Notable Stories + New Shits

Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2007 are now up. Congrats to Andrea Fitzpatrick, whose story 'DOLLFACE' from Lamination Colony made the list. Other friends including Shane Jones, Andrew Ervin, Lee Klein, Daniel Spinks, Nick Antosca, Corey Mesler, Jimmy Chen and Matt Bell were in the house, as was I for 'TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME'. Notable. Or something.

I am often confused how the journal of the year at Million Writers is one I have never heard of, and not heard of most any of the authors they have published. Is that a good thing? I think I pay pretty good attention.

Editing novel is about 1/3rd through. Hope to finish 1/3rd tonight into tomorrow. A first published piece of the novel will be at WIGLEAF next week or something. Also, Wigleaf is about to start running their own version of the Notable Stories of 2007, though this focusing on work less than 1000 words. I like this idea.

Read Tao Lin's new book COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY on Sunday evening. This is a whole other blog post, which I will write later this week, but let's just say that the book has a kind of presence reminiscent of the monolith in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, only if that monolith were made out of neutral facial expressions and lined in soft fake black fur from a fake marmot who curls around you in the evening in place of who might have been there once before or not at all.

Now reading Joy Williams's rereleased book THE CHANGELING from Fairy Tale Review Press (the presence of which as a press overall I am very stoked about), which is already becoming unlike most any other books. More on that later also.

One final bit of related news: Lamination Colony will be releasing its next eBook from an author who also has a novel forthcoming from Fairy Tale Review press. It is a backfucker of an eBook. I will tell you later. Other ebooks pending still consideration promise. I am up to my neck.

ALSO: I am selling a bunch of LPs and a pedal on ebay.

INLAND EMPIRE dream

In hotel in Boston. Corner of room has huge long window that fits down both walls. In my sleep I saw a missing scene from INLAND EMPIRE playing through the windows. It was a panning shot across a strip of land from far away on which long minimal houses were sitting with long paned windows I could see into. could see deep into the houses. Deep focus. Through the windows in some rooms there were people laying naked passed out on the bed at strange angles. The rooms were dark and sparse and many other rooms were empty. There was no sound. The panning shot kept moving over the houses. There were other short frames of things I can't remember. In my sleeping after I saw the scene I could not stop myself from shitting. Shit was falling out of me. I was trying to keep from getting myself all over the floor in the hotel room. Something else was going on at the window. In not sleeping someone came into the room as I was sleepshitting and I came out of sleeping as I began to notice something else.

AVERY ANTHOLOGY 3

I have a story in AVERY 3. There are five stories in the issue. You can now preorder the issue from their site and read the first few graphs of my story and the 4 others by Sherrill Alesiak, Malcolm Dixon, Tom Whalen and Rob Roensch.

My story is from SCORCH ATLAS.

The cover is bitchin.



I have both of the other issues of Avery and have read every story in both. I like the stories they put together.

Please preorder Avery and support this excellent young magazine.

Final: 10 days 39k+ words

Day 10 @ 9:38 pm finished draft 1 of book. There are 39281 words. There will likely be another 500-800 in an appendix that I will create in the next week, and maybe also a second appendix that I have not fully gotten a hold of yet. I still have about a page of notes to apply and things to add or rearrange and edit.

I feel 'cleared' somewhat. I feel a lot better than I did 10 days ago when I started the book. I think I worked 8-10 hours a day nonstop at desk for 8 out of the 10 days and 5 hours on the other two. I feel exhausted but good.

Now I have to figure out what I want to 'do' with it.

I will think about this later.

Here is a pretty awesome article on the house in LOST HIGHWAY and Euripedes 'Medea', which actually jarred a lot of my thinking during the middle part of the novel, and is also where I stole the title I am still trying to convince myself to run with: THE ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT IS COMPLETELY UNABLE TO BE COMMUNICATED.

I will probably, though, use: WHERE AM I WHERE HAVE I BEEN WHERE ARE YOU

I am going to find a way to get David Lynch to blurb this book.

I will do it.

I will do it.

I will corner the David Lynch literary market.

Big fuckin titties.

