Ravi Mangla's Visiting Writers & Uncanny Valley

Very excited by the news that Ravi's Visiting Writers series is slated for serialization by the great folks at Uncanny Valley. Back in March 2010, I was guest ed for Everyday Genius, and I launched my month with five pieces from the series because it was so special.

Ravi's one of my favorite writers, and I've just decided to put him on the syllabus.

Curio Week One, Three Stories Up/Down

Today Uncanny Valley Press posted "TheBrewsters," originally published in Moon Milk Review # 9, October 2010. The image here is Mike Meginnis' hilarious/ appalling interpretation of the Brewster children--I hope you love it as much as I do. Wednesday's post was "Bog Redaction," from last January's Wigleaf, and the first post on Monday was "The Second Prettiest of the Daughters," a new story. For the next two weeks plus, the stories will all be previously unpublished in any form. Seeing as the postings will continue through the beginning of March, I'm not sure how I will avoid seeming spammy with my updates, especially since the novel situation is developing very quickly: Death Wishing is slated for an October 2011 release by Ig Publishing, and right now I'm doing some final but substantial edits, gathering blurbers (you won't believe who I got), and eating lots of celebratory dinners with my friends.

Somehow I'm supposed to put my syllabus together for my first class on the 25th, but I think I'm going to mess up my blog first. I know, I know. I should get a Big Girl's blog soon, along with a douchey author site and a douchey author pic. (The word "douchey" is brought to you by my 15 yr old nephew. I think it's hilarious, seeing as he probably knows as much about douches as he does merkins).

Laura's Big Day

Curio is here at last!
If you think you'd like to review it, lemme know.

I've written a review of Erin Kelly's debut thriller, The Poison Tree.

I go back to work today. Haven't seen the old place sine the 23rd.

CURIO is coming

My collection of creepy little stories is due to launch Monday, January 10. Don't worry, I'll remind you. But just so you know what you're getting, there are 21 stories, and one will be posted each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until they run out. There will also be downloadable versions of the entire collection, with illustrations and design by Mike Meginnis.

The whole shebang is coming at you from Uncanny Valley Press as their debut publication.

ps. I own January.

Writing in public, 2010

I've been trying to write this post for days but threw out my drafts. We're in the French Quarter for the holiday weekend, and I just received the contract for my New Orleans novel by email. Haven't had a drink but I feel pretty drunk right now. Not joking, I'm woozy.

so, details. The publisher is IG Publishing, and we've been working back and forth since last new year's eve. There will be a few more edits and we have yet to settle on a title, so suggestions are welcome. Here was/is the query:

If you had one wish to change the world, what would it be? Now what if it had to be your dying wish?

In post-Katrina New Orleans, final words can cure cancer, wreck economies, and eliminate house cats. Divorced and disgraced up north, Victor hopes to re-invent himself in the French Quarter where he lives with and works for his son in a vintage shop making corsets and capes. All he wants is a quiet, drunken, carefree life,but after a series of eccentric deathbed wishes come true — including the return of the 1967 Elvis, clouds turned orange, and mothers growing third eyes — Death Wish hysteria forces Vic into action. Along with his entrepreneurial son Val, and his libertine friend Martine, Victor must battle the apocalyptics who have seduced his lovely neighbor Pebbles away from her true vocation of singing the blues (very badly). But Victor must also confront his mortal identity: just what would he wish for the world, especially the world without him in it?

Some stories adapted from the novel have appeared in Juked, Barrelhouse, Pank, killlauthor, and Storyglossia. the Juked one probably captures the spirit of the book in the briefest space, but the Barrelhouse story (in print, issue 7) comes closest plot and style-wise.

My students say the book falls into the genre of urban fantasy, whatever the heck that is.


I love you all. Going out for lunch. Going to try not to hug random New Orleans bums and aristocrats. Happy New Year.

Dear Recycling Team,

Yes, that's an empty champagne bottle on the top of all those cat food tins. No, I don't think I'm Zsa Zsa Gabor or even Edina Monsoon. I had/have something to celebrate ahead of the official holidays, but as it's still an unofficial occasion for joy, I'll keep my yap shut-or full of $25 fizzy wine from the Korean grocery. (Back channel gossip welcome, though).

Thumbnail Re-posts

When I saw that the purveyors of brief literary art at Thumbnail Magazine were looking for blog content, I volunteered material from the VIPs on vsf site--pending original author approval of course. Today, they've reposted Tara Masih's sweet little essay "How to String Together a Story Collection," an article I re-read frequently.

Enjoy! again.

