| It’s been a big year for Andy Brown. The Montreal author, cultural force and small-press hotshot recently celebrated his 10th anniversary at the helm of Conundrum Books, a successful small press with a DIY heart. He has also published his first novel, The Mole Chronicles (Insomniac Press, 224 pp.). A self-described "funny plague narrative," experimental in form, richly layered, it defies categorization, standing out amongst the new novels on the block this fall.
Over e-mail, I ask Brown what it’s like to be on both sides of the desk – writer and publisher. "I envy writers who are clueless as to the publishing side of things. I wrote, designed and typeset the book so when it comes back in a box there is no magic. There is no one moment when you can hold up the finished product and revel in your immortality for a few minutes. Is there a printing error? No. OK, let's move on to the next project." Brown is a little less blasé about the promotion, launching and reading from the novel, because he wants to be legitimized as a writer. "Or more specifically a ‘novelist,’ – historically a very rich and complex term. I work very hard at the craft and I want someone to notice. That's why we do it, I suppose, for better or for worse."
I have no doubt readers will take notice of The Mole Chronicles. In the spirit of Susan Sontag’s Illness As Metaphor, (that Brown says was very influential to The Mole Chronicles), the novel focuses on cancer, and specifically, an obsession with melanoma. Cancer also acts as an over-arching metaphor, touching every sub-narrative – global warming and eco-terrorism come into play.
Each section of the novel revolves around the removal of a mole. "I have had about 20 suspicious moles removed from my body, and after a while, every shower and glance in the mirror is terrifying. I began to think about this fear and issues of male body image and put that into the narrator."
Another reason for Brown to celebrate is that the press he started almost by accident – and that has grown to represent the cutting edge of small-press publishing on the East Coast – just turned 10. Brown marked the occasion with an anthology called The Portable Conundrum. The press seems to be thriving in an age where most small presses have trouble staying afloat. When I ask Brown about the secret to Conundrum’s success, he says, "Thriving is a relative term. I'm in the same boat really as the other small presses, but there seems to be a wave of enthusiasm about the titles I publish. I think part of the secret is that I care about the books I publish. Believe it or not, this is rare in the publishing world."
His advice to emerging authors as both publisher and writer would be to do it yourself. "As a publisher, I tend to look for people who are already getting work out there, whether little excerpts in chapbooks, magazines, etc. Register for a table at a ’zine fair and make something for it. As a writer, I believe you should treat writing as a craft and keep working at it. Find a community of writers and use it, engage, participate and expect no reward. If you have talent, it will come through eventually. There isn't a single brilliant manuscript in this country that won't be published eventually. First and second tries may not be enough. In other words, patience." |
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