Pete Lit

"Finality" and "Endurance"

My submissions for the Hint Fiction anthology were not selected for publication (the contributor list has some real heavy hitters, Stuart Dybek and Joyce Carol Oates among them) so here they are for your perusal and enjoyment.

Finality
Smoke rising to the sky, gray-black and eye-stinging, soon was all that remained of the cabin. Pocketing the matches, he walked away.

Endurance
The coffee's warmth failed to calm her this time, tasting only bitter. She shoved the mug away. It would end soon, she insisted silently.

"Zeitoun"

Boing Boing is hosting a giveway of Dave Eggers' latest acclaimed work of nonfiction, Zeitoun, which follows the life of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian immigrant fighting through the natural devastation and bureaucratic morass wrought in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. The contest seeks only an original haiku on the book's subject. With the entry period remaining open until Saturday and there already being 120 entries, I highly doubt I'll be one of the winners, so to avoid losing my entry to the backblog void that is Boing Boing's comments section, here's what I came up with:

Zeitoun
Water everywhere,
But nary a drop to drink.
Zeitoun navigates.

"One Son Resists" now appears in golden-throated audio

My public reading of my short story "One Son Resists" at The Parlor's Emerging Writer's Festival from earlier this year is now up as a podcast at the Parlor site. I haven't listened to this yet, but assume it captures the audio experience well. However, there is no video available, so the forehead sweat, awkwardly stiff posture and almost complete lack of eye contact with the audience will have to be left to your own imagination.

And in case the vocal delivery is too much for you, you can always just read the story text instead.

Six Word Stories

The folks at Six Word Stories have published a story of mine which (whaddya know?) has only six words. Check it out. Incidentally, the footnotes are by the editor, not me. Personally I think nanofiction like this should stand on its own, without any additional explanation. If you have to explain what you wrote, that probably means you didn't write it well enough.

"Steve"

 

Steve drove all night, thinking he was getting somewhere.

 

I'm quite delighted today to see the publication of my one-sentence story "Steve" (yes, that's it above, in its entirety), as illustrated on a Post-It Note by the cartoonist Arthur Jones. The premise is simple: write a one-sentence story, email it to Arthur, and he'll decide whether or not to illustrate it. As his illustrations tend to be more lighthearted in tone, I appreciate the dark edge he gave to mine. He did a great job.

"One Son Resists"

My short story "One Son Resists" has just been published online by Green Lantern Press. This is the same story I read recently at The Parlor Emerging Writer's Festival; Green Lantern runs The Parlor, so it seemed natural to have the story appear in text at Green Lantern's site. My very special thanks to editor Nick Sarno.

I wrote the first draft of this story several years ago, as part of a contest at Ron Slattery's found-photo site Bighappyfunhouse. After it failed to win there, I shopped it around to a few venues, including featherproof, whose Jonathan Messinger was kind enough to provide some great suggestions for improving the story, after which I expanded and refined the narrative and ended up with a much better piece than before. Thanks to Ron and Jonathan for the inspiration and editorial boost, as well as to Todd Dills for his helpful suggestions of Depression-era East Coast summer resorts. Call it shameless name-dropping if you like, but I truly couldn't have done it without them.

The Parlor Emerging Writer's Festival

Just a quick reminder that I'll be reading at The Parlor Emerging Writer's Festival tomorrow night (Saturday) at Green Lantern Gallery, 1511 N. Milwaukee, Chicago. I'm scheduled to read at approximately 5 PM, though that could be earlier or later depending on how quickly the others read. So just to be safe, come on out for the whole shebang!

"Clean and Bright"

My short story "Clean and Bright" has been published at the Chicago hub of the online journal Joyland. Special thanks to editor Levi Stahl.

This is one of only a handful of new stories that I've finished over the past few years, which for some reason has been a period of fairly low creativity for me. The story is a direct response to Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place", and is told from the perspective of the lonely old man who whiles away the hours of his life in the cafe in Hemingway's story. I find it interesting that I'd be so inspired by Hemingway - I've never read any of his novels, and he's not even one of my favorite authors (I've tried writing stories that riff on Nelson Algren and George Ade, with little success) but I still liked this story of his enough to create one of my own. Odd how inspiration goes.

The Parlor Emerging Writer's Festival

I've been keeping the news under wraps for the last few weeks, but now that it's official I can finally pass it along: I'm very pleased to be invited to read at The Parlor Emerging Writer's Festival. It takes place on Saturday, May 23rd from 4:00-6:30 PM at Green Lantern Gallery, 1511 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago.

It’s awesome - we’ve got a great line-up ahead for our Emerging Writer’s Festival on Saturday May 23rd - coincident, as it so happens, with the Pilcrow Lit Fest. Here is the roster - you should come out, it’s free and there’s a BBQ to follow on the back porch.

4:00 pm Sarah Terez Rosenblum - Where She Is
4:30 pm Jeanie Chung – Cuts and Folds
5:00 pm Peter Anderson – One Son Resists
5:30 – 5:45 BREAK
5: 45 pm J.D.K. Goodman – Another Place, Another Time
6:15 pm Jessie Morrison – The Queens of the Northwest Side
6:45 pm BBQ

I'll be reading my story "One Son Resists" which I first wrote several years ago and have put through several heavy-duty revisions since. If you live in the city or happen to be in town for Pilcrow, please thinking about swinging by Green Lantern for some great readings and to say hello.

Sax Man

(Previous installment)

His last visit to the Landmark was the previous week, Tuesday. He had a particularly slow day for spare change, despite the usual crowds bursting past. He had riffed on "When Johnny Comes Marching Home", playing the melody straight for eight bars before easing into an extended bop solo, staccato runs up and down the scale, ignoring not only that few of the commuters were familiar with bop - enough so to appreciate the sound and toss a dollar or quarter into his case - but that even fewer were old enough to recognize the old tune which came all the way from World War I. Though the faces flitted past in endless arrays, two things were constant: they were almost exclusively white, and none of them beyond middle age. Old men - which, he did realize, included himself more than the younger commuters - didn't seem to ride the train downtown any more, though from everything he had heard people were working longer than ever, well beyond sixty-five and into their seventies. But wherever these older men were working, it must not have been downtown. Maybe somewhere closer to their suburban homes.

He had played "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" for a good twenty minutes, with half a dozen or more clusters of commuters from the arriving trains coming and going, but gained less than a dollar in change for his effort. He had packed up shortly after, earlier than usual, and despite being short of cash stopped in at the Landmark to spend his time. He nursed a Tanqueray on the rocks, slowly, restraining himself in knowing he had to be fit for work in forty-five minutes. He thought of many things - to himself, not being the type of man who got confessional with his bartender - about work, about his music, about his father, who had taught him the melody to "Johnny" in the first place, slowly tapping it out on the keys of the piano at the corner bar as young Frank squeaked and bleated along on his sax as best he could.

"Button"

My flash fiction "Button" has been published in the April 2009 edition of Shoots and Vines. (Online here, or soon in print at select locations in southern Indiana and northern Kentucky.) My thanks to editor Crystal Folz for taking this one.

The story is pretty straightforward, so little explanation is needed other than to mention that it was inspired by archival photographs of the old LaSalle Street Station here in Chicago. I occasionally take Metra's Rock Island Line train to work, which disembarks at the new "LaSalle Street Station", which regrettably (to a throwback like me) is barely a train station at all - just outdoor platforms with a small adjacent waiting room, with none of the awe-inspiring glories of the stations of yore. Still, the new station provided just enough inspiration for me to create this little story.

What I'm Writing (Or Thinking About Writing)

Wheatyard is still simmering on the back burner - the latest revisions are ebbing and flowing through my mind but remain mostly uncommitted to paper.

I'm also hoping to revive my story cycle on Chicago neighborhoods (whose previous working title Scent of Wild Onions I've grown tired of and am planning to change). When I set it aside last year, I had one full draft of a story ("Washington Heights") and a second that was about three-fourths complete ("Pilsen" then, though I'm thinking of changing it to "Canaryville" - it's an interior story, and the specific setting isn't critical), and back then held little hope for any further work.

But reading Charles Simmons Wrinkles (reviewed here) happened to get me thinking about the Chicago book again. Simmons' book is very fragmentary in structure, presenting scattered shards of the protagonist's life, and as I read I found myself thinking about the conceptual similarities to my Chicago book. True, Simmons' book is a novel about a single character and mine would be a collection of stories about various neighborhoods and characters, but I realized that my book would share some of that fragmentary aspect. So although my book won't be anything like Simmons', I'm hoping that it might at least serve as inspiration for working on mine again.

I have a few more neighborhoods in mind - Hermosa, Dunning, McKinley Park and the (ungentrified) South Loop - and have begun to (very vaguely) conceptualize characters and plots. As was the case with the first two stories, I will still try to have each story draw inspiration from and riff on a single line from each of the songs on Lou Reed's New York album. I'm sure the whole Reed thing probably sounds convoluted, but since the first story arose out of a single line from "Halloween Parade" that popped into my head one morning, I really want to continue with that concept unless it ultimately proves itself impractical and unworkable.

But all of this pondering and conceptualizing might be nothing more than a smokescreen. Because, to be totally honest, that "thinking about writing" clause above is an unfortunately accurate assessment of the current state of my writing. I've written very little over the past few years, as I've rarely found either the inspiration or motivation to do the necessary hard work. Sometimes I think that I'm absolutely, positively a writer, but other times it's almost as if being a writer is nothing more than how I want to think of myself. My professional career is doing nothing for me right now other than providing a regular paycheck, so maybe I think of myself as a writer to have something to identify with. Right now I'm spinning my wheels, and "thinking about writing" is, for the most part, as close as I've gotten to actual writing for quite some time. I'm thinking that I either need to get out of this funk, or else realize it's not a funk at all and that maybe I should quit pretending I'm a writer. Sorry to get all confessional on you, but it's something that's been nagging at me lately.

Six Word Stories, New and Old

Soon something even worse befell him.

A new website, the aptly-named Six Word Stories, compiles these stories from here and there, from writers famous and not so famous. I'm in the latter category, as they were kind enough to re-publish my first attempt at the form. But I like the new one above even better.

"Alleys Are the Footnotes of the Avenues"

My flash fiction "Alleys Are the Footnotes of the Avenues" has been published at Shoots and Vines. My thanks to editor Crystal Folz for taking this one. Go check it out - if nothing else, it's very short and won't take more than a few minutes of your time.

Though this didn't make it into my author bio, I'd like to give a huge nod to David Berman of the Silver Jews, from whose song "Smith + Jones Forever" I borrowed a line for the title of the story. The story and song don't have much in common other than that, but I've always loved that song, which made me think about street people who live in the most humble of circumstances and long for the most commonplace of things ("they walk the alleys in duct-taped shoes/they see the things they want through the window of a hatchback"). From there it was a short jump to the first character, and then to the story itself.

NaNoWriMo: Over and Out

16,582 words. Far short of the official NaNoWriMo target of 50,000 words and even my more modest goal of 20,000 words. And I'm glad I did it this way. I don't enjoy revisions enough to spew out 50,000 words of slop during November that will later require heavy, painstaking editing to bring about a first draft that's even remotely readable. Sure, I could have cranked out that many words if I wanted to, but it wouldn't have left me that much closer to a finished book - and I don't write just for the hell of it, but because I want to craft stories that I'll be pleased with and that others might enjoy as well. So I write slowly and carefully, so I can get a decent first draft that will represent a much lower obstacle for future revisions.

