2017 Dec
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JOHN URBANCIK photographer writer creator
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MEET THE DEAD SOUTH
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AUTHORS ON THE MOVE: WENDY WEBB
CONTENTS
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issue 18 Featured Author: John Urbancik
21 Authors on the Move:
Wendy Webb
24 Meet:
The Dead South
26 New & Noteworthy:
Pev Rayz
Review Columns 04 05 06 08 10 On the Cover 12 14 Photo Credit: Patrick 22 Fore
Romance Horror General Fiction Book Club Picks Science Fiction/Fantasy Mystery/Thrillers Nonfiction YA & Children’s Books
Features 11 16
Indie Author Day Publisher Spotlight
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What if you could wish for anything—and get it? “Heartbreaking, other times hilarious, but always
THOUGHT-PROVOKING .” —Booklist
—Kirkus Reviews
“A
THOROUGHLY ENGAGING
choice for readers of realistic fiction and magical realism.” —School Library Journal
9781492636083 I HC
Also from Chelsea Sedoti
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“A solid coming-of-age novel .” —Kirkus Reviews
9781492642312 I HC I $17.99
“POIGNANT…will inspire readers.”
EDITOR’S NOTE Editor in Chief: Rebecca Vnuk Graphic Designer: Courtney Pugh REVIEW TEAM Robin Bradford Craig Clark Erin Downey Howerton Alan Keep Megan McArdle
Andie Paloutzian Becky Spratford Kaite Mediatore Stover Magan Szwarek Henrietta Verma
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Justin Hoenke SUBSCRIBER INFORMATION Contact Naomi Blackburn, 361-356-1819 x402 or naomi.blackburn@patomimediagroup.com for subscription assistance. Please include name, address, and phone number on inquiries. Individual and bulk subscriptions are available. For information, see indiepicksmag.com/subscribe. Postmaster: Send address changes to: Patomi Media Group, PO Box 533 Sugar Grove, IL 60554 ADVERTISING Advertising Sales Naomi Blackburn Advertising in IndiePicks is an opportunity to showcase your book to a national audience of readers and librarians who support independent publishers and authors. For information on advertising rates, please contact Naomi Blackburn, naomi.blackburn@patomimediagroup.com PATOMI MEDIA GROUP President & Publisher: Naomi Blackburn Vice President of Operations: Erin Matty Vice President, Distribution: Patrick Blackburn IndiePicks Magazine is a book review publication (available in e- and print monthly subscriptions) dedicated to independent publishers and authors. Part of the Patomi Media Group, IndiePicks was founded in 2017 by publisher Naomi Blackburn.
WELCOME TO INDIEPICKS Welcome, new readers! I’m delighted to introduce you to the second issue of IndiePicks Magazine. Our goal is to celebrate the uniqueness and diversity of independent publishing houses and those who have chosen the nontraditional publishing route to bring their books to market. Our magazine and website focus on reviews, as well as interviews, articles, and other entertaining columns related to topics in the indie media world. I’d like to encourage you to check out our website, indiepicksmag.com, which offers bonus review content, sneak peeks of print features, and regular blog posts. And if you’d like to know more about us, please check out the FAQ section of the site. There, you’ll find everything you need to know, including subscription information, details on our social media accounts, and instructions regarding how to submit for review. One question you might be asking is, “Why IndiePicks?” Well, we like to think that we stand out in the world of book reviews in a few very specific ways. First, we will never charge authors or publishers for reviews. Not in print, not on our website. Second, our monthly subscription model is a hybrid—our print and digital subscriptions are available for individual subscriptions, but we also offer a bulk package to libraries and bookstores at a competitive price, allowing them to offer IndiePicks as a print giveaway item to their customers. Finally, we’ve deliberately kept our review team small and wholly made up of professional librarians. We’re so glad you want to take this journey into the world of independent publishing with us. If you have questions, comments, or ideas about what you’d like to see featured in the magazine, please contact me at indiepicks@patomimediagroup.com. Rebecca Vnuk Editor in Chief, IndiePicks Magazine
Our review team consists of readers’-advisorylibrarians who review with an eye towards making suggestions to collection development librarians as well as to general readers.
