Failure is an option

As a never-quite-reformed punk rock kid, I've always been drawn to the beautiful failures of the genre, which was pretty much all of them. In real time, I'd read about the importance of the Ramones, always with the caveat that, like Iggy and the Stooges, the Velvet Underground and the New York Dolls, they were more influential than "popular". This was a time when people still used the phrase 'sell out' as a pejorative, rather than directive. Well, in that spirit, I present the work of Contemporary Press. The idea of it came to me at a moment of cultural foment in Brooklyn, where I was living at the time. It was a heyday, I'd say. I was friends with or around people who were making waves in the small indie genres in which we existed and it occurred to me that they were all kind of twee about it. Not that there was anything wrong with that! But I saw a niche — dirty punk pulp that stood in opposite to that. Something born of creative carelessness. Four years, 13 novels and two short story collections later, we flamed out and it didn't take an MBA to know why; we were undercapitalized, we had 7 partners working for a percentage of whatever we could sell out for instead of money (12.5% of zero was, in fact, zero) and we just didn't really give a fuck. All of that said, I stand by the art and the artlessness with which we ran our nationally-distributed publishing house. I believe that we were simply ahead of our time and that, no matter when we would have flamed out, we always would have been.

Uma and Me

Uma Thurman grew up going to a private elementary school in my hometown. She was contemporaries with some of my friends who went to the same school, although I never met her. Years later, we didn't meet again in this edition of GQ. She was on the cover. Contemporary Press scored a small inside piece in the front of the book, which was particularly notable since we hadn't even written a single novel by that point. A writer approached us after a particularly raucous fundraising party (oh if only for Kickstarter in 2002!) and asked us if we would mind if she wrote a piece about us. It seemed like a good idea to us, little did we know that GQ would bite on her pitch. From this piece we caught the eye of a rep from Publishers Group West, who was the main distributor for the major indie publishers from back when there were bookstores. After signing contracts with PGW, we realized we need to actually write some pulp fiction. I'm pretty sure there's another Uma connection there somewhere.

Working Blue

This was our Website. I think it's still sexy as hell. Jennifer Lilya and her husband Dennis Hayes along with Chris Reese helped us come up with a stunning design aesthetic and visual presence. It was around this time when I was interviewed by The Gothamist which adds a little more story to our project. It just felt like such a great and interesting time to be in New York.

Novel Attempts at Market Penetration

So sure, it was a little confrontational. But the key, or so I thought, was to write the book before the Republican National Convention in NYC and then use THAT in order to sell novels by hand to protestors. Didn't quite work that way. That said, I'm happy with this novel. A basic 'political operator trying to solve a problem for his boss' noir (I'm pretty sure I had something like Miller's Crossing in mind, which, naturally, was a ripoff of Hammett's Glass Key) with a NYC setting. It's still available on Amazon for a penny. There were some generous reviews too, including one by Lou Dubose, who, full disclosure, was my editor at the Texas Observer.

A quick note of pride: Halfway through the print run which was way over estimated, the print shop in St. Louis noticed the cover and theme and refused to print anymore copies. They eventually relented after I made up some legal letterhead and reminded them that they had already cashed my check. We then turned that around into an minor PR success.

Cover Design from Mars

CP was my idea and my friends did some amazing work to make the failure very, very interesting. We did two short story collections in addition to 11 original novels. This was the second Danger City collection and the cover was my original contribution to cover design. It's a picture of the pay phone at the old Mars Bar down in the East Village. Kids today would be confused by the existence of both pay phones and the Mars Bar.

Burn After Reading

I wrote this quickly and wince when I read part of it. Parts are fine. Still, it was my first novel and a learning experience. Plus, as a result of Jennifer Lilya's design — she was a partner and her legs were on the cover of my next book — we caught the eye of a Turkish publisher who arranged to translate and print our books in Asia Minor. Made some actual money off it, which we then put back in the company to burn away as quickly as possible.

The Believer at Our Last Waltz

Another generous review. This was a piece than ran in the hip lit journal The Believer. The reviewer managed to come to our last reading ever, which was an absolute shitshow, held just before I moved to Los Angeles and about six months before we went under. There's a long, sordid story that if anyone is ever interested in, I will tell in total confidence. That he saw most of it and was still this decent and honest in his review I think speaks well for him.

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