Well alrighty. Galleys ahoy

Looks like the publisher approves the revisions, has completed the line edit, and is rushing the copy off to the galley printers by the weekend. I get passed by this go-round because we're a tad behind schedule, but that's fine with me. There'll still be time to work with the galleys.

Actually, they really liked the revisions, to the point of using four exclamation points to say so, and this makes me very happy.

Keep an eye out for Donna D. Vittucci's cameo appearance as a very friendly French Quarter waitress.

A Howling in the Wires: An Anthology of Writing from Postdiluvian New Orleans

This afternoon I just received my copy of A Howling in the Wires a collection mostly just-after-or around-Katrina writings edited by Sam Jasper and Mark Folse, published Gallatin & Toulouse Press. As of this posting I'm about a quarter of the way through, and I'm buzzing with the awful vitality of the volume. I learned about the collection from a facebook posting by an old friend, Greg Peters (frenemy? the man can wear the hell out of a leather kilt, but he once told me he hated me when I was funnier than he was, which had to be a tough way for him to live). Greg's got the first two entries, and entries is the right term for the pieces range wildly from literary to journalistic to emergency bulletin style, deliberately unpolished to retain the immediacy of their original expression--that decision was GENIUS, btw. Anyway, the book has my neck hairs rising. I'm serious. So far Howling is both rough and sentimental, sitting somewhere between Robert Smallwood's ragged, good, but is-it-completely-honest? The Five People You Meet in Hell:Surviving Katrina and David Eggars' mournful and smoothly crafted Zeitoun.

Shit, I even like the poetry.

More soon.

Rocking Monday, New stories in PANK

Just got back for a hedonistic weekend in New Orleans, which makes the publication of two new stories in Pank even sweeter. Ethel Rohan has a great one in the same issue as well.

is it breathing?

someone just poked my west virginia novel with a stick. good timing, too, because next weekend is the launch party for Gravity Dancers, at Politics & Prose. My story in that collection is called "Moon Walk," and it has zero Micheal Jackson content, but it is derived from the novel.

Going to a different Moon Walk this weekend though. We're headed to the French Quarter where the river walk is named after Moon Landrieu, a politician and businessman credited with revitalizing New Orleans in the 60s-70s.

Then I need to spruce up my synopsis.

revision status

well alrightey, I'm "through" revision 1 in that I've gone through the draft and managed to whittle it down to 330 better pages. I got some great advice about the first 40, which I'm still applying, and now I think I may be at the stage of re-writing the chapter by chapter summary to see what this tighter version looks like, bird's eye view.

one of my worries is that I never really answer the questions of the supernatural phenomenon that drives the plot. all I do is write about the affect on my main character. hope I can get away with that.

next weekend we go to new orleans. whee! research! gonna eat and drink myself stoopid.

A Fat Tuesday

Happy Mardi Gras! Well, it’s only Tuesday and my week is officially memorable: Just got a story accepted by the fantastic Northville Review. Friday I get my picture taken because it appears that I have ‘served’ for 15 years at Mason (I’m a Lifer, probably). And Saturday I’m on a new media panel for a fiction writing seminar, with 10 minutes to talk about the evolving aesthetics/identity of short fiction, publishing, and teaching writing.

At least that’s what I said I’d talk about, but lately I’ve been thinking about online journals and the re-emergence of Editorship. As a veteran of a major MFA program, I have complicated feelings about personality-driven writing & lit situations, but far and away my favorite journals are ones that require the selection genius and idiosyncrasy of their founders.

I'm Juked!!!

I'm in Juked with "Do you know what it means to miss"--this story comes from my New Orleans novel, and the timing is great since we are entering Mardi Gras season.

J. W. Wang at Juked is wonderfully kind, by the way.

forgot how I want to end it

happy new year! I did some writing on the New Orleans novel yesterday, only to discover that I have forgotten how I wanted to end it. My notes are no help either. We're off to the Bahamas this weekend, and I'm taking along Kate Atkinson's One Good Turn and possibly Benjamin Black's Christine Falls (if i can find it--misplaced upon purchase. probably packed away with the christmas junk). Maybe I can steal some ideas from one of those books. It'll be a nice confusion, writing about New Orleans in the Bahamas while reading stories set in Scotland and Ireland.

do you know what it means to miss new orleans?

hey, is that your dad?

Research Mission (Wish me luck)

We’re going to Jazzfest this weekend, and that makes me quite happy. We go to New Orleans at least twice a year, and our favorite music spots are Snug Harbor to see anyone and The Spotted Cat to see The Jazz Vipers. My current novel project is set in New Orleans, as are two short stories that I have out for consideration. Wouldn’t it be cool if StorySouth organized link lists of their stories sorted by locale for us desk-chained tourists?

This pic was taken last August during Satchmofest. The statue is called "Old Man River." He was fully naked on Friday, but he was draped with a sheet Saturday morning. A tourist from Minnesota enlisted my help ("That's not right, that's art"), and while we attempted to disrobe him, her husband looked on. We failed, managing to yank the sheet even lower, making OMR look pretty hot.

loooooong stories

in addition to finishing or at least putting nails into the coffin lids of about six short fictions last month, I’m still trudging along with my latest novel project, a fantasy based in a near-future-post-bush New Orleans that I’m calling Social Aid & Pleasure. I’m also trying to find representation for my West Virginia novel, Unattended, which may be tricky, considering that there’s no sexual content in the book and the main character is a 50 year old woman. A coursepak edition of Unattended has been read by about 20 college students, whose instructor thought my book presented an un-theorized approach to insider-outsider conflicts in contemporary Appalachia. no one from the class has told me to my face that the book sucked, so I feel good about that.