This Friday I’ll be officially entering the New York literary scene by participating in a reading. Readings are where writers get up and read something – so the name isn’t really that misleading.
The reading takes place at KGB, a Lower East Side bar decorated with Lenin statues to celebrate the hilarious days of communism and Cold War intelligence gathering.
There will be four writers reading from their four books. Unless I’m mistaken they’re all humorous books which is much better than someone reading from their memoir about chronic bulimia.
We all hail from the same writing space, Paragraph, so the reading series is called “Written at Paragraph.”
Grant Stoddard is a nice English chap who wrote WORKING STIFF, a memoir about screwing everything as Nerve.com’s sex columnist. He’ll be reading from his book – a book he’ll have to hide from prospective brides and their fathers for the rest of his life.
David Goodwillie will be reading from his memoir SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME. I don’t know David personally but he’s never tried to kill me so I harbor no ill feelings. His book was optioned and he’s now turning it into a screenplay.
Janice Erlbaum will be reading from her forthcoming memoir VOLUNTEER: A LOVE STORY. She describes herself as a feminist, so she’d probably disagree with me that women should be shackled to radiators and called LoveBots. But I’ll be civil.
Brian Sack is me. I’ll be reading from IN THE EVENT OF MY UNTIMELY DEMISE, to be published by Harper next year. A whole year seems like forever away but really isn’t considering I have to write a frickin’ book.
KGB Bar – 85 East 4th, NYC (Google Map)
Friday 12 January @ 7pm
The event will not be close-captioned.
Brian, first of all good luck with the book. Looking forward to it already.
Secondly, perhaps Grant’s website should feature in Grammar Cop for the lack of an apostrophe in “Englishmans” in the second paragraph…
http://www.grantstoddard.com/book.html
Ryan
[ Sweet. I’ll go tap him on the shoulder and ruin his day. -B. ]
Brian, welcome to the wonderful world of readings. I have read some of my pieces in public also and so far have escaped injury at these events. (I’m sure that the staff at KGB will outnumber my total audience to date.) There is something very ego-inflating about live positive response to your work!
In terms of the year to write the book, I recommend a quota; this is what I did when I was writing more. This system usually consists of setting a daily target and then ignoring it for nine-tenths of the alloted time, then slamming down words on paper in the remaining one-tenth, roughly following a logarithmic scale of output as time remaining approaches zero.
Have fun at KGB! Wish we could be there!
Hey, wait a minute… there’s a laudation from Goodwillie on Stoddard’s site. And now you’re plugging both of them on your own site. Newsflash: There’s a Conspiracy at the KGB!
Congrats on the book deal, I’d buy it on the title alone.
[ I’d love for you to buy it on the title alone, but I’m contractually obligated to deliver 224 pages. -B. ]