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BOOK CLUB PICKS
by Megan McArdle
GINGERPHOBIA
The Dog Walker’s Diary by Kathryn Donahue. (North Star Editions, $14.99, 9781635839029) Everything You Came to See by Elizabeth Schulte Martin. (Skyhorse, $24.99, 9781510724044) Photo Credit: Matt Nelson Dogs in New York City
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From the moment he opened his front door and saw the beautiful red-haired Annie Doherty, literary agent Daniel Ashe’s life took on a new trajectory. As Donahue’s debut, The Dog Walker’s Diary opens, Daniel has hired Annie to walk his two dogs, despite his lifelong fear of redheads. Every evening, he is bemused to come home to Annie’s dog walking diary where, instead of a staid accounting of any issues that arose during their walks, he finds elaborate adventures she has penned with his dogs taking starring roles. Daniel discovers that these stories, and the woman who wrote them, are taking up more and more of his attention, even though he is in the middle of the biggest deal of his career as a literary agent. He is also supposedly in a relationship already, with a cool blonde who offers him everything he always said he wanted: companionship without love. While the reader might assume they know where this story is going
at this point, there is a surprising turn coming. On top of this cozy base of quirky romance, author Donahue adds a layer of tension as Daniel becomes embroiled in an unexpected mystery. This winning mix of whimsy and suspense succeeds because of its fresh execution and the clever way the author keeps the character of Annie an appealing cipher. Book Group Bonus: Book clubs that are unafraid to try something fresh and new will be rewarded with a unique read. The whimsy factor is high, but so is the humor, and Daniel is a character readers can root for even as he makes mistakes. SEND IN THE CLOWN When he shows up for an audition at Feely and Feinstein’s International Circus in
Everything You Came to See by Elizabeth Schulte Martin, Henry Bell is hungry, homeless, and lying about his age. Still, circus manager Caleb Baratucci can see he is also extremely talented and hires him as the troupe’s new clown. Feely and Feinstein’s has seen better days, but as they start rehearsing for their tour of the midwest (and a stop in Toronto to justify the “International” part of their name), Henry finds a form of comfort in company of performers. His past—from the loss of his mother to the violent father who had to be placated at any cost and the brothers he abandoned—is never far behind him. He finds himself drawn to Caleb’s wife Adrienne, a former giantess with the circus whose health is failing. Even he is not sure if he craves romantic or a maternal affection from her, but Henry’s obsession with the woman who is the first in a
long time to show him any kindness is bound to cause problems. Henry also chafes at not being allowed to fully express the grand ideas he has for new and daring routines. His ambition to be a great clown is nothing to laugh at, and Caleb can see that Henry is a talent that could be the saving of the failing circus. Book Club Bonus: The circus setting will be a great draw for fans of books like Sara Gruen’s Water For Elephants and Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love, but they will stay for the lovely writing and fascinating characters.
of Jacksonville that houses the factory to the remote town in the Scottish Highlands where Corran has retreated in an attempt to ward off his cravings for heroin. Book Group Bonus: With multiple storylines all gathering tension throughout the novel, groups can discuss which they found most compelling: the father-son conflict, Johnny’s medical drama, the mystery of the ammonia tank explosion, or any of the other small narrative eddies the author brilliantly navigates.
melancholy as well—while Adam’s work was important, he was never the physics giant he wished to be, and the work he spent so much of his career on waxes and wanes in the eye of public opinion. Book Group Bonus: While the novel covers historical periods, it feels more like character study, with less emphasis on the history of the atomic program than one might expect. Groups who would enjoy
FATHERS AND SONS When readers meet Scotsman Johnny Mackinnon in Smith’s second novel, The Ice House, he has spent the last 30 years in Jacksonville, Florida, helping run the ice factory his wife, Pauline, inherited. Now the factory is in danger unless they can successfully appeal the hefty OSHA fine levied on the business after an explosion in an ammonia tank. This would wipe them out, as their retirement nest egg was spent trying to cure Corran, Johnny’s son from his first marriage, of his heroin addiction. The last relapse left the father and son estranged, and even the birth of Corran’s baby daughter has not softened Johnny’s stance of nocontact. When he discovers he has a growth in his brain that could be cancer, he decides to travel to Scotland to see Corran, bringing along his neighbor’s slightly odd teenage son as a driver. Meanwhile, Pauline has to find a way to save the factory, which has its share of workplace drama. While this is a beautiful character-driven novel, the settings are also vividly realized, from the run-down neighborhood
A NUCLEAR FAMILY A family revolves around the powerful magnet of patriarch Adam Brooks in Knight’s debut novel, Lost, Almost. A physicist involved in nuclear weapons research in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Adam is a chilly and impatient mentor to his science-minded son and granddaughter, expecting them to live up to his near-impossible standards. In one early scene that illuminates his character, Adam visits his granddaughter Katie’s math club and both awes the teens and makes one girl cry. The novel jumps forward and backward in time, with vignettes showing readers how Adam both inspires and alienates. There’s an added
an examination of how a patriarch can inspire and damage his family will find much to discuss here, in the vein of Pat Conroy’s The Great Santini or David Auburn’s play Proof.
