Redneck Zen

Rewrite, Revise Pt. 2

2010-06-26T00:26:00.000-07:00

In college courses, revision is particularly imperative. There are many great papers which were hurt by a lack of revision. The best protection for good ideas and high grades is revision. Revision begins down at the single-word level. This short essay will seek to explore how writers can begin to tackle these problems at the fundamental level of the word.

This method first involves combing through an essay to eliminate the useless words, redundancies, and other distractions. An earlier essay covered this issue.

Students have been known to use misuse words. This happens quite often in student papers and is not something to be ashamed of. Rather, it's something which can be corrected easily enough.

Papers need to be combed through sentence by sentence. Where unusual or new words have been used, a dictionary can be consulted to check their meaning. Sometimes a word will sound familiar, but "doesn't look right?" Here, a writer may have homonym trouble.

Word processors are wonderful tools for writers to speed up their work, yet spell-check won't catch homonyms. Homonyms are words which sound the same but which have different meanings. Was a reference sited, or was it cited? Was the affair elicit or illicit? Here, a dictionary will help any writer clear up possible confusion.

There are often troubles with the forms of "there."

Their: possessive form of they
They're: contraction of they are
There: indicates a place in a literal or figurative sense - if you're unsure of your usage, consult a dictionary

Chances are that instructors will give students some leeway on these little foibles. It's hard to catch homonyms in particular. However, if the term is a main part of a thesis or otherwise pertinent to the central meaning of a paper, there could be points taken off.

Of course, many students will want to know how to possibly avoid some of these problems. One way is to constantly study words and to build one's vocabulary. Word-of-the-day calendars can help. Extensive reading will help, as well. Reading more challenging novels or works of nonfiction is a good exercise, if the reader keeps a dictionary handy to look up the difficult words.

In everyday life, a growing writer can keep a small notebook handy for various words or phrases which are unusual, unknown, or simply interesting. Writing these items down will help instill them in the writer's mind and enable her to revisit them later with a dictionary to further study their meaning.

Finally, students need to make good use of the style guide recommended by their institution. These books are dry, boring, and catch a lot of dust. However, they are crucial for the budding writer who is seeking higher grades and more effective communication.

In conclusion, revision begins with the words. They form the basis for all writing and so writers must come to terms with the various trouble these words pose. Further, writers need to come to terms with the full meanings of words in order to fully convey the meanings of their theses.

It sounds simple, it is simple. It is not easy.

Rewrite, Revise

2010-06-24T20:41:00.000-07:00

Writers, take a note. Once you have filled the page-count requirement of your professor's assignment, you are not done!

All good writing has been through multiple drafts. Yours is no exception.

Strunk and White's Rule 17 states, "Omit Needless Words." In fact, this is a great place to start any good revision.

Read through your work and search out those redundant words and phrases. I would start with adverbs. Any word ending in "ly" is a suspect here. What do adverbs do? Adverbs modify verbs and adjectives, among other things. They don't do anything. Adjectives do a bit more, but adverbs are like the guy who shows up two hours late to help you move. He carries a lamp and then sits down to have some pizza. Ask him to go home.

What you need to do when revising is to maximize the clarity of your ideas. When you ideas are clear, your professors will see them and give you credit for them. Plus, these poor souls are overworked in this abysmal economy. More students are heading to school, but there's less money to pay teachers - at least at public schools.

So, do yourself a favor and omit needless words. Clear the brush so that your professors might see your meaning. Your grades will see an improvement as a result.

Essay Writing

2010-06-23T20:15:00.000-07:00

Essay writing doesn't come easy. It's a skill which many abhor and few master. Writers need a guide to help master essay writing.

J.R. Trimble's Writing With Style is something of a classic, though few seem to know it. This book is one of the few books students keep handy from their college days. If you intend on being an effective communicator, this book is simply a must-have.

Trimble assumes a few things. He assumes good grammar and a general facility with writing. For those heading back to school, he may be a bit advanced

However, even the most novice writer can learn from Trimble's example.

Trimble presents a case that writers write for an audience, that writers need to get out of their heads and show someone else what they're thinking. He argues against a self-centered sort of writing, saying, "Once you've finished writing for your self and begin writing for the reader, your mumbo jumbo will start turning into bona fide prose."

He makes the case for revision, which is imperative. All writing is rewriting.

So many student essays start in a vague, aimless fashion and then figure out their main thesis on about page five of an eight page paper. Then, around page seven, the author realizes it's time to wrap things up so rushes through a conclusion which is just as vague and aimless as the introduction and then ends.

From that point, it's imperative to revise. Once the reader realizes her true goal with the paper, the whole thing needs to be retooled to fit that thesis. Indeed, all writing is rewriting.

For a great primer on the art of writing essays, college-level writing, check out Trimble's book. Whether you're at a local university, or continuing education online, this book will be indespensible.

