Warmed and Bound: A Velvet Anthology

by ed. Pela Via

  Tim Beverstock: I didn’t have any preconceptions about the anthology, I was just happy to be asked to submit something. The main reason I chose this story was it was also the only thing I had laying about that felt right and also something that I could easily edit in the timeframe. I’m a notoriously slow editor (though am getting better with practice!).

  Bob Pastorella: The writers at The Velvet lean towards dark fiction, Velvet Noir if one could label it. It’s not about a private detective getting caught up with a blackmail scheme with his client’s wife. Velvet Noir is the point where morality meets mortality, that no matter how we try to live, our own motivations twist the choices we’ve made, often with disastrous and deadly results. “Practice” certainly fit the bill.

  Richard Thomas: Twisted love stories is about all I had in mind. So you start with conventions, and then, twist them: pleasure bumping up against pain, laughter masking the body wracking sobs of grief, love where there shouldn’t be love, where it isn’t deserved, or welcome. Beyond that all I knew was that I wanted to be true to the neo-noir voice that I’ve been developing over the last couple of years. After that, I left it up to Pela, and took her advice. Well, most of the advice, anyway.

  Edward J Rathke: I’m familiar with most people at the Velvet, through their writing or through conversation, so that’s hard to sum up, really. I’ve been there for about three years, which, again, so much longer than I thought. Seems like just the other week when I was getting my wisdom teeth out and accidentally signing up. But, yeah, I didn’t think much about it. I just wanted to be proud of what I sent, mostly, so I sent an unpublished story that I still believed in, and just let it go. Of course, back then we hardly realised what we were getting ourselves into, never expecting Steve Erickson or Blake Butler or Brian Evenson to be in the same book. But, yeah, terrible at answering questions here. I think the Velvet has become, for some, synonymous with dark fiction, which I think is inaccurate, or it is, at least, to me. I think we write from and for the same reasons so many others do. To make sense of the world, to understand what love is, how we feel about it, to process a chaotic existence and find the threads that hold it together, no matter how surreal or unreal they must be.

  Nik Korpon: The only thing going through my head was ‘There will be a metric shit-ton of amazing writers: Do not let your story suck.’

  Amanda Gowin: No preconceptions. No themes. This story was important to me, so I gave them the best that I had, without thought to a particular mold. I think that’s one of the things that’s so special about this book – the writers gave their best as opposed to giving what they thought might ‘fit.’ And it has become an amazing collection.

  Nic Young: The Velvet is directly responsible for me writing at all. I respect the people there more than I can express in this short answer, so my only preconception was that the anthology would be amazing. I wanted to be a part of it, so I tried a couple of stories, but none of them worked. I had written the first draft of My German Daughter back in November, but I wasn’t going to submit it for fear of it seeing light. It fit the ‘scary love story’ aspect of the theme though, and as the deadline approached I became more afraid of missing the opportunity than of letting the story out into the world, so I sent it in.

  Chris Deal: None, sorry.

