I like Josh, he is my kind of dude and reminds me what it was like to live in a diy house with 10 roommates.

Q (Nicolle Elizabeth for Fictionaut): The first rule about Deckfight is that you do not talk about Deckfight. Break the rule, Tyler Durden. Who is Deckfight?

(Josh Spilker) Sleeper cell of real estate industry spies who watch the comings and goings of the baby boomer set to predict when and where they will move and inhabit next. Buy North Carolina and sell Florida with a close eye on the Del Webb communities of Middle Tennessee. All of this or none of this is true.

We’ve also been known to write and comment about music and literature with a southeast bent. Not everything we cover is in those bounds, but those bounds are what we are most interested in.

How long has Deckfight been going?

“Deck” and “Fight” have been in my mind a long time never finding a connection together until I created a horrible WordPress site to showcase random music videos. That sucked. I never knew I would like blogging until about 10 months ago, when I just decided, “Forget it, let’s start posting stuff on a regular basis and see what’ll happen.” Blogging (to me) is about a rhythm & flow, and I feel like I finally got that down. And I like music and literature, pretty equally.

I’m not sure what has happened. I wouldn’t say Deckfight is a success or failure, but I generally like it and some nice authors and music-types have been nice enough to respond to my emails. And a few people here and there have decided to help me with it. I get a lot of random press releases, some good, some not—that has happened.

How if at all does Deckfight bring in its indie rock interests to the Deckfight Fictionaut group?

To the Fictionaut group? I’m not sure yet. That’s something I need to look into. In general, I will say that I love literature about rock & roll. Love Joe Meno. Before I started Deckfight, Ben Tanzer and I had some random emails concerning the punk rock mag, Wonkavision,when we were both contributing to it. The new Tao Lin is underrated in its punk rock-i-ness. I like Jason at Orange Alert and David w/ Largehearted b/c we combine the lit & rock.

Also, I think fiction can learn a lot from the DIY indie-punk aesthetic. I’m a big fan of thinking of short stories as mp3s. Chapbooks as EPs. Books as albums. There was a conversation on the Pank blog and HTML Giant about how in music DIY and essentially “self-publishing” is ok, but in literature it’s not. And the argument is that self-published/vanity press is all rubbish with no filter. Well, there’s a lot of trash in self-released music as well. The difference is that the bands throw it out there, find a community for it and then move forward, move on or try something different.

That’s where I think something like Fictionaut can help out. It’s a huge community to post a few stories (play a few songs) and see how the crowd responds. If people support it, but a big publisher (label) doesn’t, it still might be worth putting it out there, then eventually getting some bigger attention. The lit world seems quick to condemn the very idea of self-publishing, when it may be the way to go for some authors at a certain moment in time. I guess the small/indie publishers do foster a similar spirit, but I think there’s room for the self-released, the indie press & the big press–just like in music.

Also, I’ve just started posting short story links on Wednesdays…so hook me up.

How’s the group going? Do you guys watch MTV UK together?

That’d be awesome, but I don’t have cable, only Netflix streaming. So I can rock the A-Team television series, but that’s about it. BTW–do they show Jersey Shore in the UK? What’s the response? Once I was in Belize and I went into this little village shack of a general store that somehow had a cable hook-up and they were watching “The Hills,” some episode with a yacht. The juxtaposition almost made me puke.

I’m still trying to figure out how Fictionaut works, with its bells and whistles, we should all send more stories to groups I think, instead of just posting in the great gust of stories on the main page. We’d probably receive some better feedback that way. This prompt has prompted me to change things for the better. If not me then who? If not now, then when?

Tell me anything else here. Write like a book and I’ll break it up to look cool.

Think we’re going to expand our brand into local aquariums and fish hatcheries with an anthology of Deckfight’s first year. “A Best Of” or “Greatest Hits” if you will, and I know you will. Think we’re going to rock it PDF and ePub style with maybe a couple physicality copies for our moms to wad up and throw into bonfires.

Maybe I’ll self-publish a chapbook, maybe I won’t. But for sure, I’ve got a story coming out soon through the Twitter fiction project of the CCLaP center that everyone should check out.

What will all the fishies think about this? We will have to ask them.

And I’m always interested to know what authors have been reading lately for our Friday Five piece and whatever else, so send some stuff my way: deckfight@gmail.com.

Nicolle Elizabeth checks in with Fictionaut Groups every Friday.


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