ten years of things that didn't kill us

TEN YEARS OF THINGS THAT DIDN’T KILL US

The new anthology from Paroxysm Press was launched on the weekend in Melbourne. We only got the book from the printers Wednesday arvo, left for Melbourne Thursday so I hadn’t even seen the finished product til Thursday arvo when Publisher brought it around. With the likes of Kaplowitz, Misti Rainwater Lites, David Rat, some prick called Kami, Hop Dac, Martin Downey, Kerryn Tredrea, Kristy Love and a host of others (39 writers/poets all up) this was going to be a killer book. Throw in some amazing artwork courtesy of Chad Divel and we’ve produced our best book by far. It’s been a decade since Publisher wandered into my shop looking for local writers. How time flies when you’re fucked up, struggling, boozing, battling diseases, cancer, deaths, and all the other shit but hell looking at this book made it all worthwhile. And yeah I am biased since I’m in the damn thing and I was one of the co-editors but this isn’t vanity press… publisher put his money on the line for this baby, hell he even paid me for the editing work! So this isn’t self published but it is self congratulatory… and I deserve it cos you know what? I’m pretty damn good!

The launch was a killer too… we launched it at Collected Works Bookshop, a very cool little shop run by a man Chris Hemmensley who has a real passion for the written word. He loves his poetry and he knows what is happening. It was great to fill the place up with people, do some readings, sell a pile of books and have a great time. He was smiling at the end and so were we. Apparently we set a record for the amount of people to come along to a launch too which is pretty damn nice to do when we’re from out of town and it was a more rock n roll crew than a literary crew but they still bought the book, drank the beer and then we had a session at Hell’s Kitchen, the coolest little bar in town, kicked on to Kristy Love’s birthday party and its sort of blank after that. I did wake up with a question mark in lipstick on my head though so I must have had a good time!

And I didn’t abuse anyone (well not too badly), I didn’t upset anyone (ok, maybe Rijn but I think she accepted my stupidity) I didn’t fall down or bang my head, everyone is still talking to me… so yeah, that’s a successful trip. (and I pulled a pretty good reading out of my drunken ass if I do say so myself – if you can have them laughing then holding back tears – well, you’ve done yr job)

Now I’m back in the real world – I gotta work out some income type stuff instead of all this outgoing… because we still got Sydney, Newcastle and Adelaide launches to come and that’s gonna burn a hole in my wallet!

Oh yeah, if you want the book, go to the website for stockists details and the online shop link! www.paroxysmpress.com