www.myspace.com/plaguefarm

City Life did a small profile on there's no point in not being friends with someone if you want to be friends with them 7. it's tomorrow night, free to get in, and starts at 8. more information here (blog) and here (facebook group).

more reviews of The Bird Room:

"germany at the beginning of 1939" (bookmunch)

"unlikeable and morally dubious characters" (financial times)

"inherent bleakness" (geek pie)

"this is an excellent book" (Gavin Bower)

"physically uncomfortable" (Valerie O'Riordan)

"no problem finishing" (unbound)

also, i am reading at this bookslam event on thursday night, too, in London.

even more publicity

there is an interview with me now up on Bookmunch.

The Bird Room was reviewed on the website Bookgeeks.

i am going to go and get a haircut.
[update: i got a haircut.]

i helped make a short film with this guy. it is a film of a poem by sam pink.

listen to this band. look at their music video.

celebrations, publicity, etc.

The Bird Room is officially 'out' today.

hooray.

at the moment i am celebrating by listening to Francois Hardy and typing this.

a bit later on i am going to celebrate by going to the post office and posting the books to the winners of the competition. i drew things (on request) including me practising my signature while a bird shits on my head, and 'a man and woman standing at the north pole staring at each other'.

later on still, i am going to continue celebrating by going to the pub.

an interview conducted by Steven Hall, is now up on the Canongate website.

there is also an article in The List, based on a phone interview from about a month ago. [warning: includes large photo of me, sitting on a stool, looking 'well pleased with myself'.] i am quoted as saying things in the interview which i don't remember saying but probably said.

[i wrote another paragraph here and then deleted it]

*** COMPETITION WINNERS ***

here is the draw for the competition. thank you to everyone who entered. i will post the books to you as soon as they arrive.

interview

i was interviewed by Darran Anderson for Dogmatika.

*** BIRD ROOM COMPETITION UPDATE ***

if you still want to enter the competition, the closing date is tomorrow (21st Jan), at 10 a.m. (UK time).

i am going to draw the competition entries out of something to create the ten-line poem. i don't know what the thing i am going to draw them out of is yet. it will probably be a big white bowl. i will film myself pulling out the entries and reading them, then put the video up on the blog. if i read your line, YOU ARE A WINNER!!!

about 60 people have entered the competition so far. i'm about halfway through writing up the lines of the poem on bits of paper:


Canongate sent the 'prizes' to me last week, but they never arrived. they're sending some more. hopefully they will arrive tomorrow and i can post them immediately, but there's a small chance it will be the day after or something.

two new reviews

"full of expletives" (Irish Times)

vs.

"abject loneliness" (3:AM)

"i went to go and look at copies of The Bird Room and then at a piece of hair on the floor"

The Bird Room now in stock at Waterstone's

i just got a phonecall from a friend of mine at Waterstone's. The Bird Room is now in stock. Manchester Deansgate branch received 50 copies today. it is on a 3-for-2 promotion.

i just looked at this list of other Waterstone's who also have it in stock.

[i am going to go and have a look at it on the shelf at some point today. this post will probably be updated later on to incorporate a picture of me standing next to copies of the book, grinning like a goon.]

in case you were thinking of going out to buy a copy, here are some 'edited highlights' from recent amazon ('vine programme' (tm)) reviews:

"Pathetic bloke with a broad jealous streak starts off sad, gets a bit sadder and ends up still sad. Possibly there are a couple of intriguing litrary devices to get us questioning his reality, but maybe not. I asked my lad-literate husband if I was missing something. He read it in two hours and said no, there was nothing worth missing."

"At the end of the book though I was forced to ask, 'So what?'. I was left with no sense of meaning or what this book was trying to communicate."