Radical Gratitude | One Life to Give

2010-06-23T19:38:00.000-07:00

New Dimensions Media : THE BOUNTY OF A GENEROUS HEART with Andrew Bienkowski

Check out this interview. The book was co-authored by Mary Akers, a Queens U. MFA. The US title is One Life to Give.

The book details the journey of a man from Siberia finding Radical Gratitude and a better life.

“Like Viktor Frankl’s 1946 classic Man’s Search for Meaning, this book has a keen eye for spotting the best of human spirit and endeavor in the most trying of circumstances.”
—ForeWord magazine

MFA Graduate

2010-06-13T20:40:00.000-07:00

So, I've completed my MFA. My thesis is all turned in and all is good in the world.

First off, my thesis was composed of 7 short stories and 7 flash fictions. The whole lot was linked by the 1995 Heat Wave in Chicago. I interchanged characters and scenes to accomplish the links. I was happy with it. So was my thesis committee.

Each member of my committee said that the manuscript was a "book." One called it a "novel." Of course all of them suggested changes, which I will work on over time. But, hey, a NOVEL! I was pretty jacked-up to hear that opinion from a well-respected professor and author.

So, life continues after teh MFA. I'm looking for writing/editing gigs, completing this novel, and hoping that I stay afloat long enough to see everything come to fruition.
I should mention that I did my MFA work at Queens University of Charlotte, NC. The instruction there was top-notch and the program was community based despite what I initially would have suspected.

Plus, the program is fully funded! I had student loans for the whole ride!

Market Ranking

2010-06-13T19:17:00.000-07:00

I've been referring to Bookfox's list of literary journals lately to find markets to submit my most favorite short stories.

Check out the list: Here

Keep on submitting!

Kick It

2010-06-08T18:42:00.000-07:00

Hey, Please take a moment to check out my project on Kickstarter. I'm trying to raise funds to help complete my novel:

Again, for the First Time

Chicago Novel

Midwest Novel

It's a linked-short novel which is set in the 1995 heat wave which struck Chicago and the Midwest. Characters are shared throughout the book and scenes reoccur. It's been called "smartly written" and will be a great addition to the literature of Chicago.

Thanks!

Stain

2010-05-15T16:50:00.000-07:00

"Water Damage" by Meg Pokrass @ Thieves Jargon

Ahh... Another Meg Pokrass flash fiction found on the internets. It's always a pleasure to find one of her little gems, though certainly not hard. Pokrass is one of the more prolific and widely published authors of flash on the internets. I believe she has a few obscure chapbooks published, and has a real-life book coming out from Press 53 in 2011.

Here, in "Water Damage," published at Thieves Jargon, Meg gets raw in a narrative which starts in an uncertain place and ends in pity.

Her narrator seems to be visiting a drug dealer, but this is not entirely clear. He has something for sale, this is certain. The narrator, a woman, isn't easily swayed by his amateurish attempts at flattery, but finds the man's vulnerabilities, his feminine side.

The narrative moves smoothly and is able to give us enough description of the man - his hair, the baby shampoo - to illuminate the narrator's twisted desire to be with him. Or maybe, she's just trying to avoid paying for the drugs. Either way, we're left with the striking image of a water stain on the ceiling as the man-child pumps away on her unmoving body.

I highly recommend giving this piece a read. I give it a double iced americano on a warm Portland day.

Chronicled

2010-05-07T18:47:00.000-07:00

If it Flashes, it’s not a Short Story « Flash Fiction Chronicles

Check out my blog entry over at FFC - it's similar to stuff I've written here, but perhaps a bit more polished.

I promise to blog more here. I'm looking for good pieces to critique...

Hahvahd = Wicked Cool

2010-03-06T10:39:00.000-08:00

Hey, if any of y'all are in Cambridge, check out Harvard Bookstore because they're printing a flash fiction anthology featuring yours truly.

I haven't received my copy yet, as they just announced the winners of the contest earlier this week.

I assume they're printing a few to put on the shelves or on display, but they're publishing it on an in-store bookmaking machine which they call Paige M. Gutenborg. Those Harvard kids are so clever.

I don't know any of the other writers, but here's the list of selected contributors:

Microchondria (the title):

Hobie Anthony
Anar Badalov
Shira Li Bartov
Nancy Brewka-Clark
Edmond Caldwell
Mike Campbell
Caryn Carpenter
Paula Carter
Ryan W. Cohen
Catherine Flora Con
Jennifer Carol Cook
Jane Dykema
Katherine Farrior
Nicole Fernandez
Leslie Fincke
Alex Freeman
Alayne Freidel-Sobel
Marc Goldfinger
Eiriki Gumeny
Liana Hershey-Nexon
Liana Jahan Imam
Michelle Labbe
George Lausch
Mia Lazarewicz
Melina C. McTigue
Yvonne Ng
Lauren Inness Norton
James Scott
Amy Stewart
Hillary Stringer
Cody Walker
Claudia Ward-de Leon
Adam Waterreus
Ben White
Laura Whitney
Melanie Yarbrough

Anyhow, if you see it, drop a line with your impressions!

