![[PANK]](https://pankmagazine.com/wp-content/themes/pank/assets/images/pank-logo-large.png){kind=logo}
Who’s in? Where should we book it? Quickly, quickly now.
Young Bright Things
A glance behind, a glimpse ahead.
Happy new year, shiny peoples! 2010 was good for [PANK]. 2010 was great for [PANK]. 2010 was grand for [PANK]. Let us, together, count the ways.  Across our print and digital platforms [PANK] reached an audience of approximately 100,000 readers in well over 100 countries around the world. Pankmagazine.com alone logged 934,513 hits and  152,867 visits from 75,771 absolute unique visitors. With an acceptance rate hovering around 1%  [PANK] still managed to publish  more than 250 writers in 2010, some famous, many getting that way, and a couple of surprising high school kids thrown in for good measure. PANK Little Books launched it’s second title, Matthew Salesses’ Our Island of Epidemics, we gave some kick ass readings, got name checked all over the map, and our readers loved us up until we were threadbare and exhausted. All of which is to say, again and again, thanks for reading [PANK], thanks for writing [PANK], thanks for supporting [PANK] in all of the myriad ways you did, whomever and wherever you are.
In 2011, hold on to your pants. PANK5 rolls off the presses this month with new work from so many great names it’ll stungun you dumb. So delicious. So tasty. So dripping in literary umami that you’d better have box of kleenex nearby when you read it. It’s gonna get messy. And after that, only three (four?) words for you, for you and your children:  Divination in DC. Plus new titles in the PANK Little Book Series, Ethel Rohan’s  Hard to Say and Nicolle Elizabeth’s  Read This Shit Out Loud. PANK Presents readings in San Francisco, in Chicago, and in a city near you? Could be. We’ll be reading for PANK6, for the next twelve installments of awesome at pankmagazine.com, and we’ll be wasting scads and scads of your otherwise useful moments each day right here at the pankblog. Stay tuned. Stay hungry.
Huckster: The Unbelievable History Of The Advertising Industry
You’re probably wondering how the advertising industry got started—or, to put it another way, how the industry of advertising began. It’s only natural for you to wonder such a thing. But the fact is, if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.
For instance, if I told you it all started during World War I, when allies were nailing up posters to help drum up support for their war campaign, you probably wouldn’t believe me, right? Well, I hope not, because that’s just silly. That’s not how it started at all. The industry started well before World War I, or perhaps even after it.
And what if I were to tell you it started when a man, long ago, was trying to win the affection of a woman and so, in order to gain that affection, he posted flyers around town where he knew she would see them, flyers that advertised his good qualities? And when this woman eventually fell in love with the man, the man realized his power of persuasion and the rest, as they say, is history? What if I were to tell you that? Would you believe me? The answer is no. And that’s too bad, even knowing it wasn’t how the advertising industry got started either. In fact, the advertising industry started in a different way altogether.
Look, I don’t resent your skepticism. Not at all. It’s just a shame that you wouldn’t believe me if I were to tell you John Quincy Adams hired a man to help promote his candidacy for president back in 1825 thereby launching the industry. Or that a Bible salesman started the whole thing while going door to door in 1657. Or that nobody started the advertising industry, that the industry hasn’t even been invented yet. Yes, it’s a shame you wouldn’t believe me. But you know what, it’s okay that you’re a skeptic. The indisputable fact is, this great nation of ours was founded by skeptics.
But, actually, the industry was started by that 1657 Bible salesman.
Kidding. He didn’t start it. I made him up. And besides, he couldn’t have started it in 1657 because the Bible had not even been written yet.
The truth is, nobody really knows how it got started. It’s one of those age-old mysteries, like magnetism and childbirth. Some say a Chinese caravan started the industry back in the year 210 B.C. while traveling the Silk Road, but those people are wrong for numerous reasons, starting with the fact that there was never, ever a road made purely of silk. The thought alone is just ridiculous, because that kind of road would be undrivable. Can you imagine!
No, if I had to guess, I’d say it all started with a man named Roger Thornhill. Roger Thornhill was a decent enough man, but he had the misfortune of being mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies. These spies were relentless, but luckily so was Thornhill.
And while that would be my guess, it is certainly not how the industry started. The fact is, that’s the plot to Alfred Hitchock’s North By Northwest. Which, indeed, does involve an advertising executive, but not the one who started it all.
No, that, my friends, is a different movie. Or, to put it another way, an entirely different movie altogether.
Remembering Biddy
My mom slept until noon today, and—considering how unusual that is—I got worried. She was still. I thought she had taken the wrong cocktail of pills and would never wake.
She was breathing.
My best friend’s mother died last week, two days after Christmas. We called her Biddy. She worked third shift as a nurse. She wore turtlenecks and smoked Marlboro Menthols. She cut Marlboro Miles from the packs and stuffed trash bags full of tickets. My best friend had a Marlboro jacket and was reprimanded for wearing it to school. Biddy cashed in for a Marlboro tent and a Marlboro sleeping bag. I never slept in them. When Biddy left for work, we’d slip into her king-sized bed because the mattress molded to our bodies. We’d fall asleep from the whirr of the white noise machine she kept on the nightstand.
I’d smoke with Biddy at the table while she glued feathers to Styrofoam cones. She’d feed us brownies and pumpkin rolls, and she wouldn’t eat a thing. We’d talk about people and roll our eyes. We’d pour more coffee. We’d discuss paint swatches for the bathroom. She would cut peonies from her garden and arrange them at the table. I could smell them through the smoke.
I saw Biddy embalmed yesterday. I still watched for breathing.
I dreamt last night that all the words I wanted to say to my best friend were written on a page. I woke up and could not remember.  I drove down his road and felt dizzy to think we are 24. How we had hiked that road and poked dead skunks with sticks before we grew pubes— before we had bills in our names— when we would imagine how a man might taste.
When we were 15, we would sit in his brother’s bedroom, listen to Korn, and shoot vodka Biddy bought under black light. We’d sneak out the window. We would walk to the pond across the street and summon the woman who drowned there.
We graduated high school and took whiskey shots in honor of every year from kindergarten. Biddy crocheted at the table and laughed, ashed, listened.
I have been thinking about how a room contains space, not the people in it.
At Biddy’s funeral, the minister sang a song about a comet being pulled toward the sun. I imagined Biddy’s eyes rolling beneath her eyelids. A stray mutt surfaced from the pine trees and barked at everyone. The wind sharpened during the chorus. The minister’s voice cracked.
Born Again
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads. Erica Jong
Since beginning my column here for PANK Magazine, Â I’ve received several messages on Facebook as well as several more via email from readers who didn’t feel comfortable sharing their reactions on the website but wished to share their personal stories with me.
These stories have both  stunned and humbled me. Â
A Â writer never feels more grateful or more sure of the importance of what she does than when people respond to what she writes.
One person wrote, “I wish I had your courage.” Me, too. Although perhaps I’m not courageous. Perhaps I’m a moron.  After all, I’ve received  other notes from people  who’ve said,  “I couldn’t  write what you do without using a pen name.”
I understand. Plenty of my peers use pen names. And  it doesn’t make what they write any less authentic or important.
I often cry when I write . . . afterward too.   It’s  not easy  to admit, confront, confess what I do. Perhaps someone who’s  been a stripper will understand me.  You stand on a  lighted stage and  drop  your clothes. You’re naked.  A  portion of your audience applauds you because they like what they see; because you entertain them;  because you’re beautiful,  brave.  Another portion  seeks out  your faults; they find fault with the  very thing  you do.  People  judge you.
A long  time ago, a writing mentor told me my responsibility as a writer was to say what no one else would.  I wasn’t supposed to write clean or polite or safe.  I was supposed to  get dirty, take chances,  write dangerously. In graduate school another mentor asked,  “If it doesn’t hurt, why are you writing it?”
