Well hello there

Prick of the Spindle 4.3 is live

Go here for this season's gallery of fun. 4.3 marks my second full issue as Fiction Editor, and I'm getting into the groove now. The biggest challenge had been how to deal with "friend" submissions, but now I'm over that. The sheer volume of subs + having a life makes it impossible to treat every special baby like a special baby, and luckily our reading process leaves plenty of room for me to deny influence.

I did struggle with the reviews I wrote for this issue, and I think it shows. I wasn't crazy about the books, and I kept having to re-define my purpose. I think my deal is to try to reveal enough about the writing that my opinion can be tossed if it gets in the way.

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.

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.

the dog ate my book report. the dog will starve

So writing reviews is pretty damn hard. Not quite as hard as writing a query letter, but still. My eyes actually go blurry as I try to craft the simplest phrasing, which strikes me as a symptom. Someone I respect said, somewhere, that the content of reviews is unimportant to the sale of the book. But who was it,and where did they say this? Did I dream it? I hope not, because I just told my class that it was the truth.

High class AWP off site readings!

Your Thursday and Friday nights are spoken for

Top 10 typos & recommended corrections

Culled from Dean's notes--he read my draft on his new ipad.

P.12: Why "boom, boom,boom"?
P. 27: "whale tale" --whale tail
P.135: "acetic? Do you mean ascetic?
P. 190: Paula's gun & badge?
P. 277: "Rose" should be Rosé
P. 279: big concert?
P. 316: no comma between "dozen large"
P. 317: Change "Boy Dum Dum" to Dum Dum Boy
P. 318: When the doors open slowly, it seems someone is sneaking on the snoozing Elvis. Maybe "the doors slowly opened outward"? Or something?
P. 324: Qua's his wrists-- cut "his"

Post revision paranoia

Almost a week out from having "finished" the revision of Wisher, my New Orleans novel (formerly called Social aid & Pleasure),I am waiting to hear from my readers and reflecting on my choices. I've already heard from an editor-friend who had many lovely, positive things to say and was undeterred by the bewildering dregs of a subplot I had failed to delete completely (I got rid of a major character, but I recycled her sex scenes). I'm waiting to hear from my husband, who is re-reading, and a close friend seeing the work for the first time. The earlier draft has been read by about a half dozen folks ranging from friends, agents, and publishers. So far no one has called me out on what I think is a glaring issue--none of my main characters are African American. My out, of course, is that I usually write about characters who have traveled to the place of the novel to re-invent and restore themselves, and in Wisher my main characters, Victor and Val Swaim, are white folks from up north who have fled the suburban life they we born into. Another point--none of my main characters are Louisiana natives, either. While I have no qualms about appropriating and messing with "male" experience, I don't think I could ever cross the color/culture line in a meaningful way. Having been raised in a casually racist environment probably means that my creativity will always be subject to my guilt and desire to correct for my family, 50% of whom feel no shame while the other 50% us waddle around changing the damned subject.

Thinking about this today as I encountered a student who complained that her Government Ethics text book was "heavier than a dead minister"--is that a saying? Because I laughed my ass off. But then I was catapulted back into embarrassed child mode when she told me she did not want to go to a particular admin office to complete her paperwork because "that black gal down there is bossy."

Today

I think I got through the revision at about noon today, so I did a find/replace to change all the Teeters to Colliers, called Dean (visiting his mom, possibly buying a 1950s microscope), FB chatted with Ethel (we usually talk about the vicissitudes), and called my mom (she's done with meanies).

Bwu

Gween

My Pick: John Minichillo's "Working Halloween for Christmas Money"

I was away last week (in Jamaica!!!) when my pick for Smokelong Weekly went live: John Minichillo's "Working Halloween for Christmas Money" so I did not get a chance to promote it, and now everyone has read it already (except for the Malaysian googler who seeks "foot rub fiction" and visits my blog every two months or so). Anyway, isn't it a great story, and totally messed up from a writing teacher point of view?-- which is one of the things John and I talk about in the interview that will probably accompany his story when the next SLQ appears.

mi-ni-chil-lo
mini chillo

New Story at Smokelong! (look at me using only one exclamation pt)

SLQ lives! and my ghost story "Last Seen Leaving" is in it, accompanied by a marvelous photo by an old friend, Jason Ellison. Be sure to click on the image for the full deal, so good. My Bio talks about the story as coming from my collection-in-progress, which was true then, but Curio made Pank's Little Books shortlist this year and is now out at a couple of publishers for consideration. There's also an interview where I try to pick a fight with the usual suspects.

