Stephanie Kuehnert

Stephanie is the author of I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, and Ballads of Suburbia, two kickass young adult books about punk rock, coming of age, choices and consequences. She’s not a fellow metalhead, but a conisseur of punk and riot grrrl, which makes her kind of like our cool elder cousin.

Stephanie’s books first came to my attention a couple of years ago, when I was madly querying agents in an attempt to find representation for one of my novels. Stephanie’s agent, Caren Johnson, requested the full manuscript of my awesome-in-concept-but-horrid-in-execution metalhead apocalypse book. Getting excited about the potential of having a real live agent, I started reading all the authors she represented, including Stephanie’s debut from MTV Books, I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone.

I’ve actually got a copy of I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone to give away. So, after reading this interview, if you think you’d like to win a copy, just leave a comment – make sure to write your email address in the box – and I’ll draw a random winner next friday.

First, for a bit of background, can you tell us about you and your books.

I’m thirty years old, got into books and writing when I was five and into punk when I was about twelve. I wrote some feminist/riot grrrl zines in high school and eventually started focusing more on fiction. I got my MFA at Columbia College Chicago.

I live in Forest Park, IL with my husband and our three cats. In addition to writing novels, I write a column for my local paper and I’m a bartender.

As for the books, the little descriptions that my publisher wrote sum them up better than I could! (I can’t whittle them down, hence they are 300+ pg books).

I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone

I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE is:

A raw, edgy, emotional novel about growing up punk and living to tell. The Clash. Social Distortion. Dead Kennedys. Patti Smith. The Ramones. Punk rock is in Emily Black’s blood. Her mother, Louisa, hit the road to follow the incendiary music scene when Emily was four months old and never came back. Now Emily’s all grown up with a punk band of her own, determined to find the tune that will bring her mother home. Because if Louisa really is following the music, shouldn’t it lead her right back to Emily?

Ballads of Suburbia

BALLADS OF SUBURBIA:

There are so many ballads. Achy breaky country songs. Mournful pop songs. Then there’s the rare punk ballad, the ballad of suburbia: louder, faster, angrier … till it drowns out the silence.

Kara hasn’t been back to Oak Park since the end of junior year, when a heroin overdose nearly killed her and sirens heralded her exit. Four years later, she returns to face the music. Her life changed forever back in high school: her family disintegrated, she ran around with a whole new crowd of friends, she partied a little too hard, and she fell in love with gorgeous bad boy Adrian, who left her to die that day in Scoville Park … Amidst the music, the booze, the drugs, and the drama, her friends filled a notebook with heartbreakingly honest confessions of the moments that defined and shattered their young lives. Now, finally, Kara is ready to write her own

It’s impossible to talk about I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone and Ballads of Suburbia without mentioning the music that powers those books. Tell us about music – how you got into it, what it means to you, how it’s a part of you:

The first band I got into was the Beatles and that was via my parents. But when I was 10, I met a girl who was really into music and we used to watch MTV together … back when it played music videos and good ones! We watched 120 Minutes and Alternative Nation and discovered bands like R.E.M. and Jane’s Addiction and Depeche Mode.

She also played me a tape called “Bleach” by a band named Nirvana right before “Teen Spirit” exploded. I was in love. The music just spoke to me. It was a safe haven from the kids who taunted me at school and the awkward feelings of adolescence.

From then I went on into punk, starting with the Sex Pistols, but quickly digging much deeper. I also got into bands like Hole and Babes in Toyland and discovered riot grrrl.

Music just speaks to me. It’s part of my soul. Music and books and a pen are right up there with food, air and water for me when it comes to the essentials.

Who buys your books and why? Do you write with your audience in mind?

Both teens and adults buy my books. I don’t know why … I guess they have something they are searching for them. I hear the words “edgy, gritty, and real” tossed around a lot. And of course music lovers tend to gravitate toward me.

I don’t really write with a specific audience in mind. I guess I think age 14 to 35 would relate best, but I just write the characters I would want to read about.

So what’s it like being a YA author?

It’s awesome! YA fans are the best, fellow YA authors are the best. When I was a teenager, a book or a song could feel like it changed my life or saved my life. I’m glad to be able to do that for some teens.

You deal with some very tough, visceral subjects. How do you cope emotionally with putting your characters through these situations, and why do you choose these subjects?

I choose subjects that matter to me, often that have affected me personally in some way. I like to talk about the things that people are uncomfortable talking about. I wanted to read about those things so badly when I was a teenager. I wanted characters I could identify with because maybe reading about them solving their problems would help me solve my own. So now I write those books and those characters.

How I cope emotionally … well, that is harder. Getting Ballads of Suburbia into the place I wanted it to be resulted in a lot of crying jags and breakdowns and the recurrence of an ulcer that I hadn’t had problems with in years. I get through it though because I want my characters to be as real as possible and I think about the people who might need to read about them. I also have a really supportive husband and friends.

Some writers worry about not being able to “get away” with writing about subjects like drugs. What advice would you give them?

Somebody needs to read what you are writing. It will mean something to someone. That is who you are writing for, not for critics, not for people who are gonna freak out if you write about a touchy subject.

Just handle the subject well. Write to be true to the character and the story, not to sensationalize.

How did you get into writing in the first place? How did you learn the techniques necessary to craft such amazing stories?

I decided I wanted to write back when I was about five years old and reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books. My mother always encouraged me. She took me to young authors conferences when I was in grade school. She wanted me to go to college for writing, but I didn’t at first. Thought I should do something “practical.” It wasn’t until I ended up at Columbia College Chicago, where I did both my bachelors and masters degrees that I really honed my craft. It was a hotbed of creativity. The instructors were incredible and listening to the many voices and stories of my classmates was inspiring.

