Last night we were coming home quite late when we spotted two visibly inebriated gentlemen staggering toward us with their arms around each other, bellowing. As we got closer, we realized they were sharing an iPod, with one ear bud per gentleman, and singing along quite loudly to "Don't Cry." No jokes. It is kind of awesome when one declares Metal Week and the UNIVERSE AGREES.

For today's metal moment we present to you Misstallica, an all-girl Metallica cover band whose members are still in or have recently left high school (they used to be called "Clitallica" but one of their MOMS made them change it HOW GREAT IS THAT). It sounds like a cute gimmick until you go see them and they blow the left hemisphere of your brain out your ear. Being pushed up against the stage by a mass of huge, fist-pumping 45-year-old man-metalheads bellowing in sheer joy at the mindblowing amazement that is Gigi Gleason (pictured) was, like, life-altering. So! What are you waiting for? Hmmm? GO SEE THEM. Or, as one of their internet fans put it, "why would u pay $60 to see metallica for the 90th time wen u can see these chicks for ten and they rule harder."

Our beloved psychic twin/spiritual counselor, Author-friend Chérie l'Ecrivain, expounds on how to end your novel properly. You can see more of Chérie's wisdoms here. Chérie l'Ecrivain is a Real Writer, agented, currently working on her first novel.

[An aside: if our posts are full of typographical errors from this point onward, it's because OUR FACE IS MELTING SO HARD FROM YOUR CONTEST ENTRIES WE CAN'T SEE OUT OUR EYEBALLS. You are AMAZING, Author-friends!!! UH-MAAAAAAAAAY-ZING!!!!!!!!]

Someday Axl Rose is going to die. I’m willing to wager that I find myself mulling over this sad fact more frequently than about 99.9% of the population. Sometimes when I can’t sleep it hits me, and I imagine myself many years in the future, watching the evening news after dinner with my Eventual Life Partner when Axl’s visage appears in the corner of the screen above the anchor’s talking head. Shortly after Axl’s demise is announced, my Imaginary Children flock around the sofa and tug frantically on their father’s sleeves while demanding to know, “Why is Mommy crying? Did she know that man?” After I’ve collected myself and one of my offspring has fetched me two fingers of Jameson, I explain that no, Mommy didn’t know that man, but she followed his music, his career, and his ridiculous, inimitable, singular life story, and it was a story I was devastated to see finally come to a close.

The reason is simple: Axl Rose is like a book I never want to finish. I am not a delusional fan, I do not think that Axl and I are destined to be friends, but I have watched his story unfold with particular fascination, first during my adolescence and now throughout my entire (ostensibly) adult life. I understand that he has been the subject of a great deal of ridicule since he had the audacity to outlive the typical rock star expiration date of 27 years old, get cornrows, and spend a decade holed up in his Malibu mansion, obsessively recording and rerecording every track on “Chinese Democracy” fourteen or fifteen thousand times, but I have remained captivated, if by nothing else than by the sheer outlandishness of this narrative. He never had the kind of bonafide drug or alcohol problem that plagues nearly every successful rock musician eventually, and therefore can probably count on having a normal life expectancy, which not only fills me with unimaginable delight but also makes me wonder how the hell this man is going to come up with a comparable third act, and, yes, a satisfying denouement. If his life were a novel, what ending could possibly do it justice?

There is a great deal of discussion about how to open your novel, how to write the first five pages so that you hook an agent/editor/reader, but there’s always a lot less chatter about how to write an ending. Writing the end is, in many ways, infinitely more difficult. If you have done your job as a writer, and breathed sufficient life into your characters so that your readers now consider your imaginary friends to be their imaginary friends as well, then a) HUZZAH YOU ARE A CHAMPION and b) how do you wrap up their story in a way that is gratifying and conclusive but also true to the idea that your characters are somehow real entities who will continue to live their little lives after your reader has closed your book with a pleased sigh, turn off their bedside lamp and gone to sleep? How do you leave your readers with that wistful feeling of wanting more, yet still knowing that the story ended right where it should? Imagine you were trying to write the novel of Axl's life. If you could even wrap your mind around where to BEGIN his story--when he's thrown out of his house at sixteen? when he meets Izzy Stradlin in driver's ed? when he moves to Los Angeles?--how could you possible find a good place to stop? Sure, maybe things gets less exciting after the band disintegrates in the mid-nineties, but would you really want to end your novel before you get to the part where the man responsible for the most face-melting album of the 80s makes an exclusive deal with Best Buy for the retail rights to his new record?

