VOLUME 2 ISSUE 2

Volume 2 Issue 2 is now live! I hope you enjoy it. We worked very hard to get it out, and I’m really pleased with the quality of the fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and art. 
Obviously, our blogger never materialized. If you’re interested in doing some blogging for SUB-LIT, please contact Laurah at fiction@sub-lit.com. 

We’re currently reading for Vol 2 Issue 3, which will be out in April. This leads me to my biggest announcement . . . SUB-LIT will now come out three times a year. Ours is a volunteer staff, and we get so many submissions that it was becoming difficult to keep up. With a three-times-a-year schedule, we will have the ability to focus on your work.

 

Cheers! I hope you enjoy the new issue.

New Blogger

Greetings and salutations.
SUB-LIT has received a kind offer  from a young lady who obviously has no idea what she’s in for, and we now have a chief blogger! Amanda will make weekly posts covering a variety of literary topics, which we hope will draw interest and keep folks entertained between issues. Let us know what you think! The editors will continue to blog, of course — but we’ve never been very consistent. We’re like a distant boyfriend in a touring band. We’re sorry.

We’re still accepting submissions for December, and are especially in need of quality art. We’d love to receive tattoo/flash photos/pictures, but are open to anything. PLEASE SEND art submissions to amberbrooks@gmail.com.

Seeking art submissions

Attention all creative folk:

I’m elated at how successful our first year has been. If I could change one thing about how the process is running so far, it would be the number of art submissions I receive. I need more!

Please check out past issues to get a feel for our mission and our aesthetic. I’m looking for any type of art, so long as it’s good. I’d love to see high quality photos of original tattoo designs, tattoo flash, comics, photography, graphic design, sculpture…anything good that says something.
 
Please spread the word. If you are not a tattoo artist but you know one, tell them about SUB-LIT; it’s free advertising for a tattoo artist. If we publish an artist’s work, we are always happy to link to that artist’s web page in their bio. Be sure to read our submission guidelines before submitting.

Happy Reading,

Amber Nicole Brooks

Modern Word Processors a bad thing?

I graduated high school in 1997. When I wrote a paper in school, I WROTE a paper. By hand. I had no spellcheck, and programs like Microsoft Word and Apple’s Pages/Appleworks were still a few years away from being commonplace in public schools. Editing and revisions were done painfully, and rewrites just plain hurt. 

Newer word processing programs underline words as you misspell them and grammatically incorrect phrases receive the same treatment. Its not a necessity to know how to spell the words you write. Is it making kids illiterate? Certainly not, but now its possible to write pages that are chock full of errors and go back through later and fix all the colorful problems. The problem that this presents is that, because public middle and high school teachers aren’t getting noticeably better, the expediency of a say, Microsoft Word 2007 (which yes, I do use), is doing young writers and students a disservice by doing all the grammatical work for them. 

So its not even necessary to even know how to spell anymore, or even get the words half right, because the programs being used in school are so intuitive that they can even guess what you’re trying to say. I take full advantage of these things, but I still find myself going back through a document manually looking for mistakes. In the event that these modern word processors don’t catch something, most younger writers aren’t looking either.

The Physics of Creepiness (A Review of Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves)

Here I have a good opportunity for to use Cannibal Holocaust as a literary reference. Danielewski’s eight-year-old experimental opus, House of Leaves, can be at times as daunting a read as his last name is to type out.

Published in 2000 (here and now we get a “remastered full-colored edition”), House of Leaves concerns a family that moves into a house that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. The story-which really gets no more complex than that-is told through the narration of three different characters: Johnny Truant, a drug addicted intellectual attempting to make sense of a manuscript left behind by the deceased Zampano, who has created an account of a movie, The Navidson Record, which didn’t exist. The third character is a sexless, neutral “editor” who provides the footnotes of Zampano’s book. 

It would be difficult to review such a work without reviewing it piece by piece. Truant is more or less the main voice of HOL, and his first-person narration concerns the discovery of a book written about a documentary which was never made. Truant attempts to piece together the facts from the book in an attempt to uncover any truth it contains or any relevance to his drug addled sex-filled life. With Truant, Danielewski doesn’t do anything that hasn’t been done more effectively by more seasoned writers (here I think Palahniuk), and its hard to reconcile Truant’s “I’ll do anything to get fucked up” lifestyle with his sometimes pages long metaphysical musings. Certainly there are such people, but Danielewski doesn’t quite make the connection. Still, Truant is a likeable, believable presence, and serves to break the reader away from the more effective parts of the novel, namely, the novel-within-the-novel, The Navidson Record, written by the recently deceased Zampano, a blind shut-in.

