All of the things. ‘Gutted: Beautiful Horror‘ hit #1 in Hot New Releases and #2 in Horror Anthologies on its first day of pre-sale. Tomorrow night I guest on a Noir on the Air episode of ‘Dames in the Dark‘ at 9pm. We’ve got the stories selected for the Summer edition of Menacing Hedge, and go boldly into reading for Fall. Pantheon Magazine’s ‘Hestia’ issue My son has one more week of baseball. My nephew is nearly here. There’s only one more episode of ‘Game of Thrones.’
‘Daddy’s Dyin’ Who’s Got the Will?’ at the Portsmouth Little Theatre wrapped up in a sea of love, tears and Fireball. My husband got a motorcycle. We just got back from vacation, where I met Chewbacca – who is just as sweet in person as he is in the movies! Also, not to jinx her because the day is not done (and on this, the longest day of the year, I may be tempting fate), my favorite little red hen Lauren (Bacall) has successfully navigated back and forth to the neighbors’ hen house without an automobile collision.
Howl at the moon, my lovelies. Throw away your shoes. Jump in deep, dark water. Summer is upon us!
More articulate post later, it’s early in the day and plates are spinning (as Jaime -er, Craig Wallwork- would say). Here is a pictorial illustration of some of What I’ve Been Up To.
Noir at the Bar, St. Louis in April with Jon Ashley , Scott Phillips, Jed Ayres, Greg Barth, Tim L. Williams & Joe Schwartz (look at me, bein’ the Only Girl – REPRESENT!)
“Gutted: Beautiful Horror” from Crytal Lake Publishing drops June 24th!!
‘Daddy’s Dyin, Who’s Got the Will?’ opens at The Portsmouth Little Theatre on Friday May 20th. Go to www.pltlive.com for tickets!
From an email to a friend, and honestly how I feel about This Thing We Do…
“But what if no one ever recognizes your efforts? That’s a distinct possibility. It doesn’t make the things you do of less value, or the work you’ve done in vain. Fame and appreciation are just matters of timing and luck with sometimes-talent added, based on whatever the pop culture climate is into at the moment. Picasso was appreciated in his lifetime and Van Gogh was not. But that doesn’t make Van Gogh’s work less amazing. And there are thousands of Picassos and Van Goghs that we’ve never heard of, and just because their paintings only hang in someone’s house or the canvases are stacked in a closet somewhere, that doesn’t mean the work wasn’t worth making, or breaking themselves into pieces for. Because it’s still worth it, because we can’t help it. That’s all there is to us, making things. You’ll itch under your skin if you don’t write stories, and you’ll just take up cooking or buy a bedazzler and put sequins on things. And in a few years you’ll catch yourself with a notebook of half-scribbled stories. Because it’s just what you are. You make things. You have to shrug and accept it. Even if you give up the marketing side, and submitting side, and just do it because it’s what you do. That second part – the whore part – is really unimportant in the actual scheme of making things.
So there’s your lesson for the day. You don’t ever have to submit shit if you don’t want to, ever again. Buy a fireproof trunk and seal all your work, finished and printed and also on various types of hard drives, in the trunk. Let someone else sort it out later. Focus on making it. Or take a break and make things when you damned well feel like it. Compulsion can also be euphoria.”
It’s cool, though. I’ve been selling jewelry and being Mom, and as the leaves get crinkly and the toads disappear I’ll slide back into my writer-bubble and my skin will feel settled again….
Speaking of!!
The last week I’ve had a good run.
Firstly, Kevin Catalano did an article for Entropy Magazine about 25 Badass Female Short Story Writers, and BOOM! I was in there. Click the link to the article for sure, because all these females kick some short story ass and there are links galore to their stories for proof of their prowess, including to my story “Teetotaler.”
And then today I sorta accidentally found out my story “The Line Forms on the Right” from the Burnt Tongues anthology (edited by Chuck Palahniuk, Richard Rhomas and Dennis Widmyer, Medallion Press) was Long-Listed for the Best Horror of the Year, Volume 7, edited by Ellen Datlow. Not only were some of my bestest and most favorite writing peeps on the list, but also the likes of Caitlin Kiernan and Etgar Kerat! I fully realize there are a lot of names on there (it’s called a ‘long list’) but that’s just more good company to be in. Check this out:
And of course get the ACTUAL REAL VOLUME SEVEN, it’s obviously amazing. As is Burnt Tongues, which had SEVEN stories on the long list!! The link for BT is in the Links tab above.
I’m a happy girl!!
More news to come, but we’ll talk about that in October. For now, I’ll leave you with a little Bobby Darin – the song that inspired my story in Burnt Tongues, and one of my favorites of all time.
There are two main reasons I like the Wellston library:
1. The Summer Reading Program – below is my kid, today, leaving the Pool Party with his sack of goodies – they gave them PRIZES. And a PARTY. Just for reading books and attending programs to see Mr. Molecule, The Turtle Lady, animals from The Columbus Zoo… Oh yeah, it was a real chore, let me tell ya. So first off, if you’ve got a kid in grades K-5, take them to the Summer Reading Program next summer. You want them to grow up thinking books and learning are cool, right? Because they ARE, right?
2. Sneaky Book Placement – I snapped the photo below while my son was watching magic tricks. DO YOU SEE THAT? That’s Victor Hugo, discreetly above Stephanie Meier (Meyer? Am I supposed to pretend to care?) in the Teen Paperback section. George Orwell was there, too. It was genius. One sneeze, and a lost tween could accidentally grab something worthwhile! These librarians impress me….
Alright, so let’s get to the point, to the scary part.
