Sean Lovelace is running right now, far. Other times he teaches at Ball State University. HOW SOME PEOPLE LIKE THEIR EGGS is his flash fiction collection by Rose Metal Press. His works have appeared in Crazyhorse, Diagram, Sonora Review, Willow Springs, and so on.
1. Neil from ESPN has been emailing me. And he says, “In short: We’re inviting folks to submit (to fictioncontest@espnthemag.com) sports-themed short stories of up to 3,000 words, and the best story (as picked by me and the editor of Stymie) will run in a future issue of ESPN. Then comes the fame and fortune, naturally.”
If you have a sports story, send it. Deadline is June 1st.
2. I just got an iPhone. Why should writers care? What can I do now besides take notes and commit “Douche baggery in a mesmerizing false flame.”
3. This invisible bookshelf is like emo-in-a-seatbelt badass.
Plot and “literary” are not mutually exclusive. We know this.
Cold Mountain (took 15 years to write but worth it)
The Lathe of Heaven (convoluted, yes, but every other page is a closed envelope we want to open)
The Road (obvious, but so is Cajun food with beer. Yet who would eat Cajun food without beer?)
So.
What is the best action/plot/page-churn/turn novel with a theme (a vague term, commence the coughing, but you know I mean: So What?/Idea of Life/Quickening of Human Heart/Quickening of Mind/Aspect of Life Experience/Etc.)?
Plot AND Theme.
Your choice?
Nail your whiskey sweat over the fireplace.
If you’re going to write, for God in heaven’s sake, try to get naked.
Part drunk, part bee-stung dog.
Holding a bottle and a leashed alligator.
You ever lived out of a lake?
A snake will bite when dead.
I’d much rather sit here and look at trees.
You smell sweeter than soap.
I don’t drink liquor!
I fall into…
I dip my tongue.
1. Holy fuck the WET cover gallery is the crystal bomb.
5. Are women writers really inferior? (This link blown-out so forget it. I’ll get the Francine Prose essay in later)
3. Percival Everett wins The Believer book award.
2. Fearlessly and courageously is the best way to break-up with anyone, eat boiled crayfish, write the first draft of a poem.
14. Wicked Aaron Burch/Lucy Corin discussion over EWN.
7. Best way to network is beer. If you don’t do beer, do softball. If you don’t do softball, survive something intense and dangerous together. If you can’t survive I and DT, try not to be an asshole, daily.
9. Bears.
Yes, I am slightly tri-sheeted. Over-posting. Over-commenting. In the name of Steve Martin, etc. I say, “Excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee me.”
And I understand the look on the face of the woman below. Sorry. OK? You went out in a T-shirt…
The semester is over [OK, it is finals week] and I have my rights. And lefts. Also UP and DOWN. Give me 4 chapbooks right now and I’ll buy them, period, as long as it’s painless (no checks or BS Snail Mail–I desire Paypal or you take my credit card). Give me the 4 links now, the chapbooks and I buy them. I’ll review them later, most likely. Or maybe I shoot them or set them afire. But I will read.
Chapbooks only.
They will appear here later, shot or aflame or reviewed. So like you are buying an echo.
I suppose.
A man living in a small town in Iowa recently paid two hundred and fifty dollars a book for two books of The Blue-Collar Sun by Lucas Farrell. They were delivered by motortruck from Oregon. He has more ordered.
The Blue-Collar Sun by Lucas Farrell can be bought by the book from alice blue books in almost all of the Seattle or Portland border towns for one thousand cents (approx) a book. Single pages cost fifty cents. There are plenty of words and plenty of purchasers and the price seems to be no deterrent.
It is no wonder that the question that is most often asked of a reader returning to the Midwest from the West Coast is, “How long are they going to be able to ship poetry out of Portland?”
1. Cleaned out under my fridge today and found a fillet knife, dust-gorillas, and a chapbook. It is called “thunderstorms as familial convulsion.” Ryan Call as good as any at using weather as something more than weather.
2. Made me think of this sonnet by Kathleen Kirk. It is “Roof Leaks, Mimi Calls.”
All across the city the tyrant ice
pries up the tar and flashing, disturbs the peace
of shingles, their social order. It’s not the freeze
but the thaw that ruins us, the sudden spies
wiring the closet walls with new secrets,
the trickle-down effect in our kitchens,
cups and buckets competing for attention,
disintegration: sheetrock into dust.The phone rings, your mother with the news.
The ceiling shifts, sure it wants to open.
Nothing falls, not even the sky.
Your voice is like a level, its yellow tube
tipping the bubble of air toward hope
and back. Cancer—just another tyrant.
4. I have decided those who get bothered about quotation marks bother me. Dialogue isn’t about those little cheese curls. Do it right and you won’t have to do it right anymore.
5. Hold up. Tao Lin (actually Kacper Jarecki) wants your money. Wants your money. And then they ate whale.
Should a SS collection be all winners? Or is it OK to be like (most) albums. A couple hits, a few so-sos (with redeemable aspects, though), and, oh, a dud or two.
Booze takes a lot of time and effort if you’re going to do a good job with it
I want to wrangle. Who wants to wrangle?
Arc of delight
Bumped into the commode!
Oohh, look what we have here (scotch under car seat)
That morning she pours Teacher’s over my belly and licks it off
I need a festival
Here is some math: fuck plus you
Hummers? What are hummers? Hummers are time-controlled shots of liquor
Look, counsel and process the events, or
decorate the loaf. Send it to the oven
Friends, I thought this was living. A house where no one was home, and all I could drink.