Do you have to go to school for writing? No, not necessarily but it was good for me. You do have to get feedback on your work though. Join an online writing group or an in person one. Join writing associations like Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) or Romance Writers Association (RWA). Those are two I am a member of but there are associations for other genres too. Join writing listservs and take in as much as you can. Read as much as possible. I firmly believe that you cannot be a writer unless you are reading!

Describe a “typical Stephanie Kuehnert novel”, from start to finish.

Man, I don’t know. I don’t write to a formula and I don’t want to put myself in a box. It’s a roller coaster ride though. You will watch the main character and all the characters around them change and respond. All my stories are coming of age stories where someone discovers something about themselves.

And I like to make the place very real and vivid whether it is a made up place like in IWBYJR or a real place I know super well like in Ballads. I also like to make all of my characters as fully fleshed out and real as possible so you will get to know everyone. And there is always music involved.

What advice would you give to anyone else wanting to write for a living?

Be strong and be patient. Don’t give up. It’s hard. It’s hard to sell a first book and it’s hard to keep selling books. But you have to keep believing in what you are doing. You also have to be flexible. At this point my books don’t pay hardly anything. I make my money bartending and writing for the newspaper. So be adaptable and look for other things you can do to fit in nicely with your writing.

How do you promote your books?

Mostly online. I blog, I tweet, I’m on facebook and I have my own website which I run a street team through like bands do, so I have special contests and giveaways to the folks who sign up and they help me promote.

I do events around Chicago where I live and sometimes travel when I can afford to and do other events. I prefer to do events with other authors cause it’s less intimidating.

Promotion is a real time suck. You gotta do it, but it’s like a whole other job!

What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you because of your books?

I get to feel like I’ve helped someone. I’ve made impact on people’s lives. I’ve gotten emails from people who said my books have helped them face their problems with their family or friends or drugs or cutting.

No matter what happens, whether or not I ever make it big as a writer, I made an impact on someone and that’s why I do what I do.

What are the next steps for Stephanie Kuehnert? Upcoming projects / travel / new directions, etc?

Umm, I’m going on vacation to Seattle. Like leaving in 10 minutes! But other than that right now I have another YA book (which I’m hoping will be a series of books actually) that is doing the rounds and I hope it will sell soon. And I am working an adult book too about a mother and daughter who are both bartenders since I’m a bartender and I’ve got all kinds of great stories about bars!

What was the first music album you ever brought?

On cassette tape, Madonna- Like A Prayer. My mother was displeased. She didn’t think Madonna was a good role model. Honestly I think she thought Courtney Love was a better role model when I got into her. Even though Courtney’s crazy, she’s feminist and speaks her mind. Madonna’s cool too though.

What bands and albums have you heard recently that have stood out to you?

My favorite new band right now is Civet, an all-female punk band from SoCal that’s on Hellcat. They were the kind of band I was dreaming of when I wrote I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone. Just kick ass women playing rock ‘n’ roll as hard as the boys do. Their album Hell Hath No Fury is a must.

I’m also loving the Maybenauts which is a local Chicago band. They remind me a little bit of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and are amazing live. Jane from the GoGos produced their first EP, Big Bang.

And I can’t get enough of The Gaslight Anthem right now. Their songs just conjure so many stories for me.

What was your best ever live music experience?

It was Hole at the Metro in Chicago in October of 1994. This was right after Kurt Cobain died. As to be expected Courtney Love was putting on either incredibly emotional, powerful performances or she was a trainwreck. This was one of those powerful performances. And it was a small club, I was so close to this woman that seriously inspired me back then. It was amazing.

Who or what inspires you?

Music, books, things that I see on the street, little newspaper articles. I’m constantly observing as a writer and that drives new ideas. But my readers are the ones who keep me going when I’m feeling like I’ll never be able to write another book or just in a bad funk. They totally inspire me.

Stephanie is awesome and, like her books, her blog is incredibly honest and direct. If you don’t happen to win the giveaway, I hope you consider picking up a copy of I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone or Ballads of Suburbia. I read IWBYJR in the midst of my first attempt at a metal-inspired novel, and she showed me how it can, and should be done.

Keep it Krieg and Comment Away! \m/
Steff Metal

Grymm & Epic ebooks is my line of ebooks about the heavy metal life. They are like my blog posts, but much, much longer. I wanted a way to talk in-depth about topics I’m passionate about, and since I’ve already written five ebooks, the format works for me.

I’m launching Grymm & Epic ebooks with the most EPIC ebook I’ve ever written – the Grymm & Epic Guide to Blogging. This mammoth document of doom contains 250 pages and over 45 000 words on creating, maintaining and growing a blog.

You can read more about the Grymm and Epic Guide to Blogging in the Steff Metal Shop.

Why Grymm & Epic?

My ebooks are GRYMM because you won’t find any corporate salesy stuff or “I know best” – just honest, down-to-earth advice from a fellow businesswoman / blogger / metalhead about what works and doesn’t worki in my rather crazy and exciting life.

My ebooks are EPIC because they are monsters. I don’t believe in selling $10 or $20 ebooks with only 50 pages of text. You’ll find my ebooks will be about the length of a book you buy in the shop.

To celebrate the launch, I’m offering a special price for THIS WEEK ONLY, for anyone who wants to buy Grymm & Epic Guide to blogging through the Steff Metal website. I’ve priced this book at $19, but you can buy it for $15, if you follow the link below. After seven days, the price goes back to $19.

So yeah. If you’re keen, take a look and let me know what you think!

I would love to have a new ebook out every month, but because I write so bloody much, this won’t happen. You might see the next ebook out in a couple of months, or it might be six months away, I just can’t say. I can tell you it will be the “Grymm & Epic Guide to Cookery” and will be filled with lots of wicked ass bad recipes and ideas for metal dishes and parties.

Over the next few months I’ll also be editing the ebooks I’ve already written Freelance Writing Success will become the Grymm & Epic Guide to Freelance Writing, the Gothic and Halloween Wedding Planners will become Grymm & Epic Guide to Wedding Planning, etc. (Only 33 Mistakes Writers Make about Blind Characters will remain as it was). If you’ve brought an ebook from me before, you will be automatically sent an update of the ebook.

A few other exciting things are happening in the world of Steff Metal, including an incredible site redesign, which we shall be revealing in a few weeks.

Keep it Grymm \m/
Steff Metal

Beautiful City of the Dead

“You know how if you turn the volume all the way till your ears almost bleed, how when it’s so loud there’s a quiet place inside the noise? Loud enough to shake your teeth loose but in there somewhere is a ghost voice, like silent singing. That’s the sound I want to get.”

Wow, okey.

Port O’ Call: “Beautiful City of the Dead”, a YA novel about teen angst, elemental magic and “Ghost Metal”.

Mateys: Leander Watts, whose name makes him sound like a shakespearean thespian, but is in fact an English Professor who apparently does like metal.

Premise: Zee – the narrator and female bassist – meets Relly the first day of school. She finds him both attractive and dangerous. He invites her to join his band, Scorpio Bone, and she does. Then things get weird.

Relly is obsessed with creating something he calls “ghost metal” – a music so loud and so powerful you can find silence and peace and power within it. At their first concert they create the ghost metal, and Zee sees flames shoot up Relly’s arms. He tells Zee they are all Gods of elemental magic – Zee is the God of water, an antidote to his fire. Now that Zee has joined the band, they have “four, and no more.” The perfect unit.

But another group of Gods want Zee to be their forth, and they will do anything to have her.

It all sounds a bit … ridiculous, but the literary style in which it’s written gives a raw, wild quality to the imagery, making “Beautiful City of the Dead” a more enjoyable read than you might think.

Why it’s Krieg: I am fairly partial to any young adult book that might convince more young’uns to get into metal, play instruments, join a band and generally be more like me when I was younger (oh, the days …). If I had found this book when I was eleven, I would have been down the shops buying every Black Sabbath album in sight.

A true sense of music – our music – as a force for magic permeates its pages. I love how Watts combines the heaviness and fullness of the riffs, the fascination for ghosts and the dead, and the presence of the supernatural without coming across as hokey or satanic or overly simplistic.

I adored the ending – so many YA books end too quickly, as though you walked out of the room before the movie has finished. This book ends exactly where it should, and I am thankful for that, because the rest of the book was so short.

Why it’s Emo: The main character had a surrealist thought-structure, which made her seem less like a teenager and more like a Salvador Dali painting. Some will love the writing style, others will hate it. You would have to read the book to make up your mind.

“Beautiful City of the Dead” can’t be more than 35 000 words long, which is short, even for a YA novel. This, of course, causes some problems. The characters seem underdeveloped (some aren’t developed at all), and the second half of the book comes across as rushed and poorly thought out.

One Goodreads reviewer points out the book seems like three books in a series mushed together into one short narrative.

The evocative title “Beautiful City of the Dead”, refers to an old name for the town cemetery, where Zee and Relly go to find lyrics for their songs. However, it’s not until the climax of the book when we actually visit this cemetery – we simly hear about it through Zee’s narrative. I felt as though the author cut some important scene where the teens go to the cemetery and experience the magic of the dead. I would have kept this scene in – no one would accuse this book of being too long.

Quote:

“Now that we’re together, the four of us, it’s gonna start. The big time. The biggest thing you ever saw,” Relly says. “When we get cranking, the four of us, we can cross over to the other side, the other world. It takes four and no more. It takes four to win the war.”

Rating: \m/ \m/ \m/ three horns for beautiful imagery, but not quite enough depth.

What are you reading this week?

Love, Lies and Lord of the Flies
Steff

Grymm Brutal Technical Goregrind Glossary … of Doom.

Black Metal:

n. sub-genre of metal that originated in Norway and was made infamous by the antics of bands like Mayhem, Satyrican, Darkthrone, Emperor and Burzum. Hell bent on creating an antithesis to all that is good in the world, Black Metal explored themes of Satanism, evil, chaos and Nordic pagan culture.

Musically, it is characterised by simplistic riffs, fast blastbeats, and tremolo picking and resembles the sound a laptop computer makes when you throw it into a swimming pool. Its participants decorate themselves with corpsepaint, and can be found burning down orphanages and eating each others brains.

Bogan Pride!

Bogan:

n. Homo sapiens boganius, (see also. metalhead) originated in Western Australia and was a term used to describe a group of neanderthalic individuals who inhabited the shores of the Bogan river. Throughout the ages, the term ‘bogan’ has come to be associated with all those dole-bludgers who wear black, live in state-housing in west Auckland, litter their front gardens with used-car parts, drive Kingswood station wagons, meet their nutritional needs with meals from the local chippie and $2 steak and cheese pies, suffix their mates’ names with ‘azza’, and listen to heavy metal music.