In other words, writing feels painful sometimes. Â
Not everyone shares this philosophy of writing though. Because it’s not for everyone.  I just happen to take  writing  serious  as blood. Â
When I was a a child,  I attended  Communion on Sunday.  Kneeling at an alter before Father Babb,  I opened  my mouth and stuck  out my tongue. There he placed the  “body of Christ,” which I chewed up and swallowed. A few minutes later, another priest came by with the  “cup of salvation.”  Â
All of this tasted  of wafer and wine to me.
But I understand the metaphor better now. Â
It’s why I write. Â Jesus saves me.
David M. Peak's The Rocket's Red Glare: A Review by Thomas DeMary
Nearly 350 million quarters are minted each month. In the second after a coin is pressed, an entire civilization of germs can rise and file, leaving behind only their tale of survival.
The Rocket’s Red Glare is one of these stories.
So goes the synopsis printed on the back cover of author David M. Peak‘s debut novel. The Rocket’s Red Glare conjured childhood ruminations on the ideas “universe” and “existence”Â. That is, I once wondered if aliens lived on other planets (as well as visited our own); likewise, did microscopic societies come and go without the attention—and deliberate meddling—of humanity?
With respect to germs, how would these invisible civilizations come about? What would be the science behind it? Peak offers no such explanation, thrusting the reader headfirst into cities and country landscapes built upon a US quarter, in the way Kafka wrote of a man-turned-fly, or how Octavia Butler transported a modern black woman through time, her destination at the end of an plantation overseer’s whip. It is what it is: the literature of fantasy, a writer’s imagination without scientific justification.
A novel like The Rocket’s Red Glare is difficult to execute: in addition to the prerequisite demands of entertainment and artistry, the fantastic world still calls for a sense of place, a lay of the land and a need to know the characters—or, in Peak’s case, the various species—involved.
There were the Cloppies, four-legged and long-faced germs that largely made up the working-class; the Stinks, a repulsive group of slimy, fetid puddles that slithered along the ground feeding on garbage; and several others, including the Buzzers, Dweebs, Clamps, Wailers, Flap-Abouts, Ghoulies, Duds, Cranks, Bone-Faces, Scrapers, Suckers, Cry-Babies and Stick-heads.
There is a Seussian aspect to the species’ names and descriptions, each with its own unique ticks and motivations. To absorb all of this information, all in the name of establishing “place”Â, is jarring and, sometimes, confusing; the difference between a Cloppy and a Clamp can be considered irrelevant to the story at hand, and not worth the trouble of keep each species straight in one’s head. Still, early in the novel, the Seussian aspect—child-like and seemingly benign in nature—disappears as President Spengler (an “Octo,” by the way) delivers an address to his constituency:
The time has come to take pre-emptive action, Spengler said. We can no longer sit and wait for the other side to strike first. Under the guidance of our own very Lazlow Sartarian, we have decided to push forward with the development of rockets. Yes. Rockets. Those wondrous machines of legend. We have decided to take hold of our collective destiny, to aim toward the sky, to calibrate our will, and ensure our very survival upon this Quarter of ours.
Seuss is replaced with a certain President in America’s recent history, one who pounded the war drum as loudly (though perhaps not as eloquently) as Spengler. The explosion that immediately proceeded Spengler’s speech, one that appeared to be an assassination attempt aimed at Spengler (allegedly precipitated by rockets fired via The Other Side) transforms the fantasy into a political thriller of sorts, with the protagonist Bill Whooping, a teenager dedicated to restore his brother Timmy’s failing health, in the middle of the impending war between the two sides of the coin—pun intended, for sure.
Peak’s narrative is straightforward; given the juggling act the author had to conduct—the juxtaposition of well-developed plot with the germ actors playing out the story—there was little room or time for literary theatrics and linguistic somersaults. Rather, Peak focuses his attention on ensuring the reader never loses his sense of place and always understands who—or what—is speaking and/or scheming.
In other words, Peak builds a brand new world, places it atop a quarter and never wavers away from his primary responsibility: to show the story, to stick with the choice to offer no explanation as to how or why life exists on a coin, to say nothing of the drama which unfolds, to repeat over and again to the reader: it is what it is.
Which is a welcome reprieve from literature that seeks to explain everything, to drain the fantastic out of prose in the name of installing “reality” between the lines. A story, whether in flash fiction or in novel form, states its purpose and, if executed properly, conducts its business as though the tale told is real, leaving the reader wanting more.
The Rocket’s Red Glare introduces an author who unabashedly romps in the realm of his imagination, letting the scenes discovered in his mind showcase themselves on the page. David M. Peak concocts a world with its own paradigms and hierarchies and, with that framework in place, creates a novel as believable as a man-turned-fly, as a time-traveling woman, as a city named Whoville under the narrow, spying eyes of a green curmudgeon atop a mountain.
The Rocket’s Red Glare is available as an ebook or paperback from Leucrota Press.
—
Thomas DeMary currently hacks away at his prose somewhere in New Jersey. Follow him on twitter  @thomasdemary
David M. Peak’s The Rocket’s Red Glare: A Review by Thomas DeMary
Nearly 350 million quarters are minted each month. In the second after a coin is pressed, an entire civilization of germs can rise and file, leaving behind only their tale of survival.
The Rocket’s Red Glare is one of these stories.
So goes the synopsis printed on the back cover of author David M. Peak‘s debut novel. The Rocket’s Red Glare conjured childhood ruminations on the ideas “universe” and “existence”Â. That is, I once wondered if aliens lived on other planets (as well as visited our own); likewise, did microscopic societies come and go without the attention—and deliberate meddling—of humanity?
With respect to germs, how would these invisible civilizations come about? What would be the science behind it? Peak offers no such explanation, thrusting the reader headfirst into cities and country landscapes built upon a US quarter, in the way Kafka wrote of a man-turned-fly, or how Octavia Butler transported a modern black woman through time, her destination at the end of an plantation overseer’s whip. It is what it is: the literature of fantasy, a writer’s imagination without scientific justification.
A novel like The Rocket’s Red Glare is difficult to execute: in addition to the prerequisite demands of entertainment and artistry, the fantastic world still calls for a sense of place, a lay of the land and a need to know the characters—or, in Peak’s case, the various species—involved.
There were the Cloppies, four-legged and long-faced germs that largely made up the working-class; the Stinks, a repulsive group of slimy, fetid puddles that slithered along the ground feeding on garbage; and several others, including the Buzzers, Dweebs, Clamps, Wailers, Flap-Abouts, Ghoulies, Duds, Cranks, Bone-Faces, Scrapers, Suckers, Cry-Babies and Stick-heads.
There is a Seussian aspect to the species’ names and descriptions, each with its own unique ticks and motivations. To absorb all of this information, all in the name of establishing “place”Â, is jarring and, sometimes, confusing; the difference between a Cloppy and a Clamp can be considered irrelevant to the story at hand, and not worth the trouble of keep each species straight in one’s head. Still, early in the novel, the Seussian aspect—child-like and seemingly benign in nature—disappears as President Spengler (an “Octo,” by the way) delivers an address to his constituency:
The time has come to take pre-emptive action, Spengler said. We can no longer sit and wait for the other side to strike first. Under the guidance of our own very Lazlow Sartarian, we have decided to push forward with the development of rockets. Yes. Rockets. Those wondrous machines of legend. We have decided to take hold of our collective destiny, to aim toward the sky, to calibrate our will, and ensure our very survival upon this Quarter of ours.
Seuss is replaced with a certain President in America’s recent history, one who pounded the war drum as loudly (though perhaps not as eloquently) as Spengler. The explosion that immediately proceeded Spengler’s speech, one that appeared to be an assassination attempt aimed at Spengler (allegedly precipitated by rockets fired via The Other Side) transforms the fantasy into a political thriller of sorts, with the protagonist Bill Whooping, a teenager dedicated to restore his brother Timmy’s failing health, in the middle of the impending war between the two sides of the coin—pun intended, for sure.
