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    Interview: Andrez Bergen 

    by
    Flash
    Published on 02-22-2012 03:24 PM
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    Andrez Bergen is the author of Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat (Another Sky Press), a novel that fuses sci-fi and hardboiled noir elements. In it, Melbourne is near-future Earth's last city standing, where the ominous, ubiquitous Hylax Corporation and its CEO are behind the push to apprehend, incarcerate, and even terminate Deviants for their behavior. Floyd Maquina does their legwork to pay off his wife's hospital debt, becoming both a media darling and increasingly disillusioned with the job, using his newfound influence to get to the bottom/top of the corruption. He's a stubborn, wisecracking gumshoe with an affinity for name-dropping classic films during his pursuits under acid rain and inside the domed, rezoned city where social strata are more delineated than ever.

    An expatriate Australian journalist who's written for     Mixmag, Geek Monthly, and Anime Insider (among others), Bergen has been entrenched in Tokyo for the past 10 years, where he also "hacks together" ...
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    Help Fund Clevenger's "Smoke and Mirrors" Short Film 

    by
    Flash
    Published on 02-17-2012 11:27 PM

    Six Finger Films needs to raise $15,000 to produce this short film, based on a chapter from Craig Clevenger's in-progress novel. From the Kickstarter page:

    THE STORY

    [It's] a core sample bored from somewhere halfway between “once upon a time” and “happily every after.” It’s your basic boy meets girl story only without the romance or the girl. More like your basic unlicensed medic meets escaped psych patient who claims to be an angel in an abandoned subterranean surgical theater following a massive earthquake kind of story.
    THE CHARACTERS

    There’s Icarus, who hit the dirt soon after his wings burst into flames upon punching through the ozone. That’s his story anyway, and he’s sticking to it. Nevermind there wasn’t a witness who saw anything but for a naked guy (i.e., Icarus) who fell from, well, somewhere overhead, but without so much as a sunburn or blister (to say nothing of a set of scorched wing stumps). As you’d expect ...
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    Review: By the Nails of the Warpriest by Nik Korpon 

    by
    Ferg
    Published on 10-24-2011 01:46 PM



    In a post-apocalyptic world where The Struggle was meant to save the lives of The People, memories have been outlawed. The Thief barely makes a living by stealing the scenes and lives from the elderly; selling them to junkies that get off experiencing life through the minds' eye of the past. Now, children play on the rubble of buildings and statues, rather than in grassy fields and parks, under the burning red skies of a world destroyed by war and terror. The Thief goes on believing that his family was killed in one of the riots that led up to The Wars, when he stumbles on a memory that suggests otherwise, and that the people he works for may be responsible for their disappearance.
    ...
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    Review: Damned by Chuck Palahniuk 

    by
    Ferg
    Published on 10-24-2011 01:44 PM



    Madison is the only biological daughter of a successful businessman and an award winning actress. When we first meet Madison, she's riding along in a car with her mother, as she flips through houses that they own all around the world, using a laptop. She spies on the maids, fiddles with the temperatures, and locks doors. Madison watches as her mother changes the lighting in a house in Europe. Her parents continuously adopt children from third world countries to stay relevant, so she's hardly physically alone before they're shipped off to boarding school. Whether she has the company of her siblings, or her mother is sitting beside her opening the curtains of a house in South America, Madison cannot help but feel out of place and alone. Her only escape is that she dies.

    How Madison dies remains a mystery ...
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    Kindle Edition of Warmed and Bound Now Available 

    by
    Flash
    Published on 08-25-2011 05:13 PM
    Categories:
    1. Article

    Warmed and Bound: Kindle Edition is available for immediate download at Amazon.com, $7.95. Bonus content exclusive to the e-book editions:

    • Afterword by Jesse Lawrence
    • Final Thoughts by Livius Nedin and Robb Olson
    • Warmed and Bound: Up Close by Phil Jourdan
    • Interview with Pela Via by Phil Jourdan
    • The Multiple Voices Inside Your Book by Jay Slayton-Joslin
    • Booked Podcast: Warmed and Bound Sessions
    • Transcripts of Booked Interviews with: Craig Clevenger, Brian Evenson, Stephen Graham Jones and Pela Via
    • Photography by Charles King
    • The Fuse

    Plus tons of internal and external links make this thing a breeze to navigate. Tell your friends, and remember that we could use a lot more reviews in the usual places (Amazon, Goodreads, etc.).

    ePub should be coming soon as well. ...
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    LIMITED TIME ONLY: Warmed And Bound is $9.09 At Barnes & Noble And Amazon 

    by
    Logan_Frost
    Published on 08-09-2011 04:04 PM
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    I know this may seem like deja vu, but I assure you, we won't have a repeat of our weekend release.

    This came out of a long, tense negotiation through Barnes & Noble's Publisher Author Services that began pretty much the day after Comic-Con. I also suspect there was some... external pressure to make things right. I don't want to get into specifics.

