It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt. Buy It Now!

Four years ago, I got an email from an old college friend by the name of Maureen McDole. Maureen, her husband, and a couple other folks had started a new, small press in Florida called Summerfolk, and Maureen wanted to know if I would be interested in submitting a poetry manuscript for consideration for publication.

Does a carriage horse shit in the street?

oOf course, I said yes. It took me about a year to get my act together to get a manuscript to the editors, and in the meantime I met the man I would eventually be with for the next three years. On meeting David, and seeing his art work, I asked him if he would consider a collaboration with me on the book. Twenty poems matched with 20 of his lino cut prints from his Face A Day series. He said yes. The publishers said yes. And so, the concept that would become the book, It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt, was born.

The last three years have been a wild ride of love, war, growth, change, hurt, loss, pain, and healing. Gabriel Garling with Summerfolk Press designed a fantastic book, but, the economic reality of the times is that the press, a labor of love, has been put on hold due to the recession. Unfortunately that meant that the good people at Summerfolk couldn't print our book.

Enter Sven Davisson at Rebel Satori Press.

About a year ago, I realized that I was well on my way to writing my first novel. By August of last year, I had a good 100 or so pages written. My friends Emanuel Xavier and Charlie Vazquez were both being published by the Queer Mojo imprint of Rebel Satori Press. I asked them if they would put in a good word with their publisher for me. He asked to see a sample of the novel and a synposis. I obliged. He obliged me by giving my a contract for my first novel, Eden Lost, which will be out later this Fall (YES BETTY TISEL I AM WORKING ON THE DANG REVISIONS!). In May, Sven descended from his mighty mountain eyrie in Maine to attend the book release party for Emanuel Xavier's latest project, Me No Hablo con Acento, and I had a chance to meet and hang out with Sven. I mentioned, in passing, that I had this completed manuscript that I was considering self-publishing. Sven gave me complete side eye and said, "No, no. Send it to me. If I like it, I will publish it."

Sven liked it. Sven published it. You can order it right now. Help a broke writer be less broke and do yourself a favor...get an amazing book with poetry and art that is, in my humble opinion, amazing. But don't just take my word for it. Take their words too:

"Brandon Lacy Campos is an important poet that doesn't cut corners and doesn't compromise. His work is vivid, jagged, and it takes up space in the most beautiful way. To invest time in getting familiar with his poetry is to invest in vitality. I hope this is just the first shout to announce the arrival of his chorus." -Bao Phi, author of Song I Sing.

"Brandon Lacy Campos is a word thief of the best and brightest kind, pilfering from “a corrupt system that must fall/If we’re ever to have liberty and justice for all.” These scathing, impassioned poems kick up stars dragged along asphalt—with outlandish sass, old-time funk, and a hot, ever-shimmying soul that could teach the stiffest otherness in anyone more than a few things about its most generous self." Ed Bok Lee, best selling author of Real Karaoke People.

"Brandon Lacy Campos is part tomahawk thrower and part philosopher, a fresh voice of queer rebellion, an outsider talking of revolution, avenging exploitation. The stinging lashes on a slave’s back, the mystical incantations of native medicine men, the curiosities of an innocent white child and the cultural bisection of a bilingual Latino—these are the things he sees, as these are the things he is. These poems are monuments to the victims of abuse, to the splendor of visionary queer consciousness—to true America." Charlie Vázquez, fiction writer, blogger and host of the queer East Village reading series, PANIC!, author of Contraband and co-editor of From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction (get this book too! It includes an excerpt from Eden Lost).


You can buy your copy of It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt, today!

Working It Out/Writing It Out

So, I am in the midst of writing my first novel. It will be my second book, when and if it gets published, my first book being It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt, due out from Summerfolk Press this coming spring.

So this book, so far, is about a little kid, growing up in an abusive household, that all of a sudden finds himself wielding tremendous power. The first thing he does with the power is kill his abusive step-father.

Ain't that a bitch.

I am about 52 type written pages into the book or roughly 19,000 words. I know where the book is going next, and I am pretty sure I know where this book ends (though I think there may be some sequels to it). It is part autobiography and part exorcism, and writing it is like channeling an alternative mini-me with the power to see auras, summon spirits, and tear abusive stepfathers a new asshole.

Amen.

It is an interesting exercise writing this book, as I am following the old maxim "write what you know." The book, for the first six chapters, is set in my hometown of Duluth, MN. Much of it is set in an apartment building that I lived in briefly as a child that was actually an old convent. Next, the kid is going to be hauled off to the hometown of my birth Father in the southern mountains of West Virginia. I need to go and visit Ronceverete, anyway, to visit my Great Aunt Sis. But, also, I want to visit the place to make it more real in my memory, since the last time I was there was 18 years ago. This town is the same town in which my family were held as slaves, so there is some serious history in this place. There has been a member of my family in the county since at least the mid-18th century, and since 1709 we have been in the Virginia Colony. So, I am feeling the pull of the homestead, so I can capture the spirit of place.

It also helps that in my Great-Grandma's backyard is a century+ old tombstone, tumbled over, and the maiden name of the woman on the tombstone is one that is shared by my Great-Grandmother, who, incidentally, swore that this woman was of no relation.

B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T

Don't think that isn't going to end up in this book.

In the end, writing a novel is both similar and wildly different than writing a poem. Poetry seems to capture a single moment in time and reflect it back with some analysis but mostly raw emotion. A novel seems to take broad swaths of time and delve into the woulda, coulda, shouldas in a way that is both cathartic and crazy making.

