Topics I covered include:

Beer and Music: Tuned Pale Ale

Climbing the White Ladder

10 Literary Songs

Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice”

Aimee Mann’s “Wise Up” from Magnolia

Click away and feel free to answer any questions I may or may not throw your way.

This was sent from @NY2CA on Twitter.

She was kind enough to purchase both of my books and send me this pic.

Hopefully she’ll enjoy them.

I read one very creepy little vignette called “Leave Me the Way I was Found” by Polish writer Christian A. Dumais. It’s about a video that can drive people to suicide or homicide, that finds its way onto YouTube courtesy of a mysterious person who uses the handle “albertfish.”

There’s a bit more, including a bizarre bit of synchronicity. And yeah, I know I’m not Polish, but I don’t mind playing one on television.

If you like what you see, consider giving the magazine a shot and click the image below.

Leave Me the Way I was Found by Christian A. Dumais – This short tale is very Ringu-like and eerie, about a video that causes sickness in the masses. There’s a melancholy sense of doom that hangs over it like a cloud of acid.

Go and read the rest of the review here.

And when you’re done, go buy a copy of Shock Totem here.

]]> http://www.puffchrissy.com/featured/shock-totem-2-review-5-out-of-5/feed/ 1 http://www.puffchrissy.com/featured/over-at-the-cover-stories-site/ http://www.puffchrissy.com/featured/over-at-the-cover-stories-site/#comments Thu, 29 Jul 2010 07:39:51 +0000 Christian A. Dumais http://www.puffchrissy.com/?p=4227 In case you missed it, yesterday I popped into the official Cover Stories website and talked about my short piece “Leave Me the Way I was Found”, the story now available in the latest issue of Shock Totem. Though I touch on the story itself, I go into detail about how I went about getting it published and how the editing process made it a better story. It’s not life-changing by any means, but if you’re a writer, you might find something in there to appreciate:

I ended up writing eleven euphictions for Cover Stories. The eleventh one that didn’t make the anthology was “Leave Me the Way I was Found”. I was crazy excited about this story for a lot of reasons. And though I knew it had a perfectly good home in Cover Stories, I really believed I could sell it and finally retire.

I sent the piece to two different places, the first beingPseudopod. Ever since I discovered Pseudopod (I believe through Wil Wheaton’s site), I’ve wanted to have one of my stories on their podcast. A month after I sent them the piece, they rejected it.

Read the whole thing here.

Naturally, Cover Stories is available. And Shock Totem too.

Over at Crazed Fanboy, she writes:

Despite the melancholy, there are moments of sagacity and wisdom like I’ve rarely seen before. Empty Rooms Lonely Countries is easily one of my top ten favorite books of all time.

And then over at Tampa Book Buzz, she writes:

I absolutely loved this book. Empty Rooms Lonely Countries is bittersweet and touching, with some really funny bits here and there. There are moments of sagacity and wisdom like I’ve rarely seen before, but it’s oh so sad – heartbreakingly, hauntingly, beautifully so.

She has quite a bit more to say and I’m thrilled that she enjoyed the book as much as she did.

POLISH WEDDING BLUES!

My friend Derrek has finally married after a five year courting process that would have shamed any Klingon couple. I had the honor of being the Best Man. The wedding was on Friday and ended sometime Sunday morning, which, for a Polish wedding, is considered short. In fact, if a wedding were an Olympic sport, Poland would have those Gold medals faster than a Mario brother.

On reflection, I do feel that the 3AM dance off to C+C Music Factory “Everybody Dance Now” against my buddy Fargo was a poor decision, especially since I’ve started seeing some of the pictures from said event.

I’ve never seen a DJ cry like that before.

WRITING

Now that the wedding is out of the way, I’m finally able to get back to a normal writing schedule. Since I’m not working until October, this is the best opportunity to get a lot of projects out of the way.

N. Pendleton has given me an amazing opportunity that comes with a deadline that’ll be here sooner than later.

And I’m sitting on these two book proposals that need to find homes.

SHOCK TOTEM

I got my copy of the second issue of the horror publication Shock Totem. While it’s exciting to see my short story “Leave Me the Way I was Found” in print, it’s been a revelation reading the other short stories in the book. Right now, the story that I can’t say enough amazing things about is “Sweepers” by Leslianne Wilder. Excellent work.

