With a Little Help from My Friends

Spring is here. Bursts of activity and creation, from outdoor events to the bright shiny new work of authors, publishers, and all those types that bloom in the sunshine, full of new work and bright words.

Writers and their affiliates (from presses to magazines to podcasts) get hell on the Internet for self-promotion – and a lot of the time, GAWD, rightly so – but sometimes friends are friends, and the PSA/The More You Know message of this post is that when no one is looking, and for no other reason than being good people, this group of miscreants and snake oil salesmen will unblinkingly throw sponsorship money to a 9 yr old in Southern Ohio for an event at his elementary school. And one will blink, and think how lucky, to have “networks” that are more than that word, associates and peers that are friends.

Selflessness is supposed to be its own reward, but here’s my kid kicking some ass at the Ninja Dash obstacle course/fun run. He was sponsored by Booked. Podcast (Livius Nedin and Robb Olson, Thunderdome Press (Mike Gonzalez), GAMUT Magazine (Richard Thomas), his friend Elijah Kasper (from PLT days), Kay & Allen Hayes, and Heather & Jeremy Barker. They expected nothing from him, but he wore a sponsor shirt with all their names.

Thanks to your generosity, my son gets to smash a pie in the face of his favorite teacher on the next-to-last day of school

And yes, since you asked, that green glitter shirt-lettering was all destroyed when I washed it, and the inside of my washing machine looks like a disco.

Happy summer!! And thank you for being a part of my life!!

All That Is Dark and Beautiful

Autumn goes fast!! Sometimes it’s too full to keep track in words and posts, so here’s a quick cram session of all the things wonderful and a bit unbelievable that happened along with crunching leaves, bonfires, trick-or-treat, PTO Vice Presidency (shut up), soccer season, Apple Festival, a NINE YEAR Wedding Anniversary, a new legit job at A.L. Terry Jewelers, Back to the Future Pt 2 celebrations, reading amazing stories at Menacing Hedge…. you get the idea, things are booming!! In the midst of all that, there’s also this:

MORE!! At Booked.

Halloween means the annual Spookedtacular, and this year was a two hour NyQuil and beer fest of The Final Girls, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, urban legends, serial killers, and sincere love and vitriol splattered in all directions between Robb Olson, Livius Nedin, Jesse Lawrence and myself. Is a Christmas special coming, with the four of us? You bet! AND! At the beginning of 2016 while Robb and Liv take a Disney Cruise (or whatever it is they do when they can’t record) Craig Clevenger and I will be holding down the Booked. fort and co-hosting an episode ourselves. It should be hot. But more on that later! Click HERE to be taken to the Spookedtacular 2015,

Pantheon Magazine Winter Edition

A little sad, sweet piece of mine has been accepted at the lovely Pantheon Magazine. “Orphans” will appear in the “Hestia” edition. It’s a beautiful publication and I’m honored I’ll be found in its pages!

UPDATES for ‘Gutted: Beautiful Horror’ Table of Contents

If you don’t know what the anthology is about, click HERE to find out a little more about the depths of darkness and beauty coming from Crystal Lake publishing in 2016. It was incredible enough when I learned Neil Gaiman was on the roster, along with authors John F.D. Taff, Brian Kirk, and (one of my own) Richard Thomas – who needs a shout-out and huge thanks for tossing my name their way – THEN editors extraordinaire Doug Murano and D. Alexander Ward announced on Halloween that along with all of us, Clive Barker will be including a story. It’s a bit surreal at this point, and I can’t wait to hear who’s announced next!  My story, “Cellar’s Dog,” is gangly and bizarre and pretty in its own way, and I’ll be forever grateful the editors could see what I saw when that black dog walked into those headlight beams.

So there you have it. The leaves are barely gone and already the Autumn is so full of goodness, I’m not sure where to go from here! Up? Or maybe I’ll just swim awhile. Float. Hug my lovelies and enjoy the laughter and the warmth. I think this is the top.

Thank you all so much for reading!

Amanda

Allow Me to Buy Your Love with Free Books in Honor of Sunshine!

Last night I discovered two things:

1. Goodreads has an author stats page thingie

2. LOTS of people have Radium Girls marked on their “To Read” shelves.

So! The only thing to do is come up with a plan to gently shove Radium Girls over to allllll the “Currently Reading” shelves. Summer is coming. There’s no reason my glowing green baby shouldn’t be on your tablet or in your tote bag, ready and waiting when you reach for some good words.