  Doc O’Donnell: Well, there’s a Baer quote–and I can’t, for the life of me, remember where it’s from–that I keep coming back to when I think, not only about his work, and the type of stories I like to read but, when I think about my own writing and the things I want to write about, the things I want to share, the things I think are important. He’s talking about his work and what he thinks he writes and says it’s basically “scary love stories”. So, when I think of Velvet Noir and the type of things I want to write about, to explore, to pick at until I bleed, I think of scary love stories: Sucking on your lover’s bottom lip while you’re digging a blade into their guts, either metaphorically or literally; I think about vulnerability and manipulation and the fine lines between lust and love and love and obsession; I think about hurting the ones you love, when all you’re trying to do is love them the right way; I think about moral ambiguity, blurring the distinction between what’s right and wrong; I think about every day guys and girls, stumbling, tripping, falling, through this dirty world we’ve found ourselves in; I think about the lingering sense of hopelessness, of doom, that surrounds the lives of these people–of us–and I want to inject hope in their veins, but, ultimately, that hope is crushed when we take that long drive back to reality. So, all that in mind, I thought “If You Love Me” was a perfect fit for Warmed and Bound–I mean, even the title Warmed and Bound has these connotations of scary love stories attached to it, right? “Warmth” is loving and tender yet “Bound” adds this nasty kind of S&M feel to it, for me, at least. It’s a great phrase in that sense, really. And, on top of that, I just knew this was something that I wanted to be a part of, something I’d be honoured to be a part of. That was before there were stories from Craig and Stephen. So, suffice to say, my mind is well and truly blown, like a shotgun to the back of the head. I can’t even begin to express how proud I am to have my name among two of the three Velvet authors. It’s something I couldn’t have dreamed of accomplishing this early in my career. And then there’s the surprise Erickson Foreword–just when I thought this fever dream couldn’t get any stranger. He had some nice things to say about my story, too, which, you know, still doesn’t feel real. I’m sure I’ll check my emails in a few months, looking for that note, and it’ll be gone–never existed. If that wasn’t enough, my story sits alongside some of my best friends and favourite new voices: Nik Korpon, Richard Thomas, Caleb J. Ross, Chris Deal, Bob Pastorella, Craig Wallwork, Eddy J. Rathke, Axel Taiari, Amanada Gowin, Gordon Highland, Gayle Towell, Sean Ferguson, Anthony Jacques. I mean, this line-up is bullshit good. All edited, meticulously, by Pela Via. We’re all in debted to her for nursing our stories, for fighting with us on them, for seeing the dark glow that they’re capable of with the right kind of polish–The Pela Polish. Now that’s my kind of polish.

  Craig Wallwork: The darker side to life tends to bleed out of The Velvet. Stephen Graham Jones, Craig Clevenger and Will Christopher Baer never compromise, nor are their novels similar in style, yet the flesh of their prose is diseased with the same fallacy of hope and moral resurrection that consumes my own work. So, when deciding to submit a story for the collection, my initial concern was not if I had a story to submit, but which one. Pela gave me more time than an editor would on a project of this scale. She indulged my egotistical rants and reined me in, and of the two stories I sent her, one she enjoyed and the other she threw to the curb. Had it been anyone else at the helm, I probably would have caved at the sheer weight of authors included. But like a gypsy snake charmer she enchanted me into believing I was good enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with these giants. I danced for her, and the result is finally in print.

  Paul Tremblay: Only that the readers and writers who make up the Velvet are truly passionate about dark literature. It’s why I wanted to submit. That, and to possibly get to be in an antho with Craig Clevenger, Stephen Graham Jones, and all the other talented folks associated with the book. I must say it was an absolute pleasure working Pela Via on the edits. I’m very much looking forward to reading the anthology she worked hard to put together.

  Vincent Carrella: I wanted to give The Velvet something biblically epic but on a micro scale. I thought that the story of a man at the end of his rope, having hit rock bottom and with no other option but to swallow his pride might resonate with this crowd.

  Pela Via: The Velvet’s three pillar authors, Baer, Clevenger and Jones, set an incredibly high bar for prose with their work. It’s almost inhuman, what they’re capable of with words. I simply needed a story that didn’t read like fourth-grade level writing. That’s difficult, following guys like that.

  Brandon Tietz: When you think of The Velvet, you think noir or transgressive, or just dark
fiction in general. I have a tendency to satire things, though, and that’s not really The Velvet’s style. So where I’d normally try to slide in some humor, this piece works the heart authority a little bit more.

  Bradley Sands: I just submitted it because I read it during The Velvet’s reading at AWP last year and it really seemed to resonate with a lot of people. Same thing for some people who weren’t there because it was recorded and used for one of The Velvet’s podcasts.

  Craig Clevenger: I didn’t have any preconceptions. I just knew that the Velvet has taken on a life of its own, independent of me, Stephen or Chris, and I felt an obligation to support their efforts.

  3.) What would you say in a single sentence to convince an unknown reader to buy Warmed And Bound?

