PRESS RELEASES
Mean Martin Manning
$everance
Junk
The Amadeus Net
Mother’s Milk
Cherry Whip
Exit Only
Devil Jazz I
Devil Jazz II
Season of Ash

ENC Press 21 April 2005
ENC Press 10 January 2004
ENC Press 15 October 2003
ENC Press 4 July 2003

NEW! $everance in Chicago’s WGN9, 1 June 2007
NEW! $everance in Chicago Radio Spotlight, 13 May 2007
NEW! $everance in Chicago Sun Times, 10 May 2007
NEW! Richard Kaempfer in podcast interview on Cara’s Basement
NEW! Richard Kaempfer on The Stan & Terry Show on WCKG
NEW! Richard Kaempfer on The Ministry of Truth radio show on WHPK 88.5 FM
ExecTV in the Connecticut’s Day, 9 December 2005
The Writing Show: Olga Gardner Galvin Interview 26 September 2005
The Writing Show: Christopher Largen Interview 29 August 2005
Time Out Chicago 21-28 July 2005
FoxNews 20 April 2004
FrontPage Magazine 12 November 2003

PRIZE-WINNING PLAYWRIGHT CRAIG FORGRAVE’S NOVEL
LATEST CANADIAN HUMOR EXPORT

Devil Jazz Pits Satan, Hitler, Marilyn Monroe, and Van Gogh
Against Apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, George, and Ringo

NEW YORK — Were Monty Python’s re-released Life of Brian to feature new footage of the Devil tempting Brian instead of Jesus, it might look something like Craig Forgrave’s new novel Devil Jazz. In Devil Jazz, the population of Doomsday Harbor mistake a confused homeless man suffering from amnesia for Christ, returned to prevent Satan from triggering the end of the world. After all, his face matches the image that has just appeared on the wall of the men’s toilet in the Doomsday Cafe. Satan’s plan is to send out his demons — Adolf Hitler, Marilyn Monroe, and Vincent van Gogh — to attack the last bastions of purity: the youth, the chaste, and the starving artists. Humankind’s last line of defense is the dazed and confused “JC” and his new disciples: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

A guardian angel must be looking out for Forgrave, what with Devil Jazz getting published just as Monty Python announced they were re-releasing their Messiah spoof The Life of Brian, in part to “serve as an antidote to all the hysteria about Mel [Gibson]’s movie,” The Passion of the Christ. Devil Jazz actually splits the difference between these two works, as it wraps a reverent meditation on human folly and shortsightedness in an irreverent comedy. Amidst all the satire is serious consideration of how quickly human beings can lapse into destructive behavior, how easily we can be seduced into following anyone who promises easy living at no apparent cost. In this case, it’s the Devil, disguised as a scientifically advanced alien awakened from a long nap in the Great Pyramid, who makes such promises, and his estimations of human behavior are wickedly funny. Meanwhile, his counterpart “JC” struggles mightily to recover his memory out of a sense of a personal duty to forestall the apocalypse.

Ironically, though Forgrave has won Canada’s National Playwriting Competition and had his work produced in Vancouver, Victoria, and Ottawa, he had to turn himself into Canada’s latest humor export to find a publisher for Devil Jazz: Olga Gardner Galvin of New York’s ENC Press. This small, completely independent boutique press uses e-commerce to connect directly with the emerging independent-thinker counterculture. Its specialty is sharp, entertaining fiction driven by engaging characters and likely to contain elements of social and political satire — offbeat, well-written novels too quirky and irreverent for mass-market publishers because they do not fit any genre. Galvin has deliberately chosen to distribute her quality trade paperback originals primarily through her Web site, instead of through the retail book industry, whether brick and mortar or online. “Keeping my overhead low through a series of small runs means I can take risks, and make decent author royalties a reality,” she says.

This philosophy, and the motto “Tipping Sacred Cows Since 2003,” have quickly resulted in a catalogue of a dozen published and upcoming books that is rapidly becoming international in scope. Devil Jazz author Craig Forgrave is one of two Canadian authors on the ENC Press list. There are two Britons signed, and queries from an Australian, a Nigerian, and an Indian writer are under consideration. Galvin attributes her house’s international reach to mainstream publishing decisions being “informed by a very insular, urban-elite conventional wisdom. Some of the best fiction being written today has completely unprecedented points of view, so the usual publishing suspects don’t recognize any of it as a ‘real book.’ I’m trying to maintain the important social tradition of advocating and nurturing ‘underrepresented’ and ‘alternative’ voices. To me, that means novels too complex and nuanced for the mass market, too multidimensional to be assigned to one particular genre, and too fun and readable to be classified as ‘literary.’”

