I’m willing to admit I took time out of my schedule to dye my hair back to eye-searing-red-fuchsia-maybe-it’s-pink. Now that dyeing my hair is done, I’m sneaking a few more minutes from working on beating a number of deadlines to mention some Kickstarter and Peerbacker goodness that might not be on your radar.
First, in movies, we take a trip to Kickstarter. Exotic World and Burlesque Revival is a documentary from Jessica Halem. The documentary follows the story of former dancer Dixie Evans, as she uses her social security checks to transform “a goat farm in the middle of the Mojave Desert into the world’s only museum devoted to striptease.” Like Margaret Cho? She’s the narrator. Like Seattle star and Miss Exotic World 2011-2012 Indigo Blue? In the documentary. 21 Days, 238 Backers, $13, 849 pledged. $11, 151 to go, till the documentary will see the cost to release the film met. I’m a stage manager for burlesque and a devoted fan to my friends who are going through the hard work and thrill of life as burlesque performers. This documentary is about their predecessors, their contemporaries, their teachers and their history.
In books, there’s the Peerbackers for Apex Book Company, who just landed a national distribution deal. Apex’s catalog is full of award nominated and award winning books, with great authors ranging from Gary Braunbeck, Nick Mamatas and Lavie Tidhar, to a number of other equally talented, creepy and eclectic people. Seriously, just go look at their bookstore. I’ll wait.
My boss, Jennifer Brozek, is an editor at Apex, which is part of why the Apex Peerbackers is near and dear to my heart. The Peerbackers funds will allow Apex, a small press that’s stuck to short print runs, to do a larger print run. If the Peerbacker succeeds, Apex gets to go to that dream oasis of the large print run, the national distribution deal becomes a thriving, tentacled entity, and Apex books will start popping up all over the place, like a less poisonous faerie circle of mushrooms after the rain. 22 Days, 25 Backers, $900.00 pledged. $4,100 to go, till Apex is kicking genre ass in a bookstore near you.
