You Lovely People

SIDENOTE/UPDATE: Congratulations to Glen Scribner, the winner of our Prize Pack of Awesomeness. Thanks to everyone for the subscriptions this week – it means a lot to us. But:

 

Earlier this week, as part of Artifice Magazine’s July Subscription Drive, editor James Tadd Adcox promised to mohawk & dye his hair if we got 10 subscriptions in a single day. We got over twice that many. Here, as promised, are the pictures:

Pre-hawk.

 

“Pink Fetish,” courtesy of the corner drugstore.

 

Cut.

 

The waiting game.

 

The final product, ready in time for Wednesday’s Barrelhouse and Rose Metal Press reading at Chicago’s Open Books.

Thanks once again to everyone who’s subscribed so far this month. For those of you who haven’t yet gotten around to joining in the Subscription Drive Goodness, there’s still time.

Mohawk!

Thanks to everyone who subscribed yesterday. Because of you, we met both the mohawk goal and the dye-job goal.

Pictures to follow.

(If you haven’t subscribed yet, this week you can still get free stuff, & be entered into a drawing to win even more free stuff.)

Mohawk Madness Tuesday

In addition to this and this, today only, if we get 5 subscriptions, Artifice editor James Tadd Adcox has agreed to cut his hair into a mohawk in time for the Barrelhouse/Rose Metal Press event tomorrow night. If we get 10 subscriptions today, he promises to dye it a ridiculous color, and possibly think about a safety pin.

And of course there will be pictures.

Subscribe here.

The Final Week

Monday marks the final day of Artifice’s How Do We Love Thee July Subscription Drive, and we’re still not quite to our 50-subscriptions-in-July goal. 

In fact, we still need 18 subscriptions to reach our goal of 50!

So, for this last week of July, we’ll be sweetening the pot even more than we already have by entering every new or renewing subscriber we get this week into a drawing to receive the following Prize Pack of Awesomeness. The drawing will be held on Sunday, August 1.

PRIZE PACK OF AWESOMENESS

Annalemma #6

Drain by Davis Schneiderman (Northwestern, June 2010)

Sententia #1

Early copy of Daddy’s by Lindsay Hunter (Featherproof, 2010)

Big Lucks #2

PANK #5

Early copy of Save the Assistants by Lilit Marcus (Hyperion, 2010)

Hobart #11

ACM #50 (All Chicago Issue)

(More awesomeness to come. And if you’ve got something you’d like to donate to the Prize Pack of Awesomeness, shoot us an email at editors AT artificemag DOT com.)

Why I Pledged $20 Towards Gas Money for the High Emission Book Tour

UPDATE 7/25/10: They did it. YAY!

 

My roommate just said to me, “I see the fanny pack has come out.” She does not like my fanny pack. But I was just looking for my credit card, so I could check which account I wanted to pledge $20 with.

Because I decided to pledge $20 towards gas money for the High Emission Book Tour.

Because I believe in book tours, and I believe that travelling on the road is rewarding, and I believe in communities working toward larger goals together, like having more book tours.

And because I totally have a crush on Aaron Burch (who’s going on the tour), and another one on Amelia Gray, who is also going on the tour and who I saw read at Quickies last summer on the Dollar Store Tour, where she read a piece that was recently mentioned here, to great note, and another one on Lindsay Hunter, who is also going on the tour, who has been one of the nicest people I’ve met in a long time and who co-hosts Quickies, which is easily my favorite Chicago reading series. (And: secret coming: we’re planning an East Coast tour for Issue #2 over here at Artifice, and I have tours on the brain.)

Anyway: Amelia Gray put together a Kickstarter project for the tour, and they’re trying to get $350 for gas money and the rental of a Ford Focus.

If you don’t know about Kickstarter, it’s actually a pretty great tool for getting funded for things like smallish book tours.

People (like me!) can pledge money, and if the project doesn’t get fully funded, no one pays up. But if it does, everyone’s credit card (like mine, in my fanny pack) gets charged for the amount they said they were willing to pay. And then Aaron and Amelia and Lindsay can represent in California.

So here’s my pitch.

Go watch the video Aaron Burch put together and see if you can’t dig up some spare change or a dollar bill or two that got washed in your jeans pocket. It will make you feel good. And if it doesn’t, that’s OK too. You did the right thing.

Blowing Up

Christopher Heavener of Annalemma is putting together a table for this weekend’s Brooklyn Flea (Brooklynites represent!). We’ve been really excited to see a general effort on the part of the literary (and particularly the indie lit) community to get books and lit journals in places one wouldn’t normally expect. Other examples include Vouched Books in Indianapolis and Chicago’s own Book Bike (which, for those of you who’ve been following the story, is back in business thanks to the Chicago Public Library).

Artifice will be sharing the table with Hobart, Publishing Genius, Mud Luscious, Ampersand, X-ing, fellow Chicagoans Featherproof Books, and of course Annalemma. Stop by, New York, and give us some love.

Countdown/News

Authors/submitters: We’re going to be closing down submissions for a little while at the end of July, to give ourselves a chance to prepare for our brand-new submission manager. That means you’ve got a little over two weeks to get work in to us if you’d like it to be considered for Issue 3.

Readers: Likewise, there’s a little over two weeks left to take advantage of our July Subscription Drive. Free, beautiful screenprints are involved. Info here.

Everyone: Have a beautiful weekend. Some of us plan to spend it outside, listening to loud noises.

A List of Things

1. We are a little less than 1/2 way to our 50-new-subscriptions-in-July goal. NB: You can get free things.

2. We are very much looking forward to Printer’s Ball.

3. We are working on layout for Issue #2. It is exciting. Rebekah talked about Artifice’s design here.

4. We are trying to collect our thoughts on this.

5. This is a nice response to #4, although we’re still not sure what we think about it.

6. We hope you had a nice weekend.