Taking a breather

The Barrelhouse party at The Black Squirrel was terrific, and Amber Sparks was amazing. The room was nice and full, the beer flowed, etc etc. Rather than read the intro again, I read three very short stories that came from the novel: "Do you know what it means to miss"/Juked, "Karaoke People are Happy People"/Storyglossia, and "The Dusty Bastards"/JMWW.

But now no more travel until mid December. What to do, what to do? Perhaps I should so some of that "grading" I hear everyone buzzing about. Sounds fun. Oh, and I could get caught up on the wigleaf reading.

On the Weather search page my auto-fill spits out Brooklyn, Seattle, San Francisco, Baton Rouge, Baltimore, New Orleans. Sweet. It's almost like I had a life for a couple of weeks there.

 me, robin, batman

second guessing

BIG Week

So this week was/continues to be a whopper, starting off with a packed reading at Brooklyn's Greenlight Books, which was a semi-sloshy hoot with my publisher providing home-made hurricanes and Zapp's potato chips. Erin Fitzgerald trekked out to provide moral support and logistics, but I was reading on my own, no matter what this chalk and slate promised:

I stayed on the 19th floor of a Holiday Inn in Times Square. Check out the enchanting view:

Then last night was another jam-packed event at One More Page Books & More, a shop that sells books, wine & chocolate. Most of the people at the event were folks I know, but that didn't stop them from buying bags full of stuff.  Here's what happened when I asked how many of them were at the store for the first time. The manager was pleased:

Tonight, it's a Barrelhouse hosted "Evening of Death with Laura Ellen Scott and Amber Sparks" at the fabulous Black Squirrel in Adams Morgan. Really looking forward to it.

After tonight, nothing booked until December 13. I'm really okay with that.

The Scranton Report: Pages & Places Book Festival

The Pages & Places Book Festival in Scranton, PA provided my first opportunity to take my Death Wishing on the road. I met the festival's coordinator, writer Bill Black, a couple of years ago when we both read at the 510 series in Baltimore, at which time he'd invited me to read at the fest. I begged off, explaining that I did not have a book to festivate. But this year I do, as does my dear friend Debra Lattanzi-Shutika, and not only were we invited to participate as authors, we were also asked to conduct writing practice/culture "workshops"--Deb did the nonfiction presentation, I did the one for fiction.

We hemmed and hawed for weeks, but finally decided to splurge for an extra night's lodging so we could attend The Prologue Party on Sept 30, which was great. There were very high profile guests, including futurist/physicist Michio Kaku, who was scheduled to give a lecture directly after the party. We did not get to meet him, but we did meet Richard Stallman and spent a good deal of party-time chatting with cartoonist and free culture activist, Nina Paley, whose latest kick is free motion quilting. We also went on a back stairs tour of the Masonic lodge, courtesy of Meeshka? Neshka? It was hard to hear. Whatever your name is, THAT was fun. As was the open bar and tiny pirogies. I'm sorry i did not get a pic of the pirogies.

Nina, Deb, and secret tour guide

The next day were the panels and workshops. We went to the Coal Region Writers panel featuring Sunbury Press authors Thomas Malafarina, Joseph Tarone, & Mike Breslin, all of whom were tremendously charming gents. But after that we were anxious to see the book sale tent--Deb's books were there but not mine, so we headed off to the workshop venue--the The Vintage Theater and Cafe, to see if they were there, instead. But no, and this made me a bit nervous. The Publication workshop was about to begin, so while the venue volunteer tracked down my missing books, we sat in on the session. I wasn't crazy about the presentation--the publisher who was speaking tended towards negativity, complaining about clueless authors the way my teaching colleagues complain about their students, but I do understand how, when you start down that line of discussion, it can get out of hand. And she was egged on by some cynical audience members. I think her presentation was mostly alienating, sad to say. However, I was happy to see Bill Black stride in during the middle with an armload of my books to be displayed in the back for sale.

At that point, the day just got better and better. Lori Hettler of TNBBC drove 30 mins with her mom and son to meet me for coffee, and that was great fun. Deb's session was well attended, and there were great questions, followed by my session, during which Rob Swartwood and his wife showed up. I didn't get many questions, except for a softball lobbed by Rob, but I did sell all the books in the back (like, 6 copies?). Rob & Holly had driven 2hrs, so we all had lunch at some spooky mafia-style steak and seafood joint. Though we were in the middle of downtown, for some reason nothing else was open. By 3 the weather had turned very nasty, and the outdoor portion of the book festival shut down, as well.

Lori Hettler & me

The last event for me was a Barrelhouse hosted reading that night, but the rain kept a lot of folks away. Nevertheless, I got to meet Amye Archer in the flesh (she's a riot), as well as make new friends with poets Dawn Leas and Alexis Czenz Belluzzi. There was an interesting confluence of themes, especially with Amye's, Dawn's and my work, which made the reading seem very special.

In general, a positive, exhausting experience, with an odd but workable mix of high profile and low profile events. If I'm invited to the festival again, I'd probably not use the event hotel but try to get something walking distance. Though there was a shuttle, we always missed it, which meant we were reliant on Deb's nav system, voiced by a lady we named "Recalculating Ruth."

UPDATE: Festival goer D. B. Echo does a wonderful recap of Deb's and my presentations here. Thank you D. B.!

Official Coming Out of my new Blog: Wish Tank

To promote my novel, Death Wishing, and to create a little fun cross promotion as well, I've launched Wish Tank as a place to collect Death Wishes--as I've redefined the term, a Death Wish is a wish uttered before dying in hopes that it comes true. PLEASE send me a wish--submission details are on the About page. My publishers have pledged to donate copies of my book for a possible wish contest. Coincidentally, the Department newsletter was put in everyone's boxes today and it features a profile of me and the book on the front page, so I've been receiving questions and congratulations from my colleagues all day, which has been gratifying. Also, Barrelhouse (they published my short story called "Wish Tank" a while back--see how this all fits together?) sent out a message to their online subscribers announcing that they are hosting a reading by me and Mark Yakich November 19. If it's in writing it has to be true right?

Learning Smarts

Last weekend I attended the inaugural Indie Lit Summit in DC, sponsored by the moguls and mavens of Barrelhouse and The Lit Pub, and facilitated—with charm and efficiency—by B’s poetry editor Dan Brady. The summit is a regional thing where literary editors and publishers convene to discuss the problems and opportunities of the day; in our case, the breakout sessions we decided on were marketing, readings venues, and community building. I should stop writing “we,” though. I’m pretty sure I was the only non-publisher/editor in the room, and I tried very hard not to wade into discussions with ideas like, “Let’s all buy a beach house together and smoke opium and have barbecue party-readings!”

It was an eye-opening, full day of discussions, kicked off with a keynote from Andy Hunter of Electric Literature—and here I should confess that I have ignored EL ever since I first heard about them and that they paid writers $1000 per short story. I’m either a bolshie asshole or I think boutique short fiction is a whitefolks concern (those positions might be the same), but Hunter was pretty convincing about the commercial possibilities of new fiction + innovation. I should also remind you that I believe everything that anyone tells me at the time they are telling me it. One of the points he made was that Rick Moody’s twitter based story for Electric Literature in 2009 was a huge success, despite the immediate backlash from mainstream concerns. You can read the argument here, but the upshot was 1) the story was good, and 2) the delivery resulted in a dramatic (like 10X) increase in followers and subscriptions for EL.

By the end of the day the Indie Lit Summit came up with some very exciting ideas that I probably shouldn’t go into right now, but in general it felt like the smartest-guy-in-the-room from several rooms all ended up in the same one at once: 826DC, appropriately enough.

Several things became really clear as we attempted to build a list of reading spaces that already exist in the DC/Baltimore area:

1) There are lots of places to read. Yay!
2) If you write poetry and nonfiction. Oh.
3) Not many are bookstores. Dang.

So let’s say your debut novel is coming out in October, and your publisher is counting on your hometown events to be big draws. You may be screwed, lady.

Learning highlight: If you skip out on the last minutes of the Marketing & Publicity session to have frozen yogurt with gummi bear mix-ins with your fairy-princess costumed gosh-daughter you’ll miss out on something important about Smashwords.

Storytime! for cats and tots

The party boys of Barrelhouse hosted a reading of Moon Milk Review writers last night in DC, and it was great fun.Very well attended and I finally picked up Molly Gaudry's verse novella We Take Me Apart, as well as the latest issue of Barrelhouse (#8, "Office Life"), which I'd been resisting out of petulance. I failed to convince Dan Brady that they should use the cover art for issue 7 as their permanent profile image.

I'm not sure if this was her first reading, but my 2 & 1/2 year old gosh daughter (fave quote from dinner: "Oh yeah, remind me to get you a copy of the will") squirmed quietly and charmingly during the first set of readers which included Randall Brown. She really likes the clapping part. After she and her folks cut out at half-time, several people commented on how good she was--and she was very good--but just minutes earlier we were chasing her through a restaurant, trying to stop her from running out into the street with about four twenty dollar bills she managed to snatch from the cash machine.

This morning I woke up to find that the gorgeous card that Rae Bryant distributed to promote the latest MMR issue had been mauled by Harriet. She loves Ben Loory, is my guess.

Can we write off our booze to Smokelong and Prick of the Spindle?

This reading is at the Black Squirrel tomorrow night, same location as the Smokelong/Corium/Prick of the Spindle AWP offsite reading in Feb 2011. Tara Laskowski and I feel duty bound to check it out. Thoroughly. We even lined up drivers so we can get ripped.

the day after Dzanc Workshop Day/DC

I have no idea if it went well, but we filled up the time and made people write. There were about a dozen participants, most of whom could have run the workshop themselves--I was especially pleased to meet Rae Bryant of Moon Milk Review, and poet Kate Wyer, whose living book project And, Afterward is really fascinating.

It was a gorgeous day, so of course we convened in the windowless upstairs of the Wonderland Ballroom bar. The Barrelhouse lads like bar food and bar drink, but I did not see anyone taking up the waitress on her offer of free waffles. Apparently they used to have bacon days.

Mike Ingram started things off with a discussion of point of view, I did my flash thing, and Reb wrapped up with a guided tour through "Moves through Contemporary Poetry," an essay by Elisa Gabbert & Mike Young that appeared on HTMLGIANT.

For my segment I tried to talk about how tension occurs in vsf, and I shared Katrina Denza's "Soap," Scott Garson's "Captions," Joseph Young's "10 Point" & "Lethe," and Matt Bell's "How To Watch Paint Dry." After a quick browse of the readings I had the attendees write in response to one of the following exercises, all of which I adapted from Behn & Twichell's Practice of Poetry--my rationale being that the compositional mood for writing very short fiction is more akin to that of writing poetry than it is to writing conventional fiction:

A
Write one or two complete sentences in response to each of these steps.
The “You” in these prompts is the narrator, who is part of the scene.

1. Think of a person you know, or invent a person. Describe the person’s hands.
2. Describe something he or she is doing with the hands.
3. Use a metaphor to describe an exotic place.
4. Mention what you would want to ask this person in context of numbers 2 and 3.
5. The person notices you and gives a response that indicates a misunderstanding of your question.

B
Build or dismantle, piece by piece, an object, being, or phenomena that we don’t naturally think of as being constructed.

C
1. Write a paragraph to describe an intriguing event or object—avoid using comparisons, stick with the image.
2. Do the same to describe a powerful character.
3. Combine the paragraphs into one, alternating between the object and the person. Use transitional language to make the paragraph sound right, even if it doesn’t seem to make sense. Make the flow take priority over reason. (new reason will create itself)

Dzanc National Workshop Day: March 20

I'm very excited to be helping out with the DC Dzanc event for Dzanc National Workshop Day, March 20, 2010. So far it looks like there are 25 cities involved, running lectures, workshops, etc, with the proceeds going to support all those awesome Dzanc charities and initiatives. I'll be there as "flash fiction writer Laura Ellen Scott," with Reb Livingston, Dave Housley, Mike Ingram, and Dan Brady.

Strangely enough, flash fiction writer Laura Ellen Scott's only Barrelhouse pub is a 15 pager.

More news as we get closer to the event.

Hey Danny, isn't Wonderland Ballroom close to your house? Can we have a party there? Lucy won't mind . . .

38 minutes of my life

So happy to see Reb Livingston and Dave Housley at Mason today, paneling for a session about local lit journals. They did a fine job, despite the lack of structure and a shy crowd--20+ of us in a venue that seats 100+. Well, they were shy as a crowd, but swarmed Dave and Reb after, which was kinda weird. Wonder what they wanted?

A friend said to me about Dave: "He's good looking."
A different friend said to me about Reb: "Oh wow, she publishes non-linear poems? I'm home."

Up top on the plaza, Richard Peabody was selling Gargoyle and Paycock Press publications from a table. He always recognizes me, but never knows who I am. That must bug him. Especially when I wave and smile like a nutjob.

When Dave's "Ryan Secrest is Famous" story made the top 10 of StorySouth's Million Writers list, I taught it to my class. But it was months after I connected with Dave and the Barrelhouse editorial pod (at their conference they traveled together, I assume so they could sing barbershop songs when needed), that I realized he'd written that very cool story. Similar experience with Paula Bomer--we were net friends for a while before we realized that we had been reading each other's stuff for years. Paula's great, she still reads print. She's Amish. Her specialty is Amish erotica.

So the Barrelhouse Mixtape podcast marks my first willing listen to a podcast. I'd been ignoring the announcements fairly successfully until today when Dave described what was covered, and I suddenly thought, oh hey--THIS IS RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS. It's quite good, and as promised, in the style of This American Life, right down to the swallowing sounds from the host. Adam Robinson sounds exactly as I thought he would. Michael Kimball does not (I thought he'd sound more like a cartoon bear). And Mike Ingram? He just sounds troubled. Dave.

Completed the draft of the Louisiana Novel

it's a mess, but a completely workable one. think I'll take the rest of the afternoon off. the thing is called Social Aid & Pleasure. what dean has read so far, he says is like cory doctorow. my story in Barrelhouse 7 "Wishtank" comes from the novel.

I will celebrate the same way I grieve, with food and alcohol.

Barrlehouse 7: The Future will cost you $9, $11 w/shipping

so just as I'm being bitchy about other writers hijacking my dreams, the news of the Barrelhouse #7 is posted, which makes me HAPPY AGAIN.

Look for me in "The future" section, featuring:

Sacrament, Matt Williamson
The Ruined Child, by Blake Butler
Antiquity, by Sandra Beasley
Wish Tank, by Laura Ellen Scott
My Gun is Smart, by Flavian Mark Lupinetti
Cities of the Future, Kaethe Schwehn
Someday Soon, We Are Taking Over, by Kate Angus

But there are a TON of other awesome writers in the issue, including my Mason colleague, Wade Fletcher. Can't wait to get my grubby hands on a copy.

excitements, distractions

While I was gone I got word from Barrelhouse just who all was going to be in the next issue with me, the 'future' issue, and it's a great list but I don't think I can spill it. I guess it isn't strictly private information, but at the same time the news isn't mine to deliver. They do promise that the issue will be produced at the end of the month. so in the mean time I give you Newton and the incredibly creepy Mr. Punkinhead. Mr. P lost his squeaker some time ago, so now he just sort of pants when Newtie gnaws on him. Worse though: sometimes Mr. Punkinhead lands standing up.

the mood

So three stories that tickle my fancy lately--"Sister Hayes Takes Up a Serpent," by Roseanne Griffith reminds us what we already know about spiritual passion, but in a force-of-nature way that is irresistible. "The Two of You," by Jack Kaulfus sets my hair on fire and is the perfect maturation of all the things that made the Friday the 13th movies even remotely watchable. Finally, there's a new Barry story called "Mountains," at Pequin that I haven't seen anyone talk about yet, which is odd, so let me throw a wild punch: think "Good Man is Hard to Find" without all that sticky Catholicism and grace.

anyway, these pieces form an emotional set for me.

WOO HOO! Barrelhouse Future! And Storyglossia!

Barrelhouse Invitational: The Future
The "contest" ended today, and I just got word that one of the stories from my Louisiana novel made it!!! When S read a draft he commented: "What a fun way to examine the grotesque desires of humanity"

And while I'm being undignified I might as well spill it--I placed a story in a future issue of Storyglossia as well. It has been a BRILLIANT week for me.

what scott has linked

is probably not as dramatic as what god hath wrought, but by and large I'm happier with the results. Scott Garson's blog, Patterns of Silver Light and So Forth features links to several of his most recent pieces published in some really great forums. Finding these stories is great for me because 1) Scott's an old pal, 2) I'm competitive, and 5) his embrace and mastery of the very short form is pretty much breathtaking. So here I have pledged to "blurb" the work. The first three:

Reengineering, at Barrelhouse
In which Edwin J. Tier is completely full of it, but he’s right. Better than right. I want to work for this company, is that wrong? Featured -fu: Lavender bath towels.

Acknowledgements,at elimae
a garson classic with imbedded, muted anger

Captions, elimae
most worried for: Annabelle
if you like daddy, mountains and gold, this one's for you

More soon, but an added note: I don't recall SG writing or even tolerating so much brief mystery. The humor is forever, though.