works by David Byrne, McSweeney’s 2012, www.mcsweeneys.net.

Interview reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Photograph: Catalina Kulczar

NOISETRADE WWW.NOISETRADE.COM

DISCOVER NEW MUSIC. DOWNLOAD FREE ALBUMS. SUPPORT THE ARTISTS YOU LOVE.

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(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction Devo (1977) Original by the Rolling Stones (1965)

A

RECOMMENDS TO FANS:

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long with an earlier reconfiguration of the song by the Residents, issued in 1976, Devo’s cover of “Satisfaction” is one of the most extraordinary versions of any Rolling Stones track. Mick Jagger was all for it, apparently; it was, according to his lawyer, likely to give him considerable financial satisfaction if it were a hit. And it surely would be a hit, wouldn’t it?

In 1977 Devo were the art-punk satirists most likely to. They came out of Akron, Ohio, dressed in flowerpot hats and tangerine boiler suits, with the slogan “Are we not men? We are Devo!” like the dysfunctional Midwest cousins of David Byrne. When they got their nimble fingers on “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” they duly transformed it from one of cocksure frustration into a deadpan, mechanical jerk. Devo stripped the song back to its bare bones — and then rearranged the skeleton to create a wholly new animal.

Noticed by Eno and David Bowie

and consequently signed to Stiff records in the UK, Devo and their decidedly strange single was a small hit, just nudging the Top 40. It was a Number One in Yugoslavia, though, but perhaps overall not the smash Jagger and his accountant were anticipating.

From The 100 Greatest Cover Versions

by Robert Webb, McNidder & Grace, 2012, www.mcnidderandgrace.co.uk. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Photograph: Janet Macoska 1978

menacing ckout and Mafia. But dy knows, one before nfront the

Slaughter

by Pete Delohery A novel about love and cour age, sin and redemption “Iron” Mike McGann is facing the twilight of his prizefighting career.

Desperate for his future, he has refused to honor his promise to his wife to quit the ring and start a family.

PETE DELOHERY LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER

demption. zefighting mise to his is leaving

Lamb to the

Rufus “Hurricane” Hilliard is the most menacing presence in prizefighting. But behind his menacing ring presence lives a man nobody knows, a complex man who despises his own image.

terrorized olic and a zefighters. ust finally

Rufus “Hurricane” Hilliard vs. “Iron” Mike McGann, just another fight shown on The Continuous Sports Network, but by the time it is over the lives of these and many others will be forever different.

ther fight s over the

DELOHERY

LAMB TO THE

S l au g h t e R

“This heartfelt tale makes a powerful emotional impact.”

—Blue Ink Starred Review

> Click on this link to read two free chapters < Available in print and e-book at Amazon.com, xlibris.com, and BarnesandNoble.com.

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translations

read global

A

ngel Igov’s Short Tale of Shame is a road novel on many levels — a group of friends goes hitchhiking and is picked up by the father of a girl they used to know, setting off a trip backwards into memories. Told solely through the mind’s eye of the characters, there is no direct speech; in the dreamlike narrative, the point of view jumps from person to person, lines flow into thoughts sink into recollections, so the tough task for the translator is to make sure these twists and turns of consciousness retain their meandering beauty and don’t end up sounding like jarring detours. The group is also travelling through an alternative Balkans, peopled with Thracians, PhryA Short Tale of Shame gians, and Dacians, begging the quesby Angel Igov tion: What if a war had ended slightly diftranslated from the ferently, what if borders had been drawn Bulgarian by Angela Rodel elsewhere?

I grew up singing in all sorts of groups, Open Letter Books from punk bands to church choirs. I fell in www.openletterbooks.org love with the powerful sound of Bulgarian folk singing when I joined the Yale Slavic Chorus as an undergrad, and after graduation won a Fulbright scholarship to study Bulgarian language and music. After moving to Sofia, I teamed up with poets Ivan Hristov and Petar Chukhov to create Gologan, a folk-rock band that mixes electric guitars and drums with Bulgarian traListen to Angela Rodel and ditional tunes and instruments. The lyrics Gologan here: www.myspace. are a mix of original work and rearranged com/gologanmusic. folk songs. Having a musical ear seems to help in catching the rhythm and melody of language; not surprisingly, I have found that many of my fellow translators are also musicians. Perhaps we should hold a translators’ jam session at the next ALTA conference?

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Is what we know about Jesus true?

D.C. Smith reintroduces history’s most misunderstood Messiah. He presents the Torah-observant teacher, accompanied by classical artwork and concise explanations, to show what actually happened to him both before and after Christianity took root in Roman-occupied Judea. Using a carefully drawn out series of historical segments, Smith peels back 2,000 years of revisionist distortions to uncover the many myths and made-up stories about a local rabbi we now think of as “Jesus,” but whose real name was Joshua.

From start to finish, this remarkable book separates fact from fantasy in reconstructing the historical Jesus and the turbulent times in which he lived. It is a must read for inquisitive people of all faiths as well as secular humanists.

The Jesus No One Knows by D.C. Smith.

Available in paperback and e-book at Amazon.com.

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novel thinking

Can’t Buy Me Love

by Dan McNeil Available through Pulse

M

usic has always been a big part of my life. My mom was a wonderful piano player and it was because of her that I eventually started to play music myself (piano, of course.)

At one time my cousin and I had a band and we wrote and recorded two CDs of original music. It was very much in the pop/rock vein as we both were drawn to that style. Bands like Crowded House, Supertramp, Genesis, and the Beatles were enormous influences.

Especially the Beatles.

I was only 8 years old when they called it a day in 1970. At that time I had never heard of the Beatles but as I got older and more into music I became aware of just how important these Liverpudlians were, and what a hold they had (and still have) on modern rock and roll. It was never more evident than when they hit these shores in February of 1964. There was an urban myth that stated that while the Beatles performed on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9th, 73 million people tuned in to watch. Not a major crime was committed in that hour — not even a stolen hubcap. When I read that, not only was I amazed at how many people tuned in to watch, but it occurred to me that that would have been the perfect time to rob a bank — hence, the major plot point upon which my book Can’t Buy Me Love turns.

How could one group of rock and rollers captivate so many? There were a number of factors — timing, certainly was key as well as having studio wizard George Martin for a producer. Primarily though, it was the extraordinary song writing capacity of Lennon and McCartney.

It occurred to me as I was writing Can’t Buy Me Love just how similar song writing and novel writing could actually be. Through creative hooks and twists, a great story will capture the reader’s imagination.

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“As good as anything I’ve read in courtroom fiction.”

—The Reporter

Capital Kill

Horns of the Devil

“Federal prosecutor Jeff Trask returns to work on a case involving Salvadoran gang members. Soon, several are marked for death by hit men, including Trask himself. A well-paced mystery featuring an entertainingly complicated protagonist, supported by a robust cast.”

—Kirkus Reviews.

“Lawyer Jeff Trask is a new Assistant U.S. Attorney when he becomes embroiled in a high-stakes international case. … Trask, an engaging main character, works to find out who is behind the heinous murders plaguing D.C. Despite being extremely intelligent, he comes across as an everyman. … The book’s intense action, realistic tone and memorable characters will keep readers engrossed in this thriller with a superb payoff.”

—Kirkus Reviews

New from former federal prosecutor Marc Rainer, Capital Kill and Horns of the Devil are available at Amazon.com.

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feature

the download

AMANDA PALMER If you have yet to discover Amanda Palmer, prepare to be mesmerized.

She’s got a critically acclaimed new album, Theatre is Evil, with an übercool accompanying art book, The Grand Theft Art Companion. She’s got almost 900,000 Twitter followers. And she gives her music away for free. www.amandapalmer.net | facebook.com/amandapalmer youtube.com/amandapalmer | twitter: @amandapalme 34

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Artwork: David Mack

Shelf Unbound: You describe your music as a cross between punk and cabaret. What drew you to this artistic amalgamation?

Amanda Palmer: Well, both punk and cabaret have similar themes, as far as I’m concerned. Art as culture therapy. But I thought “punk cabaret” was the perfect way to describe my songs and the dresden dolls back in the day, since we were very theatrical but very aggressive and LOUD and both grew up with DIY and punk bands as our aesthetic and emotional parents.