With The Navidson Record, Danielewski has crafted an entire other novel, and the technical way in which its written is something fresh in the world of horror writing, but is a method that has been used by filmmakers for almost three decades. It would be difficult to imagine Danielewski not having been influenced by films like Cannibal Holocaust or The Blair Witch Project, in which the idea is that the viewer is witnessing something that actually happened. The Navidson Record is written like this. The Navidson Record is a documentary about a family that moves into a house in which the interior dimensions exceed the architectural exterior ones. It is about a house that defies physics. Here the writing style could still be considered first person, but the technical manner in which it is laid out on the page adds to the creepiness.

Where Danielewski succeeds is creating two different realities, the one Truant lives in, which we could call “ours”, and the one that Zampano writes about, which the reader could see as made up. By adding a layer on top of Zampano’s terrifying account of Navidson and his family, we get one more place to retreat to and tell ourselves it isn’t real, much like the professor who sees the students’ documentary in Cannibal Holocaust. Where Danielewski misses slightly-even though this is a largely experimental work-is the addition of footnotes, which are added to Zampano’s work by Truant and the editor. Some footnotes are informative and add much realism, while others are simply lists of names that go on for pages at a time. Even in experimental fiction (I believe) the text should progress the story, or add characterization you can’t necessarily get from other passages. But here, Danielewski-to his credit-is a completionist, and spares nothing (not even the reader’s eyes) to illustrate the slow madness of his protagonists.

Even with the minor gripes, this is the best horror novel to hit the shelves since The Shining. It is scary, engrossing, and the story of The Navidson Record sits firmly in your head at night. Danielewski hasn’t published anything since, but if he did, he could likely teach a few genre hacks (I’m talking to you two, that take up two walls in the bookstore horror section) a thing or two about creeping out a reader.

Long time, no type!

Well, readers . . .
SUB-LIT is still going strong! We’re just not good bloggers. The new issue is shaping up fabulously, and will be out August 1st. I am really excited with both the number of submissions and the quality of our accepted work. We’re now reading for the December issue, so keep sending us your best!

We have had some staffing changes.
First, I’d like to welcome Addison Williams as SUB-LIT’S newest assistant fiction editor. Addison will be handling author rewrites and helping us to make tough decisions. I am really thrilled that he accepted the position — he has an incredible eye  for editing. Addison started out as a reader!

Scott Miles, a former SUB-LIT poetry reader, has accepted to position of SUB-LIT’S assistant poetry editor. Scott and Michael have known each other for years, and we’re pleased to add Scott to our editorial team.
Pete Zuppardo, who reads for poetry and fiction, has been dubbed “senior reader.” This means that he will only handle second-and-third-round reads. Pete is great at finding the diamonds in the, well, slush, so we’re happy that he will continue to work with us.

Chelsea Taylor and Josh Aldridge will continue on as SUB-LIT readers.

We are currently seeking a proofing editor and an assistant online editor (Atlanta area for the online position). Let me know if you’re interested!

SUB-LIT reviewed at New Pages!

They only looked at the first issue, but hey — press is press! It’s a nice review, I think . . . we’re not complaining about a comparison to The Nation!
Check out the review at

http://www.newpages.com/magazinestand/litmags/default.htm#sub-lit

Incessant Ramblings from an Angry Little Asian Girl…

So, after many promises to Laurah that I would write a blog, “this weekend,” “next weekend,” “as soon as I finish grading this batch of papers,” “as soon as I finish this story I’m working on,” I’m finally writing my first blog for Sub-Lit—long overdue! (What can I say—I’ve been going through some serious life changes recently.) The blog that I had intended to write, was supposed to have been entitled “Me and Mandy Moore” after I attended a concert in which she was the headliner (I was there to see the opening act—Rachael Yamagata: one of my favorite musicians). I was very very sick that night and getting very very annoyed by the little dude standing in front of me with Mandy Moore wallpaper on his cell phone (I noticed this because he was waving it about), but that was months ago, and to write about it now would be pointless.

Instead, allow me to ramble on incessantly about ideas directly and not-so-directly related to my very first show at Masquerade. Now before you judge me, please keep in mind, I grew up in a very conservative, Korean, Christian family. My parents wouldn’t even let me go to a New Kids on the Block concert when I was younger, which sadly shows how NOT rock n roll I am—but I don’t fret it because Laurah is rock n roll enough for the both of us. I went to see The Honorary Title, a band that I’ve been listening to for about two months now ever since I saw them on an episode of One Tree Hill. (Yes, I watch lots of bad TV. Get over it.)

