Librarians Everywhere Shocked by the Children’s Book of Necromancy
Magical tomes, dark secrets, an army of zombies mystical rituals held in the dark of night by black cloaked figures, a science lesson … wait,
Shocked Librarians
Librarians the world over are finding the Children’s Book of Necromancy a shocking surprise. Within the pages of this modern magical grimoire are secrets librarians’ never thought they would find.
“I was stunned,” one hapless librarian told me when I interviewed her. “And then I was, appalled, then I was surprised and then I was intrigued, after that there was acceptance and recovery. I still don’t know who could have written such a thing, but I am glad they did. We have to break out of our old ways of thinking and accept this new way of doing things. Raising the dead isn’t always the horror show we think it’s going to be. Libraries and bookstores everywhere should pick up this book.”
“Yeah, I get it,” said another librarian, “I am still shocked though.”
Why so shocking ...?
I know you are intrigued and are dying to get your hands on this book never fear I have the inside scoop. I can get you closer than you’ve ever been to this book of pure power, I my friends and a secret minion of the Great and Fearless author of this book. Follow this link and I promise you all your dreams will come true.
Let’s Take a Ride
All Along the Pacific with C.B. Calsing
Hello dear reader, dear friends and fans. I know it has been a week since we last got together but I have had some, shall we say, difficult days in the last week or so. However I have been working diligently on your behalf, never the less. This week I want to take a short break from An Honest Lie Volume 2: Delusions of Insignificance to bring you something else we’ve been working on. You can still vote for your favorite author from An Honest Lie Volume 2: Delusions of Insignificance here and you can pick up your copy here.
In An Honest Lie Volume 1: Encouraging the Delinquency of your Inner Child we were treated to a haunting tale called “Gran’s Prophecy“ about horticultural prophecy and the birth of kings. In An Honest Lie Volume 2: Delusions of Insignificance we were treated to a darker story called “Martina Gets the Last Word “ about true love and it’s eternal depths. Both of these great stories were brought to us by one of my new favorite writers C.B. Calsing. Now she returns to us with an anthology of her own called All Along the Pacific. This is a collection of 10 stories set in and around San Louis Obispo. Spanning the years from 1835 until 2005 each story not only carries us into these time periods, but also does a wonderful job of ting the lives, families and cultures of the age together giving us a picture of our American history. But more about that later, first let’s meet Corina B. Calsing.
Hailing originally from San Louis Obispo, California C.B. Calsing now lives in and writes from New Orleans, Louisiana. Her passion for The Big O is only surpassed by her love for writing, cocktails N.O. sports teams’ architecture and really good food, all of which are in grand abundance in her adopted home city. 
Her creative drive was encouraged by parents who were themselves “hard-working free spirits”. “My mother would draw children’s books just for me, and as I got older, the three of us would collaborate on projects: writing, drawing, binding. By second grade I had started writing with a goal for publication,” she told us. By the second grade she’d already established the goal of writing for publication. Her first effort was a musical play about two rival break dancing gangs which she cast with her class mates, none of which auditioned. Maybe that’s what drove her to her current profession, teaching middle school kids the dastardly craft.
Like the rest of us writers she often thinks of her chosen passion as entertaining though others often see it differently.
“Writing was entertainment for me. I did short stories, movie scripts, and novellas. A compulsion, some might say. An addiction others would call it. After all, it does interfere with my relationships and work, sometimes.”
But even so writing is a passion that cannot be ignored. She got lucky following Richard Fords advice in his “Ten Rules for Writing Fiction” when he said, “Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer’s a good idea.” She has a very give and take relationship with her loving husband who supports her efforts, even bringing her dinner to the writing table and accepting responsibility for overlooking editorial mistakes prior to submission. But she gives him credit saying, “I don’t think I’d have accomplished as much as I have in the last decade if he wasn’t with me. A lot of my ideas develop with his input too. We spend a lot of time discussing “what if,” and if I get stuck on an ending, he always has the best solution.”
Her major turning point came in 2004 when she had a bad experience working with an alternative middle school for students that had been expelled from their neighborhood schools. Without the gory details, she quit and found herself with an opportunity to write full time. In that time productivity was an understatement. Corina finished two novellas, both of which are still “in the box” so to speak, and several shorts. Realizing she needed to move forward with her Masters of Fine Arts she applied with the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans who accepted her by 2006. This was when she got serious about her writing, more serious than ever before anyway.
“During those workshop classes, I first conceived of the short stories that would eventually make up All Along the Pacific. Part of this came from a general dislike of contemporary, realistic fiction.”
