Half & Half

During the Spanish Flu Epidemic in Eureka, Utah a woman lost five of her six children and her husband. She would no sooner return home from the cemetery only to find that another child had died. This happened to her and no one remembers her name.

—

There is still no explanation as to how cattle are being found drained of all blood and with organs removed with surgical precision but with no signs of hemorrhage and no trace of blood on the ground around them or anywhere on their bodies. The first written account of this kind of event was in 1606.

—

For the past four or five months I've felt like I have one foot in this world and one foot in the next. I somehow survived a massive heart attack five years ago and still can't quit smoking and am only gaining weight due to lack of exercise and terrible eating habits. These facts add up to another fact: At forty-two the chances of seeing my fifties are not at all good. I've been trying to live with this knowledge while being unable to change my life to avoid it. It is what it is.

—

The late, great Thom Jones said: “You know, they call it earth, but actually it’s hell. Even a good day is so full of horrors it’s almost unbearable. When I open my eyes, there’s a chasm of despair waiting for me.”

SLC

Nobody writes better than William T. Vollmann - as good as, maybe, but not better.

Reading several books right now and all of them good. Easily the most skillfully written is The Atlas by William T. Vollmann. Here are two quotes.

"Catacomb, honeycomb of the slow bees of souls, the slow crowd in the halls, where do you keep my little sister? Not in Saint Cecilia’s tomb, where the marble corpse lies on her side, offering three fingers in remembrance of the Trinity. You won’t find her there. Tell me, catacomb, and I’ll leave fresh flowers in the webbed niche around your daylight."

And this.

"But she would not trust me anymore, and so once again, sister, you’d had your revenge as easily and purely as an antler of sunlight slitting a woman’s throat on a passing bus."

Help me help Donald Ray Pollock, please

I'm helping Don Pollock, author of Devil All the Time, with an accent-related project the studio producing the film and the director filming the movie version of the novel has asked him to work with on. Yep, you fans, after seven years setting on it, they are finally making this movie. So I'm looking for West Virginia residents.

I know a couple people who would be interested but since Don don't traffic on Twitter I thought I'd put out a call here. So here's the deal: I would send you two items - A PDF of a story piece called "Arthur the Rat" that you would read and record in whatever way you'd like.

The second part is a questionnaire that I would send to you as a Word Doc. You would record yourself reading the questions and answers. Get both those recordings back to me and Don and you'll be richly rewarded with the gratitude of one of the best writers living today.

So if you're a resident or know a resident of West Virginia and are interested at all, please write me back and we can further connect to get started. I'm hoping to have five totaI recordings back to Don within a week.

Tolstoy's most recent bit of goodness

"'Yes, but then how often the happiness of these prudent marriages flies away like dust just because that passion turns up that they have refused to recognize," said Vronsky. “But by marriages of prudence we mean those in which both parties have sown their wild oats already. That’s like scarlatina — one has to go through it and get it over.”

“Then they ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox.”

- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina 

My Story "The Last Friend in Red Knife" today @ COG

I had a story submitted around for the past three months or so called "The Last Friend in Red Knife" that was roundly rejected by all the journals I hold in any kind of regard. That's always a sad string of events for a writer, of course, but it's nothing compared to the elation felt when the exactly perfect journal accepted that same story.

In today's new issue of COG, the literary journal of Cogswell College in San Jose, California, my long-traveled story "The Last Friend in Red Knife" appears alongside a host of amazing writers and work. Those I'm happy to share space with include:

Maddy Raskulinecz. Hugh Minh Nguyen. Cassandra Dallet. Glen Armstrong. Marni Berger. Robert Wexelblatt. April Sinclair. Casey Killingsworth. Holly Day. Jed Myers. Judith Cody. Gene Goldfarb. Emily Zasada. Travis Tyler. Ron Austin. duncan b. barlow. M.A. Vizsolyi. Charles Rafferty. Roger Camp. Zahara.

And before I move on to the links to read this packed issue, let me say that the directing editor of COG, Soma Mei-Sheng Frazier, was amazing. She reminded me again how an editor is meant to work with writers, guiding, suggesting, closely reading each piece. She is an example for all those putting literature out into the world.