I Can Haz Published Now?

2010-02-23T01:10:00.000-08:00

Worried Note | GwI

Yup, yours truly gets published every now and then.

This is a non-fiction piece about my early days in Chicago when I lived in the notorious Uptown neighborhood amongst crackheads, crack dealers, prostitutes, and murderers. My block (Malden between Montrose and Wilson) was home to 10 murders one summer. That was the highest concentration I could find in all of Chicago in my analysis of a Chicago Tribune map.

Anyhow, I hope you read and enjoy the story.

Flash Review - Alan Michael Parker Takes a Meeting

2010-02-07T12:15:00.000-08:00

THE COLLAGIST: Report from the Committee on Town Happiness by Alan Michael Parker

The pond. Still water, fed from beneath. Possibly fed from an underground source, if we could ever find someone to go check. Perhaps then the pond might be reopened to the town.

It remains a 3, better than two, as deigned by the Committee on Town Happiness, a collective of 7 individuals. Yet it remains closed, though they open their hearts, though they never truly share with one another.

I really like Alan Michael Parker's writing here. I've appreciated his poetry since i heard him read a few years back and now I'm pleased to find him in prose.

I must say that this flash remains somewhat of a mystery to me. Still water running deep, beneath a veneer of sheer, clear prose. Focused, engaged, prose, which I find necessary for the best flash. Even for good flash.

Anyhow, it's always a pleasure to find a great flash. It's rather like finding a pure diamond.

I give this one a tall glass of fresh spring water.

Comments are open. What do you think of, Report from the Committee on Town Happiness?

Scott Wilkerson's Graduating Thesis Reading

2010-02-06T21:54:00.000-08:00

Redneck Zen - Poetry Corner

2010-01-31T16:15:00.000-08:00

Piano by Patrick Phillips

I re-read this poem again the other night and was blown away all over again.

The first time I read it, I was taken by the image of the piano itself, the brokenness. I really didn't get much past that.

But, the poet is an old friend and the poem was made famous by Garrison Keillor, so it stayed in my brain.

The leaves and trash built up, blew away, returned. Then I read it again.

The cracked harp began to sing at the end. I always knew it held music, but I never quite heard it. Yet, like any good piece of music, my appreciation for it had grown in the interim between first reading(s) and this most recent encounter. I'd gotten the wax outta my ears. A high wind, howling, had come past to take the mess away.

I'm glad that Mr. Keillor posted the text of, Piano, on his website so that it could be shared easily with you. I recommend listening to him read, as well. I recommend the whole collection, Boy, a fine collection of verse and a great addition to any library.

Smooth Landing

2010-01-26T19:44:00.000-08:00

Sampsell: 'The Parachute'

What do we say to someone who knows not what we are saying? Why do we even try? Is our message that urgent, that dire, that we must tell even someone totally illiterate in our language?

I think so. I talked some poor bastard's ear off in Prague. I can't remember what I told him, or why, but only a few seconds of intelligible communication passed between us there in the lobby of that hostel. It was late. I was drunk.

Sampsell presents us with a scene, a simple scene, which is often the best place for a flash to occur. Single setting. Two characters. Simple, compressed.

We feel the narrator's bafflement in the face of a non-English speaker. He searches for "handles" in the language, words or phrases to hang onto. "Parachute" is what he finds. The man lands in his brain. A story is told, contact made.

A story within a story. Metafiction? Perhaps. But, the story-within is told in one word, "Parachute." That's compression!

Lots of fun. I recommend reading this Flash for yourself. Report back, tell me what you think. Really.

Thoughts on an Approach to Flash

2010-01-03T16:42:00.000-08:00

As I formulate my ideas on the craft of flash fiction, I've come up with an annoying acronym which will serve some sort of purpose. I'm not much for prompts, though I'm coming around, what I do tend to gravitate towards is more of a general focus - a trajectory to guide the work. So, here are the four main trajectories I tend to use when writing flash:

Narrative - try to focus solely on a narrative. Eliminate as much excess description and exposition as possible. Tell just the story. If you compress it tightly enough, the rest will come bubbling to the surface.
Image - find an image and use your laser beam intensity to give it context and meaning.
Character - that guy who used to live next door to you when you were ten? The chimerical character you just imagined? Lets' see her and only her. More than a sketch, this sort of flash does require some action to illuminate the character.
Emotion - What exemplifies a particular emotion? What sort of scenario brings it to the surface. Perhaps it's a confluence of complimentary and conflicting emotions which bubble up. This is a tricky one which will borrow from the other three, but try to keep the emotion at the forefront - everything else is in its service.

So, there it is: N.I.C.E. How quaint and perfect, eh?