When people invest in fictional characters, eventual closure is one of the returns they will demand on that investment. (This is why the series finale of “Six Feet Under” is the most pants-shittingly awesome episode of television, ever, and the last ten minutes of “The Sopranos” is essentially believed to be an act of aggression against decent American people.) [Also why the final episode of "Battlestar Galactica" makes us FUCKING HOMICIDAL. --ed.] Since most fictional narratives can’t follow every important character to their eventual demise, the rest of us are stuck trying to find a sincere way to bid them farewell. Like pornography, we know a good ending when we see one but are hard-pressed to identity its components; we recognize that plaintive lump in our throats when an utterly delicious book comes to its conclusion, and we turn the last page hoping for more but find only the acknowledgements. If I had to find a common thread among my favorite endings, it would be those that have followed their characters to the completion of whatever story that novel set out to tell, without overreaching by trying to freeze the cast in that moment forever. The last line of Weetzie Bat, Francesca Lia Block’s slinkster-cool YA masterpiece, sums it up nicely: “I don’t know about happily ever after... but I know about happily, Weetzie thought.” As for Axl, I will continue to follow his story in real time, occasionally going back to revisit some of the juiciest bits, checking my Google alerts for news of him, my bottle of Jameson always at the ready.

Historian, writer, and metalhead Helen Walden is, as those crazy kids say these days, totally killing it. She writes the hilarious and incisive zine Doctrinal Expletives (which you can get here and here), as well as the blog Order of the Gash. We would like to state for the record that we thought she was amazing long before she said anything nice about us in a public arena.

Why is heavy metal so awesome?

Well, first of all, the music is amazing, and there's a surprising (to some, anyway) amount of variety within. There's scrappy punk-influenced bands like Motorhead, bombastic symphonic bands like Therion, bands like Moonsorrow that incorporate European folk music into their sound, bands like Necrophagist who play super-technical stuff with a billion wacky time changes... I could go on forever, really. I used to be a little punk rocker, and I've always loved aggressive-sounding, energetic music. Metal offers that same aggression and energy with a little more sophistication and variety.

Second, metal is nerdy, in many senses. It's got a reputation is being a genre for meatheads, but a lot of bands are unabashed geeks. For example, look at Iron Maiden basing a 14-minute song on Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, or Karl Sander's lyrics to Nile songs being (in some cases), directly lifted from ancient Egyptian texts. And even bands who don't necessarily explore sophisticated concepts in their lyrics sometimes still nerd out with their music, in terms of playing solos and melodies that are technically complex yet still memorable as songs. A lot of these supposed meatheads do actually know quite a bit about music theory, and apply themselves to their music with a dedication I really admire and try to emulate.

Third, sometimes I really love metal as a subculture. Sometimes it makes me want to punch a wall, but at the best shows I've been to, there's this sense of "look at all of us scumbag longhairs, we don't fit in but who needs that when you've got all this?" which is just exhilarating.

Metal gets a bad rap for a lot of things: misogyny, homophobia, and racism, for starters (although one could certainly argue metal as a genre is no more misogynist/homophobic/racist than, say, Henry Miller). How do you negotiate being a feminist metalhead? And conversely, how do you deal with people who assume you can't be both?

I'll refer to my main man Robert Walser, a UCLA musicologist who wrote my favorite book about metal (Running With The Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music). In his chapter on gender, he points out repeatedly that while many metal songs and music videos are quite sexist, sexism (and homophobia, and racism) is hardly unique to the world of heavy metal. To say so would ignore the wider social/cultural context in which it is produced, where those forms of oppression are widespread. That is, I'm not going to pretend that some bands and fans don't traffic in pretty vile misogynist imagery (from Motley Crue's leering in "Girls Girls Girls" to the pile of sexually assaulted and mutilated women that populates Cannibal Corpse's discography), but it's not as though they're deviants in an otherwise egalitarian society. If I gave up my participation in metal subculture tomorrow, I would still be dealing with sexism in my daily life. And, speaking as someone involved in punk rock for the better part of ten years, I can say that even subcultures that claim to be politically enlightened when it comes to "women's issues" and female participation still fall short a lot of the time. So, I would say that I negotiate being a feminist metalhead in the same way I negotiate being a feminist anywhere else.

