Jake Decides To Escape Heaven and Hilarity Ensues: A Review of Cliff Hicks's Escaping Heaven

Escaping Heaven: A Comedy Of The Afterlife by Cliff Hicks starts out on what is a fairly bad day for Jake Altford, a man who is somewhat used to treating bad days with a ‘that’s life, might as well get on with it attitude.’ Jake loses his job, finds out his fiancée is cheating on him, gets into an auto accident, and is then crushed by a telephone pole. Interestingly, “that was when Jake’s really began to get bad.”

Jake is taken to heaven, where he is subjected to a series of line-ups, bureaucratic forms, and a plethora of other nonsense supposedly designed to get him to his ‘personal heaven.’ Eventually he is taken there, though, but this does not result in his day getting better:

Everyone has an idea of what their personal Heaven will be like, even if they aren’t a religious person. But no matter when and where Jake had been thinking of Heaven, this was certainly not what he had in mind. He wasn’t sure whose idea of Heaven this was. Maybe Bob Ross’s.

Today, at the insistence of the activity group’s project leader, Jake had been making a painting form macaroni. Yesterday, it had been basketweaving. Tomorrow, they were planned to do pottery.

*****

In his six weeks (or whatever) in Heaven, Jake had come to realize that they had placed him in what could only be compared to a retirement community. There were ‘guest speakers’ who would come by every so often and talk about improving one’s status in the afterlife, and not once did any of the speakers ever seem to have a clue as to what they were talking about. Still, his fellow afterlifers would clap mindlessly and nod their heads, only to regurgitate the information later, as if it was perfect.

What Jake found funniest about this was that on one day, they had had a speaker talking about positive thinking, and how it kept men and women afloat. The audience agreed and nodded, reciting their lines after the angel was gone. The next day, however, another angel showed up and lectured about how positive thinking could easily get out of hand. Sure enough, as soon as the second angel was gone, they were spouting the propaganda as if they had never heard the first angel speak.

Jake’s heaven is an endless series of crafts and motivational speakers. For some reason, despite always just having gone with the flow no matter how much he didn’t like things that happen to him, Jake decides to escape Heaven. Hilarity ensues.

No, seriously, Jake’s escape from the confusion that is heaven is one hilarious episode after another:

He pushed open the larger doors and stepped into a busier chamber. People were coming and going, bustling about, and not one of them gave Jake a second look, not even the two guards who were standing on either side of the doors he’d just come out of. He nodded to one of the two angels who were standing guard, and one of them snapped off a well-practices salute.

“Sir!” the angel barked.

Jake returned to regard him a little bit, then tried to put on his best air of superiority. He’d dealt with supervisors his whole life, and he was well aware how to act like an asshole to a subordinate. Whatever it took to blend in, he was going to do it.

Mistaken identity, pratfalls, and such; all the elements of a classic farce are there. All in all, Escaping Heaven has got to be one of the funniest books I’ve read in a long time. Heaven is a bumbling bureaucracy. No one has any idea what is going on and they just try to act like they do, keep up appearances. No one is in charge, and absolutely no one is prepared for anyone to act different. The result is like The Three Stooges on a cosmic scale when Jake shows up and does just that.

Now, humor isn’t the only good point of Escaping Heaven either. In addition to being delightfully funny, the book is actually really well written. Jake and the supporting characters are fully developed and compelling. The plotting is fast paced and holds interest well. In short, this book is really well done. All in all, I found Escaping Heaven to be fun, engaging, and light-heartedly rebellious.

There is one last thing I should mention. I hear tell that the author is waiting on the response to this book to decide whether or not to write another. As such, I’m going to have to ask you all to buy this book, or at least read it. Really, that’s the only way I’m going to be able to find out what happens next.

A Place that Feels Divorced from a Sense of Home

Cityscapes, curated and edited by Jacob Steinberg, is an ambitious project. It aims to gain the perspective of an impressive amount of writers located in major cites not only in the US but around the world. I know that Jacob has lived in various places throughout his life and has recently made the transition from New York to Argentina. I feel like this contextualizes the project as a subject of not only intrigue but of personal importance. I believe that identity and place are inextricably linked and form almost a feedback loop unto each other. Place shapes identity and identity shapes your perception of your surroundings.

