Bella Street Romance Goes Retro

Delicious drama, thrills, and cliff hangers...what better way to celebrate literature as fall approaches?  The Chicago Center For Literature and Photography is hosting a new 12-part serial audio anthology to run every Monday in September, October and November; entitled " CCLaP 's Podcast Dreadful," inspired by old Victorian "pennydreadful " publications, and features cliffhangers to every chapter and a dark, strange tone throughout , featuring around a dozen writers over the entire course of the run.    On Friday, September 21st, there will be performances of episode 4 in front of a live audience at Quimby's in Wicker Park , featuring not just four local authors but a crew doing real-time radio-style sound effects. (The total list of participating authors includes Kate Cullan, Jason Fisk, Kevin Haworth, Jacob Knabb, Keith McCleary and Sophia G. Starmack, John Reed, Jason Riley, Jim Ruland, Davis Schneiderman, Ben Tanzer and Karl Wolff, with mus...

Please help me welcome Chicago Center for Literature and Photography author Mark Brand . The Chicago Center for Literature and Photography is an organization founded by Jason Pettus, a Chicago writer and photographer. The organization started as a small online publishing venture but now publishes several original titles a year in print and electronic form. The really cool thing about CCLaP is that all of their books are handmade and bound by the staff.  Mark is a sci-fi writer based in Chicago. Besides being a really cool dude, he is also a really good writer. CCLaP usually doesn't do sci-fi novels, but " Life After Sleep " is a book that would be enjoyable by even non-sci-fi buffs (and sympathetic parents of small children). The future Mark creates is interesting and definitely foreseeable.  Talk about the story behind the Life After Sleep . What made you write this novel? At the time the idea came to me, I was working in the medi...