In other no-news-yet-news, I will spend these days leading to Christmas peering up at the virtual skies.

What we were doing

One of the least well kept secrets of the summer was that Cami Park and I had put together a group of five women (Cami, me, Erin Fitzgerald, Andrea Kneeland, and Donora Hillard) to collaborate on a dark-themed flash collection that was going to feature a lot of art, graphic novel style. The project was Cami's baby, but she had dubbed me her co-editor, the marvelous benefit being that she and I were in frequent contact. Sadly, we did not get very far in the project before she became ill--as a group we spent the first 6 weeks or so joking and gossiping more than we wrote, time I consider very well spent, regardless. When Cami dropped out of sight, even from our private group board, we didn't question that for some time. Cami was a private person, one of the few people whose "privacy" did not strike me as perversely narcissistic.

But I don't think I have a right to make any sweeping memorial-type statements about Cami; like a lot of folks who loved her, I didn't know much about her, not even what she looked like. We only discussed writing and writers, but we did it a lot. I can say that Cami's fiction did for me what music and poetry is supposed to do--it carved new pathways in my brain.

So what I have to say is fragmented, it's all I know. She gave me fantastic advice on fictionaut. She wrote an amazing mini essay on titles for my very short fiction blog. Sometimes she'd IM me with the latest on one of her dust-ups--she stepped into a few messes at Zoe. She had a fat dog. She was not averse to a bit of priest bothering. Doing all those poetry-book-a-day reviews in September almost drowned her.

Tomorrow her memorial service will be at Circus Circus in Reno. I'm guessing it will take place in a normal, non-clown festooned space, and those of you fortunate enough to go--please send my love. However, I must point out that there will be performances on the midway by JR Johns and his dogs at 12:50 and 2:30. Do what you know is right, and bring back a slanted report.

Goats

We bought our cabin in the WV panhandle in late 1997, closing the weekend after Michael Hutchence died. Not a lot has changed in the area since then, but goats are getting more popular. I'm guessing that's because they are cheaper than alpacas.

Less than one mile from our cabin there is an extraordinary sight on Route 9: an excavation contractor has a couple of medium-small duty machines parked in his driveway, along with hand lettered signs advertising skilled labor. Then in the lawn area:

a genuine beardy, horned billy goat (used to be tethered to a barcalounger, but is now allowed to roam)
a trampoline
two large red dogs, free range with itchy butts
a plastic, castle style kid's playhouse
spiderman, hanging by the neck from a tree (he goes up at halloween, doesn't come down for months)

I can't get a picture because there is no room--this is all happening on a sharp, narrow mountain road. So to confirm to each other and remember, Dean and I speak the inventory out loud every time we pass: goat, trampoline, dogs, castle, spiderman. It's like a Meg Pokrass prompt, but I will never be able to write a story that will do it justice.

Premature announcement

I shouldn't say anything yet, but I'm too excited not to. And yet, I don't have anything to say--except that the kind folks behing not-even-fledgeling-yet Uncanny Valley dig Curio, the ghost/goth story collection that I've been pushing since March. Details are still floating about (I only found out yesterday [best thanksgiving ever, or at least better than last year's ulcer party]), but I can confirm that we are not talking conventional chapbook.

so excited.
too excited. too too.
stoopid happy. got up at 4 this morning for no good reason, that kinda thing.

Old TG story: "The Cool Aunt"

I'm passive/aggressively pretending Blip doesn't exist until they get the Mississippi Review online archive posted. For me, getting published in MR was really important to my progress. Here's a Thanksgiving story that appeared in a politics themed issue from 2004, edited by Gary Percesepe. Al Gore was in that issue, too.

"The Cool Aunt" is about a middle class teenager from PA who decides to wear a burqa to a family gthering. It's a conventional, domestic kinda story, one of the last I ever wrote of that type. The Thanksgiving story I'm working on now is a series of flash sections with crows, ministers, and a dead kid in the attic. And yes, Donna, there is a pie.

idea for a national park

My husband has an Ipad, so one of his jobs is to tell me what's really happening in the world while CNN's John Roberts struggles to curb his impulse to say "you go girlfriend" every 15 minutes during the morning news. But there is coffee involved, and Dean sometimes flits through several stories, so I usually go out into the world armed with a jumbled sense of current events.

For a few minutes yesterday I was seized by the incorrect notion that coyotes were roaming the streets of Detroit, apparently with the blessing of that city's wildlife management agency. But that was wrong--the city in question is actually Chicago.

