I’m working on updating the website and adding some social media links to, you know, up those follower numbers, in the meantime I’ll manually add them here, please think about giving me and Chai a follow on Twitter and Instagram.
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If you’re in the Brooklyn, NY, area on Saturday November 5th at 7:30pm, stop by the Comic Carousel hosted by talented artist Robert Sikoryak. The Comic Carousel is an amazing event where graphic novelists (or, in my case, graphic memoirists), sequential artists, and comic creators do live, interpretive and performative readings of their works! I’ve never been but I’m one of the guest speakers on the 5th and I’ve heard that it’s an amazing time for anyone who loves comics, graphic novels, and any sort of sequential art.
Along with myself, there will be the amazing artists and writers: Brian Michael Weaver, Rebecca Mock, Lauren Weinstein, and last, but not least, my fellow Street Noise Books author, Sharon De La Cruz!
Here’s the address: 370 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211, USA. Be there at 7:30pm sharp!
I have a new article out on Brevity Blog today. The title for the article is: Tinder for Writers? How to Find your Writing Partner on Reddit. If you get a chance, it’s a quick read, and goes over briefly how my writing partner Chai Simone and I connected on the SubReddit R/ComicBookCollabs; became partners, got an agent, and then a deal for our book Just Another Meat-Eating Dirtbag; and then it discusses how others might be able to do the same thing and find their writing partners online too!
I’ve long wondered why some books on Amazon seemingly get star treatment and get to add cool photos and author Q&A’s in their book description section and others don’t; apparently, I’ve learned, it’s because Amazon has something called an “A+ program.” Amazon’s A+ program is special program that only allows select, approved, publishers to use these advanced features on a book’s page.
Anyway, I learned about this A+ program recently because my publisher is part of it and I’m excited to announce that my new book is going to be part of it too!
Check out the Amazon A+ stuff on my Amazon book page: Just Another Meat-Eating Dirtbag: A Memoir. (Images below too).
We just got in our first trade publication review for Meat-Eating Dirtbag and it’s from Publisher’s Weekly!
Publisher’s Weekly is one of the premier book reviewers and they get sent thousands of books for possible review–not all of them get a review–so it’s an honor that they’ve taken the take to read and review my newest book. Here’s my favorite highlight from the review:
“Anthony’s cocky, chatty voice is complemented by Simone’s vibrantly colored drawings and keen eye for gesture and character detail. Whether or not this missive changes minds about meat-eating, it’s a winning argument for empathy, concluding that love can sometimes be the absolute best, too.”
One of the most stressful things in publishing a book is asking other authors/writers/illustrators to blurb your book (if you’re not familiar with what a blurb is, it’s those comments that typically appear on the cover, back cover, and inside first pages of a book where other writers and media types praise the book). It always feels weird/awkward to approach someone whose work you respect and then ask them to read your work and hopefully enjoy it enough to comment positively on it (not everyone agrees, and not everyone comments positively).
Anyway, we got some amazing blurbs for my new graphic memoir Just Another Meat-Eating Dirtbag.
The first is from Tom Hart, an amazing graphic memoirist who wrote the heartfelt, and heartbreaking NYT best-selling graphic memoir Rosalie Lightning (read this graphic memoir when you’re in need of a cathartic crying session). Tom also wrote the book The Art of the Graphic Memoir: Tell Your Story, Change your Life, which was a book that I devoured while writing my own graphic memoir, so it was amazing to hear that he would actually be reading my book and that he was willing to provide a blurb (truly, an amazing guy).
Tom’s blurb for Just Another Meat-Eating Dirtbag: “A charming, often hilarious look at how love is actually the worst.” It’s a short and sweet blurb and exactly what an author is looking for, it’s also the blurb that made it on the front cover of my book!
The next blurb is from Josh Neufeld an amazing writer and artist who wrote and illustrated A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, and who was the illustrator of the fantastic and NYT best-selling book The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media. (Both books are quick reads and ones that I can’t recommend enough!)
