Replacements Anthology - Title & Submission Details

By Jay Stringer

A couple weeks ago I started blabbing about an anthology of crime stories inspired by the music of The Replacements.

Best band on earth, yadda yadda, go back and read what I had to say if you need to know why I love 'em so much.  I'll quote this bit, though;

In industry terms, The Replacements failed. They didn't get the big hit. They didn't sell a bajillion records. They didn't care if the door opened when they threw themselves at it, as long as it rattled. They sang about the disaffected and the lonely. About losers and rebels. They failed by insisting on being themselves to the bitter end, and is there anything better than that? They just played, drank, laughed, toured and set about waiting to be forgotten.

That last line is important. It takes a lyric from the song Bastards Of Young, and I loved the line so much that I'm making it the title.

Waiting To Be Forgotten: Stories of Crime and Heartbreak inspired by The Replacements.

So what am I looking for in the stories? Well, I don't really want to tell you what the band and their music should mean to you. I'm not telling writers what inspiration they should take. I want stories with heart, with hopes and failures, with crimes and passions and challenges and people who said 'I Will Dare,' regardless of whether they meant it or succeeded. The quote above shows the spirit that I love about the band, and the title gives an idea of where the stories should be headed, but the route ahead is wide open for each writer to chart their own path.

Word count? No minimum. Maximum around three thousand words. 

Who can submit stories? Well, this is where you come in. It wouldn't really be honouring the spirit and legacy of The 'Mats if I started laying down too many rules. I want to see a wide variety of people. Over the past two weeks I've already spoken with writers and artists who want in, and they've not all been crime writers. The three rules are; you've got to be serious about it, you've got to be able to finish what you start, and, you've got to be willing to dare. 

I want to hear from you. Here, facebook, twitter, even my email address eejutATmac.com. Seek me out, grab me, ask which song titles are available. Fifteen have been taken so far, and not necessarily the ones you'd think. 

And do it soon. We're going to work with writers over deadlines for the stories -we're going to play fair and give people as much time as we can- but I need to hear from you within the next two weeks to know that you're in, and which title you're after. 

Ready...Set....GO. 

The Death of the Detective by Mark Smith

A few years ago I wrote that The Death of the Detective is "one of the great lost novels of any genre" and that "it’s the kind of book you long to find, then treasure when you do, mixing rhapsodic and original prose to create an eloquent and lyrical crime epic, as if Thomas Wolfe had written a crime novel". 

The Death of the Detective by Mark Smith is out in a reasonably priced e-book today from Brash Books.

You know you love a book when you own multiple editions

This is the kind of large, messy, imperfect, swing-for-the-fences type book you don't see too often in crime fiction. And I love it. It doesn't settle with being only one thing, it wants to be everything.

Smith crams the book's 600 oversized pages with description and digression, and he drags dozens of characters through multiple overlapping plots. I can't deny that The Death of the Detective could have used some editing: some portions drag, some characters never amount to much, and some scenes are repetitive. But Smith's ambition is so vast, and the tapestry he weaves so detailed and compelling, that I'm willing to forgive him the occasional lapse. 

Praise (taken from the Brash site and earlier editions of the book):

It’s the novelistic counterpart to Sandburg’s “Chicago”: 

The Death of the Detective  is one of my very favorite “lost” 20th-century American classics, an encyclopedic urban crime panorama that embraces both vernacular and highbrow dialects, tragedy, melodrama and farce, putting it in the very exclusive company of Thomas Berger, Thomas Pynchon, and The Wire. -- Jonathan Lethem

"Remarkable for both its ambition and its accomplishment, [it] reads as though it were written by a resurrected Charles Dickens, one chilled by a hundred years of graveyard brooding. . .every page is a pleasure to read." -- New York Times

"A masterpiece, one of the best books of its decade . . . raises Dicken's benign ghost to remind us again that we're all connected, all both innocent and guilty." -- Kirkus Reviews

"Mark Smith is a writer who, like Thomas Wolfe, has a gift: the magical ability to transmute familiar and trivial elements of live into images of distinction, rarity and fascination" -- Philadelphia Bulletin

"A deeply disturbing, intriguing, and involving novel that attempts something all-encompassing and damn well pulls it off...a meticulously well-layered, moment-by-moment account of madness, murder, the Mafia and guilt" -- Publisher Weekly

"As long and ambitious as Gravity's Rainbow, its underworld is as much Pluto's as Chicago's and the total experience is as a riveting as that of being lost with a guttering candle in a booming maze of sewers" -- The Observer (London)

"A brilliant and arresting novel which so far transcends the detective genre that inspired it as to stand in a category of its own." -- Arkansas Gazette

"The characterization and plot flows together, like rivulets that feed a coursing river, in such a way as to give the novel a momentum and magnetism of scope, and put it beyond the category of mere thriller." -- The News and Observer (Raliegh, NC)

"A novel of great skill and brooding intensity... a work of patient and unvarnished realism...exceptional." -- Newsday

"A piece of fiction that is at once terrifying and compassionate, brutal and brilliantly written, and overwhelming in its impact. It may just be the shortest 600 page book in contemporary American literature." -- Cleveland Press

"One of the most significant American novels in recent years...Bleak House is the only book I can think of that even faintly resembles. A novel I cannot get out of my mind." -- Roanoke News

"Precise, controlled, and often brillant." -- San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle

"In its sustained vitality, power and scale, it is unlke any other fiction I have read....A complex and unforgettable novel."Times Literary Supplement

"The imagination churns as in Dickens, Dostoievsky; bottomless. It’s a good novel. Insane, terrible, but very, very good" -- John Gardner