I also considered discussing idea, but that wrecks the the acronym and is so similar to the approach one would use for emotion that I bagged it. Fill it in yourself.

Anyhow, comments are open and I'd love to hear a reaction.

Bukowski - Roll the Dice

2010-01-01T15:11:00.000-08:00

Disaffected Prose

2009-11-28T17:02:00.000-08:00

So, I spent some time on Friday night reading some lit zines down at my local independent bookstore. I was taken by the popularity of what I'm calling disaffected prose. I use the term ironically, which is getting me into meta-levels I don't even want to consider. That is, the authorial tone seems to be "ironic," in the snarky sense of the word.

I came of age in the 90's, so I know from ironic snark, the affect of the disaffected. I had hoped we'd moved on, and I wonder why we haven't.

Is it because these authors are folks around my age, fellow products of 90's popular culture who are still stuck in that mindset? Can they not get past the ironic distance and get to know characters? Or, as in the book, Prague, do they just hate their characters?

Perhaps we're burned out from the brutish, reptilian illogic of the Bush years, where honesty and truth were sold out, ignored, and tossed on the burning pile of rubbish in downtown Baghdad. Most of us believed the bullshit, were manipulated into enabling the world's most dangerous alcoholic/addict. Integrity means nothing any more, so that is being reflected in our literature.

Now, we don't know what to trust. Sincerity turned around and bit us on the ass. Rather, what we thought was sincerity bit us. Bullshit is what bit us and now we're feeling burned, bruised, used. Yet, that's what life does, that's the nature of society - societies have always been brutal, injust, awful places (to paraphrase Joseph Campbell in, Myths to Live By.) Yet, to continue with Campbell's thought, it is incumbent on us, the writers and artists, to rise above this and to show that the likes of Shrub and Cheney cannot take our spirit nor can they sell our sincerity or our hearts.

I'm not advocating pollyanna prose. I'm advocating authentic fiction which takes risks, which gets inside of characters. Write from the heart, not a mind full of post-Bush resentment. Blow out that resentment, write real characters - don't just write about real characters. Get close, get real.

Perpetual Folly: 2010 Pushcart Prize Rankings

2009-11-07T20:10:00.000-08:00

Perpetual Folly: 2010 Pushcart Prize Rankings

I always look for resources to help me decide which markets to submit to. Now that I'm building a significant collection of standard short stories, I'm glad to have Cliff's list here to help me decide where to submit my stuff.

I think I'm more picky with my flash submissions, as I feel that there are so many definitions of what constitutes good flash, that I really try to be picky to see who is most in line with my thinking. I have a sense that it's the same in the poetry markets.

Any poets have ideas on that?

Cain, Caleb, Cameron by Matt Bell

2009-11-02T00:15:00.000-08:00

w i g l e a f : (very) short fiction

I really liked this piece by Matt Bell. In retrospect, I'm a bit baffled that I did. I'll try to explain after some play-by-play of my reading.

He jumps right out with a strong first sentence. Two babies were expected but only one was born - this is compelling, as are the phrases "pummeled womb" and "troubled cavity." So, I'm hooked. This is visceral, this is fascinating in that train-wreck sort of way - "mistaked-toothed"? WTF?? I'm hooked.

Then comes the horrific lyricism of the second paragraph. Wow, now I'm really hooked. Damn fine writing here. "What delta of destruction flowing!" Holy crap! That's some fancy writing!

Ultimately, it's the writing and the inventive language use which gets me into and keeps me going through these few (<500) words. It's a demonically creative idea which is really given real life by a writer who likes to write - and who is not afraid to turn a phrase. I appreciate this.

After the dust had settled, the blood dried, I took another look. This thing is written from the viewpoint of a detached 1st person narrator. He's sorta there, but not really. He reports on what his wife is going through and what the kid is like, but not much more.

I'm usually livid when I see stuff like this published. Why? Because I find it to be a hollow device where the writer can distance himself from everything and just tell us a story. Like when someone tells you all about a movie. They're not involved in the movie at all, but they're telling you anyway.

Often, these narrators are just telling a story - you know, not showing...

Bell's narrator is such a wordsmith that he does show me the story. It's brought to life, and it's creepy as hell.

Compare to, Yellowfin Tuna, posted at JMWW. In Christian Bell's story, the narrator seems to be desensitized and keeps a distance from the character and the action of the story. The words are flat, the emotion is sucked out. Yet, I guess we always want objectivity when being delivered the news.

Personally, I'll take Matt Bell's approach to delivering a story - alive, rich with language, and totally visceral.

I give Matt Bell's story five jack 'o lanterns and a sack of candy corn. Yes, I know that Halloween was yesterday.

It's Next Door

2009-10-28T16:13:00.000-07:00

Apparatus Magazine - Volume 1 Issue 4 - Hobie Anthony

Here is one of my Heat Wave stories. Flash, really.

