Episode 45: Twenty Acres of Taylor Swift

January 2nd, 2020
Hosted by Katie Rainey
Guests: Andrew Lloyd-Jones
Produced by Katie Rainey
Transcript by Jon Kay
Podcast Assistant: Dylan Thomas

Hoppy New Year Animals! We hope your 2020 is kicking off to a good start. Here's our first episode of the year, featuring writer, editor, and reading series curator Andrew Lloyd-Jones. Andrew is an award-winning short story writer, and won the Fish International Short Story Prize with his story “Feathers and Cigarettes”, recently adapted for film. He is the  founder, producer, and host of the regular live fiction reading series and podcast Liars' League NYC in New York. Join us today as we talk about the reading series community, short story writing, rejections, and being really uncomfortable talking about ourselves... 

>> Katie: Welcome to the 45th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by Animal Riot Press, a literary press for books that matter. I'm Katie Rainey, filling in for Brian Birnbaum while he’s taking some time off. This is our first episode of 2020 and I am so happy to have with me here today one of the biggest advocates for the literary community, Andrew Lloyd-Jones. 

Andrew has spent more than fifteen years in the marketing and advertising industry, and was creative partner at the occasionally infamous HHCL & Partners in London. Today, he specializes in copywriting, branding, and creative direction for global clients and local brands alike. His services include advertising copy, web content, and brand messaging, to name but a few. 

But most importantly, Andrew is an award-winning short story writer, and won the Fish International Short Story Prize with his story “Feathers and Cigarettes”, recently adapted for film. His  fiction has been featured in Blue Lake Review, Popshot Quarterly, The London Reader, Northern Colorado Writers’ Pooled Ink Anthology, and in the Canongate collection Original Sins, among others. He’s the  founder, producer, and host of the regular live fiction reading series and podcast Liars' League NYC in New York. Hi Andrew.

Hi, Andrew. Welcome. Did that make you really uncomfortable to hear?

>> Andrew: Unbelievably uncomfortable. Ordinarily, I'm introducing other people and at Larry's League. And so, yeah, I don't think I've ever heard anything like that. So thanks very much (laughter)

>> Katie: I promise I won't, you know, trying to make this as painless as possible. You don't like talking about yourself. We just learned that.

>> Andrew: Well I've just learned that, to be honest with you. I never thought that I don’t like talking about myself, But, um, apparently I don't. This might be a very short interview.

>> Katie: Okay. Well, you could just make it more of a conversation.

>> Andrew: I'll try.

>> Katie: But I do want to learn more about you.

>> Andrew: Sure.

>> Katie: Originally, you are from London.

>> Andrew: That's correct. Yes. I was born in London

>> Katie: And you lived in Alaska for awhile? You moved to Alaska from London?

>> Andrew: That's correct. When I was very young, my parents shipped us on to the states.

>> Katie: Without them?

>> Andrew: No.

>> Katie: Oh, you said they shipped you (laughs)

>> Andrew: Yeah, they hated me. So much. Is something like a changeling, baby?. No, They know we all moved out, shipped us all out, too. With them to the states. So, yes, I was in California for a brief time and then Alaska.

>> Katie: Were they in the military or something? Or just for work?

>> Andrew: No worse than that. Oil. BP.

>> Katie: What did they do for BP?

>> Andrew: It was my dad. He was in human resources personnel. Yeah.

>> Katie: That's a big move for...

>> Andrew: Yeah, well, I guess they had sort of. They just discovered oil in the north slope of Alaska and at the time was very exciting. And now it's absolutely sort of catastrophic for the environment. My dad spent a lot of time in the Arctic, I think, on oil rigs and things like that. Sort of interviewing people for jobs.

>> Katie: So when did you come to New York?

>> Andrew: I moved here just about 11 years ago now. I've been living in London prior to that.

>> Katie: What made you move to New York?

>> Andrew: It's a good question. I had fallen in love with New York sometime before that and I used to have friends here, and I would come over once or twice a year. Just hang out for a week at a time. And I was particularly enamored with Halloween.

>> Katie: Oh, yeah?

>> Andrew: I mean, Halloween doesn't really exist in the UK, and maybe this is because I grew up in the States when I was younger and I left the States when I was 10 years old. I was in fourth grade or something like that. And Halloween's obviously big business. If you're you know, 10 that's kind of you.... you look forward to that as much as you do Christmas and so used to love Halloween. And then I came to England and it just doesn't exist. You know, there's some sort of quaint notion of bobbing for apples that happens. Something like that. Yeah, that's about it.

>> Katie: That breaks my heart a little bit.

>> Andrew: Yeah, it is heartbreaking.

>> Katie: That's really the most American thing I'll say all day. Like you don't have Halloween? God.