Within the context of new media and the Internet I feel as if one can adopt an almost global identity and feel connected to places and ideas that are divorced from one’s current surroundings. For example, a specific style has formed around new ideas of what literature is and what it can become. Some have called this culture ‘alt lit’ and others feel aversion to that moniker. Jacob’s project was originally titled ‘alt lit cityscapes’ but in the process of working with the diverse styles and viewpoints of contributors it was simply called ‘cityscapes’ in the end. However, whatever one wants to call the online literature scene there are discernable patterns of a homogenous viewpoint. Many writers in this ‘community’ experience similar feelings of alienation from their ‘irl’ surroundings and have sought out the Internet as their surrogate ‘cityscape.’

In Mira Gonzalez’s piece, ‘palm trees are not native to los angeles’ I feel as if she explores the disconnect between her city and her person, in terms of spatial relationship between herself, both internally and literally, in her external surroundings. Taking the title as a metaphor I feel like it expresses her alienation from Los Angeles. The feeling of being ‘out of place’ even though, if I recall correctly, she is a Los Angeles native. I feel like this piece really speaks to the alienation one can feel when confronted with the vastness of everything compared to one’s minor role within it. Mira writes:

lying on the sidewalk

on venice boulevard

i am able to perceive this
inconceivably large distance
between myself and the street

i am trying to become
two squares of cement

i am one fraction of the pacific ocean
compared to me everything is enormous

. . .

i am one unit of matter
moving through time
at this incredible pace

I like the imagery that is created in this poem. I imagine Mira lying on the sidewalk, almost comically, as other people that are also ‘moving through time at this incredible pace’ pass her by. I Imagine her trying to desperately feel a connection to her city, a connection to anything. Physically she is as close as she can be to her city, trying to join with the concrete, but she is not able to feel a connection mentally. She is somewhere far away. The poem then shifts. Because she feels unable to connect internally with her city she focuses on external, tangible, and objective things. ‘It is going to be 73 degrees today’ she writes without any implication of how she feels about that fact. It is just fact about her city, disconnected from any emotion of affection towards it.

In Megan Lent’s short story she expresses a different perception of Los Angeles. I really like the contrast between her piece and Mira’s piece. I feel like it highlights the subjectivity of experience and how your surroundings can either feel alienating or comforting or sometimes both. Megan expresses nostalgia for Los Angeles that is connected to memories and experiences that have been positive and also influential in the construction of self. She writes about ‘the best parts of Los Angeles’ through short vignettes that make up her perception of Los Angeles.

. . .[T]he ocean. The sky above it. The end of historic Route 66” sign. A blind man playing saxophone. Your best friend standing under the pier. Someone you love walking down the sand with you late at night… A painting that is all in shades of red that looks just like your hair and probably your heart… [A]nd you recognize that you are here, in this city, under this layer of smog, and stars, yes, you are here.

I enjoyed M. Kitchell’s contribution to this project. His piece is a series of webcam photos taken in ‘every place i’ve lived in since moving to san francisco a year ago.’ If I am discerning this correctly, I believe that this piece is showing different living situations within San Francisco. I liked how it shows the transient nature of trying to establish yourself in a new and unfamiliar place.

I particularly liked how Carolyn DeCarlo’s piece, much like Megan Lent’s, focused on not how the specific geography defines a place but how personal experiences and interactions with the people that you meet within the place are what shapes your perception of the city. She writes about the context of place in relation to a certain experience that she had while in a particular place. My favorite lines are

What I’ll miss is
your mouth full of donut
on a bench in Dupont Circle

The lines seem funny and sentimental and not dependent on place. ‘Dupont Circle’ could easily be replaced with any other location but the affection that Carolyn feels for the moment that occurred on Dupont Circle creates affection for Dupont Circle itself.