I've since revised it a bit, but I do like this version. Take a gander. Let me know what you think - review here or on your own blog (but please let me know if you review on your blog.)

What's For Dinner?

2009-10-27T00:30:00.000-07:00

Food Carts Portland

Ok, this isn't about flash. It's about food in a flash. Portland's real contribution to world cuisine - the food cart! They're all over. You can get Ethiopian, Thai, Indian, Mexican, Hoagies, Subs, Grinders, and even Heroes at these carts. They're incredible - just hope you don't get rained on trying to find a bench to snack on.

Bumble Bee - by Me

2009-10-19T16:03:00.000-07:00

Published by Shape of a Box - the YouTube Literary Journal

On Fat Cats and Flash Fiction

2009-10-16T22:28:00.000-07:00

I spend too much time thinking about Flash Fiction. I have plenty of other things to occupy my mind: employment, school work, and facebook. Yet, as I ride my bicycle at dusk and see other bikers without their lights on, I can only think of Stuart Dybek's Lights, a magnificent flash if there ever was one. I think of it as a modern archetype of the more poetic side of flash fiction.

I've been thinking about what Dybek said in the current Vestal Review about compression in prose. He's talked about this before, in Sudden Fiction, for instance. But, his Vestal Review interview got me thinking (this time.)
My Webster's says of the word -

Compression: 1. the act of process of compressing 2. the process of compressing the fuel mixture in an internal compustion engine 3. conversion (as of data) in order to reduce the space occupied or the bandwith required

I think the third definition really suits our purposes. The data is compressed. It's diamond-hard and pure. Pure. It's all of a sort. No explication. No extraneous scenes, characters, or emotions. All the extra stuff is gone, if it ever was there in the first place.

Short stories have "extra" stuff. In a sense. They are muli-layered like a wedding cake. They are wonderful. They have explication and flashbacks (sometimes.) But they are not flash, and flash are not they.

Too many writers and editors get confused on this point. They set a word-count and look for a short story to fit that word count. This cheapens the form of flash. Dybek says:

"I think the current urge to see flash fiction as a new form and genre onto (sic) itself, which then demands that it is defined by superficial notions such as word count, is far less interesting to me than seeing flash fiction as a symptom, a manifestation of an ongoing tradition that has to do with the compression in prose, the counterpoint between the lyrical and narrative, fragmentation, and the redefinitions of both story and poetry." (MaryAnne McCollister, "Interview with Stuart Dybek", Vestal Review, #34 (2009))

Dybek argues for yet another term for our short little darlings. I don't think that's necessary. That would only further confuse the matter as we all are struggling to figure out what these things are. The crux of his frustration is, to paraphrase, with the superficial notion of word count.

Indeed, when word count is the only consideration, we often are served flabby pieces which have perhaps been squeezed into a word count - much like how my fat cat squeezes his rotund self through the cat door. It's inelegant to watch, but he gets through, much like a short story forced into a word-count restriction of, say, 500 words. We all marvel, wondering how he manages to do this day in and day out, and that's the novelty. Flash should not be treated as such a novelty.

Though, I'd love to read a flash about novelties - of any sort. That's an interesting idea... maybe. ( note: pic left is not my cat - my cat only drinks PacNW microbrews.)

Anyhow,when approaching a flash fiction, I urge all you writers to keep yourselves focused. If you want a narrative flash, stick strictly to that narrative. All Story - keep it moving. If it's an emotion you want to show, show that emotion - or that complex of emotions. When showing a complex of emotions - show it as such, as a complex, not a series of emotions - compress them to show the complexity.

You're flashing, you're a strobe capturing a milisecond of something. You are compressing a thing to such a degree that it becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Strip a narrative to its core and you have a wonderful thing. Like a diamond formed from common coal, compress the object of your creative vision. Don't mess around trying to obey the tropes of standard fiction - they don't apply.

If you want to write a short story, then by god write one. Just don't squeeze it through a word-count requirement just to say that you can.

RAW

2009-09-21T15:48:00.000-07:00

Girls and Paper and Tassels by Mary Miller

I honestly haven't read much of Mary Miller's work. I did hear her read from her collection, Big World, a month or so back. I was impressed by the hard-hitting risks Miller took in her prose. My friend Amy bought the book and loves it.

I have to say I reacted poorly to these at first. I thought there was going to be some male-bashing stuff going on. That was the baggage I brought to the text. However, I returned and found something far more complicated.

What comes through here and in the short story she read that night in Powell's is a near-confessional rawness. In this age of memoir, Miller makes a fiction which cuts to the quick with an unblinking honesty most memoirists can only dream of .

In these pieces, Miller writes in the 2nd person. Like many people, I hate 2nd person. But, she pulls it off. Consider the first two sentences of Girls:

He shows you his drawings, sketchbooks full of naked women. Women who were live at some point, who let him draw them before they became a story he would recount to you.

