Dysphoria lands on the Goodreads Appalachian Horror list

So I forget how I found it, but my novel Dysphoria is 14th on the Goodreads list for Appalachian Horror.

Now that I'm here and writing about it I realize there's nothing else to say about this news. I'm happy about it. There's that.

I don't know who added it, but likely it was Adam Van Winkle, mastermind of Cowboy Jamboree Press, the press that published it last year.

The Short Story Becomes Essay Becomes the Short Story Again, or I Use Labels a Lot Even Though I Hate Them

So the wheels are moving on The Orchard Is Full of Sound. The call has been sent out by WVU Press for readers, which means the final touches are near. I started working again on short stories the day I sent the last manuscript their way back in November. Wrote quite a few and am still working on one that has stretched to an infuriating 15 pages. But then something else happened.

I must have missed nonfiction because I started writing essays.

And I'm reading the crap out of essay collections and anthologies of great creative nonfiction. I bought a total of 14 books along those lines around Christmas. Turns out I have enough already for most of a collection. So that might be something that happens at some point. Depends on whether or not I can actually write in that form in the way I feel a writer should be able to write. The line is thin that must be walked and still be interesting. A few names as examples:

Eliot Weinberger
Paul Crenshaw
Lydia Davis
Eula Biss
Anne Carson
Joan Didion
David Foster Wallace
Hunter S. Thompson
John Jeremiah Sullivan

There's countless others, but a list of examples needs to end somewhere.

I have been guilty in the past of trying to push myself into a form simply because I want to move around in it, wear it around the store for a couple laps, etc. I'm likely guilty in this case. But I do enjoy the essay, the personal narrative, the lyrical essay, nonfiction. Like short stories, it does have too many names, though. But that's just part of my crusade against labels.

However, work does and will always continue with my true form, the short story. I'm putting together the final touches on the new collection, Sway, due out from Cowboy Jamboree Press this coming spring.

So it's back to the 15 page behemoth I can't seem to wind down.

Pray for me church.

Servant To My Imagination

I'm procrastinating my way in a different direction than this latest story I've been writing for the past week or so. I promise you, this post will have no structure or definite point. I'm here when I should be on that story. I do this sometimes, stop with a story at the exact moment it starts gaining momentum during a writing session. I have no idea why.

It's really humming along this evening. The scenes are spilling out with conversational ease and without many hiccups along the way, characters are developing before my very eyes, there's even the glint of an ending becoming a little brighter up ahead. Of course I should stop. What's wrong with me?

Thing is, I don't actually question my process. If my instincts say move away, that's what I do; if my instincts say push and push and push even though nothing feels like it's sparking, that's what I do. I'm a servant to my imagination. It's only when I lose confidence in this approach that I lose the thread of a story and have to send it limping off to the potter's field. It sincerely is like a dance for me that way, balancing my own movements with the movements of the narrative. It's not magic by any stretch, but it's not mere drudgery either. It's why I can't understand formulaic narrative, why I can't imagine being a writer who would engage in that kind of behavior. 

The story is getting a bit longer than I usually write, though. And I'm trying to not get caught up thinking about this. I'm trying to block out that thought altogether, in fact. I hate that I still, after writing for 30 years, concern myself with page count. I only do that with short stories, never with novels. When I'm writing a novel I already know that it's coming in under 200 to 225 pages. I don't sweat that. But with a short story, a form I focus more fully on and with more energy and, frankly, hold in much higher regard, I get that old nagging feeling once I vault past about page 10. It is what it is.

And here I'm starting to feel a nudge to head back to the manuscript. Like I said, I knew this post wasn't going to come out nicely formed and neat. I knew I'd have to go when my gut said go. Nothing personal, dear friends. And thanks for listening.

my (small press) writing day: Sheldon Lee Compton : Repose In a Tattered Recline...

my (small press) writing day: Sheldon Lee Compton : Repose In a Tattered Recline...: Briefly, How I Got Here In the First Place When I started writing, back in 1987, I used my grandmother’s Singer sewing machine as ...

FISSURES in the mail and an upcoming interview with the author, Timothy Dodd

Checked the mail a few days ago and was pleased to find a signed and personalized copy of Timothy Dodd's short story collection Fissures.

This book of Tim's was just released from Bottom Dog Press, the same publisher of my first novel Brown Bottle.

I'll be reading this while continuing my interview with Tim. We've been talking back and forth for a couple weeks now and I'll be publishing that interview here at Bent Country and a couple other places - likely PLUMB and Enclave. In any case, I'll post the links here when it goes live.

In the meantime, go HERE and order Fissures.

Alban Fischer included my story in the new issue of Trnsfr's Sip Cup

I've been a huge fan of Alban Fischer for years now. He is both a talented writer and an amazing graphic design artist. Check out some of his book covers at his link up there. 

I recently trolled around and came across Trnsfr Books, in particular the feature there called Sip Cup. Admittedly I didn't really look closely when I submitted a story to them a short while back. I had no idea who the editors were. I found out soon after that Alban was involved with them, so I was happy as all hell that he liked my short story "This Story Isn't About That Stone" for this most recent issue of Sip Cup.

HERE is the issue with my story, and thanks in advance for giving it a read. Also, read the other works included. It's all golden. And Alban is doing some creative stuff with this, and, not surprisingly, some beautiful stuff, too.

I can't do graphic design but I can use Canva and make myself feel like I can. So here's a cover.

So I'm writing a horror/detective novel called The Omega Problem. The main character is a small town journalist turned investigator named Bishop Ford. He's tracking a serial killer who may be more than anyone bargains for in the end. Here's a mock up cover I did with Canva this evening. You know, for fun.