In recent years, many metalheads in the antipodes have claimed the word “bogan” as a synonym for metalhead, in an attempt to create their own cultural identity. So far, this has been of mixed success.

The bogan is an often misunderstood mammal, and his habitat and diet have not been well documented by scientists who favour more glamorous research projects like monkeys and badgers, which also smoke less pot and smell more fragrant.

Corpsepaint:

n. When Black metal musicians paint themselves to look like dead clowns or walking, electric guitar-playing corpses. Not to be confused with Kiss makeup, since Kiss are too disco to be krieg.

Corpsepaint Birthday Cake

Dead:

n. The lead guitarist of popular black metal band Mayhem, Dead committed suicide in 1991 by blowing his brains out with a shotgun. His suicide not read “excuse all the blood”.

Death Metal:

n. The aural equivalent of soft tissue being forcibly extracted from the skull cavity by decidedly non-musical instruments. Death metal bands have brilliant names like Necropotomus and Hot for Corpse and Satan’s Suicidal Death Cunt Satan. Sprouting from Death metal is Brutal Death Metal: Death metal with more extreme sounding names.

Emo:

A fatal error would be to confuse a metalhead with an emo. The distinction here should be clear as emos aren’t actually considered human. To be confused with a prepubescent, androgynous, squared-spectacled, weeping, wrist-slitting, chuck-Taylor toting, pink-and-black-striped-sock-wearing monster with a running nose and tissues stuffed up the sleeves of its My Chemical Romance shirt, sporting a meticulously coiffed fringe that looks like a droopy unicorn penis is a mighty insult to any proud metalhead. I warn you that if you ever make this mistake, you will only make it once.

A diagram to help you spot an Emo

Euronymous:

The lead singer of Norwegian black metal band Mayhem between 1983-1993. Often cited as the founder of the black metal scene and instigator of the infamous church burnings across Norway. Euronymous was the first to find Dead … well, dead … and instead of calling the police he shot several rolls of film and then cooked his bandmate’s brain into a stew and ate it. The photos of Dead later turned up on the cover of the Mayhem bootleg Dawn of Black Hearts. Euronymous was stabbed at his Oslo apartment 23 times by bandmate Varg Vikernes.

Folk Metal:

n. Any kind of metal sub-genre mixed with folk instruments. Most band members dress up as elves, peasants or trolls. Folk metal is mostly as silly as it sounds. See bands like FinnTroll, Skyclad, Korplikanii.

Goth:

Metalheads are not – and this is very important – ever to be confused with Goths, who wear black also, but their black is BLACK, black like the lining of a coffin, black like their mascara, black like their souls.

Instead of adorning themselves in cheap cotton effigies touting skulls and pentagrams and slogans like ‘The Time to Kill is Now,’ Goths prefer velvet, and lace, and chiffon, and even vinyl.

Many metalheads actually refer to themselves as Goths, but the Goths know better. For example, while the majority of Goths will tout H. P. Lovecraft as their favourite author, most bogans – who are a wholly illiterate race – have only seen the film adaptation, whilst stoned.

A Goth

Grymm:

adj. Grymm is a metal word and is used to describe something ‘metal’ or something that is rad, awesome, cool or wicked. Note the ‘metal’ spelling. Synonyms: see tr00, kvlt, grymm, nekro, evil.

Hardcore:

n. Take metal, subtract everything that might be mistaken for music, add fifteen-year-old boys who can’t get laid and an insipid sounding name. Voila!

Holden HZ Kingswood 1977

Kingswood:

n. The Holden Kingswood was once the staple model of the larger-sized cars produced by Holden. A drive down any West Auckland street reveals a rust-encrusted Kingswood lurking under every carport.

Krieg:

adj. German for ‘war’. Krieg is metal slang popular in Europe. SynonymL Grymm.

Kvlt:

adj. Cult is used to describe metal bands who have become popular on the underground, similar to cult movies or books. The grymm and nekro spelling evolved over the usage of cult in internet metal forums. Many online communities filter swear words, so posters use alternative spelling, eg. Fvck, kvnt. These alterations spill over onto other popular slang, as a kind of 1337 in-joke that isn’t actually funny.

Metal Couture:

The Metalhead can be easily identified by his attire; huge, clunky steel-capped boots and ripped, straight-leg jeans, usually with an attractive oil stain smeared across the buttocks. His torso will be covered with an immaculately faded black t-shirt depicting one of the following:

1) Logo and cover art of a heavy metal band
2) Logo and tour art of a heavy metal band, with tour dates slashed across the back
3) Logo and picture of band members looking staunch
4) Logo of a bogan associated product – Yamaha, Zildgen, Jack Daniels, Harley Davidson
5) A humorous statement containing the word ‘fuck’.

If the weather is less then savoury, the bogan chooses a leather jacket, a black oilskin, long black trenchcoat, or (strictly for older bogans) a denim jacket covered with patches from famous heavy metal bands.

Metal Couture

Metal Chick:

The metalhead female is a rare and unique creature; and can at first glance be difficult to distinguish from a female Goth (see Goth). Both will dress in equally laced, corseted, zippered, vinyled attire. A bogan male must spend so much time painstakingly removing a female’s garments that he will inevitably fall asleep before intercourse. This is one of the many reasons the metalhead race is in perpetual danger of dying out.

The only indicator that you have stumbled across a true metalhead female is her constant punctuated use of the goat (see Throwing the Goat), and her fondness for swearing and bourbon swilling.