She starts with immediate action and attention-grabbing elements. At least my attention was grabbed by a sketchbook full of naked women and not so much by the 2nd person aspect. Then, the second sentence is largely descriptive and brings us back to "you" at the end. So, she's not banging us over the head with YOU straight away.

Considered together, we are left with a very emotionally complex picture. We have a woman who in the first instance seems skeptical and cynical. In the second flash, we have a woman who is passive. Yet, both are captive to a sense of fate. They will be with this guy no matter what, it seems. The author winks at us, telling us that the narrator is a fool, that she is deluding herself, drugging herself to take the pain that fate has brewing.

As reader, we sit and watch the wheel turn. We know this girl, we've seen her go through one bad relationship after another. We wonder why. Perhaps it's just her fate and she's just along for the ride.

So, go take a gander. I could probably write a full essay about these two shorties.

Great Flashes. I give 'em a weeks worth of crisp, sunny, fall days.

Can't Look Away

2009-09-15T17:20:00.001-07:00

PANK Magazine / Buck, Naked by Frank Dahai

Funny, fresh, and buck naked. Buck, the main character of Frank Dahai's flash, Buck, Naked, poses nude for his wife in a small trailer while she snaps away with a polaroid camera.

I feel for Buck, his nudity perpetually caught. His vulnerability burned into the emulsion into infinity. Like a human being tortured by Greek Gods, Buck is forever exposed. Posed and re-posed. Never to find repose.

Dahai has created a million stories, an infinity of humanity pressed into the emulsion of these few words.

I give it 5 ripened Washington Apples baked into a pie.

Short Sharp Shock in the Heart

2009-08-30T17:36:00.000-07:00

The Hamburger Story - Lauren Becker

I think Wigleaf is certainly one of my favorite journals. Not just because the editor deigned to publish me, giving me my first acceptance. But, the stories there most closely come to my definition of Flash.

I was pleased to see Lauren Becker's work appearing in Wigleaf's most current issue - if they have issues, that is. I think the editor posts stories on a rolling basis. But, I digress. I can't say I always like Becker's work, but I do find her writing compelling and worthy of note.

Thus this blog post.

Here is a Flash in flashback. I have been ruminating on the use of flashback in Flash, so I was happy to find this great use of flashback. Here, the act of flashing back is not a mere digression to explicate the present action, but the flashing back is, in fact, the present action. This meets my criteria for a tight focus - Becker stays in this ruminative mode throughout the piece.

Much like the protagonist in Tobias Wolff's A Bullet in the Brain, Becker's narrator has been shocked. Becker's 1st person narrator has been shocked by an ex-lover's book and his fictional portayal of her therein.

As to the writing, I found the staccato tempo of the piece refreshing. Short, sharp sentences marched me through the anger and turmoil the narrator is experiencing. Thankfully, Becker gives us a few compound sentences so that we can breathe through the middle of the piece.

All in all, I'd chalk this up as another success for both Becker and Wigleaf!

I give this one a Blackberry Pie with a nice strong, black cup of Stumptown joe to go with.

What Chekhov Said

2009-07-12T22:35:00.000-07:00

A First Time for Everything by Michelle Reale | Word Riot

Michelle Reale's flash, A First Time for Everything, took a few minutes for me to get into. The majority of this piece felt like the writer was looking for something. She finds it in the last two paragraphs and I thought that everything prior could have been cut.

This is flash, a genre where we claim intense focus. However, this piece spends so much time on the mother and father that we sort of forget about the narrator and her sister - until those final graphs where the real flash occurs. The image of those girls looking through a map, longing to escape the madness imposed upon them by their parents, is really touching. This ending needs to be the beginning, these girls are where the real truth of the piece lies.

I could go into more detail, but I'm sorta tired. Happy flashing.

I give this story one fresh polish sausage from a deli on Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago.

When is Now?

2009-07-03T14:08:00.000-07:00

SmokeLong Quarterly—Issue Twenty-Five—"Rats" by Z.Z. Boone

I liked this story quite a lot at the outset. I liked how the narrator took off with her father to hunt rats on a Saturday night, something decidedly atypical of a teenage girl. I liked how she had "nerves as sharp as shark's teeth" and easily pulled the trigger, "pop...pop...pop, just like that."

I got off track a bit in the flash forward, especially since I didn't think I was "in scene" at all, but reading a general account of what usually happens on a Friday night in the life of this young woman. I thought perhaps that every week the father laments his divorce and the way he acted "weakly."

Then, we come back to "now," a particular scene where the rats are being hunted. In this version of "now" the narrator is jumping at her father's touch and seems to hold the gun like a fearful newbie. My initial assumptions about the narrator are gone and I suddenly feel adrift, wondering who this character really is.

So, I'm just perplexed. We move from speaking about an activity generally to a flash forward into what seems be a specific instance, back to a specific evening where the narrator has changed from a confident rat-hunter to a shaky adolescent. She now is learning how to handle violent power and her father's presence as an emasculated figure.