In honor of so many well-intentioned readers, and the upcoming One Year Birthday of Radium Girls, I talked to my lovely friend and publisher Mike Gonzalez, and…

Here’s the Plan

From May 5th through June 5th we shall hand out e-books like candy. As a show of good faith and even better intentions, all you need to do is TAG ME in a photo of ANY OTHER copy of a paper publication I’ve been in that you already have in your possession. Doesn’t matter where – post in the comments here, or tag me or Thunderdome Press on Facebook, or Twitter: @mandajoon (me) or @monkeywright (Mike Gonzalez) or @ThunderDomeMag (the Press), or on Instagram: @mandajoon (me). I don’t care if it’s actually even a pic of you with RG, we’ll still collect your email address and give you an ebook to pass on to someone else!

Here’s the List

Post a pic of ANY of the following with a tag:

Exigencies

Burnt Tongues

Radium Girls

The Booked. Anthology

Cipher Sisters

LA1K

cutaway

Warmed and Bound

And! When that giveaway is over it’ll officially be my birthday and we’ll give away some paperbacks, too! And and! There will be a 4-day Free Radium Girls for Kindle weekend. I want these stories in your hands!

Last year when we were getting Radium Girls together I really didn’t want to do any…um, well, promotional work, so I didn’t blurb-hunt or really advertise or whatever, but since the release I’ve gotten a lot of cool reviews and whatnot, so I’ve collected that and shall put it here, in a “Don’t Take My Word for It” section:

Praise for Radium Girls:

“These stories glow in the dark.”
– Craig Clevenger, author of The Contortionist’s Handbook and Dermaphoria

“I loved it, that’s for damned sure. Radium Girls is a great book.”
– Benjamin Whitmer, author of Pike and Cry Father

“Her work exists in the rarified air only found at high altitudes…Gowin unfolds a series of portraits of exquisitely flawed and powerful characters.”
– Kelly Boyker, author of Zoonosis, editor of Menacing Hedge

“Gowin is the tornado, lifting the flotsam of society and spinning it around and around until it lands just south of Kansas where magic and colour are just beyond reach.”
– Craig Wallwork, author of The Sound of Loneliness and Quintessence of Dust

“Radium Girls puts beauty in places you probably shouldn’t find it and makes the reader question the norms they’ve come to accept.”
– Livius Nedin and Robb Olson, The Booked. Podcast

May your Spring and Summer be be full of sunshine and words. Thanks for letting me be a part of it!

Bring on 2015!

My son is WAY more excited about the New Year than you. It’s a fact. Allow me to illustrate:

 

 

2015 is the year of hoverboards, power laces and flying cars. Or, in my kid’s mind, the year it all becomes POSSIBLE. So cross your fingers that the designers of sneakers make a knock-off cheap kid-size replica of those multi-thousand dollar power laces they HAVE promised.

There are plenty of “best of” lists of this and that, so I’m just going to skip it and do a pimp recap post of things I’m writerly happy about from 2014 and link ’em all here. Because I’m ready for 2015, too, so let’s just skip the nostalgia for 2014 (of which I’ll have none) and get one with the new! Shiny clothes and dehydrated pizza for everyone!

Offerings:

Radium Girls

My firstborn! Full of cicadas, mental institutions and beauty.

 

 

 

 

Order Radium Girls

 

Cipher Sisters

Technically this is from 2013, but I’m still pretty proud of it. Mike and I stitched this quilt with twisted beauty.

 

 

 

 

Order Cipher Sisters

 

Burnt Tongues

My brush with fame! Edited/selected by Chuck Palahniuk. And no, my story here is not in RG 🙂

 

 

 

 

Order Burnt Tongues

 

Exigencies

Coming April 2015, but there’s a Goodreads giveaway going on this very moment to win one of ten free Advanced Reading Copies! (This story isn’t in Radium Girls, either!)

 

 

 

 

Enter to win an advance copy of Exigencies

 

Curiouser and Curiouser

Author interview site, sister site, home of my nosy alter ego Alice. Author interviews that have nothing to do with writing. The schedule is erratic, but recently there’ve been interviews with everyone from Karen Abbott (Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy) to Ben Whitmer (Cry Father). No money necessary, it’s merely collected anecdotes and gorgeous information.

