ProtestLove

Wedding Trip: Revolt from the Singles Table

PICT4963-Edit-1After a few years and various cups of coffee and a couple of things in between I’ve released my first book. It’s self-published – not official in the sense that someone has put up financial backing to get it into print. In the digital age, what is the point unless one has been approached already by a publisher? This is the value of the internet, the ability to side-step financial barriers to produce what you want and publish how you want. There was no specific reason for writing this book, I could have done it earlier if I were a motivated person. Basically I attended a wedding, too some pictures and started writing, thinking it would be a funny email to send out. Then I thought it would be a webpage and it just kept growing. After a while I decided that it needed some sort of form and turned it into a short story – a book, a literature-challenged novel, whatever you want to call it. I made it into a book, because this is the exact form which was required (as opposed to a blog post). I wrote it as a short-story because I wanted it to be simple and short, uncluttered and with a voice that is unpretentious and genuine (well, at least from my perspective). So here it is:

Wedding_Trip_Small.jpgAmerican Peyote Vol. 1
Wedding Trip
Revolt from the Singles Table

Other title iterations included:

Last Thoughts Before Being Born
Dissension from the Singles Table
Revolution of the Dateless Guest

Chapters Include:

I. Everything else is background noise, feel the beat and ride it as far as you can
II. It means not looking for a return on your emotional investment
III. Last Thoughts Before Being Born
IV. Elixir of the Gods
V. Carpe Noct
VI. Only a determined removal of the thin veils of society sets the soul free…a beast approaches
VII. The night is also mortal
VIII. Epilogue

Basically the story is about a guy attending a wedding, and all the random thoughts on Love and relationships which infest in his mind during the festive event. If I tell you all the details now your reading experience will be ruined. I don’t know if it’s any good or not, but a few very cool people said they like it.

I could have left it on my computer, like writing stuff in journals and then leaving them on a shelf somewhere, but that’s like writing a letter and not sending it, what would be the point? The emotions and revelations are then left to sit – lost – irrelevant. Which is not to say that Revolt from the Singles Table is in any way important or significant in any sense of the universe. It’s a self-published book through Lulu.com and is available online sofort (immediately). It’s a pocket edition, not very long (meant to be carried around and easily left on trains or coffee shop seats), some of you know the backstory – and others of you can no doubt guess at it. I could have made it longer, but in the self-publishing realm of reality I can make it as long or short as I like, and this is the exact length that the story needed at this point in time. Names have been changed, certain facts embellished, and it wasn’t written to be a historical document – so it is for sure a stretch to call it non-fiction, and therefore, it’s been released as a work of imagination with accompanied footnotes.

More books are sure to follow, but not being tied to publishing responsibilities I can’t say there’s any specific timeline. Some day I’ll be poor and anonymous, but until that time – I’ll keep publishing under the American Peyote framework. Now the fun begins in this grand experiment, developing and executing a marketing strategy.

Order Revolt from the Singles Table from LuLu.com

Preview from Issuu

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Revolt From the Singles Table – Cover Design

Wedding_Trip_Small.jpgI’ve been slowly working on finishing a sort of short-story or non-novel about a wedding I attended a few years ago. The wedding sets the backdrop for thoughts about love and relationships, life and death, the normal stuff I think too much about. Naturally, once you write the book, you need to represent it somehow, everyone reads a book by its cover, or at the very least the cover leaves a mental image in the mind of the reader. So in the process of writing I needed to eventually design a front and back cover.

At first I wanted to go a bit Retro and started stared with a simple uniform yellow background with the American Peyote logo and the working title: Wedding Trip. The title was never a set thing, it sounded sort of cool, but after it was written I wasn’t happy and in the end I expanded it to: “Revolt from the Singles Table” For me this works on many levels, giving a preview of what to expect and it also reflects the tone of the book. Since I work a lot with layering and concrete or grunge textures mixed with portraits, it seemed logical that I’d add that to the book cover and give it some grittiness. This visual texture also reflects the tone and feeling I’m trying to communicate in the book.

The author name is there to reflect two of the main characters which were the inspiration for the writing style of Wedding Trip, Tyler Durden and Hunter S. Thompson. The desire to do this is somehow linked to the idea that a person writes in a certain voice, and the voice I use for the blog is different from the one I use for research publications, and somehow I wanted to put this on the cover as well. Maybe it’s also because in a research publication you always cite where different ideas were coming from, it’s another theme I’m playing with in Wedding Trip.

cover_pocket_back_small.jpgFor the back cover I stayed with a bit of 70’s retro styling and layered colored rectangles over one another with a solid black background. The American Peyote logo is added with Gonzo sitting prominently there as well. It sort of makes me think of a rainbow tunnel, like the one I used to walk through at the Detroit Institute of Arts when I visited with my mom. It also reminds me a bit of A Clockwork Orange and the visuals from the movie. Strange how all these things get mixed up in the head.

So, now we’re nearly set for the soft launch. I’m waiting for the test copy to come back from Lulu.com, where I decided to publish it. In the digital age you have the option of being the author, published, marketer, and designer for a book, and it’s been fantastic doing these things on the side when I’m bored with climbing, uninspired to do photography, or need a break from Science.x  I’ve decided to offer it as a low low introductory price, initially without an ISBN number and then expand it to a proper release later on if I decide to Go Pro.

Update

I’ve finished with all the madness and put up an edition for sale on lulu.com

Wedding Trip: Revolt from the Singles Table – LuLu.com