Yesterday and the day before and the day before that I drove across Iowa. It's not that bad a state to drive across, if you stay off I-80 and I-35, which I did.
I read from the Gymnos @ Defunct Books in Iowa City Sat. Nite. Where was Barry G? I think Michigan. So I didn't finally get to meet Barry G. But the reading was great and it was good to hear and meet the others (readers): Charly Fasano, Becca Roberts, Amy Ganser and Jesus Angel Garcia.
My set list: Buffalo, Flagstaff, Asheville, Omaha, Albuquerque. (As an intro to that last one, I slipped in a Neil Young reference: something like, All I know about Albuquerque in real life is that they say Sante Fe is 90 miles away...)
David McNamara was there, and he verified that the snow of Buffalo is often a wet snow.
So that was the reading.
Also: new story at The Literarian: "Kiss of the Underachiever."
Also: me and Tim Horvath and others converse in Polish @ Minimal Books, thanks to the excellent Piotr Siwecki. ( Mine--"Kosciol"--was first seen as "Church" in Unsaid #4.)
Also: new story in Midwestern Gothic. When I heard there was a mag called Midwestern Gothic, I saw that I had no choice but to try to publish something there. This story, "Extravaganza," is set in the Twin Cities in the 90s, largely in St. Paul's Union Depot (which lets me pull in The Great Gatsby).
Also: Matt Bell gave my Redivider story, "Desultory," some nice consideration in one of his Short Story Month posts (This was late in the month, and I'd really enjoyed a number of the earlier ones, so seeing the "Desultory" post was super fun). Among other things, he gave some thought to the title and how it might be taken. Reading that part helped me expose for myself one interesting (and sort of wrong-headed) way I'd been thinking of the word: as being akin to the word "offertory" -- like they have in church.
That's two church references for this post. Three, if you count the words of the Flagstaff Gymnopédie.
