House of Leaves, and, right at the end, fathers

Hi. I've been writing a lot. Got 226 first draft pages of my new novel The Old Invisible finished since February. Started it, half-heartedly, late last year. Used it for the first three months while composing as a place to be safe; used it this last month not at all. Only wrote on it.

I also have a new short story collection finished called Story of My Stories and Other Stories. I'm adding to that one as I go. I'll know when it has enough stories in it. Or maybe not. My past collections were sent to my publisher when I'd written enough to constitute a book-length work. With that as a measuring stick, I would have submitted this to them a month ago. So I don't know what I'm doing with it. All I'm sure of is the stories are coming fast. Even with my output on TOI I've still written seven new long stories and three shorter stories. This has been in the last two months. 

I guess I rarely have prodigious output (not that this is prodigious on the full scale, only in relation to what I usually write..you know what I'm saying).

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But my writing isn't what I stopped by here at the old house to talk about, actually.

I was enrolled as an English major at Eastern Kentucky University in 1997. One of my English classes (I cannot at all remember which one no matter how hard I try) assigned us some books to pick up at the college bookstore. One was Watchmen by Alan Moore. Another was House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. My sister-in-law at that time knew more about hot books than I did. I was still reading Hemingway and Stephen King and nothing else. So she asked if she could have them when my wife at that time left me and moved back home to the hills. I gave them to her. And found later that both were major books.

I later read Watchmen, borrowed it from a friend, but have not yet read House of Leaves. Tonight I ordered it and will see what I can manage with it. I glanced through it back then and thought of it as, I don't know what, really, a really long, involved literary parlor trick? I'm going to try to actually read it this time and see how it goes. If I finish it, I'll add the designation "personal mountain top" to it on my Reading Log here.

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That's all. Happy Father's Day to you dads who are being good dads. To hell and all its dark fire to those of you dads who are doing anything other than that.

Still struggling with social media

I was the victim of people on social media in 2015. They called me things I'm not, terrible things that actually contradicted my actions as recently as a month before this began. I can't say anything else because I'm afraid something will happen to me again. I wouldn't be able to get through it again.

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I don't bring this up in search of pity or anything of that nature. I bring it up so I can explain to my writing friends why I'm no longer active on social media. It scares me, plain and simple. It's just something I wanted my friends to understand. 

Love you all.

New story up this evening at Poverty House

 It's a new one called "King Mob" and it's part of a new story collection I just finished titled Night Tracks.

 If so inclined, go give it a read at Poverty House.

Fact for a Title: Today It Has Rained

I'm barely in the following places anymore - Twitter, Facebook, and, well, I was never at any of the others. 

I suppose I should include Blogger, since I rarely post here anymore either.

There was a time, though, when this was the only thing I did use to connect with the literary community. This was before I knew what Twitter or Facebook was (I miss those days).

There are reasons behind why I don't like social media, but they are long, complicated, and decidedly unpleasant for me to recall, so we'll leave it at that.

By evidence of this post, I would like to come here to my first online home and reach out into the bleary ether of the lit world more often. I can't give a good reason for this feeling, so I won't try.

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I'll likely talk some about writing here, but not as much as I intend to write about living and reading. I turn fifty next year and have the strong feeling I won't live to see my sixties, along with plenty of health issues to add weight to that suspicion. I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about this. I feel scared, but also, in short bursts, excited - excited to see what's next. My brother, Bryan, went on to whatever's next in 2008 and I think a lot about how he now possibly knows that big unknown. 

But thinking about dying also makes me sad.

/ /

I've been reading a lot (really since the summer of 2014 ((which is when my reading log on here began)) but steadily more over the years). This new-to-me-author Vladimir Sorokin is blowing my hair back, man. Already two stories of his and large chunks of one of his novels I read before the collection have stopped me in my tracks. First time in my long life of reading I caught myself with my mouth hanging open while reading a passage from a book. Literally was reading with my jaw dropped for several minutes and didn't realize it until pretty far into the story. If I had it to do over I would have read his collection Red Pyramid first; I actually read his novel Day of the Oprichnik first. Both are good, but that collection would have made me a fan for life. I am anyway, but it would have been cooler that way is all.

/ /

Since I am writing well lately, I will mention something. For the past two months I've been writing fluidly, that is without much strain. I'm logging about a thousand to a fifteen-thousand words a day with ease. And the work's not half bad. Novels are coming faster for me now. My first was a three-year-long grind, and I still don't like to think of the book often because of that. The one published in January came far easier and faster. And now this new one I'm writing is going even smoother than that. I guess the more novels you write, the easier it gets. This is coming from a short story writer, so take it as you will. But the work is flowing nicely enough that I look forward to opening my MacBook after a long day of working as a journalist to pay bills. 

I have no clever way to end this post. So, next time.

A title change for my novel-in-progress, publication Tuesday of my new novel OBLIVION ANGELS

So I started a new novel. I swear, it's like every short story I start now veers too long and then becomes something more than a short story, because I don't think a short story should be thirty pages long. I love horror collections but those stories are way way too long. I truly believe they are novel attempts that faded out around that page count and were reconstructed to fit a short story narrative and then submitted to an anthology.

That's something else I've noticed; a lot of horror writers publish their stories not in journals but in anthologies. It always seems like somebody like Ellen Datlow or Ellen Datlow herself is putting together another anthology. It's surely some quirk of the genre I've just never noticed before now.

But those stories are too long. So once a story I'm writing hits around twenty pages I either stop and read it over a few times and see if I've just got wordy here and there or if it should have been a longer work. If it's the latter, I usually just drag it into the Various folder on my desk top for the time being or possibly forever. With others, I sort of like where it's going and can feel more of it swirling around in my head and fingertips and so keep working on it.

It's become easier for me to admit that I'm officially working on a novel. I had never been a novelist, really, until the publication of The Orchard Is Full of Sound. Before that book, I was solidly a short story writer and a hundred percent content with that. But after Orchard, I started a story that became Oblivion Angels; and now I've started started a story that's become The Old Power (originally titled Sister Hall). I'm at about page twenty-five on The Old Power and so it's only just been born as a novel. 

With this being my six novel (the fifth, Oblivion Angels, comes out Tuesday) I'm now at five novels and four story collections. Once this sixth is published (Lord willing) I'll have two more novels than collections and then there it is.

I'm proud of Oblivion Angels and really eager to see it come out with my publisher, Cowboy Jamboree Press. Adam Van Winkle, the publisher there, has published my last several books and will publish (if he likes them in manuscript) whatever books I write from here on. We have an agreement that CJ will have exclusive rights to all my prose books - fiction, essays, short stories, etc. 

But I also have a collection of stories presently in the works - Until the Going Down of the River. That manuscript is at just over a hundred pages right now, and I just finished another story to include in the draft called "To Open Hills," published by Wilson Koewing at his journal Bottle Rocket. You can read it at the Selected Writing page here at Bent Country.