>> Andrew: There you go. So when I came to New York connected, I think for the first time, which, as an adult, which was in the early 2000s or something like that, I coincidentally happened to be here at Halloween and I was just blown away. I guess that childlike enthusiasm people have for it here and it genuinely does seem to be a creative outlet for anyone. You know, it doesn't matter if you're in the arts or if you're working on Wall Street or  it doesn't matter, everyone embraces the sort of the chaos and the creativity of it all, and they're sort of in your child. And, yes, there's sort of slutty nurses and things like that, but I think it's all part of the fun of it. You know, you're allowed to dress up however you like, and nobody really... Nobody's shaming anyone. No one's judging anyone for being anything at Halloween. It's just this kind of fantastic holiday that that, incidentally also, you know, just involves your friends. You don’t  get together with family for Halloween. So it's very much a friend type occasion. Thanksgiving is for family and then Christmas, if you celebrate, is for, you know, family. But Halloween is just friends and drinking, you know? So yeah, so anyway, so I was here for that Halloween, but I just love New York and, uh, as the catch phrase goes... And I felt more and more like home. And then one Halloween in fact, while I was here, I met a girl at a party and she and I got involved in the long distance relationship and then I moved over. So a year later.

>> Katie: All right. So yeah. So we met. When was that? A couple years ago? The first time at your house?

>> Andrew: It might have been at my house.

>> Katie: The first time might have been through a party for reading series Curators. I think that was the first time we met. I just showed up with I think you had invited Devin.

>> Andrew: Yeah.

>> Katie: My co-host.

>> Andrew: You didn't come to the one on the roof.

>> Katie: No. Is that they're on the one on the roof. That's when I first met. Like Tobias and Dolan, Morgan and I think that's I mean, it was your house. I think that's the first time I met you.

>> Andrew: OK, I think I've had a couple of reading series parties. Yeah, that was a sort of a party that that wasn't my idea. That first party, the one on the roof was Nancy Hightower, who is my collaborator at Liars' League a couple of years ago. She had this great idea, you know, trying to bring together everyone. This is before the Reading Series of New York group existed, you know, wanting to kind of cross pollinate, collaborate with other reading series, which now seems like a no brainer. And now the reading series of New York Group exists, it just seems obvious. Why weren't we doing this before? Because there are so many reading series out there and groups that you know convince if it from each other's experience and contacts or whatever it might be. And in fact, that's why I'm sitting here right now.

>> Katie: Yeah, I know because we met and that yeah, even that first party I met so many great people and had I mean, that's just how we became friends with, Like, Tobias and all of them anything. And Natalie was there and several other people and it was really great. But then we didn't really have a lot of contact until the whole Reading for RAICES thing happened. And so I don't know how we talked about that before on this podcast, but maybe we have, like, a few years ago. A bunch of curators just got together like you said and said, like, Why aren't we doing more things? And so we decided to fund raised together for RAICES... I'm from the South (laughter)... which helps families and children who are detained at the border. And so we fund raised across and that was really excellent. You hosted the closing celebration, which was kind of when we'd all decided to, like form this more like formal community of curators, who were working together. It's been really lovely so far.

>> Katie: Yeah, I know. It's been great and I know there's been a lot of enthusiasm, and I think that I'm an adman on the Facebook group, and I'm always amazed that they're sort of several... It seems there are several requests every week for other people from reading series that I've never heard of you to join the group and which is awesome. I mean, the fact that there's so much out there, incidentally, I mean, it wasn't a reason for my moving to New York. But when I eventually got involved with the literary community, having moved to New York, I was amazed at how many reading series exist here. And you know, whether it's for fiction or poetry. Or drama or whatever it might be. There isn't a fraction of that amount of organization in London, which is bizarre. London is a Literary City, you know, kind of long literary pedigree. But yeah, I think we're just massively antisocial in London. We just don't trust each other.

>> Katie: There's tons of people here and there's just easy access to like each other and and meeting in public and that kind of thing because there's really not like reading series communities. I will swear like I'll go to, like we just started a salon in Little Rock, which there's nothing else. Out in California, there's like a couple in LA. But they're sporadic and they're mostly like the ones we've heard from are started by people who, like came from the East Coast like New York. Like Ryan Sartor is out there doing the Difficult to Name series, that he took from New York, out there. This is such a home for the reading series community. It's great.

>> Andrew: Very much so. Like you. I know of very few other places in the world. I think Portland has, you know, a few literary kinds of events happening at any one time. And San Francisco has Lit Quake and I think they are connected with a lot of literary organizations. But you know, the sheer number every week, every night, in fact, there's a literary event going on and which could be incredibly depressing when you're trying to program, you're in events. I'm sure you've clashed with other literary events.