A Devil Jazz capsule summary, sample tasting, and author bio are available at www.encpress.com/DJ.html — home of a few of the most wicked, most funny, and most thought-provoking novels North America’s mainstream publishing business doesn’t know how to handle, including the latest comic work by one of their own that Canada let slip away.

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NATIONAL PLAYWRITING COMPETITION WINNER CRAIG FORGRAVE
HAS NOVEL SNAPPED UP BY “SACRED COW TIPPING” NEW YORK FICTION HOUSE

Devil Jazz Pits Satan, Hitler, Marilyn Monroe, and Van Gogh
Against Apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, George, and Ringo

NEW YORK — Why must even a National Playwriting Competition First Prize winner tread that well-worn artists’ path south to the States to find a publishing house for his novel? Says Craig Forgrave of his first novel, Devil Jazz: “I should have known there was no way in hell that a Canadian publisher would touch this book. It’s satirical, it’s set in New York City, and it has no recognizable Canadian content other than a Yorkton farm girl getting possessed by the demon spirit of Marilyn Monroe.”

Devil Jazz is a multilayered work that wraps a reverent meditation on human folly and shortsightedness in an irreverent comedy. In Devil Jazz, the population of Doomsday Harbor mistake a confused homeless man suffering from amnesia for Christ, returned to prevent Satan from triggering the end of the world. After all, his face matches the image that has just appeared on the wall of the men’s toilet in the Doomsday Cafe. Satan’s plan is to send out his demons — Adolf Hitler, Marilyn Monroe, and Vincent van Gogh — to attack the last bastions of purity: the youth, the chaste, and the starving artists. Humankind’s last line of defense is the dazed and confused “JC” and his new disciples: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

The stateside setting did allow Forgrave to paint U.S. media, and the president, as cartoon buffoons. He also created a suburban American couple who turn survivalist in an attempt to ride out the impending Apocalypse. Such unflattering characterizations serve as a foil for the nobility of “JC,” who struggles mightily to recover his memory out of a sense of a personal duty to forestall the apocalypse, and can certainly be read as yet another welcome parody of Canada’s neighbor to the south.

But while the Canada Council for the Arts says it assists and promotes Canadian writers regardless of where their work is set, one editor has described Canadian publishers’ lists as featuring “Canada tourist brochures disguised as thousand-page novels.” Commercial publishing parallels the Canada Council grant process of decision-making by “peer assessment committees.” People who have succeeded by producing the types of work that get grants are cycled through these committees as judges of new rounds of applicants.

“Canadian humor is our greatest export to the States,” says Forgrave, who is now an example of that phenomenon. Though he had achieved professional status, namely “having a history of public presentation or publication,” his novel languished in manuscript form until he pitched it to Olga Gardner Galvin of ENC Press in New York. This small, completely independent boutique press uses e-commerce to connect directly with the emerging independent-thinker counterculture. Its specialty is sharp, entertaining fiction driven by engaging characters and likely to contain elements of social and political satire — offbeat, well-written novels too quirky and irreverent for mass-market publishers because they do not fit any genre. Galvin has deliberately chosen to distribute her quality trade paperback originals primarily through her Web site, instead of through the retail book industry, whether brick and mortar or online. “Keeping my overhead low through a series of small runs means I can take risks, and make decent author royalties a reality,” she says.

This philosophy, and the motto “Tipping Sacred Cows Since 2003,” have quickly resulted in a catalogue of a dozen published and upcoming books that is rapidly becoming international in scope. Devil Jazz author Craig Forgrave is one of two Canadian authors on the ENC Press list. There are two Britons signed, and queries from an Australian, a Nigerian, and an Indian writer are under consideration. Galvin attributes her house’s international reach to mainstream publishing decisions being “informed by a very insular, urban-elite conventional wisdom. Some of the best fiction being written today has completely unprecedented points of view, so the usual publishing suspects don’t recognize any of it as a ‘real book.’ The usual Canadian suspects didn’t recognize Craig as a ‘real Canadian author’ because of his unprecedented point of view. Oh, well . . . Their loss, my gain.”