I'm also glad that I've devoted significant time to The Night. The story has been in my head for several years now, and I thought it finally deserved some effort from me to see if there's anything viable there. And I think it is viable, but with a lot more work. So though NaNoWriMo ends today, I'm going to keep right on with the writing, Mondays through Wednesdays, starting tomorrow. Only once I've finished the first draft will I finally set it aside, then let it ferment for a while and come back to it later. I won't be able to publish any more excerpts at my NaNoWriMo page, though I may do so here periodically as the book progresses further.

Incidentally, I first thought up the premise for the book a few years ago, when Continuum Books was soliciting book proposals for their excellent 33 1/3 series. As it turns out, they are once again soliciting proposals, with a deadline of December 31. I'm not sure if I'll have enough of the book finished by then to decide whether or not it would be worth it to submit a formal proposal. Last time around I did make a proposal, despite having thought up nothing more than a few paragraphs of plot summary. This time I'll be close to having a completed first draft when it's time to propose, though I still won't be sure whether or not I'll have enough of it done to be able to commit to delivering a book. We'll just have to see about that.

NaNoWriMo: Week 3

Things are already slowing down. I'm at 12,406 words and only anticipate three more days of NaNoWriMo writing. It's doubtful I'll get to even my reduced goal of 20,000 words, and I'm fine with that. The slowdown is due to a significant shift in my writing schedule. As I've mentioned before, I do all my writing on weekdays while on my morning and evening trains - two hours a day, ten hours a week - with no writing at night or on weekends. Those two hours a day that I write on the train are the ones I'd otherwise spend doing serious reading or, on the evening train, serious napping. Sleep deprivation for the sake of writing is one thing, but I've found myself quite driftless by not being absorbed in a book. I can't give up serious reading (my time at home is spent in other pursuits, with the only reading being casual - usually magazines), so I've decided to divide up my work week - until I have a finished first draft of The Night, I'll be writing Monday through Wednesday, and leave Thursday and Friday for reading. I think I'll be much happier with this arrangement.

I've posted another excerpt from the novel at my NaNoWriMo page (under the "Novel Info" tab) for what I hope is your reading enjoyment.

NaNoWriMo: Week 2

The story is going in fits and starts. Sometimes I'll be really inspired and feel it's going almost effortlessly, and other times I just can't get it going and start to doubt if I'll ever get even a first draft out of it. Part of that is because I've been fighting a cold all week and have had no energy at night on my train ride home, so whatever I've been able to write has been strictly on the morning train. Some good stuff has come out of that, but just not enough of it. I'm now at 7,971 words. Still hoping for 20,000 for the month but not as optimistic as last week. I've put another extract up on my NaNoWriMo page (click the "Novel Info" tab), which describes the moment the protagonist first discovers Morphine, a revelation which will completely change his life, both for better and for worse.

My friend Frank left a comment on my last update, asking if the book is autobiographical. To which my best answer is: yes and no. Yes, in the sense that I suspect few if any fiction writers write anything that is completely divorced from their personal lives. We all mine our present and past lives for characters, settings and plot, and though we dress up those aspects in creative finery there still is at least some degree of "real life" to them. Which is good - it gives fiction a grounding that the reader will hopefully recognize as genuine, which goes a long way toward drawing in that reader into the purely fictional aspects of the narrative. So in a sense all fiction is autobiographical, at least to a small degree.

But the answer is also partly 'no', since my protagonist is almost completely invented. Little about his life (he's a software developer in Boston) at all reflects my own. For the most part the only things we share are age, long stretches of solitude during our bachelor days, and a love for the band Morphine - although my passion for the band has never approached the obsession that eventually consumes him. In fact, I wouldn't even want to be my protagonist - in no way am I am getting any vicarious thrill out of writing him, though I do empathize with his situation.

NaNoWriMo: Week1

The new novel, The Night, is underway at NaNoWriMo. I'm off to a slow start - only 3,709 words - as I've had some other stuff going on that took priority, but I'm pretty happy with what I have so far. I've posted the opening passage at my NaNoWriMo page (click the "Novel Info" tab). But I've got a lot of ideas to work on, and will probably be able to pick up the pace during the next two weeks. I've set the modest goal of 20,000 words for the month; as I mentioned earlier, I'm more interested in quality than quantity this year.

NaNoWriMo begins again...

This morning I started my latest NaNoWriMo novel, The Night. The story is inspired by the great Morphine album of the same name, which will play an integral part in the plot. I wrote 617 words on my morning train. But despite NaNoWriMo's primary goal, I have no intention of reaching anywhere near 50,000 words. I won't be writing at night or on weekends, and I'm writing careful and methodically, paying attention to getting it right the first time and ignoring word count. Finishing November with 50,000 words of slop seems pretty pointless - as it is, I have trouble revising careful writing, let alone slop. Speed-writing 50,000 words would probably leave me with nothing more than another never-to-be-finished manuscript gathering dust in my desk drawer. Instead, this year I'm using NaNoWriMo as a disciplinary framework to compel to write for a few hours every weekday - like I should be doing anyway. Sometimes I need to force that sort of reminder on myself every now and then.

But even though I won't reach the 50,000 word goal, I'll update my word count daily on my NaNoWriMo page, where I'll also post an occasional excerpt. I'll be enjoying the ride, but at a very leisurely speed.

