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.

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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.

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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.

The Opening Section of My New Novel-in-Progress SISTER HALL

Below is a link to the opening section of my new novel-in-progress, Sister Hall. I posted on Twitter about the novel, too.

I'll also post this on Poverty House later today. It's a short section, but it is the opening of the novel.

Here it is at Poverty House.

My short story "I Am War, Mr. Tolstoy" published today

My short story "I Am War, Mr. Tolstoy" was published today on my author's page at Cowboy Jamboree Press. 

I pull from some personal shit on this one more than I usually do with my stories (which is generally a pretty fair amount to begin with). It's subject matter I've not been brave enough to share until the past, maybe, two years. 

Also, I insert some Leo Tolstoy into this one, obvious by the title for starters. Tolstoy is my favorite stylist - not my favorite storyteller - but goddamn his style is impossible. Listen, for real, go read him. Not one of the novels, though Anna Karenina is a fine one if you can push through to the last two pages, where all the patience and pushing through gets a right fine pay off.

But start with the short stories. Start with "Alyosha the Pot" if you're just getting into him. Then move next to his short novel Master and Man. Just read Tolstoy is what I'm saying. He style is simple enough to be read in grade school. Thing is, you may not appreciate its themes and profundity until much later in life. But ain't that at least the start of a great relationship.

Hope you like the story. And I guess it's okay if you want to leave a comment here and tell me it was good or that it was so bad it nearly blinded you with horror while reading. Don't care. Just say something. 

David and Tom, Chaos and Hobart.

Went and got behind on sharing my Hobart Chaos Questions interviews here, so I'm going to post links to the last two here now.

I talked with David Joy a ways back there. He said things like, "I go back to eleven years old fishing the cattle pond on the Johnston’s farm. My Granny can be my Al." And chided me for calling what people wear outfits. 

David's Interview

And just yesterday I posted my interview with Tom Williams. Tom said things like, "I am going to eat the editorial offices of literary magazines and book publishers that have rejected me and my friends..."

Tom's Interview

Next up is Bonnie Jo Campbell. We wrote yesterday and she let me know that she'll have them my way at some point this week. Can't wait to see what this black belt storyteller offers up.

I Asked Leah Hampton Some Chaos Questions

Leah Hampton, the chimera herself, "sat down" for a Chaos Questions interview with me at Hobart. She is also the self-espoused Hobo Hampton, it turns out.

Productivity

The reason I've written and had published nine books in twelve years is because I write for recreation, for fun. It's what I do instead of going to the movies or having dinner out, or so forth. I don't mean it's my hobby; I'm saying it's the most fun thing I do, so I do it a lot.