Monday, May 22, 2006
Cloverfield
And now let me say something about Cloverfield Press.
Cloverfield is a small press based in Los Angeles that puts out incredibly beautiful and incredibly tiny books. The books themselves are as much a work of art as the texts contained within. Cloverfield's stated goal is to promote the work of new artists, and to celebrate the short story as an art form. The folks who started the press, Matthew Greenfield and Laurence Dumortier, are two of the nicest people you'll ever meet if you ever get the chance to meet them. A case can be made that I'm biased, since it's entirely due to them that I'm now a World Renowned Published Author of Fiction. A case can also be made that just because a person is biased doesn't mean they're not telling the truth.
Speaking of truth, when I wrote The Cubist Infant I'd originally planned on it being a novella of approximately 80 pages. Ultimately, I scrapped a lot of the material (for instance, there was a lot more Gertrude Stein dialogue in earlier drafts... but I'm apparently the only one who thought it was funny. And then there was this big thing with Matisse and the Fauvists that turned out to be not as funny as I thought it would), and ended up with about 35 pages. I'd call that a Long Short Story. Some people, however, would call it a Novellette. I'm fine with either, at least until somebody does a study showing that people are more inclined to spend $15 on one or the other.
Anyway, I obviously want everybody to go to Amazon, Powells, or the publisher's website to buy my damn book, but I also want everybody to buy the rest of Cloverfield's books as well, because they're AWESOME. I've met the other Cloverfield authors (except Miranda July, who's too busy getting famous, and Haruki Murakami, who's too busy figuring out how he's next going to blow our collective minds), and they're all great people who you shouldn't feel bad about supporting.
So yeah, support independent publishing and buy some books.
Cloverfield is a small press based in Los Angeles that puts out incredibly beautiful and incredibly tiny books. The books themselves are as much a work of art as the texts contained within. Cloverfield's stated goal is to promote the work of new artists, and to celebrate the short story as an art form. The folks who started the press, Matthew Greenfield and Laurence Dumortier, are two of the nicest people you'll ever meet if you ever get the chance to meet them. A case can be made that I'm biased, since it's entirely due to them that I'm now a World Renowned Published Author of Fiction. A case can also be made that just because a person is biased doesn't mean they're not telling the truth.
Speaking of truth, when I wrote The Cubist Infant I'd originally planned on it being a novella of approximately 80 pages. Ultimately, I scrapped a lot of the material (for instance, there was a lot more Gertrude Stein dialogue in earlier drafts... but I'm apparently the only one who thought it was funny. And then there was this big thing with Matisse and the Fauvists that turned out to be not as funny as I thought it would), and ended up with about 35 pages. I'd call that a Long Short Story. Some people, however, would call it a Novellette. I'm fine with either, at least until somebody does a study showing that people are more inclined to spend $15 on one or the other.
Anyway, I obviously want everybody to go to Amazon, Powells, or the publisher's website to buy my damn book, but I also want everybody to buy the rest of Cloverfield's books as well, because they're AWESOME. I've met the other Cloverfield authors (except Miranda July, who's too busy getting famous, and Haruki Murakami, who's too busy figuring out how he's next going to blow our collective minds), and they're all great people who you shouldn't feel bad about supporting.
So yeah, support independent publishing and buy some books.
// posted by Justus Ballard @ 10:31 AM 
