I have an entry in the Absolute Horror Wiki! What?!

Just a quick post to say I'm crazy excited to come across the fact that I have an entry in the Absolute Horror Wiki, Fandom section. Here it is. Damn!

Absolute Horror Wiki - Fandom

Wow.

When a Friend Makes You Define Yourself

Talked with a friend yesterday about why I mess with all this "writing stuff." He meant not only my own writing but the journals, blogs, correspondence, etc. It's the easiest thing in the world to answer. I told him, "I do it because it's fun." 

Folks, it's just fun. That's what I get out of it.

Some people go to the lake, others take vacations. I've noticed that a lot of people play video games and others go shopping. There's a lot of people going out to eat and then to a movie. I am not joking, I do all of this writing stuff because it's more fun than anything else I can think of besides sex.

There are a lot of writer friends of mine I've not talked with or seen around for a long time, writers who were so immensely talented it that I'm sure they still have amazing ideas ready to share. I don't know why they're not around anymore, but I wish they'd come back. I get a sense they were, as was I for sure, trying to get their writing careers off the ground, pushing around in the online indie lit scene hoping to cannonball out at some point the way our mutual friends like Roxane Gay, Blake Butler, and others did. And maybe when that didn't go exactly as hoped, they put their pens away and got on with life, as it were.

But I know they had fun doing this. You could feel it in their books and stories and poetry. I guess what's I'm saying is I wish they were still around. This indie scene is more than a set of steps to the real publishing scene. It's a carnival, a theme park, a party, a comfort food, a nostalgia, a night out.

Plain and simple, and again, it's just fun.

And well....

I miss you guys.

There, I said it.

Found a review of Brown Bottle from earlier this year!

Yes, friends, I'm not even sure I remember now how I ran across it (I do google myself sometimes to see where things are with my indie writing career, that's probably how it happened) but there's a new review of my 2016 novel, my first novel, as it were.

Brett Milam (as soon as I write this and post I'm going to go find this guy and thank him) was the kind gentleman who wrote the review, and it's sincerely the best one I've read. He gets it, all of it. And like with any fantastic review, I learned something about my book I didn't know before reading it. That, to me, is the trait of a great review.

No need to ramble on. Go on ahead if you're interested and read Brett Milam's review of Brown Bottle. He nailed it.

New western story "Her Little Place of Dying" published today at Cowboy Jamboree.

Cowboy Jamboree Magazine published a short story of mine today. I took the title from a line in the novel Comanche Moon by McMurtry, "Her Little Place of Dying."

The story is one of several I've finished and had published for an upcoming western collection called Seven Drums.

It's western with a twist of horror and was a lot of fun to write. It had been several months since I'd finished a story, so I'm doubly happy to see it appear today.

If you'd like to read it just visit the following link:

HER LITTLE PLACE OF DYING.

Am I Writing a Novel?

 Ahhhh, just sitting here thinking about how I can't really write a novel. I mean I've written and had published three (kind of four, cause hybrid and all) but I still don't feel like I can do it well enough to be noticed. Now that's not saying the books were bad. My publishers for each (especially Adam Van Winkle) have great taste and wouldn't have published them if they weren't, you know, publishable. But can I really write a novel well enough to stand out? Well, no. 

Can I write a short story that stands out? Hell, yes. I know this about myself, as a writer. I know my strengths; I know when I feel comfortable inside the room of words that's my brain when writing is happening. And it's in the short story, the most difficult form we have, canvasly. 

So I'm thinking about this novel I have going, Oblivion Angels. I have lots of it figured out in my head. It's all spaced out crazy like right now. Example: I'm writing different sections starring different characters at different time periods right now. And with no idea how it's all going to tie together. Or if it even will. Or if there's a narrative there at all. Right now. 

I do know that the first chapter and the last chapter (this last chapter because of the way it brings things back to the third chapter) are going to be strong. Really good, in fact. It will be poignant and heart-wrenching and beautiful all at the same time. I'm confident in those chapters. The others...I don't know. My plan is to get in there and just start writing. The more I plan things, the more of an absolute horror show it becomes usually. Every bit of humanness and heart gets sucked out of it. It ends up dry as a New Yorker short story. Dry as a Iowa Writer's Workshop short story.