Peak’s narrative is straightforward; given the juggling act the author had to conduct—the juxtaposition of well-developed plot with the germ actors playing out the story—there was little room or time for literary theatrics and linguistic somersaults. Rather, Peak focuses his attention on ensuring the reader never loses his sense of place and always understands who—or what—is speaking and/or scheming.
In other words, Peak builds a brand new world, places it atop a quarter and never wavers away from his primary responsibility: to show the story, to stick with the choice to offer no explanation as to how or why life exists on a coin, to say nothing of the drama which unfolds, to repeat over and again to the reader: it is what it is.
Which is a welcome reprieve from literature that seeks to explain everything, to drain the fantastic out of prose in the name of installing “reality” between the lines. A story, whether in flash fiction or in novel form, states its purpose and, if executed properly, conducts its business as though the tale told is real, leaving the reader wanting more.
The Rocket’s Red Glare introduces an author who unabashedly romps in the realm of his imagination, letting the scenes discovered in his mind showcase themselves on the page. David M. Peak concocts a world with its own paradigms and hierarchies and, with that framework in place, creates a novel as believable as a man-turned-fly, as a time-traveling woman, as a city named Whoville under the narrow, spying eyes of a green curmudgeon atop a mountain.
The Rocket’s Red Glare is available as an ebook or paperback from Leucrota Press.
—
Thomas DeMary currently hacks away at his prose somewhere in New Jersey. Follow him on twitter  @thomasdemary
Breeding and Writing: Suck it up and change anyway
–by Tracy Lucas
We’re rearranging my kid’s room in the aftermath of that which is Christmas.
Among the haul, he got a play kitchen, a talking truck as big as he is, a train set with eight feet of track, and half a million other toys. The newly-adjusted number of worldly possessions our two-year-old now has is ridiculous. His belongings no longer fit on the shelf we’ve bought him.
Yeah, we’ll get rid of some stuff. Â It’ll get pared down once everything settles back into a routine again and we see which old things he’s outgrown and what new toys are taking root.
(By the way, Freecycle is a great way to connect with folks in your own area who could use your former possessions. We love it.)
But I’m a mom, and I’m sappy as hell when it’s time for new steps.
Every time we change anything, I get all emotional about it. It doesn’t even have to be big stuff like his starting preschool or potty training or preferring his friends’ company to mine. Be it mixing up the furniture floor plan of his room, penciling another notch higher on the door jamb, or even having to throw out a threadbare pair of footie pajamas, I get weird.
I want his little days to stick around.
I’ll be good with the diapers leaving. (That’s a lie. I’ll cry then, too. I’m such a wuss.) But I know things are meant to change and life goes on.
Life does that.
That’s what it’s for.
I’ll get over it.
What’s the most difficult is the precipice. That one, dangly moment when everything could change, swinging one way or the next into the unknown. One day it was Way X, and from this point on, it’s going to be Way Y. There comes a moment where both are visible, even slightly so, and you have the option of moving forward or hanging back.
I have that problem with writing, too.
I always want better things to come, but I never want to leave the warm and comfortable spot I’m already sitting in.
I always think that whatever I’ve most recently written  is probably crap, and I therefore don’t want to show anyone. My older stuff is just as hard to share, because I’ve learned more since I wrote it and I’m convinced you’ll be able to see just what needed improvements and which parts suck the most.
You’ll know I’m full of shit and you’ll smell me out.
The only work of mine that I tend to like has either A) already been (ouch) released and somehow garnered an overwhelming amount of unexpected praise, and is thus outwardly validated, or B) Â been something I wrote a month or two ago and have polished but not taken a chance on showing to others in the light of day.
It’s reworked, it’s a little old but not too distant, and it’s not been risked.
But just like kids, it doesn’t do any good to raise and nurture a chunk of writing and just leave it lying protected in the drawer. The point is  to  share it, to have it be  read, to make it strong and then let explore on its own two feet.
So it’s scary. Risk it anyway.