Shelf: You had me at 2010’s Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on Her Magical Ukulele. Last year you famously set a Kickstarter fundraising record for a music project with contributions totaling almost $1.2 million to produce and promote your new album Theatre is Evil. Rolling Stone called it “one of the year’s best rock records.”

I’ve been listening to it over and over and agree with every accolade it has received.

What does being fan-supported do for you as an artist?

Palmer: It means that I get to communicate directly with my audience without having to negotiate for permission. And having gone through the major label nightmare, and having done many projects where I felt my phones got tapped and my psychic artistic letters to my fans got censored by the prison warden, it’s all I ask in this life. Just a clean line and de-static’d connection straight from me to those who want to listen. My favorite shows to play are in living rooms, as much as I also love playing in huge public theaters and venues. I’m happiest when I’m actually WITH people. And since I know that my

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music will never be mainstream or commercial, I’m very happy to dig deeper and find my kindred spirits than I am to try to please the lowest common denominator. For that, I need a very clean signal. The internet has provided it. I feel hugely grateful.

Shelf: I love these lines from one of your recent blog posts: “i take the things around me, and i put them in a blender in my mind, and i connect the dots, and i layer, and….i write. sometimes songs, sometimes poems, sometimes emails.” In your songs, your blog, your twitter posts, your performances, and your life you are continuously putting yourself out there raw and seemingly unfiltered. Is revealing yourself to your audience the chicken or the egg of your art?

Palmer: Yes, I suppose it is. Making art is always a dance between your inner spark, the filter you send it through, and the final transmission that comes through your song, your voice, or your paintbrush. The choices we make at every one of those steps are the choices that make us unique artists.

Some choose to be opaque. Sometime I choose to be opaque. But where I like to grow and water myself is the challenge of being authentic and spontaneous and dealing with the consequences of those actions.

Sometimes you get explosive joy raining down electricity all over you and sometimes you get a pile of rotten dung on your head.

But one thing is for sure: it’s never boring.

If I had to play it safe and make considered choices for a focus group; or churn out safe, standard radio music and aim for the middle audience I’d rather....I don’t know...just sit in a cave and meditate.

Artwork: Rick Berry

The Bed Song

The Grand Theft Art Companion “NOW, about the ARTWORK. over the last six months i’ve been working in secret with OVER THIRTY visual artist friends of mine to create a massive explosion of song-inspired album art, in all different kinds of media. some people took the project really literally and made super lyrics-specific paintings....some people went way abstract. the end result is an EXPLOSION of incredible art.”

—Amanda Palmer on Kickstarter.com The Grand Theft Art Companion is available exclusively at http://amandapalmer.net/producttypes/misc/

Theatre Is Evil Sampler Click HERE to download Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra’s Theatre Is Evil Sampler at Noisetrade.com 38

JUNE/JULY 2013

Artwork from The Grand Theft Art Companion by Amanda Palmer, www.amandapalmer.net. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Artwork: Sylvia K.

Sips Card puts short fiction and poetry into local coffee shop venues around the country. We are a publication run by artists, for artists.

Each card contains a QR code, loaded with a short story, or set of poems, from an independent writer, meant to last as long as a cup of coffee. Our passion is to share the work of other artists with likely readers. Visit

www.sipscard.com for more information.

Call for submissions: We are accepting short fiction and poetry submissions for our October 2012 issue from August 1st through August 31st. Guidelines can be found at www.sipscard.com/submit.

BOOK A Taste for Truth

by Thistle Brown

“A

newlywed uncovers some unsettling family secrets. Anne’s strong narrative voice guides the story through WASP family get-togethers, newlywed clashes and office politics, offering pointed observations about relationships. Lively writing, brisk pacing and a likable narrator fill out this promising debut.”

—Kirkus Reviews “The book aptly examines the fragile realities of two people who enter into a marriage with conflicting expectations.”

—Christina Hamlett for Clarion Reviews www.thistlebrown.com Available at Amazon.com.

Love Crazy: A Memoir

by Selby Fleming McPhee

I

n this memoir, the discovery of a forbidden box of letters sends the author on a bumpy ride through her family’s history in the first half of the American twentieth century. On the box’s lid is a provocative warning: “Personal letters of Mr. and Mrs. J. J. Fleming—to be destroyed unopened,” an invitation if there ever was one … www.selbyflemingmcphee.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Martin Sisters Publishing.

Surviving Curtis Hall: The Lure of Blood

by L.A. Matthies

T

hese compelling teens strive for excellence in academics, sports, arts, and music; all while maintaining lifelong friendships. Tristen, Billy and Sasha’s lives are made more perilous when they transfer to a new school filled with a fascinating array of subterranean tunnels, glyphic codes, and a labyrinth. The sharply etched, appealing characters, both human and supernatural, lead us down a path of intrigue while attempting to sort out their love/hate/friendship triangles. www.SurvivingCurtisHall.com Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

*

Special Advertising Section For Authors Promote your book in Shelf Unbound in our new Special Advertising Section for Authors. Each issue of Shelf Unbound is distributed to more than 125,000 people in the U.S. and 57 countries around the globe. Our introductory ad rate for this section is $250/quarter page as seen here.

Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK Introduction to Islam

by Haj Dawud Bell

I

slam is a religion of over one billion people, and is the fastest growing religion in the West. Yet it is largely misunderstood and misrepresented.

Fanatics in any religion tend to occupy the headlines, and unfortunately, few Westerners look beneath these headlines. This book is written for the Western reader, including relatives and/or friends of those who have embraced Islam and wish to understand the basics.

Available at Amazon.com and Trafford Publishing.

The Girl in the Butternut Dress

by Joanne Hardy

G

abrielle, an illegitimate orphan, comes of age on the eve of the Civil War and her familiar world comes apart.

Sent to help on a nearby farm, she discovers it is a station on the Underground Railroad. Based on real historical events in a border state, the county is alive and volatile with Copperheads, vigilantes, Union Army deserters, and war-hardened veterans. Can Gabrielle’s love for a Southern-sympathizer have a future?

With postage paid, author will send signed copies; contact BJH110233@gmail.com. www.joannehardyauthor.com; www.joannehardy.blogspot.com Available on Amazon.com, Kindle.com, and BarnesandNoble.com.

Buying the Farm

by Kimberly Conn

W

hen a horrific accident leaves Missi Jennings scared and alone, it also becomes a catalyst for the change her tired, urban life needs. From the chaotic streets of Washington, D.C. to the fragrant fields of rural Mississippi, family secrets give way to family love in this heartwarming portrait of one woman’s journey to discover her Southern roots.

www.kimberlyconn.com Available at Amazon.com and Smashwords.com.

Links to purchase: Boiling Point

by Eileen Susan Eckert

P

sychologist Sara Bradley finds herself triggered by haunting memories of her past while working with a child who possibly witnessed her mother’s death. The attorney for the admitted murderer, Michael Grey, is thrown up against his violent past while defending his client. A chance meeting between Sara and Michael fuels a mutual attraction. Can their relationship survive the mysteries they uncover?

www.eileensusaneckert.com Available at Amazon.com.

BOOK Penalty Stroke

By Susan Leigh Shallcross

A Prison of Lies

by Robert Thomas Doran

FAMILY/CHILDCARE

A Prison of

In his novel, A Prison of Lies, Robert Thomas Doran portrays a troubled youth, who confronts a world of sadness and hopelessness and comes to question the existence of God. Beset by challenges on every quarter: unable to fit in with his peers, shamed by his sexuality, ill equipped for emotional intimacy and unable to express himself with girls; he slips from a depression into full blown mental illness. In the depths of his illness, he battles internal demons that threaten to steal his innocence with evil thoughts and hallucinations.

P

A Prison of Lies is a brutally honest look into one man’s odyssey into the darkness of mental illness and finally out into the light where he finally heals his broken spirit and begins a new chapter in his life.

As this fiction is inspired by his own struggle with mental illness Robert Thomas Doran is grateful to god for helping him recover from mental illness. Today he lives in Pennsylvania with his wife of fifteen years. A Prison of Lies was written as an act of faith and with the hope of helping others afflicted with mental illness.

