Tuesday, November 29, 2011

40 Times

That's how many times my story "Where You Live" was rejected before it was finally published earlier this month.

Usually I don't tally these things up, but I was curious, because this is an older story that I've been tinkering with and sending out for several years.

So yeah. Persistence pays off.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

New Story "Where You Live" at the Good Men Project

The Good Men Project has been publishing some great fiction, thanks to fiction editor Matt Salesses.

So I'm very happy that my short story "Where You Live" has found a home there.

Here's how it starts:

"It was the director himself who called. His voice, serious and low, sounded trained for such occasions, the delivering of bad news to loved ones and relatives. And this was what he told me: my mother—68 years old, known for her marble sponge cake and Zen-like bridge skills, a rabid fan of movie musicals—was missing. Missing. Though he didn’t use that word. Euphemisms were employed instead. 'Temporarily unaccounted for' was one, 'currently unsupervised' another."

You can continue reading "Where You Live" here.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Fessing Up

Paris Review editor Lorin Stein recently fessed up about the famous books he’s never read.

OK, I’ll fess up too...

Books I've never read:
  • War and Peace
  • Paradise Lost
  • Robinson Crusoe
  • Winesburg, Ohio
  • Catch-22
  • Tristram Shandy

Books I've started but never finished:

  • Moby-Dick
  • Anna Karenina
  • Blood Meridian
  • Gravity’s Rainbow

Anyone else care to confess?

Monday, November 7, 2011

Coming Soon: Pank 6

The next print issue of Pank is due in January (yes, 2012 is just around the corner), and you can preorder it right now.

The list of contributors includes, well, me, along with Lindsay Hunter, Sara Lippmann, Lincoln Michel, Frank Hinton, John Warner, and (wait for it) Sherman Alexie.

The cover also looks fantastic:


Pank's print issues are always a thing of beauty, both inside and outside, and I'm very happy the editors gave a nod to my story "Close."

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Kathy Fish's Dream Writing Day

Katrina Denza recently interviewed the amazing Kathy Fish.

Here's how Kathy describes her dream writing day:

"I always begin with notebook and pen. I don’t think I’ve ever started any writing at all on the computer. I need time to scribble. And it’s all over the page. If something feels like it might be good I circle it. After awhile something clicks and I know I’m ready for the keyboard. I’m very unstructured. I don’t give myself a time limit or word count goal. Coffee is always involved. I know the writing’s going well if the coffee gets cold.

"A typical writing day is spent messing around on the internet for longer than I ought to until I’m seized with guilt and shut it off. I stare out the window a lot. I take my dog for a walk. I pour another cup of coffee. Maybe after two hours I start to scribble in my notebook. I look out the window some more. My dream writing day is when I get past all of this and go into that beautiful trance, where I forget everything and look up, finally, two hours later and have before me something that feels real and right and pretty decent. A dream writing day is when it feels effortless."


Kathy's book "Wild Life" is a master class in the art of flash fiction. Highly, highly recommended.