Sometimes the simplest act of release changes everything—in a good way. Sometimes even in a way so amazing you can’t imagine it.
The universe likes to throw some weird shit at you now and again, but it always first requires trust. Movement. Faith and gumption.
If you’re not letting go, you’re going to end up with a forty-year-old virgin living in your basement. And no one wants that.
Besides, if you release it into the wild and it turns out it  WAS crap, it’ll just make your next stellar piece look that much more awesome in comparison.
Right?
So what are you waiting for?
The Week Between Is Really the Worst Week. These Words Will Make It Better
Tim Jones-Yelvington’s Conference Room is a great round up to some of the best writing from 2010.
Necessary Fiction this week features Nick Ripatrazone.
Janey Smith reads “Circus Tricks.”
A poem from Amber Sparks appears at Used Furniture Review.
Heather Fowler is interviewed for the Re:Telling anthology, out in February from Ampersand Books.
There’s a great interview with Nicolle Elizabeth, whose chapbook is forthcoming from PANK in 2011, at Dark Sky Magazine.
NOO Weekly features Janey Smith and and Nicolle Elizabeth this week.
Two microfictions by Sara Lippman are featured at LitSnack.
Pubes, by Ryan Bradley, is up at Metazen.
Kelly Davio and Nicelle Davis have work in the Winter issue of Contrary.
The new issue of Corium includes Amber Sparks, Ravi Mangla, Rachel Adams, Michelle Reale, Carrie Murphy and James Valvis.
Blake Butler’s Ricky’s Spine is at Dethcicle.
There are four stories by Nicolle Elizabeth up at Wigleaf as well as a postcard.
Blip features a short story by Mel Bosworth.
Eric Beeny reviews xTx’s He Is Talking to the Fat Lady and Ethel Rohan’s Cut Through the Bone. To complete the trifecta, Â Flash Fire 500 rides again with writing from Eric.
Chris Newgent writes some beautiful things about Our Island of Epidemics, which, by the way, is still on sale.
First Words/Last Words: Hiromi Goto, "Stinky Girl"
This week’s First Words/Last Words feature comes as a total accident. I was researching the poet Hiromi Ito, and came across the Japanese-Canadian writer Hiromi Goto, whose work strangely enough has a lot of crossover with Ito’s, and with my own obsessions, specifically with stinky brown alien girls. I’ve only read some of the stories in Hopeful Monsters, of which “Stinky Girl” is one, and look forward to reading more. (The collection is partially accessible through the Google Books feature.) I’m including “first words” here this time, too; what, I never said I was systematic.
As I understand it, Goto writes both “young adult/children’s” literature and “adult” literature concerning—much to my delight—alien abduction, depressed Asian girls who go on epic quests to save their neglectful mothers, abnormal or hysterical pregnancies, unconventional bodies, monstrous bodies, a woman who slices off her painful lactating breasts and transplants them onto her husband, then gently instructs him to “do what comes naturally.”
From the back cover of Hopeful Monsters: “Hopeful monsters” are genetically abnormal organisms that, nonetheless, adapt and survive in their environments. In these devastating stories, the hopeful monsters in question are those who will not be tethered by familial duty nor bound by the ghosts of their past. Home becomes fraught, reality a nightmare as Hiromi Goto weaves her characters through tales of domestic crises and cultural dissonance. They are the walking wounded — a mother who is terrified by a newborn daughter who bears a tail; a “stinky girl” who studies the human condition in a shopping mall; relatives on holiday with a visiting grandfather who cannot abide their “foreign nature.”Â
Then the cover says something about magical realism which I think is a somewhat simplistic way of getting out of talking about the urgencies and immediacies of what Goto does with the writing in this book, with the body, with sexuality and maternity and monstrosity, how monstrosity is conceived, and how it can be reclaimed.
In the essay “Alien Texts, Alien Seductions: The Context of Colour Full Writing,” Goto writes: “How will we go about dismantling our desire to read the alien? How will we disrupt our desire to be seduced by that which does not seek to seduce in the first place?”
Continue reading