I liked Noah Cicero’s poems about living  in Korea. I found it interested and felt fascinated while reading about people’s subjective experiences in countries outside the United States. I liked the juxtaposition of the perspectives of writers that were natives of country with writers that were foreign transplants. I like how Noah writes in plain language, directly expressing his negative feelings about moving to a place that feels divorced from a sense of home. Noah writes:

I don’t like Koreans
I’m from Brooklyn
none
of the Korean
girls fuck with me

so I write this poem

I like the idea of using poetry as a form of expression to relieve feelings of alienation; To try to relate what is inside your head to the heads of other people. It feels difficult to do that when we are distinct bodies, and it is especially a challenge if there is a language barrier on top of the difficulty of trying to get people to understand what you are feeling.

I like how Noah’s second poem deals with a relatively positive encounter that he had with someone in Korea. I feel like the poem expresses a connection and exchange of ideas that directly affected Noah and his perception:

I tell another foreigner
that I enjoy eating
paris baguette for lunch

he respnds
that he has been to paris
and paris bagutte
doesn’t match the power of
french bread

. . .

I believed in the purity of  his words
I never went to paris baguette again

I’ve noticed these same sentiments being expressed in many different pieces throughout the publication. I like that people feel that human connection [or lack thereof] is what makes something seem good or bad to them.

This is a ‘long-ass’ publication at 290 pages and ideally I would like to discuss every piece in depth because they each feel special, personal, and different, perspective-wise. However, I feel like a ‘long-ass’ review would gradually lose the attention of you, the reader, and consist of me repeating myself a lot.

I highly recommend reading through the Cityscapes collection in its entirety. Overall, I would say that one of the most valuable things that I have gained from reading this publication is reflection on my own city and how I relate to it. I live in Woodbridge, VA, which is basically a city that people pass by to go to DC or Baltimore or any place other than Woodbridge, VA. I don’t feel a strong affinity for my city but since my external world is lacking in the things that I would want from a city I feel like I have immersed myself in a wonderful online community that I would consider my true ‘cityscape.’ There are many people in this issue that I have interacted with formed connections with online that feel just as dear to me as any ‘real life’ interaction. In my opinion, a conception of place has less to do with specific geography and more to do with the people that you chose to interact with. Anything and any place can become your city, regardless of physical location.

Identity Schisms: The Space Between Desire and Fulfillment

Earlier this year, budding Virginia poet Gabby Gabby released a new e-chapbook in .pdf format. First impression: Pretty Flowers is brief. Very brief. Discounting the cover, a postscript and two small illustrations of Virginia, the .pdf only has twenty pages of text (a mere 65 sentences) in a very large, peach font. The poem’s meaning lies compacted into so few words but with some reflection and re-reading, it expands outward like a haiku.

The chapbook begins with the declaration that the poet would like to visit every state fair:

I want to go to every statefair in the United States.

I donʼt think I really likestate fairs but I like theidea of being the type ofperson that likes state fairs.

I think if I tried hardenough I could really bethat person.

From this simple premise, the author touches on a variety of issues revolving around the concept of identity. She admits to feeling the angst of missing out on life, the need to travel in order to feel fulfilled. She ponders whether or not she would break her vegan diet for the sake of eating a corn dog, the staple food of state fairs. She confesses that she does not like state fairs, but likes the idea of being someone who does.

In a brief set of nine stanzas, the author’s self has already begun to unfold with some its complexities: let’s take, for an example, her vegan diet, which is inarguably trendy, and also a diet typically prone to questioning and prodding to determine authenticity – non-vegans seem to always know just enough about veganism to interrogate their vegan counterparts and find flaws in their adherence to the diet. In mentioning her veganism immediately contrasted by the need to eat corn dogs for the sake of ‘completing’ an image, that of the state fair-goer, Gabby has awoken this disparity between what we are and what we try to be in an interesting way. Just as non-vegans will ask vegans why they don’t crave meat when they’re at a diner, friends pressure you to be in the mood for a corn dog just by virtue of being at a state fair.

The questions of identity that the text poses are expressed in a very direct language, one that quickly progresses away from that initial intent to discuss state fairs into examining the relationship between space and fulfillment. A brief interlude wonders about the contentment of Michiganders, dealing with the division in their state:

I thought about howpeople on one side ofMichigan must really missthe people on the otherside of Michigan.

