Wednesday, July 25, 2007

diagram 7.3

if you haven't gotten around to browsing the contents of the latest issue of DIAGRAM, you probably should. it's an all fiction issue, made up of the finalists of their $5 innovative fiction contest. there's some pretty incredible stuff.

the winner of the contest fuses found photography with q&a into a pretty stunning result: Holly Tavel's ON THE MYSTERIOUS APPEARANCE OF PHILO S. IN OTHER PEOPLE'S PHOTOGRAPHS

i also really got big kicks out of and am kind of amazed by Christopher Higgs's MOTHER: A DECONSTRUCTION WITH CRITICAL APPARATUS. it makes use of david markson's influence in a way outside of mere replication. very cool.

i haven't read everything in the issue yet but if it's anything like these two, damn. really, the stuff they have up here is heads above a lot of print journals. who said online text was just secondhand?

i had a piece accepted by them back in january that hasn't been posted yet. hopefully it'll be in the next issue.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Part of the World

read Robert Lopez's 'Part of the World' last week in a couple hours straight. another book i just couldn't put down. the voice had me from the very first page. i love books where nothing much happens and it is just the way it is told to you that keeps you reading. they are rare, but robert has completed killed it in this one. everyone should go to the calamari press website and pick this up immediately.



yet another in the list of books i've read recently that i need to write reviews for. falling behind in that category. i've been finding it hard also to keep working on the novel i've been trucking on for the past 6 months or so. there's a whole subplot that needs a facelift and i can't quite bring myself to pick it up. so i'll wait for that motivation. in the meantime i've been having a blast working on a series of shorts set before/during/after some form of apocalypse event. i can foresee them eventually running together and becoming a larger text but right now i just like working on each alone and finding tiny threads that interweave.

i can't seem to bring myself to write stories longer than 2000 words. its either less than 2000 or greater than 60,000. i don't have much that fall in between. i think that comes from the fact that i have trouble reading short fiction of a longer length, because i like, once i really get into something, for it to keep going and wrap me up. usually when reading pieces that are 4000-7000 words i'm just getting amped up by the time it ends. of course there are a billion exceptions to that trend, but i'm just a lot more picky about it.

plus it seems just a lot easier to place shorter pieces in publications. if something takes up a lot of space, it better earn it. maybe i'm lazy. maybe i have ADD. i dunno.

reminded today of how great brian evenson's story 'The Intricacies of Post-Shooting Etiquette' is. i think that's the story i've been trying to write since i started.

Friday, July 6, 2007

ZEROVILLE

so i just finished reading a proof of Steve Erickson's new novel ZEROVILLE.



it is fucking phenomenal. i read it pretty much straight through without moving (which i haven't done with a book in a long while). i will have a review of it on bookslut next month but let me just say:

if you are a Steve Erickson fan, like i am, get ready to read his best book since AMNESIASCOPE.

if you are not a Steve Erickson fan, get ready to be one.

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

monday night lit #6

i got contributor copies of the 6th issue of Monday Night Lit. it's a nice little independent mag and has work from pal Mike Young whose 'The Peaches are Cheap' I read immediately---dude can work the flash piece like nobody's business. you'll want to get a hand on this thing based on his page-and-a-half alone.

also in the mail today i got proofs of Jim Shepard's new collection 'Like You'd Understand, Anyway' and Steve Erickson's 'Zeroville'. two of my favorite writers. i can hardly decide which one i want to read first. i am excited to be excited about reading again.

i went on a submissions bender last week. sent out a slew of short stuff i had let sit for a long time. starting to get responses back to some of the stuff i sent out in the last slew i mailed. black warrior review took one of my lists as a nonfiction piece for this fall. very excited about that. and some nice new stuff forthcoming ;)