A Devil Jazz capsule summary, sample tasting, and author bio are available at www.encpress.com/DJ.html — home of a few of the most wicked, most funny, and most thought-provoking novels North America’s mainstream publishing business doesn’t know how to handle — and now the home of yet another Canadian comedic talent who had to head to the States to get published.

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NEW YORK — South Africa, 1994. Nelson Mandela, smiling and waving at adoring crowds. Zulus marching on Pretoria in traditional dress, brandishing axes and spears. Eugene Terreblanche and his fanatical followers planting car bombs and trying to poison the water in Soweto. Endless violent clashes between loyalists of rival political factions. All with the attention of the world press fully focused on the first-ever free elections in that country’s history.

This April will mark the tenth anniversary of the first free elections in South Africa. Media retrospectives will no doubt reduce this milestone event to a struggle between a monolithic black population and a monolithic white population, while, in reality, there were factions and internal rivalries on both sides. Looking beyond the facade of benign statesmen smiling at cheering crowds, Justin Bryant’s first novel, Season of Ash, eloquently explores the reality of political manipulation, the adversities of township life, and the disquieting uncertainties of change. A tale of revolutions real and merely hoped for, Season of Ash puts history and headlines into a human context, demonstrating, in the tradition of V. S. Naipul’s Bend in the River and Robert Stone’s Flag for Sunrise, the unique inclination of mankind to both save and destroy itself in the name of righteousness.

Florida native Justin Bryant has lived in England, Scotland, South Africa, and North Carolina. In the fall and winter of 1993–94, while visiting his father in South Africa and pondering his retirement from professional soccer, Bryant traveled through Johannesburg, small Afrikaner farm towns, and even smaller black settlements. He found that the young black people he befriended in Kruger National Park and at the mall in Sandton City were nowhere near as sanguine about their society’s prospects under the likely new black leadership as were the young adults in the integrated crowds at Johannesburg outdoor markets. Haunted by the contrast between the idyllic bush veld and the revolutionary turmoil in towns and cities, he spent the following winter in the Florida Keys feverishly drafting the political novel that would become Season of Ash.

After being told by one agent that nobody would publish a first novel set in South Africa, and getting “we love it but can’t market it” letters from others, Bryant stumbled across ENC Press, a new boutique New York fiction house whose motto is “Tipping Sacred Cows Since 2003.” ENC Press publisher, Olga Gardner Galvin, had gone into business for herself on the premise that selling books directly to readers from a Web site — thus avoiding giving deep discounts to either brick-and-mortar or online chains — would enable her to publish quirky fiction that fell between genre cracks. It would also allow her to work hand-in-hand with promising authors, in the manner in which the great publishing houses used to take pride.

Galvin points to Season of Ash as an exemplar of ENC Press fiction: it deals with issues that heretofore have mainly been the domain of nonfiction, and does so in a well-written, entertaining way, without putting forward feelings as “proof” of propositions that don’t stand up under rational examination. She recommends Season of Ash as guilt-free reading for people who might otherwise not think they can get political and social food for thought through fiction, or who consider reading fiction self-indulgent.

Galvin searches out genre-busting books and authors whose views may be unpopular with some readers and establishment critics. While many mainstream editors and publishers like to position themselves as guardians of an important social tradition — advocating and nurturing “underrepresented” and “alternative” voices — what ENC Press considers “underrepresented” and “alternative” are novels too complex and nuanced for the mass market, too multidimensional to be assigned to one particular genre, and too fun and readable to be classified as “literary.”

ENC Press’s self-chosen “boutique” designation involves more than house size and the high level of attention given to the editing, design, and production of each release. ENC Press engages in the antithesis of mass marketing, distributing primarily through its Web site. Other publishers, whether inspired by ENC Press or not, are beginning to see the wisdom of keeping titles available through direct e commerce as well. The long-established Penguin house recently announced that it would keep its back catalog available by selling directly to readers through its Web site. Coming from a stalwart of an industry that has looked upon selling through the Internet as the hallmark of a vanity press, this is some pretty serious validation for the entrepreneur who wasn’t afraid to hitch the traditional book-crafting wagon to a 21st-century high-tech star.

And how many houses get to lead off their second fiction list with something as timely as Season of Ash, then follow with new works from American, Canadian, and British authors? Descriptions, samples, and more information about this novel and others are available at www.encpress.com/ASH.html. ENC Press takes PayPal, and has printable forms for those who would rather make their purchase with checks or money orders.

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