ENJOY OUR CONVERSATION

ARCHIVALIST'S NOTE: Enough with the O'GRADY already! Last night at Aalto Lounge, Another Sky Press put on a rollickingly bizarre reading in celebration of its first anthology, FALLING FROM THE SKY. Another Sky Press is a non-traditional publishing company in Portland, Oregon, operating under a progressive publishing/distribution paradigm that aims to benefit both audience and author. Radical. ASP is run by Kristopher Young, author of CLICK. CLICK was recently selected for September's book club on Chuck Palahniuk’s official website, The Cult. Nice. Kristopher will be involved in the discussion, answering reader questions. Find out more about CLICK by clicking HERE. I (Mike Daily) became sincerely interested in what Kristopher is doing back in November 2006. Here's the MySpace-messaged interview (late-but-not-lost!) between us.

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Click
Date: Nov 1, 2006 2:12 PM

Mike,

Thanks for your (eventual) purchase - that sort of thing means a lot. Once you've read it, make sure you let me know what you thought, though I suppose that's obvious.

Tell me more about your book...

As for the delay - yea, it's awful isn't it. There were SO many delays and frustrations in regards to Click. Most of them directly involved other people - waiting for this, waiting for that. Other things just took far longer than expected. An incredible amount of energy has gone into writing Click, getting it to print, and making Another Sky Press a reality.

The biggest lesson learned is that promotion is HARD. Grassroots can be slow, and it's painfully out of my hands. I'm very fortunate that Click is receiving such a wonderful reception, but it's still hard getting it out there. I think, in large part, because it's a book... and books require such energy and time on the part of readers.

But yea, actually things are going wonderfully.

In terms of meeting up- sure. This week would be rough, but next week? Weekdays are actually best for me.

k

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: O'GRADY
Date: Nov 1, 2006 2:38 PM

Kristopher,

I'm drawn to what you've done and what you're doing because it's f'in cool, and revolutionary if my rushed preview is any indication. Preview of your profile pages and the website. Haven't been able to give it the attention it deserves. Yet.

You've got something unique going on, I can feel it.

Even the cover conveys this is something special.

Good to hear the delays I've been experiencing are common to others as well. Comforting is the fact that delays give one TIME/DISTANCE to fine tune the little details that can make a big difference.

Next week, absolutely.

Click is on my To Get list.

Not sure if I mentioned this but I have a three-month-old daughter and a full-time job.

Best days for me are Wednesday and Thursday.

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Click
Date: Nov 1 2006 5:19 PM

congrats on your daughter!!!

thank you in regards to your comments on ASP and what it stands for. while i believe you're right - it's unique, the goal is for that to change. i want more people pushing the boundaries - i want the idea to evolve and grow and become something... of course, the best way for that to happen is for ASP to be successful. that will both spread the word AND encourage people to try out similar ideas.

i was listening to a bunch of stuff -

major fiction, which is 'o'grady', was fantastic. i wrote more on it, but my browser crashed and it was lost - i particularly like the spoken word over spoken word.

listening to drum machines now.

i can't seem to find the straight up spoken word you speak of? must be blind.

i wish i could find my voice for spoken word / readings. i haven't yet. burroughs has a fuckin' lock on it, that monopolizer.

congrats again; you're a lucky man!

kristopher

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: kristopher
Date: Nov 1 2006 5:22 PM

just noticed you've got lots o' kevin sampsell links.

i only know him from powell's... he seems a nice guy. but knowing people on a 'business' level is so strange... not anything like knowing someone for real. usually that doesn't happen to me - getting to know people usually comes easy. harder when someone's at work and busy, though.

sneezing a lot right now. gonna go.

kristopher

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Click
Date: Nov 1 2006 6:30 PM

>Click is such an evocative title...does it at all refer to the "click" of a mouse? gun? pun? Please explain.

Reading it is the best explanation, but you've got half the answer already. The click of a trigger. Everything starting to make sense, everything starting to click. The click as things fall into place.

