Roseanne Bar, Nazi Punches, My First Book Deal

I'm proud of my book, but I sure regret working with this publisher

It was the punch heard round the world. I didn’t know that proud alt-right scumbag provocateur Richard Spencer getting punched in the head on network television during Trump’s 2016 inauguration would cost me friends and win me a book deal. I was doing some gigs in Austin, Texas when it happened and I was staying at the home of a well known atheist debater and magician. We went to the Women’s March in Austin which was off the hook awesome. Later that day as we drove around trying to find the best vegan ice cream in Austin (so many options!) our social media feeds began to fill up with images of Spencer getting clocked while cheerfully showing off his Pepe The Frog lapel pin (Poor Pepe, his creator is NOT down with the alt right using his artwork at all.)

I cheered. Mr. Atheist debate guy’s wife cheered, but my argumentative friend was not pleased with this violence or with our celebrating it and we started to debate the ethics of punching nazis, resulting some weeks later in him telling me to fuck off, and then blocking me, which I thought was weird since debating people is his whole shtick. Plenty of others did stick around to debate, and for a moment there defending the punching of Nazis felt like a full time gig.

My friend, podcaster Carrie Poppy, suggested these debates were strictly scholarly since we surely do not regularly run into actual Nazis, do we? She was amazed to hear what a strong presence white supremacists have held in the punk scene since at least the eighties, or that various white supremacists tattoos were everywhere when you knew how to recognize them.

It was around this time that I got a curious email from Alexandra Hess at Skyhorse Publishing.

I’m an editor at Skyhorse Publishing in New York. We are working on a book with Carrie Poppy and she mentioned that you have a memoir tentatively called “Punching Nazis” that documents your experiences fighting Nazis in the punk scene. It sounds right up my alley. I’m wondering if you have a full proposal and if the manuscript is completed. Please let me know!

I laughed hard at this. I had no such memoir, and no proposal, and not only was the manuscript not completed, it wasn’t started, it didn’t exist. Apparently what happened was that Carrie was offered a book deal from Skyhorse, and being the delightful friend she is, she said “You know who you should have write a book? Comedian Keith Lowell Jensen!” and they said, “Who?”

I sent them a book I had written which had earned me some blog readers and a couple of rejection letters. This resulted in my adding another rejection letter to Not For Rehire, which I then turned into A HUGELY SUCCESSFUL (by my standards) comedy special. But Alex said nice things about my writing, and my “voice” and said they really wanted the Nazi punching book, would I be willing to put together a proposal?

So I put together a proposal. I got great advice to write the proposal in the same voice the book would be written in. I wrote a fun, somewhat flippant proposal, and submitted it and very quickly they accepted my proposal and sent me an advance. Several writer friends told me big advances were a thing of the past. Well, this advance was big to me, and I spent it immediately because I’m an independent artist, which means I am always broke. And this caused me a great deal of panic. I started writing furiously. I really didn’t know if I could do this, but I’d already been paid to do this and now I HAD TO DO THIS!

I suggested to Alex we go with “Punching Nazis and other good ideas” as the title, because I thought it was funny and because “other good ideas” let me expand what I was writing about. I banged the first draft out in a mad dash driven by headache inducing anxiety.

I interviewed a local promoter who’d had his face kicked in by Nazi skinheads. He was a fantastic interview, at one point describing feeling sand in his mouth and then realizing it was what used to be his teeth. A few days after the interview he wrote me and asked me not to use his real name. I tried to reassure him it would be fine, it had been 20 years. Most of the guys involved were dead or in prison. It was a losing fight. Finally I said, “Okay. Of course. It’s your call, but if I have to give you a pseudonym it will be one of my choosing.” He agreed, and that’s how my book came to feature an interview with Farty McFuckbutt.

I sent the first draft to Alex. Waiting to hear back from her was pure torture. I crossed a boundary messaging her at her personal email address over a holiday weekend when I didn’t hear from her soon enough. She let me know this was not cool, and I apologized and talked myself down from the ledge. I had convinced myself that I’d turned in a steaming pile of shit and that she was about to write me and say, “Sorry, we were wrong. You’re not a good writer after all.” Finally, after she’d had time to read it, we scheduled a call.