So, anyway, one of my recent goals has been to try to reclaim some semblance of my youth, especially since I feel that most of it was wasted on my loser ex-boyfriend (Yes, I am still bitter. No, I will not likely move past it anytime soon—he stole my twenties from me, and I want them back, I tell you! I want them back!). I must admit, trying to edge my way closer to the stage amidst a flock of high schoolers pretty much did it for me—the whole reclaiming my youth bit. I felt just like I was back in not-so-good ‘ole Roswell High where I could count the number of Asian kids in my class on one hand; in the whole school, probably on two. Our senior prank consisted of a bunch of guys driving their riding lawnmowers in circles on the street in front of our school, backing up traffic—but I digress…Back to the show…The lead singer’s skater-boy haircut was reminiscent of all the cool skater/rock star wannabe bad boys whom I had major crushes on back then but who never noticed me because I was, afterall, the loner Asian chick who snuck her food into the library and did homework during lunch period.

Sadly, I must admit, it seems I haven’t come very far since those days. After the band finished playing, the lead singer first, and then eventually the rest of the band, came out to mingle with the crowd, pimp their merchandise, pose for pictures, and sign autographs. Kristen, my freakishly tall White friend who went to the show with me (Sorry, Kristen—but you know I love you!) insisted that I go talk to the front man. But I couldn’t. I was too shy to speak to the big bad rockstar (even though I’ve got to be, like, eight years older than him) and too afraid of losing a limb in the swarm of hovering high schoolers. We did eventually try to approach him and say something clever, but—and this is after he actually glanced at us and then turned his back—what ended up coming out was, “Uh, really great show tonight!” To which his reply was a polite, closed-mouthed stretch of a smile he tossed our way before resuming what I can only assume was the most engrossing conversation ever with the merchandise pimping guy. Of course, it wasn’t until much later that Kristen leaned in and said to me, “I totally should’ve said something like, ‘I really enjoyed your pube anecdote—very clever!’”

So, this is the point in the blog where I completely lose my momentum and concentration, thereby reverting to bullet points to describe the rest of the night…

What I could’ve done without:

• The Masquerade itself. I’m sure a lot of you have been there—you can’t all be as complacently sheltered as I am. Does it not look like that building is about fall down around you any second?
• The realization that besides the moms who brought their kids to the show, I was probably the oldest person there.
• The realization that many of those chain smoking high schoolers were way cooler than I. I bet they all watch One Tree Hill.
• Crazy Camera Girl, who was all over the place snapping pictures of the band.
• Overhearing, at the end of the night, the front man proclaim to a staff person, “…I know, but I can’t anymore. I’ve been hanging out here with them all night.” Which I took to mean that he no longer wished to mingle with the common folk.
• Losing the twenty dollar bill that I had shoved haphazardly into my pocket.

What I enjoyed:

• Finding my crumpled up twenty on the ground next to the bar.
• Hanging out with my freakishly tall White friend, Kristen.
• The show, which was really really good. Although I have very little experience at concerts, Kristen confirmed that it was indeed a really good show, and she should know—her husband’s in a band.
• The mom sitting in the back, reading a book. I so desperately wanted to go up to her and ask what she was reading and how she was enjoying it. A couple days later I finally had the courage to admit this to Kristen. Her reply: a very enthusiastic, “Oh my gosh—me too!” That’s why she’s my friend.
• The very enthusiastic boy standing to my right, wearing a cap with buttons, who belted out the words to EVERY SINGLE SONG and then followed each song with a loud whoop, clapping, and fists punctuating the air above his head. At one point, he screamed out, “We love you!” which I thought was a little odd since the band is all dudes. At the beginning of the show, this guy was very annoying. After three vodka tonics, I found him strangely endearing.
• Tuscaloosa Girl, who looked about twelve years old despite the fact that she stood there with a Budweiser in hand, telling Kristen and me that she had driven all the way from Tuscaloosa just to see The Honorary Title play. I think she was alone, as she looked a little lost and lonely. She was also among the throng of admirers hovering around the lead singer after the show. I sure hope he was nicer to her than he was to us.
• Knowing that since I had the foresight to program the timer on my VCR (yes, I hear there’s this new thing called “tivo” that is totally not worth me getting, since my tv is not much larger than my laptop), a new episode of American Idol was waiting for me at home.

If anyone wants to take up a collection to send me to the American Idol finale show, I will totally blog about it.

SUB-LIT ISSUE FOUR!

We’ve made the selections for SUB-LIT issue four, and are now reading for issue five (out August 2008).

Issue four will be live April 1st. I’m still waiting for Mikey to finish up his poetry selections, but I’m happy to announce that we’ve selected the fiction and creative nonfiction of the following writers for inclusion in SUB-LIT’s upcoming issue:

Jason Jordan

Lori Horvitz

Leah Erickson

Liane LeMaster

Brandi Wells

Paula  Bomer

Kimy Martinez (art)

and more!

Remember

The SUB-LIT reading period ends March 1st! Submissions received after 3/1 will be considered for our August issue.