"I was not very thrilled by this book. I found it to be quite mind numbingly void of any real story plot and intensely boring ... All in all I found it boring, seedy (not sexy) and very depressing."

a miniature swan has been made and emailed

a person actually made a miniature swan, after watching this instructional video.



this swan has been 'fashioned' from a potato (body), knitting needle (neck), sachet of vinegar (head), page from student paper with diamonds on it (feathers) and sellotape. also please note the 'improvised lake' in picture one (which was made from an Air Iceland blanket), and biscuit tin (?) pedestal in picture two.

i am giving this swan maximum points. if you want to vote for this swan, you can do so in the comments section. unlike this swan, voting will stay open indefinitely.

thank you for your time and consideration.

interview #16

interview with CATHERINE LACEY

please describe a thirteen year old version of yourself.

The child in question was born on April 9th, 1985. It is the late spring of 1998 and she is with her mother in a white van that will soon be irrevocably damaged. She is underweight by seven pounds and though she still does not have breasts, the bleeding has started today. A Hispanic man was in her kitchen, presumably repairing something, at the exact moment that this happened, so she didn't tell her mother until now, when they were a safe distance away from the man, whoever he was.

have you ever made up a language either by yourself or with 1 or 2 other people? if so, what were some of the words, phrases, etc.?

One time a character in a story I wrote made up a word. It was "Lopskod." Also, he made up "Dosmonetory," but for some reason gmail's spell check is registering that as a real word even though it is not in the dictionary or anywhere in Googledom, so I don't know.

what do you think the people who live next door to you are doing right now?

Stealing bowls of their roommate's granola.

please describe a 'giant elderly online fox'.

Poor Fox. Contrary to popular belief, a giant elderly online fox still hasn't figured out how to turn on the computer yet, so he's sitting in his narrow, windowless office with stacks of his students' term papers around him. His computer was a gift from his nephew about 10 years ago. It's one of those all-in-one Macs that looks like a big clear egg with blue details. There is a sticky note on the screen of the computer that explains how to turn the computer on, but whoever wrote it did so in hand writing too small to be seen by the giant elderly "online" fox. Also, and this is a point of embaressment for him, he's not a fox. He's a cross between a hare and a dog. He's a harg. It's really embarressing, so don't mention it if you see him. And while we're at it, he's not elderly either, he's only 17 years old, but he has a rare form of asbirgers syndrom that made him age really quickly. Amazingly, he only weighs 2 ounces. So cute.

what were you doing before answering these questions? what are you going to do next?

I bought a hat and put it on. A random homeless woman said to me, "You lookin good! You wearin the hell outta that hat!" I said Thank You. I am going to put the hat back on when I am done with this because I have to go feed someone's cats.

*** BIRD ROOM COMPETITION ***

Canongate are giving me 10 copies of The Bird Room, to give away in a competition.

i lay in bed this morning trying to think of ideas for the competition. i didn't want to do something where people have to 'compete' and then i have to judge which one is the best. so i was thinking of a draw. but a draw seemed a bit dull.

here is the competition:

send me an email (chriskillen@gmail.com) with the word 'competition' somewhere in the subject line. include your address, and say whether you want me to write/draw something in it and (if so) what you would like me to write/draw. please understand that i am rubbish at drawing. if you don't specify anything, i will just sign my name and draw a picture of a bird in the top right hand corner.

also in the email, please include one 'line of poetry'. it doesn't need to be any good, it could be very abstract, but make it something specific enough that you will recognise it again ... once the competition is 'closed' (i don't know, a week from now?), i will put up a video on here of me pulling the lines of the poem out of something, to create a 10-line cut up poem. if i read your line, that means there is a book in the post to you.

the competition is open to anyone in the world.

the competition is perfect if you are thinking something like, 'The Bird Room looks interesting, maybe, but i would not want to pay for it' or 'i can't afford it' or 'i have been openly slating it and Chris Killen as a one-trick-pony hack who got lucky (but secretly i would like to read it)' or 'i don't know, i'm bored, why not' or 'i could tear the pages out and wipe my ass with them' or 'okay then; i could give this in to Oxfam if i hate it'.

i hope the instructions weren't too confusing.

update: i am panicking that no one is going to enter the competition.
update: someone entered the competition.
update: some more people entered the competition.
update: i went out for a bit and came home again and a lot more people had entered the competition. it made me feel strange (in a good way).
update: the competition was linked on HTML GIANT. (thanks, sam.) the entries increased 'dramatically'. at the moment, 'contestants' have about a 1-in-4 chance of winning a book.
update: a few more entries have 'trickled in'. i have decided the closing date is going to be Jan 21st. that way i can post them in the afternoon, and the people (in the UK) will receive it on the 'd.o.p.'