"This Wonderful Scourge"

I've been somewhat remiss in mentioning this, because the image is saved on another computer and I haven't been able to upload it until just now, but...my "newspaper blackout poem" entitled "This Wonderful Scourge" was named a runner-up in Austin Kleon's monthly Blackout Poems Contest. My poem will be published as part of Austin's blackout poem collection, which is coming out next September. (Click on the above for a full-sized, non-squint-inducing version, and click here for the original text.) This was a really fun piece to put together - so many possibilities and combinations of words to choose from, and the inevitable Sharpie fumes weren't even that bad.

Sax Man

(Previous installment)

Again he felt the taste, a phantom on his dry tongue. Dry from playing the sax on the windy bridge for hours, and figuratively from not taking a drink for the past several days. He felt the cold sting of the gin, again, alluring and threatening at the same time. He checked his watch again. 9:35. His shift started in twenty-five minutes and he still had to change into his uniform, and even though the Landmark was only steps away from the hotel he thought he might not have enough time. Lingering those few extra minutes on the bridge, lost in the music while also keeping a hopeful eye out for next passerby who might be generous with spare change, might end up keeping him from the stiff one that would help him through the workday. He debated, as he did on so many other mornings, whether he truly needed it. He thought he still had the will to do without it, but still, it would be such a nice, pleasant addition to his day.

(Next installment)

Psyching up

As I mentioned earlier, I'm resuming NaNoWriMo this year, after taking a hiatus last November. I will be reviving a concept I came up with a few years ago for a work of fiction based on Morphine's final album, The Night. The story has been in the back of my mind all this time, so I've decided to give it a month of serious writing to see if there's anything material there. I'm doing so despite being fully aware that Wheatyard needs yet another round of revisions that I haven't started in on yet, but then again I'll only be doing The Night for a month to see what, if anything, materializes. After that, back to Wheatyard.

So now I'm mentally preparing myself for the new book, and gladly immersing myself in all things Morphine. Since every one of the band's albums will figure into the plot, last weekend I downloaded the band's debut, Good (their only studio album that I hadn't already owned), and have been avidly listening to it this week on my new iPod. (Quick assessment: though it's generally thought of as a formative album for the band, as a whole I think it's better than either Yes or Like Swimming.) And this weekend I'm ripping my CD of Cure For Pain onto the iPod - in my story, that album is the one that hits the protagonist like a ton of bricks when he first hears it, much like it did to me, back in 1993. I'll be wallowing in Cure For Pain in the next few weeks, trying to re-experience those first feelings of discovery all over again, and then hopefully I'll be able to translate them into my prose.

Looming in the not-so-distant future...

"Moonlight"

My short story "Moonlight" has just been published by the good folks at decomP. I wrote the story several years ago during a brief Frank Sinatra phase and while I was particularly obsessed with his rendition of "Moonlight Serenade." Writing the story, I tried to impart the feeling I get whenever a great song like "Moonlight Serenade" completely absorbs me, and to project that feeling onto a protagonist who is reflecting on what that song once meant to him during much happier times. I hope I was successful, and that you enjoy it regardless.

Eerie

During the past week I've been listening to the Mekons' Original Sin (their legendary Fear and Whiskey plus EP tracks from the same period) in the car, driving to and from the train station. When I got home on Monday I thought about taking the CD inside and switching it for something else for my brief drivetime, but decided against it. On my drive home last night I suddenly obsessed on the Mekons' cover of Hank Williams' "Lost Highway", listening to it three or four times and deciding it might be the genesis of a new short story for me, and before bed I paged through Peter Guralnick's chapter (in the aptly-titled Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians) on Hank Jr., looking for some insight into Hank's life and hopefully some writerly inspiration.

And just moments ago I blissfully discovered that today would have been Hank's 85th birthday.

Weird, huh? Though I have no idea what form it might take, it's almost as if this story is simply meant to be.

What I'm writing

"Hope Café" is one of my older stories which I wrote back in 2004, after being inspired by a Tribune article about a young black woman who opened a coffeehouse on South State Street in Chicago, across from the being-demolished Robert Taylor Homes public housing project. The story has been submitted to and promptly declined by a dozen literary journals, and I've let it completely languish for the last few years. Though I knew it was far from perfect, I never got around to revising it. But after having not written much new fiction over the past year, lately I've decided to instead revisit some of my older stories that remain unpublished and are in need of some work, which got me thinking about "Hope Café" again.

The story is written in three parts which, as I've realized all along, were a bit disjointed and didn't flow together as smoothly as they should have. Over the past week I've taken pen to paper and made additions to each section that better echo/foreshadow the others. Adding to an existing draft is certainly not my usual practice - instead I usually pare things down as much as I can - but this is one instance where more elaboration was needed. At the same time, I cut out numerous expository asides which now, four years after I first wrote them, seem almost laughably obvious (most memorably an allusion to a friend's visit to the shop being "an emotional pick-me-up as jarring as the strongest espresso" - really!). I have also deleted several perspective errors - the story is written in third person limited, and a few secondary characters' thoughts and motivations had been revealed which were inconsistent with the limited perspective.

I think the story is much better now than it was before. I've always really liked the message of the story, and now I hope the presentation is stronger, enough so that it will finally find a publisher. Stay tuned.

What I'm writing

Or not. A few days ago I saw this notice for a crime story contest sponsored by TimeOut Chicago, Vintage/Black Lizard and Intelligentsia Coffee. Great, I thought. As it happens, earlier this year I wrote a satirical noir, "Conned and Bruised", which got great feedback from my only crime writer friend but has already been turned down by five journals. Perfect - I'd just send the story off to this contest and see what happens.

But then I read the contest guidelines more closely, and saw that the story has to be set in Chicago. My story is set in the fictional city of Quincy. Okay, I thought at first, maybe I can just tweak the story to have the setting be Chicago instead. But I realized that wouldn't work - my protagonist has a fairly low opinion of Quincy, comparing it very unfavorably to Manhattan, and my love for Chicago would make it quite painful for the negative connotations of the original story to be redirected at Chicago. So "Conned and Bruised" looks like a no-go for the contest.

