Dear Dear Peoples,

I am sitting at work hungover, but if that were news, I’d be Charlie Kane. Ho ho ho, how sad… Anyways, from a more third person point of view I can appreciate that things are going beautifully. I have been roving across the eastern seaboard with the speed of a righteous slug, leaving behind a thick ooze of Revisions of several thousand books long. I have seen two thousand smiles when people realized that the books were free, and three thousand frowns once they began to skim through its contents. I have met many wonderful and or insane people, escaped many impossible dangers (goblins, true love, etc.), and succumbed to many more possible dangers (such as my previously stated present condition).

The big news is that a box of the Wraith has arrived! They look “degree absolute.” They are for all and every, so if anyone wants a sneak peak just drop me a line, if I run out, there will be plenty around in a year. So woo hoo! I danced a wicked dance when I opened the box. How did I afford it, you may ask. Through a tactic I learned from a sweet imbecile in Eugene Oregon; you just have to ask! Well, some might call it robbery, but really what’s the difference between that and pan handling with an open carry permit? Furthermore, I am always gracious and debonair about it, I always say ‘That’s a charming necklace madam, would that I had such a necklace…’ ‘I would repay you, but all I have is bullets’ and ‘let’s not involve the police in this, those poor devils are overworked as it is.’ This and other such tips are available on my instructional DVD ‘a man’s gotta do what a man doesn’t necessarily have to (with Dr.* Goodloe Byron Esq* MD*)’, which, I need not remind you, is perfectly legal for me to sell. So anyways, I present the pre-presentation of the Wraith! You will notice that it has no back cover copy! Roughly… it is a ghost story starring some deviant youths in a trailer park..

Then the even bigger news is… The Minitour! Taking place roughly from Dec 10th to Dec 18th in roughly the upper left part of the united states map! This is going to be fun! I don’t know exactly how many of you live in this part of the country, but those who do should know that it is beautiful, lovely and soulful (in the summer), and glum, sullen and despondent the remaining months! Anyone who lives along the way please feel free to drop me a line with any ideas, this is all jazz (inasmuch as I have no idea how to play jazz).

In other news:

The new Brown Paper website is up(ish!), I will continue my trend of updating it once every two years. Actually this time it should be easier so check back from time to time and you will be rewarded with various colorful and luscious ‘error’ signs, collect them all!

http://www.brownpaperpublishing.com

the great Mark Ahtitakis wrote a piece giving you an inside look at the making of the cover for Matt Stewart’s ‘The French Revolution’. If you ever wanted to see all the glory that goes into me making a book cover, well, as an analogy it’s something like a dwarf running at full tilt:

http://americanfiction.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/cover-story/

And then here is a lovely little article by my friend the Col. James McGrory, who I happened to meet the way I happen to have met most of you

http://www.georgetownvoice.com/2009/11/12/a-portrait-of-the-author-as-a-middle-aged-man/

Alright, and lastly I would like to thank the Great grand David Moynihan, of Munsey’s, Olympia Press, Disruptive Publishing, Black Mask, Ophelia Press, Ophir Press and Silk Pagoda fame. A truly good friend of mine and great fellow, David always invites me to loiter at his tables during various bookfairs and do my thing. What’s more, he pays me money to deface his books both inside and out! I would not be able to get all this done and head out west and all that without his graciousness, generosity and the baksheesh I get from my begging/second job. So thank you Snr! As for the rest of you I hope you’re all well and that you are fighting the good fight, and that you are prepared to use dirty tactics.

Sincerely,

Goodloe

What a busy time its been. After burning the remnants of the Zero Dollar Tour Mach II last month, a mountain of empty boxes, I finished up Revisions of for the Mach III and sent it to the printer, then I got some sort of nearly fatal diarrhea and started writing a new book. Three weeks later I stumbled out of my office at eleven pm coughing from chain smoking, and started running down the street towards the nearest bar, farting and cackling, wahaha the book was done. It is called The Wraith, it is my favorite thing I’ve done and were there any possibility of it I would just print a boat load of them and hand them out to all. This means very much to me. Though I have spent some years compulsively rewriting Revisions Of, I haven’t done anything new for nearly half a decade. No one will even try to deny that I was, am, and will be forever the number one fan of The Abstract, but now I have a lovely and long book that is the center of my universe. Next year I’ll print up a whole bunch, but I want to print up a few of them soon for you all. So in order to scratch up the money I’ll do whatever I can, I will go roll drunks and deal drugs for the next few weeks, if any of you wind up being my unfortunate victims, know that it is for a good cause. So, I suppose the subrevelation is that not only is Mach III beginning, but Mach IV will probably be starting next year, I hope it will go on forever, or until they legalize debtors prisons. It is the best feeling in the world to walk yourself weary handing out books to every man woman and child you see, it’s just my thing I guess, a regular Johnny Badseed.

