fiction | fiction
Jan.02.2009
I had a great amount of fun yesterday, putting together a trailer for The Wonderful Demise of Benjamin Arnold Guppy. I have no idea whether or not trailers do ultimately make a huge difference to book sales, but they're so much fun to make (well, this one certainly was) that I'm not sure I really...
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Dec.31.2008
Almost a day after I received an email from the editor of a forthcoming fiction anthology to submit a piece and an email from a prospective agent asking for more information on my writing, I received a rejection that I really had been hoping would have been an acceptance. Despite the two pieces of...
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Dec.30.2008
Periodically I briefly experience the desire to get an MFA. I don't go through it because I think it will make me a better writer--though I'm sure it would--but because I want to teach. There is this bizarre contradition that exists within the writing world that really bothers me because I think it...
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Dec.30.2008
A story of mine was just published in the latest edition (volume six, issue one) of the excellent lit journal Redivider.
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Dec.28.2008
Here are a couple of quotes from my Quote of the Day list:
"The relationship between the fiction writer and the reader is, in some ways, tantamount to a seduction: the writer, via the plot, awakens a desire within the reader, and the longer the desire remains unsatisfied, the more intensely it...
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Dec.26.2008
I’ll admit it. One of the things I love about Facebook is that it gives me the impression of being in contact with so many people from all phases of my life–elementary school classmates, lost friends from high school, college comrades who fought the good fight alongside me or worked at the Kresge...
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Dec.25.2008
My mother's grandfather was in vaudeville. Every Christmas her Pappy perpetuated the Santa ruse with aplomb. My mom was a champion of truth and justice from a young age. Each year she intuited that something was afoot, that Santa's lap was very reminiscent of another she was used to bounce upon,...
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Dec.21.2008
The direct route to writing a novel?
Recently, a reader asked me about “the short stories that had led to writing each of my novels.” The question presumed a set path in developing fiction, a road starting with an embryo short piece that, incubated and nurtured, develops into a book-length work....
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Dec.20.2008
The path to book sales shouldn’t be paved with white smiles and checkerboard slacks. When dealing with a product that has neither life-sustaining value nor infomercial superfluence, sales might best be treated as a byproduct of a well-manicured relationship. One between author and audience, as well...
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Dec.19.2008
The original New York Times review in 1937 put it this way:
"Mr. Hemingway has been for some years an outstanding figure in American literature; he has influenced greatly men a little younger than himself, and they have paid him the tribute of imitation. Whatever he does is of interest...
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