She also posits that Michiganders would likely know whether or not they were lonelier than, say, Mainers, regardless of having ever visited Maine. Here again we see the disparity between actually knowing what a label entails and what we expect of it. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been to Maine or can feel the essence of the adjective ‘Mainer’: based on pure geography there is an expectation that we take as real and defining in terms of that category’s fulfillment.

Gabby then discusses Midwestern states and what their “square” shape implies about their identity. This geographical meandering progresses until we land in Virginia, the poet’s home state. Gabby externalizes her general discontent in life into the identity of her state, claiming it is outdated and boring. She envisions a more exciting life for herself.

Sometimes when I tellpeople that I live inWilliamsburg I let thembelieve that I live inBrooklyn.

I try to imagine myself inBrooklyn.

For some reason I amimagining myself passedout and almost nakedsomewhere in Brooklyn.

For some reason I thinkthat is a very ʻBrooklynʼthing to do.

It is also a very ʻGabbyʼthing to do.

We’re slowly working forward and unwrapping layers of questions about identity, namely, the disparity between who we are and who we would like to envision ourselves as being.

Despite its brevity, Pretty Flowers encapsulates one of the most complex problems in dealing with autobiographical writing: the distance that exists between the narrator of the text and the writer herself. We typically determine the level of intimacy or authenticity in a work based on the brevity of that distance. When the author effectively closes the gap between their real self and the persona of their narrator, we deem a work to be “authentic” or “intimate.” This is what is strived for in journals, diaries or confessional poetry.  If we determine that something in the text is not a substantiated fact of the author’s life, we cry “inauthentic” and demerit the work.

Gabby, however, is not just writing about her own life, but rather about the crisis of identity itself. As she projects the “Gabby” that she would like to be, she consistently reminds us of the fact that this projected “Gabby” is inconsistent with the real one, the one living behind the keyboard. The poet’s penname itself indicates a constructed identity: she has replaced both her legal first and last name with a repeated, disyllabic nickname that comes off ludic. What’s more, she incorporates that nickname into the text when she says:

It is also a very ʻGabbyʼthing to do.

The inscription of her own name into the text would constitute what Derrida designates the signature de la signature in his critical text Signéponge. As opposed to the signature proper, which expresses identity and serves as a written source of veracity (think of authorial rights, the name on the book cover), or the signature of style, that is, the use of a “set of idiomatic marks” that stylistically points to the author, the “signature of the signature” is the embedding of the author’s name into the text itself.  In this act of self-inscription, the writing becomes a reminder of the inherent schism I mentioned earlier.  As readers of poetry (particularly confessional poetry), we unconsciously bought into this narrator’s identity and left behind the question of authenticity; now we stumble upon a replica of the name on the cover inside of the text, and we remember that a real person, outside of the text, exists – one that perhaps does not conform perfectly to the narrator we’ve “bought into.”

Pretty Flowers pivots around this concept, constantly reminding us that these projections of what the “real” Gabby would like to be never manage to become anything more in the text than just that: projections. Rather than fictitiously portraying herself at those state fairs, eating corn dogs, or stripped bare on a bed in Brooklyn, the only literal action in the text is Gabby sitting at a keyboard imagining other realities for herself. The height of this game arrives when the author inscribes herself in the text, a signature that, according to Derrida, serves to remain and disappear at the same time — a mark that serves to affirm identity but also blur the lines defining it. 

Even on a linguistic level, the penname is built upon two syllables that position themselves on opposite ends of the vocal chart: the open ‘a’ and the closed ‘i.’ This cohabitation of opening up and closing off, the double motion of an identity that projects itself outward but also negates that projection in acknowledging the separation that exists between its potential and its fulfillment: that is what sustains the concept of ‘Gabby’ in the text.

Towards the end, we see the realization of this fusion of opposites. Gabby apologizes for the lack of “pretty flowers” in the text, a segue into a wrap-up where she discusses her romantic life. The ties between geography (that is, appearance) and qualities return in the form of the question: is Virginia a downward sloping or an upward sloping state? In simple terms, if you see it as a downward slope, you’re a pessimist; as an upward slope, an optimist.

Sometimes I look at a mapof Virginia and think that adownward slope could bekind of fun.