COVER STORIES

Have you ordered your copy yet? Sales have been picking up thanks to some great word of mouth. I honestly think readers have been surprised by the stories in the anthology, especially those who were put off by the euphictional concept of the book.

DRUNK HULK

It’s been a lot of fun reading people’s reaction to the outing of Drunk Hulk in the last week. It’s also nice to see all the new followers at @puffchrissy on Twitter. I certainly hope they find me as interesting as a fictional drunk gamma-radiated super-hero.

]]> http://www.puffchrissy.com/featured/4191/feed/ 0 http://www.puffchrissy.com/interview/christian-a-dumais-interviewed-at-galleycat/ http://www.puffchrissy.com/interview/christian-a-dumais-interviewed-at-galleycat/#comments Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:20:25 +0000 Christian A. Dumais http://www.puffchrissy.com/?p=4176 In the off chance that you missed yesterday’s big announcement, you can read GalleyCat’s exclusive interview with me as they “unmask” Twitter’s Drunk Hulk.

The Drunk Hulk Twitter feed was written by author Christian A. Dumais. Dumais (pictured) was most recently published in Shock Totem and edited the Cover Stories collection. He currently lectures at universities in Poland, teaching American Literature and Pop Culture.

We caught up with this mysterious writer in an email interview.

Read the rest here.

Again, I’d like to thank GalleyCat and Jason Boog for the write up.

The key word here is influence. Borrowing an idea from Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, we can look at euphiction this way.

Let’s take the myth of Icarus. Needing to escape from Crete, his father creates a set of wings from feathers and wax for him, with specific instructions not to fly too close to the sun. However, once Icarus is flying, he’s overcome with excitement. Enjoying his flight, Icarus ignores his father’s warning and naturally flies too high, until the sun melts the wax holding his wings together. Icarus eventually falls to his death.

Now let’s flash forward nearly 2000 years later. Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel, inspired by the myth, creates Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.

Read the rest at the Cover Stories website.

Euphiction is a writing genre where writers do literary “cover versions” of specific songs, a marriage of musical inspiration with the written word, or a story that works like a three-minute single. The word combines euphonious and fiction.

To write a euphictional story, writers select a song and either use the song’s title or a lyric from the song as the title of the story, and then write a story that reflects the song itself. The goal of the piece is to create a literary cover of the song, by emulating the song’s message or theme, or simply replicating the mood of the song in the story. The song’s influence can be overt or cryptic, or the song can simply be recognized as a kind of soundtrack to the story. Some euphictional writers challenge themselves further by inserting as many of the lyrics from the song into the story. It must be stressed, however, that permission to use lyrics from the musician or band is paramount, especially if seriously considering the publication of the story.

Euphiction is a form of flash fiction, where the maximum word count for the story is 1,000 words, not including the title. The imposed word limit helps to reflect the ephemeral nature of a song.

Euphiction, as a writing genre, fits neatly into Warren Ellis’ concept of burst culture. Euphictional pieces, like the songs that inspire them, are meant to be digested quickly and provide readers with satisfying narratives in bursts. And like music, collected euphiction can be shuffled (read in any order) and encourages repeat readings.

The term euphiction was originally used in Cover Stories: A Euphictional Anthology, where ten writers each chose different albums and wrote ten stories based on the songs from the selected album. The book collected 100 euphictional stories inspired by the music of Combichrist, the Walkmen, By Hook or Crook, the Twilight Singers and others. The writers included in the anthology were Simon Neil, Derrek Carriveau, Christian A. Dumais (Empty Rooms Lonely Countries), T.P. Whited, Erik Schmidt, Suzi M. (Nemesis), A.C. Noia, Derek Handley, Matt Gamble and N. Pendleton (What Trees Have Done). An introduction was written by Freddie & Me creator Mike Dawson and an afterword by Florida Atlantic University Associate Director of Bands, Dr. Sean Murray. The anthology was collected and edited by Dumais.

In February 2010, N. Pendleton’s Museioncast Volume 3, Episode 3: “Six Euphictions” which featured the music of Nest from their self-titled EP, was made available online. Pendleton imposed further restrictions to these euphictional pieces, such as no story could be longer than 500 words, no rewrites, and all six stories had to be recorded for the podcast in one take.

The first officially published euphictional piece was in issue 2 of Shock Totem Magazine, “Leave Me the Way I was Found,” written by Christian A. Dumais.