 

 

 

 

Read author interviews at Curiouser and Curiouser

 

Booked. Podcast

Robb and Liv were crazy enough to have me on THREE TIMES this year – once to talk about Radium Girls, and twice for holiday specials with my fellow space cadet, Jesse Lawrence. The Radium Girls review/interview is the only episode of these three I can recommend if you’re under 18, related to me, or know me through my son. The holiday specials are full of horrifying language and subject matter, extremely fun, and rated a strong R leaning towards NC-17. Free entertainment!! Booked., I love you….

 

 

 

Click to listen: Booked. #209 – Radium Girls

Click to listen: Booked. #225 – Halloween Spookedtacular!

Click to listen: Booked. #231 – Christmas Extravaganza Spectacular!

 

I hope you find some enjoyment here!

Mainly, I hope you kiss your loved ones, take a deep breath and jump headfirst into 2015.

Happy New Year!

– Amanda

 

HALLOWEEN IS HERE! Family Trick or Treat & Booked. Spookedtacular!

Happy Halloween! It may be rainy and damp, but the weak light and various colds have not dampened spirits this week. Below, see what happens when my son says “Star Wars” and then listen to what happens when Booked. says “What plan? It’s Halloween!” Thanks for a helluva week.

Also, ‘sexy’ Han Solo is just Han Solo – dig my lean….

Click the Booked. pumpkin to be transported to the SPOOKEDTACULAR!!

 

 

Booked. on Radium Girls, plus interview!

Robb & Liv talked about my booooook,  then had me on to talk about it. There’s a lot less discussion about writing than Billy Idol, but it works! And as far as the review part goes,  they’re not title experts. No matter what they say… I wish they’d let me be on every episode.

 

 

http://www.bookedpodcast.com/2014/06/11/209-radium-girls/

 

LA1K (In Search of a City: Los Angeles In 1,000 Words)

BUY HERE!!

 http://thundadome.com/LA1K/ 

 

BOOKED REVIEW AND INTERVIEW WITH MIKE:

http://www.bookedpodcast.com/2011/11/30/episode-53-michael-paul-gonzalez-and-in-search-of-a-city/

 

and NOW, i name drop:

 Table of Contents

Ryan Wilson – “American Trash”
Stuart Gibbel – “Break on Through”
Craig Clevenger – “Obsolescence”
Nik Korpon – “South of Thirteen”
Dennis Cruz – “Smile Now, Cry Later”
Pela Via – “Bathhouse”
Stephen Conley – “Don’t Feed the Animals”
Grigori Black – “This Was Heaven”
Doc O’Donnell – “Your Personal Apocalypse”
Nikki Guerlain – “Sick Ticket”
Patrick Verhagen – “Swim”
Craig Wallwork – “El Bordello Alexandra”
Nicholas Merlin Karpuk – “Ahm’s Bay”
Nik Houser – “Subtitles for a Silent Film”
H.R. Tardiff – “Walls in the Sand”
Richard Thomas – “The Jenny Store”
Bob Pastorella – “Alexandra”
Simon West-Bulford – “Project Asmodeus”
Jay Slayton-Joslin – “The Fantasy of California vs. The Reality of London”
Amanda Gowin – “Gilded Bones”
Chris Deal – “Padre Nuestro”
Boden Steiner – “Here”
Gordon Highland – “Fry Girl”
edward j rathke – “All the Dreams You Dreamt Retold”
Michael Paul Gonzalez – “Tidal”
Victor Bengtsson – “Venice, Forever”

I Love Zombies and Zombies Love Me (MEDIA!!!)

 An Interview with Bill Grundy’s corpse, via Craig Wallwork:

http://craigwallwork.blogspot.com/2011/10/zombie-interview-2-amanda-gowin.html

Episode #47 – Zombie Extravaganza Spectacular (With Livius waving his arms in the air)

http://www.bookedpodcast.com/2011/10/15/episode-47-zombie-extravaganza-spectacular-with-livius-waving-his-arms-in-the-air/

busy, busy… and inspirational!!