The new issue is out today. Visit and have a look at the newness. I honestly hope you'll take a little time and read through the issue. These folks are doing good work.

READ COG ISSUE 12

READ MY STORY "THE LAST FRIEND IN RED KNIFE"

I Bought Hillbilly Elegy for $3.99 and I'm Going By God Going to Read It

Here's a confession: I've not read Hillbilly Elegy. But, to be fair, I've only been critical of it a few times publicly.

That will very likely change and I will spout many venomous phrases and ideas in good time. I bought the book today. So far I've only read the first sentence: "My name is J.D. Vance." I'm already mad. I'm not sure why, but I honestly am.

I know I'm going to agree with my many legitimate hillbilly friends who scorn this book. For one, you should never try to write about the hard life from a Buckeye point of view unless your name is Donald Ray Pollock. I know there's exceptions to that rule, but I've not met them yet that I know of (Chris Holbrook's collection Hell and Ohio is what's on my mind when I say that). It's been years since I read Chris's fine collection, so I can't say for sure what role Ohio plays in it. Being honest here.

So this memoir by Vance. Let's see what the deal is so I can talk about it like a good and real and informed hillbilly.

The Heart Is an Organ on Fire and Other News

Since September a lot of good things have happened for me on the literary front.

I've been publishing short stories and poems in indie lit journals and books for small presses for parts of the last nine years. Parts because a great number of those years were not exactly productive. I drank away a lot of them, wrote nothing, read less. In short, I traded life as a writer for life as an alcoholic and drug addict.

When it was over (See also: hit rock bottom as a drunk and started taking responsibility for my actions as best as I could) all I wanted to do was read. The writing followed after about six months of that, and I started sending stories, reviews, and columns out into the world again. As what I considered my personal projects, I also started to write books again, with no hope anyone would ever read them except me.

Steadily I found my way back into the community with various publications over the course of about a year and a half. Editors and journals that shared my work during that time will always hold special places in my heart and mind. They gave me back a life I thought was mostly over.

Now, with three years of sobriety and my compulsion to write returned, here's the developments.

Of course this began with my prior announcement that I am now under contract with West Virginia University Press to write a book about Breece D'J Pancake and being Appalachian. I'm about half way through a rough draft on this work, which I can only refer to as a biography/memoir, though I'm trying to not toy much with labels. I'm letting this book feel its way around, breathe. I'm still in a general state of shock that I've been given the chance to write a book on Pancake. Derek Krissoff, Director at WVU Press, is going to work with me to make what I hope will be a book all of us can be proud of across Appalachia. That's my hope at least.

Some weeks later, my short story "Remodeling" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by one of my favorite journals, Cowboy Jamboree, and its editor Adam Van Winkle. It never fails to lift my authorial spirits when my peers give me this kind of recognition. If we can continue lifting each other up like this, the independent literary community will only ever need one another. Not very much longer after this nomination, Adam wrote to tell me of his plans to start Cowboy Jamboree Press, adding he wanted to see a manuscript from me, if I had anything. I sent a draft of a novel I'd been holding onto for a good while called Dysphoria. He liked what he saw and now it's another book project and my head's spinning and this about when the surreal started to set in. Read "Remodeling" in the current issue of CJ here.

In the same week, my story "South of Cincinnati" was published at my other favorite journal, BULL: Men's Fiction. Editor Ben Drevlow has always been great to me, so much so at times that his support and that of Adam's have been the only reason I've continued to submit work. I count them both, along with Sheryl Monks, editor at Change Seven Magazine, Mike Lafontaine editor at Vending Machine Press, Rusty Barnes at Fried Chicken and Coffee, and Christopher James, editor at Jellyfish Review, as true friends. Read "South of Cincinnati" here.

And just this past week Mike published another story of mine at Vending Machine Press called "The Heart Is an Organ on Fire" the title for which I directly lifted from a poem by the god-like Michael Ondaatje. In this story I've continued to work toward an occasional blending of the place I'm from, here in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky, and a sense of the fantastic in many forms. In a lot of ways, I've never left behind my childhood days reading Stephen King novels and short stories. Should you be inclined, read the story here.