>> Katie: Yeah, every time. Yeah.

>> Andrew: I'm always conscious when you know there's only a relatively small audience for Liars' League, that something else is happening somewhere. That's kind of dragging people away, which is amazing. It's great for everyone. And it does cause logjams, though, when you have things like the Brooklyn Book Festival happening. And when everyone's trying to hold events on the same night and things like that. It's a nice problem to have.

>> Katie: Yeah, So speaking of Liars' League, let's talk about that. Where does the name come from? How did it start?

>> Andrew: So the name comes from the name of the  reading. I think it was a guy called Tim Oldrich's nanny. He came up with it, and he had been chatting with another friend of mine, Katy Darby, who's a writer who actually met by the Fish Prize. So she came in. She was onto the runners up, and so she and I met in Ireland when we were there for the big award ceremony. So they had come up with this kind of vague concept on this name, Liars' League for a reading series that just had actors and writers. And then the idea was that actors would read work with writers that submitted. So they then approached me. Another writer called Tom McKay and I think he was more of an actor, actually. And Michael Caine's who at the time was that the time is the literary supplement, and the six of us got together. We became the original Liars' League, and we took submissions. We had auditions for actors to read and we held our first Liars' League... I think it was in a pub, the top room above a pub on Lambs Conduit Street in London. It was called the Wheat Chief. Yeah, and, you know, it proved incredibly successful. I think one of the reasons for that… A) I still think it's a great idea on and B) there aren't, as I said, as many literary events happening in London than there are here. So we were running one of, I don't know, half a dozen readings. The reason I might be completely wrong about that, and that certainly might have changed now. But back then, yeah, it was not a crowded field.

>> Katie: Yeah, so it gives it a level of sophistication. Having actors read writers' work. Is that kind of what the thought was behind that?

>> Andrew:  Yeah. I think that thought was twofold. I mean, I don't know if we were as judgmental as you know, wanting readings to be.sophisticated or anything like that, I think, was more of a sense that, you know, writers' write. I mean, that I came up with that start line originally. Writers Write, Actors Act, Everyone Wins. Which I still use here in New York and because that really sums it up, you know, and writers are good at writing and they don't have to be good at reading their work. And not all writers like doing that. I think we've all been to readings where some writers got up and mumbled into the mic and just been atrocious. And it's got nothing to do with the writing.

>> Katie: It's a completely different skill.

>> Andrew: Completely. And so the idea was really to level the playing field and actors are good reading and writers are good at writing. So let's everyone play to their strengths. So that was the idea behind it. And it was only years later when I came to New York and I set it up here. It took me a while to set it up here, actually, because I was so intimidated by all the kind of literary events happening. And I just thought people started talking to me about monetization and things like that. So it felt immediately like a more professional pursuit in the States. And so when we set it up here, and at the time that was again there was a kind of a collection of us kind of got together to set up Liars' League, primarily with an actor director, friend of mine, Elizabeth, who's the artistic director. And she was really in charge of finding the actors, sort of running the rehearsals and all of that. And she's been fantastic at that. Yeah, it felt like a more intimidating prospect setting up a reading series in New York.

>> Katie: Where do you find these actors? That's what I'm curious about.

>> Andrew: Well that wasn't my area of expertise. That was Elizabeth Alice Murray, who was the artistic director. And she being an actor and coming from that community you have a lot of actors. It sounds ridiculous, but actors love acting, and it's an amazing thing where you can You can talk to actors and they are absolutely willing to come along and record a story written by somebody else and have the opportunity to really bring that to life in front of an audience. It's what actors love doing, and I've always been amazed at how willing people are to kind of get involved and which has been great.

>> Katie: I guess it's like a credential for writing to. Like submitting your work and getting it read aloud is  a credit to your name and then also performing someone else's work, I mean, and then getting it recorded on a podcast. You can use that for your career. You're real to share your talent.

>> Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there've been lots of reasons why I think it's worked as a concept and it's partly because we function as a journal as well, we publish online, and in addition to having the recordings which are on the Web sites and then their podcasts as well,

>> Katie: Who's doing all this work?

>> Andrew: It's a kind of a joint effort more than anything else. I think so. It really just depends on who's doing what. Sometimes it's me. Sometimes it's someone else. But yeah, there's a lot of work that goes into it.

>> Katie: So it's a live journal and a podcast as well as a live reading. It's a journal in a podcast as well.

>> Andrew: Yeah. So in fact, I mean, the journal aspect of it, I think is, you know, has been fascinating for me. I mean, it wasn't something again until I moved to New York. London doesn't have the same kind of MFA culture that New York does where you've got a lot of former MFA students and who are writing short stories and pitching short stories and submitting short stories journals. So, you know, we're essentially in competition for everyone else and along with everyone else. And I think there is a sort of a hierarchy of publication that starts with your own blog and ends with the New Yorker. Well, you could argue. I don't know where it ends, but, you know, some people pass it and somewhere a bit more. I don't know, actually, where would you say that hierarchy ends?