Big thank you to Tara Laskowski who encouraged me to submit "Last Seen Leaving" to Smokelong. I wouldn't have thought to do so. & then shortly after, she took on an editorial role at SLQ, so that meant she helped me get the story into the shape you see now, including the title.

The Chronicler is a figure in a few of the stories from the collection.

Mason Alumni Appreciation Workshop & Reading

So this Saturday I'm running this thing--I'm always hearing from graduates that now they are out of school, they feel untethered to a writing community. Even though there are plenty of readings and workshops locally, I think a good portion of our former students would like a little more help entering a scene, and I totally get that. I cooked up this idea after the Dzanc workshops in March, although our thing is not so much a fundraiser simply because all the money we've raised is going toward paying the small group facilitators, and maybe some lunch for me, Tara Laskowski, and Art Taylor.

Our thing will go like this:

10am--Poet Wade Fletcher will talk about Metro area opportunities and resources, like readings series, workshops, festivals, etc. He's very good at this, having helped run the Cheryl's Gone series as well as Mason's Fall for the Book festival.

103am -12 Workshop session one

12-1pm Lunch discussion with me, Art Taylor, and Tara Laskowski. The topic is writing after Mason, or as we more delicately put it on the flyer, "Writing After Graduation." You know Art from his mystery & crime fiction, his blog interviews, and his reviews in the Washington Post. Tara's got a ton of great stories out there and is now an editorial force at Smokelong Quartery.

1-2:30pm Workshop Session two

2:30-4pm Free & Open to the Public
Readings by Joe Hall, Mel Nichols, and Kyle Semmel. They'll each read about 10-15 minutes, so we will use the rest of the time for an "open mic," prioritizing the workshop participants. Of course I have no mic set up at this time, so it may just be a shouting event.

If you want to come out, the reading will be in the Johnson Center Bistro (lowest floor in the JC). Parking is free on the green areas of this map:
http://parking.gmu.edu/pdf files/parkingmap09.pdf

dear cosmos

message received.

Econ 101: Tales of Mystery & Gloom

My completely unscientific survey of attitudes among newly minted teens (total of three interviewed) suggests that Micheal Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" is as important to young thinkers now as Rand's novels have been to the same demographic for the last fifty years.

I guess I'm impressed that Moore's fairly predictable essay on financial oppression seems to resonate so powerfully with the junior high set. I don't recall "Bowling for Columbine" as being anything other than darkly amusing to the same population.(But maybe I didn't know enough teens then. Ye gods, did I really write that sentence?)

Wish I had one of those Live Journal thingies. Mood: Hopeful

What it's all about

I currently have two books "out" for consideration by publishers. One is the Louisiana novel, and the other is the ghosty-gothic vsf collection. I may have gotten my little toe in the door with one publisher, so if I'm not very social lately it's because I'm attempting a re-write based on some excellent notes. I was doing this last year at this time, too, but in that case I was trying to inject a project with more commercial elements to please an agent. THAT did not work out. This time, I'm trying to recover the heart of the concept, and in the process my soul as well. It's way easier than you think. As if that weren't motivation enough, years back my old man and I made a deal. If I get a book accepted by an agent or publisher, I get a SECOND pinball machine. This is not the sort of info I can comfortably include in a query letter.

my brain turned over

If writing is the exercise of thinking, then I'm just getting my heart rate up.

This is about revision.

Things I wish I had the energy to do this weekend

I wish I had it together to put on a pig mask and a snow suit and dance around the webcam at night. I'd send the photos to the cell phones of my friend's kids who were just busted for prank calls.

On a gentler note, I'd like to drive into DC and look for parking this holiday weekend with a dried pine tree tied to the top of the car. If we could get it to be a little bit on fire, that would be extra neat.

Happy 4th, everyone.