"Honorable Mention" 2nd Edition Cover of GCO Now Available for Purchase

The new cover for Grid City Overload is now up and available for purchase. Here's a couple of grainy photos (also reversed just to make sure they're the most terrible of quality) of me holding the genuine article.

 

I think that, all in all, this edition turned out great. Now you can read this book and look extremely fancy if you so choose. Enjoy!

New Cover Preview for 2nd Edition of Grid City Overload

Grid City Overload Reviewed in the Long Beach Post

GCO was reviewed in The Long Beach Post very recently by Shannon Couey. This is a fantastic review, and also features some great criticism. Thanks to everyone who worked hard to make this possible. I'm happy to have received some mainstream attention.

Read 'Grid City Overload' and the Devolution of Humanity by Shannon Couey.

To celebrate the book's Honorable Mention in ForeWord's Book of the Year Award and this review, I will be giving the book a new cover. Look for a preview soon!

GRID CITY OVERLOAD Awarded Honorable Mention for 2012 Book of the Year Awards

So if anyone remembers, way back three months ago GCO was announced as a finalist in the LITERARY category for the ForeWord Reviews 2012 Book of the Year Award, and yesterday at the American Library Association Annual Conference, which took place in Chicago, the winners were announced on the Popular Topics Stage.

Here is how the contest is judged according to the press release: ...a panel of sixty judges, librarians and booksellers only, will determine the winners. Gold, Silver, and Bronze awards, as well as Editor’s Choice Prizes for Fiction and Nonfiction... The winners of the two Editor’s Choice Prizes will be awarded $1,500 each. ForeWord’s Independent Publisher of the Year will also be announced.

Although I didn't receive any of these four awards, I was awarded Honorable Mention. I was up against novelists with some impressive pedigrees, including many university professors and previous award-winners of different fiction contests. Most everyone on the list had an MFA, it seemed, and the novel that won Silver was reviewed in the NY Times and had a blurb on the front from David Foster Wallace, so considering my own humble resume I'm honored to be among this list.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FULL LINE-UP OF WINNERS.

GOLD - Frottage and Even As We Speak by Mona Houghton. What Books Press.

SILVER - That's Not a Feeling by Dan Josefson. Soho Press.

BRONZE - Total Secession by Adam Connell. Published by Adam Connell. (The Bronze winner, I noticed, was the only other book on the list that wasn't published and distributed by a small press other than myself. Congratulations on your accomplishment.)

HONORABLE MENTION - Grid City Overload by Steven T. Bramble. CreateSpace.

Whole Beast Rag Issue 5: CHTHONIC

Issue Five of Whole Beast Rag, CHTHONIC, was published yesterday. In it you can find my short story Bottle Cap Theory.

Read BOTTLE CAP THEORY,
 or, read my previous short story in the AMERI/A issue, LENTES OSCUROS.

This issue looks to be a great one. See?



The art in this issue is from featured artist Tyler Spangler.




Also, listen to the mixtape made for the CHTHONIC issue.

CHTHONIC from wholebeastrag on 8tracks Radio.

1. BRING DA RUCKUS - El Michel's Affair
2. KIRUNA - Gina X Performance
3. DIALOGUE OF WIND AND LOVER - Paul Parrish
4. COLORADO TRAIL - Javelin
5. NO LLORES MÁS - Morena y Clara
6. EARTH SONG - Truck
7. A GIFT OF TEARS - Jeunesse d'Ivoire
8. A QUALSIASI PRESSO (TITOLI) - Luis Bacalov
9. DAYDREAM - Gunter Kallmann Choir
10. ALLORA IL TRENO - Bruno Nicolai
11. VALENTINE - Justice
12. ILLUMINATION - Broadcast
13. OH ALLAH - Alice Coltrane
14. WHEN THE LILIES DIE - IO Echo
15. FLYING - The Beatles
16. WITCHI TAI TO - Harpers Bizarre
17. SEVENLER AĞLARMIŞ - 3 Hürel
18. BELIEVER - John Maus
19. DIES IRAE PSICHEDELICO - Ennio Morricone

Enjoy!

