Jackie Corley Writer, indie publisher, vagabond

Shome Dasgupta wrote an incredibly kind review about The Suburban Swindle for the footnote.

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Pittsburgh turned out to be a far more vibrant town than I had expected. The drive there and back was kind of hell, if hell was a really, really long turnpike. The central Pa. landscape was pretty damn mountainous and beautiful. Should have brought a camera. I got exhausted driving back Thursday morning and pulled into a rest stop to take a nap in the back of my car. The backseat of my hatchback Yaris was surprisingly roomy and comfortable. I can’t remember the last time I fell asleep that quickly in a car.

Thanks so much for the folks who turned out in the cold for the Pittsburgh reading. And thanks to Savannah Schroll Guz and her husband, Michael, for being so incredibly hospitable.

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Nick Antosca’s MIDNIGHT PICNIC is now available in Kindle edition.

I want to make it available for iPhones and iPod touches but I haven’t found an eBook generating software that produces a good-looking product. (Amazon makes it pretty easy to format books on their site for Kindle, which is helpful.) Anyone have any advice for producing eBooks to sell on iPods?

Posted under The Suburban Swindle

Copies of MIDNIGHT PICNIC have arrived!

To celebrate, I offered two copies to <HTMLGIANT> for contest purposes. Nick came up with this most excellent contest question:

What is the way you would least like to die?

Head over to <HTMLGIANT> and put in your best death wish.

Better hurry, though. The competition is heating up and the contest ends Monday night.

Posted under Books, Word Riot

I start Bennington’s MFA program in January. I have to get 25 pages into them by Dec. 1 for workshopping. It’s going well. I’m going to send a novel excerpt, which is probably dumb, but all the promoting for The Suburban Swindle has left me drained and wanting to back off short stories for awhile. I kind of disappear into a novel when I’m in that writing headspace. I like that. I know I’m getting into the right tempo when I start forgetting whether or not an event happened in real life or in the book I’m working on. Those kind of non-memory memories are wonderfully redeeming. If I can trick myself, maybe I can trick y’all.

I haven’t done a workshop session since college and never on any substantial work. Anybody want to scare me with workshopping horror stories or links to horror stories? Just trying to expel the demons.

Oh, and Word Riot Press got name-checked in GalleyCat for picking up Nick Antosca’s Midnight Picnic. I keep wanting to call it Midnight Panic for some reason. I don’t know why. At least one person found Word Riot by googling “Nick Antosca” and “Midnight Panic” so I’m not alone.

Posted under Blogging, Books, The Suburban Swindle, Word Riot, Writing

We’ve made a very special announcement today. You can pre-order Midnight Picnic at Word Riot. And here’s the press release:

Middletown, NJ — Punk rock-spirited independent publisher Word Riot Press will release Nick Antosca’s second novel Midnight Picnic on Dec. 15.

Midnight Picnic was slated to be released by Impetus Press on Oct. 31. The book’s publication was put on hold when Impetus Press publishers Willy Blackmore and Jennifer Banash announced the dissolution of the company due to financial pressures. Shortly afterward, Impetus Press, Word Riot Press and Antosca began discussions about the novel’s future.

“Willy Blackmore and Jennifer Banash’s dedication to Impetus authors is remarkable,” Word Riot Press publisher Jackie Corley said. “When Willy and Jennifer learned of Word Riot Press’ interest in Midnight Picnic, they worked tirelessly to make a deal happen.

“I’m pleased and impressed by how fast Word Riot stepped up,” Antosca said. “Jackie didn’t hesitate, and I think it’s a wonderful thing for independent literature that she runs her press so fearlessly. It’s terrific that she’s going to publish Midnight Picnic.”

An eerie story about the nature of death, Midnight Picnic is a non-traditional ghost story in which a vengeful child searches for his murderer on the deserted roads of the American countryside, drifting in and out of the afterlife.

“If there’s a real Hell out there in the American heartland, and real ghosts, I suspect Nick Antosca has seen them. Midnight Picnic reinvents the ghost story for our unsettled times—it’s a riveting and terrifying 21st Century Book of the Dead that’s one of the most frightening novels I’ve read in years,” said Elizabeth Hand, author of Generation Loss, Mortal Love, and Winterlong.

Jami Attenberg, author of The Kept Man, has called Midnight Picnic “a thrilling follow-up to his contemplative debut, Fires. His imagination makes an astonishing show in this macabre, bizarre and witty story of ghosts and revenge. Impossible to put down until the extremely satisfying end, Midnight Picnic conjures up the mounting tension of the finest Bradbury story.”

John Haskell, author of American Purgatorio and I Am Not Jackson Pollock, concurred with Hand and Attenberg’s assessment of Antosca’s uncanny ability to unearth the darker elements of human nature: “Beneath the skin of emotion there are muscles and nerves, and that’s where Antosca takes us.”

Called a “page-turner” and “a demented little novel” by Publishers Weekly, Midnight Picnic will be at home in Word Riot Press’ diverse stable of literary and experimental works of fiction.

“Nick’s forceful authorial voice has made him a young writer to watch. I’m elated to have Nick as part of the Word Riot Press family,” Corley said.

Posted under Books, Word Riot