I am going to stop talking about that man.

I also just wrapped up an interview with J'Lyn Chapman, who, damn, is interesting and know how to talk about her work. That will be forthcoming soon. I'm digging for new venues that do good literary interviews. It seems like so few people do those anymore. Any suggestions?

Day 9:B

7pm on Thursday, May 22 @ 1818 Gallery at 1818 E Lafayette Ave in *Baltimore* I will be reading at the first ever celebration of the PDF Chapbook series with Michael Kimball, Chris Toll & Daniel Trask. Come.

6:00 pm yesterday there were 34689 words. Spent most of day moving, though now a part three added. Part three will be the final part. Plan to finish today and tomorrow in long sits.

Want to call novel now: THE ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT IS COMPLETELY UNABLE TO BE COMMUNICATED, which I stole.

Is that title good ridiculous or bad ridiculous. Think more later.

Watched FUNNY GAMES again last night, original version. Also watched the CRUMB documentary again.



I feel better now with all my shit out of my old place and reconstruction underway but I feel like I am living inside several boxes inside several boxes.

Blurbs & Blabs + Day 8 sidenote

BLAKE BUTLER ON MIKE YOUNG: "Mike Young's poetic teetaw caused a cosmic enjambment in my scrote, which once infected, defined a nation, and that nation was neon purple & made of email, and I left that nation with Mike Young's mother's mother, and Mike Young's mother's mother was the dude who scripted most of Legend of Zelda II."

MIKE YOUNG ON BLAKE BUTLER: "Blake Butler's synthesis of Lynchian hyperbole and didactic Wu-Tang skank tropes (in the Lacanian mode) causes readers to question anew our semiotic Dairy Queen panopticon. What Roland Barthes called "the grain of the voice" and Jeff Gordon called "I could've won if the other cars had just gotten out of my way" is embodied in Butler's spry, wedgie-tight narratives of American betrayal and disillusioned shopping cart races. Coming strong as dinosaur's breath from the Fugitive poet tradition, think of Butler as a modern day John Crowe Ransom with buck teeth, a penchant for "iced coffee" (in the Derridian sense of the phrase, more than a surface-level thirstiness and rather a concertedly diachronic poop-under-the-bridge aporia), and a finger up yo dirty brain nigguh."

FENCE nominated me for Best New Poets. They are allowed 2 nominations. That made me glow. Beyond an honor coming from such folks. TY, editors. Hot fuck action maximum. Titty licker.

Crunchy sumppump dicktease googoo.

Today is very good if filled with humming if a little rough around the edges if making me shake.

Still working on NOVEL for today. Results to post. (Late night update: There are now 33113 words. Figuring I will be done now around 40k.)

Did you know these things about LOST HIGHWAY:

- The Mystery Man never blinks during the entire film.
- In a recent interview, director Lynch confessed that Lost Highway and Twin Peaks take place in the same world.
- According to Lynch, the first scene in the film is based upon an incident which occurred in his own life. He says that early one morning, his intercom buzzed, and when he answered it a voice he didn't recognize said, "Dick Laurant is dead." However, by the time he got to the front of the house to look out the window, there was no-one outside.



Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon! Pretty soon!

Day 7: Beirueareadlij

Day 7 @ 7:24pm there are 28627 words. I feel slightly better than yesterday as the energy of PART TWO is rather different from the first and is birthing babies in my sternum or something. I realized last night I haven't remembered any dreams since I started this which is unusual for me and a strange kind of silence.

This book is very 'bleak,' probably in parts more bleak and evil than anything I have written, but also I think funny. My funny, which is not always others' funny.

I feel like I am writing the closest thing to a Lynchian novel that I've seen. I feel like I am getting out all the 'evil' in me in this writing and when it is done (hopefully by Friday, first draft anyway) I will be expunged and good things are going to happen. I have a lot of evil to get out.

Today I want to call the novel: I AM THE ONLY BLACK GOD, which is an ODB lyric.

I tend to like to shoot myself in the foot, at least in the eyes of industry-types, though I think a lot of people would buy I AM THE ONLY BLACK GOD with a picture of an enormous antbed inside a living room or a child covered in mold on the cover.