The Ice House by Laura Lee Smith. (Grove, $25, 9780802127082). Lost, Almost by Amy P. Knight.(Engine Books, $14.95, 9781938126833) Photo Credit: Paul Morris Skye, United Kingdom
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MEET
by Becky Spratford
JOHN URBANCIK
John Urbancik writes lyrical, dark, and creepy stories of fantasy and horror that are part Neil Gaiman, part China Mieville, with a dash of Salman Rushdie. Urbancik’s expertly crafted tales would be hugely popular with a wide range of readers, if only more people knew about him. Urbancik began writing at a young age, creating single-page comic strips in grade school, but his first published story came in 1999, “A Portrait in Graphite.” Since then, he has had so many stories, novels, and poems published that even he cannot keep track of them all. He spent his youth in New York City and Long Island, went upstate to study video and audio production in college, and eventually settled in Florida. He’s recently relocated to Virginia, and had the opportunity to live briefly on the other side of the world in Sydney, Australia. He happened to bring with him a very nice camera, practiced the craft while there, and got quite good at it. And so, Urbancik the writer added “photographer” to his professional and artistic titles.
At first glance, Urbancik notes that his life does not seem colorful. As he likes to say, “No time in jail or in the armed forces, and no game show victories. However, I feel lucky to have been able to see and do all I have.” Among his several mottos for life: “Go everywhere, do everything.” And, “It’s all fun and games until someone gets eaten alive by a tiger shark.” This world view is easily seen in Urbancik’s writing, as his work is hard to classify using our current genre constructs. When I asked him if he set out to blend genres, he talked about the amalgamation of genres as part of the natural progression of all literature. “It’s always been present. In the 70s
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and 80s, we had a lot of horror that was meant to terrify, but you also started to get things like Aliens, which is science fiction-slash-horror, and The Princess Bride, which is as much romance as it is fantasy. I tend to blend genres because I don’t generally think of a specific genre when I write. I’ll include elements of crime noir, fantasy, horror, science fiction, romance, whatever’s appropriate for the story. My latest novel, The Corpse and the Girl from Miami, begins like crime noir, then swings into full-tilt horror before shifting to over the top magic and mythology. [Editor’s note: review found on page 5]. Most stories don’t belong to a specific genre until the marketers get their hands on them.” Urbancik writes like a reader. He sees a story and he does not let the limits of established tropes rein him in. He simply tells it how it needs to be told. I wondered if his work as a photographer shaped this unique vision at all. “I don’t know that the photography influences the writing so much as the writing and photography have their source, in me, in the same place. I see cinematically, so I tend to write that way. In my first novel, Sins of Blood and Stone, I have a scene where a demon crashes into a cathedral through a stained glass, rose window. Of course, even before I wrote the scene I was seeing it [in my mind] on a big screen in brilliant technicolor.” After years of holding down a “day job,” Urbancik has recently taken the leap to being a full time writer. “I’m older now than I’ve ever been, and I’m only ever going to get older. I reached a place where I needed to give up on the endless succession of no-future jobs I’ve been laid off more times than I can count as companies restructure and consolidate—and pursue the thing I’ve always wanted to do. My heart, my soul are in my stories, and the day jobs only barely paid me enough to survive. They never made me happy. If I’m going to make a living writing, I need to spend all of my energy and resources in pursuit of that.” But Urbancik notes that he didn’t make the shift to full-time writing until his partner finished her Ph.D, which now allows him to “focus on what I want—and love—to do.”