Maybe I can put something brand new together in the next month (the contest deadline is September 2nd) but nothing promising has come to mind yet, so I wouldn't count on it. I've got another dozen unfinished stories kicking around - I recently printed them out and put them in my snazzy new springback binder, hoping to facilitate their completion - that I should be working on instead. Onward.

Sax Man

(Previous installment)

His father, like Smitty much later, was forced to find new work. Smitty, Henry hoped, got more help from his employer than his father had. Smitty's employer might have moved him to another surface lot to watch over, unlike his father who received only two weeks advance pay and a hearty handshake and wave goodbye from the Driscoll Building manager, before moving on to a series of odd jobs and a steadily rising taste for liquor. A taste which was somehow passed along to young Henry, the older version of whom crossed LaSalle Street with thoughts of the Landmark Lounge once again in his mind.

(Next installment)

Latest obsession: Wordle

My, this is fun: Wordle. The image above (click here for full-sized image) is derived from the text of my first published story, "Ectoplasm", which appeared at Storyglossia in January 2006.

Pretty...oh, so pretty...

That's three copies of the latest (third) draft of Wheatyard, just back from the printer. Once I find some envelopes I'll be mailing them off to three trusted readers who I'm hoping will be as brutally honest as I need them to be.

This land was made for some other publisher

Bad news: My story collection This Land Was Made For You and Me failed to be named a finalist of the chapbook contest at DIAGRAM, and will not be published by New Michigan Press.

Good news: The bidding war now begins! Publishers, start your checkbooks!

(In all seriousness, my heartfelt congratulations to winner Marc McKee and top finalists Chloë Joan López and Jennifer Moss, all of whose books will be published by NMP.)

Sax Man

(Previous installment)

He continued on, past Franklin and an aging garage which he bemusedly noticed had been gussied up with out-of-place evergreens on the corners at each level, then to Wells where he paused at the Dont Walk light. As he waited for the light to change an El train clattered overhead, its roar drowning out every other sound on the street. He peered up, beyond the elevated tracks to the marble building just beyond. It was here, at the Driscoll Building, that his father had operated a passenger elevator for forty-four years. Henry remembered visiting him at work now and then, curiously entering the compartment which was his father's home for ten hours a day, his only comfort a narrow cushionless stool. His father would greet him warmly, not as his son but play-acting as if young Henry was a tenant of the building, with all of the Good morning, sirs and Fine weather we're havings and What floor will it bes that the job required. Henry's father showed up there and worked every day for forty-four years, missing only a rare day from serious illness, enduring the back pain from ten hour stretches on the stool and resisting all suggestions of retirement until automation of the elevator made the decision for him.

(Next installment)

Sax Man

(Previous installment)

On this day he did notice the building, looking past the white-shirted workers streaming through the revolving doors into the soaring atrium and toward the white-clothed restaurant. As thoughts of Smitty drifted from his mind, his thoughts returned to the busboys, catching one last glimpse of them busying themselves inside before they disappeared from sight as he moved past. The tower going up meant Smitty was out of work, Henry thought, but at least it meant jobs for these other guys. And who could even say Smitty was out of work? It was a big parking company he worked for, and there were still plenty of surface lots around that needed attendants like him. So maybe Smitty was still all right.

(Next installment)

Wheatyard - Small Edits and Big Edits

I'm working my way through the third draft of Wheatyard. As of this morning, I'm finished with what I call the "small edits" - tweaking words and phrases, adding a sentence here and there, fixing minor inconsistencies and streamlining the narrative.

Now it's on to the "big edits" - major revisions and additions that didn't occur to me until this most recent re-reading of the manuscript. One of these is the narrator's attitude toward the small town in which Wheatyard, the protagonist, lives. The narrator is a grad student in his final days of college town life, soon to return to the big city of Chicago. While he admires the simplicity of Wheatyard's town, he also sees its shortcomings - notably the small-mindedness and insularity of its inhabitants. But re-reading the manuscript, I was struck by how much my narrator, while considering small-town life, veered from admiration to condescension and back again. One day he was seeing something he really liked, while another day he was bitterly critical. The narrator's attitude is one aspect of the book that is in need of significant refinement.

Another thing I need to develop further is Wheatyard's relationship with his older sister, which was once close but by the time of the story has become completely non-existent. As it stands right now, the story doesn't at all address why the sister suddenly disappeared from Wheatyard's life. Julie was kind enough to point this out after she read the second draft, and it's something I definitely need to fix.

But the work is progressing very nicely, and I expect to have the third draft finished by the end of June. I've already lined up one writer friend, one whose judgment I greatly respect, to read the manuscript, and I'm soliciting a few others. If all goes to plan I'll have the final draft done by the end of this year and ready to send out to publishers. I hope.

Sax Man

(Previous installment)

The last time Henry had stopped was just a few days before the bulldozers moved in. How's it hangin', Mr. Henry, Smitty had greeted him. Hanging low like always, Henry laughed in reply. Business good this mornin'? Eighteen and change, Henry said, shaking his head. Low even for this time of year, Henry had thought without speaking. Early spring was even worse than winter, wind and cold rain sending commuters rushing past without stopping. 'Bout what I made here since six, Smitty said, before tax of course. Least you get to keep all of yours. What little there is of it, yeah, Henry said. The conversation was similar to most of the others they had in the mornings, on Henry's way to the hotel, and though their talks were plain and ordinary he now found himself missing them, Smitty gone after the bulldozers suddenly appeared one day, levelled the cashier shack and tore up the asphalt. As the office tower later rose Henry barely noticed it as he shuffled past.