U.S. $XX.XX

Age of the Gentiles and the White God Delusion

by Timothy Hugee

T

he book is a logical Bible study and in-depth examination of Race, Sex, Power, Politics and War. The Author addresses the false doctrine and propaganda that has been fronted for centuries, by Christianity and Judaism, as to their supremacy above other religions and black and Semite races. www.authortimhugee.info Available at Authorhouse.com, Amazon.com, and BarnesandNoble.com.

RO B E RT TH O M AS D O RAN

enalty Stroke is a thrilling mystery centered on the wealthy, aristocratic Abbott family—and the dark secrets of their past that haunt the present. When Lady Madison’s university friend unexpectedly dies at a charity polo match, no one believes it was murder, except Madison. Not knowing who she can trust— maybe not even herself—Madison struggles to solve the mystery and her erase her own haunted past. www.susanleighshallcross.com Available at Amazon.com and Audible.com.

Lies

In A Prison of Lies, Doran presents a story of anguish, breakdown, and recovery with the hope that this journey through mental illness might raise our consciousness; kindle a common understanding and most importantly, facilitate the recovery of individuals who may be similarly afflicted. As he offers this compelling glimpse into a man’s personal crisis that includes the reasons why he loathed himself and developed a massive inferiority complex, Doran illuminates an intriguing and often frightening path into what exactly motivates suicides and fuels crimes of passion. Highlighted in his story are insightful poems and compelling conversations therapists and hypnotists.

W

ith its brutal honesty, witness one man’s odyssey into the darkness of mental illness and his slow A Prison of emergence out of ROBERT THOMAS DORAN that darkness where a broken spirit is healed and a life begins anew.

A Prison of Lies offers a candle in the cave for those seeking to understand and for those who are themselves lost and unable to find their way.

(Mature content)

Lies

www.aprisonoflies.com; www.stopharm.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and iUniverse.com.

Blooms on the Bones

by Yvonne Kohano

Who’s next for romance in Flynn’s Crossing?

O

ld bones, predestined love, and troubled adversaries clash as an unlikely relationship soars to conquer the spirit world.

The story of Tess and Powers is heating up Main Street! www.YvonneKohano.com.

Find your copy at your favorite ebook or paperback vendor.

BOOK WTF? How Karl Rove and the Establishment Lost … Again

By C. Edmund Wright

T

his book has the Republican Establishment in shock—a stunning indictment of two decades of beltway failures that threaten the country. Wright’s conversational style and logic approach mixes in just the right amount of humor and anger as he explains our current political universe like no other. A must read for all political junkies, and others worried about the country. www.tokyorove.com Available at Amazon.com.

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Gabriel’s Wizard

Gabriel’s Wizard

by Daniel Turner

G

Daniel Turner

abriel’s Wizard is a tale of metaphysics and magic in the real world today. A young adventurer makes his way to Alaska and encounters an old Alaskan mountain man, Daniel Turner a powerful wizard as wise in the ancient teachings as he is in the modern world. Together they journey through encounters and dangers that test his spirit as he learns of wisdom and power.

A Mystical Journey Through Alaska

www.gabrielswizard.com Available at Amazon.com.

Ixeos: Book One of the Ixeos Trilogy

by Jennings Wright

W

hen they’re lured from our world into Ixeos, an alternate Earth, the McClellands find themselves in a maze of tunnels that lead all over the world.

They’ve been brought to Ixeos for one purpose: to take the planet back from humanoid aliens who have claimed it. The aliens aren’t the only problem on Ixeos. The worst? There’s no way home.

www.jenningswright.com Available at Amazon.com.

All The Light There Was

by Nancy Kricorian

A

t the beginning of ALL THE LIGHT THERE WAS, Maral Pegorian, a teenage girl, peers through shuttered blinds as German troops march into Paris. Her journey to adulthood over the next six years takes her through a world transformed by war, but also by everyday acts of heroism and love. www.nancykricorian.net Available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and wherever books and ebooks are sold, including from Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble. com, and Powells.com.

BOOK Field of Vision

by Michael Jarvis

My Life On Craigslist

by Alexandra Ares

P

HAVE YOU READ IT YET?

hotographer Jake Mayfield finds racial trouble and multiple passions on a beautiful Caribbean island, but feels his journey spiraling downward into paranoia and criminal tourism. A surprising literary adventure story of sex, war, art, love, travel and survival. “....Field of Vision is a formidable achievement from a talented new writer.”

—ForeWord Clarion Reviews www.michaeljarvis.net Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com Cemetery Whites

by Connie Knight

A

mateur detective Caroline Hargrove Hamilton solves two murders, one from 1875 and one from today.

Biracial friendships, during slavery and after the Civil War, are discovered in her research. She finds the corpse of history professor Thomas Harrison, a black man, in the Hargrove Family Cemetery, then she uncovers family secrets that solve the crime.

www.ConnieKnightBooks.com eBook available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

A

New York girl who works in the arts lives vicariously on Craigslist where she runs into big trouble ... But she has a special talent.

Finalist of Best Books USA. Recommended by Midwest Book Review, US Review of Books and Readers’ Favorite. Heartbreaking and Zany!

Critics say it is funny like Seinfeld. www.alexandraares.com Available in paperback and e-book on Amazon.com.

Operation Doublepayback

by Jack Freeman

A

fast-paced thriller set in 1961. An ex-CIA officer turned London-based beat generation bookseller, blackmailed into infiltrating a revolutionary terror group (RPI), is quickly involved in an attack on the U.S. London Embassy, assassination in Amsterdam, bombs in Berlin, fire fights in Venice and L.A., affair in Miami, torture in Mayfair, and a conspiracy to provoke all-out nuclear war in N.Y.C. jackfreeman_writer@hotmail.co.uk Available at Amazon.com.

BOOK Blood and Whiskey: A Cowboy and Vampire Thriller

by Clark Hays and Kathleen McFall

Endor the Wizard Trilogy

by John R. Garland

E

ndor leads the peaceful country of Greysmire, who must join forces with neighboring Dame, to overcome the wicked powers of the evil Lord Gundermire. Book 1, Endor the Wizard, introduces Endor from the beginning. Book 2, Endor’s Adventures, takes Endor into Dame to bond an allegiance against the might of Gundermire. Book 3, The Final Chapter, brings about the end.

E

nlightenment just took a strange detour.

Welcome to LonePine, Wyoming, population 438; it’s like any other slowlydying western town, only with vampires. When a cowboy falls for a beautiful vampire, saddle up for a metaphysical ride through love, death and the afterlife.

“Strong writing, funny characters, and plenty of action; a riveting tale of love and blood in the modern West.”

—Kirkus Reviews

www.endorthewizard.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Lulu.com.

www.cowboyandvampire.com Available at Amazon.com.

I

Lamb to the Slaughter is a novel about love and courage, sin and redemption.

“Iron” Mike McGann, 32 years old, is facing the twilight of his prizefighting career. Desperate for his future, he has refused to honor his promise to his wife to quit the ring and start a family. In despair, his wife, Madge, is leaving him.

Rufus “Hurricane” Hilliard, Mike’s next opponent, is the most menacing presence in prizefighting. He has won all 22 of his fights by knockout and is said to be a former enforcer for something called The Black Mafia. But behind Rufus Hilliard’s menacing ring presence lives a man nobody knows, a complex man who despises his own image. Unexpectedly left alone before his bout with McGann, Rufus “Hurricane” Hilliard is forced to confront the past that haunts him and the future he dreads.

Charles “Charliehorse” O’Connell, Rufus’s cornerman, has been terrorized by a mob kingpin to sabotage him. O’Connell, who is an alcoholic and a compulsive gambler, blames himself for the ring deaths of two prizefighters.

Trapped in a moral crisis, Charles “Charliehorse” O’Connell must finally

n Eirelan you will live for a time with men and women, old and young, fighters and writers, poets andªxHSLEQFyship 3 9270zv*:+:!:+:!@ captains, who cannot take for granted that anything they treasure will survive to be the inheritance of their children.

