Dzanc to Publish Stephen Graham Jones
Earlier this week, news broke that one of Slushpile’s favorite indie publishers Dzanc Books signed on to release two new books by one of our favorite writers, Stephen Graham Jones.
You might recall Jones from one of our two interviews with him.
After the news broke, I asked Jones for a little more detail about his new partnership with Dzanc.
“Very cool to be hitched with Dzanc for Flushboy and Not for Nothing,” Jones says. “I mean, they push quality writing, they produce slick books, and they believe in fiction. And, aside from all that, are excellent people, have a great catalogue. Couldn’t be happier to be doing these two with them.”
In regards to the two new books, Jones points out that “Flushboy is maybe going to be the first drive-through urinal novel, yeah? Probably I should patent that process, all the bank tubes, the hygiene measures, the inevitable accumulation of shame you’d have to get — or, that this kid working that drive-through in Flushboy accumulates, anyway. But it’s more than that, I hope. A love story, because my wife told me I hadn’t done one of those yet. Not good enough, anyway. Flushboy‘s all about love, about being sixteen, seventeen. All happens over the course of one shift, too; hopefully Stewart O’Nan doesn’t feel robbed or anything. Which — not to say I didn’t write this a while back.”
The other novel leaves the bathroom behind and lands in a town with a hard luck detective. “Talking robbed, when Robert Coover’s Noir hit, I thought it very possible my heart might just break, come crumbling down my sleeve. Because that second-person approach to the detective, that way of rendering his voice, it’s what Not for Nothing is. This exiled homicide cop Nicholas Bruiseman, returning to his home town of Stanton, Texas, the last place he ever wanted to go again, the only place he has left. But already, not even looking for work, not even licensed to work, he’s tangled up in a love triangle that’s spitting bodies out, and he’s finding that, to solve this case, to figure out who’s who, he’s going to have to crack into a past he thought gone forever. But, in places like Stanton — I grew up there — the past, it’s all around you, everywhere you go. It’s terrible and wonderful, liberating and cloying, maybe the best place to finally figure out who you are. All of which is to say, yeah, 2013, 2014. If Emmerich was wrong and we somehow make it through 2012, then save some space on your shelf, maybe in your heart, if I can be that cheesy this far in advance.”