London

i went to London yesterday, to read at the pulp net event. i arrived at 17:42. i left at 21:40. i was in London for 3 hours and 58 minutes. on the tube i listened to Handsome Furs. i sat opposite a man reading Razzle. i could see the inside of the magazine reflected in the window behind him. he had a large open rucksack on the seat next to him. after a few minutes he put Razzle back in the rucksack and took out another pornographic magazine. he leafed through it like it was a 'fashion magazine' or something, and he was looking for 'something to catch his eye'. the event was good. i met my friend Alice there. i tried to say something 'humorous' before my short story, to counteract its depressingness. i think my 'humorous' introduction was maybe 76% successful. it was strange reading a story that is now about 2 years old. a man shook my hand after i finished reading. i tried to promote The Bird Room. i think i sold 1-2 prospective copies, maybe. there were lots of people there. i listened to Handsome Furs on the tube back to Euston station. i stood near a green olive on the tube. the olive was dusty, like it had been there all day. i wanted to take a photo of it. i wished i had a camera phone, sort of. i listened to Jens Lekman at Euston station. i needed the toilet. i walked across Euston station, and looked at the pigeons, and thought something like, 'almost all things in the world are small and sad and kind of heart-breaking' whilst simultaneously being aware of how mawkish and sentimental and over-the-top i was being. there is a Filipino word/phrase (?), 'muni-muni'. someone taught me that. i paid 30p to use the toilet. i had an idea for a Paul Simon story as i was washing my hands. i think i am going to write a Paul Simon novel soon. 'unpublishable.' i dried my hands in a Dyson 'airblade' (?) handdryer. you just put your hands in a slot. it dries your hands really quickly, like someone is wiping them with a frantic sheet of air. i thought about a handdryer in Chortlon, in the Iguana Bar, which is the most 'insane' and 'over the top' handdryer i have ever used. it has a blue neon light and it makes a terrifying noise, like a cross between a vaccum cleaner and a tube train approaching. i felt that using the Dyson 'airblade' (?) handdryer was worth 30p. i asked Helen Simpson a question in the Q&A, after her reading at the Pulp Net event. she said that she liked the short story writers Lorrie Moore, Tobias Woolf, Alice Munro, and some other people who i've forgotten. i went back to Manchester on a Virgin Pendolino train called 'The City of Chester'. i wonder if this man went to the Pulp Net event in the end.

Handsome Furs + review + 'online book tour'

i wrote a short thing about the band Handsome Furs on barbed cat penis.

The Bird Room has had its second proper review (this time by the 'manchester person' Max Dunbar).

there is now a post on the Canongate website about my forthcoming 'online book tour' (which is just a series of scheduled interviews with online literary journals and things)

interview, poster

Tao Lin asked me some questions about British publishing, and bookshops, and Knut Hamsun novels.

i made a poster for the next reading night:


more info about that here.

reciprocal interview by Ryan W. Bradley

i was reciprocally interviewed by interviewee #15, Ryan W. Bradley (see two posts down).

the interview can be read here.

*warning: interview spoiler alert* negativity, passivity, apathy, moustaches, repetition, ingestion of trans-fats, self-loathing, small penis, lack of intimate relationships, Steven Hall, forthcoming novel (Jan 22nd), more negative amazon customer reviews, lack of knowledge, Frankie Sparo, inability to tell anyone else what to do seriously, giant panic, giant feelings of technical inadaqacy due to comparisons of writing to the writing of Richard Yates *warning: interview spoiler alert*

"let some mysterious chunk of space debris puncture the roof and set me free"

Crispin Best made a remix of the the song 'Andy Warhol'. i like the remix a lot. it made me laugh. it sounds 'wildly geriatric' somehow, in a good way.

i was featured in Dennis Cooper's thing, 'Five interesting guys I don't know personally who've befriended me on Facebook, Volume Two'.

i have some readings coming up.

very soon:

i am reading at the Pulp Net Short Story Cafe, next monday (12th), at the Costa Picadilly in London. it starts at 7.30pm, and costs £3 in.

soonish:

the launch for The Bird Room is going to be part of the next No Point in Not Being Friends night, which is booked for Tuesday, 27th of Jan. i think the launch part will be quite early on, about 8.30pm, maybe.

i am reading at the January Bookslam in London, on Jan 29th, along with Ross Raisin, Richard Milward and Joe Dunthorne. it costs £6/£8 in, and starts at 8pm.

bit further away:

i will be doing a lunchtime reading thing, somewhere at Nottingham Trent (probably the Clifton Campus?), and again, maybe in the evening, somewhere else in Nottingham, on Feb 25th.

ages away:

i am reading at this Manchester University event, on 29th of June, along with fellow writing fellow Peter Sansom. it costs £4/£2.50 in and starts at 5pm.

the quote at the top is from a Mountain Goats song.

interview #15

interview with RYAN W. BRADLEY

what did you do today?

So far I have woken up, put in my contacts, taken a shower, shaved, gotten dressed, and eaten some strange new cereal (I think it had something to do with Animal Planet). Now I'm chilling on the couch mentally preparing to go to my day job.

what is going on in your life right now?

I'm getting ready to head in to the thesis semester of my MFA, I also stay busy with my six month old son and doing math homework with my ten year old son. I'm also trying not to be impatient about all the submissions I have out in the ether, especially not the submissions of my novel.

please describe an 'online interactive elderly cat'

Orange, slightly pixelated, ragged fur. Trying to cough, but not quite able. It sounds more like choking. You turn down the volume on your computer. Then you change the page, because really, who wants to look at that?

have you ever made up a board game?

Not that I can remember. I've made up non-board games, ranging from baseball with stuffed animals when I was a small child to games that were ridiculous excuses for me to drink more when I was an undergrad.

what are you going to do directly after finishing this interview?

I am going to find something to bring to work for lunch, and grab a book as well (I'm thinking Karnak Cafe by Naquib Mahfouz). Wait, reading back over my answers life is sounding dull, so now I'm going to make something up. After I finish this interview I am going to get in my Nascar car and drive in a circle for a few hours. Damn.

interview #14

interview with MONTGOMERY MAXTON

please describe an 'online interactive game' called 'Elderly Relative'.

hmmm. well. i'm just going to write how my last visit with my grandfather, aged 85, went. he is in a nursing home here in America and i swung by last night after leaving Christmas at my mother's for a quick visit. As I was turning into his shared room I was met in the doorway by him in his wheelchair. "It's me, Montgomery." said three times. "Oh yeah." "How are you, Merry Christmas." "Yeahhhh." He's kind of out of it from all his medication. He has, among other things, pnemonia. It's about eight o'clock at night. He is headed to the nurses station to get his blood-sugar checked, take his other medication, etc. "I just wanted to stop by and see you on Christmas. I'll be back this weekend." "Oh yeah? I'll be at the funeral home."

please describe yourself in the voice of a tiny child.

I's five feets nine inchez, hundred turdy pounds, my eyes blue my hairs ... mommy what color is my hair? bown. I like boys.

what is happening in your life right now?

I just finished lunch and had a Starbucks latte. My laundry is drying. It's the day after Christmas. In two hours and fifty-seven minutes I'm having a coffee date with a former Navy sailor. I may go to a club tonight. Tomorrow I'll be seeing a few movies and having a few more coffee dates. The same for Sunday. I am single for the first time in like nine years. I am prepping for my first major solo photography exibit one week from today. Then I'm flying to San Francisco where I'll make my second gay porno and hang-out with my beloved friend the artist Rene Capone and his friend the beloved novelist Flower Frankenstein. Also, I would like to point out, for those of you who are not attempting to do this, that it is hard making a living being a writer and photographer, even if you are well-published and have a cool name.

what are your 'hopes and dreams'? (please reply using sentimental language and cliches)

To find my Ashley Wilkes (aka Mr. Right). To start raising a child no later than age 35 (seven years left). To get married (to a man, so there is no confusion). To finally finish my novel that I've been working on for the past eight months out here in rural Ohio. To buy a BMW. To return to my flat in Manhattan with my Ashley Wilkes and Bonnie (can you tell I watched Gone with the Wind last night?). I also watched American Psycho, but there is something not right about referring to my Mr. Right as Patrick Bateman.

please write something about the online computer game the 'Second Life'?

So I just looked at the site. I'm intrigued. I think I'll sign up and find yet another online thing to waste more of my fucking time.

interview #13

interview with AIDEN CLARKSON

please describe an elderly relative in the voice of a 'bratty' teenage American girl.

I can't do this. i thought about it for a long time, and i tried out various different ideas in my head. i thought about my Grandad in his kitchen, and my Grandpa in his garden, and my Grandma's big glasses, and my Nan's obscenities.

I cannot do it.

I think it is very difficult to describe someone without being cruel to them. and i do not want to be cruel to my grandparents.

Fuck you Chris Killen for trying to make me describe my Grandparents.

like, totally like, fuck you? like, whatever, like Chris Killen?. Are you like a total Retard?

how does your own medicine taste Chris Killen? does your own medicine taste like, totally bitter?

what are your 'hopes and dreams'? (please answer using sentimental language and cliches)

Hopes:
My hopes are modest. i want to have enough money to live by the sea. i don't want to have to get a job. I want to write beautiful books and collections of poetry and short stories and things and i want people to read them and feel affected.

i am going to have to get a horrible job.

I want to meet a woman i fall in love with and stay in love with and it doesn't get ruined. i would love her with the entirity of my being.

I will win the noble literature prize. people will acknowledge that i am as talented, transgressive and visionary as William Burroughs, but with mass appeal. i will not shoot my wife in the face.

also, simultaneously, i want to live in london, where i will eat handfuls of drugs, drink bathfulls of alcohol, fuck unending amounts of women in incomprehensible ways and combinations, get thinner, get rich, become famous and have people write slightly awed articles about me and my drug drink and woman intake and my fiery and immediate prose style.

They will call me the UK's answer to Hunter Thompson. i will die of heroin.

Dreams:

My dreams happen when i am asleep. i enjoy them. sometimes i can control them. this is the best thing, especially when i am dreaming about fucking or fighting.

in my first year of university i think my occasional lucid dreams actually were the highlights of my life. i was not very happy at the time.

what is going on in your life right now?

right now it is Xmas eve. i am at my parent's house. i have a sore back and neck. and the rest of my body is sore as well. i am bored of going out in my hometown. i have what is known in some circles as Lover's Balls. i am frustrated because i have not fucked /been fucked recentley. i would say for around 10 or 12 days.

i am considering what to get for my next tattoo.

My sister gave birth to a baby boy on sunday. His name is Harry. Harry has made me into an uncle, my other sister into an aunt, and my parents into grandparents. Those are some impressive acheivements for a tiny little beautiful miniature person who has only been in the world for less than a week. Good going Harry, you are a little champion.

What else....

i have been doing some writing. i have been doing more writing recentley. i think it is because i am single again. i was going out with an incredible woman. But it did not work out. So now i have a lot more time on my hands. so i am writing more.

You asking me to read at No point....5 really enthused me.

i am meant to be writing my dissertation. i should write more dissertation.

i have been using the phrase "You lucky goose!" quite a lot recentley. i have got a lot of beard at the moment.

I am hungry. i drank a lot last night. i danced badly. i think i kissed one girl. on the lips, but with no tongue. i remember last night i went to the bar and i ordered a pint and a shot of whiskey and a vodka and coke and i poured the shot of whiskey into the pint, drank the vodka and coke in four mouthfulls and then went for a piss in the toilet and stood there with the pint with the whiskey in it in one hand and my cock in the other and when i was pissing i could feel other peoples piss soaking into my socks through the holes in the shoes i got for free because my housemate's brother left them in the front room of our shared house in manchester.

do you own a watch?

nope. i have a nice watch somewhere.

i used to wear a watch to school.

but i have a preternatural ability to break watches. they loathe me. they kill themsleves just to get off my wrist.

i don't like them. they catch on things.

they make my wrist too heavy.

they annoy my skin.

i hate watches.

please write something about something you like or dislike or feel ambivalent towards.

i am very strongly in favour of insulting people. not insulting complete strangers (although i have done that, and it has a certain guilty thrill about it). Insulting people you know. i think it keeps the intellect sharp. there is nothing better than having friends who you can say horrible horrible things to, and know that your friendship is so strong that it doesn't matter. it becomes a game. You can win with a sudden and unexpected outburst. call them a Mongoloid Nazi. Call them Daddyfucker. or you can win if you create a very long and detailed hypothetical scenario in which you violentley rape them.

i find it helps to act it out.

get physical.

(but not to the point of actually raping them)

It's childish, but beautiful. prurient insults both require and aid the development of a rich vocabulary. And they help you discover your own voice. my insults tend towards sexually explicit (and often sexually violent) non-sequiters. maybe yours will be more scatological? who knows.

i have a casual lover. she told me i laughed like a rapist, and it made me self concious EVERY TIME I LAUGHED from then on. i have only just got over it. She's incredibley talented at being insulting.

she sent me a text today saying i had a face like a diseased gash.

she is winning on points.

I will have to kick her dish in next time i see her.

interview #12

interview with SIAN CUMMINS

if you were going to create an male 'avatar' in the online interactive game 'Second Life', what would he be called and what would he look like, do, etc.?

He would be called The Line Manager and he would wear a Rain Check Suit. He would Review, Monitor and Evaluate the situation.

who would win in a fight between you and me?

You, probably. When we were flatmates, I would have had recourse to dirty tricks; dipping your toothbrush in mushroom soup every day until you were at such a spiritual low that my pathetic martial skills would prove deadly. Now I am powerless.

how can i cure the mold on my bathroom ceiling (it keeps coming back)?

You should ask ‘how can I mould The Cure on my bathroom ceiling (they keep coming back like all the other ones do)’. Cure-nices.

if you had unlimited money (Linden dollars) in the online interactive game 'Second Life', what would you do (as the male 'avatar' you described in question one)?

Going forward, I would Action a bout of Sky-Blue Thinking. If my online friends could spare me the Resource, I would buy them a celebratory Pixel Sour.

amazon, guardian, liz phair

The Bird Room is now £5.99 pre-order on amazon.

it can be reviewed.

it got a very a small mention in this Guardian article.

Liz Phair (born Elizabeth Clark Phair on April 17, 1967^[2] in New Haven, Connecticut, USA) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.

Phair began her career in the early 1990s by self-releasing lo-fi audio cassettes under the moniker Girly Sound, before signing with Matador Records and becoming one of the leading artists of the 1990s DIY indie rock underground. In 2003, Phair's fourth album, Liz Phair, was released on her new label, Capitol Records and her music began to move in a more pop rock-oriented approach.

Her signature guitar, which she is often seen playing (and is prominent upon the cover of her self-titled fourth album), is a Fender Duo-Sonic II. Her album Exile in Guyville was chosen as one of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.