I was actually talking with my friend Greg a little bit about this--he's an out queer dude who has played drums for a couple awesome metal bands around here. To the people who claim that we're "outsiders" in metal because of our politics or our gender/sexual bent, I think we would both answer: fuck you, dude, you don't own this. Our love for the genre is just as fierce as anyone else's, and I think that's all that really matters. There's no specific lifestyle or set of beliefs attached to liking loud guitars. (I have heard some Internet blowhards attempting to expound on what they apparently see as an inherently right-wing traditionalist heavy metal philosophy, but I am fairly sure this is simply the result of a few too many hours spent feverishly masturbating over their dog-eared copy of Lords Of Chaos.)

Best metal album of all time?

Slayer, Reign In Blood. I would say that one of the high points of my life was seeing Slayer when I was 19--their encore was just playing Reign In Blood, beginning to end. Every song is the perfect fusion of melody and aggression. The lyrics maybe aren't the most eloquent in the world but they fit the music to a T: "Bones and blood lie on the ground/Rotten limbs lie dead/Decapitated bodies found/On my wall, your head!"

Some books you've read lately and found pleasing?

Angela Carter's Nights At The Circus, China Mieville's The Scar, John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let The Right One In (I loved the movie, too). I've been re-reading H.P. Lovecraft's stories, which I've loved since I was a teenager. I'm also currently reading Reza Negarestani's Cyclonopedia, which is this bizarre philosophical novel based on the premise that oil is a sentient entity and us humans are merely its pawns. Or something of that nature. Anyway, it's great.

Who are some of your metal heroes? Any advice as to how the general public can incorporate the awesomeness of metal into their daily lives?

Heroes? Let's see... Cliff Burton, for being an amazing bass player and writing some of my favorite Metallica songs. Whenever I don't feel like practicing, I sometimes imagine the ghost of Cliff Burton shouting in my ear "I used to do this shit six hours a day! Get off your ass!"It's incredibly motivating.

Although I don't listen to her band Arch Enemy that much anymore, I still admire Angela Gossow for being a high-profile woman in the world of metal who steadfastly refuses to talk shit on other metal ladies. I've seen far too many women take the "cutting down other women to fit in with the sausage party" route, and her outspoken opposition to that is refreshing. Plus she's probably inspired a bajillion teenage girls to form bands, which is terrific.

Also:Dio. Just for being Dio. And for providing me with my karaoke standard, "Holy Diver."

As far as incorporating the awesomeness of metal into one's everyday life, I recommend doing what I used to do in college and listening to Manowar's "The Gods Made Heavy Metal" every morning. Wimps and posers leave the hall!

You know what we love about HEAVY METAL? Well! Lots of things! Weird outfits! Shenanigans! Loud noises! Thrashing around maniacally! Repetitive power chords! Yelling! When you are stomping down the streets of Brooklyn in a high dudgeon and suddenly hear the opening chords of "Paradise City" and realize they are coming from a Hummer being driven by an elderly Polish gentleman and you make a little "rock on" sign at him and he makes one back and then the rest of your day is really excellent! Stuff like that! So what if you could take that feeling and make a WHOLE WEEK OUT OF IT? WE DID!

Oh yes, dear ones, it's HEAVY METAL WEEK! In honor of HEAVY METAL WEEK: heavy metal interviews! heavy metal guest posts! HEAVY METAL CONTESTS!!!!!!! ARE YOU READY? READY TO ROCK?

YOUR SUPER THRASHING CONTEST MISSION, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT:

Your task is to compose The Most Shredding Form Rejection in the History of the Universe. Your heavy metal rejection special shall be a COVER of a HEAVY METAL SONG. Remember that day when we were listening to a lot of Bon Jovi and everyone practiced this activity a little bit in the comments? Like that, except with a whole song. You can rewrite all of the words, replace a few choice phrases--up to you. You may send us lyrics, submit a video of yourself (CLOTHED) covering the song--whatever. Just make it shred, make it reject, and make it fucking righteous.