I hate to say it, but this piece simply unraveled for me. The more I asked of it, the less it gave. The narrator goes through a change, but it seems to be a regression. Regression is interesting, but I don't know if I have enough to really see how or why she regressed.

Again, I think this piece has a lot going for it. Interesting characters, neat situation, great writing. As the interviewer in the companion article, Smoking With ZZ Boone, says, it is a multi-layered piece. However, like a many-tiered cake, this piece needs a solid support to maintain its structure.

I give this flash a lone, shiny sparkler.

The News

2009-06-30T16:25:00.000-07:00

Atypical Research by Shelly Rae Rich - pubbed in: Flash Fiction Online

Exposition... It's one of those necessary evils in writing fiction. The reader sometimes needs "the news" to understand what's going on. Are the characters in an undersea cave? That detail might be pertinent to the action of the story.

Backstory. If a character has a reaction to a certain smell as a result of a childhood incident, that might be good for a reader to know about. We do sometimes need the news.

However, in flash fiction there is little room for it. Unless your whole flash is somehow expository, if you have taken exposition to such a level that the flash can be said to be virtually about exposition itself, then it has little place.

Ultimately, if a flash has a strong narrative focus, we need strict focus on that narrative. Again, Hemingway's, A Very Short Story, is the best example of this I know. That tale is nothing but story, plot, it's a narrative from tip to tail with any exposition limited to a sentence or two to merely set a scene.

The story, Atypical Research, which served as the prompt for this little rant is comprised of so much exposition as to lose all focus for the reader. It's a nice piece of writing, to be sure, but I'm left with little idea of these characters or what's really going on. At the end, I have a narrator in a love affair with a beautiful and quirky woman. But, there's no real treatment of the emotions the narrator has, only some cursory statements about a research project which is no longer objective.

At the end of the day, I found this piece too unfocused to qualify as flash. It felt like a nice draft for a longer short story where all of this expostion could be developed into something living and breathing.

I give this story one 7-11 burrito, with a Big Gulp chaser.

Titling

2009-06-27T17:34:00.000-07:00

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION: EVERYBODY SAID PULL YOURSELF UP BY THE BOOTSTRAPS - kyle minor

This one ended.

I read it and it ended and I was satisfied, but not wholly satisfied. I'd met with the printed words, and I found their punctuation interesting, though at first difficult. Unusual. I liked the movement from talk of the wife/girlfriend to then propositioning the therapist. I found that humorous and fresh. But, like the narrator, I was not wholly satisfied. Until I looked up to the title.

Somehow, I'd missed the title. I was looking for a flash by Kyle Minor; when I found it, I dove in without a thought to the title. What's the big deal with titles, I thought. Yet, finding my self not-wholly-satisfied after reading Kyle Minor's flash, I found a rush of delight when I took notice of the title.

Of course, I do have a bias against therapy. Few therapists seem bold enough to require anything of their clients and even fewer clients are willing to actively participate in their recovery. I digress.

Minor's flash does seem to have a movement to it. Dare we call it a narrative? A relationship is defined and perhaps dissolved - perhaps found useless, when we take in the title, a call to dump the therapist. At the end of the day, this flash has tight focus which reflects and refracts and is wholly satisfying.

I give this one two air conditioners and a glass of cool water on a hot day.

Enjoy.

Great Review

2009-06-23T16:08:00.000-07:00

Lydia Copeland in the Wigleaf Top 50 House!! « Sean Blog: It All Relates 2 Writing

I really dig Sean Lovelace's review of Lydia Copeland's addition to the Wigleaf Top 50. In particular, I like his additions to the definition of the form.

Read. Enjoy.

Pete and Repeat

2009-06-21T14:09:00.000-07:00

Tomlinson Saying the Ball Was Tipped by Kyle Minor elimae

Wigleaf Top 50 Selection

I love the use of repetition in Kyle Minor's (very) little flash. The haunt of an excuse which carries through each chapter of the narrative. I don't have a clear idea of why a "tipped" ball would make any difference. I don't know much about football.

But, I do know about pleading one's case and that plea gaining no traction as one's case goes down the tubes.

I know that Minor is known for writing longer fiction and this is the first thing of his I've ever read. I regretfully missed his reading at Powell's last winter. But, I'm pleased that he seems to be adept in the Flash format.

Great read and a worthy addition to any collection.

Closed

2009-06-21T14:06:00.000-07:00

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION: COME BACK TOMORROW - Tania Hershman

A Wigleaf Top 50 Selection

This is a good read. I like how Tania Hershman uses the convention of store hours to illustrate emotional (un)availability. At times I was wondering if she was trying to personify a store or other business.

Here, Hershman has picked her images and her conflict. Nothing else. She hammers these home and from that focus, the flash becomes more truthful and hopefully universal. I certainly related both to the narrator and to the person to whom the flash is aimed.

