90 Seconds, starring Nacho Sasha

A gripping drama coming to a theater near you! 90 seconds of hardcore sex with porn starlet Evelyn Lin!

Actually, I think I’d need a bit longer. Because I’ve been practicing for a night with Evelyn Lin for about three years now. But that’s not what I’m here to write about. I’m here to write about my latest attempt at failure – putting together a book by “Nacho Sasha” (whoever that fucking geek is) using Kickstarter. You can blame this idea on filmmaker, chipmunk-murderer, and man about town Lonnie Martin. I’ve promised him a review of his indie horror debut, Women’s Studies, for about two years now. My original intent was to have the review be the end-piece in a lengthy series detailing West Virginia horror films from the 1940’s to the present day but, when I posted the introduction to that series, I was inundated by shitheads and father-rapers who called me a “racist” for hating on West Virginia. I got more severe hate mail than when I took a shit on 8407.

That sort of cooled my heels on the project. If there’s one thing I hate about Great Society, it’s when I discover that people are actually reading it. I exist here under the very forced illusion that I’m all alone. That way I can confess to sins, attack my bosses, and whine about sad sack shit in my life and never flinch.

Which sort of defeats the purpose of a book, yes? But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from six years of publishing – nobody’s really buying books. You can reach for the stars and get great authors and stick feathers in your cap, but it’s all masturbation in one way or another.

The idea of a Great Society book isn’t a new one. It’s been rolling around the empty hold for the last ten years and, at this point, it’s something that I need to do just to stop all the little yammering voices in my head.
But goddamn if I’m going to pay for it, so how nice that Kickstarter has recently become a fascination (to the point where I’ve actually opened my dusty wallet and supported several projects).

On the book side, I figure I could do it for under $1500. The printing and the cover is the big expense. After that, it’s all about buying my layout girl marijuana and scotch, cajoling my old copy editor to work for free, and general expenses incurred in rounding up the old publishing team from hiatus… All so they can waste their considerable talents on a Nacho Sasha collection.

Then I list the title as a backlist with my distributor and, in a sad sort of parody of what I’ve been doing in real life for the last six years, the Nacho collection will enjoy a worldwide release available through every retailer and etailer. And you, my mysterious readers, can make it an even sadder parody if it actually starts selling.

But fuck the sales figures. I publish books because I think it’s fun. Which also explains why I really identify with Wilford Brimley in The Thing when he’s locked up in the shed building a spaceship from spare parts.

So back to Lonnie. I’ve never really had any sort of idea as to how to go about putting together a Great Society book, but he pointed me in the obvious direction – take the Cult Culture articles. Link them, expand on them, and do what Joe Bob Briggs did 25 years ago. To my horror, when I pulled the “best” (to use that word loosely) of the Cult Culture articles together, I had 60,000 words. So… Instant book! I have several that I want to add (including, finally, the West Virginia series), and then I’ll start the grueling task of actually re-reading my writing and trying to make it…um…not suck so much.

So, if I can raise the money, I’ll launch into the sad and strange world of self-publishing. Step one, putting carts before horses, is to create a 60-90 second video for Kickstarter. Writing this article is my way of preparing for that task. I have no idea what I’m doing… But, by god, I’ll do it. I’m bored enough to carry this through to the bitter end. So, at the very least, you all will get actual GS-inspired multimedia content in your near future.

And, in the meantime, be thinking real hard about Kickstarter. Because one thing about a Great Society book – I’ll make sure it looks fucking pretty.

Oh, and a secret – just between you and me – this is all a grand experiment to see if we can do a series of Kickstarter books that are not full of my rantings about Star Trek V but come from real, actual authors with some awesome ideas that I can’t afford to fund. I figure, if we need to throw someone to the wolves, we’d best start with me.