“My writing heroes — Marquez, Steinbeck, Lovecraft, Dick, Gaiman, Mieville (you’ll notice no women there, and probably fault me for it) — didn’t settle for the ordinary, and I couldn’t let myself either,” she said. Corina started with Science Fiction and her advice is: “don’t turn in science fiction if you are not in a science fiction workshop.” Stuff she wrote that got panned in workshop sold to Sci-Fi magazines without any revisions. From there she tried historic fiction which went over better in class but her creative spirit wouldn’t allow her to play I straight. “I kept coming up with strange concepts for historical fiction — pickled heads in jars, midgets on trains, delusional car salesmen — and then I had this pile of stories.”
“After a little thought, I realized, “Why not a collection?” A little tweaking here and there, a few rewrites and some additions… After two years of workshop and revision I had All Along the Pacific,” Calsing told us.
The path we walk from where we begin a project to where they end can sometimes be a dark one. We may not know what comes next we can only light our way one story at a time. C.B. Calsing has illuminated our path with a tale about an outlaw, who is supposed to be dead, viewing his own head at a state fair, and a tale about a Chinese rail worker with much higher ambitions than anyone around him could imagine, and a tale about a common whore who really lives to protect herself and her “adopted” son. Though each of these stories are based in different time periods Corina Calsing has done a fantastic job of submerging us in these individual lives and leading us through time, showing us every step of the way the connections we all have to one another regardless of time and space.
All Along the Pacific is an anthology that is not to be missed and Corina Calsing is a writer that should not be over looked. Stick with us Friends and fans and we, I can promise you, will be bringing you the best of the best. In the end C.B. Calsing remains true to her creative roots and continues to experiment with her work.
“Since I’ve finished workshop, I’ve headed back into the realms of science fiction, and a little horror, but when I plan a big project, it still tends to be historical with a touch of magical realism. The work I’m finally returning to after about a year and a half off is just that — set in the bayou, during the Depression. An English botanist searching for a rare orchid falls into the trap of a backwoods giantess who distills sassafras moonshine and raises Cane Corsos. There are definitely elements of horror in it, but the story is more about mood and setting and detail than anything else.”
Most of the best stories are Corina, most of the best ones are.
Davin Kimble-Jr. Editor
C.B. Calsing was born and grew up in the small Central Coast town of San Luis Obispo, California. As a child, she spent long hours composing stories and plays. Half-way through her junior year in high school, she left to attend Cuesta Community College, where, after a few years of study, she received her associate of arts degree with honors. Following that, she transferred to Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. There, she completed her bachelor of arts in English. She took a year off, traveled to Indonesia and Ireland, and then decided to return to school to become a certified English teacher.
In 2002, fresh out of her studies, Mrs. Calsing and her future husband moved to New Orleans. Mrs. Calsing has worked in the field of education throughout the Greater New Orleans Area for the last eight years. In 2004, she married. Following her evacuation from Hurricane Katrina, Mrs. Calsing returned to New Orleans and began her master of fine arts degree in creative writing, fiction, at the University of New Orleans. She completed that in 2009. Now, she teaches middle school English, edits for a prominent e-book publisher, and writes when there is time.
“To Wade Alone,” a story from her upcoming collection All Along the Pacific, took second place in the On the Premises “First” contest in June 2009. Her work has appeared in college literary journals, guerrilla zines, and on Web sites, such as Crossedgenres.com. Her work also appeared in the anthologies An Honest Lie Volume One: Encouraging the Delinquency of your Inner Child and An Honest Lie Volume Two: Delusions of Insignificance, and Things We Are Not, a collection of queer science fiction.
Her two favorite genres to write are historic and science fiction, probably because both allow her to visit worlds different from her own. Up-to-the-minute information can be found at her blog, cbcalsing.blogspot.com.
And Now … Our Fearless Leader Debrin Case
We here at Open Heart Publishing have had a ton of work on our plates but one bite at a time deadlines are being met and production is moving forward. With everything coming up on us in the next weeks I wanted to, halfway through; introduce you to our fearless leader, the Dictator of Deadlines, Debrin Case.
I remember when I first saw the friend request from An Honest Lie in my Facebook in box. I thought, “What the hell is an honest lie?” I’m glad I did the research because I was more than pleasantly surprised at what I found. There are so many small publishers out there, and I’m not one to point fingers, but Open Heart Publishing struck me immediately as one of the better ones. At the time Debrin was hiring and I was determined to get in on the Publishing business so I sent him an email. It wasn’t long before he got back to me and within a week he’d given me a call. I remember one of the first things he said to me was,
“I have to warn you I get a bit nervous around new people and when I’m nervous I cuss.”
It seems like such a small thing but it made him more real to me, more human, more accessible than the other interviewers I’ve had to deal with. I didn’t get the job then but Debrin and I remained in contact. When the time came he called me first and I appreciate it.