And I was disappointed. I've been to Detroit exactly one time, under stressful conditions, and I recall that there was an eerie yellow fog hovering over a cracked highway leading into a gray city that was quiet and edgy. In the years since (about 20 now), the Detroit of my imagination is post-apocalyptic. I apologize to the real Detroit, but the Detroit in my mind is a perfect place to encounter a coyote loping down the middle of an abandoned city street.

Not that it's possible, but if we did put aside some stretch of a failed, post-industrial city watched over by the NPS, I'd go.

Time is hard to predict

This two day work week will be jam packed with things that need to get done, food that must be eaten, and stress that WILL float to the top. I'm going to walk as much as I can so that I can argue with my imaginary friends--

I just noticed we haven't changed the calendar page from October.

The collaborative project seems to have stalled, except that I just blooped out a new, horrible story last night.

I am expecting news, which means I'm as emotionally stable as a 14 year old.

JMWW Anthology V--I want to believe

I'm listed as a contributor to the JMWW V Anthology, which, if it is like their previous anthologies, is a best-of collection from their 2010 issues. There is a horrible possibility that my name appears on this list in error, but if that is the case I'll just be pitiful and entitled until Jen gives in.

The all star line up--

Lindsay Ahl
Matt Bell
George Blecher
Andrew Borgstrom
Callista Buchen
Alan Stewart Carl
Alexandra Chasin
Kim Chinquee
Robert Coover
SL Corsua
Patrick Dacey
Jeremy M. Davies
Nicelle Davis
Andy Devine
Spencer Dew
Brian Evenson
Jon-Michael Frank
Timothy Gager
Scott Garson
Katrina Gray
Justin Hamm
Jane Hammons
James Hannaham
Clarinda Harriss
Lily Hoang
Tim Horvath
Joanna Howard
Jamie Iredell
Kevin Killian
Brian Kiteley
Norman Lock
Ben Loory
Robert Lopez
Sean Lovelace
Miguel Morales
David Peak
Emily Peterson
Nate Pritts
Timothy Raymond
Ethel Rohan
Davis Schneiderman
Savannah Schroll Guz
Laura Ellen Scott
Amber Sparks
Ken Sparling
Terese Svoboda
J.A. Tyler

let the ass kicking contest begin!

Even though I am way too busy, I just set a bunch of projects in motion, several related to my duties at Prick of the Spindle, a job that gets more interesting with each issue.

But it's also my favorite part of the semester--we're lurching into round 3 submissions for my advanced workshop. I LOVE round 3 because that's when everyone panics, having run out of polished work. Give me something sloppy, inspired, and volatile, kids.

NaNaNuNu: Day 1

They got me again. We're coordinating NaNoWriMo events at Mason again, but this time with a BUDGET. No more passing out leftover Halloween candy at write-ins.

Come here to watch us suffer.

BTW nano-haters, I care not one crap about your cynicism. Hope it keeps you warm at night. Oh, and shut up anyway.

TREAT!!

Just learned that Smokelong Quarterly has nominated my story, "Last Seen Leaving" for Dzanc Books' Best of the Web 2011 collection. Yes yes yes yes.

Sophie Hannah Interview

Thanks to Art Taylor for letting me throw a few questions at British crime fiction writer Sophie Hannah for his blog. This was fun.

If you don't know Hannah's work, but you like Tana French, give her a shot. Penguin has released a bunch of her Charlie Zailer/Simon Waterhouse books in lovely trade paper editions--all with different titles than the UK eds, so be careful. The US order is

Little Face
The Wrong Mother
The Truth-Teller's Lie
The Dead Lie down

That should tide you over.

Read silently to yourself, please

Oof. We held a reading yesterday, and though a ton of folks said they were coming, only two people who was not one of the coordinators, readers, or readers' companions showed. So we conducted the reading salon-style, and that would have been a treat if I could have quelled my embarrassment. And I swear this is true: one of two non-affiliated attendees took a wee nap during the third reading.

I don't think there's anything to blame except for the fact that we were competing with a gorgeous Sunday afternoon in a volatile season--

Making Vips on vsf more useful

I'm thinking updating the Vips on vsf blog in a few ways and then putting out a call for new contributions. One thing I need to do to make it more useful is create an easy and thorough index--for example, I gotta be able to find Cami's essay on titles, Joe & Kathy's collaborations, or Lauren's Granta pestering argument a lot more quickly. But also, I think there's room to expand the discussion to include notes on publishing experiences, interviews, etc. I even think the "vsf" focus no longer needs to be as central . . .

If you use it or want to, let me know what you or your students would like to see.