this story? ends with stuff blowing up

Minesweeper

I took a few years off from writing short stories so I could work on novel projects, and as I ease back into the online fiction scene I am thrilled by the new flavor of feedback I’m getting: I read your story instead of doing work.

4 or 5 years ago response to my fiction was a little more serious, a little more practiced, a little more practical. More about what I’d accomplished than what the reader experienced. Even my rejections are more gut level: an editor recently wrote that my submission “just didn’t do it for me. I don’t know why.”

I’m working on a theory, and it doesn’t have much to do with me.

New story up at Hobart!!!

"From Laura's Pocket Guide to the Americas: Belize City and Beyond"

1968

I’m not sure I want to write about this because I’m feeling both insecure and excited about the Louisiana novel, but I don’t want to be superstitious and I don’t want to forget this moment. Earlier this week I was overcome when I realized several parallels between my plot and that of Le Guin’s Lathe of Heaven. I had to do the inventory a few different ways before I convinced myself that the similarities were not so substantial—after all I’ve never even read LoH. What followed then was a rush of new ideas, all of which are careening into the absurd, and as far from serious science fiction as I can scramble. What am I talking about? Well, for starters I’m bringing back Elvis and I’m giving women a third eye. Wish me luck.

stuffed animus

my paid duties are light these days but when something needs doing it announces its urgency like a ghost slap to the face—think poltergeist administration. you’d think the down time would be good for writing, but the randomness of work-work has me on edge, distracted. And more than a little dull. Still, I have it together enough to mix vice with virtue—I added at least three miles to my walking routine by looping out to the bookstore to buy a new noir before going out to the second nearest liquor store instead of the one that’s pretty damned close to the bookstore. On the hike home I was kinda hoping that if I was destined to be hit by a car that today was the day. Imagine the paramedics opening my backpack to find murder book and bottle of Bacardi. Any other day, I’d be carrying student papers.

New Writer: Jody Madala

I just fell for "I HAVE CANCER! I HAVE CANCER!" Hard. The story is by Jody Madala, featured at Anderbo.com and while it covers familiar territory and familiar materials, it seems to do so in a completely energetic, irresistible way. Plus, the story is followed by Madala's long bio which reads like an essay for match dot com. "IHC " is her first short story publication, apparently (way to hit one out of the park), so she probably has no idea what an author's note typically contains. Or, and I like this idea better, she is treating the author's bio as a form worthy of interrogation.

Okay, this question is for the world's workshop: That title?!?! What does it do to your reading?

early summer action

just when i think everybody is shutting down for the season, Smokelong Quarterly comes out with a double issue whopper to celebrate their fifth birthday. All the kool kids are featured, and if you want to know what fiction is right now, read these stories and chase down the writers' links. I have a lovely virtual scrapbook of rejections from SQ, by the way.

Also, two trade paper copies of Anthony Neil Smith's novel, Yellow Medicine, showed up on the Mystery/Crime shelves at my local. I'm going to buy one today. Pretty book, and being named Smith places it in very close prox to Martin Cruz Smith, which has to be a plus. Plot summary on the jacket is almost unintelligible. Cool. Maybe it's a Joe R. Lansdale kinda thing?

Story South Top Ten

they're up and ready fer votin'! I'm a little bummed that Shane Jones' "I Will Unfold You with My Hairy Hands" didn't make the cut, but congratulations to all the fine writers on the list. Nice range of journals, too.

Also, just finished reading Tana French's In The Woods. Dang, it's good, even if . . . sorry, no spoilers here. But I will say that the narrator is a flirty, charming Irish detective who enjoys giving foot rubs to his partner.

Pura Vida

I think I like the idea of being a “regional’ writer, even though my native region—Northeastern Ohio—lacks the detail required for fiction. I have one very long Ohio story that queases me out so much I identify the setting as Indiana. I strongly prefer to write about places I’ve visited, from the point of view of permanent visitors (moved there, or are returning after a long absence)—characters with the privilege of critical margin. I have to admit though, that I favor characters who can vacate their regions without losing identity, and I am keenly aware that my drama is limited by the escape hatches I install.

I learned this week that Hobart online has accepted one of my stories. Don’t know when it’ll go up, but I’m thrilled. The story is about Belize, Guatemala, and the perilous romance of travel. Stay tuned.

Bad Brain

These feel like related issues in that they flirt with superstition and mystic irrationality but really speak to the fact that my psychology hates me—

1) I dreamed about the West Virginia novel being published and immediately turned into an indie film, and conditions I thought were crucial had been altered with no loss of effect—main character male not female, the setting was a village in northern England not rural West Virginia, things like that. The dream bugs me because I’m always harassing my students to make sure, even in their so called genre or pop writing, that their choices are always essential, in-extractable and un-swappable.

2) I’m going back through the first 100 pages of the Louisiana novel and I’m really surprised and pleased at how naturally it writes itself. Even when I don’t want to write, I know that I can open up the file and it will change my disposition.

Check out youtube clips of Derren Brown’s stuff. It helps.

Sort by . . . or the Anxiety of Anthology

The myth of theme as anything other than an open container for intelligence has always interested me. I love arbitrary organization as long as it remains permeable and aware, and the best literary collections tend to be the ones that play with their own assumptions of content or push the extremity of formal restriction. The theme is interrogated from page 1.

At the same time, I’m deeply attracted to narrower venues that promise certain emotional outcomes, as in permanently dedicated horror or crime collections. I wish I could claim to be a reliably “Noir Writer,” but my dark fiction is more opportunistic than it is seriously crafted for excitement.

I have earned other labels though, as I’ll have a story in an anthology for Washington Area+Women Writers. Delightful, but these are two identities I don’t really inhabit or understand from an aesthetic point of view. I know what DC means in terms of food and interior decorating, but beyond that I’m clueless/curious.

I am reminded of my colleague's experience with a library assistant who refused to copy several essays and place them on reserve for students to check out. The librarian wrote that he could not execute the request as the collection "would make an anthropology."

why it's important to google yerself

According to the Paycock Press "Forthcoming Titles" website, I will have a story in the anthology
Gravity Dancers: Even More Fiction by Washington Area Women, due out in Spring 2009. This is the 4th volume in the series, put together by Richard Peabody, whom you know as a poet, fiction writer, teacher, and editor of Gargoyle Magazine since its inception in 1976. Here he is in a WETA interview about the series.

How this kind of thing happens: on the recommendation of The Happy Booker (aka Wendi Kaufman), RP invited me to contribute, and he did say something to the effect of "if you're invited, you're in," but I'm always expecting takebacks. Now, did he like the story I sent him in January? Or is he gonna ask for something else?

it has been a cool weekend, yeah?

an indelicacy

heh--

"what your cat thinks of In Rainbows" up at dogzplot's flash blog.

unpacking

We're back from the beach, and while it was too cool to swim, we were treated to some heartbreaking sunsets. As far as the novel goes, I didn't write much new material, but I did manage to whack some sense into my chronology. so far each "chunk" has been drifting in time, but now I have begun the messy but grown-up work of writing the story in order--you know, with some respect and concern for dependency.
I also need to bite the email bullet, but before that happens I must scrub the sand and salt out of my chiweenies.

the plot doctor

dean, bird scoping gear slung over both shoulders, on his way out to the bug-infested dunes of hammock hills: "remember, in the kind of loose futures market of the type you're imagining, as soon as any two parties collude, the system starts to collapse."

This, with emphatic finger pointing.

gotcha.

I did a little good writing today before moving into a long bout of bad writing wherein my main characters have a long, tagless argument about a plot point I don't quite understand yet. Like my friend used to say about The Olive Garden: a whole lotta food, not a lotta yummy.

meanwhile, back home where the ocean is just an idea and the mattresses are not so lumpy, my most sentimental student is trying to arrange a BBQ for his classmates. the semester concluded last week, and I am afraid he is about to learn that summer break is more powerful than comradeship.

beach reading and writing

so we're here, after a long, hard semester:

and it occurs to me that we've never rented a cottage that didn't have a copy of Ira Levin's Boys From Brazil on the shelves. French fries and beer for lunch. See ya--

Kathe Koja and Lia Matera

I miss Kathe Koja, the horror writer. She used to write gruesome, sexual, psychological dark fantasy novels with artists as main characters, and the books were all pretty much the same, but each sort of lurched the argument—whatever it was—forward in giant, sloppy, steps. I think of her as splatterpunk’s Flannery O’Connor, in that she seemed to be writing the same problem over and over again. I guess that’s why she had to stop. Now she writes for the “Young Adult” market and her website doesn’t even name check those lost novels, The Cipher, Bad Brains, Skin (I think the critical favorite?), and Strange Angels (when she overstayed her welcome.) A collection of short horror, Extremities and an erotic novel Kink (unreadable) capped off the 90s and her work for an adult readership.

Lia Matera is one of them there lady-lawyer-writers. What I specifically miss are her Laura Di Palma mysteries, which were super-short and power packed. And they somehow managed to make an iffy cousin-love situation kinda hot.

Beach in 4 days

I haven’t made many entries lately because I’ve been sick for almost two weeks now, and every shred of focus is going into comments on student writing. I’ve got my grades in, but with the novelers, grades are almost insultingly meaningless. My friend S said, when I mentioned a colleague picking up the bar tab for a group of writers: “I know students are strapped, but they really want your time and attention much more than they want your money.” Grades are like money, to my mind. And the whole thing reminds me that this was a very tough semester, beginning with me un-hiring a boatload of excellent instructors because enrollments were too soft. It was a frustrating time, and we weren’t getting accurate information or appropriate support from the administration, but when I tried to explain myself to the incoming chair he misunderstood my rant/wail as a threat. Wanted to know if I wanted more money. I told him I wanted more time, could he get me some of that?

Undergraduate Novels--I Am Fearless

In addition to teaching my conventional short fiction workshop, I’m also piloting an online novel writing workshop for eight students, most of whom are continuing projects begun in f2f seminars I called “Imagining the Novel.” ItN was all about giving undergrads permission to try what was really in their heads and to expose them to what it feels like to write in the long form. I also wanted it to be a genuine workshop wherein the writing was discussed as it was produced. From what I’ve heard, many novel workshop sessions are about writing and not necessarily about the writing. By the end of term, each ItN participant had written a stack of 80-100 pages that had been read and remarked upon. A handful of those writers really felt they were onto something, and so the online continuation was set up. The course was designed for collaborative teaching, but my partner hasn’t been able to participate, which is a drag. However, the energy of the writers has been outstanding, and they are reading each other’s works with voracious passion. I am officially exhausted.

It’s not that I am in any way qualified to teach novel writing to groups of undergrads, but I’m the only one in our prestigious program who is willing. I came up with the workshop scheme after meeting so many recent freshmen who claimed to have written one or more novels already. Which lead me to wonder, just how do we learn to write big books anyway? And does that process have to be more private than short story writing? And why offer the opportunity for serious community only to grad students?

Yeah I know the answer to that last question. So there are a lotta ponies and wizards out there. Big deal.