You have to Spark me up/I’ll never Spark never Spark…
Sorry, that shit got in my head and the only way to get it out was starting my blog post with it. I make up dumb parody songs constantly—I’ve repurposed dozens of tunes to be about my girlfriend’s dog Zag (sample lyric: “All I do is Zag Zag Zag no matter what/got nothin’ on my mind ‘cause I’m a silly mutt/And every time I try to do anything my ears go UP/And they derp there/and they derp there”). You’re probably wondering how I got this particular Rolling Stones song in my head, or why the fuck I’m even writing this post in the first place, but trust me, there’s at least some semblance of a reason—I started using IngrahamSpark.
Now, no disrespect to self-published writers out there, but I’m more of a small press guy. There are aspects of publishing that I have no interest in participating in, and frankly I like being part of an imprint like Eraserhead—kind of feels like being in a gang, frankly. But Lucas Mangum (author of Gods of the Dark Web and many more) gave me this cool idea, he started printing short stories in book format, and I have a few old shorts I’ve published where the rights have reverted to me, so I figured I’d give it a go. I’m also doing a new horror convention this weekend, Horrorgasm, so I thought it would be cool to print up some chapbooks through IngrahamSpark.
I don’t want this to sound like a sales pitch, but the process was pretty damn easy. Surprisingly so. Laying out my book required a lot of trial and error, and there were some tricks I had to figure out to get IS to accept my files, like embedding fonts. When laying out my book, I thought I’d save page count by making the margins really tiny, but when I got the print copy of the book I had the epiphany that tiny margins force the reader to break the book’s spine to read it. Not a pleasurable experience. Because I’d already approved the files, I had to spend an extra $50 re-uploading files in order to reprint the book, but that’s on me for being a dummy.
So now I’ve got something nifty to do with my old stories other than look for anthologies that accept reprints, and I think offering an exclusive item could be a fun convention strategy. We’ll see how it goes.
Oh, and if you want the limited edition of NOW I DON THE MASK with exclusive bonus content that will never be available anywhere else, you’ve got to come to Horrorgasm this Saturday, October 24th, at Queen Bee’s in North Park.