Debrin is a man with a focus and a plan and he does a fantastic job of bringing us all together to accomplish our goals. He may seem gentle and unassuming on the surface, but don’t be fooled he has an iron will and a remarkable depth of talent. He graces the Pages of An Honest Lie Volume 2 with a tale called Learning to Pray. today though we are going to talk to him about Open Heart Publishing and what exciting things are in store for us. But I’ll let him tell you about it.
Open heart Publishing: So you are the man who started it all. I feel I would not only be remiss if I didn’t ask, but I might get a few less than pleasant emails as well, so, what do you feel is a delusion of insignificance?
Debrin Case: I feel it would be a travesty for me to interpret the meaning of this year’s theme or the masthead . This is something I would rather leave to the interpretation of the individual reader as opposed to defining it and ruining all of the fun.
OHP: I can understand that. What is An Honest Lie?
D. C.: Like a Delusion of Insignificance, I feel it would be a travesty for me to interpret the meaning of this year’s theme or the masthead. This is something I would rather leave to the interpretation of the individual reader as opposed to defining it and ruining all of the fun.
OHP: Looks like we are going to be sticking with the party line on that one. But I asked him! No angry emails! Open Heart Publishing and the An Honest Lie anthologies are becoming pretty popular pretty fast; tell us something about where you are planning to take them in the future.
D.C.: AHL is heading into its second volume and wow what a great collection of authors we have found for our readership this year. It does my heart good to see a new cast of amazing authors to work with for volume 2, and as we get ready to embark on volume 3 it can only get better. As to what else to expect from Open Heart Publishing, the best advice I have is to keep checking us out. A wonderful collection of short stories from C.B. Calsing entitled All Along the Pacific will be available later this year, the winner of AHL Vol. 1 will be announced, yet another wonderful opportunity project, and of course Volume 2 of An Honest Lie should be available by late October.
OHP: I can hardly wait; it’s looking pretty good right now. Is your desire to publish other writers as strong as your need to write?
D.C.: Absolutely, in some ways it is even stronger. They are both important sides of me and my own personal missions of creating accessible fiction, and to promote and find new authors.
OHP: I’ve read some of your work and I know what’s waiting in the wings as far as Open Heart Publishing goes, I find your imagination fascinating. Where do you draw your inspiration from?
D.C.: Like all artists, and the rest of humanity, my inspiration is an amalgamation of everything I intake into my life. Whether this is through food, drink, music, movies, T.V., books, internet, conversations with strangers, moments of road rage… etc, in the end everything I do is a byproduct of everything I have consumed.
OHP: so many bathroom jokes and waste to writing comparisons to make, so little time. In your opinion, which is the more important discovery of humankind… plumbing or the written word?
D.C.: Definitely plumbing. Though I would like to believe that the written word has changed the world far more vastly than any other human invention, it has also brought about more debacles, damnations and epiphanies than any other invention before or after. Yet, it is in fact plumbing that has done more in the ways of health, safety and the unity of mankind than was ever dreamed of before. Just like pants that go on one leg at a time, so too do we discover that everyone goes to the bathroom and perhaps this could be the very medium by which world peace could be achieved.
OHP: People miss the simplest things sometimes. Are you a writer or a publisher first?
D.C.: I am dictator first, everything else is highly suspect.
OHP: Are there any authors, besides yourself, that you enjoy reading?
D.C.: There are thousands of authors out there besides myself that I love to read. Too many to list and to many egos to inflame or deflate by a mere mention or deletion from that list. I am a voracious reader, and in fact often read books without trying to discover anything about an author before I devour their work.
OHP: Who would you say is your writing mentor/ hero?
D.C.: My writing heroine is Ariel Gore, her book How to Become a Famous Author before You Are Dead is like a bible to me. I read it far more religiously than I ever read any assumed to be “Holy” text. If you are an author or a publisher and have not read this book, then stop reading this article now and hit Google, or whatever search engine you prefer, and find out more about this amazing book right this second. Seriously, you won’t regret it.
OHP: I haven’t read it yet … I know, I know. Do you have a writing nemesis?
D.C.: I sure do, and I have to see that bastard every morning when I get out of bed and wander my way into the bathroom. If you never realize that you are your own worst critic and at times your own worst enemy then perhaps you need to reexamine your artistic endeavors.
Being an artist is about introspection, and introspection is not as easy as getting your temperature taken, on the contrary it is more akin to exploratory surgery on a primitive battlefield where the doctors are still blissfully unaware of the concept of infections caused by dirty hands.
OHP: Indeed! I know how much work goes into producing an awesome literary product; do you have any advice for aspiring publishers out there?
D.C.: Keep to your deadlines. Nothing else matters above your word and keeping to your deadlines.
Is your life in shambles, can’t pay the rent, need a new car… tough shit, keep to your deadlines.
