Avery #4 now Shipping

Just got them in the mail, and good thing there were two because B and I were at them immediately. This is easily one of the prettiest things I've been in. A really, really nice job Steph and Adam et. al have done w/ this one. Very hard to leave it and go to work.

My story is called "In Lieu of My Final Paper." Here's the first part from memory:

"Prodigious thanks, first of all, Professor Saloman, for considering what I wrote in my March 12 email and granting me an incomplete. You yourself could not hope for such clemency if you tried emailing us with excuses like mine and saying you could not give us grades. I am very aware of this. Awareness in general is definitely on the rise in my case, even as I deal with the confusion of my parents' divorce and my mother's collapse...."

Some others in #4, again from memory: Kevin Canty, Hannah Tinti, Jamie Iredell, and Jessica Breheny, who I never managed to meet when I was in Santa Cruz (though my friend Liz Bennett did her best!).

Late add-on: just read at the Avery blog that Emma is going to be at AWP w/ the issue. Stop by their table for sure...

Confessions of a Total Idiot

I spent two and a half hours this morning writing a piece that turned out to be 80 words long in the end, "Richmond Gymnopédie."

My car, during this time, slid down the icy driveway and into the street.

Auto Blog Post

I went to flickr and put in the first word that came to mind, which was 'headspace.' Then I lifted the first photo that came up under that term, which was this one, by somebody who goes by the name AlterEgo Trip Svenska. I think it's a Second Life domicile or something. Now what. I guess I need an avatar, to take down that unicorn tapestry.

Bad Dream

Mary Lynn Reed's "On the Way to Death Valley" is up today at WL.

I had a dream last night that before posting it I changed a bunch of stuff in the story, made these whimsical, arbitrary changes. In the dream I was just realizing how horrible a thing this was. I couldn't handle the idea of MLR hitting the link and seeing what I'd done.

So this morning things are better. I didn't do it, Mary Lynn!

Obscure Anniversaries: Gulf Shores 7"

In the middle is the young Will Oldham (I had to scan it because there's nothing on the net but pix of the current W.O. -- older, balder, beefier, beardier, just generally weirder)

When people talk about young W.O. -- usually to tag him as instrumental to the rise of alt country or low fi or slacker folk or some such -- they typically cite one of the early albums he recorded under the Palace/Palace Bros/Palace Music monikers. Maybe Viva Last Blues, or the first one, with a name any fiction writer will love: There's No One What Will Take Care of You. Those are both great, but I never lost my head over them. Only the singles did that to me. The first big single: "Come In." And the three tracks on the '94 7", Gulf Shores.

That one is now 15 years old.

The tracks are "West Palm Beach," "Gulf Shores," and "(End of) Traveling." My love for them is perfect and complete.

Here's the "West Palm Beach" mp3 (not quite sure what our source is here....). I've been listening to it lately because I think it's amazing in its invocation of place, and I've been writing some place-centered fictions.

B-day

It's Jan. 17th. Here's some random dude blowing out the candle on Wigleaf's birthday cupcake.

If there was a party there'd be music. My first pick: "Pops U" (see video below) by the Slipshod Swingers. That's Pirooz Kalayeh's band. His story "The Party" was among the first to go up @ Wigleaf last year.



I think that's a self-portrait of Pirooz at the controls of the space ship there but I could be wrong.

Truly killer one up this morning, "Let Me Go," by Myfanwy Collins.

Anything else to say here? I don't think so. Over and out.

When the Internet's Down

There's self knowledge.

The Other Day

I was taking my 3 yr old to preschool and he was telling me something I wasn't getting. It was about a tree, but not a tree --some kind of play tree, with rings. Okay, Daddy? he was saying to see if I was with him. Is this at home or at Erin's house (preschool)? I asked. He said, No. Then he said, I'm right. I told him I wasn't saying he was wrong but that I was trying to figure out where the thing was. He said, My brain, and I said, Ah. He said, It was in my heart and then my brain. The seeing of it was in my heart.

He actually said that.

I'm trying not to be scared.

Five Best Lines from the Wizard of Oz

1. Dorothy to Toto: "I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."

2. Glinda to Dorothy: "Ha ha ha! Only bad witches are ugly!"
(not half as good without the facial expressions)

3. Wicked Witch to Dorothy: "I'll get you, my pretty--and your little dog too!"'

4. Tree to Scarecrow: "Are you hintin' my apples ain't what they
ought to be?"

5. Wicked Witch to Dorothy: "How kind of you to visit me in my loneliness."

Nu @ Wigleaf

Chantel Tattoli's "How Barbie Came to Live in Our Barn."

How annoying is that 'Nu'?

Or maybe these ones: Neu?

Noo? (Taken)

Nieu? (not bad, God undertones)

Neeiww? (very dumb! very annoying!)

Obscure Anniversaries: RE: Erik Satie

One hundred and thirty years ago, young Erik Satie flunked out of the Paris Conservatoire.

Erik Satie was rad.

He did the above sketch--a study for a possible bust head of himself.

He was one rad dad....

I've been thinking about Erik Satie because I've been writing a bunch of shorts I call 'gymnopédies.' Maybe to combat the strong association of rainy Parisian scenes, I've been naming each one after a different American city. Today I did three: "Atlanta Gymnopédie," "Manhattan Gymnopédie," and "Omaha Gymnopédie." At first only two of them were good, but then I went back and redid Omaha, and now it's good too. They're all about a hundred words long and seem to me to be a cross between stories and poems without being anything like prose poetry, if that makes sense. I'm liking them a lot and may try to put a bunch of them together in a collection--American Phonometrics.

Here's a link: to ES's Gymnopédie No. 1. Probably you've heard it b4.

Reader Poll

What's your word for the hole in the side of this object?

Pre-Orderable: PANK #3

My story in this one is called "Land of the Whispering Dead." I'm happy about having it in PANK and looking forward to reading the issue, which looks pretty massive, featuring, among others, Molly Gaudry, Kathy Fish, Blake Butler, Michelle Tandoc-Pichereau, Rachel Yoder, Rosanne Griffeth, Luke Geddes, and Chantel Tattoli.

p.s.: for the past few months, PANK has been running fiction online too. They're off to a pretty good start.

Chez Wigleaf

On Jan. 17 of '08, Wigleaf went live. There was just one story in the column that day, Leah Browning's "Scars."

The mag's had a good first year. Maybe more to the point, the people in the mag have had a good year. Consider:

Six of the ten finalists for Keyhole's chapook competition have had stuff in our pages: Thomas Cooper, Stefanie Freele, Kathy Fish, Aaron Burch, Randall Brown and Matt Bell (whose manuscript, The Collectors, we published a piece from).

Four of five finalists for Rose Metal Press' Short Short Chapbook competition have Wigleaf connections: Aaron and Stefanie, again, and Jac Jemc, who has one coming soon, and Molly Gaudry (whose title piece, "Come See the Monkey," we were thrilled to be able to run).

And then the Rose Metal winner, Sean Lovelace. His April short, "Crow of No Goodbyes," has been a Wigleaf reader favorite, and he's since let us run another great piece, "A Sigh Is Just a Sigh."

Congratulations to you people!

And everybody go read the new one (plus p-card)--from the super-fantastic Nuala Ní Chonchúir.