WOOOO!!! Interviewed by a zombie for Craig Wallwork’s blog, which should with any luck go up about the same time this weekend as the Booked podcast i guest-hosted (i have tourette’s, they’re saints to let me anywhere near that podcast) with Chris Deal for Craig’s story ‘Revenge of the Zombie Pussy Eaters’ and general horror topics. chris is so damned smart about that stuff – screw you, chris, you hear me?? i rambled about frickin’ ted nugent and false penises on female hyenas, and pretty much everything you said was insightful and funny. yeah, i’m calling you out right here on this blog no one reads, chris deal!!

so anyway. this weekend both of those things should be up. links forthcoing, also to be found in their respective homes in the blogroll list to the right ->

only two soccer games left. i love the kids. they’re so awesome. i’m actually considering doing this again in the spring. i’m vicariously living their happiness just running and jumping and kicking and getting SNACKS!

rehearsal every night the rest of this week and all next week (except soccer night). i’m trying. my big fear is to be the ‘okay’ one – like, not the one that ruins it, but the one that ‘didn’t ruin it’ – but just barely. like keanu in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. please god don’t let me be keanu….

Friday is our five year wedding anniversary. FIVE FRICKIN’ YEARS! i forgot that we made this joke agreement to go on five year contracts and re-evaluate if we’d go another five at each interval. i sure hope we sign on for another five, because i can’t hold a job. only thing i’m good at is teaching my kid stuff and rambling and… well, to be honest i could always be a hooker.

in conclusion, i would like to say, don’t let anyone tell you that rambling like an idiot about zombies won’t get you anywhere. because it can. believe in yourself, damnit.

this is my inspirational post. i feel pretty good about it.

The Batman Ring

Messes with my head when I’m up so much earlier than everyone. Kiddo got leapt upon by 3 lbs of black fur at around 3:30 – now kid, dad and aforementioned ball of fur are all nicely settled together in the big bed. Me? Im wider than a stick of gum and had to slip away.

My toenails look fabulous, I want to photograph them, but that’s the same part of me that just spent too long looking for a plastic batman ring I saw shoved on the cat’s ear last evening.

Lets see. What, what? Fourth of july weekend was all the stuff it is supposed to be, more “classic” than any we’ve had so far – kid games at the park, dunk tank with the mayor, swimming, grilling, sparklers, fireworks. Maybe adam’s best holiday to date; Lily really brings out the satyr in him. (Photos in a later post)

There’s a lot of fog.

My stories are getting more compact – working on this thing, thought it was about a whole night, got interrupted, back to it later and I realized it needed two more lines. What, maybe 400 words? But sometimes you WANT something to be sex but instead it’s about moths and alcoholism. It’s voice work, I think. Anais Nin crisis – I go back and forth between Henry & June and her erotica, and try to figure out what she was trying to figure out – the journal voice turning to the writer voice. Henry figured it out, or maybe he just said fuck it. Maybe this is about form. Don’t know. Just know that things that come from scribbles and journal scraps and bundled thoughts fallen from the sky (tied together with cigarette string and stored near the X-files trivia but not too close to the D’inofrio box) shine up into a lot more like my voice than my “this is the story” planned tales. It’s like I put on my fancy writing hat – I dont write anything fancy, but the voices are distinctly different… bridget’s voice is the only narrative voice I like, and its just (to paraphrase andrea speaking of something different) the out loud version of me. We’ll see how all that pans out.

these are good thoughts to have while it becomes daylight and the fog refuses to burn off.

If i had the batman ring, perhaps the answers would feel closer.

Too many books on the side table, but I guess it’s good –  I can say Fuck it to the voice earwhig and listen to other voices for the moment. Ahem, allow me to catalog : Knockemstiff, By the Time We Leave Here We’ll Be Friends, Clown Girl, Henry & June, Sexus, Erotica by Anais Nin. Thats an impressive table. If the PBS schedule and One Fish Two Fish weren’t amongst the pile it would be downrigh hip – and no doubt a calculated lie of a pile.

But this is not about the table. This is about the Warmed & Bound Release Party, isn’t it? No, maybe it’s about the Booked podcast that terrifies me to no end. I shall ramble in new and horrifying ways, and I am AFRAID. Big mouth, more nervous = more talking.

But the release party is exciting shit. Why? Shoes. Shoes and the 1920s and meeting all these people – I want to know what these typed voices sound like out loud, I want to match faces to stories, I want to hit on waitresses dressed as flappers.

I want a pink bandanna for my pirate costume, and to FIND THAT BATMAN RING!!!