Monday November 16, 2009

Cassingle Release Week and the Days Ahead

I officially released my new e-book collection, Cassingle, today and it’s off to a great start. (Thanks to everyone who’s already downloaded it.) It’s available for free as an e-book or pdf (exclusively, for now) at Feedbooks.com. Here are the tracks, as it were, in order:

“The Guest,” which first appeared in Fence (Winter/Spring 2007)

“July 4: Easter,” which appeared in the debut issue of Twelve Stories

“Nose,” which first appeared in Bridge: Stories and Ideas (Spring/Summer 2001)

“The Adventures of Bad Badger”—my first published story—which appeared in McSweeney’s #3 (1999)

“The Arab Bank, ” which I serialized earlier this year during the Cannes Film Festival

I’ll be writing more about each of these as Cassingle Release Week continues, and I have lots of interesting stuff planned. In addition to the stories behind the stories, I’ll be unveiling an audio version of “Nose” in collaboration with my friend James’ netlabel Workbench Recordings and an illustration of the imaginary character Bad Badger that my friend Charlotte drew when “The Adventures of Bad Badger” first appeared. Also, if you’ve got a Google Wave account and you haven’t been able to figure out what the hell to do with it, come hang out in the Cassingle Release Week wave and chat about fiction, digital publishing, or whatever.

On the topic of digital publishing—or whatever you’d like to call it—I learned something very important about it this spring when I serialized “The Arab Bank,” and that’s that digital publishing is more fun than traditional publishing. It’s more exciting, immediate, social, and rewarding. Lucrative? I leave that to those whose livelihoods depend on it. (Although from my point of view—I have made less than $200 on fiction in the last ten years—it could hardly be less lucrative than traditional publishing.) But I like it, and I’m going to keep doing it, hopefully by executing two projects a year. “The Arab Bank” was the first, this is the second, and I’ve got some ideas rolling around for the spring. Hope you like what’s happened so far. Stay tuned.

Tomorrow: A little “Nose” music and what happens when the sizzle becomes the steak?