Conor, Fethnaid, Oran, Mairin travel a road unlike ours. It is a dangerous road, yet one well worth exploring. Contact the author: highc.king@ verizon.net.

confront his “Cardinal Sin.” Rufus “Hurricane” Hilliard vs “Iron” Mike McGann, just another fight shown on The Continuous Sports Network, but by the time it is over the lives of these and many others will be forever different.

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www.eirelan.com Available at Amazon.com in print and as ebook.

DELOHERY

ISBN: 978-1-4653-3927-0

Lamb to the Slaughter

by Pete Delohery

PETE DELOHERY LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER

Eirelan—Saga of the Latter-Day Celts

by Liam O’Shiel

“S

et against the vividly rendered backdrop of professional boxing, Pete Delohery’s hard-bitten yet LAMB TO THE generous-spirited novel S l au g h t e R focuses on three men at crossroads in their lives. The moving portraits Delohery creates of three men, each damaged by a brutal world, who flee from personal demons toward the only imperfect redemption available to them: victory in a fight. This heartfelt tale makes a powerful emotional impact.”

—Blue Ink Starred Review www.petedelohery.com

Available at Amazon.com, xlibris.com, and BarnesandNoble.com.

BOOK Mirror Deep

by Joss Landry Danger and Romance …

R

oll like thunder in Kat Bonner’s world, when a known felon comes to the ranch to drop a bomb about her past. Kat turns to Pierce for help, the same Pierce who bucks her every chance he gets, and whose feverish investigation lands them in trouble with the law and directly in the path of a serial killer.

www.josslandry.com Available at Amazon.com, Kobo.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Indigo Chapters, EbookPie, and E Sentral.

Awaken Our Spirit Within

by Patsie Smith

T

his book will awaken your true reality, shift your perceptions, and raise your consciousness onto a higher plane. it contains words of wisdom from our core and essence, conveyed with concise simplicity, clarity and insight. A must-read for the transformation and transcendence from the web of human ignorance and suffering, into true inner peace and joy. www.patsiesmith.com Available at Balboapress.com, Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com, and all leading online bookstores.

Tales from the Loon Town Cafe

by Dennis Frahmann

F

ame, fortune, ambition and love collide when smalltown boy leaves big city job for his northwoods hometown. Much like the writings of Garrison Keillor, this novel captures the characters, rhythms and sometimes downright loopiness of a town where most everyone thinks they know most everything about what’s going on.

www.loontowncafe.com Available at Amazon.com, the iBookstore, and BarnesandNoble.com.

The Vampire Girl Next Door

by Richard Arbib

M

ark falls in love with Sylvia, the beautiful, but quirky girl next door, not realizing that she’s a vampire who killed his last neighbor.

When Mark first meets Sylvia, he tells her, “You’re the girl of my dreams!” Sylvia smiles and responds with a warning—“Be careful what you wish for.”

“Alternately eerie and funny, the novel blends horror, romance, and humor.”

—from the publisher’s press release. www.thevampiregirlnextdoor.com Available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

Paperback and all e-book formats available on author’s website.

BOOK Neiko’s Five Land Adventure

by A.K. Taylor

T

he IndieReader Approved Award winning debut YA fantasy novel by A.K. Taylor. Follow Native American warrior Neiko when she is trapped in another universe by the ultimate force of evil while she must get back to her own world.

www.backwoodsauthor.com Available at MyBookOrders.com, Amazon.com, and BarnesandNoble.com.

Ye Gods!

How the World REALLY Works

by Betsy Jo Miller

Y

e Gods! shows our part in the problems of our day through the spectacular creative ability of our thoughts.

We see here how to change those creations now slowing our evolving and devastating our planet—including the terrorism from countries abetted by religions and government leaders, including ours. This trip is not tedious but joyous! A wakeup call long overdue. www.gabrielswizard.com Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

Girl Unmoored

by Jennifer Gooch Hummer

S

et in Maine, 1985, Apron Bramhall has come unmoored. Her mother has died, her father is about to marry a wicked witch and her best friend has dumped her for a newer model. Then she meets “Jesus”—the actor who plays him in Jesus Christ Superstar—and his boyfriend.

These three unlikely friends form an unbreakable bond not even death can separate.

“Girl Unmoored may be the undiscovered young adult novel of the summer.”

—Entertainment Weekly www.jennifergoochhummer.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, iTunes and other online retailers.

Spies and Lies: The Paradox

by Fred Malphurs

S

pies and Lies: The Paradox is a gripping story about espionage, politics, deceit, and romance as one man, David Pearl, risks everything to defend his country—and his reputation— from evil forces. With national security at stake, Pearl must overcome adversity and the ultimate betrayal in order to determine whom he can trust, before an assassin strikes again.

www.fredmalphurs.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Books-a-Million, and other online stores.

BOOK The Tesla Conspiracy

by Michael D. Finley

I

n 1931 Nikola Tesla invented a car that ran on free energy, but the information was buried.

Now, two female graduate students are on the verge of re-creating that technology, but sinister forces are amassing against them. A weapons designer in hiding, who has unlocked one of Tesla’s darkest secrets, may be their only hope… and they may be his. www.theteslaconspiracy.com FACEBOOK LINK Available in paperback and as an ebook at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com and onther online retailers.

Dissonance in A Minor

by Nicole Disney

R

ainn never meant to fall in love, definitely not with a meth addict. But Jaselle is the only one who doesn’t see Rainn as the homeless girl. To Rainn, that makes her worth all the pain, fear, and danger she’ll have to go through if she wants to save Jaselle.

www.nicoledisney.com Available at JMSBooks.com and soon on Amazon.com.

Scorched by the Sun: Poems by Moshe Dor translated from the Hebrew by Barbara Goldberg

T

hese poems live, breathe, smell and taste like Israel. Here is the harsh reality of clashes unfolding in biblical landscapes, the agony of war and the craving for peace. This is also a book about love—love for a woman, love for a motherland. “Ardent, compressed, pungent and lyrical, these poems have a glorious force that recalls the roots of all poetry.”—Robert Pinsky. Former U.S. Poet Laureate. www.barbaragoldberg.net Available at Amazon.com, Small Press Distribution, and WordWorksBooks.org.

Backseat

by Tom Wascoe

I

n 1969 failure from college or dropping out meant the draft and possibly Vietnam.

Michael’s freshman year has not gone well. He believes that pledging a fraternity will put him on the right path. To get in he must hitchhike 1,500 miles in one weekend.

The rides he gets, the people he meets change his life. www.TomWascoe.com Available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, and iBookstore.

BOOK Black Pool—A Jack Flynn Adventure

by C.H. Garbutt

H

elpless to save his mum from drowning off the coast of County Kerry, Ireland, and just barely surviving himself, young Jack Flynn is rescued by a mysterious pair of webbed hands reaching up from the ocean depths. Jack recalls nothing of his narrow escape until years later when he meets Lillay, a young teenage mermaid, at the Dublin docklands, where his past and future meet. www.blackpoolthebook.wordpress.com Available at Amazon.com.

Baby Rocket

By Stephanie A. Smith BABY ROCKET is the story of an abandoned, adopted child, who, as an adult, must heal the traumatic ruptures BABY of suicide and abuse in ROCKET her past by becoming a Stephanie A. Smith detective with respect to her own life and is the second book in a trilogy about contemporary American women and historical trauma. WARPAINT is the first novel in the series; BABY ROCKET will be available in June 2013 and the last in the series, CONTENT BURNS, in October. www.stephanieasmith.net Baby Rocket and Warpaint are available at Amazon.com and ThamesRiverPress.com.

When Women Were Warriors Book I: The Warrior’s Path

by Catherine M. Wilson

“T

hink Beowulf—only comprehensible and with girls.”

—The Rainbow Reader “Breathtakingly gorgeous writing … a multilayered tale of such depth, breadth and insight that it was very nearly a spiritual experience…

Both men and women of all persuasions seem to love these books... Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!”

—T. T. Thomas The ebook is FREE at Amazon, B&N, Apple’s iBookstore, and Smashwords www.shieldmaidenpress.com Available at Amazon.com.

