Glue and Ink Rebellion is my second book.  It is a collection of stories and essays that I wrote between 1995 and 2002.  Most of the the stories were previously published in Ink 19, Razorcake, Clamor, Thin Air, and Talk Story.  Among the stories is “My Broke and Homeless Ass.”  I released it as a short story zine in 2000.  It was otherwise unpublished.  “My Broke and Homeless Ass” inspired me to write Train Wreck Girl.  Both story and novel share the same main characters, though the story and the novel are told from different perspectives.

Here’s what the back cover of Glue and Ink Rebellion says:

In Glue and Ink Rebellion, Sean Carswell delves into the lives of drunks, potheads, punk rockers, bartenders, waitresses, drug fiends, surfers, and various working class folks as they search for meaning or try to make sense of the madness around them. Reading through these stories gives insight into the world of Carswell’s characters: the dangers of growing up in a “fuck, fight, or drink” town; the humor behind lousy jobs; the creeping paranoia that accompanies watching the Phantom Menace in the wake of the WTO protests in Seattle; the beauty of spending a summer afternoon doing nothing but drinking beer on a front porch; and the bittersweet realization that the characters who are our friends are constantly being rewritten.

You can order it from Gorsky Press here.

You can order it from Razorcake here.

Here’s what some people have said about the book:

“Sean Carswell is a wonderful story teller. His situations are as gritty and real as those of Nelson Algren and Ernest Hemingway. His writing style is easy, breezy, funny, but he is also an acute and intelligent observer of life in today’s America. Reading his stuff makes you laugh, and makes you think.”
—Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States

“Carswell is the J.D. Salinger for the Internet Generation.”
—PopMatters

“You would be well advised to pick up a copy of Glue and Ink Rebellion because it is an almost flawless collection of pure literary entertainment on the most down-to-earth, real level you could ever hope to find in the world of underground press.”
—Jay Unidos, Maximum Rocknroll