>> Katie: Oh, I mean, you know, probably that Oprah book sticker. Book Club sticker. Getting that big, fat paycheck.

>> Andrew: An anthology of your short stories, with your name on it, with the Oprah Book Club on it.

>> Katie: Yeah, you know, just something that sells copies. So I guess that's for me. Like publishing a novel.

>> Andrew: As far as submitting short stories go. Where does that go?

>> Katie: I guess the New Yorker, The Atlantic. New Yorker.

>> Andrew: But then there are instead of Paris review, I don't know, they're sort of other sort of underneath it that follow hard, you know, hard after, and but so yeah, And so I became aware that there was this hierarchy existed and we were somewhere on it, and and to a certain extent, as a publisher, I don't know if you find this is well you published short stories too, right?

>> Katie: Yeah. 

>> Andrew: You're constantly looking to effectively move up the rankings, you know, move up. And so I'm always delighted when we someone submits a short story to us that I think while this could get published somewhere higher

>> Katie: Do you tell them that?

>> Andrew: God, no, no, no. You wouldn't want to say that, but yeah, you know, I kind of Yeah, I find that that's what you're really looking for. You're looking for that as.

>> Katie: I asked because I know a small press publisher who you probably know as well, who has received books before that he felt, were way above his press and could be published bigger. And he tells them that.

>> Andrew: Really? 

>> Katie: And so Brian and I, as new publishers, have had that debate in which my thought was like, Maybe it's a conversation. Brian's like, No. He said the same reaction that you didn't know we published. 

>> Andrew: Yes, absolutely. You're right. It's an ethical dilemma. To some extent. I mean moral dilemma. 

>> Katie: I don't think it is.

>> Andrew: But yeah, I mean, I think that's what everyone does.

>> Katie: There's also the question of, like the landscape, like, even if you think it should be published somewhere else, it may not. 

>> Andrew: This is it. It may come down to your tastes right. I think we all know really when you receive a short story kind of yeah, To a certain extent, it's subjective. There are, like, say, take the pushcart prizes. If you flick through their anthology, there's a certain standard that you become used to. And I'm like, Okay, this is where you know you need to be hitting if you want to be published in Tin House or RIP. Or somewhere of that caliber. And yes, when you sort of receive a short story and one hopes that no one is writing that type of, you know quality as well. And I mean, I guess that's that's interesting as well, because you always think like yes, this could be published in The New Yorker. That this story that I've just written and then you you know, it's only when you get 50 rejections back that you realize, well, maybe not. Maybe I'll pitch it at my mate's blog instead. Maybe I'm that at that point on the hierarchy, that's number two on the hierarchy. Number one is your own blog. And that's your mates blog. Anywhere  above number two is good.

>> Katie: Yeah, well, so you guys aren't KGB bar? 

>> Andrew: We are at KGB bar. We were really lucky. Uh, one of the sort of Liars in New York founders. Our name is Lila Cecil. She was one of also one of the co founders of the reading space Paragraph.

>> Katie: Oh, yes. We had them on this podcast.

>> Andrew: Fantastic. You had Joy on?

>> Katie: We had Joy on.

>> Andrew: Joy's Lovely. So yeah, Paragraph has had a reading series at KGB for years. I think ever since they set up on. So Lila was kind enough to introduce me to the owner of KGB who gave Liars' League, they get the home and, you know, and We've been there ever since, you know, enjoyed their kind of crumbling architecture and there terrible lighting and sound system and everything like that. But it's a fantastic kind of literary space and in New York, and it has that sort of sense of history. And whenever we tell anyone that we're at KGB, everyone kind of goes like, Wow, that's great.

>> Katie: For those folks listening who are not in New York, it's definitely the most, I think now the longest running kind of literary space. I feel like.

>> Andrew: Yeah, probably. There's spaces like Housing Works.

>> Katie: KGB literally is just a bar that has literary events every night, you know? 

>> Andrew: Yeah. KGB, has succeeded despite so many things that should make it not a literary venue.

>> Katie: If you want to go somewhere or, you know, you're disliked by the bartender.

>> Andrew: I was about to say cantankerous bartenders. I've got to say not on Wednesdays. When we have Dan and Seiji behind the bar are fantastic, great. Some people think some of the bartenders can be surely. But Dennis Wojciech, who owned the entire building the establishment because it's so said the Red Room above and the Crane Theater below. And it was a comedy venue below that. He's great, and he's a sort of a genuine sort of old school patron of the arts, I think, and he's a writer himself. He writes plays and I think he does it genuinely does it out of a sense of love for the literary community. And it's genuinely kind of an honor to be housed there. I feel really lucky that we've had that connection.