"If I'm going to make a living writing, I need to spend all of my energy and resources in pursuit of that."
One of those things that Urbancik loves to do is to take on large scale creative projects. His most recent one is InkStains, a project in which he challenges himself to write a story a day, every day (with only one day off a month) by hand, with a
nice pen and paper. Some days John writes for only 20-30 minutes and other days, much longer. As he explains, “In the past, I’ve done short-term challenges, like writing seven stories in seven days. And I’d done it with photography, too—my first year-long project was self-portraits. Then in 2012, I had a heart attack. I faced Death, and I came back, and realized I was letting myself down. I started the InkStains project after that as a means of making sure I was writing. The goal has never been quantity, but to continue to improve, to explore and experiment, and to get the creative wheels inside my head not just turning, but spinning like mad. And I believe I’ve done that. I’ve never been filled with more inspiration or more ideas. And I think I’ve improved immensely, as a writer and artist, from doing what are essentially practice stories. I freely admit that some of these stories don’t work, some are not interesting, some fail as stories even if they’re successful as explorations. But I also believe some of these stories are wonderful.” After the first year of InkStains stories, Urbancik knew he wanted to share what he wrote with others, both readers and fellow writers, but he wasn’t quite sure how. “I started typing them, and decided the best format was to self-publish monthly installments. That was a lot of work, but it gave me a chance to play with things like layout and design that I hadn’t had much experience with. I’m slowly getting the second set of InkStains published now, as I write the third set. I wrote in 2013, 2015, and 2017. The real question now is, will I do a fourth series in 2019?” But even though this multi-year project has resulted in hundreds of thousands of words—the first year alone was close to 250,000—it has not been enough satisfy his seemingly insatiable creative drive, so Urbancik recently found another outlet for both the stories he has created and the lessons he learned along the way— InkStains, the weekly podcast. “I have friends who do interview shows and such, and I didn’t feel I could contribute to that. But I talked with Project Entertainment Network and pitched a show of me giving readings from the InkStains stories and talking about writing, photography, art, and creativity. I want to be an encouraging voice for everyone who feels they have an artistic spark they’ve never been able to fully explore. I want to give people permission to experiment and make mistakes and learn from them. I want to help artists achieve success, however they’re defining their own successes, and this podcast seemed like the perfect tool to accomplish that.” You can listen to Urbancik’s weekly musings on writing and even hear him read some of his stories on
his InkStains podcast at projectentertainmentnetwork. com/shows/inkstains, and you can find all of his books, including the monthly InkStains installment volumes, on Amazon. For more information and to follow Urbancik’s artistic adventures visit his website, darkfluidity.com, and catch him on Facebook (facebook.com/Urbancik), Twitter, or Instagram (@JohnUrbancik).
Here are a few recent titles by Urbancik, with readalike suggestions to help readers pick a place to get started: The Corpse and the Girl from Miami begins when a man wakes atop a fresh grave during a thunderstorm without any memory. The only clue he’s got is an address on the license in his wallet. When he gets there, they’ve been waiting for him. For fans of Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim series who also like Seanan McGuire. Stale Reality is a love letter to Sydney, Australia. The premise is simple: what if all of reality shifted to accommodate somebody else, and you, who never existed in this version of reality, was left behind? Kevin finds himself in a world where he’s never met his wife and their infant son was never born, and he wants to reclaim his other existence. This is Urbancik’s darkest novel and is a perfect suggestion for fans of Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. Tales of the Fantastic and the Phantasmagoric is a collection of novellas and vignettes that serves as an excellent introduction to Urbacik’s work. The title is cribbed from Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. The stories are a combination of fantasy, dark fantasy, and horror and will be enjoyed by fans of Neil Gaiman. City of Glass [forthcoming] began as an InkStains story. A man built a city of glass in the desert to declare his ardor, but his love interest is unimpressed. She says it’s fragile, it can’t last. And it won’t. The city will exist for only 100 days, but 100,000 people move in and make it their home. Those who enjoyed China Mieville’s The City & The City will love this work about identity and secrets.
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