"Mark Smith's novel is beautiful, macabre, nauseating, enormous, frightening, and thoroughly fascinating" -- Book Review Digest

"Harrowing...seething...it throbs with powerfully rendered life...that you won't get away from for days after you've finished reading it." -- Book Week

"Powerful...chilling...brilliant." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"Powerful...with this one enormous book, Mark Smith has emerged as one of the most ambitious, original, and thought-provoking novelists writing today...It is not only about Chicago, it is Chicago." -- Chicago Daily News

"Bizarre...ingenious...a tour de force...a bloodbath with the most bizarre trappings of the Gothic, a massacre of people and animals, a slaughter of innocents. A trip through an urban jungle wilderness." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer

"It's pages fairly explode...terrifying and compassionate, brutal and brilliantly written...An intricate, textured, nightmarish and unspeakably macabre study of guilt and destruction, told in terms of brilliant melodrama." -- Cleveland Press

Living as a "Kept" Woman*

by Kristi Belcamino

*Before you gag on the title to this post, read on.

Being a published author is a dream come true. No doubt about it.

I am grateful every day that there are people NOT RELATED TO ME who are reading and enjoying my books.

It is mind blowing.

But the truth needs to be told. Six months into being a debut author—and with my third book coming out in a few months—the reality is I am not anywhere close to making a living.

The good news is I already knew this going in.

From everything I've read, an author shouldn't even consider counting on royalties or advances to survive until they've published at least five books.

And from what I hear that isn't even a guarantee, it just makes it more likely.

I know that I'm extremely privileged to be able to spend four hours every day writing my novels without having to rush to a day job. I get it. I don't take a second of it for granted. I very rarely squander my "sacred" writing time because I know it is a gift.

And I know I'm very fortunate to have a husband who believes in me and encourages me to write instead of seeking some job where I will most likely not even make enough to pay for the kids to be in daycare while I work.

This subject has come up a lot in my world this week, including this Salon article and this article.

For me, this subject is also tied in with people who quit their day jobs to be writers.  Maybe because I have such mixed feelings when I hear someone has quit their day job before their first novel is published. On the one hand, I think, Uh oh. And on the other hand, I feel guilty because how can I judge someone who doesn't have the luxury of time I have to write?

But, wow, what a gamble. I hope that for some of them it pays off, but it seems to me that is a heck of a lot of pressure to put on oneself — sink or swim, in fact.

Consider this:

Several friends of mine who are unbelievably inspirational talk about their writing career as a way to survive retirement.

For instance, Peg Valenti Cochran is one of the hardest working writers I know. She has two agents and several books out. Here is what she said on Facebook:

"...my books will go toward my retirement income. I have 9 books out and no way I could support myself unless I wanted to live in a garret, have no health insurance and dumpster dive for food."

Another hardworking writer friend, Kathleen Prater Taylor, says this:

"13 books and I'm not even close to supporting myself. Sigh. My first knitting book earned more than all 6 of the mysteries put together, and still, it's not a living."

I hear you.

And here is where you can stop reading if you don't want to hear me justify having so much time to write:

While I don't work outside the home, I'm also in charge of every blasted thing within our home and family of four. I'm shopping for food and other necessities, I'm making every meal, I'm the accountant and bookkeeper, I'm chauffeuring the children to doctor's appointments and sports and piano and choir. I'm doing a crappy job keeping the house somewhat clean. And I'm not complaining. This is the part I play in our family while my husband's role is bringing in the paycheck that pays our bills and provides our health insurance.

As a feminist who imagined being a newspaper reporter until she died, it is almost difficult and a bit embarrassing to write about my "housewife" duties, but it is important to point them out. Why? In all honesty, it is because I feel guilty that I don't work that 40-hour job. Let me clarify, I believe that my job as a mother is extremely important and I don't want to make this a post about stay-at-home moms versus working mothers. But the truth is I feel guilty that I am able to choose how to spend my days.

(And being a "kept" writer is not just for women. Brad Parks tells about how his wife believed in his writing enough for him to quit his reporting job and pursue his writing career.) And it's no coincidence that Brad coined the phrase "Church of One Thousand Words" which states if you write a thousand words a day five days a week, you can write a book in three to four months.

I feel like I need to justify not working and so yes, I am being honest about what I do and how I spend my time so people don't think I'm a dilettante, sitting around pondering a blank page for eight hours a day and then writing a perfect sentence when the inspiration strikes.

There is no such thing as waiting for inspiration to strike in my life. Writing is work.

My guilt about being able to do this every day means I don't fuck around. I worship at the Church of One Thousand Words. (Stephen King also talks about this schedule - he says you can write a book a season - Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall.)

I have friends on the same publishing schedule as me who fit in writing books around full-time jobs as pediatricians, attorneys, reporters, etc. So I don't waste a second of my gift of time.

Every morning from 8:30 to 12, Monday through Friday, I park my butt in a chair, either at a cafe or at my kitchen table, and I write until I hit my One Thousand Words. The rest of the day involves Mamma Italiana and household duties. On the weekends I work as a newspaper reporter.

But because I don't work outside the home full-time, I have nearly four hours a day to devote to writing. I don't waste this precious time. Here's why: By sitting there every day for five days a week I have accomplished this: In September, I will have had four books published in 13 months.

I have a four-book deal and I'm doing everything in my power to turn that into a six-book deal, maybe an 8-book deal, as far as I can go. Like Peg, I'm working for retirement, baby.

It is a luxury that my husband is carrying our family through this time while I work on building a writing career. He's my biggest champion. He believes in me enough to believe that one day, I will be carrying our family with my writing alone. But in order to get there, I can't waste a minute of my time.