New story "The Judas Steer" published this week at Cowboy Jamboree

My new short story "The Judas Steer" was published this week at Cowboy Jamboree. I would sincerely love if you stopped by and read it. 

And also check out everything there. CJ Press publishes the best fiction and nonfiction across the literary landscape.

Let me clear my throat

There's been a lot going on over the past couple of weeks. A new book, Runaways, out from Alien Buddha Press, my Collected Stories out from Cowboy Jamboree Press, and a third book in the early stages of promotion and one I've worked on for the last three years, The Orchard Is Full of Sound, also coming out this spring from CJ Press.

During all this, I posted briefly about something I want to talk more about here this morning. 

Cody Sexton, publisher and editor of A Thin Slice of Anxiety, nominated my poem "Another Cure for Boredom" for a Pushcart Prize. This is my first for poetry, so it's special to me. I have had good luck with these nominations, though, with seven now over the past decade.

I told my wife the day Cody announced his nominations that in the indie lit world the nomination was the win because the big swinging egos of the literary world at large were never going to include one of our pieces in the big book. Sadly, and stupidly, those people won't recognize A Thin Slice of Anxiety or Cowboy Jamboree Magazine or Alien Buddha Press or any of the other indie journals because they don't follow the old lines and the old ways and the old kinds of stories and poetry.

And thank god for that.

Cover reveal!

 

My first poetry collection RUNAWAYS published by Alien Buddha Press

I sent my poetry manuscript Runaways to Alien Buddha Press because I loved what they had been doing for a long time. I had a small hope that they would like it, and they did. That email saying it had been accepted was a great one. I read it once, twice, three or four more times before responding with an eager agreement to get into some revision work.

Here is the finished product of that work, the poetry collection Runaways. Please go buy a copy. I really think you'll enjoy it.

To have a collection of poetry out there in the world is a great feeling. I've been told by at least one infuriated detractor the following "Please, though, no more occasional tries at modernist stanzas, you gumpy trinity of names, or Jean Toomer’s coffin will bench press you." I don't care who you are, that right there is hilarious. I won't say who this was, but his essay trying to destroy me was so well written, to be honest. I'm almost tempted to link to it, but I'm not going to.

I won't lie, the first time I read the essay, it hurt my feelings. I laughed, but it hurt some. So I did what I do and kept writing poetry even harder than before. After a bit I had this bunch of prose poems (no modernist stanzas, detractor!) I thought were good enough to collect and submit. 

Like I said, I couldn't believe Alien Buddha Press liked it and has now published the book. It's a nice, 87-page collection of all my poetry to date, which is pretty cool because it comes in the same week that my publisher Cowboy Jamboree Press put out my Collected Stories, a 630-page book of a every short story I've ever had published for the past decade. 

All my stuff in just a couple books. It's pretty amazing.