Kind of like a slip and slideor the side of a cardboardbox pressed up against agrassy hill.

Maybe I am an optimist. Atleast for today.

Identity is never simple. Optimist or pessimist? Our poet is both.

How Often Do We Complicate Such Simple-seeming Things?

Mason Johnson’s Sad Robot Stories does a great job of, among other things, flipping the bird to conventional narrative and reader expectations. Mason’s humanization of his robot protagonist (protagobot?) skillfully navigates robot cliches and preconceptions and even dabbles with sexuality in a way that is not “shocking” but graceful and important.

While these stories are obviously interesting in their kind of kitschy existence, they remain important in other ways. Mason uses the perspective of the robot not in an attempt to bank on whatever quirkiness it instantly provides but as a very effective proponent of “outside-looking-in.” Dilemmas which are “so human” are examined by the inquisitive and heartbreakingly innocent perspective of the lead character and leave the reader wondering why employing this very clean and simple perspective seems so foreign.

How often do we complicate such simple-seeming things? Why do we take these emotions for granted? Items like sadness become so alluring and divine for the robot that readers are enveloped by contempt for their non-robotic selves.

This book is funny because as much as it is a tongue-in-cheek extravagance, it’s a beautiful work about the difficulty anyone has in feeling “human” or “loved.” The presentation — the crayon drawings, different reader paths, and comically minimal website — are tools that were created to augment the campy appeal, but I cannot imagine what could be less alluring than the best and most honest robot narrative I have experienced (sans Will Smith) in many, many years.

Sad Robot Stories is a free e-chapbook and can be downloaded at sadrobotstories.com.

One of the Best Science Fiction Books I Have Ever Read: Hugh Howey's WOOL

Now you’re probably wondering, what’s outside, right? And also, who the hell is Hugh Howey? This is good; this is normal, these are good questions. Let’s begin by answering the last question first. Howey is many things: an ex-yacht captain, a master story-teller and probably, the Internet’s best kept secret. But WOOL isn’t Howey’s first book, and book might not be the right word, since WOOL is actually Howey’s second series. He’s self-published (for the most part) and this, quite possibly, is what makes WOOL so brilliant. With no publisher, no advertising whatsoever, no budget and no famous-author blurbs, Howey managed to single-handedly create his most successful (and one of Amazon’s best-selling Kindle sci-fi) series to date.

Briefly, WOOL is one of the best science fiction books I have ever read. And it’s actually addicting! The formula? Howey never (ever) offers straight-up explanations to anything, even to the most important questions like: what is outside, how did the world blow up, did the world blow up and why are these people all living underground in a silo? Howey takes his time — almost like he is flaunting his ability to tell a damn good story — and lets the book do all the work, through meticulous character development and engaging dialogue.

But to answer the first question: WOOL is an unorthodox tale about survival and post-apocalyptic wellness in a dystopian world where reality and the very notion of survival have devolved into a state of underground existence. In principle, it’s definitely a science fiction text but don’t fret — Howey abstains from using age-old science fiction clichés or boring us with already-been-done end-of-the-world scenarios. And don’t expect this to be a tale about aliens from distant planets with shrink rays from the future; there’s nothing about time-travel here. The world of WOOL is anchored in a reality that seems much too real and plausible.

The exposition is rather speedy: something bad happened and the outside is no longer safe. All survivors now live underground. And again, forget clichés, these people don’t live in giant vaults or covered bunkers; they live in one giant silo but there’s more to it. . . . On the first level of the silo (the top), there are these giant wallscreens connected to cameras that are mounted to the exterior wall of the silo and these cameras allow the inhabitants to see the outside, which really isn’t that much. On the wallscreens, it’s the same loop: a brown desert and hills with a gray sky. Pretty straightforward, see, but note that these wallscreens are central to the entire WOOL universe. The world went to shit a long time ago and these people have been living in a silo for quite some time — several decades it seems — so after a while, a (somewhat unique) justice system, contingent of the wallscreens and outside cameras, was created. If you ask to go outside, you are considered a traitor and are treated like a criminal and criminals are punished by being sent outside, for “cleaning.”