I would buy the fuck out of that.

I would also buy a book with this cover:



No title. The picture is the title.

No matter what else I say in the future, the title of my novel is that picture forever.

Other things are about to happen.

My stuff is being packed and moved for me by some company the HOA hired. I was not allowed to pack or move my own stuff because they had a contract. They said I could come watch them pack my stuff. Tuesday I get to go watch them put it on a truck. I can choose between them putting it in a cubicle where I have 5 days to get it out or I can bring a truck for them to put it on and take it somewhere myself. Somebody from FEMA wants to inspect the place for the 3rd time now. They are waiting to see something in the walls unfold. They are waiting for me burst.

Submit to

NO COLONY.

Day 6: P

Most of Saturday off. Wrote a little, edited a little. There are 24359 words. I feel sick. Something got inside me. Something. Tomorrow will wake up ready regardless of feel.

I'm not really aware of half of what I'm saying.

To those who have submitted Lamination Colony eBooks: I am behind on these and it might be a minute. I will read them all eventually without question, just please be patient. I will probably do next book as the summer is getting hottest. I've peeked at some. Many excellences. I am going to have to be decisive.

The story LYNETTE, YOUR UNIQUENESS in KISSED BY by Alexandra Chasin is one of the coolest stories I've read in a while.

Random sentence from today:

Across the street, the enormous box in the neighbor’s yard was changing shape.

Day 5: Bldsirue

Do a read on this story from Barrelhouse by Matt Bell. It fuses cultural object with mysticism in a new way, which is the kind of writing I've been most interested in lately. Excellent story. Matt's story from Caketrain 4 (I think it was 4) is also supremely killer.

Ryan Call sent me KISSED BY by Alexandra Chasin, which seems to have come like a key into a room at a perfect time in this time of Massive Heat.

At 4:50 pm today there are 22,698 words. Didn't crunch as many numbers today due to last night in the bath I figured out something important about the novel and its beginning and went back to adjust some things about the beginning and add on in certain places and delete/reword a couple key graphs. Then and this afternoon I finished what is now PART ONE of the novel. I will take a short breath tonight and maybe into tomorrow and then return at the door to PART TWO. There will be two parts and a brief introduction and maybe an appendix.

Sharon Tate and Krissy Taylor are in the book now. As is a girl who can see through other people's computer screens from her computer. As is a woman named Ribbit, Shawna, Santa, Ricky, Rick, Sandwich or Blake.

** Please read

PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE.

I would like that. It is different than most things I have written but I think in several ways connected to novel.

I am very fucking tired.

My ebook/chapbook is now online:

PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE.

You will be able to buy printed versions of the chapbook for $4 in the near future. Supposedly they look really nice.

The easiest way to read this on ISSUU is there's a little button on the screen when you first go there with a double arrow at a 45 degree angle. That pops the book out to full screen mode and makes it easier to zoom rather than dragging it around as it is in default.

Massive thanks to Adam Robinson @ Publishing Genius for all his hard work designing and tasteful edits and just being a bitchin dude in general.

Thanks to Heather for causing me the title and for being an awesome friend and person and girlfriend during these weird times.

The book has a little blurb by Josh Maday. Josh Maday wrote several blurbs. Here are some of the others:


"PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE by Blake Butler is waking life broken into pieces and reassembled in a dream, an assemblage of tectonic plates with words and sentences smashing into each other, rubbing in a sexual way, and copulating with the reader’s mind. The aggregate of words and sentences vibrates at 8.6 on the Richter scale. This ebook is a seismic wave radiated by the earthquake that is Blake Butler."


"PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE by Blake Butler:

grows inside your head.

fucks with fine motors skills.

is best commented on by itself.

is the leading cause of sexual pleasure.

produces a feeling like jalapeño eye drops.

creates and discloses waking life in the dream.

does with words what David Lynch does with film.

catches the eye like those pointy old fashioned breasts.

crawls inside the gut, circles around before lying down.

taps your mind and soul and lingers long after it has left.

takes your mother on a date and leaves her on the porch.

leaves you alongside the road, but it always comes back.

moves into and out of and back into your unconscious.

throws you off balance like a low-swinging belly.

wields language in ways that provoke envy.

leaves imperceptible scars on the eyes.

may cause swelling, bleeding, joy.