Nekro:

adj. Synonym for Grymm. Latin for ‘death’. As metalheads think death is krieg and Latin is kvlt, nekro is used in lots of metal words: necropolis, necrophilia, necrophagia. Necropocalypse. Note the grymm spelling. Alternative spelling ist krieg.

Post-hardcore:

n. Don’t be fooled, it’s really emo.

Power Metal:

a sub-genre of heavy metal that grew out of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal scene, and is heavily influenced by bands like Iron Maiden and Saxon. Power metal emphasizes tight musicianship, ball-clenchingly high male vocals, and songs about slaying dragons that are so cheesy they make live action role players cringe. Examples: Blind Guardian, Kamelot, Helloween, Nightwish, Rhapsody of Fire.

Throwing the Goat:

des. ph. If you are ever approached by a bogan/metalhead, the most appropriate and friendly opener is to throw him the goat and comment favourably on his choice of t-shirt.

Throwing the goat is not a literal action – which would be ungainly and result in many livestock-related injuries – but rather a hand gesture where one clenches ones hand into a fist, while extending the pinkie and index fingers, forming the ‘goat horns’, and thrusting this ‘goat’ into the air. You can accompany this action with one of the many metal words; tr00, kvlt, krieg, grymm or nekro.

Tr00:

adj. “True” is used to describe metal songs or bands that stay true to the metal ideal, as opposed to false metal, which is played by wimps and posers and is homoerotic in nature. Synonym for kvlt, and evolved along the same process.

Varg

Varg Vikernes:

n. One of the most notorious metal musicians of all time. Varg was a prominent leader of the Norwegian Black Metal scene and conceived the one man band, Burzum. He has recently been released from prison after stabbing his bandmate, Euronymous, 23 times.

Numerous reasons have been cited for the murder, including self-defence, power struggles, a girl, and Euronymous’ wearing of a rather ‘un-krieg’ white sweater. Varg is also allegedly responsible for several of the stave church burnings in Norway.

Viking metal:

n. Folk metal (see folk metal) with Vikings. Vikings ist krieg. German declensions ist kein krieg. Examples: Bathory, Einhajr, Ensiferum.

This is Part 1 of an ongoing project. What do you think?
\m/ Steff \m/

I read one or two books a week. I have rather eclectic tastes, but I’m certain I can find a few books you lot might enjoy reading. Like this one:

The Forest of Hands and Teeth

In Mary’s world, there are simple truths.
The Sisterhood always knows best.
The Guardians will protect and serve.
The Unconsecrated will never relent.
And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village. The fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth.

Port’o'call: The Forest of Hands and Teeth, a YA zombie apocalypse novel with heavy overtones of the movie The Village.

Mateys: Carrie Ryan, who might not like metal, but she was a lawyer with a fetish for zombie films, thus making her OK by me.

Premise: Mary lives in a tiny village surrounded by a high fence. She knows nothing about why the world now contains two types of people: those in her village and the undead outside the fence, who prey upon the flesh of the living. 

After her mother is bitten and joins the Unconsecrated, Mary is sent to the Sisters to be prepared for marriage. She’s supposed to marry Harry, but she’s in love with his brother, Travis, who’s been bethrothed to her best friend. Angst ensues … but then the fences are breached and the village overrun.

Mary, Harry, Travis, Cas (Mary’s best friend), Mary’s brother and his wife, and an orphaned boy they saved from the attack all escape through a gate in the fence. On either side of the path are high fences to protect them from the unconsecrated. The Sisterhood told them never to come here. They start to walk.

Why it’s Krieg: If you’re not already dying to read this from the title alone … you might be on the wrong blog :) The writing doesn’t dissapoint – Ryan weaves evocative language and difficult themes with subtlty and grace. And there are zombies.

I love zombies. Those faceless, lumbering flesh-gluttons form the perfect narrative device for authors to rail against society’s foibles: overpopulation, futility of life, consumerism, cultural values, collective conscience, pack behaviour … But Ryan’s zombies resonate on a different level: they match perfectly the conflicting thoughts of a teenaged girl faced with love, loss and hard decisions. They represent the unstoppable social order she’s bound to.

Why it’s Emo: It’s a YA book, so it reads a little short. It’s one of those books where you’re completly wrapped in the story, and you turn the page and realise you’re on the last chapter and there’s no way she can wrap everything up and answer all your questions. And she doesn’t. And this always bugs me.

There is a sequel, The Dead-Tossed Waves, coming out soon, but until I get my hands on it, I remain annoyed that so much in this book wasn’t explained.

Quote:

People in our village have gone mad from seeing their loved ones as Unconsecrated. It was a woman—a mother—horrified at the sight of her son infected during a patrol, who set herself on fire and burned half of our town. That was the fire that destroyed my family’s heirlooms when I was a child, that obliterated our only ties to who we were as a people before the Return, though most were so corroded by then that they left only wisps of memories.

Rating: \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/ (she looses one \m/ because the ending makes me curious, and angry).

1. Positively Bleak by E. Bleak

Emily Bleak is a self-proclaimed proud pretentious metalhead, obsessive horror junkie and hobbyist blasphemer, among other titles. Her blog focuses on heavy metal lifestyle topics, like Getting the GWAR Off and On Dressing for the Frozen Wastelands. Also, she’s awesome. 

2. Reign in Blonde by Julia and Elise

Winners of the unofficial “most kickass blog name of all time” competition. Reign in Blonde is written by two tall, blonde chicks who bring the metal. They went to an Ashlee Simpson show together and yelled “Slayeeerrr!” over the heads of a bunch of nine year olds – they’re those kind of girls. They write awesome content and think Gabe Garcia is hot, which makes them alright by me.