>> Katie: Well, the actors and actresses that perform... How do you pair them with the writers? How do you figure that out? What's the process like?

>> Andrew: Over the years we have a company of actors who use and, you know people drop in and out of that company depending on you know where they are in the world or whether they're working on stage at any one time and whatever it might be. But we certainly have regular actors that we use for certain types of story. And I think that whenever we read a story we have certain actors in mind for a certain type of mood or or kind of tone. And again over the years, it's become fairly it's become a fairly easy thing, gonna see like Okay, that would be perfect for Matt. Or that would be perfect for Alice or whoever it might be, to read. And so that kind of shortcuts the process. There are times where we have a submission that we're excited about. And, you know, we have to kind of think we don't know, You know, exactly the right kind of actor would be. But all of the actors we work with, you know, professional training, they were all great what they do and it's rare that I think we've cast an actor and it's not been right. Yeah, I think that's pretty much every time we nailed it sometimes. I mean, I think, sometimes more so than others. You know, I know that we've had we've had actors on more than one occasion who have continued a relationship with a writer afterwards. 

>> Katie: Oh that's cool.

>> Andrew: Yeah, And I think recently Olivia Killingsworth, one of our actors, read a story by a writer whose name I now completely blanked on. I'm really sorry. And I apologize to that writer. But she read this piece, and she and the actor got together and actually turned it into a short film. 

>> Katie: Wow.

>> Andrew: And subsequently we've used Elizabeth for one of her other pieces of writing as well there she submitted the following year. So sometimes it, you know, there's just this incredible, magical kind of connection that happens and I would never really want to kind of list my top 10 recordings that we've done. But, you know, I certainly have some favorites in my head.

>> Katie: So what about submissions? First you guys are monthly? Is that right?

>> Andrew: Every other month.

>> Katie: And so is it just open submissions?

>> Andrew: No, we have themes. And it's something that we set up in London. Originally, the theme is always kind of had there are two words with an ampersand in between. The two on that 1% is part of our logo as well. So our most recent theme was intimacy and isolation. And so, yes. Every other month there's a new theme and we generally announce the themes at the end of the year, we do. I was going to announce our themes for next year here right now, but which is clearly the most exciting thing to happen to the Animal Riot Podcast ever. But we haven't agreed on those yet, so I can't do that. But yeah, they will be announced very soon in the new year.

>> Katie: That'll be in February, right?

>> Andrew: No. Our next event is in February, which is intimacy and isolation, in fact. And so the next submissions theme deadline will be around the end of February for an event in April.

>> Katie: Ok. So where can people go to find out more about submissions?

>> Andrew: They can go to our website at LiarsLeagueNyc dot com. And yeah, all of our submissions guidelines are there together with a few details about what we like and what we don't like. I mean, it's such a cliche, but it really is the case that to get an idea of what we read then read what we published in the past. And we have a full archive of all our stories, both in terms of time recordings on our website that anyone can listen to for free any time. Yeah, we tend to kind of feature kind of character driven stories that have a sense of an ending and that it sounds really obvious to say, I think, probably along with a lot of journals on publications, you know, we received a lot of short stories which start out with some fantastic idea. But then sort of just trail off or just not end, and it's sort of a snapshot. But without the story sense of story, and, you know there's a difference. I think there's also, in addition, every journal, to some extent has a house style that's based on the tastes of the editors. I think to a certain extent, but for Liars' League, and this would apply to Liars' League in London as well as New York and in Portland and Hong Kong, where we also have a presence. Certain stories work well, when read aloud and certain stories don't. So a story, ironically, that would seem like it's made for an actor you know, sometimes just doesn't. That involves a lot of dialogue, sometimes just does not work when it's read out aloud.

>> Katie: Yeah, I tell people that same thing, like when they're submitting to read, though at like, we get a lot of emails that's like, What are you looking for? Whatever. And we're pretty open at Animal Riot because we're just a reading series. But what I always tell them is I'm like you're going to get 8 to 10 minutes to read, the best things to read are something that's kind of like a complete story that will get people in. Not something that you have to have a lot of context still like drop them into it because people are listening and sometimes we learn the best listeners too. So yeah, so that's something with a complete ending. I definitely agree. Well, so we talked a lot about Liars’ League, and it's so wrapped up with your literary career. But I do wanna shift paces a little bit and and talk about you as a writer. So when did your kind of literary career... When did you start writing? 

>> Andrew: I started writing relatively late in as much as I didn't... I didn't really write at university. Or I mean, I, you know, dabbled in bits and pieces. I think, as anyone I read English, legendary University and on as a degree and but here, Yeah, but I wasn't massively involved is a great writer at that point, and it was only I think when I who was working for an advertising agency in London, which is what I did for a long, long time, I found myself in my spare time at the agency kind of writing short stories, and I think it probably started when I got really into Raymond Carver, and I think there was something about his writing that made the process seem incredibly accessible. And deceptively so in the case of Raymond Carver, as I'm sure everyone knows everyone tries to write like Raymond Carver. 

>> Katie: But that's the word I'd use to describe him to us. His writing is accessible.

>> Andrew: It is. Yeah. And, you know, and maybe that's a good thing for a lot of writers, because it kind of strips away some of the intimidating s. But it's a good point of entry. And even if you do, just write bad Raymond Carver-esque fiction. I think there's something about you can write about a trip to the the local corner shop to buy some a pint of milk or whatever it might be. And that can still seem full of meaning and significance. So I started writing kind of these little short stories that were really just, I think kind of initially snapshots, and I mean, this is gonna sound incredibly arrogant, but, I really hadn't written very much, and I submitted a short story to a competition I'd heard of, which again there weren't many competitions or anything like that in the UK. And this was run one that was run by Cannon Gate, the publisher in Scotland, and to a competition which was about the seven deadly sins. I think that was the only theme with it. You must be writing about one of the seven deadly sins. And so I wrote this story called Coveting and which is about a man who worked in a lost and found department of a railway. I think it was, He worked for the must unfound, and that might have been London...

>> Katie: This sounds very British to me. (laughs)

>> Andrew: Oh, you don't have lost and found departments.

>> Katie: We do. But it's at a railway station.

>> Andrew: It was a railway station (laughs). It was a long time again. And anyway, this thing was published. And in this anthology, and which I really took for granted, I was like, Oh, cool, excellent, Great. And now I look back on it and I'm like, Bloody hell, that was kind of relatively unusual. So I then just started submitting stories to lots of places and I kept getting published at an early stage, and I think, yeah, that kind of... It was a slightly warped introduction to...

>> Katie: I can tell you're getting really uncomfortable.

>> Andrew: I'm really uncomfortable. (laughter)

>> Katie: Well, you won the Fish International story. What's that story about? Where can people find that?

>> Andrew: I think it might be online. It was published in their anthology. They produce an anthology every year, and the anthology was called Feathers and Cigarettes and Other Stories, and my story was called Feathers and Cigarettes. And that story was about... I'm still incredibly fond of that story. Actually, it was about a 15 year old girl who, basically whose boyfriend breaks up with her. And then she goes around to her friend's house, steals some money, does some coke and then throws a brick through her now ex boyfriends window. That's it. It was kind of written in the first person.

>> Katie: Man, is that only in print?

>> Andrew: I think it might be online as well. I think you might be able to find it online. It was sort of almost a train of thought type of story written in her language. And, you know, the way that a 15 year old at the time would speak. And I remember they called me up because they couldn't believe a man had written it. And they wanted to make sure that I was who I said I was. Yeah, Apparently there was some debate as to whether or not I should I don't know. I can't remember. It was a while ago, but...

>> Katie: They thought you were actually a 15 year old girl?

>> Andrew: I don't know what they thought and why they would assume that somebody would want to impersonate a man... 30 something year old man or whatever it was at the time. So but yeah, so that was that was published. And that was the thing that somebody turned into a short film.

>> Katie:  Well, it sounds like that although you're uncomfortable talking about yourself, you're very comfortable in the short story form and...

>> Andrew: I think that's been accidental. Yeah, it's weird. I often think as many writers do you know I don't like calling... So I guess I call myself a writer, you know, because that's sort of what I've done all my life. It's even as a copywriter in advertising. That's what I did and you know it. So, yeah, right here is kind of how I make a living as it were, but I still think of there is a jump from being a writer to being an author. I don't know why.

>> Katie: Because it's a book because versus a short story?

>> Andrew: I don't know. So, yeah, I've never really kind of seen myself as a short story writer, even though that's predominantly what I've published. Yeah, and I've published a lot of short stories  in various places. And short stories are great because you can get them out of your system quickly and get them out there. And if they don't go anywhere, if nobody wants to publish them, then it's not the end of the world. But I've always been massively intimidated by writing anything longer because, you know, it just seems like such a huge investment of time. And for that,  to spend years of your life writing a novel and then potentially not to go somewhere. Yeah, just seems tragic to me and, you know, I know that, you know, ever no reward and everything like that. But yes, I've really hesitated to kind of get too involved with anything longer form I am working on over at the moment, but I said that on so many occasions. And I definitely don't want to talk about that.