RULES AND REGULATIONS:

1. Our tour van will have a Jacuzzi filled with Evian and we want CAVIAR BACKSTAGE AT ALL TIMES.

2. What counts as Heavy Metal for the purposes of this contest: we will leave this largely up to you. Though legitimate metal aficionados everywhere doubtless weep and groan when we use "Bon Jovi," "Poison," and "heavy metal" in the same sentence, hair metal bands are absolutely in. Yes? Yes. Journey is not metal. Don't even ask us if Limp Bizkit counts or we will hunt you down and make sure you never write anything again ever.

3. If any of our 17 Norwegian readers (Heisann, Opphavsmann-venns!) wanted to use a black metal song and enter in Norwegian we would probably invent a special prize just for that person. No impaled animal heads, please, we are deep down kind of softhearted.

4. Your Most Shredding Form Rejection must be posted in the comments of THIS POST by EIGHT P.M. EASTERN STANDARD TIME ON FRIDAY MARCH 12th. The WINNER and there will be ONLY ONE WINNER shall be announced MONDAY MARCH 15. Because the Ides of March are totally metal.

5. You may only enter one Shredding Form Rejection.

6. Please let us know which Heavy Metal Song you are covering. We are very clever, but not psychic.

7. Please also keep in mind that we are, you know, kind of leftist. So, as much as we love Guns 'N Roses, maybe you don't want to cover One in a Million for our contest. Also, Cannibal Corpse covers are probably not a good idea. Dead ladies=not okay. You don't like it, take yourself to a GWAR show, babies!

8. We will absolutely accept bribes in the form of pre-1995 Bon Jovi or Metallica tour shirts.

THE PRIZES:

1. Knowledge that you are like the most righteous force in the universe ever and all your enemies shall bow down before you.

2. A book which we shall select for you at random from our exhaustive library of titles filched from "Steve's" collection of books sent to him by editors.

3. A comprehensive critique of either your query letter or the first five pages of your manuscript by our person. WHICH WILL NOT WE REPEAT NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES RESULT IN THESE ITEMS BEING VIEWED BY A LEGITIMATE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY PROFESSIONAL I.E. "STEVE" NO MATTER HOW GOOD THEY ARE BECAUSE WE ARE ANONYMOUS. ANONYMOUS. ANONYMOUS.

Okay! Ready? GO! FRIDAY! EIGHT P.M.! MAKE US HAPPY! MAKE IT SHRED! MAKE IT MELT OUR FACE! GET READY FOR HEAVY METAL WEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!!!

"No, she's not supernatural. Just compelling."

"That guy has his head so far up his own ass it's a wonder he can see well enough to write a book."

"Are you saying to me in code that she's an idiot? Because you know I don't do idiots."

In other news, interview alumnus/fiancé contender Paul Constant, who is possibly the only person in the world who has read more books than us (hey, we didn't say they were all GOOD books, did we), has started an exciting new matchmaking service. Can't think of what to read next? Paul will help you! How clever is that? So clever! AND he likes Elaine Dundy! Who you should all go read RIGHT NOW!

So maybe it is extremely possible that NEXT WEEK WE WILL BE HAVING THE MOST AMAZING CONTEST EVER IN THE HISTORY OF PUBLISHING BLOG CONTESTS WITH ALL DUE RESPECT TO NATHAN BRANSFORD. Maybe our contest is SO AMAZING that we made A WHOLE AMAZING THEMED WEEK WITH WHICH TO HOUSE OUR CONTEST. Maybe that might happen! Maybe you will find out on Monday! Maybe we walk these streets! a loaded six string on our back! we play for keeps! 'cause we're not coming back! we been everywhere! and we're standing tall! we've seen a million faces AND WE'RE ROCKING ON AND YOU BETTER ROCK RIGHT ON WITH US SEE YOU MONDAY AUTHOR-FRIENDS!!!!!

Tayeb Salih
Season of Migration to the North
184pp. NYRB Classics.
9781590173022

After years of study in Europe, the still-young and nameless narrator of this 1966 novel returns to his native Sudan, eager to make his mark in the postcolonial culture of his homeland. In his home village he meets the enigmatic Mustafa Sa'eed, who slowly reveals the story of his own years in London, his career as a child prodigy and brilliant economist, and his series of increasingly perilous relationships with white women obsessed with his dark skin and invented exotic past.

