Juliana Finch is an infectious woman. She laughs with a room, and warms it with her smile. She’s the type of person who belongs on a stage. Luckily she’s also a singer/songwriter in the Atlanta area where she brings her guitar backed songs to life as often as she can get away with. She also fights crime. Or occasionally dresses up as a character from BSG. One or the other. Maybe both. She was cool enough to waste some time and share some thoughts.

APK: So something I’ve always wanted to ask a singer/songwriter… which did you start to do first – write lyrics or play music?

Juliana: I’ve always done both writing and music, but it took a long time before I realized they could go together. As a kid I was always in choirs and musical theatre, but I was also that poetry nerd kid scribbling in a notebook. I was writing poetry before I was playing guitar… so I guess I’d have to go with “lyrics”… though maybe I didn’t know they were lyrics at the time.

APK: Interesting. You’re also one of the musicians I most associate with writing. You tend to discuss the writing, lyric end, of things a lot in your blogs to the exclusion of the music writing it seems. Is that a conscious choice?

Juliana: Yeah, it is. I guess because there’s so much out there about the music part – chord progressions, tabs, lessons, etc… and so much out there about the “music business.” I think the readers I want to attract are the people who really care about words and realize that being a songwriter is a form of storytelling.
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Achariya is one of my oldest friends on the internet. Certainly one of my best. We’ve been through all sorts of personal crap together (not crap between us, but general life happens stuff), Tolkien craziness and the endless pursuit of hats. But these days she blogs about fashion in Second Life and I… well I tried Second Life once or twice, mostly to hang out with Achariya. I still don’t quite get it. So I asked her a lot of questions and she made me understand stuff. Now we share that conversation with you:

APK: What got you onto Second Life?

Achariya: My doctoral advisor said, “Oh, you like the internets. You should play this…mmorpg thing. It’s named Second Life. There are educational places there!” And I said: Oh no. I can’t possibly because then I’ll get sucked in and never finish my dissertation. She didn’t believe me, and I’m still on chapter 1.

APK: See when I was in school they warned us about MUDs and they were right back THEN. Good to know things don’t change too much.

Achariya: Absolutely. Second Life is like MMORPGs plus no monsters or leveling plus BARBIES. Obviously it’s instant crack to one such as I, who only cared about how pretty my armor was.

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Christian Dumais interviewed me about Crunchy, writing and other such things. I managed to say something about … well… sleeping with your readers, kind of. I… sometimes these things get said.

Anyway! Enjoy!

You can read the full interview right here!

Lauren Vogelbaum is one of my faveorite people. I know that sounds trite, but it’s also true. She’s simply a joy to talk to and to work with. She’s also a great editor. We worked together on Stays Crunchy in Milk and for the release I wanted to do a quick interview with her for the fun of it. So here we go, mostly discussing editor-y things!

Adam P. Knave: so we met on this project, right?  What was your impression of it, or me, before you started to read the book?

Lauren Vogelbaum: I think the only contact I’d had with you before I signed on for Stays Crunchy was on Livejournal, which is a sort of social cornstarch — it allows friendships to thicken pretty quickly.  So I had a (fairly accurate) concept of you as this walking bowl of pop culture soup.  The book I hadn’t heard anything about, really — our friend Laszlo, who possibly felt bad that the book I’d just finished working on for him had made me scared of assorted things that are difficult to avoid (like y’know trees), promised that the characters were completely non-threatening cartoon cereal mascots and that there was no toad-eating.  But you and I agreed that the best way to edit a book is to actually read it, and that the best way to read a book is to not hear all about it beforehand, so that’s all I knew about it going in.

APK: Non-threatening? HA! Well, no, ok, point.  And that’s right, you went in fairly cold.  Less than readers have, really, because the blurb wasn’t even done.  It was just “Pop culture-y madness – GO!” … how’d that treat you?

LV: You really don’t give your readers a wading pool to dip their feet in before they plunge into all that madness… I knew by the end of the first paragraph what I’d gotten myself into.  But I watched too many Saturday morning cartoons in the 80s and studied a lot about pop & mass media in school, so the Stays Crunchy brand of surrealism is a brand that I was instantly comfortable with.

APK: What’s your process when you approach a book to edit?

LV: When I was a kid and I had more of that “time” stuff that’s so elusive these days, I always read new books twice, straight through. (This is relevant I promise.)  The first read would go super-quick ’cause I just wanted to find out what happened, but the second go was always sloooow ’cause I wanted to study the language, dissect how the author had put their words and ideas together to construct the whole. That’s sorta how I edit — I’ll do a first pass where I’m just familiarizing myself with the story and characters, and fixing silly little typos and clear-cut grammatical mistakes, and then have a second go at it where I’m in up to my elbows, working with characterization, pacing, concept structure, and all that fun meaty stuff.
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First up is the finale of that interview! Jeff Lester and I talk, and talk and talk!

Part one was about Popgun and Agents of the WTF.

Part two was almost all about Popgun.

Part three is all about Burrito Blade.

I had a blast doing this stuff and hope you have some fun reading it. Speaking of reading Strange Angel is a bit closer. I can tell you it will cost 15 bucks, it will be about 280 pages long in total and will be out soon. When it is out there will be a much bigger post.

Also speaking of reading I hope a bunch of you picked up POPGUN 3 this week. But we got a great review, and speciifcally also a review of Agents of WTF in Want to Dance, Papi?:

Agents of WTF in would you like to Dance, Papi?
Review by Aziz Bawany

Writers: D.J. Kirkbride & Adam P. Knave
Artist: Matteo Scalera… Read More
Colorist: Antonio Campo
Letterer: Thomas Mauer
Page 153

So far this is the best story I’ve reviewed in this Anthology. While we’re all splitting duties up, Agents of WTF has to be one of the craziest, off the wall concepts to be put on a page.

While the idea of a superhero team is nothing new, and can feature a who’s-who of weird characters, Agents of WTF lives up to its name with a 300 but really 8 year old man-boy and a Native American princess who battle some of the odder creatures of earth. In this case it was an evil demon-summoning clown, and the agents of WTF used every trick in the book of WTF moments to make sure they won. Quite enjoyable and with its chaotic art style of Matteo Scalera, highly recommended. (Review sourced from here.)

Woo!

POPGUN VOL 3 is in stores TODAY! So go to your local comic book store and tell them you want that nifty-keen Popgun Vol 3! Almost 500 pages of amazing comics for only $30. That’s a great deal. Editing by Mark Andrew Smith and D.J. Kirkbride (with assistant edits by me) Popgun is just made of win.

Also, inside, is among the greatness, a short story written by Kirkbride and I: Agents of the W.T.F. in Want to Dance, Papi?

Click here to see a preview page from the story!

And click here to see a SECOND preview page from the story!

Also, while we’re talking about POPGUN (go buy it right NOW!) part two of Jeff Lester’s interview with me is now up and sitting right here where you can click and read. In part one I kinda meander about some writing stuff. In part two I explain why Popgun rules the jungle. Go read and enjoy. And if you missed it, here’s a quick link to part one, again.

So Jeff Lester interviewed me over at Savage Critic and part one just went up. Now you too can read how I manage to say “you know” every ten seconds, and constantly call myself a whore.

And this is only part one.

I think I love this interview, this is honestly what being on the phone with me sounds like, no holds barred, no careful interview speak. Just … two guys, going forth, while one won’t shut the hell up. Go read.

I was interviewed by Comicon’s Pulse yesterday you can read all about it by clicking the link. It was about Popgun and … well the Golden Girls, kinda and uhm … oh hell it was me, what do you expect.

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Things Wrong With Me updated today.

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And here is a video of a turtle trying to fuck a shoe. No, seriously. Now this is funny without sound but if you have sound, dear lord, it is priceless. The sound the turtle makes. Oh the sound!