>> Katie: Fair enough (laughter) 

>> Andrew: I'm happy to talk about novels that I've worked on that haven't come about. Like failed novels. There should be a podcast entirely devoted to writers talking about...

>> Katie: That would be a good podcast.

>> Andrew: They either started and never finished, or that they finished. It never went anywhere, or that they only got into the planning stages of, and that stayed with him for a while.

>> Katie: I do agree that writers should talk more about rejection. We do this kind of abstract form like oh I got a rejection and, like they talk more about like what the editor said in the rejection letter.

>> Andrew: Because that sometimes the only form of validation you get.

>> Katie: Yeah, but actually like, yeah, like, really rejection and what that looks like, I think like, if people were a lot more honest about that. I mean, everybody has been rejected so many times.

>> Andrew: course. I mean, I think there's a great analogy, which is, you know, being a writer and expecting not to get... to be rejected is like being a boxer and expecting not to get hit. Yeah, I definitely feel that, but it takes some time to wrap your head around that and not to take it personally. I think that today it's easier than ever to be rejected in a good way. Like we have things like Submittable and you know that. Just make it easy to fire things off, and and you can kind of watch this kind of long list of submissions getting slowly rejected

>> Katie: I'm very involved with a lot of younger artists because of my training program. And then, like, I just have such a close connection with Sarah Lawrence, like I'm up there all the time and some constantly meeting like writers who are, newer, into the literary scene and, like just starting to submit things and how brokenhearted they get after those first couple of rejections. And I'm like, just submit about 100 more times and then come talk to me and see how you feel. It just becomes routine after a while. You're just like okay, whatever.

>> Andrew: It is. I mean, even though it's routine, like, you know, I still feel the sting at times when I kind of submit the story somewhere, and I think they're definitely gonna publish it. And they definitely don't want to publish at. And more than that, it's not even a nice rejection. It's just a form rejection. 

>> Katie: Oh got, I'm not even going to say that to myself anymore. They're definitely gonna want this, cause that's like, more than likely, that's the place that gives you that form rejection from

>> Andrew: Form rejections are shit.I think that I try not to. I know why they exist. I've worked with Submittabel on the editor side as well as on the righteous side before and, you know, having worked with I worked briefly with literal, the kind of fiction editor for a literal for a year. And so we used Submittable there. And, you know, we were dealing with huge numbers of submissions, and it just became the easiest thing to do is to, you know, entire match rejections. And, you know, you had to do it. And I For that reason, I try really hard with Liars' League. I try to put at least something in with every rejection that explains what we liked about the piece or why we're rejecting it.

>> Katie: Yeah.

>> Andrew: Just to give the writer is kind of a sense of closure, and I don't mean that a patronizing way I mean it genuinely. Because I know what it feels like to kind of get this kind of anonymous rejection back from someone anonymous. And but yeah, I mean, I think that there are times with Liars' League where it's easier to write that rejection letter because you have genuine criticism and in a good way, you can say, like, look, we really love what you were doing with this character. And but we just felt that the ending let it down or you know that it took a strange turn in the third act or whatever it might be. And but sometimes it's genuinely hard to find the time to reject a lot of pieces. I mean, for our most recent submissions deadline, we had hundreds of submissions, and that's something that's weird. I still to this day, I don't understand why some themes get a lot of submissions and others don't, and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the time of year.

>> Katie: That was my first question in my head. I wonder if it's the time of year.

>> Andrew: No, it's not. And, you know, I often think maybe it's that something because, like in summer, nobody wants to write because you're out kind of sitting in the sun. Yeah, and on the beach, whatever. But some themes really seemed to resonate. And, you know, intimacy and isolation really, really did this past month. So I was kind of completely overwhelmed by all the submissions we had, so that might impact on whether or not we're able to kind of, yeah, offer personal rejections. I'd love to do it every time, and it just becomes a time.

>> Katie: It's hard. We definitely feel that with our, we don't really advertise that we take open for submissions because we want him on a rolling basis and we want him to be manageable. And we're reading novels, you know. So we also want to send out personalized rejections, and that's not always possible with everything that you get. Sometimes it's just like, you know what this person didn't even take the time to, like, put their contact information and it's written in eight different fonts. So I think it's okay to have a form rejection here, but for the most part, we try to give something and what we've heard back from writers is that this is the first feedback they've really gotten, and they didn't know what wasn't working and like, why it wasn't getting picked up. They just kept being told no, without knowing why. And so hopefully some of them took that our feedback positively and went and worked on their stuff and hopefully makes it better.

>> Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it could be incredibly gratifying to people, again, to kind of have that sense of something that they can do about rejection. Otherwise there just isn't this just a general kind of faith that you have to have in your own writing that at some point somebody will want to publish the story, but I've definitely had stories that have been consistently rejected. I still to this day am not entirely sure why. Because they seem consistent with other things I've written.