In one of the early chapters — and these chapters go by fast, the longest being something like six or seven pages — Howey goes into great detail about the outside, basically affirming that what the inhabitants see on the wallscreens is indeed real. The outside is nothing but desert. Obviously, an environment like this is terrible for cameras, as bits of sand, dust and grime quickly collect onto the surface lenses. This is why someone is required to clean, routinely. And if there is no one to send outside, the sheriff chooses one of the inhabitants for cleaning. Pretty sick, right? Oh, and also, no one has ever refused to clean.

If anything, WOOL is like a (very) good soap-opera that reads like a mystery novel (at times) with obvious elements of science fiction and the occasional (spectacularly-written) action sequence. Each chapter (generally) leaves the reader in a daze, with a mini-cliffhanger, the sort you would come to expect from a serialized novel like WOOL, and this, actually, is what makes WOOL so addicting and ultimately, so satisfying. Oh, and did I mention? WOOL features one of the most-accomplished and satisfying villains in recent years. The kind who does the obligatory explanation-of-dastardly-plans speech but then actually goes through with the plan!

Go read the Amazon reviews; WOOL has the sort of characters and chapter endings that will leave you lying awake at night, wondering: my goodness, what could possibly be next? How is this character ever going to overcome this great torment? It’s a drama, a thriller, a mystery, a science fiction text. It’s WOOL, and I promise: it will infect your life.

An Interview with Dina Gachman

Dina Gachman is the founder of Bureaucracy for Breakfast, a blog that pokes fun at the crazy shit rich people do (because we all need a hearty laugh now and then, especially when the economy is put-put-puttering along like a broken train). Ms.Gachman took a bad experience (getting fired from her job) and transformed it into a writing career that now includes a web comic and a book agent. We’re all kinda jealous.

* * *

Angie Spoto: Why did you create Bureaucracy for Breakfast? How do you think your blog eases some of the pain for those most acutely experiencing the recession?

Dina Gachman: I got laid off from my job as a development exec in film in 2010 and out of frustration one day the words Bureaucracy for Breakfast popped into my head so I wrote them down. Then I pitched the idea of writing a few posts about unemployment to the editor of the site Lost in a Supermarket and he said go for it. We were just going to do five but now we’re at twenty-six. I guess I created it because I needed an outlet for what I was going through being newly unemployed and reassessing my next steps in life, and then the audience started growing so . . . I kept writing.

It started off as a comedic look at unemployment but then turned into a comedic look at the economic divide in general, which most people can relate to. Laughter always helps during tough times and I’m a big believer in combating frustration and fear with humor. My hope is that if someone is feeling down because they can’t afford a mansion or a yacht like Jay Z, or a garden pizza oven like Gwyneth Paltrow, they can read the blog and laugh about how ridiculous those things really are, and feel a little better about their situation. We’re all in it together I guess.

AS: What did you ideally want to result from Bureaucracy for Breakfast when you started . . . and how has that ideal since changed?

DG: I really just wanted to write – I didn’t really have time to write for two years while I had my development job so I wanted to take advantage of the time and get back to what I really loved. I thought it would be five posts and then I could build up a portfolio and figure out the next project or job, and then it just grew, and cheesy as it sounds I really found my voice as a writer through Bureaucracy for Breakfast.  It’s changed because of the readers I think, plus I spend a lot of time building the audience through social media. It’s tedious but it’s necessary. I’ve gotten emails from all over, from so many different types of people from places as different as Iceland and Nevada. Then it started getting covered by Marketplace in NPR, AOL News, it got a mention by Chelsea Handler’s Borderline Amazing Comedy site, which all led to where it is now. I signed with a book agent recently and the proposal based on the blog is on submission to publishers now, which is never what I expected to happen when it started. It’s exciting but also extremely nerve racking!

AS: Some might say you’re living the dream life of a blogger. Would you agree? Any tips for those aspiring to become successful bloggers?