On the Verge of Madness

On the Verge of Madness
by Octopus Brothel



New music video from everyone's favorite band outta Hollywood!

the fox and the grapes

the fox and the grapes
by corrine noel

HOW TO OPERATE WITH A BLOWN MIND

HOW TO OPERATE WITH A BLOWN MIND
by Lo Fidelity Allstars

Forthcoming Short Story to be Published in Issue 5 of WHOLE BEAST RAG

I'm proud to say that I will have another piece of short fiction published in CHTHONIC, the fifth issue of Whole Beast Rag. I have to admit it's refreshing to have found a pair of talented editors and publishers (which is a shout-out to Grace Littlefield and Katherine Hargreaves) who feel my work has a place in their magazine.

Have I mentioned that you should take a look at Whole Beast Rag? Or maybe if you don't believe me, you'll believe the hype.

In any case, here's a preview of CHTHONIC, as well as a preview of "Bottle Cap Theory", which will be published therein:

 

CHTHONIC - JUNE 1

[This issue] will serve as the documenting of depths and vices both individual and collective. Derived from the Greek chthonios, "in, under, or beneath the earth," the chthonic expresses the desire to expose the underbelly of our beings and ideas. It is about examining the raw impulse, its presumed repression, and its rebirth. 

BOTTLE CAP THEORY

by Steven T. Bramble

Then the hydrogen bomb exploded! And I don’t have to tell you that the capitalist bastards were caught with their pants quite down around their pale little ankles, having not really come to terms with their souls and shit like that on account of all their monies. And plus there was Irene H. Ronstadt, who was getting fed nearly science-fiction-like commercial messages about vehicular homicide and Jolly Khadafy Goat Samwiches while sitting in a well-earned blue nylon recliner, and she didn’t have a clue what the TV was blathering about because she was two days away from turning a hundred years old when fusion occurred and the thermonuclear sprinklerheads went shik-shik-shik-shik-shik-shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiik! Oh God—the 1940s horror—and it was always a mystery of the universe why Colonel O’Mannon found it necessary to bend over to look for the bottle cap he’d just dislodged from the top of his beer bottle, the same bottle cap from a Coke that was recycled from seventy-seven years ago which caused a horrible smoke to belch from Anne de Witt’s Electrolux Model 30 vacuum cleaner in 1952 when it got jammed in the drive train. The colonel’s large trapezoidal posterior made accidental contact with the arcane lever which sent the electron current to the mechanism that lit up and shrieked, “Launch, launch, launch!” and subsequently sent him through fifteen years of psychological therapy just to come to terms with it. Oh yeah, great stuff. You can actually see the mushroom cloud from two states over because most of the land in Middle America got shaved flat for the Go-Kart track...

Read the rest on June 1st in WHOLE BEAST RAG. 

GCO has been announced as a finalist for 2012 Book of the Year

Grid City Overload has been announced as a finalist for Foreword Review's 2012 Book of the Year in the LITERARY category. The winners in each category will be announced in the next couple of months. This is a huge honor for me, and I'm excited for the results to come in.

To help me out in this competition, I'm asking that everyone who has read Grid City Overload please leave a review on the book's Amazon page. Leaving a review will help me out immensely by attracting the attention of potential publishers and judges. Whether you liked it, hated it, or were so-so about it, please share your opinions in a review. If you do so, I'll probably be honor-bound to buy you a beer at some point, so please also feel free to consider it an investment.

Until then, here's the full list of finalists for the LITERARY category:


    

GRID CITY OVERLOAD by Steven T. Bramble

MOTHERLESS CHILD by Marianne Langner Zeitlin

THAT'S NOT A FEELING by Dan Josefson

TOTAL SECESSION by Adam Connell

THE SIX GRANDDAUGHTERS OF CECIL SLAUGHTER by Susan Hahn

CODE OF THE FOREST by Jon Buchan

FROTTAGE AND EVEN AS WE SPEAK by Mona Houghton

DESTRUCTIVE INTERFERENCE by Martin Skogsbeck

INTO THIS WORLD by Sybil Baker

HATTIE by Anna Bozena Bowen

RENATO THE PAINTER by Eugene Mirabelli

SO L.A. by Bridget Hoida

THE EMANCIPATING DEATH OF A BORING ENGINEER by Michel Bruneau

VANDAL LOVE by Deni Bechard


                   


                      GLORYBOUND by Jessie van Eerden

Please review!