    Anyway, the good news: For a limited time, at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, WARMED AND BOUND is being sold at $9.09, and equally good news, Barnes & Noble finally sent notice to all canceled orders and made sure to let them know that this is happening, and that the price will be honored.

    So, ladies and gentlemen: Fire sale.

    Copy this link: http://astore.amazon.com/thevel-20/detail/1613641621

    Send it to everyone you know.

    We've got a second shot at really kicking the paperback into gear. While everyone who ordered at B&N may end up just going ...
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    Review: bad bad bad by Jesús Ángel García 

    by
    Ferg
    Published on 07-20-2011 03:33 PM
    Categories:
    1. Article



    bad bad bad - Jesús Ángel García

    Jesús Ángel García is the name of the main character of bad bad bad. The fun coincidence of this is, that also just so happens to be the name of the author of bad bad bad. The nerve that this humble reviewer would have to muster to make such a move is immeasurable, but after meeting García, seeing him in action, it probably wasn't even given a second thought. That isn't to say that he lives with a god-sized self-importance. Jesús just exudes an effortless air. Listening to him pitch his book to a ridiculously attractive woman just moments after starring down a troupe of motorcycle enthusiasts, mocking their rumbling engines with a megaphone just made sense. ...
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  • Interviews

    Ferg-38270

    Interview: Robert Gatewood

    Robert Gatewood is the acclaimed author of the best selling novel, The Sound of the Trees and author of the short story, "Down in New Orleans" which appeared in Sonny Brewer's Blue Moon Cafe series. He is currently a creative writing instructor at the University of Colorado. The interview was conducted by Drew "writerswrite" McCoy.



    THE VELVET: When did you know you wanted to be a writer? To pursue this as a career?
    Robert Gatewood: For me, finally, the best answer abides in an early love for reading. At the same time I want to be careful not to conjure the iconic image of some pale, feverish child tucked away in the vast recesses of his father’s tiered mahogany. And while there is much to admire in those writers who have endured by way of an unusually elaborate relationship with books extreme conditions, I think it’s too often that we hear a writer describe himself as having read “voraciously” in his youth; almost always we learn that this was done... read more
    Ferg 02-11-2009, 11:00 PM

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    Article 
    JesseLawrence-38264

    Interview: James Meek

    James Meek is the award winning author of The People's Act of Love as well as the novels McFarlane Boils the Sea, Drivetime and We Are Now Beginning Our Descent. Below, he talks about his writing, small press publishers, and borsch, among other things.



    THE VELVET: Your first three books were published by Polygon in highly limited numbers. Were all of their titles published in this manner? Why has Drivetime, your second novel, been reissued but not the other two?

    JAMES MEEK: In the late 1980s, under Peter Kravitz and Marion Sinclair, Polygon pioneered a French-style first publication of fiction, neither hard nor soft cover but a semi-rigid cover with fold-out flaps and a simple, elegant design of a small monochrome image on a white background. This style was subsequently imitated by Secker & Warburg under Robin Robertson, who also poached a number of Polygon’s authors, most notably James Kelman. Although the novels and short story... read more
    JesseLawrence 02-01-2009, 11:00 PM

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    Article 
    Malickfan-

    Interview: Vincent Louis Carrella

    [news]Back in March, our very own Craig Clevenger alerted The Velvet to a new book by Vincent Louis Carrella called Serpent Box. His praise was well-justified, as Serpent Box turned out to be one of the best books of 2008. While Serpent Box is his first novel, Carrella has written many short stories, which you can find at http://www.serpentbox.com.



    THE VELVET: So your book's been out for quite a while now. How has everything been since the release?

    VINCENT LOUIS CARRELLA: Well everything has been … well, I can’t think of an adjective. It’s been good and bad. Hellish. Stressful … but also humbling, so you’ll need to be more specific.

    VELVET: Just wasn't sure if your life has changed since the release? Obviously you get to travel and meet new people.

    VLC: Well it’s not what one might expect. My life has not changed per se and I have done very little traveling. My publisher sent me to a couple places. I’ve... read more
    Malickfan 12-01-2008, 11:00 PM

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    Article 
    JesseLawrence-38264

    Interview: Mark McNay



    Last year, I read Mark McNay's debut novel Fresh. Excited by this new voice and the news that his second novel, Under Control had just been published in the UK, I procured a copy, then tracked him down for a brief chat. He is published in the UK by Canongate and in the US by MacAdam/Cage, who will release Under Control in January 2009.


    THE VELVET: When did you get the writing bug, decide to have a go at it professionally? Was there a specific episode in your life or a particular book that greatly influenced your pursuit?

    MARK MCNAY: I've written journals since I was a teenager. And crap poems about girls dumping me and life doing me down. I started to have a go at it professionally when I was studying literature as a mature student. I wrote a short story called "El Dorado" and it received a prize. The praise helped to spur me into a novel.

    VELVET: Your first novel, Fresh, won two awards. The Arts Foundation... read more
    JesseLawrence 09-22-2008, 11:00 PM

    Categories:

    Article