I was at my day job when the call came. I grabbed the phone and raced outside, announcing to my coworkers that I was on lunch. I walked and talked and the first words she said were, “I loved it.” followed by “Do you know Aaron Cometbus?” I was thrilled she was asking me this. There were things about my writing that were intentional and stylistic that I worried would come across as amateur and clumsy to someone not giving me the benefit of the doubt. That she knew Cometbus meant she likely got where I was coming from. I am a huge fan of his writing and it has greatly influenced how I write. She even let me keep Farty McFuckbutt!

When we hung up, I cried. I ducked into a doorway and cried. I realized just how stressed I’d been for months now trying to get this thing done, feeling like an imposter, worrying that I was headed for finally getting something I though I wanted only to fail at it. Relief washed over me at having heard her say she loved it, and knowing that she got it.

Over the next weeks Alex gave me really great critiques. She savaged the way I handled the interview chapters (looking back she was actually quite gentle with me) and she told me some other things I needed to fix. There was at least one chapter she suggested we dump completely. I loved her advice and mostly agreed with it and I once again had the wonderful feeling of knowing that an editor is making me into a better writer (Thanks Jackson, Becca,

Amy Bee

, and my long suffering wife Bryna).

I cleaned it up, rewrote the interviews, and I felt much more relaxed and confident as we readied it for print. They had me solicit quotes from famous folks I knew. Doug Stanhope wrote me a crazy rambling missive that had nothing do with the book and then later wrote me that he’d been so drunk he didn’t recall writing it. I laughed at this, and was tempted to use this second message explaining the nonsense of his first message as the official blurb. Skyhorse sent me several covers and I picked the one I liked the best.

I loved this cover. I wanted it on t-shirts. I was excited about it. Then they told me no, and sent me the cover they were going to use instead. I hated it. It showed a guy being punched and the guy looked like he had an afro. I told them how I felt and was informed that how I felt didn’t matter nearly as much I hoped it would for the cover of MY book. I begged them to at least scale back the dude’s hair so it didn’t look like an afro. I’ve never known a Nazi to have an afro!!! We settled on a cover, with me doing most of the compromising. It was their cover, the one I hated, but with the afro cut back.

Around this time Roseanne Barr, one of my earliest comedy idols, had several times asked me to feature for her at clubs, and had said kind things about me. The quote from her was at the top of the book’s cover, but Roseanne was becoming increasingly problematic, and I asked them if we could switch the quote to one from Doug Stanhope, or Myq Kaplan (he wrote the back cover blurb), or anyone else. I was told the Roseanne Quote was fine, and would help sell books.

Two news items grabbed my attention. First, Roseanne tweeted something blatantly racist and got fired from her own sitcom. And I read that Skyhorse had laid off a good portion of their staff. I got an email from Alex. She’d been let go. Skyhorse was cancelling many upcoming titles and I was sure my book would be one of them. I was emailing everyone else I could at the company trying to find out what was going on.

Finally I was contacted by my new handler. “Is my book still being published?” I asked.

“It printed this morning.” he answered, which felt like him saying they were stuck with me.

I asked again about getting the Roseanne quote off of the cover.

“It printed this morning.” he said again. Damn.

I had an anti-Nazi book topped by a quote from a Nazi, and to make matters worse it featured a big old stupid typo! “Keith Lowell Jensen In Hilarious”? WTF?

My book came out. Skyhorse did the minimum to support the book and I never felt like anyone else there loved it or even really got it the way Alex had but going it on my own is something I was used to. I booked my own readings, and sold copies at comedy shows. I got a gig opening a whole weekend of shows for Michelle Wolf, and Michelle Wolf didn’t have merchandise to sell which was great news for me. I sold a ton of books to her fans. The thing I was most proud of us was the tiny check I got from Skyhorse. This meant I’d earned enough royalties to cover my advance, and then some. That felt good. I continue to sell books at shows.

Since then Skyhorse has gotten really gross releasing books by Roger Stone, Rand Paul, Tulsi Gabbard, and RFK Jr., including his book attacking Anthony Fauci. They slobber all over these creeps on their social media channels.

So now I have to accept that I published a book about Punching Nazis that features a quote from a Nazi on the cover, with a pro-Nazi publisher.

For my next book I went with a super dope husband wife indy publisher. I love you CLASH Books! The indy scene is where I belong anyway. The advances area bit smaller.

And now I’m on Substack sharing my new novel, Festival, for free, with all of you, one chapter at a time. You can read the first chapter here: