Q: What kind of a rock star takes his wife to a convention with him, out of town?
A: I'm there on business.
Do you think I'm looking for strange
pussy?
I'd look like an old lecher. An old fool.
Hey, baby, you want
to change my colostomy bag?
Besides, when you write about whatever you do,
it keeps you on the straight and narrow.
What would I do? Cheat on my wife
and then not write about it?
That wouldn't be good for my writing.
I don't want to do anything I would be ashamed to tell the world.
Q: The hippie chicks, in their net stockings.
A: There haven't been any hippie chicks since Nixon.
They're all
65 years old now.
They look like the first Playboy bunny, 45 years
later.
Q: An underground writer doesn't have audiences like a rock star has.
A: No, it's a reader here, a reader there.
People who like the
kind of thing you do and seek you out.
You build a clinetele, over the years.
They stick with you, through thin and thin.
Sometimes at a convention you'll
meet new readers, new colleagues, doing the same things you are. Exchange tips. You
don't feel so isolated, and alone.
If you're an artist, you get a few dealers
to sell your work, or you have a studio you sell work out of.
If you're a
musician, you produce your own CDs, and sell them after shows. With spin-off merchandise
like band T-shirts.
Q: Camo bracelets.
A: Dixie Outfitters, second cup free.
A writer publishers chapbooks,
a book once in a while. The books mount up.
The main advantage of publishing
on the web is people get to see the work as it's being created and they get to see
all the raw material, not just the polished version, with mistakes edited out.
You get to see the master and alternate takes, and compare different versions.
You can send the author an email and he'll think about what you said, respond to
it in the work.
No response is a response.
But the books are designed
to be published, as books, and read, as books.
The fact that the publishing
industry is not interested in supporting such writing, that they prefer to manufacture
formula blockbusters, by name-brand authors, and market them like movies, or pop
record albums, is a given.
Given that, what do you do?
You write,
you publish on the Internet, you put out a book, when you can, with the help of friends.
You go to trade shows.
Same thing with a painter.
Same with a musician.
A musician, you either have a regular local gig or tour, or some combination of the
two.
For a trade show, bluegrass musicians have the IBMA convention.
For painters there is Folk Fest in Atlanta every year.
Q: Didn't you go to Fantasy Fest '86 and Miami Book Fair International one year?
A: Yes, and wrote a book about it. Forty.
I could have called
it Poor Boy at the Party.
Oh, I see. Yes. Now I'm going to Philly
Zine Fest 2005 and Zine-A-Polooza 2005. And writing a book about it.
Maybe
it will be published. Like Forty.
Q: 225 books later.
A: Daily typewriting mounts up.
That is what most of these people
do.
They write, paint, or play music every day.
That's how you get
better.
Some of them make enough money to do it full-time, if they live poor.
Some drop out and take day jobs, then give it another try.
I spent 11 years
out of 33 at the house.
I always went back to work.
Now the kids
are grown and I can live on less. But I still need something.
Q: Many people your age have been doing it as long as you have, or longer.
A: Yes. John M. Bennett has. John Bennett has.
They are both old
small press hands.
They're good writers.
They published little magazines.
John Bennett published Vagabond, and John M. Bennett published Lost &
Found Times.
Q: Charlie Parker said he was tired of playing in cellars.
A: I'm tired of reading in cellars. But that is where the readers are.
Q: Are your books banned?
A: I am Garage Band Books. Not banned books.
We don't ban books
in America. We just let their authors wither on the vine and die.