Karen Davis, whom I suspect may be the head honcho, asked if I’d like to do an event/reading at this here library. She “discovered” me AKA decided to be kind to me when I was embarassedly (I know that’s probably not a word) and rapidly emailing friends to look at their copies of Radium Girls to find the ISBN so someone could request the book be carried. I received an email from her not long after. I was both shocked and flattered. And terrified. So I was three things, not both things…
Anyway. I’ve never been in front of an audience for anything like this for longer than ten minutes. Always part of a group, part of a larger event. Always with the advantage of tossing back a couple drinks first. And I don’t even drink! It’s just, you know, exposing that little bit of your soul to people that makes a little alcohol helpful before sliding onto stage…
Karen, I promise not to drink before this event!
It’ll last about an hour. I’ll probably read a story, and talk about writers in the area, and storytelling in general -because face it, Appalachians are natural storytellers. We’ve all got stories. We’ve all got history. I just happen to write stuff down. There will be cookies, prizes for Q&A and discussion participants, three paperback copies of Radium Girls as door prizes just for showing up, and books to buy if anyone is so inclined.
I’m really excited about this, so come hang out for an hour.
Gayle Towell started this thing, and basically it’s about squeezing out the excess, and leaving only the essential behind. Micro-fiction as it should be. Not just about “short,” about “important bones.” This is only her third week open to outsider stories, and she’s going five a week.
So far she’s gotten work by Stephen Graham Jones, Suzy Vitello, Caleb J. Ross, Michael DeVito Jr, and whoever the amazing Angela Maracle is (her piece is ‘Romania 1989’), and on and on. I’m not even linking the issue I’m in, I’m just linking the main site page, because I really don’t think you can go wrong here.
About once a month my brain goes psychotic and begins punching itself in an effort to make me into what one small, strange, part of my unconscious thinks I should be.
Namely, the housewife in all the ads from the 1950s and 1960s. Or as an even better example, one that makes a lot more sense to me: Franka Potente after her lobotomy in American Horror Story: Asylum.
i look around at my house, I see there is dust, and there are toys, and I have an organizational system based on the same schizophrenic filing system I use to organize my Brain-Stuff. There is no rhyme or reason to the way things hang on the walls. I’ve woven Halloween decorations into everything. The bathroom has no color scheme at all. The kitchen table is covered with gloves, puzzle pieces, magazines and a jar of assorted aquarium marbles, with a few crayons thrown in for good measure.
So here’s the confession:
I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to being a Housewife, Decorator and Housekeeper. I think there must be some sort of system involved, some system where I sort of stand in curlers and chainsmoke until I’ve identified the next step to Domestic Neatness and Shiny Household Bliss.
And here’s the second confession:
Deep in my heart of hearts, I don’t care. There are always clean clothes, and clean dishes, and the play and eating surfaces are sanitary, it’s safe to put your face on the floor, the bedclothes are always clean even if the beds go unmade. I make supper most nights, i pack lunches for my husband and kid. The largest part of me realizes that it’s awesome that I’ve got this stuff covered.
SO WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY BRAIN?? How do I shut off the dumb part that’s kicking me for not having everything all shiny and pretty for…whom?? Would anyone I care about judge me for the Lego house on the floor or the unmade beds or the lack of…doilies? No. I’m going to write instead of dust on a free afternoon. I’m going to play dominoes with my kid instead of organizing the magazines and mail. I’m going to watch Sherlock instead of painting the bathroom. And if my son asks me to hang a picture up on a certain place on the wall, or to leave his Christmas tree up all year round, I will.
Help me make peace with this! It’s January, winter doldrums anyway, and I’m judging myself pretty harshly for not keeping our household in a more conventional manner. To help me get past this, I’m exposing myself. I’m exposing what things look like, how “unclean” I am. Because seriously, I need to get past this.
The rectangle of fluorescent above me is the exact opposite of my garden, and my garden is the exact opposite of a grave – which logically means fluorescent lights are perfect facsimiles of graves. “I met a boy. I might be in love.”
A couple weeks ago, the lovely ladies of Books and Booze had me on for an interview – coffee and Nyquil were consumed. Llamas and novels were discussed. Check it out here!
So close now I can almost smell the pages…and they smell of fresh peonies, and rose water, and shoeboxes of old photographs and crumbling newspaper clippings, and stale cigarette smoke, and mothballs, and lavender sachets, and spearmint gum, and the gold tube of lipstick rolled all the way to the back of a drawer you were sure was empty – when you twist it it’s bright red and only half used up….
adam: once up on a time, there was a LIZARD! that was half a lizard and half a PERSON! and when you petted him on his head he went to all lizard, THREE lizards, then when you stopped he popped back up as a BOY! well the next day he did. and this was all by the desert. THEN – in seven years, he turned into a BAT! with sparkles! do you know what color the sparkles were? do you? silver! and he had a BIG nose, big as his face, big as my sock puppet’s nose but bigger – big as three bats! big as this (spreads arms). well, really as tall as the ceiling.
me: did you just fart on my lap?
adam: i was telling you something. he farted a lot. that’s part of the story…..
a few years ago i joined a workshop. i was getting long in the tooth and decided it was about time people KNEW i wrote stories all the time, as opposed to just scribbling them down then hiding them in notebooks, folders, envelopes, folding them up and shoving them in books as markers, and what have you. maybe at some point i wanted actual humans to see them. so, other people working to become better writers seemed a good place to start.
fast forward a few years, and it’s very difficult for me to keep ANY of my fiction to myself. and one of those stories – “The Line Forms on the Right” – that i oh-so-fearfully handed over to be judged, praised and shredded in the writing workshop ends up here:
Miss Ohio 