So I’m doing this now.

I think it’ll be fun. I feel like there needs to be more assholes in the food blog sphere, so I figured I’d enter the fray. Plus, I’m getting fat, and a food blog is as good a way as any to really pay attention to what I’m putting in my body. It’s a food blog, but it’ll likely end up being an exercise in how many ways I can relate something I want to talk about to food (e.g. the Hobbit trailer at PIIYF could have been accompanied by a recipe for Elvish bread or something).

I’m keeping this here for posterity’s sake, and to maintain a reference list of my publications, but for all intents and purposes, I’m going to talk about literature at Vouched, and food/life/etc. at Put It In Your Face. Hope you follow along.

The Hobbit was a life-changing book for me. I seriously read that book at least a dozen times as a child, and it would be fair to say it is one of the many books that saved my life back then, which seems melodramatic to say perhaps, but it is its own truth.

Suffice it to say, I can’t wait for this movie to release next December. There are few movies I care to see more than once in the theater, and I fully expect this movie to be one of them.

For those in the Akron/Cleveland/PGH area, I’m going to be reading in Akron at Nick Sturm’s Big Big Mess reading series on January 14th. Tyler is one of my favorite dudes, so I’m stoked to get to read with him there, Nate Slawson does good word, and our pal Layne loves to bring the yum yum*. This should be a good reading, and what else do you have to do on a Saturday in January in Akron?

Thanks to Nick for asking us out to read.

*Inside joke.

I mean, some perspective:

I’m not getting delusions of grandeur thinking I’m going to win, or do the classic faux pas of putting it in my cover letter, but it is a pretty great feeling knowing that of all the 100s of stories/poems/etc. that PANK publishes over the course of the year, they thought so highly of mine.

Thanks so much for the support and encouragement, PANK!

Mitzi Gordon & the Bluebird Books Bus

One of my Vouched contributors, Josh Spilker, posted about this over at the blog, and my heart leaped. Mitzi Gordon, a Tampa-based artist and community organizer, is working to launch the Bluebird Book Bus. Think of a food truck, but you know. With books.

Dubbed the Bluebird Book Bus, the project was conceived by Gordon as an answer to her lifelong dream of owning an independent bookstore, a goal that seemed in danger of falling by the wayside as she entered her 30s. Instead of a storefront, she began considering a small, mobile bookstore as a hobby after learning about a similar project that took place at USF in 2008 (an Airstream trailer called Moving Thought filled with art books).

Gordon’s Bluebird runs on the same premise: an eye-catching vehicle filled with art in the form of handmade or limited-edition books and printed items along with a cache of commercially published books about art. -Creative Loafing

Just last week, I was tweeting about the idea and possibility of doing something like this here in Indianapolis. With the current food truck craze that’s swept the city, something like this could really take off, and I want to be the one to make it happen. I already have the platform with Vouched Books. I just have to get to work.

This is going to happen.

Discuss.

This started as a joke on Twitter a couple nights ago, and now, it’s happening.

In April, Tyler Gobble and I will be embarking on a 1300 mile trip to read in Tuscaloosa, Atlanta, and Nashville, joined by the illustrious Brian Oliu.

This is gonna be good. This is gonna be so good.

Go.

-Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix