Wednesday
20Aug
Guest Post: Ron Tanner on Dzanc Books Best of the Web
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 07:51AM 
Dzanc Books recently released the 2008 edition of its new Best of the Web anthology series, an anthology that collects some of the very best, fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction that appeared on the internet last year. Today, a number of blogs are hosting guest posts by the contributors of this anthology. The following post was written by Ron Tanner, who has published stories in such magazines as The Iowa Review, the
Massachusetts Review, the Literary Review, Story Quarterly, and dozens
of others. His work has been anthologized in Best of the West, the
Pushcart Prizes, and Twenty Under Thirty: Early Work of America's
Influential Writers. Awards for his short fiction include a James
Michener Fellowship from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, first prize in the
New Letters national fiction competition, gold medal in the Pirate's Alley
Faulkner Society national competition for short fiction, and many others.
His first collection of short stories, A Bed of Nails, won the first-annual
G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize, sponsored by BkMk Press at he University of
Missouri-Kansas City.
Here's what Ron had to say about his appearance in Best of the Web 2008:
I appear in Best of the Web, Dzanc books’ new anthology of best writing from the web. My story is called “My Small Murders.” In fact this was the first story that I web-published. All my other stuff has been published in conventional magazines. I avoided web publishing only because I didn’t know where to start. I sent in “My Small Murders” after David Wolach at Wheelhouse magazine asked me to send something. So now I’ve started and I feel good about that.
Web publishing has become a big deal and it’s becoming bigger by the day. I can hardly keep up with the increasing number of online magazines, not to mention great blogging sites like this one. I myself am running five websites – one for my writing, one on Myspace, another on Facebook, one for my band, and one about my old house. I have a blog too. I’ve heard that now there’s a service for those of us who can’t keep up with our websites – you pay someone to manage traffic on your sites. That seems to defeat the purpose of putting the web-maker in contact with the public. But, then, I wouldn’t mind somebody doing my laundry too. And ironing.
“My Small Murders” is about an infestation of mice in a young couple’s apartment. It’s mostly a true story, about the demise of my first marriage and the mice that ran amok in our apartment just before that happened. Occasionally a mouse shows up in the old house I now share with my third wife. (Yeah, funny how those numbers multiply.) Mice don’t last in this house, however, because we have cats. They always find the mice before we do. Mice KNOW when a house has cats and so they will go elsewhere. Mice have choices, that’s what I’m saying. People in small mouse-infested apartments have choices too. That’s what my story’s about.
The web is about choices too. Sure, there are a lot of choices here. Some say too many. But that’s the way I like it. I live in a city – Baltimore – because I want to be immersed in choices, like having a 24-hour supermarket down the street. It doesn’t matter that I never go there at, say, four in the morning. I like to know I can. Good for you for reading this far in a too-busy world. Let me express my thanks. Go to this link at my website, take a look at the cool, one-of-a-kind, writer’s greeting card I’ve invented. Tell me which one you like. I’ll send it to you via conventional mail. Honest.
Sunday
17Aug
August Issue of Elimae Now Live
Sunday, August 17, 2008 at 03:56PM The August issue of elimae is now live, including new and excellent stories by Kim Chinquee, Bob Thurber, Jennifer Pieroni, Jimmy Chen, Meg Pokrass, Nathan Leslie, Jo Horsman, and lots of others, as well as poetry which I'll assume is also good but which I'm generally unqualified to say a word about. That said, elimae is one of the only places that I generally enjoy the poetry, so I'll just tentatively suggest A.R. Buchinger's "Benedict," which reminds me of back when I was a little more invincible feeling than I am now. It looks to be another great issue, and I can't wait to read more.
Sunday
17Aug
Alexandra Chasin's Kissed By
Sunday, August 17, 2008 at 01:27PM 
I finished reading Alexandra Chasin's experimental fiction collection Kissed By a day or two ago, and it's been in my thoughts quite a bit since. It's a very inventive, interesting collection, and a challenge to read in all the best ways. A lot of the stories are initially hard to get into, but given time teach you how to read them and how to understand what they're doing. Luckily, Chasin's writing is excellent at a pure sentence level, offering plenty of time to settle into each story. Ryan Call recently reviewed the book for The Quarterly Conversation, and goes into way more depth than I'm capable of, so I'll point you over there for more information about this intriguing collection.
Here's a short excerpt, from Chasin's "all kinds of people on the Q train":
rattling horizontal in the subway car, one gazes one dozes another drifts off, but the junkie always nods. nods on the subway nods in the waiting room nods at the wheel of the car, and nods at home with the television up too loud to think while a child pulls at her sleeve, mommy wake up, i'm hungry. but it's always a waiting room wherever she is, and she's always nodding. off.And I'll leave you with Ryan Call's final thoughts from his review:
we rattling along we know the nods. it's not a nap.
the camel coat on my right elbows the high heels to his right silently to say, look at the child. the child breathes on the window blacked by the racing headlong flashlight tunnel walls and draws an O in the greasy condensation of her breath.
some like it nap some like it nod. the child turns to her mother slumping like some cilium in a lung, turns away, and says to the graffiti above her head, let's pretend we're in a spaceship.
As an experimental work of literature, Kissed By is one of many such books that should inspire in its readers a desire to seek out a more active role in the creative process. Those hesitant to approach such experimental writing should know that Chasin has made room for them in her work. They should take encouragement from Chasin’s thoughts about the relationship between the reader, the text, and its author—these thoughts, which do not strike me as particularly experimental or innovative, suggest that she writes with a sharp awareness of her reader, an awareness that protects her work from the coldness of heart often attributed to failed experimental writing. And the more adventurous readers, who have come to this review expecting an affirmation of their thoughts, already know that there exist numerous opportunities in a book like this for the reader to learn the language of want. What these readers will find, then, is this: Chasin, its author, is a gifted tutor.
Saturday
16Aug
Books Received: The Elfish Gene
Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 09:37PM 
I came home yesterday to a review copy of Mark Barrowcliffe's The Elfish Gene, an upcoming memoir about growing up playing Dungeons & Dragons in 1970s England. I read the first thirty pages or so over breakfast this morning, and so far its been pretty funny, and certainly there's been some recognition of my own younger, nerdier self (at least I like to pretend that I am now less nerdy). For instance, I can remember smuggling D&D rulebooks to school when I was in the fifth grade or so, before I really knew what they were. They were my dad's rulebooks from his own days playing in college, but despite my lack of full understanding I know that I had found something that I was really going to like.
In any case, a short excerpt from the book:
A month after the rules had arrived, I was someone else. Some people come to their addictions slowly, I fell for D&D at my first hit.
Within a day of the white box dropping through my door Porter had borrowed the books to design a dungeon and we were off – gaming as much as we could, lost in a world of barrow wights, vampires, manticoras and gargoyles, rings of X-ray vision, girdles of giant strength and mirrors of life-trapping. I couldn’t get enough of this stuff and ached for the half-term when we would be able to game all day, every day, despite the fact that my characters were regularly killed – by monsters or by the treachery of other players.
There’s nothing in the rules of D&D to prevent player-on-player attack – my magic-user can freeze your fighter solid if he chooses – they only advise against it. Accordingly, my characters were often slaughtered by the fourthyears as an outlet for their irritation with me. I told myself that it was just a matter of learning the game, that I’d work out how to come out of a dungeon alive eventually. In fact, it was a matter of learning about life, but I couldn’t see that at the time.
My only concern so far is that the book does seem to suggest that being the kind of kid that played D&D was a irrevocably bad thing, so much so that the author's occasional loathing for how he used to be gets transferred to everyone else who ever played. I'm not sure that's fair, but hopefully it's not really that cut and dry.
The Elfish Gene comes out November 1 from Soho Press.
Saturday
16Aug
Chad Simpson's "Let X"
Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 05:15PM 
It's been a while since I've had the pleasure of reading something new of Chad Simpson's, so I was pretty excited to see that he has a new story up at Esquire as part of their Napkin Fiction project. Titled "Let X," the story is your basic boy meets girl premise written with a mathematical mind and filled with sweet regret. Here's the beginning:
Let X equal the moment just after he tells her he’s starting a club for people who know something about computers.
It is summer, 1984, and this is their grade school playground. She is idling on a swing over a patch of scuffed earth. He stands just off to the side, one hand on the chain of the swing next to her.
Let y equal her laughter. Her laughter sounds like a prank phone call at three a.m. It sounds a little evil.
She throws her head back, and even though he is hearing the y of her laughter in the wake of that moment x, he can’t stop staring at her hair. He can’t believe how black, how shiny, how perfect it is.
She stands up out of the swing and asks, “What do you know about computers?”