  Caleb J Ross: Steve Erickson said it perfectly already: “The writers of The Velvet are contemporary fiction’s most effective and least self-conscious aesthetic guerrillas.” Hell, Erickson could have said “The writers of The Velvet warrant contempt and evacuation of bowels like a pathetic guerrilla” and I would still pick up the book.

  Sean Ferguson: I’ve already read about 80% of this book, and it is easily the best thing I’ve read all year.

  Anthony David Jacques: This collection contains work not only from established authors whose work will surely require a trip to Borders or a couple clicks on Amazon, but also debuts some talented up and comers whose future work just might warrant a trip to IKEA for the new bookshelf you’re going to need.

  Gordon Highland: In a pinch, the book may also be used as a weapon, a mirror, or even an alibi, but not a contraceptive.

  DeLeon DeMicoli: The “Warmed and Bound” anthology comes out during a time when most literary blogs discuss the demise of the book and rarely discuss the great literature coming out of small presses and self-publishing…Fuck the politics, ya’ll, “Warmed and Bound” is about good writing and great storytelling.

  Stephen Graham Jones: It’ll stop a small-caliber bullet from a distance greater than twenty yards.

  Tim Beverstock: These stories will bleed well crafted fiction into your psyche.

  Bob Pastorella: Warmed And Bound: Thirty Eight Authors, thirty eight stories in one collection, destined to be The Anthology of The Year

  Richard Thomas: The Velvet warms and binds.

  Edward J Rathke: Steve Erickson believes in it enough to lend us his words.

  Nik Korpon: These stories will change your understanding of fiction.

  Amanda Gowin: This book attacks with murmurs and teeth.

  Nic Young: These authors will hurt you, and you’ll like them for it.

  Chris Deal: The talent contained in this anthology, the pure dedication to literature, transcends any boring descriptor like “genre”; no, this is a collection that gets to the very heart of what it takes to be alive in this day and age.

  Doc O’Donnell: Welcome to Velvet Noir: it warms and binds.

  Craig Wallwork: Reading this anthology is like tying one end of a piece of string around a rotting tooth, and the other around a doorknob; you await an end with mouth agape, and when it comes a small part of you is wrenched away, forever leaving your smile a little less pretty.

  Paul Tremblay: Buy this book or I’ll stab you in the kneecap while making fun of the kindle you loaded with books you’ll never actually read.

  Vincent Carrella: If you don’t buy this book I *will* shoot this dog.

  Pela Via: I genuinely believe there’s nothing else like it.

  Brandon Tietz: Just buy it or I’ll cut you.

  Bradley Sands: I haven’t read it yet so I dunno but Steve Erickson wrote the intro so that’s cool since he’s one of my favorite authors even though he didn’t mention my story (it was probably too zany for him) but there are a ton of authors in the book so you will probably get a lot of bang for your buck, plus there are a few contributors whose stuff I’m really into: Blake Butler, Brian Evenson, Cameron Pierce, Stephen Graham Jones, Jeremy Robert “Crunkcore Will Never Die” Johnson.

  Craig Clevenger: I can only steal from Steve Erickson’s introduction, to answer this question: “The writers of the Velvet are contemporary fiction’s most effec- tive and least self-conscious aesthetic guerrillas and obliterators of ‘literature,’ vaporizing arbi- trary distinctions intended to tame a spirit that needs neither distinctions nor quotation marks.”

  The Warmed and Bound Sessions

  With Hosts Robb Olson and Livius Nedin

  Booked Podcast interviewed a staggering seventeen Warmed and Bound contributors. The conversations were released as individual episodes, as part of the unique series The Warmed and Bound Sessions, July 18 to August 3, 2011.

  Chris Deal: Booked

  Amanda Gowin: Booked

  Sean Ferguson: Booked

  Richard Thomas: Booked

  Pela Via: Booked (transcript)

  Caleb J Ross: Booked

  Anthony David Jacques: Booked

  Doc O’Donnell: Booked

  Edward J Rathke: Booked

  Axel Taiari: Booked

  Nik Korpon: Booked

  J David Osborne: Booked

  Bob Pastorella: Booked

  Gordon Highland: Booked

  Brian Evenson: Booked (transcript)

  Stephen Graham Jones: Booked (transcript)

  Craig Clevenger: Booked (transcript)

  Warmed and Bound Wrap-up Episode Featuring Mlaz Corbier

  (External links can also be found at BookedPodcast.com/WB)

  Interview Transcript:

  Craig Clevenger

  Hosts Robb Olson and Livius Nedin

  Transcript of a live interview produced 8/03/2011 by Booked Podcast

  Audio available at bookedpodcast.com

  ROBB: Craig, thanks a lot for coming on. We’re really glad we could have you.

  CRAIG CLEVENGER: Thank you, gentlemen, for having me.

  LIVIUS: Craig, we’ve interviewed 16 authors for Warmed and Bound so far, and we’ve gotten each one of their perspectives on The Velvet, how they got there, why they stuck around. Can you tell us a little bit about the genesis of The Velvet, what the inspiration for it was, and how it came to be focused on you, and Baer, and Jones?

  CRAIG: Okay, I’ll see if I can make this a quick answer. Chris Baer had just had his first two novels reprinted by MacAdam/Cage, and the Handbook had been out for some time, and he and I were both getting our websites up. I had a little starter Blogger site a while back and Chris didn’t have anything, as you might gather, he’s not a super-big internet guy. So, we knew that having a forum for the readers to discuss was important. We took a lot of cues from The Cult, obviously. It just didn’t make any sense for the two of us to have separate discussion forums, given that we had the same publisher and so much overlap in our readership, so we joined them. How Chris lassoed Stephen in, I don’t know. It really started out as a way of having one message board for the two or three of us, rather than dividing our audience up into three different boards and diffusing the readership that way. So that’s how it started, and has since become self-aware and ambulatory and has moved on without us, apparently.

  ROBB: We’ve heard that there’s kind of an interesting origin for your story that’s in Warmed and Bound called “Act of Contrition.” Is that something you can share with us?

  CRAIG: Yeah, it was inevitable that this was going to come up. [laughs] I wrote four, maybe five travel diaries while I was down in Bolivia. The very last one I wrote before I came home, I just sort of came to this realization, part of what I think, I was struggling with this third novel. I’m always very nervous when someone close to me reads my work. I’m pretty boring, actually. I watch movies, I sit around, read and write, and I’ll take the occasional walk. People that read my work think I’m some kind of outlaw, and nothing could be further from the truth. What’s really disconcerting is when, say, I’m dating someone and she says, “My dad’s going to read your book.” Few things put the fear of God into me like that. So, I kind of thought that was the strengt
h of the work. This third novel I’ve been working on, I was too comfortable sharing things. And I’m proud of what I’ve done; I think I’m a much better writer than I was with my first book, but I think I was getting comfortable. I wanted to write something that would make me uncomfortable. I wanted to see where my own threshold was, because I don’t think anything good comes from the comfort zone. So, it was a very late-night writing binge in Bolivia. I had a wad of coca leaves in my mouth the size of a softball, and started writing until I made myself nervous. That pretty much veered into Nabokov territory. So when The Velvet asked me for something, it was all I had, and I knew that to not contribute to this anthology would have been just a grievous insult. So I mailed that one to Logan and Pela, and just prayed that neither one of them reported me to someone.

  LIVIUS: Can you tell us just a little about the story itself?

  CRAIG: There’s not a really deep story arc. It’s fairly static, the narrative. But the narrator is a very, very religious person, to the point of beyond being sexually repressed; he just cannot handle his own sexuality at all. So, Nabokov territory maybe was a bit of an exaggeration. It’s not that he’s a pederast; he doesn’t know what he is. So, even though he commits no crime in the story—spoiler alert—he’s always on the verge of doing something, but even he doesn’t know what that is. I can be more vague if you’d like.