Results may vary.

Unlikely."


"This ebook made me feel excited, sad, and other feelings named by inadequate words. When I came to the end I wanted it to go on, probably forever. Blake Butler is an earthquake. I enjoyed PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE. It is not allowed to say it is good, but I still think it is good."


"This blurb is regarding PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE by Blake Butler, Esq., Earthquake, Etc. PIATBVL features a narrator who I would have liked to talk forever, a dog with a festering tumor, and a girl named Emily who is a spambot. Blake Butler shatters waking life and reassembles the pieces into a dream; or he shatters a dream and reassembles it in waking life. The disjointed narrative slides seamlessly along in this waking dream, touching tendrils of happy, funny, sad, and lonely. Blake Butler writes out of a chocolate energy. His words rub together in provocative ways and come together like Diet Coke and Mentos."


"This ebook by Blake Butler, it made me feel like I had soaked my contact lenses in jalapeno juice. I felt like I had sprayed twelve bottles of Afrin up my nostrils. My hair felt shiny and powerful. My teeth felt scared and alone. My fingernails felt hard and tremendous. This ebook by Blake Butler wanted me to eat it. I would eat this ebook if I found it on my plate in a restaurant. The words, they got inside me, and they grew. I liked PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE by Blake Butler very much. I liked it in a superlative way. The language in PIATBVL is chow mein. The sentences are teeth. I enjoyed living in this waking dream. It was strange, comforting, foreign, and familiar like a David Lynch film. I squirmed with anxiety and I liked it."


"PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE took me by the nose, held a gleaming straight razor to my neck, and looked me in the eye. When I walked away my neck was clean and my beard meticulously groomed. Inside, though, I was hemorrhaging."


Here are more blurbs other people wrote:


PRATHNA LOR: "reading this book made me feel itchy"


KEN BAUMANN: "PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE made me physically shake at times. I never felt scared, though. Something written in the book would seem too familiar, and I would shake. This happened many times. I really like this book."


BRADLEY SANDS: "Everybody likes stories about a boy and his dog, a girl who may only exist within the imagination of an email spammer, and a house with secret rooms that may not be real. I would doubt the existence of anyone who did not like these things. Therefore, I doubt there is anyone alive who would not like Blake Butler's Pretend I Am There But Very Little."


SHANE JONES: "PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE has everything I like in a story. It's funny, it's strange, the language snaps. It also has something that is hard to fit into a blurb and that I have found with most of Blake Butler's writing in that it fucks you up to a certain extent. I like this feeling very much and I'm thankful that Blake Butler has written this lovely little ebook."

That's a lot of words. Shit.

Thanks to everyone and thanks for reading the ebook when you can.

Day 4: Anthill

9:31 pm there are 20,042 words spread over 72 pages and I am beginning to feel destroyed. I drank 7-8 cups of black coffee and my head is throbbing and my body is sore and I am beginning to think inside the book and the book is starting to feel evil, both in the writing and what is written, and what is not written but still there. I wrote all day today and did not get around to any of the ideas I have appended to the bottom of the MS. The book I think for now is going to be called WHERE AM I WHERE HAVE I BEEN WHERE ARE YOU. In the book now there is a massive anthill. I did not watch anything last night or watch or reading anything today. I have now lost 6 pounds and run 10 miles. I did not really expect to find myself this absorbed in this project but now I am and now I am and now it's time to take a bath.

Announcing NO COLONY

NO COLONY

A new perfect-bound print fiction journal collaboration
between No Posit and Lamination Colony.

First issue to be released Sept 2008.

Submissions are now open.

Bring your shit.

Day 3: BUBBERESE

Day 3 @ 9:50 PM there are 15,676 words. I am now saving the document with the name WHICH HOUSE IS OURS?, which is one of 4 working titles, none of which will likely get used. The other working titles are

WHERE AM I WHERE HAVE I BEEN WHERE ARE YOU

and

SOMEONE CAME INTO THE HOUSE LAST NIGHT

and

KNOCK ONCE IF YOU ARE THERE.

