Among other things, I am a poet. But I'm feeling insecure about that. Also, I'll have an interview going up soon at a poetry website.

So a writer I have been aware of in my periphery for over a decade wrote a hate piece about me a couple years ago. Or a year ago. Doesn't matter. Still hurts, but it doesn't matter for the purpose of this update.

Shockingly, the hate piece has nothing to do with what I've come to call The Great 2015 Online Attempted Social Murder of Sheldon Lee Compton. Well, it's possible it does tangentially have something to do with it. Sideways relating to. Tangential, that favorite catch word from a few workshop semesters ago.

There's a reason for going into all this. So yeah, I guess is matters for the purposes of this update. I was freely given unsolicited advice to not engage in social media in a way that, well, I tend to engage with most people when I'm wrongly challenged or accused or understood.

Crux: This hate piece by this writer I don't really know but know of that included two other writers (one of whom is incredibly, incredibly famous) who I won't name in a journal I won't name stated that I was a joke as a poet. Not in those words; in funnier words.

Today, I'm told, an interview with me will be published at poetry mini interviews by curator Thomas Whyte. I know I did the interview I just don't know if it will for sure go up today. Point is, I'm feeling insecure because of the aforementioned hate piece, which I do mention in the interview. I hate that I feel that way, that I'm allowing this peripheral writer who I would love to name but won't have that effect on me, but it's what it's.

I'll update with a link when the interview is published.

A Painful Trip to the 80s: "Night Tracks" published in Atticus Review

photo courtesy of Atticus Review

I'm so happy to say that my piece "Night Tracks" was published this past week at Atticus Review. I've always enjoyed AR's content, and it's good to be a part of it again.

I'm grateful to Michelle Ross for liking this enough to publish it. It's set in the 1980s and includes references to the song "Mickey" and the arcade game Ms. Pac Man. And, of course, Night Tracks, the 12-hour long marathon of music videos popular on TBS during that time.

I love the 80s. But as this piece hopefully shows, the 80s didn't always love me.

Here's the link to go read. And thank you.

Cowboy Jamboree Press is now the exclusive home for all my published work. Good god that's a beautiful sentence to write.

Here's the thing.

Sometime a few years back I was scrolling through the list of journals at Entropy's incredibly helpful "Where to Submit" feature and came across Cowboy Jamboree Magazine. The name was bold, fearless, and I knew right away I wanted to submit something to them. I did and editor Adam Van Winkle accepted the story.

It was the beginning of a fantastic friendship. And now I have news that would give any author goosebumps....As of today, every piece of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and all the rest I might write and they might see fit to print will be exclusively published by Cowboy Jamboree Press.

People, how I can explain what a great feeling this is? I'm rarely at a loss for words, but it's nearly happening. My work will appear in book form exclusively from a press that has supported and loved my writing as much as one could ever hope for a press to do so. As a kind of bonus, when, for example, a short story collection of mine comes at from CJ, those stories will be appearing for the first time ever, not reprinted from one of the journals it appeared it before. That is especially interesting to me. I've never had that kind of reading experience with my work. In fact, I've never had a short story appear in a collection (this over the course of three story collections) that did not first appear in a journal. Novels, poetry collections, essay collections - all of which I have on the burners as we speak, will also appear exclusively with CJ Press, which is to say no a single excerpt will be published anywhere else. Other than, perhaps, Cowboy Jamboree Magazine.

It's a whirlwind fever dream for me at this point. The most exciting thing that's happened to me since I started writing 33 years ago. It even surpasses the publication of my first book, and I didn't think that would every happen.

I do have one book, The Orchard Is Full of Sound, that will appear later from WVU Press, but that was accepted and contracted prior to this new agreement with CJP. Also, there will be two pieces coming out in Atticus Review and Cobalt Review, respectively, that were also accepted and scheduled for publication before Adam and I discussed the exclusive stuff.

Now, for the bonus-bonus: I no longer have to spend countless hours upon hours, days upon days, filing and organizing and writing cover letters for submissions to other journals and presses. Those who write professionally will truly understand how important this is. It means all those hours and all those days and weeks and months will now be freed up for writing. Since 2012 I've had seven books published and more than 200 short stories, poems, columns, and essays. And each one of those required submission-related tasks. Those tasks are a thing of the past for me.

Good lordamercy, Adam. How can I ever thank you enough, my great friend? I'll say so now, thank you so much, but I'll also thank you by providing the absolute best work I can create for CJ Press. I'll work harder than before to polish my work. I'll write more and produce more and all of it will be the most focused work I've ever completed.

There's just not enough thank yous to express it. It truly is exceptional.

New essays soon to come from Atticus Review and Cobalt Review

Some writing news...

It just occurred to me that I pretty much only share writing-related stuff here. Well, trust me, about eighty percent of my energy day to day is spent on writing. Thinking about writing, actually writing, reading others, making notes about stories, reviewing books, buying books, adding books to my respective wish lists, including my local library. Seriously, I don't see how anyone who takes writing seriously has much time for anything else. That's just my opinion.

That said, some writing news...

I'm excited to say that I'll have two more essays published soon. Coming up in Atticus Review will be a piece rooted firmly in the 1980s called "Night Tracks," which will be the title essay for a collection I'm now working on. Soon after that, I'll have an essay called "I Saw Absolutely Nothing When I Died, but Carl Jung Did" at Cobalt Review.

Here and now I want to thank editors Michelle Ross and Andrew Keating with Atticus Review and Cobalt Review, respectively. It still thrills me when good people see something they like in my work and share it with others. It's always been payment enough, and for that I suppose I'm lucky.

Look for posts here about these upcoming publications soon.

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.