3. Baroque, Bleak, Brutal by Eric

An epic name for an epic blog. Baroque Bleak Brutal seeks to explore and pay homage to all of the complexity, barrenness, and savagery of metal. I don’t usually read album reviews, because I find them quite boring and subjective, but I read theirs. Check out their As the Palaces Burned features.

4. Metalographer by Danielle

Part of the essence of being metal is taking pictures of quote “epic shit” unquote. A recent discovery, Danielle photographs scenes, objects, spaces, places, animals and people she considers aptly “metal”. She’s bloody grymm. And she’s obsessed with Alice in Wonderland …

5. NO CLEAN SINGING by Islander, Alexis and IntoTheDarkness

No Clean Singing exists on the premise that 1) all popular music sucks, 2) metal doesn’t suck, unless it’s metal with clean singing, in which case it probably does suck, 3) Some metal with clean singing doesn’t suck, but that’s an exception to the rule and 4) Some metal with no clean singing also sucks, but that’s also an exception to the rule. They then proceed to do a steller job of backing up these statements with writing and plenty of pictures of long-haired dudes staring contemptuously at the camera.

I have discovered SO MANY epic new bands through them. These guys deserve major horns for supporting Steff Metal, but aside from that, they’re a great source of really in-depth metal discussion and growly grymness.

6. Rakk and Ruin by Rakk and Ruin

A blog of grymm and epic fashion pictures. Everything is way too expensive and designer for me, but it’s an excellent source of inspiration. You can also get some epic (and incredibly budget-conscious) jewelry at the Rakk and Ruin shop.

7. Metal From Finland by Tero and others

Most of my favorite metal at the moment comes from Finland, so I love a blog that keeps my up-to-date on the Finnish metal happenings, and that’s exactly what MFF does. You will see regular HIM updates, which are irksome, but trust me – most of their content is grand. And they have Perkele t-shirts!

8. The Palpable Obscure by Ana

I’ve been reading Ana’s blog for ages, centuries even, back when it was called Kvlt Fashion. She was the first blogger to ever inspire me to post daily outfit photos. A tall leggy blonde with impeccable style and a love of Wolves of the Throne Room, Ana’s always posting inspirational fashion shoots from around the globe.

9. Metal as Fuck by Leticia and various contributors

Called by some “the world’s most obliterating metal zine” metal as fuck is the moonchild of Leticia Supple, and includes some great pieces from Kay of Enter the Goatlady. They employ contributors from all over the world, for real global coverage of everything – and I do mean everything – metal. It is one of the BEST metal zines in the world, period. The quality of the writing blows most magazines out of the water. Read their interviews. Right Now.  

10. Cosmic Hearse by Aesop

Ever since I started reading Cosmic Hearse, I’ve been drowning in underground metal and Japanese crazy. Not a day goes by CDH doesn’t walk past my office, stop, turn around and cry “what the fuck are you listening to?” For that reason alone, you should check out this blog. Cosmic Hearse shares hard-to-find and special recordings from various metal and underground projects. The recordings span the genres – it’s not all tr00 kvlt kreig grymm nekro eeevil black metal here. Aesop places each album contextually within metal and underground music as a whole – sometimes they are rare EPs from popular bands, sometimes scratchy recordings of barely musical noise. And Cosmic Hearse takes nothing away from the artist – all these tracks are legitimately found.

and secret number 11.

Steff Metal by Steff (that’s me!)

Why should you read it? Well, you tell me :)

What are you reading this year?

Horns up! \m/
Steff

Heavy Metal and You, by Christopher Krovatin

Boy listens to lots of loud music and hangs with his friends. Boy meets girl. Boy falls dippy-happy-scared-as-hell in love with girl. Friends meet girl — and aren’t impressed. Girl meets friends — and isn’t impressed. Boy meets big dilemma. Boy plays music even louder.

I haven’t done a review in … several months. Rest assured, this will change now that I’m in the same place long enough to read books, watch movies and do things worthy of review.

Port O’ Call: Heavy Metal and Me, Scholastic, is a book aimed at the young adult (teen) readers.

Mateys: Written by Christopher Krovatin, who was born in 1985, the same year that Slayer released Hell Awaits.

Premise: Sam the pot-smoking, classical literature lovin’ metalhead meets Melissa, the girl of his dreams. Smart, cute, funny … and totally straight edge. After a disasterous date at a Deicide concert, Sam tries his hardest to please Melissa … but that means changing who he is. Giving up drugs, alcohol, smoking and his friends come easier than Sam thought, but Heavy Metal?

Why it’s Kreig: Krovatin has been compared to Nick Hornby – a well-justified claim. He writes with humor, raw passion and a deep respect for the music and the people who love it. A book like this could only have been written by a metalhead.

I love that it shows a character more like the metalheads that I know – intelligent, literate and articulate. Sammy is a real metalhead, a real person, not a caricature of us. He’s self-aware, he doesn’t spend the novel whining about no one understanding him or randomly inserting Slayer lyrics into conversation for comedic purposes.

He’s also smitten, and he makes mistakes, and you love him all the more for it. You love him because he’s you when you were sixteen, and in love, and you thought you knew what you were doing, but really you didn’t. Sammy deals with his situation, his perfect girlfrined – who wanted the intelligent, funny Sam without his friend and his smoking and his anger and his heavy metal.