Anyway, here’s Josh’s blurb for Just Another Meat-Eating Dirtbag:
“Just Another Meat-Eating Dirtbag offers a lot to chew on — not just the carnivore/vegetarian/vegan debate, but also questions of war, speciesism, ethics, and religion. The meat of the book, though, is a star-crossed love story, and Anthony’s confident, self-aware narration, spiced with Simone’s engaging art, makes for a fulfilling meal.” It’s another excellent blurb that made it onto the back of the book.
And last, but not least, a blurb from Global Vegan Magazine, an amazing company and magazine based out of Canada, but reaching globally, to spread the word about veganism and animal rights (two themes touched upon in my book).
Global Vegan Magazine’s blurb of Just Another Meat-Eating Dirtbag:
“A refreshing, skillfully-illustrated novel that provoked all the ranges of emotions. Michael’s ability to write with humor quickly draws you into his personal experience as a meat-eating boyfriend learning about compassion for animals in the midst of a schemey plan. His perspective of a military veteran offers readers the opportunity to learn compassion from a different lens.” And there you have it, another great blurb that made it onto the back cover of my newest book.
I’m honored that these individuals took the time to read my work and felt strongly enough in it that they would lend their names to the blurbing and promotion of it.
If you’ve read and enjoyed any of my work before; or are someone who loves graphic novels/graphic memoirs; or are someone who loves books on veganism and animal rights (don’t need to be all three) then I think you’ll enjoy this book (and if you’re doubting it, then just reread what those blurbers had to say!)
I cannot believe it’s been five years since my last book Civilianized: A Young Veteran’s Memoir came out! I guess it’s time for another! This November 8th I have a new graphic memoir coming out and if you’re not familiar with graphic memoirs they’re this amazing–newish–growing medium that combines graphic novels (illustrated story-telling) with the honesty and self-reflection of memoir.
A few examples of great graphic memoirs are Rosalie Lightning, Come Home Indio, Tom Boy, I’m a Wild Seed and Fun Home.
My new book is titled: Just Another Meat-Eating Dirtbag: A Memoir and here’s what it’s about:
“A rough-and-tumble Iraq War veteran is young and in love, and the last thing on his mind is food and the ethics of eating meat. But when his girlfriend becomes a vegetarian and animal rights activist, suddenly food is all he thinks about.
A true story of how love and vegetarianism can triumph over all else. Love, heartache, and the rest of the ingredients that make a reader laugh, smile, stop-and-think, are all found in this enthralling graphic memoir. Amidst the stories of love and frustration, there are treatises on food, vegetarianism, and the ethics of the animal rights movement (some of it juxtaposed against Michael’s graphic wartime experiences). Told with Michael’s sardonic perspective and the delightful artwork of debut graphic novelist Chai Simone, this is a journey of true love gone temporarily astray.”
I think it’s some of my best work yet and I’m super-stoked and honored to have worked with the amazon artist Chai Simone and the amazing Indie Publisher Street Noise Books (more on them both later).
Anyway, if you’ve read any of my stuff before I think you’ll definitely enjoy this book, and make sure to pre-order it on amazon or at your local bookstore (pre-orders help with some sort of algorithm for books and stuff, so make sure to buy a copy today!)
Recently, I finished reading I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel, a novel by Tom Wolfe. I loved the book and, as always, loved Tom Wolfe’s writing style and way of dissecting his subject matter, which in this case was collegiate life, sex (as always), racism, coolness, and (also, as always) the general maladies of life.
One thing that he kept repeating throughout the book though, was the term “Fuck patois,” in relation to the language that young college-aged folks use nowadays (also “shit patois”).
I wasn’t familiar with the term “patois” and had to look up the definition: “the dialect of the common people of a region, differing in various respects from the standard language of the rest of the country.”