Hold on to your diaphragms ladies...this is going to be a hell of a ride.

Book Review: Mark Haber's Deathbed Conversions

So, I have yet to meet, face to face, the remarkable young writer Mark Haber. I came to know Mark, virtually, through our common publisher, Maureen McDole. Mark is the second author to be published by Summerfolk Press, which is the press releasing my book, It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt, in spring 2010. A couple of weeks back, Mark sent David and I copies of his first book, Deathbed Conversions. A couple of days after receiving the book, Maureen mentioned that Mark would like me to review the book for this very blog, but he was too shy to ask himself. He shouldn't have been. It was my pleasure to read this book. And Mark, though he is happily married to the gorgeous Ulrika Moats, is hot. A great artist and a hot artist are enough to make me think about inventing new ways to sin. The review below is my testament to Mark's work.


Book Review: Deathbed Conversions by Mark Haber

After reading the first story in Mark Haber's collection of shorts, Deathbed Conversions, about a U.S. gone wacky with declarations of holidays, I thought to myself, I need a holiday from reading this book.

I am very glad I didn't take one.

Though I wasn't a fan of the first story, largely because I am not a fan of absurdist literature, and all I could think of was being tortured by Kafka in high school, I moved on to Haber's equally absurd but absolutely brilliant commentary on the rich in his next story, “How the Common Manage.”

From that moment forward, I was hooked.

From a fictional police report that warns of the dangers of monkey bites to a scathing indictment of the use of religion as a tool of domination written as the journal of a 17th century pirate carrying a purloined load of piano keys in the hull of his ship, Mark Haber stretches every day life to absolutely ridiculous proportions. And in his process of magnifying every day occurrences to their most illogical conclusion, he makes visible to the plain eye the contradictions, ironies, and outright moral blasphemies that lay at the core of so many of our closely held beliefs and truths.

And, I must say, I was dutifully chastened when in “Interview for the Government Post of Executioner,” Haber invokes the spirit of Kafka, and in a very absurd manner, declares his mimicry of Kafka's absurdism as absurd.

Without a doubt, Mark Haber is a needed voice in contemporary American literature. He examines everyday vices and values, blows them up, and then breaks them down. Do yourself a favor, go out and get a copy of Deathbed Conversions and commit sections to memory. You can purchase a copy of Mark's book by clicking here.


Mark Haber was born in Washington D.C. in 1972 and grew up in Clearwater, Florida. He spent 4 years living in Los Angeles and came back to Florida in 2000. He has always loved books and literature, to an almost palpable degree. Though eschewing the discussion of things like “style” Mark’s influences are wide and varied. The 19th century Russian writers are essential; also Knut Hamsun, Borges, Marques, Henry Miller, Saul Bellow, Herman Melville, Vladimir Nabakov, Franz Kafka, Jack London, William Faulkner, Thomas Pynchon, Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, Thomas Wolfe, Jack Kerouac, Louis Celine, Charles Bukowski, Thomas Bernhard, Roberto Bolano, Antonio Lobo Antunes, William Gass, Cormac McCarthy, J.M. Coetzee, Jose Saramago, and the poetry of Dickinson, Blake, Whitman, Ginsberg, Stevens, Yeats, Simic and many more. Like Harold Bloom Mark thinks some of the best poetry of the last century is found in prose. Unlike Harold Bloom, Mark isn’t grouchy.

Mark has a B.A. in English Literature from the University of South Florida, Saint Petersburg. He has bussed tables and waited on them, taught middle school, worked as a night auditor at a bed & breakfast and is at work on a novel, Act of Oblivion, coming out Spring 2010 from Summerfolk Press.

Excerpts from It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt

My publisher, Summerfolk Press, has a fantastic website where you can read excerpts from my upcoming book It' Aint Truth If It Doesn't Hurt (due out in February 2010).

On the site you can also find portions of Mark Haber's recently released collection of short stories, Death Bed Conversions.

And, also, there are several pieces from Maureen McDole's Exploring My Options.

Take a minute to check out the work of these authors and my work.

More Advanced Praise for "It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt"

Hey folks:

Super exciting news. Ed Bok Lee, author of the best-selling collection of poetry Real Karaoke People reviewed my manuscript for my upcoming book (and collaboration with visual artist David Berube) from Summerfolk Press: It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt.

Here is what Ed had to say:

Brandon Lacy Campos is a word thief of the best and brightest kind, pilfering from “a corrupt system that must fall/If we’re ever to have liberty and justice for all.” These scathing, impassioned poems kick up stars dragged along asphalt—with outlandish sass, old-time funk, and a hot, ever-shimmying soul that could teach the stiffest otherness in anyone more than a few things about its most generous self.


--Ed Bok Lee, author of Real Karaoke People

Look for It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt in October 2009!

Advanced Praise for It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt!

Advanced praise for my first solo book of poetry, due out at the end of September from Summerfolk Press, It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt.. Look soon for the release of a webpage for the book!

"Brandon Lacy Campos is part tomahawk thrower and part philosopher, a fresh voice of queer rebellion, an outsider talking of revolution, avenging exploitation. The stinging lashes on a slave’s back, the mystical incantations of native medicine men, the curiosities of an innocent white child and the cultural bisection of a bilingual Latino—these are the things he sees, as these are the things he is. These poems are monuments to the victims of abuse, to the splendor of visionary queer consciousness—to true America."

Charlie Vázquez, fiction writer, blogger and host of the queer East Village reading series, PANIC!