It is 1984. Nobody at this elementary school—or in Monmouth, Illinois, in general—knows all that much about computers.
Click here to read the rest of the story, which appears both visually as written by Chad on his napkin and in an easier to read text form. Definitely check this one out.
Wednesday
13Aug
Sage Advice Can Sometimes Be Found in Books
Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 05:49PM I just got my used textbook for my fiction techniques class and thumbed through it to see how damaged it was, since I bought it for nine bucks when it was supposed to cost seventy. It's a little beat up, but there isn't any writing in it, and there's only one phrase highlighted that I saw.
Having found this, I'm now picturing this person reading along, hovering over the page with his yellow marker, just waiting for a pearl of wisdom worthy of his illumination, and then bam, there it is on page 20: "Write about what you know."
Yup. Highlight that. Put a big yellow streak across the otherwise pristine page.
I mean, Seriously? That was all the previous owner got out of the book? How could he be a writing student with any amount of experience and not have heard this already?
I hope he's famous now. Or that he's this guy.
It's probably worth pointing out that the following passage is actually a takedown of that little pearl. Maybe it all just got too confusing to carry on.
Wednesday
13Aug
Keyhole's New Website
Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 02:30AM Update your bookmarks, people: Keyhole's got a new home, and it's a slick one at that.
The new website is up at www.keyholemagazine.com, and includes some new things to read, including an interview with William Walsh, "Globe" by Kim Chinquee, "Tricks" by Thomas Cooper, "We Shoplifted" by Samantha Arlotta, "An Open Letter to Her Brother-in-Law, On His Regrettable Decision to Shoot Himself" by Alexandra Zobel, and an interview with Tao Lin by Blake Butler.
They're also encouraging writers to sign up and submit through the
website, specifically short fiction (less than 2,000 words), poetry, and reviews. Their new submission guidelines can be read here.
Also on the way is a new website for their newest venture, Keyhole Press, which will be publishing William Walsh's Questionstruck (a book of meta-nonfiction derived from the writings of Calvin Trillin): www.keyholepress.com.
Pretty cool stuff all around. Get over there and check out the new website. Read. Submit. Spread the word.
Wednesday
13Aug
Jeff Vande Zande's Sleepwalker
Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 02:10AM The film embedded below was adapted by my friend Jeff Vande Zande from his own short story (which was originally published in The Adirondack Review), which was then shot and directed by Michael Randolph with acting by, among others, Jeff's wonderful wife Jenny. It's pretty interesting to see a story that I originally saw in draft form get turned into a short film, and to see the changes Jeff made as he adapted it. For instance, the ending is presented slightly different, due to the change in form, but I think its a more subtle and ultimately better ending:
Watch the film, then read the story. Or vice versa. Enjoy!
Tuesday
12Aug
Five Star Literary Stories Reviews Barry Graham
Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 04:52PM This week, Five Star Literary Stories has posted a review of Barry Graham's "This Story Is Not About Ham and Cheese Sandwiches," which was published in Wigleaf. This story has all the elements of classic Barry Graham: a sexy girl, a handful of well-worn panties, and food you can buy in sealed plastic gas station containers. Go read it now.
Monday
11Aug
Books Received: Peter Conners's Of Whiskey and Winter
Monday, August 11, 2008 at 06:11PM 
I received a copy of Peter Conners's Of Whiskey and Winter a little while ago, and finished reading it earlier in the month. I liked the book while I was reading it, and thought I'd write a review of it, but after trying a couple of times I realized that I wasn't really qualified. It's a collection of prose poems, which often function enough like flash fiction for me to be able to comment on them, but in this case I felt that the balance was pretty far on the poetry side of the equation, and that the effects of the book were perhaps a little beyond me. Still, as I said, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Conners uses some great language throughout, and even when I didn't fully understand I was still drawn in.
As an example of his work, here's the opening poem, "The Babies of Winter":
It is not just the chill, but the sounds. Information spent on thin wires of air. Upstairs, the window has been blown open; a dilemma telegraph beating itself against walls that will need to be painted before the baby arrives. Not a figurative baby, a literal one: minuscule mittens and woolen hats with chin straps. The cobwebs will need to dusted from Whitman's old toys. The seasons hold us tight: the storms have betrayed our trust but they must be forgiven. Dusted, put to use. They did the best they could. The are one hundred years old, and the babies of winter must always be forgiven.
Of Whiskey and Winter is available now from White Pine Press.