*

Special Advertising Section For Authors Promote your book in Shelf Unbound in our new Special Advertising Section for Authors. Each issue of Shelf Unbound is distributed to more than 125,000 people in the U.S. and 57 countries around the globe. Our introductory ad rate for this section is $250/quarter page as seen here.

Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK The Marathon Man

by Liz Cowan

Regnum Vita

by Naim Sadeer

text tk

www.facebook.com/lizcowanauthor Available at Amazon.com.

I, Livia: The Counterfeit Criminal

by Mary Mudd For two millennia Livia Drusilla, third and much beloved wife of Caesar Augustus, has been misrepresented as a conniving criminal, who killed or incapacitated Augustus’ descendants through his previous wife to promote the political career of her son by a former husband. I, Livia: The Counterfeit Criminal corrects those popular misconceptions with an accurate assessment of this much maligned woman. www.livia-drusilla.com Orders can be placed with Amazon or with the publisher directly at www.trafford.com.

Regnum Vita is the story of Prudence.

On her coronation day, Prudence is attacked and forced to run away. When she awakes, Prudence meets Ryan in a city named London.

Prudence returns to Vita and learns the myth of a sword with the power of an army. It is only a myth—but her only chance to free her kingdom. www.naimsadeer.co.uk Available at Amazon.com, Waterstone.com, and Troubador.co.uk.

Red Is for Rage

by Connie Corcoran Wilson text tk

www.conniecwilson.com Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

BOOK Blood Land

by R.S. Guthrie

C

rime’s an ugly constant in the big city. L.A., Chicago, New York. But when a savage murder brutalizes a small town and neighbor turns on neighbor, a tough-as-nails cop is essential to restoring order. Blood Land is a gritty, emotional saga set in the Wyoming badlands with both greed and vengeance at its core, and a reluctant hero forced to battle his own demons and ultimately choose between justice, revenge, and duty. www.rsguthrie.com Available at Amazon.com.

Hippo in the Garden

by Mark Trodd, illustrated

by Steve Hallam

I

n this sequel to Hippo in the Stable, Hector is captured by Roman soldiers after his cousins play a trick on him.

Hector escapes and ends up in Jerusalem for the first Easter. He witnesses the crucifixion and hears Jesus forgive those who hurt Him. Moved by this, Hector decides to forgive his cousins when he gets back home because that’s what Jesus would do.

www.hippointhegarden.com Available at Amazon.com and Ebooks.

Faithwriters.com.

The Webs of Varok

by Cary Neeper

W

hat does it take to sustain an enjoyable standard of living for all the world— and across millenia?

The possibilities come to life, explored through the adventures of a mixed human-and-alien family as they travel an alternate 21st Century Solar System in The Webs of Varok, science fiction finalist in the 2012 ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Awards.

www.archivesofvarok.com FACEBOOK LINK | GOODREADS LINK Available at Amazon.com.

*

Special Advertising Section For Authors Promote your book in Shelf Unbound in our new Special Advertising Section for Authors. Each issue of Shelf Unbound is distributed to more than 125,000 people in the U.S. and 57 countries around the globe. Our introductory ad rate for this section is $250/quarter page as seen here.

Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK The Brother-in-Law

by F.X. Biasi Jr.

The Future of Our Past, Book 1, The Remembrance Trilogy

by Kahlen Aymes.

J

ust days before 9-11, and after months of plotting, a disguised Bart LaRocca inflicts vengeance on his brother-in-law, the powerful Mafia boss, Al (aka Little Nicky) Nicosia.

Bart then vanishes without a trace. The Brother-in-Law is a fictional forty- year saga of an Italian-American family whose lives are caught up and shattered by their family association with the Mob.

www.fxbiasijr.com Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

Available in print and eBook at amazon.com, amazon. ca, amazon.co.uk, smashwords.com, barnesandnoble. com, sony.com and online Apple stores.

This is the proof of the cover for the paperback version of your book

55824-COMP Printer's Crop Marks

“T

his was absolutely a stunningly, beautiful book…It’s complex and intriguing… yet it’s real…both heartbreaking and beautiful…I literally feel every emotion Ryan and Julia felt. It tore at my heart more than once! The passion…is amazing.”

—ReviewsByMollly.com Book 2, Don’t Forget to Remember Me available now. Book 3 coming summer 2013.

Prologue available at Kahlen-Aymes.blogspot.com

Back 6"

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Couples’ Therapy: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to a Better Relationship

by Ariel S. Compton, MD

NOTE: SPINE WIDTH may change during final production of the book.

Below 108 pages or 0.216 of an inch will no longer have spine text.

Front 6"

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Studies: Joint Memories !

by Margaret Schuyler Sternbergh

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They touch on the death of a child, on the joy of love, and the pain of unrequited love, on the wonder of man, and despair at his destructiveness.

They reveal a life-long struggle for justice and goodness.

Not discovered until after her death, the poems are remarkable for their lyrical beauty and intensity of feeling.

3

They are presented here as a remembrance of her indomitable spirit.

4

9"

5

She was an independent spirit, an artist, a musician and a poet, a woman beyond her time.

6

These poems, dedicated to her beloved sister, Gertrude, were not found until after her death. They are published here now in her honor.

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ISBN: 978-1-4363-9610-3

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Ariel S. Compton, MD

ouples’ Therapy is written to help the many couples who struggle on their own to A Do-It-Yourself Guide to a Better Relationship make their relationships ªxHSLENGy396103zv*:+:!:+:!@ a success. Drawing from her training as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, her many years as a therapist, and her own personal experience as a woman, Dr. Compton takes you through a therapy hour just as if you were in a session with her.

STERNBERGH

C

Margaret Schuyler Sternbergh lived from 1897 until 1982. Her father, James Hervey Sternbergh was the founder of the Reading Bolt and Nut Works which later became Bethlehem Steel. Her mother, Mary Candace Dodds, was the oldest of twelve children born on a farm in Burlington, Vermont. Margaret, or Mardi as she was known, attended the National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C. as a teenager, and then boarding school in Weisbaden, Germany.

STUDIES: Joint Memories

CORREX 04/03/09 DESIGNER: AJomoc REVIEWER: EVillamante/ FAres

2

Couples’ Therapy

Margaret Schuyler Sternbergh wrote these poems over the course of her life. Written at a time when women were meant to be docile and submissive, they reveal a vital and passionate spirit.

1

Couples’ Therapy: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to a Better Relationship

Ariel S. Compton, MD

INITIAL 12/29/08 DESIGNER: FAres REVIEWER: GBuyco

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Available at Amazon.com.

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IMPORTANT!

Crop Marks or Book Edges

These lines are where the design will end.

Images or any design elements beyond these lines will be cropped and will not show on the final hard copy of the book.

M

argaret Schuyler Sternbergh wrote these poems over the course of her life. Written at a time when women were meant to be docile and submissive, they reveal a vital and passionate spirit. They touch on the death of a child, on the joy of love, and the pain of unrequired love, on the wonder of man, and despair at his destructiveness.

They reveal a life-long struggle for justice and goodness.

Bleed allowance must be 1/4 or .25 of an inch all around the edges.

Printer's Crop Marks

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www.poemsbymardi.com FACEBOOK LINK Available at Amazon.com and Xlibris.com.

BOOK The Disharmonic Misadventures of David Stein

by Jonathan L. Segal BUSINESS AND SPIRITUALITY

funny, far-out musical mystery.

A jazzy novel written by a jazz pianist. A bungling, neurotic jazz musician gets caught in a crazy, comic world of musical intrigue. His obsessive quest to find out the identity of the pianist on a mysterious recording leads him to outrageous gigs, a death-music cult, a murder, and a mystical battle of the bands.

“Mind Your Business is a rare book that combines eminently practical and valuable advice for would-be entrepreneurs with wise reflections that imbue the whole activity with a larger purpose. Toine Knipping is a hugely successful entrepreneur who has valuable observations not only about business but also about the business of life. Mind Your Business should not only be read by budding entrepreneurs but by everyone who is involved in business life and is struggling to give this life more meaning.”

—Sudhir Kakar, World-renowned Psychoanalyst and Author of numerous books including The Inner World

TOINE KNIPPING , founder of the Amicorp Group, has been promoting a

balanced and holistic approach to business ever since he started his first company. He believes that in a business, employees, clients, shareholders, and suppliers all need to benefit commensurately to the benefits generated by the business. In the process, the society at large should feel a positive impact as well, and the environment should not be negatively impacted.