DG: I wouldn’t say I’m rolling in money and blogging as I sip Krystal, but doing what you love and having people respond and relate is a writer’s dream in a sense. My blog is a little different too because I don’t post several times a day, but more like several times a month. The posts aren’t quick hits with an image and some hash tags, they’re longer and take a while to generate so if you can post more often that I do – do it. I would say find your topic/tone and stick to it, rather than randomly throwing out posts about things that aren’t related and seem haphazard. You should spend a lot of time trying to connect with other writers, doing freelance posts for other sites who will link back to your blog – basically build your audience and get yourself out there.

AS: How do you promote yourself?

DG: I spend half the day writing and half (at least) promoting via Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, etc. I was anti-Twitter before the blog and then I gave in, thankfully. It’s such a great way to get your writing out there especially if you can’t afford a PR machine to promote your work. I do a lot of freelance writing, and I go to a ton of events. I stick Bureaucracy for Breakfast postcards all over town – it’s a huge part of the job.

AS: Your comic, Fling Girl, is a dating guide for single women in L.A., am I right? How did you come up with this idea?

DG: It’s the story of a newly single girl learning how to navigate the dating world again after a long-term relationship, it takes place in LA which is notorious for its crazy dating scene, but anyone who has dealt with relationships / breakups can relate. I did NaNoWriMo in 2010 on a dare and wrote the novel (or novella) version of Fling Girlthat November . . . and then it just sat there. I’d worked with the artist Amy Saaed a few times and one day we were talking about it and the idea of turning it into an online comic book was born. Neither of us knew it would pretty much take over our lives at that point, but it has. We love doing it.

AS: Do you have any past experience writing comics?

DG: Not really. I went to film school and creating comics is a lot like making films in a sense. We’re producing something each month, creating storyboards, telling a story visually. I wrote a comic book about Elizabeth Taylor for Bluewater Productions which comes out this fall, and when I got hired for that job (about six months ago) I had no clue how to write a comic, what the structure was – I barely knew what a panel was. Then you learn. It’s a good exercise in saying a lot with very little. Those restrictions force you to get creative with your storytelling.

AS: Can you explain the comic creating process for Fling Girl? How did Fling Girl go from an idea in your head to a real-life web comic?

DG: It’s based on the NaNoWriMo book but very loosely, so each month I’ll write the script and suggest images, then sent it to Amy. She’ll take some time with it and add her ideas, and then she’ll map it out as far as the architecture of the issue, how many panels on each page etc. Then –my favorite part – we meet and hash it out, add / change / collaborate until we’re both happy with the issue. It’s a fun process. Then she holes up and creates the panels which is a huge amount of work. In the meantime we’re doing a lot of other things as far as site giveaways, content, reaching out to potential sponsors and partners and then – when we’re both exhausted – the issue goes live and we take a breath. Until the next one. . . .

AS: Convince us, in one sentence, why your comic is awesome.

DG: It’s entertaining, fun, fresh and relatable – it’s Wonder Woman but our main character’s superpower is being able to conquer things like cheating ex-boyfriends or lame guys in Ed Hardy.

AS: We hear time and again writers who call the Internet the devil and social media its spawn. We experienced the rise of Amazon and the “death” of small presses. We actually debate about the death of the book as we know it. As someone who’s seen success due largely to the Internet, what’s your opinion about all this?

DG: I’ll always be a fan of holding a book in my hands, keeping it on your bookshelf- I’m the nerd who likes the smell of old books. What’s unfortunate to me is that a lot of publishers, agents, and managers care more about how many Twitter followers you have than about what you’re actually writing, and a lot of “journalism” now consists of making lists (I’m guilty, I’ve written my share of lists for people but you have to get your writing out there).  So, yes I agree the Internet has cheapened writing in a way. On the flip side though things like Twitter can get your writing out to people all over the world – it’s really democratic and if you work it right it can be creative as well. I’ve gotten a lot of ideas from things I’ve randomly Tweeted, and a lot of phrases in my writing come from something I’ve spouted out into the ether in 140 characters. It can actually be a great writing tool, almost like a free write (as long as you’re not Tweeting about what you ate or how bad traffic is).

AS: What are you working on next? Not to sound too much like a job interview, but where do you see yourself (and your writing/blogging career) in the next five years?