(Next installment)

Wheatyard - Unconscious Influences

I just started reading a book that I've owned for more than three years, whose first chapter brought me an oddly pleasant pang of recognition. The book is Plainsong, Kent Haruf's critically acclaimed novel of life in a small Colorado town. Our local Starbucks has a book case which the store encourages customers to permanently take books from, provided that the customers donate a book of their own to the shelf. Sometime in mid-2005, I visited that Starbucks with my family, having brought along another book which I had started, not enjoyed at all and then abandoned, and I figured I'd give that book a chance at finding a more welcoming home than my own. I deposited the book on the shelf and was quite pleased to see Plainsong, which I had been meaning to read for some time. I read the first chapter as we savored our coffee, then I took the book home, shelved it and didn't finally return to it until yesterday.

The first chapter of Plainsong involves a father, two sons and an all-but-invisible mother who live on the outskirts of the small town of Holt. Their house stands directly opposite a set of railroad tracks, on the very sensibly named Railroad Street. When I read this chapter yesterday (for the second time, the first having been at Starbucks in 2005), it suddenly seemed very familiar, and for very good reason.

I started writing Wheatyard in November 2005, several months after reading the first chapter of Plainsong. The eponymous protagonist of Wheatyard just so happens to live - you guessed it - on the outskirts of a small town, directly opposite from the railroad tracks, on Railroad Street. (Albeit childless and unmarried, in Central Illinois and not Colorado.) Although the similarities between Wheatyard and Plainsong end right there, I find it very interesting that these fairly minor elements of Plainsong found their way, unconsciously, into Wheatyard. Until yesterday I had completely forgotten that first chapter, and had absolutely no idea that Haruf's book had at all influenced my writing of Wheatyard. But the influence is definitely there, although to a very small degree.

Other than the name Elmer Glaciers Wheatyard (which my daughter Maddie made up) I have had really no idea where the concept of Wheatyard came from. At the outset, I simply reasoned that anyone with such an odd name had to be quite an eccentric, so I just started with the idea of an eccentric protagonist and improvised from there. Or that was what I presumed to be the extent of influence, until yesterday. Now that I recognize the fact that I borrowed some basic story elements from Plainsong, I realize there is undoubtedly a myriad of similar influences that went into the creation of Wheatyard, most of which I'm still only vaguely aware of. I expect the revelation of other influences in the future will be a similarly rewarding experience.

Sax Man

(Previous installment)

He crossed the four lanes and wide median of Wacker and descended the gentle incline toward Franklin, eyeing as he passed the sleek businessman's restaurant inside which busboys busily set up tables with white cloths and napkins for the coming lunch rush. He remembered back, before the glassy office tower was built, to the parking lot that occupied the site and the old attendant who regularly waved a greeting to Henry from the doorway of the cashier shack. Every now and then Henry would wander over, shake hands and idle away a few minutes in pleasant conversation. Smitty was a good man, Henry reflected, wondering where he was now.

(Next installment)

Sax Man

(Previous installment)

For now it was nothing more than that - a thirst. Not dependence or even a habit; more of a pastime, a way to kill an hour after the morning crowds had dissipated and the start of his shift at the hotel. A man couldn't help being thirsty, he assured himself, after blowing a saxophone non-stop for three hours in the face of those brisk river winds. The bitter air dried his lips and tongue, and his playing could never cease, as commuters would never give money in return for silence. So he played until his mouth was raw, which was very hard work, and for that hard work he could see no reason to deny himself some refreshment at the Landmark Lounge if he chose. And it was still his choice. A pastime, he insisted.

(Next installment)

"Quit These Hills"

My short story "Quit These Hills" has just been published in the recently launched online journal Big Pulp. My sincerest thanks to editor Bill Olver for accepting the story. While the journal classifies the story under Horror, I really don't think of it as a horror story. But the narrator's act could easily be considered horrific - at least to the polite society he disdains - so in that sense it is horror, I guess.

"Quit These Hills" is a combination and refinement of two shorter pieces that I previously wrote and submitted for story contests at The Clarity of Night. Neither submission was a finalist, so I salvaged their remains into this story, and I'm pretty pleased with the result. The story was originally inspired by the Pinetop Seven song of the same name, so I'd also like to thank that band's Darren Richard for permanently lodging that haunting tune in my memory.

Sax Man

(Previous installment)

But the morning rush slowly dwindled, the streams of office workers giving way to scattered clumps of tourists coming in on the train from the suburbs for the day. Though these people often had time to stay and listen, and even toss some change, they came by too infrequently to justify Henry staying around. By ten a.m. he had to be far to the east, on Michigan Avenue, changed into his uniform and ready to open and close doors for hotel guests for the next eight hours. As he packed up his saxophone and stuffed his middling take into his pants pocket, chasing for a few feet a dollar bill caught in a quick gust of wind, he realized without even checking his watch that he had barely an hour to spare. Barely an hour to ease his thirst.

(Next installment)

Sax Man

(Previous installment)

He knew he had to keep playing. For the money, of course, to wring a little more spare change from the commuters before the morning rush ended. The evening rush wasn't quite the same. Unlike the morning, when workers plodded grimly toward their offices and seemed to relish any delay they could find, including a saxophonist playing tunes they had never heard, in the evening they were all in a rush. A rush to make their trains, a rush to get their cars out of the garage and beat the traffic to the expressways, a rush to get home. No time to pause.