So more on that later I suppose, I have more news of my favorite kind (good, for me). On Monday, I received the call from the loading dock, ran out of work and spent yesterday driving back and forth to Harrisburg hauling back a small mountain of books a bit at a time. So now I have a barn full of Revisions Of. Outside of the lack of quality in the writing and production materials, they are absolutely lovely! I’ll start dribbling them out this weekend and kick it into high gear at the Brooklyn Book Festival on the 13th of September. There also might be some sort of party of some kind somewhere, I hate to be vague, but in actuality I’m being very clear about a vague idea. Unfortunately I’m not really the sort of person with the attention span or social charm necessary to organize or plan events, or basically anything that requires submitting concepts in writing. It would be lovely little party to celebrate the birth of something doomed, any and all will be invited, so I will keep you posted once there is something to say on that front!

So, if anyone wants a Revisions Of, just drop me a line and I’ll toss it in the mail! It is a charming little fellow. The back of the book here reads ‘Nathan First is a childlike biographer, making barely enough from his writing to survive. His only source of contact with the outside world is his sister, whose recent marriage has left Nathan to his own devices. Moved by a paltry obituary that he reads in the paper, Nathan sets out to compose his masterpiece; a biography of an ordinary man. But this will be no ordinary book; as Nathan becomes increasingly ambitious, the project blossoms into a study of dark matter, and appears to contain the abandoned history of the world. So there we go, basically a cross between Wall-E, Eccesliastes, and the songs of Ira Gershwin, with lovely illustrations of a man that resembles the child of ‘Beaker’ and ‘Dr. Bunsen Honeydew’. What a great week, I hope everything is going beautifully for you all, but not quite as good as it is for me, as that would ruin my high. Mach III beginith!

My Dear Peoples,
If you’re interested this Saturday I’ll be heading up to Annandale on Hudson to be see the honorable Steven Cleaver’s, acclaimed writer of C.S. Lew-ish allegories, and be a part of his fantastic radio-stradiovaganza ‘leave it to cleaver’, www.leaveittocleaver.net , which can be listened to live! online from 12-2, or unlive! at any time you like through a podcast, or so my completely baseless faith in technology would lead me to believe. Then I’ll be heading to an abandoned military base, and finally up to New York for some sort of book festival the last weekend of the month. Lastly, watch the website called www.edrants.com, where the good proprietor Edward Champion will post another little essay I wrote like the one he so excellently allowed me to write about Jose Saramago http://www.edrants.com/jose-saramago-death-takes-a-breather/ , this time it will be a rant in favor of Bret Easton Ellis.

How have you all been? I am confident that the third round of the zero dollar tour can be financed through an elaborate restructuring of Brown Paper’s operations and range of services (attached), as well as the expected sales of my post apocalyptic country album (also attached), buoyed solely on the strength of its hit single ‘I would never kill a man (just to get the meat from his bones)’. Be sure to let me know if there’s anyone you need a hit on, particularly if it is a wealthy baroness who will pay me to double cross you (in the biz, this is called ‘leverage’).

Now for the bad news, if you will indulge me in calling it so. A couple of you seem to be enjoying Revisions of; it has received several stars, a couple thumbs tilted at positive angles and three thousand out of three thousand and eight ‘Mr. Yuck’ symbols (which I will assume must be a good thing). This is very odd for me, as I have long been used to tepid climates of response and dress appropriately in an iron cape of feigned indifference. I am not so naïve as to expect that these findings will be replicated when the experiment is performed on a larger scale, but all the same it does have some implications. My original plan was to print up five thousand copies of this new one and then the same amount of Abstracts, but after some soul searching and more importantly wallet searching this does not seem feasible at the moment. So I think what I mean to say is that I am announcing the hiatus of the Abstract Zero Dollar Tour. Alas it has been a mighty parasite, one which has sucked me dry of all money, energy and time, and in its course has corrupted many children and perhaps has further widened the stream of the world’s tears by some small amount. And I also met many excellent people, some who liked it and some who hated it, but in general were excellent people who were excellent to speak with and shared many of my values, minus my complete lack of values. I include you all in this group, and obviously I would not keep doing what I’m doing were it not for the fact that talking with and meeting you all has been a sufficient reward in and of itself.

But lo, from the ashes of this stupid phoenix will rise a fresh stupid chick. What I mean to say is that I am announcing the birth of the Revisions of Zero Dollar Tour, which will be the exact same thing pretty much, ten thousand books that people don’t need, but with a more feasible financial weight. I am hoping that this is the right thing to do. For the time being I’m going to save a couple boxes of Abstracts, and I hope those of you who are willing to do me the favor of keeping it in circulation for me by handing it to your friends and/or enemies. And then once it has retreated to its fortress of darkness and licked its wounds for a year, the book may once again hatch some comically doomed plan for world domination.