The world is doomed, the wrong political candidate won the election, there is a race of mutant rats overthrowing your city… ah well, stick to your deadlines.
An author needs an extension on their piece, an artist is having issues, your printer is going away on holiday, who cares… Keep your deadlines.
OHP: Why do you feel the need to write?
D.C.: Communication. Communication and communion with the rest of the human race is the endeavor of all people the world over. Whether this is via speech, interpretive dance, collages, decoupage, crochet or writing the need is the same it is in its presentation where we discover all of the dissimilar ways in which we are so similar.
OHP: Besides short stories what other writing endeavors are you currently engaged in?
D.C.: Tons of them. Currently I am working on 4 different books, and I am preparing 3 more volumes to be published this year by Open Heart Publishing.
OHP: It has been a pleasure picking your brain. Just a few more questions; what do you feel about the following quote “Imagination is more important than knowledge?”
D.C.: I believe Einstein was more accurate than he could have ever dreamed, and as the day’s move forward into months, then years, decades and eventually eons we will see just how far down the rabbit hole we can go while taking what we perceived of as reality along for the ride.
OHP: According to Anatole France “To die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture,” in your opinion what do you believe is worth dying for? What do you believe is worth living for?
D.C.: I believe that everything is worth living for, I have yet to find one truly worthy reason to die and for this reasoning alone I am currently refusing any model of living which concludes with such an outmoded way of thinking.
OHP: Mark Twain once said that “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” What do you believe he meant by that?
D.C.: There is a bigger picture in all things with which you may be blissfully unaware at any given moment. As such you aren’t always seeing or understanding what is actually going on at any moment. Pay close attention to everything and all of the details. No matter how unusual, bizarre or even downright ordinary things may appear… they aren’t. They never are.
OHP: Most people have two stories for doing anything… a plausible excuse and the real reason, why do you really write?
D.C.: I write, therefore I am.
Or is it; I am, therefore I write?
Or is it simply, I enjoy telling a story whether good or ill conceived and in the end I want to get paid for it?
Yes to all of the above, and then a whole bunch more that I am quite sure would quite easily become a philosophical debate about the existence of bubblegum on the dwarf planet of Pluto and how that is causing certain politicians’ to vote no to better funding for public education art programs.
OHP: There is a great deal of talking going about your book “A Children’s Book of Necromancy”, I hear that anyone that reads it can become quite powerful and even learn how to raise the dead. Is this true?
Absolutely, Davin. “A Children’s Book of Necromancy,” is absolutely the most important coloring book ever to be published, and I personally promise with absolute barnum sincerity that anyone who reads this book will be able to raise the dead.
If you want to know more about this amazing volume visit the official website here, and you can also visit us at Animefest 2010 in Dallas,TX where you can meet myself and Darcy Melton (the illustrator).
OHP: We are coming up on the publication day for An Honest Lie Volume 2: Delusions of Insignificance very fast. Do you have any plans for a third volume?
D.C.: Yes I do, but you will have to wait until next year to hear more.
Debrin Case has been making the story more interesting since 1970!
Debrin Case holds a B.A. in English Literature and is currently the founder/publisher of Open Heart Publishing, a company that promotes, showcases, and opens doors for new authors with its annual anthology
“An Honest Lie,” but also for children through its charitable project called, “The Opportunity Project.”
Additionally, Debrin oversees intuitive writing workshops, writes grants for charities (non profits and artistic endeavors), and is an experienced storyteller, ghost writer, and fiction writer.
Previously held the positions of editor for Hedge Wizard Press, and also co-editor for Red River Review.
When asked of the validity of his tales he will normally reply,
“My stories are 50% bullshit… and the rest is questionable, but at least they are honest.
http://debrincase.com/
That’s the sound of a whip cracking.
I’m cracking it to remind you that submissions for An Honest Lie, Vol. 2 will close on March 15, just a little over a month from today. Unlike last year, the deadline will not be extended, so be sure to turn in your work on the theme “Delusions of Insignificance.” Submissions should be at least 3000 words in length and no more than 6,000 words total. Please be sure to read the faq for further details before submitting: www.anhonestlie.wordpress.com/faq.
In addition, the deadline is also March 15 to be considered as a writer or illustrator for an upcoming serialized fiction project with Open Heart Publishing. The setting is modern and based around a specific location and a diverse cast of characters; the “story collections” created by this team will be linear and as such the changes to characters within the story will have unique effects to plotline and development, and authors chosen for this episodic serial will receive full credit for the pieces. For more information regarding those writing and illustration opportunities, click here: http://debrincase.com/blog3/opportunities-with-o-h-p/
Artists interested in doing illustration for other projects should send a link to their work to ohpcareers@debrincase.com.