I'm not sure which meaning came first. I just know when it clicked, it clicked. There was a brief period where I considered other names, but could never quite visualize it as anything else. The only thing that came close was 'Evolver', or 'The Evolver', which is a play on words with revolver. Another was 'Before Again', which just didn't have any ring to it. So Click it was, and Click it shall always be. All of the above will likely be used as titles in the future for short stories, though.

>Talk to me, Kristopher, I'm listening. Recording.

Grin.

>My research has begun. Also: Please tell an amusing anecdote about the guy who did the illustration for the cover of Click.

Jesse is an amazing cat. Pure energy. Rabid. Foaming at the mouth. Total sweetheart unless he hasn't had enough to eat. He is prolific - we're talking, hundreds of paintings a year prolific. I'm lucky to count him as a friend.

>How does it relate to the book?

The narrator of Click is going through what might be an evolutionary period (he's experiencing strange but empowering glitches in the universe) but is crippled with fear that he's paranoid schizophrenic.

Jesse kept asking me if I had any ideas for the cover, I always was like 'fuck if I know'. As he read it, he kept coming up with half-ideas, nothing cemented... and then, finally, one day he just sat down and painted the cover.

And it's perfect. Note the many faces of the character on the front - the angry/lost/manic/schizophrenic yelling to the right, the calm and peaceful hero holding a flower to the left. Words scrawled everywhere... many of which will make sense once the book is read.

He basically nailed it, first try. Incredible.

An interesting anecdote - Jesse has a severely lazy eye. He doesn't read anything but manuals for music equipment. Click's the first novel he's ever read (at least since school, but quite possibly ever - I'd have to ask him again to make sure).

kristopher

>O'Grady

----------------- Original MySpace Comment -----------------

Date: 11/2/2006 11:26 AM

Post A Comment About Click

Got your book last night, Kristopher.

Powell's on Burnside.

Sweet.

--O'GRADY

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Click
Date: Nov 2, 2006 5:06 PM

thanks for the support. seriously, it means a lot.

do you remember what you paid for it? i know it was orginally mislabeled and I want to see if it's been fixed before I nag anyone.

k

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: O'GRADY
Date: Nov 2, 2006 5:26 PM

$14.

I had a Powell's Gift Card worth $10 but I also got a Jerome Klinkowitz book for $5.95 so I ended up paying $9.95.

I started reading Click. It takes me awhile to read a book. I get distracted.

----------------- Original Message -----------------

From: Click
Date: Nov 2 2006 5:50 PM

ok; i figured it was $14. it's supposed to be $12.75. I guess i need to nag.

i'll buy you coffee when we finally meet to make up the difference to you.

kristopher

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Click
Date: Nov 12 2006 2:05 PM

hey! how's all? haven't heard from you in a bit and myspace sort of has the Worst interface for email ever, with everything slowly falling into oblivion.

anyway, let me know how you are...

and emailing kristopher@anothersky.org might be a better way... much easier for me to manage my conversations with various people (in other words, i enjoy our conversation).

kristopher

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: O'GRADY
Date: Nov 14 2006 8:45 AM

Dear Kristopher,

If you don't hear from me for a spell, don't speculate for the worse.

I'm halfway through your book (okay, page 60) and super impressed with your skills as a novelist. But like I said, I get distracted.

I enjoy our conversation.

Click is cleanly executed so far, very cinematic...

Your narrator is an oddly fascinating guide. Reminds me somewhat of Knut Hamsun's Hunger guy but only somewhat. Not so much stylistically--more along the lines of his intelligence and aimlessness. Obsessive, compulsive, striving to make sense of disorder in general. Thinking errors incorporated. He has a timeless quality, your narrator. Well done.

You used present tense to tell the story of Click. Tell me why you chose present over past, or future tense.

"every morning, I'm waking up to the sixes."