I also might ask some of you to write some more introductions to this one along the lines of those that appeared in Mach II, as those seemed to be the best received portions of the book and did a better job explaining the score than I do myself. Maybe I’ll do the same thing with a cover election, but that might require some modicum of thought or effort on my part, which is not my forte.
Hasta Luego,
Goodloe

Dear Peoples,

Alright so I have just driven back from Chicago, a town that lives up to its reputation as one of the greatest cities on the planet, when it’s not one of the worst cities on the planet. There was a little book fair going on around Grant Park, and I was The first two days were largely passed in an old style and deep-dish induced laconic trance, either sitting at the table or watching specials on beluga whales in the hotel room. But eventually there were some good shenanigans involving Canadian motorcycle poets and the exchange of two bud lights for a private concert of soulful Haitian blues. It was a very good time and people picked up another seven hundred books, ensuring that the whole zero dollar thing is going pretty swimmingly! If you’ve never been, it’s really a great place, the Chicagoons have good hearts and will engage in conversation with just about anybody. The drive back is regrettably highway-ish, but you do get glimpses of the greatness of the rustbelt from the dilapidated buildings and the billboards, which alternate evenly between “God so much loved the world that he sent his only son” and “Go tell the recession where to stick it: Miller Hi-Life”

So this brings me to my reason for writing, the ‘bidness’ as it were, namely that those of you who requested copies of the new book back in December may have noticed that you do not have it yet. Of course, when you are revising a book titled ‘revisions of’ you should be prepared for some sort of ironic nonsense. Worsening the matter, my lifestyle has recently taken inspiration from Ivan Goncharov’s ‘Oblomov’, a delightful book in which the main character does not even leave his bed for the first eighty pages. Furthermore, I have been distracted by the accusations of ‘objectionable content’ delaying the debut of my new play (attached), and the unforeseeable demise of my clothing brand during its first week (also attached). Anyways, I finally got my act together and fixed it up a bit. The cover, I think, is passable, so there won’t be any election this time around. If you saw the other candidates you would agree that this is totalitarianism in the best interests of democracy. So please please forgive the delay on my part, but a box full of them should get here in a week or two, and then I will send them along to those of you who requested them. Drop me a line if you’re address has changed since then.

Sincerement,
Goodloe

Dear Peoples,

Ho ho ho, anyways, vis a vis books, I am proud to announce that a new old book, which has not been printed before, is just about (re)done, and I intend to print up a couple of copies for any and all of you that are interested, for the usual price point (i.e. nada). This one, ‘Revisions of’, follows the adventures of an idiot-savant biographer as he undertakes his most ambitious project to date; the collected writings of a random ordinary man. For those of you who loathed The Abstract, for its floundering style and maniacal monotone, you will be pleased to hear that this one is slightly different! For those of you who loved The Abstract, for its floundering style etc. etc., you will be pleased to hear that it is only slightly different.

It can be a little unexciting to truck around the same book over and over again, so I am hoping to print up a couple of these and send it to those of you who may be interested, and then if you ever get around to reading it you will offer me your advice as to whether or not I should include this book in the dreamed of ‘Zero Dollar Tour mach III!’, which may or may not take place. Anyone who wants one just send me a good mailing address and I’ll send one your way as soon as money affords to print them and I can secure covert access to the postage machine at work.

Lastly, some of you may be proud that the Zero Dollar thing is going swimmingly, and has now gone ‘internacional!’ with a handful of books smuggled into Beijing, Xian, and the rural Shaanxi coal basin by yours truly, and then handed freely to people who will be unable to read them. A symbolic victory of the most medium order! And of course my mind is adrift with the possibilities of four million people descending into my home turf next month for the inauguration, though I have yet to come up with a suitable scheme to twist this to my advantage.

Anyways, I hope you are all having a lovely holiday and will continue to do so despite the unfortunate circumstance in which you currently find yourself (i.e. having received an email from me). I recommend you all take the opportunity watch the movie ‘Wall-E’ a delightful animated film that I watched three times in succession on the plane, in the paralyzing clutches of a communist wheat liquor.

All the best,

Goodloe

The Zero Dollar Tour is over, long live the zero dollar tour. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, last September a friend of mine and I loaded up a truck with four thousand copies of a book and went around handing them out for free, mostly to vagabonds. We went to Chicago then up to Seattle down to LA, back to Chicago etc. The heap of books has dwindled down regularly since then to basically nothing, and now down to nothing, proper. Last Saturday I was going about my DC rounds when I heard there was an arts and crafts fair out in Silver Spring. After several hours of sitting on the curb and offering helpful information, the final book, # 10,544, was handed to a young lady to whom I shouted “Damn you! Just take it”, a less romantic conclusion than I had anticipated. So now, at last, the jig is up and the books are gone.

The free book tour has received a level of public enthusiasm ordinarily reserved for a free Manson tour. It’s been a very refreshing thing to do. It’s brought me from desolated metropoli, to isolated trailers in the badlands, podunks, Florida beaches and the like, handing them in parks when its warm and stacking them in dozens of coffeeshops a day when it’s cold. I started off terribly intimidated when I looked at the mountain of boxes in the barn, and now I’ve been increasingly worried when staring into the growing vacancy where it was. So long and short, I think I’m going to print up another ten thousand copies and keep it going.
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