It wasn’t a major part of the theme/plot of the book, but I found his musings on the “fuck patois” and “shit patois” interesting; especially since, for those of you familiar with my own writing, the military and veterans, have their own special usage of “fuck patois” and “shit patois.”
Here are some quick “Fuck Patois” and “Shit Patois” paragraphs that stand out from the text:
Without even realizing what it was, Jojo spoke in this year’s prevailing college creole: Fuck Patois. In Fuck Patois, the word fuck was used as an interjection (“What the fuck” or plain “Fuck,” with or without an exclamation point) expressing unhappy surprise; as a participial adjective (“fucking guy,” “fucking tree,” “fucking elbows,”) expressing disparagement or discontent; as an adverb modifying and intensifying an adjective (“pretty fucking obvious) or a verb (“I’m gonad fucking kick his ass”); as a noun (“That stupid fuck,” “don’t give a fuck”); as a verb meaning Go Away (“Fuck off”), beat-physically, financially, or politically (“really fucked him over”) or beaten (“I’m fucked”), botched (“really fucked that up”), drunk (“You are so fucked up”); as an imperative expressing contempt (“Fuck you,” “Fuck that”). Rarely—the usage had become somewhat archaic—but every now and then it referred to sexual intercourse (“He fucked her on the carpet in front of the TV”).
The rest of the trip fell into a regular pattern. The frat boys and the sorority girls sang songs—they shared gossip—the two bitches were superb at filleting people’s reputations while seeming to be merely adding little details—they turned whatever they could into sexual innuendo—they indulged their predilection for Shit Patois. Charlotte had been aware of Fuck Patois from the day she arrived at Dupont, but it was not until spending hour after hour after hour cooped up in this SUV that she realized how cool it apparently was to use shit in every way possible: to mean possessions (“Where’s your shit?”), lies or misleading explanations (“Are you shitting me?” “We need a shit detector”), drunk (“shit-faced”), trouble (“in deep shit”), ineptitude (“couldn’t play point guard for shit”), care about (“give a shit”), rude, thoughtless, disloyal (“really shitty thing to do”), not kidding (“no shit?”), obnoxiously unpleasant (“he’s a real shit”), mindless conversation (“talking shit,” “shooting the shit”), confusing story (“or some shut shit”) drugs (“you bring the shit?”), to egest (“take a shit”) to fart in such a way that it become partly egestion (“shart”), a trivial matter (“a piece of shit”), unpleasantly surprised (“he about shit a brick”), ignorance (“he don’t know shit”), pompous man (“the big shit,” “that shitcake”), hopeless situation (“up Shit Creek”), disappointment (“oh shit!”), startling (“holy shit!”), unacceptable, inedible (“shit on a shingle”), strategy (“ohthat shit again”), feces, literally (“shit”), slum (“some shithook neighborhood”), meaningless (“that don’t mean shit”), et cetera (“and massages and shit”), very (“mean as shit”), verbal abuse (“gave me shit”), violence (“before the shit came down” or “hit the fan,” “don’t start no shit,” “won’t be no shit”). Still, they didn’t neglect Fuck Patois…
I can’t believe it’s been five years since I last had my author photos! Figured it was time for some new ones!
The one on the right is my new one, taken by Robert over at 4K_Kings Photography. The one on the left was taken on the day I graduated from my MFA program at Lesley University (photo was taken by faculty member Thomas Sayers Ellis).
More photos to follow of the photo sessions I was lucky to have with the talented photographer over at 4K_Kings.
In this dark humored War Memoir, Iraq veteran Michael Anthony discusses his return from war and how he defeated his PTSD. Civilianized is a must read for any veteran, or anyone who knows a veteran, who has returned from war and suffered through Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
“An intense memoir.” -Kirkus
“A must read.” -Colby Buzzell
“Anthony delivers a dose of reality that can awaken the mind…” Bookreporter
Order your copy of Civilianized: A Young Veteran’s Memoir .