U.S. $XX.XX

www.disharmonicmisadventures.com Available at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

Rickie Redeemed: Chronicle Of A Cure

by Trudi Knoedler

TOINE KNIPPING

A

“While you may or may not agree with everything Toine Knipping says, one thing is for sure: he is an inspiration to all entrepreneurs. Mind Your Business is a practical and necessary read for anyone who wants to succeed in business.”

—Chip Conley, Founder of Joie de Vivre Hotels and author of PEAK and Emotional Equations

MIND YOUR BUSINESS

“Toine Knipping has taken to heart the statement, ‘One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure that it is worth watching.’ In a very engaging, lucid style, he draws the reader not only into his philosophy of entrepreneurship but also explains how to live a well-rounded life. This is a book full of wisdom—highly recommended to anyone interested in acquiring a deeper understanding of the inner theatre of the entrepreneur.”

—Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries, Clinical Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change, The Raoul de Vitry d’Avaucourt Chaired Professor of Leadership Development

Mind Your Business: Thoughts for Entrepreneurs

by Toine Knipping

M

ind your Business,written

by Toine Knipping, straddles the area between spirituality and business. Learn how a business needs to service not only clients, employees, suppliers and shareholders, but also provide useful life challenges and contribute positively to the society without damaging the environment.

FACEBOOK LINK Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Chapters.Indigo.ca.

Can’t Buy Me Love

by Dan McNeil

F

n Rickie Redeemed, 50-year-old cougar and fitness expert Rickie Lennox is thrust into the next phase of her personal evolution when she is diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer and decides to re-evaluate her treatment options, her approach to the men in her life, and her innermost notions of how to fight for a cure. See excerpts at the author’s Facebook link, below.

ebruary 9, 1964: the Beatles performed on Ed Sullivan, starting the British Invasion. That night, not one major crime was committed in NYC—or was there?

Can’t Buy Me Love is a light-hearted suspense novel featuring four ex-cons, New Jersey mobsters, unexpected love, loss, and bittersweet triumph during one of the most important eras in rock & roll history.

FACEBOOK LINK www.trudiknoedler.com Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and most e-book retailers.

www.danmcneil.ca Available at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, BarnesandNoble.com and Pulsepub.net.

I

BOOK Inside the head of the author is a fantasy world of wonder where heroes and enemies collide, vampires and werewolves walk the Earth, parallel dimensions crossover and alien worlds try to overtake our planet. Some are ugly, some are beautiful, but all are courageous. Ignite your imagination using my world!

J

A Million Prompts, Characters, Plots, Subplots, TV Show Ideas, Movies and Loglines

Classmate Murders

by Bob Moats

im Richards receives an urgent email from a girlfriend he hasn’t seen in years. He doesn’t get to her in time, she’s been murdered. Jim must stop the killer before he reaches another woman, a new love in Jim’s life. First of the 27 book series.

The Hunters

by Victor Roldan

I

http://murdernovels.com Now FREE on Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Kobo, Sony and iBookstore.

Available at Amazon.com.

able, on sight, to determine what carton was good for my toys, which broke too easily (therefore not being able to “bend” at the knees or elbows) which produced capes, and other things needed for super hero appendages such as wings, weapons, etc. At first I produced heroes that already existed in then current comics of the time. But after meeting my friend Pedro Blas and after our adventures as Midnight (he) and Spy (me) my imagination grew and I created my own super heroes. First was The Green Hood, followed by The Whip, “Dictator” John, Johnny Wells

the Human Wonder, The Earth Master and many, many more. The adventures, heroes and villains became so overwhelming that I started to put “pen to paper” first in long hand, then in type, then in (Hallelujah) computer.

300 chapters in all! In 1991 I came up with the idea of a family of superheroes called The Hunters that aged in real time and re wrote the entire 300 chapters to incorporate them into the book. Then with the advent of Hollywood and the publics love for superheroes I wrote five screenplays, “The Green Hood”, “Cat Man”, Spy Master & The Guardians of The Earth”, The Alliance of Special Humans and “The Hunters 1999”. So after 40 years of writing I have decided to share my world with the world. My fantasy world of heroes, villains, gods, vampires, aliens and their adversaries, their heartaches, victories sins and defeats.

All for Love

by Ann Swann

L

iz falls in love with Quinn the moment they meet in college.

He professes to love her, too. She begins to think about the future, but his past rips them apart. What Liz does next impacts the rest of their lives, but she feels it is the only way… she does it all for love.

www.5Princebooks.com, www.annswann.blogspot.com FACEBOOK LINK Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Smashwords.

Victor M. Roldan

“Just finished Classmate Murders—well done!

Rockin’ good fun!”

—John Locke, Million Selling author.

nside the head of the author is a fantasy world of wonder where heroes and enemies collide, vampires and werewolves walk the earth, parallel dimensions crossover and alien worlds try to overtake our planet. Some are ugly, some are beautiful, but all are courageous. Ignite your imagination using my world!

A Million Prompts, Characters, Plots, Subplots, TV Show Ideas, Movies and Loglines is the product of the imagination of Victor Roldan. As a child my parents were not able to buy me the toys that I wanted and as a result I made my own toys, mainly action figures made out of carton. I called them “carton men” and as a result I was

Traces of Kara

by Melissa Foster

F

rom international bestselling and awardwinning author Melissa Foster comes her newest pulse-pounding thriller, the International Kindle Bestseller, Traces of Kara.

“Traces of Kara is psychological suspense at its best...”

—Midwest Book Review “Traces of Kara is a twisted, eerily atmospheric tale with an ending that will shock you.”

—Author Barbara Taylor Sissel www.melissafoster.com Available at Amazon.com.

BOOK Life Is Strange, Phase One: Pain and Pleasure

by Anastasia McConnel

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mericans flocked to read 50 Shades of Gray and its taboo subject of BDSM. Well now you can enjoy a reality version of bondage in Anastasia McConnel’s bibliography of her amusing escapades as a Dominatrix. Join this average woman as she tells the story of her unintentional initiation into the world of BDSM and her life today as a professional Dominatrix.

Available at All Romance and Amazon.com.

Summer’s Growth

by Tina Gayle

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orced by the family spirits to get a life, Mattie Winston has to train her replacement Amber Harrison to be in charge of the Winston estate. Mattie forms a bond with Amber, when strange accidents start happening which threaten their lives. Can they meet the challenges ahead?

Read the first chapter of my books on my website.

www.tinagayle.net Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Kobo.com, and itunes.apple.com.

The Music …

Oh, the Music

by Francesca Noumoff

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n account of Elonora, a Russian Holocaust survivor and violinist whose love for music sheltered her through hardship. “I am the witness who discovered her a decade ago after the Second World War,” says the narrator. The book offers a worthy invocation to hold fast to beauty amid travesty.

Recommended for those intrigued by short forms that border between genres, and those intrigued by Europe’s 20th-century cultural elite.

—Foreword Reviews Available at Amazon.com, Xlibris.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and BooksaMillion.com.

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Special Advertising Section For Authors Promote your book in Shelf Unbound in our new Special Advertising Section for Authors. Each issue of Shelf Unbound is distributed to more than 125,000 people in the U.S. and 57 countries around the globe. Our introductory ad rate for this section is $250/quarter page as seen here.

Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK Learning to Live with Fritz

by E. Rawlins 5 Stars: “Spirited, Philosophical and Beautiful.”

“Just as Fritz, the feisty yet irresistible Maltese puppy, drew author E. Rawlins into a pet store one day so that she would take him into her life, Fritz called to me to read his story. I couldn’t put it down. Through this fast-paced, bumpy ride we follow the life of an opera singer while Fritz amuses us and teaches important life lessons.”

—Caryn Hartglass www.learningtolivewithfritz.com Available at Amazon.com, iUniverse.com, and BarnesandNoble.com.