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Click
Date: Nov 17 2006 4:12 PM

oh, i wasn't speculating, grin. my concern is much more practical - on myspace, once someone's last email slides off the first page of results, they can easily get lost in the shuffle.

and thank you for the kind comments in regards to click. special thanks for the 'timeless' comment... it's one of the principle goals I sought to accomplish so I'm glad it worked out. grin.

i actually haven't read Hunger; I own it, and it's on my to-read shelf, but it's been there for years because there always seems to be something else in line first. hrm. i will try to get to it soon.

in regards to the 'present tense' question, could i ask a favor? can you post the relavent part of this email to the forums at http://www.anothersky.org/forum/

basically, it's a really good question and i'd like to respond in a more public setting since others might find the exchange interesting.

that said, i won't leave you hanging... my initial response (subject to being edited):

The simple answer is that I used present tense for the narrator's voice because everything else rang false.

The more complex answer:

Click is in present tense because the narrator isn't reflecting, he's experiencing. To that end, Click is almost more of a thought pattern than it is a narration.

Narration implies filtering. We choose what to tell. We reflect, we edit ourselves. We become, in narration, what we want to be, or what we think we already are. I didn't want that. I wanted it raw, without the benefits of hindsight. Everything we experience affects us - not just the day to day, but dreams and hallucinations and random thoughts. The glimpses of unreal out of the corner of our eyes.

As such, that's my goal for the reader as well - to experience. I wanted the reader to be an active participant, not an observer.

With Click, the narrator is suffering from a severe disassociation from what most people might consider 'real'. His very sense of self is in question, and that abstracted sense of self is only being aggravated by the glitches he's experiencing. He's not sure what's real, and he recognizes the central issue at hand: if he believes in what he's experiencing, he'd be diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. But he also recognizes that if he doesn't believe in what he's experiencing, then he's not even himself, let alone sane.

There's an endless discussion in regards to art about the conflict between artistic vision and audience interpretation. I sought to remove that conflict - I fully acknowledge that Click only exists where author and audience meet; that my intentions and motiviations only go so far, that the individual reader's interpretation of Click trumps my own.

It was my goal to have the reader experience the same questions the narrator is - as a participant, not an observer. And Click is a completely different book based on how the individual reader chooses to answer them.

-kristopher

----------------- Original Comment -----------------
From: Click
Date: Nov 17 2006 5:28 PM

happy birthday. i know it's tomorrow but i figured i'd get it in early since time is rather meaningless anyway. have a beautiful day, every day.

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Click
Date: Nov 27 2006 11:33 PM

>Something happened. Something "clicked". I'm on page 78 and hooked as they say, line and sinker.

Awww. Always good to hear. I've had a fortunate week; there has been quite a surge of supportive email from complete strangers in the past few days. It feels really good; I'm glad Click is resonating with people. And I'm glad it's getting out there.

>Dude.

Dude.

>I feel like I'm reading a translated work. Certainly something from another country.

This is one of my favorite comments, ever. Thanks for that.

>Devoid of pop cultural debris, Click has a refreshingly timeless quality to it. I'm into it. Thanks for your clarification on tense.

No problem.

>We are recording. This thing is on. The study. Click. Inspired study. Kristopher Young, who did the notebook scrap titles for each vignette?

I did them all by hand. Once I had thought of doing something like that for the chapter heads, I had little choice in the matter - it simply had to be done. It was an intense process. There are ninety-eight chapters in Click and there is no way to write phrases over and over again for that long of a time period without going a little mad in the process. Many of the words and phrases breakdown and become something new - much like the sixes for Click's narrator. Sometimes these new formations were quite interesting - for example, 'they are' is also 'are they' when written repeatedly.

>Aesthetically, it works well. Chops it up. Gives the read a sort of sustained creepiness.

Thank you. I am very happy with them as well. I'm even happier I'm done writing them.

>Are they chapters or tracks? Know what I mean?

