I had an interesting April...(photo courtesy of Alt Lit Gossip)

Greetings, people who follow my blog…that I never update.

Well, it’s May already. Cray, right? Shit’s cray…like Kanye said in that song. Time flies. The winter is gone, the weather continues to warm up, people are smiling. Good times for everyone!

News and updates!

FIRST!

If you’re in Brooklyn, or near Brooklyn, or feel like traveling to Brooklyn, PANK Magazine’s “PANK Invasion” reading series bum-rushes the borough on May 23rd at the kick-ass WORD Brooklyn bookstore.

The lineup is deep: Sean Doyle, Robb Todd, M.G. Martin, Tess Patalano, Jennifer Pashley, Roxane Gay (!!!), and yours truly. We hope to entertain the crowd–which is sure to be quite packed–with our varied literary works and styles.

This is my first reading EVER. I’m scared. Skurred. Frightened. But excited and thrilled as well. If you can come, please do–I’d love to meet you guys. I’ll be in town overnight most likely, so you know–buy me drinks and stuff.

NEXT!

OMG! A pleasant and exciting surprise. My flash fiction piece “Stark County,” published last year by Used Furniture Review, was selected this week as one of Wigleaf’s Top 50. If you aren’t familiar, Wigleaf selects 200 pieces and hands the longlist over to a guest judge/editor to choose the final 50. Dan Chaon was this year’s selecting editor.

Anyway, “Stark County” is one of my top 3 favorite stories and I’m so happy that it got such recognition. And I can’t front–my story was among powerhouses like Sarah Rose Etter, Roxane Gay, Blake Butler, Erin Fitzgerald, J.A. Tyler, and others. I’m fucking thrilled and honored to be among these awesome writers. For real, this news couldn’t have come at a better time.

FINALLY! (or why there’s a photo of a Klansman)

I made my debut at Thought Catalog a few weeks ago with, in my opinion, one of my better essays. It deconstructed the HBO’s show “Girls” as a further perpetuation of “whiteness.” You can read it for yourself and form your own opinion.

While you’re at it, check out the comments section. A civil conversation quickly devolved into racist & apologist rhetoric. Some of it was, quite frankly, funny–some of it was aimed at me personally, which stung a bit–and some of it was completely ignorant and disgusting. Any sound and reasonable point drowned in a sea of shit.

To be fair, I knew something was going to go down. As I wrote the essay, I had one place in mind for publication–Thought Catalog, perhaps the whitest online magazine. I wanted the essay to get as many eyes on it as possible–a goal I easily achieved.

But now, I’m trying to kill the label of “angry black male writer” even though I am an angry black male writer. And please, stop asking me about “Girls.” I saw the first episode. I don’t intend to watch further episodes. It served its purpose for my larger point with respect to whiteness. As far as I’m concerned, I’m done with it.

Okay, I have nothing else to say. Here’s a gif for you. Peace.

Now, down to business.

The best laid plans. The best ideas forged in the fires of love…ugh. Love and fire should remain separated, never to meet within the same sentence again, unless Love and Fire have something to do with arson. Because your character is an arsonist. Who loves fire.

Sometimes, the support one needs to do a creative project…any kind of creative endeavor…is all one should ask of his/her lover. To ask for more, to partner up, is perilous, but not entirely foolish. As I learned on Twitter, it depends on the partners.

For me, well…what can I say? I’m egotistical. I’m emotional (very). And I’m at a stage in life where I want to do things my way. I want to do things myself. I mean, yes I ask for help or advice, but I want to make the final decision. Kitchen and groceries according to Bill Parcells.

When the partnership ends, the project becomes endangered. Again, depending on the partners themselves. Personal matters bleed into business, making one giant bloody mess–like an arsonist’s body left in the middle of a diner because he was assassinated by a cybernetic assassin from the future–and if one isn’t careful, the project can crumble alongside the partnership.

Am I referring to myself in this wee little blog post? You’re worrying about ALL the wrong things.

Studies show that authors who have professional-looking websites are 99.3% more likely to be taken seriously and, perhaps, read by both authors and non-authors. I trust these studies. I can’t cite them. But trust me, they’re out there. Google them. You’ll find them.

My Internet presence is–shall we say–a little bipolar: a manic barrage of tweets and Tumblr re-blogs mixed with prose, columns, and reviews aimed to depress you, the reader (they’re entertaining too, yes). This is my home base where I can present myself in a professional light. Hence, “mensahdemary.com,” home of mensah demary–i.e. me.

Is this an attempt to build my “brand?” As much as I deride the notion that writers–people in general–should reduce themselves to “brands, further commodifying ourselves–let me be slightly realistic: “mensah demary” is, for better or worse, my brand. It’s the name I choose to use for publications and my Internet presence, but it’s not me in real life. Not completely. I mean–”mensah demary” is a part of me, but not all of me. So yeah, sure–”mensah” is my brand (just call me “mensah,” BTW).

How do I define my brand? What’s my platform? Hell if I know. I’m a just a writer-editor who loves to write and edit. Read enough of my work, visit enough of my social network pages, and you’ll get a sense of who I am. I suppose I should take control of my “brand” and define it for you, for myself.

I’m a clinically-depressed hermit who aims to produce work which displays the highs and lows of life through a solipsistic prism. In other words, I write about myself–a lot–but I use myself as a conduit of sorts to connect to other people, to touch on universal issues. Now–that’s not to say my fiction is autobiographical, but I’m not saying my nonfiction comprises of lies lies lies, either.

There. My brand. “mensah.” I’m pleased. Are you? I hope so. I do. I really do.