Never Climbed His Mountain: One Life’s Journey To the Heights and The Abyss (Second Edition)

by Julian Gladstone

A

t this moment millions of American males are publicly “underdressing” in feminine lingerie. And no, they are not gay! Join me in the disarmingly honest engrossing journey of one. Call 1-877-buybook to order. Find reviews, blogs, and more at the website below. www.neverclimbedhismountain.com Available at BuyBooksontheWeb.com, Amazon.com, BarnesnandNoble.com, and bookstores.

Skinny the Cat and the Magic of Kindness: The Cure for the Common Curmudgeon

by Donna Rawlins

C

at lover, people lover, dog lover. It is about the kindness one can give in life. The story of a scrawny rescue cat who shares a secret that can change the world: how to love with unwavering persistence. A funny, captivating tale complete with heart-warming photographs. Learn how to practice a new verb—“to skinny.” http://skinnythecat.com/ FACEBOOK LINK Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, the iTunes Store, and eBookstore.Sony.

*

Special Advertising Section For Authors Promote your book in Shelf Unbound in our new Special Advertising Section for Authors. Each issue of Shelf Unbound is distributed to more than 125,000 people in the U.S. and 57 countries around the globe. Our introductory ad rate for this section is $250/quarter page as seen here.

Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

SHELF UNBOUND’S COOL READS FOR KIDS.

New in 2013: Shelf Unbound’s Middle Shelf magazine Know any middle-schoolers who are avid readers?

This fall, we’re launching Shelf Unbound’s Middle Shelf—Cool Reads for Kids magazine. Like Shelf Unbound, Middle Shelf will feature the best of small press and indie reads, all directed to a middle-reader audience.

Like Shelf Unbound, it will include author interviews, reviews, excerpts, and photo essays. And like Shelf Unbound, subscriptions are free. To learn more and sign up for a free subscription, go to www.shelfmediagroup. com/pages/introducingmiddle-shelf The Wildwood Chronicles

by Colin Meloy, illustrated by Carson Ellis Harper Collins Publishers www.harpercollins.com

C

olin Meloy is not only the lead singer of the charttopping indie band The Decemberists. He’s also the author of the enchanting The Wildwood Chronicles series, illustrated by his wife, the award-winning illustrator Carson Ellis. In a letter to readers on his website, Meloy tells how it all began.

B

ack in the year 2000, Carson and I were living humble, impoverished lives in a warehouse in Portland, Oregon. I was think-

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ing about starting a new band; Carson was doing oil paintings and selling them at fire-sale prices. We were kindred spirits. Since we’d met in college a few years prior, we discovered that our creative sensibilities lined up perfectly. Carson had done flyers for my college band. I sometimes suggested subjects for her paintings. We were looking for some way to create a real collaboration.

We started working on a story.

It would be an illustrated novel, we decided, and it would be for kids. It would be epic in scope. A war-torn world that existed, somehow, out of time. A young protagonist, searching for a lost relative. A mechanical boy-prince, whose resurrection and subsequent death was the ultimate cause for the heartbreak of a nation and, perhaps, the madness of his bereft parents.

We called it “How Ruthie Ended the War.” I wrote 80 pages and Carson sketched many drawings. Then I started a band called the Decemberists and began touring the country and eventually the world. Carson began illustrating other authors’ books—while also providing all of the art for the band’s record covers and T-shirts and website. We spent the next ten years being too busy to think about the project and it was abandoned.

A few years ago, however, we decided that maybe the time was right to revisit the bones of that old story and see if we could breathe life back into it. We’d recently moved just outside of town to a little neighborhood notched into Forest Park, a 5,000-acre Colin and Carson talk about tract of woods on the edge of Portland. We spent a lot of time The Wildwood Chronicles wandering its many trails. The otherworldly nature of the park’s deeply forested hills—made more so because of its proximity to downtown Portland—set my imagination abuzz. What if it were its own secret country, populated by a diverse and strange people?

The books I loved growing up often used settings that were familiar to the reader, but were wonderfully distorted through the lens of the author’s imagination—a country house in England with a mysterious wardrobe, a re-imagined Florida in which the citizens of the state are born with magic talents. I wondered what sort of world could be created within the borders of this beautiful, verdant park.

So we started as any explorer should: with a map. On a large sheet of paper, Carson traced the actual boundaries of the park.

We noted where some of the park’s landmarks were: the Pittock Mansion, the Japanese Gardens, that strange old house on Macleay Trail. And then we applied the lens of our imaginations.

Wildwood is the end result of that incantation.

—Colin Meloy UNBOUND

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afterword

In the Now

by Beth Johnson

M

B

eth Johnson is the author of Coming to Your Senses. “Many people have read about the benefits of meditation and would love to try it, but feel it is beyond their capabilities. Coming to Your Senses changes that perception. It teaches a new approach to meditation that makes the task of silencing the thought and clutter in your head no longer a difficult challenge,” says Johnson.

Learn more at www.silentplace.com.

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usic, music, music. Even the word makes you think happy thoughts. Some of us love the tunes, some love the words, some like the sound of certain instruments. But have you ever stopped to think that one of the reasons you love music is that your body loves it, too. Yes, your body. Your body responds to the harmonics of the music and actually vibrates along with it. Both the tones and the rhythm encourage the body to move and it does so even in ways we cannot see.

Although the ancient ones may not have described this phenomenon in this way they knew something powerful happened when they performed their drum rituals. They added their chants and songs to the vibrations of the drums and this brought about a cleansing and rejuvenation that they deemed magical. The rituals were used to honor the spirits, prepare for war, or celebrate a new season. In each case there was a transformation that occurred from immersing themselves in the swirling vibrations.

A parallel story can be told about the Tibetan bowls or singing bowls. The bowls were used to signal the beginning of the ritual of meditation. The sound of the bowl created a magnificent vibration that not only could be heard but felt. The bowls were designed so that they would have harmonics, or overtones. With different shapes and certain materials the bowls could have multiple harmonics. The vibrations were created with a wooden striker. One soft but firm tap on the bowl and the sound would bellow forth. The followers listened to the penetrating tones and knew it was time to go within.

I should not have put this in past tense because these bowls are available today—and I use them. I use them not to start the meditations, but to facilitate the meditation. Once the bowl is struck I ask my group to feel the vibrations, listen with an interactive intent, to feel what they hear, and feel the tones in their bodies. Then I tap another bowl and yet another. While giving their keen attention to the sensations in their bodies they feel themselves began to resonate with the vibrations and easily surrender the Ego’s hold on the outer world.

You, too, can do this. You, too, can reap the wonderful sensations of being in the Now.

I

f we have some inner thoughts that are not healthy to keep around in our heads, why do we? What is the antidote to those thoughts? The antidote is being able to feel. Feel the sensations of the body—not the emotion, but the sensation.

Seems simple enough, right?

Well, it is simple in its original design, but we humans, by natural evolution, have moved our attention toward our intellect, and we revel in our thought processes. In doing so we have lost touch with our ability to recognize the sensations of our core self. We think we are feeling when we are, in fact, experiencing the effects of a Starbuck’s latte, getting cranky from lack of sleep or food, or exhibiting the side effects of an antihistamine. We have lost the art of knowing that a bodily reaction generated by outside

stimulants is not representative of our true selves. We have to find ways to move past the episodes we have labeled as “us” and into the more meaningful, meaty part of our self… the original piece of art we all have within.

I cannot count the number of people who have come to me to learn to meditate and say at the outset that they are quite certain they are a hopeless cause. They claim that the noise in their head is nonstop and it would be a miracle if it could stop for a second, much less for a full minute.

I love it when I get someone like this because it is one more time I get to see that what I teach works.

From Coming to Your Senses

by Beth Johnson, www.silentplace.com. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

UNBOUND

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poetry

Wild Wild Ways Don’t mention the old days.

You’re talking to yourself again.

Somewhere between the bar and the café you got lost at sea and drowned in your tears on the sunken dance floor in the spinning light the storm-watch night, as the band went overboard, over a face that is the absolute harbor of desire, featureless, irresistible, end of song.

You’re talking to the girl you used to be.

Saying what you needed to hear.

From This Drawn & Quartered Moon: Poems by klipschutz, Anvil Press 2013, www.anvilpress.com. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

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poetry

Phantom Noise There is this ringing hum this bullet-borne language ringing shell-fall and static this late-night ringing of threadwork and carpet ringing hiss and steam this wing-beat of rotors and tanks broken bodies ringing in steel humming these voices of dust these years ringing rifles in Babylon rifles in Sumer ringing these children their gravestones and candy their limbs gone missing their static-borne television their ringing this eardrum this rifled symphonic this ringing of midnight in gunpowder and oil this brake pad gone useless this muzzle-flash singing this threading of bullets in muscle and bone this ringing hum this ringing hum this ringing

From â&#x20AC;&#x153;Phantom Noiseâ&#x20AC;? by Brian Turner in Lit from Inside: 40 Years of Poetry from Alice James Books, edited by Anne Marie Macari and Carey Salerno, Alice James Books 2013, www.alicejamesbooks.org.

UNBOUND

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on our shelf

LOW

W

I AM A DOG

W

eighing in at 22 pages, I Am a Dog has the heft and appearance of a children’s book but reads like a lavishly illustrated meditation on friendship, life, death, and reincarnation. While the story is certainly both engaging and intriguing, the true star of this book is the artwork. The paintings that adorn the book are as colorful and imaginative as the story itself, and they bring the story to life brilliantly.

—Marc Schuster I Am a Dog by Douglass Truth, www.douglasstruth.com.

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e love the 86-volume (and counting) series of books written about music albums from 33 1/3, starting in 2003 with Warren Zane’s in-depth analysis of the Dusty Springfield album Dusty in Memphis to last year’s Fear of Music, a memoir from Jonathan Lethem recounting his teenage fascination with the Talking Heads. Bowie fans will enjoy Hugo Wilcken’s Low. Coming in October: The Dreaming (Kate Bush) by Ann Powers.

THE WATCH TOWER

T

he new series Text Classics is bringing classic out-of—Ben Minton print Australian literature to a global audience. One of their Low by Hugo Wilcken, 33 1/3, first offerings is The Watch www.333sound.com.

Tower by Elizabeth Harrower, originally published in 1966.

Harrower crafts a gripping, psychologically astute tale of two sisters abandoned by their mother in wartime Sydney whose lives are taken over by the controlling and cruel man who ostensibly is their one chance at rescue. A classic, indeed.

— Anna Nair The Watch Tower by Elizabeth Harrower, Text Classics, www.textclassics.com.au.

Find your next favorite book in SHELF UNBOUND’S

COOL READS FOR KIDS.

COMING IN OCTOBER 2013 SIGN UP FOR A FREE SUBSCRIPTION AT W W W.SHELFMEDIAGROUP.COM UNBOUND

65

small press reviews A Rough Guide to the Dark Side

by Daniel Simpson

A

reporter for The New York Times when his narrative begins, the author is not content to participate in the echo-chamber of political reportage, so he decides, along with a mysterious partner, to stage a music festival on an island in the Danube. His efforts, however, are plagued by difficulties from the outset. With no money, Simpson can’t attract big-name performers, and without big-name performers, he can’t attract the advertisers and investors who might foot the bill for his festival. Along these lines, a visit to Elie Wiesel for the sole purpose of begging for cash is among the more bizarre—and entertaining—incidents in a book that’s riddled with bizarre, entertaining, and horrifying moments.

In many ways, A Rough Guide to the Dark Side is also a delayed coming-of-age book. Throughout the proceedings, Simpson openly discusses his fears of squandering the potential of his youth, as well as his increasingly desperate attempts to numb his existential angst with a variety of drugs. Indeed, it’s this layer of the narrative that lends depth to the book and turns what might otherwise simply be the tale of a major entertainment industry debacle into an odd kind of bildungsroman: (relatively) innocent and naive boy goes to the war-torn Balkans and emerges a few steps closer to being a man.

Reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary in terms of style and Peter Hook’s The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club in terms of subject matter, A Rough Guide to the Dark Side stands on its own as a compelling critique of the media, international politics, and, ultimately, the author himself. An insightful and thoroughly enjoyable read.

—Marc Schuster, www.smallpressreviews.wordpress.com Shelf Unbound Contributing Editor Marc Schuster is the author of The Grievers, The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl, Don DeLillo, Jean Baudrillard, and the Consumer Conundrum, and, with Tom Powers, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy: The Discerning Fan’s Guide to Doctor Who. He is the editor of Small Press Reviews, and his work has appeared in numerous magazines and journals ranging from Weird Tales to Reader’s Digest. When he’s not writing, Marc teaches writing and literature courses at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania.

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a war…”

“There was always

The Last Death of Tev Chrisini Winner of the Shelf Unbound Writing Competition for Best Self-Published Book

“An exceptionally well-built world... the sheer depth was done brilliantly.”

—Fantasy Book Review UK “Jennifer Bresnick’s enchanting Tolkien-esque epic fantasy The Last Death of Tev Chrisini captivated our judges from page one and held us in thrall through its conclusion 467 pages later. We fell in love with the story and its characters and with Bresnick’s assured literary tale-spinning.”

—Margaret Brown, Shelf Unbound magazine

Available on

and

W W W. J EN N I FER B R E SN I CK .CO M UNBOUND

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REBEL REBEL

“

Why am I a punk?

Because I wasn’t anything before, except different. And now it’s like I’m different, but with a vengeance.

”

— from What We Do Is Secret by Kief Hillsbery

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june/july

contributors

MATT BELL is the author of Cataclysm Baby, a novella, and How They Were Found, a collection of fiction, as well as three chapbooks. He teaches creative writing at Northern Michigan University. He is the senior editor at Dzanc Books, where he also runs the literary magazine The Collagist.

COLIN MELOY is the singer and songwriter for the band the Decemberists.

DAVID BYRNE is well known as the musician who cofounded the group Talking Heads (1976–88) in New York.

In 2002 Talking Heads was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

ROB ROBERGE is the author of the novels Drive and More Than They Could Chew and the short story collection Working Backwards from the Worst Moment of My Life. He’s the guitarist for the seminal punk band The Urinals.

CARSON ELLIS is an illustrator in Oregon, providing art for such bestselling books as The Composer Is Dead by Lemony Snicket. Additionally, she is the illustrator-inresidence for the band The Decemberists.

TOD GOLDBERG is the author of several books, including the novel Living Dead Girl, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the story collection Other Resort Cities, and the popular Burn Notice series. He directs the Low Residency MFA program in creative writing and writing for the performing arts at the University of California, Riverside.

ANGEL IGOV is a Bulgarian writer, literary critic, and translator. He has published two collections of short stories, the first of which won the Southern Spring award for debut fiction.

GRAYDON JAMES leads the band Graydon James and the Young Novelists, which has been honored with a Galaxie Rising Star award.

AMANDA PALMER is an American performer who first rose to prominence as the lead singer, pianist, and lyricist/ composer of the duo The Dresden Dolls.

ANGELA RODEL won a PEN Translation Fund Grant in 2010 from the American PEN Foundation for Holy Light, a collection of stories by Georgi Tenev – the first time a Bulgarian work has received this award.

BRIAN TURNER’s poetry has been published in Poetry Daily, The Georgia Review and other journals, and in the Voices in Wartime Anthology published in conjunction with the feature-length documentary film of the same name.

ROBERT WEBB has contributed music features, columns and interviews to The Independent, Mojo, Time Out and BBC Radio, among others.

Shelf Unbound is published bimonthly by Shelf Media Group LLC, 3322 Greenview Drive, Garland, TX 75044.

Copyright 2013 by Shelf Media Group LLC. Subscriptions are FREE, go to www.shelfmediagroup.com to subscribe.

BETH JOHNSON has practiced meditation since 1980 and began teaching her own technique called Inner Vision Meditation in 1994. She is the author of two other books on meditation.

KLIPSCHUTZ (aka Kurt Lipschutz) is a San Franciscobased poet and songwriter and the author of Twilight of the Male Ego. MARY LAMBERT is a Seattle-based singer-songwriter and spoken word artist.

DAN MCNEIL spent much of the Eighties playing in bands around Ottawa, later writing and recording two albums of original pop rock with his cousin and songwriting partner Steve Casey.

what to read next in independent publishing