You're the first person to outright call them 'tracks', but now that I think about it there is a definite track like quality to the chapters. Fade in. Fade out.

More than one person has told me they've enjoyed reading Click out of sequence... basically, on random play. That's fine by me. I know most (if not all) chapters can be read as individual pieces as well. That said, there is a definite narrative to the story and everything is in its place for a reason. I think there is value to reading Click in its intended order to fully appreciate certain themes (for lack of a better word) layered throughout the novel.

The chapters themselves were written out of sequence; I sit down to write, not to write something specific. Something new may fit into a larger project I'm working on, but often doesn't. I may not even recognize that scraps go together until much later - it's only in the process of reviewing a newly written piece that I recognize that two older, separate pieces are actually connected. This isn't to say I write without intention - it's more an acknowledgement that I allow my subconscious mind a lot of leeway to work its way through my writing.

I read the entirety of Click every single day for a few months straight during the sequencing process, as moving a chapter (or set of chapters) almost certainly required other chapters to be reworked due to a 'ripple through' effect. Then the new version would be read the next day, rinse and repeat.

>Awe strikes me reading passages such as:

i'm in pain, and i can't keep my eyes off the long incision up my side, it's pulsating as if alive. it gapes open, and i watch in horror as my organs float out of it one by one, hovering in the air above me. i keep thinking, i need those, i need those. and then i notice that i'm not held down anymore, i'm rising, i'm swimming in the air, and begin grabbing for my innards. they're fish in the ocean and i'm the shark, devouring them one by one, gorging on myself. [page 70]

Thank you.

>Has kind of a Naked Lunch feel to it but more like the screenplay for N.L., or Trainspotting. Or something. Stripped down, bare, yet vibrant. I like how the narrator's fanciful flights of imagination could be viewed as dreams, hallucinations, or waking fantasies...memories. He states his personal distrust of the present, based as it is (he suggests) on memories.

Thank you. I fought hard to maintain that balance. There were times when I couldn't be sure how the narrative was flowing - as author, I'm obviously tied to the material and therefore know where it's going - but I knew that I wanted to achieve the state you describe above. Unfortunately, there's just no way for me to read Click 'for the first time', and so I just had to trust that everything was flowing the way it needed to, that I provided just enough solid ground to prevent everything sinking into abstraction.

>Click is sticking.

Awww (again).

>It's taking me on some Invisible Man-like trips.

That's on my to-read list, actually. I assume you mean Ralph Ellison and not H.G. Wells?

>I really like the dynamic between the narrator and the girlfriend, or girlfiend. It's not your typical junkie love story.

Are they junkies? I've been asked that before. I never meant them to be junkies, though I know that it can be read as such. The gun as needle. I admit to recognizing the potential for that allegory during the writing process, but it wasn't a direct motivation and isn't my personal interpretation. To me, it's still a gun. No drugs. Ultimately, the gun in Click is a catalyst for change - beyond that, it's open to interpretation.

>Crazy as he is, the narrator seems to have the mental upper hand on the girl's disturbed ruminations.

Possibly? In a way, the narrator slowly becomes everyone he meets. I think he wishes he could have her laid-back, fanciful approach to her own insanity, where he's fighting off breakdown with every other step. His upper hand may only be because he's the narrator. He isn't particularly self deprecating.

>So how many people have downloaded Click for free? Do you have any way of tracking it?

I don't know. I don't look. It's tracked in the way all things internet are tracked, but it's easier just to not concern myself with it. I know it does get read online quite a bit because I get emails to that effect. I also know that people who read it online often buy a copy or friends of theirs end up doing so.

>How many copies (print) have you sold?

In the hundreds. Which is great, given the amount of time it's been out and the fact that there is no advertising whatsoever - it's all from word of mouth. I'd like to see that number rise, of course (and it is rising) but it will require reaching a critical mass before it really takes off. Books are like that - a book can sit on the to-read pile for years before actually being read.

