Top secrets of 2011

A very literary baby boy is due today, but then so are final projects for my class, and I bet those are gonna be late, too. Thinking good thoughts about little no-name-yet.

Speaking of the final project, this year I'm a genius. Instead of requiring a revision, portfolio or self-evaluative essay, I made my students interview each other--Smokelong style. The results, so far, have been amazing. NEVER have I enjoyed grading so much.

I'm also finishing up my reading my reading for my Wigleaf long list picks. In a year when I did not publish individual short pieces, I've felt a little untethered, but going through the year's output for these amazing online journals (I'm responsible for about 67?) reminds me how good and vital the art of vsf really is.

Let's see . . . 12 more days left in 2011. Still time to suck up, you know?

. . . and the hump story is "Moon walk"

The 11th story in the 21 story collection is a streamlined version of "Moon Walk," which originally appeared in the Paycock Press anthology Gravity Dancers: Even more Fiction by Washington Area Women. "Moon Walk" is a straight up ghost story, the longest in Curio. Tomorrow I hit AWP hard, and I'll be armed with postcards to pimp the collection.

Tomorrow night, I'm part of the dogzplot/wigleaf/jmww/sententia offsite reading at the Wonderland Ballroom. Uh huh.

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 For the next two weeks plus, the stories will all be previously unpublished in any form.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).

High class AWP off site readings!

Your Thursday and Friday nights are spoken for

Listed! (long short this time)

One of the best things about the Wigleaf Top 50 is that it comes at a time of year when I'm usually on vacation, so I never expect it. I'm so thrilled to have made this year's Long Shortlist with "The Temple Dog," a story that Adam Robinson took for Everyday Genius. BTW, 5 of the top 50 came from EG. Thanks Scott, Ravi, and Adam. No one works harder for the art.

This year's Top 50 is stellar, take your breath way stuff.

Wigleaf: "Bog Redaction"

So very proud to have my story "Bog Redaction" at Wigleaf. It is, so far, the major story of the collection of creepy vsf that I'm working on. It's also the best thing I ever wrote.

It's an interesting thing when the bar is set and you know it.

Thank you, SG.

My Fictionaut Fave: Katrina Denza's "Soap"

Over at the Fictionaut blog they've started a new feature for members to discuss a story they have faved. Looks like my note about Katrina Denza's ever re-readable "Soap," first published in Wigleaf, is up first.

Feast AND Famine

It happened again, you know. I just stepped out of another rough agent adventure--this time the agent contacted me, out of the blue, because she'd read a snippet of my novel on a private site. So I sent her the book, but it didn't do what she thought it would. Then I sent her the other, but even though she loves the writing, the characters, etc, it wasn't what she wanted either. So that was hard news, but quickly followed by notice from Cooper Renner that he was going to nominate "Render, or to Transmit to Another" for the Dzanc 2010 Best of the Web anthology. He published the story in elimae in December, and that was thrilling enough, but to have the story make Wigleaf's Top 50 and be nominated by CR--I'm over the moon.

Yes you are a good little story, mommy loves you very much.

So honored to make Wigleaf's Top 50

That's right, the list is UP, and I'm blown away to have made it with "Render, or to transmit to another" from December's elimae. The whole list, including the long shortlist, is stunning, and Scott Garson and Darlin' Neal should receive significant CASH PRIZES and other honors for the work they do in the advancement of short fiction. I'm dead serious about that.

a week of not existing

I've been down with a head cold since the conference last week, unable to think, read, write, etc. Plus I broke my glasses. It's feast or famine (yo Dave Bragg, where ever you are!).

Got a flash accepted for the June issue of decomP, which is totally unexpected. I send to decomP for the swift and human rejection--my way of checking in with the universe. Now what?

Read Art Taylor in Fiction Weekly. Read Erin Fitzgerald in Wigleaf and elimae. Read the whole damned issue of FRiGG, but then you're already doing so, right?

way to kick me in the pancreas, wigleaf

This is a fine story by Kuzhali Manickavel.

Forget that I'm trying to do a bunch of things just like it, as I am flirting with writing several "pocket guides" along the lines of the story I have in Hobart, and the draft of a guide to Poland and the Ukraine that I posted to fictionaut. I will.

congrats KM. This is as graceful as I get. actually that's not true, i get sweeter as my memory fades.

required reading

I'm showing the wigleaf top 50 to my juniors to start the semester off. This is my 2nd time doing this. My students are enthusiastic about the form and technique on display, but they are not all on board with content, which is to be expected. They want The Funny. They want surrealism in heavier doses. They want Happy Sex if there's gonna be any sex at all.

But there was a lone voice complaining that the pieces were too literary, and that art was more important than honesty in the collection. I'm convinced the student was reacting to unfamiliar uses of compression and voice performance, or maybe the student resists lyric fiction in general, but we'll see. After class, I was delighted to discover Piers Marchant's "Deserve" just posted at WL. Piers' story is an example of a brief fiction that is rich, detailed, and unhurried. The entire arc is present, and the narrative unfolds with the measure and tension we come to expect from a longer, more conventional story. But more interestingly to me, Piers' story does what it does elegantly, without use of magicians or nostalgia for adolescence. It does feature the Sad Sex though.

McGuffined again by Tana French

Just finished reading The Likeness. Um, the first 100 pages took me weeks to slog though. The next 300 were utterly thrilling. then the last 70 or so . . . well, let's just say I now have serious trust issues with French.

In other news, I'm pretty happy with my new set of students and their creative agility, especially as concerns the Flash fic unit we're into at the moment. We read the wigleaf top 50, and at least one student has proclaimed flash as his new fave form, and Garson has written a letter to my class about process. Despite the fact that I feel about as crazed as Dalek Caan, things seem to be off to a lovely start.

non-toxic paranoia, two moments

one—the very short fiction purveyors of Wigleaf are in early stage planning for a special autumn issue, and I don’t want to give the theme away, but the call for input reminded me of a mild madness that seized me during the summer of 2004: I was writing the first draft of my West Virginia based novel, Unattended and I had convinced myself that music was in competition with my creativity, and time spent listening was time spent not thinking hard enough about the book. That is, I felt that the two activities used the same mental juice.

two—My most recent novel project, Social Aid & Pleasure is based on a fantasy idea that sounds silly in summary form. I refer to it as my Post-Katrina New Orleans book, which shuts down most “what are you working on now?” inquiries. Not that I want to shut them down, but when I try to explain SA&P I sound really stupid. However, my friend J collects details, both as a hobby and a vocation, so he naturally pressed for more. When I gave him more he said, “You could totally milk a Broadway musical out of that.” Bless him.