(Next installment)

Sax Man

Few remembered the old songs that Frank played, and fewer still would appreciate them enough to spare any change as they passed by. The saxophone case rested on the sidewalk, opened wide to reveal only a few scattered dollar bills and a handful of small coins. Four or five dollars for several hours of work. Because as much as he loved the music, as much as it satisfied his soul and made him the man he was, it was indeed work. Standing at the railing, hot or cold, rain or shine, the wind from off the river usually whipping at his face, honking out the same standards for hours on end to the mostly indifferent glances of business people hustling to the office. He had been riffing on "Round Midnight" for ten or fifteen minutes and needed a break soon. He had been playing without pause for over an hour and needed a break. Even Coltrane would step away from the stage now and then, he thought to himself, taking a break as the band continued on, settling in at a table filled with well-wishers and enjoying their praise and a cold highball. But on the bridge Frank saw neither praise nor refreshment before him, just a few minutes to rest his mouth before he would continue on.

(Next installment)

This Land Was Made For You and Me

My story chapbook This Land Was Made For You and Me is now finished, and has been submitted to DIAGRAM for their chapbook contest. When I first started this project three or four years ago I envisioned it as a much larger collection of twenty or more stories, each based on a different photograph from the Farm Security Administration archives. But the project languished at just seven stories as my attention moved elsewhere, and the prospect of creating two dozen more stories to round out a longer collection apparently was just intimidating enough to prevent me from continuing to work on it. It was a project that was always in the back of my mind but which quite frankly I just assumed would end up in my writerly dustbin. I did scavenge a few individual stories that I've circulated around to various journals, one of which, "Deep in the Northwoods", was published in Wheelhouse, but my hopes were very slim for ever seeing a unified collection of stories based on FSA photographs.

My sudden late discovery of the DIAGRAM contest changed all that. The contest sought chapbooks (fiction included) of up to 44 pages in length which, I quickly realized, was just about the total length of the seven stories I had already written. And I always do better with hard external deadlines (in this case, April 1) to get things finished instead of relying on my own inner drive. (I'm a procrastinator at heart, even for something as important to me as my writing.) Fortunately, given the short deadline, most of the stories were already close to finished form, and required only light pruning. One story ("Chicago, Illinois") did require a complete rewrite, as the original was almost entirely exposition with no real narrative, but it's a much better story now than it was originally. So, I now have a finished story collection that I'm quite proud of, and though I'm under no delusion that the book will win the contest, I'm somewhat encouraged by the fact that New Michigan Press will consider all entrants for publication, and has published numerous non-winning chapbooks in the past. Just the thought of my manuscript being read by such a great writer as DIAGRAM/NMP head honcho Ander Monson is enough to make the effort worthwhile - hell, even if he doesn't read it, the possibility of him personally tossing it in the recycling bin is enough for me.

As promised, I'll be publishing a few teasers from the collection here from time to time. First up is an excerpt from "Cimarron County, Oklahoma" (which was inspired by this photograph):

They approached the house. It was long, low and windowless, and built haphazardly of rough planks, many of which had been pried away by the storm. The house sat encircled in dirt, and the youngest, not comprehending, laughed when the door would not budge as his father tugged at it. The door normally swung outward but was now wedged in by two feet of soil.

His father turned toward him and glared, just mean enough to make the boy draw back, his laughter cut short. Gone was his father’s good mood of the hours in the truck, gone was the adventure of the long walk and the disappearing footprints. The boy’s quiet wonder slowly gave way to tearful sniffling.

Through misting eyes he now saw, for the first time, that there was really nothing here but dirt. He suddenly remembered the young wheat stalks which had just emerged from the ground during the last few days. The family planted the wheat themselves, the first time the youngest was old enough to do so, and he waited with excitement for the plants to grow. Finally they emerged, tiny and green, and he imagined how they would look when fully grown.

But now the wheat was nowhere to be seen.

What I'm Writing

As I mentioned earlier, I'm working on This Land Was Made For You and Me, rushing to meet an April 1 submission deadline for the chapbook contest at DIAGRAM. I just finished the latest round of revisions, and have started designing the layout. I might publish some excerpts here soon, but for a teaser here are the FSA photographs that the seven stories are based on:

Dorothea Lange: Nipomo, California
Russell Lee: Craigville, Minnesota
Jack Delano: Greene County, Georgia
Arthur Rothstein: Shellpile, New Jersey
Arthur Rothstein: Cimarron County, Oklahoma
Russell Lee: Chicago, Illinois
Russell Lee: Prague, Oklahoma

Beautiful and powerful images all. I couldn't help being inspired by them.

What I'm Writing

Nothing new in the works, but...

I'm revising "The Last Final Copy", a story I wrote almost two years ago about the last few hours of Chicago's legendary City News Bureau. It's been with a small anthology publisher all this time, for possible publication in a workplace-themed collection which has been pushed back several times. Not wanting to wait any longer, I submitted it to a prominent but for-now-unnamed journal which really liked the story but had a few suggestions for tightening up the narrative. The editor was exactly right - it did need some streamlining. One of the really interesting things about writing is how you can create a story that you really love (as I do this one), so much so that you're convinced it's already in its final, can't-be-improved form. But once someone else reads it and makes a few suggestions, you're suddenly aware that, indeed, there is considerable room for improvement. There's a strong possibility that this story will be published soon, depending on what the editor thinks of my revisions.

I'm delving back into This Land Was Made For You and Me, the story collection based on Farm Security Administration photographs from the Depression era. I just saw a notice in Poets & Writers about a fiction chapbook contest co-sponsored by DIAGRAM and New Michigan Press, both of which are curated by the esteemed Ander Monson. My collection had stalled out at around six stories, and I've been hemming and hawing about whether or not to resume writing new pieces for it. Now I'm thinking I might not have to - with this contest seeking chapbook-length collections (18-44 pages), the stories I've already written might already be just the right length. So now it would simply be a case of polishing up what I've already written (one of which is "Deep in the Northwoods", recently published in Wheelhouse) and shipping it off. Of course, given the entry fee involved, I'd have to be sure the collection is good enough to be contest-worthy before going through with it. I probably will, though, just for the hell of it.