Though we finished this novel months ago, its unsettling and complex beauty still haunts us. Salih writes with an unerring eye for the terrible consequences of colonialism and its lasting impact on Africa, as well as an eloquence and restraint that is as remarkable as it is effective. Never less than gorgeous, his cool and hypnotic prose sits in the mouth like poetry. Salih, who died in February of 2009, deserves to be every bit as famous in America as he is in the Arab world (a panel of Arab writers and critics selected Season of Migration to the North as the most important Arab novel of the twentieth century). As relevant now as it was when it was written, it's also a surprising window into a Muslim world most Americans never see. As close to perfect as anything we've read in a long, long time.

1. We do not troll the internet looking for your faux pas. Really. We often read the blogs of our Author-friends for fun, because our Author-friends are very clever and charming people, but we for reals do not care if three years ago you left one comment on one agent blog being all like WTF PEOPLE WHY HAS IT TAKEN YOU SIXTEEN YEARS TO READ MY GODDAMN MASTERPIECE WHAT ARE YOU DOING UP IN THERE LOOKING AT YOUTUBE VIDEOS OF PUPPIES OR SOMETHING. Honestly, it would not affect our decision to reject or request even if we DID google you and, say, found a post on your blog along the lines of THE REJECTIONIST IS A HUGE CRYBABY FEMINAZI MORON. The ONLY thing we care about is YOUR WRITING. Lots of agents do very much care what you say in public forums (for (hopefully) obvious and very good reasons, and we are certainly not suggesting you should be a douchebag all over the internet); but also lots of agents don't spend much time on the internet at all unless it's to watch Youtube videos of puppies.

OBVIOUSLY the odds are very slim that a person who thinks we are a crybaby feminazi moron is smart enough to write a good book. But just so you know, we don't care what you think of us. We care about your book.

2. Writers get signed out of the slush pile ALL THE TIME. WE SWEAR TO GOD. WE HAVE SEEN IT HAPPEN. WE HAVE LISTENED IN ON THOSE PHONE CALLS. Writers also get signed by meeting agents at conferences, by being agents' dentists, by randomly charming people they do not know are agents, by mystical coincidence, and by being famous, it is very true. But listen up, little ones: we have been reading slush of one kind or another off and on for almost ten years now (!!! GET US OUT OF HERE!!) and we are STILL happy when we see a query that is actually delightful. Promise. We are even happier when the manuscript is delightful, too. Promise!

3. Maybe what you need is a break from the internet altogether! Try it! Don't look at publishing blogs. Don't write about writing on your Author-blogs. Don't look at agent blogs or other Author-friend blogs or Rejectionist blogs. Don't look at Galleycat or Publishers Lunch or even Bookslut. No looking up debut authors on Wikipedia to see if they are younger than you! No refreshing your browser every sixteen seconds to see if someone you follow put up a new post! No obsessively reviewing every post ever written on how to write a query! It's kind of amazing! Freeing! Joyful! Try it for more than seven minutes! Try it for a day! TWO DAYS! A WEEK! Need help? Mac Freedom can help you!* Go outside! Take a goddamn walk in a park! Pet a fuzzy animal! Eat a tasty treat! Try the revolutionary process of WRITING WITHOUT FEAR (of failure, of being rejected, of the imminent collapse of publishing/rise of e-book/pending mass polar bear extinction and total disappearance of polar ice, of the logistics of the royalty schedule for a book you haven't even finished let alone started querying for let alone published, of whether some agent is RIGHT THIS MINUTE finding a comment you left on an agent blog three years ago being all like WTF PEOPLE and blacklisting you from ever being published anywhere in the entire universe). NO INTERNET. WRITE YOUR BOOK. It is kind of amazing how much less anxiety we feel about publishing when we are not, you know, reading about publishing all day.

4. There is not actually an industry blacklist anywhere. As far as we know. Maybe that's something agents get handed at their top-secret annual meeting with Xenu, to which the assistants are not invited.

Okay, that's all. Tomorrow we return to being hateful. SACK UP, BABIES!

*Seriously, this app changed our entire life. We feel totally cultlike about it. Just looking at that glowing blue circle is now enough to soothe us.