Brent Robison and Tom Newton follow their own muses, along with their individual recognition that something inside each man dictates a need to create fiction. The two writers came to a decision to create books, to print literature, via their new Woodstock-based Recital Publishing after they got together several years back and found they had similar interests. They started producing literary podcasts, of their own and others’ work, under The Strange Recital, “a podcast about fiction that questions the nature of reality.”
Like the heady sort of work that drew Robison and Newton together in the first place, the means by which their Recital experiments and business grew involved happenstance and shared concerns.
Robison – who’s been writing short stories, and more recently novels and novellas, since he was a teenager — started his first publishing entity, Bliss Plot Press, in 2001 (he placed an ad in Woodstock Times looking for writers on 9/11), and printed his first regional literary journal collection Prima Materia the following year.
Over the next years, Robison ended up publishing a total of eight books – including Simone Felice’s first novella, a collection of his own short stories, a novella by Djelloul Marbrook, a collection of essays on masks written with his wife, noted maskmaker Wendy Drolma, and several other editions of Prima Materia – before the publisher realized he wasn’t getting his own writing done.
Which he has since been doing with spirit, having since finished his first novel, Ponckhockie Union, enough new short stories for another upcoming collection, and another novel in the works.
Plus his venture into podcasting.
“Through mutual acquaintances I had connected with a guy who worked with an audio book group based in Georgia who were looking for writers, but that project ended up going nowhere,” Robison explained of the lateral move that ended up in The Strange Recital’s creation. “Then I met Tom Newton through Facebook, reviewed the novella he published as an e-book through Bloomsbury, Warfilm, and we started meeting for coffee.”
Newton, who came out of an earlier life working around the punk scene in London and ended up working in the film industry around New York City, and settling in the Woodstock area some 20-plus years ago, had written plays as a kid enamored by Shakespeare, Monty Python and his older siblings’ philosophy-spewing friends. Several years ago he found time on his hands, wrote his novella, and realized he had audio skills he could utilize in the new field of podcasting he’d started talking about with his new pal, Robison.
“I’ve always found myself drawn to Borges, but also rejected the idea of ‘magical realism,’ as too restricting,” Newton said by phone, self-quarantined in his home (as we all have been). We talked about the ways in which early surrealists expanded far beyond their original sphere of interests. “I really hate to take myself too seriously.”
Together, Robison and Newton came up with their idea for The Strange Recital, podcasts outside the sorts of genre writing much of the field has found successful. Items that would include subtle humor, some serious Q-and-A’s with the authors … and a bit of music curated by Newton.
“We have fun. I had writers to bring into the endeavor. Tom had audio capabilities,” Robison explained. “We launched in August of 2016 and just passed our three-and-a- half-year mark, but having decided from the beginning that this was not going to be a money production, but strictly a labor of love.”
The result has seen a growing body of work, usually in the 20-minute range, featuring a who’s who of Hudson Valley, international and even some historic writers … all available through pretty much all the major podcast platforms.
“We wanted The Strange Recital to be inclusive from the start, to not be genre-oriented and instead get people from all over,” said Newton. “It’s built itself up nicely and while quite time-consuming, with me doing most of the audio producing and Brent handling the publisher role, it’s been a great deal of fun.”
Whence the move back towards print?
“I’ve always been interested in publishing books,” Robison replied. “Somewhere in our first year, we spoke about putting together a collection from our podcasts. As time went by, and we found ourselves working on our own writing, we decided, ‘Why not move to books in a similar small way to the way we started The Strange Recital?’”
Newton had been working on a new collection of stories, Seven Cries of Delight (which just won the 2019 Dactyl Foundation Literary Award), and liked the idea of branching out. And he trusted not only Robison’s experience in the field, but the way he’d been charting the changes since he last launched a work through Bliss Plot.
“I did know the ropes, some, even though distribution has gotten harder,” Robison admitted. “We decided to continue our vision.”
To beef up the look of their print-on-demand publications, which started on Amazon and will soon expand to include more bookstore-friendly distribution, Newton brought in his longtime London-based designer friend Bryan Maloney, whom he’s known since the two were 19, to design logos and book covers (he’d done the same for the podcast’s visuals). The results are as distinctive as the great old Westerns and hardboiled detective paperbacks of yore.
Both men agree that things have stumbled since the age of viruses has infected all business matters of late. They’ve not been able to announce a publication date for their next book, The Joppenburgh Jump – a novel by Mark Morganstern of the Rosendale Cafe – because they’re trying to figure out how to launch a work virtually, or whether it’s better to wait. But they’re still planning new publications, and podcasts, into the future, beyond quarantines.
Newton is finishing up his latest short-story collection, as well as a new novella – Revolution in Dream Time – that Recital will publish alongside Warfilm, whose rights he’s regained from Bloomsbury. Then there’s Robison’s new novel and book of short stories. Plus the two are finishing up that anthology from the podcasts both had spoken about.
“Last year, e-books slipped relative to paper books again,” Robison said. “I have, and I think Tom shares, a philosophical bias towards dealing directly with the public rather than going through agents, editors, publishers, and the like.”
He paused. “We don’t see publishing as business but more as art. This is all about doing what we must for our souls to live,” he said. “We’ll just do our best with technology, now, to get past these present challenges.”
For more on The Strange Recital podcasts, visit thestrangerecital.com. For more on Recital Publishing, visit recitalpublishing.com. And eventually visit your local bookstores, again.
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