DG: Besides Fling Girl and Bureaucracy for Breakfast, I just finished the first draft of a comedy pilot so I’m about to dive into rewrites for that. In the next five years I would love to be making a living as a writer, and working in comics, film / TV and working on a novel. One at a time though! I would love to see Fling Girl as an animated series as well, fingers crossed.

AS: Is there anything else you wanted to add?

DG: I guess just my favorite quote about writing, from Paddy Chayefsky: “Stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.” And write every day.

And I Hope It Rains Forever

A phrase without context, one I've written a thousand times and will write thousands more, in every language I know, backwards, forwards, inside out. It's been in me for years and I've chased after it, even built a novel around it just so I could see it, feel it, be it. But it's still here, elusive.

i am the moon tonight

this is the last night in my body

there are better worlds than this

 Words. Phrases that haunt me and I can't place them. They may be mine, but likely they're not, though they now are. They possess me and so I must push back, bend them to me, consume and integrate them, find a whole through the neverness. And then there's the phrase I know I stole but has become so integral to me that it's neurologically deep.

i remember you

There are so many things I should be doing today, like preparing to leave this country I've called home for the last year [ten more days?], packing my life into a suitcase again. 90,000 words into editing/rewriting a novel staring at me, challenging, singing, screaming, Finish me.

Instead I've spent the day watching cartoons -- The Boondocks -- looping this and this and this, wandering the internet, where awesome things like this exist. It's been one of those days: scattered, incoherent, languid. Just me and my laptop, the mountains past my window, the rainbow of leaves, the skeletal trees. And pizza. I'll miss these bizarre Korean pizzas.

It makes me restless, knowing there are so many things to be done, like finishing the novel, writing about my travels for my friend's site, writing about ten e-mails, figuring out how to get to the national pension office, finding a place to sleep in Tokyo, but, instead, I'm living on cartoons, dropping pizza on my keyboard [which is, apparently, not terribly easy to clean], and thinking about images.

The problem of publication, even just the howevermany stories I have floating out there, is that some of my friends want to know more, and I find that awkward. But people want to know where your ideas come from, what drives you, what compels and feeds this disease. I know I do. When I read or see or hear the sublime, the desire to know grabs me. Where did this world come from? How did she ever think to use language this way? What makes a sentence into a character, a misheard song lyric into a novel?

This is where ideas come from for me: Images, visions, more than words or sounds. It's the image that floods and then the words are just the way I translate because, despite all my best efforts and years of trying, I just never was very good with my hands, drawing or painting or molding, and my mother never bought me a camera like I always wanted, so I rely on a medium of communication I find crippling, because words are made to fail. But, yeah, images. That's what today's about and what, I think, has caused me to do nothing that I'm meant to be doing, spending the day lying down, emptying myself into the air, flooded by this and this and an epicene singing her stories over a man caught forever dreaming. And it leads me to comic books or graphic novels, whichever the preferred term is, and how I'm trying to get two underway, but, because of my artistic limitations, I'm collaborating with two of my friends who will make the images, which I'll respond textually to, which is, apparently, backwards, but it's the way that makes sense to me.

I've never been one to collaborate as I'm kind of artistically controlling and probably never would've considered it, but my sister asked me to write a book for her soon to be born son, her first, my godson. I thought it would be better as a picture book and then the world sort of opened up and I realised I could do that all the time, if only I had someone to produce the images.

And then Angie Spoto's post last month solidified it for me, made it all shine a bit more, turn from an idea to a compulsion, showed me this medium I've [accidentally] largely ignored my whole life really has a unique and special quality to it. The way text and images not only exist together but the way they interact and affect one another keeps turning over and over in my head, opening possibilities that didn't exist here before. And so I contacted two of my friends about joining me on a collaborative book project.

Another problem with collaboration, however, is that one must wait.

But then I came across the work of Natsumi Hayashi, The Yowayowa Camera Woman and everything kind of clicked. All these images, the nebulae, the floating woman, and then they tied to these words I hold within me and it's all I can think about, how this could be a way for me to make the collaborative novel I want to make, driven by the language of visuals, housed by the language of english. And so I'll take what exists millions of lightyears away, the peculiar self-portraits of a japanese woman, and the ghosts of me to make something, maybe, worth holding.