>How many copies are in print?

As many as required. We print up about 100 at a time. They go relatively fast. It's a bit pricier per copy printing small quantities, but it's far less up front overall... and in order to see a distinct price drop it would require a print run in the thousands which would be a storage nightmare.

>The discussion group is cool--I haven't had time to check it out yet--but this is becoming its own study. I'm recording it. It's like a running interview. I enjoy our conversation.

fantastic. thanks!

>Mike

kristopher

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Click
Date: Nov 29 2006 10:48 AM

>Thanks for this. A lot.

no problem.

>I just read the "Food" vignette a la Night of the Living Dead or Zombies. Some gruesome shit.

hah. yea. off the record, part of me wanted that piece as a short story to submit to an anthology or whatever. i really love it. but Click needed it; the insatiable desire/hunger to be something more, the sense of being doomed, fated to purpose, the inability to relate to others. a lot of people tell me it's one of their favorite chapters. it isn't mine, but that's neither here nor there. i never thought of that chapter as gruesome, really. heh. go figure.

>What I really admire, Kristopher, is the economy employed in the style. That's what makes it seem a translated work. I like that. It moves.

thanks. out of curiousity, do you mind expanding on "the economy employed in the style". i'm fairly certain i know what you mean.

>I want to comment on your great replies but I'm in need of sleep.

sleep!

>Still haven't explored your website Another Sky in detail. O, but I will.

sleep!

>I will ask this: Are you doing readings for Click? Where have you read so far?

i have yet to do a reading for Click. honestly- i haven't found a voice for it yet. i listen to burroughs on occassion, as well as other people who do 'spoken word' well (such as yourself)... but i can't quite find the right sound for Click. I like my voice, so that's not the issue... it's more the... rhythm I'm having trouble with. The human factor that makes it sound more like words and thoughts than someone reading.

>It's good to see you achieving some success for your hard work. You read it every day, eh? Have you memorized parts?

Unfortunately, my mind does not memorize things well. At all. You'd think, right? I can pretty much turn to a chapter on demand, or find a phrase quickly and easily... but recall of extended lines is usually beyond me. sad but true. i think that may be another thing that traps me when trying to find a voice... i want to be able to just speak it; but my eyes are glued to the page.

>Off the topic (Click) but wanted to relay the info that O'GRADY is performing at Ash Street on Saturday, January 6, 2007.

Well - if Christine and I are in town we will definitely be there. We aren't sure yet. Probably? Our current plans are to leave just before new years and get back on friday or saturday, but no tickets have been purchased yet. but yea, i'd love to go.

>Novel as performance.

!!!

>My small press book ALARM is coming out in June 2007.

Feels good doesn't it!!?!!!

Did I ever tell you about the anthology? Don't know if you have anything ready on short notice, but the deadline is far past so it would need to be slipped to the editor fast. Anything outsider/raw/grit/surreal/bizarre/etc would be ok. under 5000 words: submissions@anothersky.org

>At any rate, more soon!
>M D

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Click
Date: Jan 4 2007 11:24 PM
Subject: i will try...

to be at your show on saturday.

kristopher

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: O'GRADY
Date: Jan 4 2007 11:45 PM
Subject: RE: i will try...

kristopher,

if you could make it to the show that would be truly awesome.

that would truly be awesome.

we're filming and recording.

we load in and sound check at 8pm. I'm telling ppl O'GRADY is playing at 9pm sharp but I believe actual commencement will be more like 9:30pm. doors at 8pm.

if you do decide to go, for sure, let me know in advance so I can put you on the guest list, which would save you the five bucks cover.

speaking of cover, Click should win Best Book Cover of 2006. I repeat myself sometimes. I repeat myself sometimes.

I'd've continued reading Click if I'd been able to find it. it is here somewhere and I will finish soon. I've got all your great words about it saved. O, yes.

book report in the works.

HTML book report.

Good regards,
Mike