Krovatin says:

“I’ve fallen for one girl too many who’s wanted some variation of who I am and only that. It eats you alive.”

It eats Sammy alive, too. And we read this, and we just want to jump into the book and give him a hug and tell him that actually, he’s a totally awesome person, just the way he is.

Melissa, the girlfriend, is another incredible character. She’s so human, you can’t hate her. She’s not an idealised, bitch girlfriend who’s easy to hate. She just doesn’t yet understand that chosing to be with someone means accepting all of them.

Likewise, Sammy’s friends remind me of real people I knew in high school.

Sam goes off on these amazing, off-the-wall awesome and totally hilarious rants – about music, about life, about hipsters. And they’re all so true:

“I’ve always thought that, as much as I utterly loathed some of it, music was still music, be it Annihilator or Good Charlotte or Ja Rule or Sigor Ros or Christina fucking Aguilera, and that assholes are assholes, regardless of their musical taste.  Hipsters, though, were the anti-what-I-just said.  There are hipsters for every musical genre: metal hipsters, Goth hipsters, rap hipsters, even country hipsters (well, a few).  And by the look of it, I had two emo/indie megahipsters in front of me – the worst kind.  I don’t know why, but it just seemed like those two genres of music bred more hipsters than any other.”

And, lastly, who couldn’t adore a heavy metal love story set to a soundtrack of Slayer and Testament and Paradise Lost?

Why it’s emo: It’s clear (and unsurprising given the author’s age at the time this book was written) that Sammy is a manifestation of the author’s own experiences and opinions. Krovatin even says as much in this interview. There is a real honesty about Sam – he’s a person I feel I really know.

However, he has a couple of emo moments – crying about his past and such – and they’re not as well shown as I felt they could be. The author, knowing his own internal thoughts so well, glossed over them a little, so the impact of Sam’s breakdowns wasn’t as strong as it could have been. Instead, he came across as a bit, well, emo.

Also, some more discerning metal readers might disagree with many of Sam’s listening choices. (Shadow’s Fall, what?) and could find fault in simplistic descriptions of the Norwegian Black Metal scene. But I don’t feel either of these points detract from the awesomeness of the story and characters.

Quote: “My teeth were nice commodities, and I did enjoy having kidneys, but I’d give them all away if someone threatened to take my Slayer albums from me.”

Rating: four horns for being a little on the emo side \m/ \m/ \m/ \m/

Super Snuggles and Shoggoth Kisses
Steff

I stumbled across a few news articles from 2007 confirming what we’ve all known for decades – the Clever Kids Listen to Heavy Metal.

Kitty Empire of the Observer wrote the first piece: Why Heavy Metal Freaks are Kissing to be Clever. She discusses the results of a study conducted by Stuart Cadwallader of Warwick University, who found that one-third of his sample (drawn from the National Academy of Gifted and Talented Youth) rated metal as their favorite genre. Metal beat out jazz and classical, commonly thought to be the favorite among pimply-braniacs.

Being one of the pimply-brainiac-metal-loving kids, I just wanted to say “Of course it bloody is.”

Metal isn’t what people think it is. First of all, much of it is complex, multi-layered, mind-blowing musicianship. Second, with lyrical themes running the gambit of literature, history, religion, art and human emotion, metal speaks to intelligent people on many subjects and themes. Metal connects with the very aspects of the world clever people find most fascinating.

Thirdly, clever kids in general face exclusion and bullying at school, and pressure from parental units at home. Heavy metal is a culture of inclusion – as Manowar says “If you like metal, you’re my friend.” What pimply-brainiac would be able to resist that message? I sure can’t.

Empire says “In the savage ‘uuuurgh’ of metal you can hear the collective human howl of disgust at a world gone mad. It’s the sound of the rejected getting even, the trampled-on standing up, the unbeautiful settling scores with the buffed.” Its fucking heaven on earth is what it is.

Paul Connolly of the London Lite disputes the case of clever metallers in his article Metal Kids aren’t brighter, they’re just more needy. Connolly argues that the metal kids in the survey admitted to listening to metal to “let off steam” and vent frustrations through aggressive music. “That says more about their upbringing than anything else.” Connolly thinks the kids who appreciate many forms of music – those with “open minds” – are the smartest kids.

I think Connolly makes the mistake of confusing subculture with musical taste, as most metalheads I know listen to a wide variety of music. You can’t love Slayer all the time. Around 60% of my music collection is metal and metal derivatives – the rest is a mixture of … everything else. I bet a lot of these kids are exactly the same – you can listen to a little bit of everything and still consider yourself a metalhead. Being a metalhead has more to do with who you are on the inside.

I think his “metalhead” kids and “open minded kids” are actually one and the same.

What do you think, gentle readers? Do Immortal and Intelligence go hand in hand? Does being clever make you more susceptible to liking metal? Is the rise of “popular” metal and metalcore affecting this statistics? Will true metal prevail against its naysayers? I want your opinions!

Super Snuggles and Shoggoth Kisses
Steff

I always wanted to be a writer, but I don’t know where to begin. I’m in my third year of an English major at college and I don’t have anything to show for it except for some better-than-average marks and several short stories the school Lit magazine won’t touch with a ten-foot clown pole. Should I stick around for a MFA? Do you have any advice on how to get started as a writer?

***

I sure do!

First, I’ll tell you my story, since I can only offer you advice based on my own experiences.

I went to university to be an archaeologist. I loved every minute of my four years there. I took papers on museum ethnography, social anthropology, gothic literature, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, love and death in classical literature … and a really terrible, terrible English paper called ‘Reading, Writing, Text.’

While at uni I wrote a few short stories and submitted some poems to the English dept. magazine. Some were accepted, despite their obvious crappiness. I poked at my novel a little when I had a spare moment, dreaming of the day I accepted my Pulitzer.

Photo by Alial Hasani , a Jordanian metal blogger and photographer.

In my third year I noticed an ad in Student Job Search: ‘Content Writer Wanted for Real Estate Newsletter’. Money for writing? I’d never heard of the concept. I applied with a sample piece about how I was obsessed with Dr. Phil (I know – pathetic) and got the job.

I had to write two 400 word articles per week on general interest topics, and I got paid $40 per piece. I kept that job till I finished uni. I enjoyed getting my monthly check so much I decided to submit articles to magazines.

I wrote my first articles on topics I studied at uni, music I listened to and problems I encountered. Somehow – despite knowing nothing at all about the query letter – I sent out several query letters to editors, and I ended up with a few projects, and a few checks. I was hooked.

When uni finished I simply stepped up my writing pace, and I started reading about writing online – on industry blogs and in discussion forums. I finished my novel and won a competition to pitch it to a HarperCollins editor, which was a massive ego boost! I’ve since finished three more novels with a forth half done. I’ve also self-published five ebooks, which sell through my websites.

The only writing course I took at uni taught me nothing about being a writer. I learned everything from trial and error, reading on the internet, writing, and sending off my work to editors and agents.

I learn by doing, so for me, sitting in a classroom talking about writing didn’t teach me anything. My archaeology degree gave me new skills, crazy experiences, and heaps of interesting factoids to write about. My non-writing degree helped my writing career more than a MFA (or MCW in New Zealand) ever could.

I can’t tell you what’s best for you. I can only talk about what worked for me. Because of my specific experiences, when people ask me what they should study at university if they want to be a writer, I say “anything but writing.” I believe if you really are a writer, you learn everything you need to know by writing, not by sitting in a lecture theatre talking about writing. Unless you’re going to be an English teacher, an English degree will be naught use in the real world.

If you want to be a writer – really be a writer – you need to write. And then, you need to submit. Aspiring writers often forget the submitting stage, because it involves the bane of every writer’s existence – rejection. When you start submitting, you start getting rejections letters, and they bruise your tender ego something terrible, especially in the beginning.

I recommend you start discovering the realities of the writing life while you’re still at uni. Sign up to FundsForWriters free newsletters, read up on writing query letters, (I pack lots of info into my Freelance Success ebook). Use Duotrope to find short story and poetry markets. Read industry blogs. Join a writing discussion forum.

Try this for a few months, and reassess how you feel about writing. Which mediums do you enjoy? Which do you detest? I’ve discovered that I enjoy novel writing, magazine articles, ebooks and copywriting the most, and short stories the least. I concentrate my effort on those four areas.

You may discover you no longer want to make writing a full time career, but you enjoy it as a side hobby. You may discover a knack for writing non-fiction you never knew you possessed, or a knack for blogging.

You can’t make a decision about the future without arming yourself with information first. Learn the realities of the writing life before you decide to dedicate another two years of university and several thousand dollars to your pursuit. Above all else – write. Always write.

Resources

• Holly Lisle’s website contains over 100 000 free words about writing fiction. She also stocks some excellent ebooks on writing (including one of mine).
• The free writing newsletter Writers Weekly contains articles, markets and information for writers of all walks of life.
• The Swivet is agent Colleen Lindsay’s blog and a great industry blog to start reading. The sidebar contains over 150 links to other blogs, sites and forums for writers.
• Nathan Bransford is another blogging agent
• Miss Snark bites down on foolish writers.

Super Snuggles and Shoggoth Kisses

Steff

Is heavy metal a disability? Roger Tullgren, 42, from Hässleholm in southern Sweden, recieves state benefits for his unique disability – he’s a metal fan. After an occupational psychologist declared that his compulsion to “show his heavy metal style … puts him in a difficult position in the labour market”, the government supplements Tullgran’s income and his boss gives him special dispensation to play loud music at work.

Tom Findlay explores Nietzsche and Heavy Metal. A thought-provoking read.

Friedrich Nietzsche - check out that grymm moustache!

Heavy Metal is making an underground comeback in Egypt. In the 1990s, metal was popular and many bands played in Cairo, including the popular Egpytian acts Steel Edge, Vyrus and Andromeda (these bands played mostly covers). In 1997, police rampaged against the metalheads, arresting hundreds for alleged satanic cultist activites. Now, black-t shirts and skull-emblazoned album covers are creeping back into Cairo’s music scene.

Many bright teenagers use heavy metal to deal with the stress of being a gifted outcast. Finally, a study that legitimises my entire youth.

For you budding academics, a conference titled Heavy Fundementalism: Music, Metal and Politics is taking place in Salzburg, Austria from 10-12 November. Read about 2008′s conference here. If I’d known before the cut-off date, I would have sent in an abstract. Oh well, I’ve contacted the organizors and hope to bring you some interesting updates from the conference later in the year.

Heavy Metal Music Rocking Finnish Churches. An interesting concept. Discuss.

A pilot study into the Effects of Heavy Metal Music on College Women finds that heavy metal induces strong physiological reactions in women. Interesting.

That’s all for now. I’ve been enjoying reading these random articles. I’m a little tied up at the moment with travelling to write my usual responses, but I might look at discussing some of these ideas in-depth upon my return to NZ.

Until next time, keep it Kreig, my friends
Steff