Color Me Podcasted

My friend, fellow writer and kindred spirit Ben Tanzer interviewed me this week over lunch, and the result is podcasted here. (Note to self: next time, speak slower, enunciate and never say "you know.") Topics include the challenge of writing historical fiction, Nelson Algren, Knut Hamsun's Hunger in ten words or less (okay, twelve, including the obligatory "efficacious") and whether or not I'm an outlaw. Contrary to Ben's regular tagline, listening to this interview will not change your life, but hopefully it will distract and maybe even entertain you for a few minutes. My sincerest thanks to Ben for the shameless shilling.

What I'm Writing

I'm finishing up a new story, a noir named "Conned and Bruised in Alphabetsville." My old friend Fred recently pointed me to this wonderful resource: Twists, Slugs and Roscoes: A Glossary of Hardboiled Slang. Just like the title states, it's a long list of slang and jargon compiled from noir and hardboiled crime fiction. I'm a longtime casual fan of noir (casual enough that most of the slang was new to me) but had never attempted a story in the genre. So, duly inspired by that profusion of new words, I wrote a story about a hapless, two-bit criminal which incorporated as many of the glossary's terms without (I hope) overdoing it.

Storyglossia (which, incidentally, published my first short story two years ago) is running an all-crime fiction issue for its next edition, and I'll be submitting my story for consideration there soon. Cain or Chandler it ain't, but I think it's at least halfway decent.

These Hills Get Pulped

I recently learned that my short story "Quit These Hills" will be published in early May at the new pulp fiction journal Big Pulp. The journal's publication schedule can be viewed here - their first story will be published during the first week in March. The only name I recognize there is Corey Mesler, but I'm sure there will be plenty of worthy stories published therein.

I originally wrote this story as two separate pieces which I entered in contests at the litblog The Clarity of Night, and after neither one finished as a finalist, I stitched the two stories together with an interconnecting passage, and after several rewrites the resulting story emerged as a considerably better and much more complete narrative than either of the original pieces. I didn't think this story was particularly pulpish, but I liked the concept of Big Pulp so much that I submitted on a whim. Bill Olver, Big Pulp's editor/publisher, really liked the story and apparently thought it was close enough to horror - the protagonist's actions are, indeed, rather aberrant if not outright horrific - to be a good fit with the journal. I'll post an announcement here when the story goes online.

Wheatyard - The Epigraph

I have mixed feelings about epigraphs. When used appropriately, they effectively convey and summarize the author's thoughts about the work - but when misued, they can come across as pretentious and desperate invocations of earlier classics, as if the author is saying, for example: "By quoting from Milton, I am insisting that my book is every bit as great as Paradise Lost."

Erring on the side of caution and wanting to completely avoid the latter case, at first I gave no thought whatsoever to an epigraph for my novella-in-progress, Wheatyard. I finished the first draft last spring, epigraph-less, but then during my Summer of Classics I happened to read Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener, and was struck by this passage from the narrator's introduction:

Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable, except from the original sources, and in his case those are very small. What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby, that is all I know of him, except, indeed, one vague report which will appear in the sequel.

I immediately saw the obvious (and, I hope, non-pretentious) parallel between Bartleby and Wheatyard. Both protagonists are mysterious, idiosyncratic individuals who have mostly withdrawn from society and want to live their lives entirely on their own terms. Both interact with society only to meet their most basic needs - Bartleby for employment (and a clandestine place to sleep), Wheatyard for outlets willing to publish his fiction. And both Bartleby the Scrivener and Wheatyard are narrated by individuals who discretely and over-cautiously seek to find out the truth about the protagonists - tiptoeing around the periphery of the protagonists' lives without directly confronting them to get an immediate answer to the mystery.

Obviously, I could write for centuries and never achieve the status of Melville, and hope that in choosing this epigraph I'm not being too presumptuous. I'm doing so because Bartleby's sad story is very much reflected in the life I've conjured up for Elmer Glaciers Wheayard, and not because my writing in any way approaches the greatness of Melville. I'm merely standing on the shoulders of giants.

RAGAD reading at Book Cellar: no bruises, no frostbite

The RAGAD reading at Book Cellar went very well. Turnout was much better than I expected on such a bitterly cold night, the atmosphere was warm and inviting and despite the added pressure of being the "featured" reader (since issue #5 is devoted entirely to my story "Mercy Day", which I read) I didn't perform too horribly. Despite what Nick Ostdick says, however, I wouldn't describe the audience as being "riveted" by my story, but they did seem to enjoy it - and not a single one of them dozed off. My sincerest thanks to Nick for publishing the story and hosting the event, and I'd also like to give a shout-out to my fellow readers Spencer Dew, Jill Summers and the irrepressible Ben Tanzer.

Incidentally, Ben, Nick, Jason Pettus (CCLaP) and Jason Behrends (What to Wear During an Orange Alert?) convened after the reading to record a podcast on all things locally literary, which can be enjoyed here. I was kindly asked to participate, but had to decline - after Julie was cheerfully willing to be dragged all the way up to the city on such a forbidding night, I thought she deserved a nice dinner afterward. Which we had - after a few unsuccessful stops at other places, we had an excellent meal at Tilli's, in Lincoln Park.

Update: Jason Pettus has posted several photos from the reading. In the third photo down, I'm the follically-challenged guy in the plaid shirt. Julie is to my right, and the bearded Nick Ostdick is at the far left. The hands grasping the beer bottle and glass in the foreground, I believe, belong to Ben Tanzer.