Released Today

Warm Milk Press is happy to announce a new book, ZZZZZZZZZZZZ [the stars] by J. A. Tyler. ZZZZZZZZZZZZ is a collaborative project that spans 3 small presses and 1 Online journal.

Here is Tyler's description of the project:

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ is wreckage. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ takes place as five distinct works, all built around the same core story. Each narrative is that of a girl who holds the last water in the world, a herd of chaos that takes it from her, and the boy who comes to resuscitate it all. But each story takes this kernel and shreds it in a new direction, incorporates other elements, reshapes the narrative in its own image. And each press that came aboard this project, releasing this wreckage into readers’ hands, worked on the same principle of core unity with distinct press-specific alterations. All that is left is the beautiful static hum: zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Thanks to the following presses and their editors and journals, where you can gather
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ:

links:

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ [a well]: Greying Ghost (Carl Annarummo)
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ [the stars]: Warm Milk Printing Press (BS, KW, JW)
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ [this town]: The Collagist (Matt Bell)
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ [an island]: NewLights Press (Aaron Cohick)

HOW THEY WERE FOUND by Matt Bell

Includes the story "Dredge," a Best American Mystery Stories selection, and the story "His Last Great Gift," a Best American Short Stories Distinguished Story of 2009.

In his debut collection How They Were Found, Matt Bell draws from a wide range of genres to create stories that are both formally innovative and imaginatively rich. In one, a 19th-century minister follows ghostly instructions to build a mechanical messiah. In another, a tyrannical army commander watches his apocalyptic command slip away as the memories of his men begin to fade and fail. Elsewhere, murders are indexed, new worlds are mapped, fairy tales are fractured and retold and then fractured again. Throughout these thirteen stories, Bell's careful prose burrows at the foundations of his characters' lives until they topple over, then painstakingly pores over the wreckage for what rubbled humanity might yet remain to be found.

Excerpt: Read "Dredge," selected for Best American Mystery Stories 2010

ADVANCE PRAISE

"Reminscent of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's The Winter War in Tibet in its calm examination and unsettling embodiment of mental and physical extremes, How They Were Found is a dreamer's chronicle of the loss and partial recovery of a world given over to the wrecking ball. Fierce, unflinching, funny, How They Were Found is just the book we need right now, Matt Bell just the writer." —Laird Hunt, author of Ray of the Star

"How They Were Found offers a world with shifting rules, described with a lovely and deceptive simplicity. This guide shows you thirteen different types of wilderness, and you can spend all day exploring before you realize you are lost." —Amelia Gray, author of Museum of the Weird and AM/PM

"You're a robot if the stories in Matt Bell's debut collection don't exhilarate, frighten, and unalterably change you. His wild manipulation of form and genre makes the bulk of contemporary fiction feel bloodless and inert in comparison, but it is Bell's recurring arrival at something sturdy and true about human behavior that makes the stories in How They Were Found so rewarding and resonant." —Matthew Derby, author of Super Flat Times: Stories

You can and should order it (devour it), here.

Matt Bell Wolf Parts

Matt Bell's Wolf Parts is just over 40 pages. Each page reinvents itself, setting a new stage, adding a new detail, changing. Several of the pages are not full pages but thick, violent, and sexual vignettes. Each of Bell's sentences is carefully detailed, full of symbolism. While reading it Peter Markus came to mind because of Wolf Parts repetition of violence and love. If you can get your hands on this book you'll read it again and again.

When I was only halfway through the short book it became clear to me that Bell's upcoming book HOW THEY WERE FOUND had become one my most anticipated releases of the year.

Wolf Parts was a limited edition print but the audio file of Bell reading it can be downloaded from Keyhole Press for $2.

HOW THEY WERE FOUND is forthcoming from Keyhole Press, October 5, 2010.

I feel like this came out of nowhere. I just ordered my copy from Keyhole Press, it's limited edition in print until March 21st, and only $8. Comes with an audio download and a $3 off coupon for Matt Bell's upcoming How They Were Found, too.

What a great cover.