>> Katie: Yeah. No. Well, so speaking of writing and everything, or would you be willing to read some of your writing for us?

>> Andrew: I would be happy to read some of my writing. Anything to avoid talking about myself. Yeah, sure. I'll read a section from a short story that was published recently in a magazine called Parhelion. The story is called "Twenty Acres of Taylor Swift". And I'm not gonna read from the start of it. I'm gonna read sort of midway through. And I guess what you need to know is that...

>> Katie: You're a huge Taylor Swift fan?

>> Andrew: I am actually a huge fan. I am an unapologetic Taylor Swift fan. Yeah. Which I can go into great length. I don't know why. It's actually started out as kind of an in joke, I think at one point, and then it somehow kind of metastasized into...

>> Katie: That's how I learned to love Britney Spears.

>> Andrew: Well, there you go. Metastasized. Is that the right word? 

>> Katie: Yep. We're equating your love for Taylor Swift to cancer. (laughter)

>> Andrew: Terrible. It's definitely not the word I want. OK, we'll go with that. Yes. So I do love Taylor Swift. Yes. So what you need to know is that the narrator has stopped for lunch at a kind of a big farm. He's on a road trip, and he stopped for lunch at a big farm. And it's a farm where they have a corn maze. Have you ever been in a corn maze?

>> Katie: I don't think I've ever actually been in one, no.

>> Andrew: So corn mazes are there around the country, normally in full, and it is what it sounds like. It's just a giant labyrinth cut into a field of corn, and but they're often done in interesting shapes and sometimes they're sponsored and often to entice people along that will be done in some sort of fashionable shape, like the shape of Harry Potter or in the shape of, I don't know, like Sponge Bob Square pants or whatever it might be. And so this particular store he is set, this farm he goes to, there's a giant corn maze, and it's in the shape of Taylor Swift's head. So he's had lunch, and he's got some time to kill, and he decides to go into the corn maze. That's how the story starts. So I'll pick up that point.

==================

Check out "Twenty Acres of Taylor Swift" by Andrew Lloyd-Jones published on Parhelion

https://parhelionliterary.com/andrew-lloyd-jones/

==================

>> Katie: (laughter) My favorite phrase in that was, I turn a lobe. 

>> Andrew: Yeah. There's a lot of fun to be had from describing that. Kind of like anatomy of Taylor Swift's head as you're walking through it.

>> Katie: That was a really fun story. Thank you. I'm gonna get to read the rest now. I have it pulled up. Actually, when I was doing my research on you and poking through all your things, I found that story, and I was excited. You decided to read part of that. Thank you.

>> Andrew: Oh, you're very welcome. 

>> Katie: Well, you may be uncomfortable talking about yourself. You have a very lovely podcast and reading voice.

>> Andrew: Oh, thanks for my very much.

>> Katie: That was like a bedtime story for me.

>> Andrew: I rarely read anything at Liars' League. I think I've done it once have actually read somebody else's story when one actor dropped out and the story itself called for an English accent. And so I stepped in. But yeah, again, I wasn't massively comfortable doing it

>> Katie: It's funny. I know a lot of curator Sze who feel that way, too. I also do very few readings anymore because I'm just like we host one monthly. I don't need to read my own work.

>> Andrew: Yeah, yeah, I like reading my own work. I don't know why I don't want that. It's reading other people's. I don't mind hosting it. I enjoy that, but I know something about it's certainly talking about myself.

>> Katie: Thank you so much for being on tonight.

>> Andrew: You're very welcome, it has been a pleasure

>> Katie: Thanks for being the first guest of 2020 for us, So

>> Andrew: I'm super excited about 2020.

>> Katie: What's your resolution? 

>> Andrew: That's a really good question. I think I'm gonna kind of try and get back to an earlier resolution from last year, which is not to bring my phone into the bedroom with me.

>> Katie: Oh, yeah, that's a hard one.

>> Andrew: Yeah, it's quite difficult. You can manage it, but I think it's good. It's an achievable resolution.

>> Katie: That's my alarm. 

>> Andrew: Yeah, I've actually bought an alarm clock. I kind of crumbled at some point and went back into the habit of having my phone in the bedroom. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna try and push that away again.

>> Katie: OK, that's it for today's episode. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and review on whichever platform you're listening on. You can get in touch with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @animalriotpress or through our website animalriotpress.com. This has been the 45th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast with me your host Katie Rainey and featuring Andrew Lloyd-Jones. Our transcripts for our Deaf and hard of hearing animals are provided by Jonathan Kay and we are produced by Katie Rainey… me. See you animals later.