That was mean of me. I take it back. Wait, I don't take back the New Yorker comment. That stands.

New story "The Caretaker" published today at Cowboy Jamboree Magazine and Press

I have a new story "The Caretaker" published today at my author's page at Cowboy Jamboree Press. And I've said it ten-thousand times but you need to know how much I love Adam Van Winkle, CJ Press publisher and mastermind behind it all. And how much I love my fellow authors at CJ Press. It's simply beautiful to find at this time in my writing life a press so supportive and so interested in publishing great books. I am so lucky and I know it.

A CLUSTER OF LIGHTS - Ten Years in the Making

Between May 2010 and May 2011 my great friend and amazing author Michelle Elvy and the gang published compositions as 52/250 A Year of Flash. My story "A Mountain So Lost" was published there during that time.

It was a terrific undertaking - from the website:

"...176 artists and authors who contributed over 1,500 flashes, poems and art. What began as a simple challenge between two friends (let’s write a story a week for a year) swiftly gained momentum and turned into something exceptional in every way. Our first week began with 17 writers taking on the theme of “Breadfruit” and our year ended with 52 authors inspired by “Threesome.” In the collection below you’ll find 52 weeks of stories and poems, each piece limited in word count to 250 or less." 

Not too long ago, I was invited to compose another story for the ten-year anniversary anthology from the press Pure Slush. Ten years. Damn that's crazy. In some ways it feels exactly like ten years (or even more!) have passed and then sometimes it feels like a few months ago. But I was happy to be invited to take part and offered a story called "A Common Creation."

This past month, that anthology was published. A Cluster of Lights collects works from all of us ten years later. It's truly ingenious, just as the original idea was a decade ago. 

Go get the anthology and please do enjoy!

Short story published in the anthology Travelin' Thru Townes

Cowboy Jamboree just published a Townes Van Zandt-themed anthology. Here's who TVZ was.

I story of mine called "Marie" was included in the anthology, the title of which was taken from the name of one of my favorite Townes songs.

Townes in cool repose.

It has a ton of fantastic compositions, including work from William Taylor Jr., Brian Beatty, Clem Flowers, Margaret Sefton, Anthony Lawrence, Joe Kille, Kent Rose, Barbara Byar, Burke de Boer, Teddy Griffith, Vincent Cellucci, David Mihalyov, Karl Koweski, John Yohe, Mark Rogers, Charles March, and Colin Brightwell.

Cowboy Jamboree Press's editorial staff Adam Van Winkle, Constance Beitzel, and Kassie Bohannon are to be thanked beyond thanks for the hard work and vision to put together a collection like this.

Go get a copy. It's well worth a few bucks.

⎰⎱

So I tried a workshop. It didn't work out as well as I would have liked. Life is like that, though. I'm of an age now that little failures mean less. And I'll try again. And it might work next time. For now, though, Yonder Writers Workshop is in a vague place where it can't connect with anyone or anything. 

Like I said, no worries. 

But by god I've been writing and posting here for 14 years. I can go back to posts I made in 2009 and see what the hell I was doing and thinking when I only had a few short stories published, a couple of which don't exist anymore, in the vague place, too, I suppose.

It's funny because I'm still sitting here with this same interface (colors schemes are the same, tool bar, the strange white "b" in the middle of an orange square in the upper left corner) indeed sitting here with the same interface thinking to myself and writing down the words that come. I still think the voice we hear inside our heads is probably the most amazing thing about us. Not the fact that we can speak those words or write those words but the fact that the words are there at all.

⎰⎱

I just finished reading a book about the conscious and it's wiped me a little. Everything is suspect. The world is what I view it as but is that real and should I keep running from snakes when cutting grass? A lot is going on.

Also, I don't think I've posted my author's page at CJ Press here. Here's where you can go read some of my most recent compositions.