Yeah okay. Got a late start today after getting up at 9:45 to meet with FEMA again, as there are more things I can apply for and now that I am going to be out of my place another 2-3 months other options have opened. Spent a long time trying to find a specific hall leading to a specific elevator to a specific tiny portion of a large room where I met with a man who refused to let me fill out my application paper because there was no one there and he was bored. He wrote very slow and asked for information I have given FEMA 3-4 times at this point. Whichever. I will feel blessed if something comes of it.

Last night girlfriend and I watched THE BIRDS, which I hadn't seen since I was little at a friend's birthday party. It was much different than I remembered. I like the ending though. The ending made me think about other endings to other things.

Finished reading A NEW QUARANTINE WILL TAKE MY PLACE and started reading ACTUAL AIR by David Berman which was recommended to me a while ago.

Strong news and motions underlying in several ways have me feeling very positive about things.

This 10-15 day novel may end up being much longer than my original aim of 30,000 words as on day 3 I'm already past the halfway mark on that number and the short list of notes I have for things forthcoming keeps getting longer and longer and longer and most of what I've written to this point is stripped and could be expanded with a lot of weird meat.

There is a couple in the book with a very thin man and a woman wearing a veil.

William Gass's THE TUNNEL is in the book, as is a magazine called ENORMOUS WOMEN.

As is Braille wallpaper and a very long hallway.

ENORMOUS WOMEN might be a good title.

I also thought about THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK PART 2, though Harmony Korine already made a short film with that title. MEIN KAMPF 2?

Couldn't sleep to save my life last night. Two nights in a row now. Massive insomnia return since I started this project. I've also lost 4 pounds.

Listened to IT TAKES A MILLION YEARS TO BECOME DIAMONDS SO LET'S JUST BURN LIKE COAL UNTIL THE SKY'S BLACK by Storm & Stress over and over for about an hour today while writing. It's hard to write to most music. That song is on the Lamination Colony mix that you can download from the site.

I am going to watch TOP CHEF and then keep writing or pass out.

Day 2 etc.

Today is the second day of my 10-15 day novel. Today at 6:11 PM I have 10,282 words. I started today at 11:00 and took a break to go running again. I drank a whole pot of coffee and ate some dried cranberries and bran cookies and a couple handfuls of oatmeal cereal. I am hungry now and feel very buzzed out. I am going to go eat four turkey dogs with a little Mexican cheese and hot sauce and then I may either stop for the day or keep going. I wrote more today in less time than yesterday.

This novel is beginning to take form. I feel energized writing each sentence. I do not feel like I am writing shit I will have to delete. I am finding things out while I am writing.

The novel is about a house. There is a family in the house and none of them know what is going on. The mother mows the lawn over and over again. The family members get lost in the house. The 8 year old son has a red cell phone that receives phone calls. The mailbox fills up with things and receives packages.

I think the house may be the same house as in the beginning of LOST HIGHWAY.

Last night I watched INLAND EMPIRE until the part where Laura Dern goes into the room full of women and they talk to her and then she goes through the window to Poland.

When she went to Poland I turned the movie off and tried to go to sleep but couldn't for several hours.

I am reading Johannes Goransson's A NEW QUARANTINE WILL TAKE MY PLACE. I like it a lot.

I think this novel is also connected to Ol Dirty Bastard's NIGGA PLEASE. I think NIGGA PLEASE was recorded in a very short time also.

The working title for NIGGA PLEASE was BLACK MAN IS GOD, THE WHITE MAN IS THE DEVIL.

I wish I could name my novel that.

People are very sensitive.

My ebook/chapbook PRETEND I AM THERE BUT VERY LITTLE will be released this Friday. It looks really nice, I am very happy with it. Adam Robinson is doing some really awesome things with Publishing Genius which you can read about on his blog.

I will post links to it when it goes up and I think you will be able to order print copies for $4 or there will be an option to print them yourself. It will also feature original artwork by Lauren Bender.

There are other things coming up to talk about.