Now, why isn't this a prose poem? There's no narrative, there are no scenes and scant characters. Perhaps it's the narrator and the complexity of emotion she emits. There is a progression emotionally as well. We move from a limited openness to really no openness and a feeling of being trapped. Yet the narrator is still hopeful, or at least wishes to keep the imagined lover as an emotional hostage, ever longing and ever rebuffed.

So, please do check this one out. I give it 4.5 out of 5 Mt. Hood Strawberries.

Lots of Things Going On

2009-06-20T11:19:00.000-07:00

3:AM Magazine » Better Things

I found Andrea Kneeland's flash, Better Things, pretty much at random. I read it. There's a lot here.

People often talk about how there's "so much going on" in flash. How did you pack so much into such a small space? They often ask.

The beauty of flash is that there is so much going on in such a small space. But it's a contained space and there is great focus on a single thing from which emanates a million different things. Stefanie Freele's Sisters does this. In Freele's micro masterpiece, we have two sisters in two different places communicating over the telephone. Simple. Elegant. But there's so much tension that it nearly tears you apart.

Here we are shown a bunch of different things: bloody van, burrito workers, and a relationship possibly in trouble. There's the coworkers finances and the confusion they cause in a relationship which is given no other context for conflict. There's a lot going on here.

But none of it seems to go anywhere.

There is a lot to like, however. I think there are some neat characters here and the scenario is creative and interesting. I'm glad I read this and that I got to peek in on these people. But, I didn't get a flash moment. No one thing seemed to resonate, but there were a lot of little things lying around which could have been woven into something larger, or concentrated for a flash. Or perhaps those were stray twigs (see illustration, above.) I'm not really sure.

Again, please comment if you agree, disagree, or are curious about where to find a killer burrito in Portland.

Confessions in Narrative

2009-06-18T18:38:00.000-07:00

SmokeLong Quarterly—Issue Twenty-Four—"I Use Commas like Ninja Stars" by Samuel Lee

So, this is one of the most popular stories at SmokeLong. Most clicked anyways. So, I decided to take a gander and write a review.

Lee tells the tale of being a 1st generation immigrant. The child of adult immigrants, the narrator grows up with English being taught to him in school and through language he becomes American. Acculturated. Assimilated. He rejects his parents' old world ways until the end when he is reunited with his mother over the grave of his father.

This flash seemed a bit uneven. I found it effective, but not entirely convincing. Lee seems drawn to turn this into a narrative, to give us some "arc." So, the son leaves and rejects the old ways. But he comes back and says, "look ma we talk same." Huh? Same? Isn't this the character who's all about change? Can't he remain changed, "talk different" and still love his mother?

I did enjoy the flash up until the point where it decided to go narrative. At that point, when the narrator goes to college, we lose the focus of the boy learning English and conflicting with his parents and soon we're treated to the tortured phrasing, "pawn their configurations for money." You mean be a writer? Write for money?

At that point, in the second-to-last graph, I find the author stretching. He's got something going, a real flash. Then he decides he needs the arc and there he starts writing the story. The narrator gets righteous about his grammatical prowess and the author loses what's special about this piece.

So, while I did appreciate the confessional nature of the story, the emotional tug of watching a boy grow up through the language of his adopted homeland and the conflicts that brought at home. But, the flash needed to stay there, stay with that conflict and that interesting, complicated focus. That Flash.

Please take a look and comment back if you felt otherwise (or if you agreed) about this flash.

Amazon Fail

2009-04-16T01:33:00.000-07:00

I'm not really buying Amazon's obfuscations. Really, that sort of bamboozlement went out with Shrub and the rest of those bums.

There is a nice debunk of the Amazon Bunk Here

So, support Powell's - at least they're in my local economy ;)

Novellas / Short Novels

2009-04-11T22:08:00.000-07:00

Taking a tip from John Madera, whom I don't know, but who Matt Bell linked to over at Zoetrope, I'm listing a few novellas I like:

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The Secret Sharer - Joseph Conrad
Timbuktu - Paul Auster
The Mezzanine - Nicholson Baker
A Box of Matches - Nicholson Baker
Age of Grief - Jane Smiley

Review of Living in Reverse by Kate Blakinger

2009-04-10T12:12:00.000-07:00

Living in Reverse (published by Vestal Review and available online)

Kate Blakinger offers us an excellent example of a non-narrative flash. Virtually nothing happens in this piece. The only in-scene action we have is where the unnamed woman takes Polaroid photos of her children and names the one June. The rest of the action is rather non-specific in terms of when it occurs.

The title is curious as the woman is not, in fact, living in reverse but wants to live in reverse. The final paragraph is interesting in the wonderful description of a possible life lived in reverse. The life of one of the children, backed up to the moment prior to conception where the woman's lover moans her name.

The writing in this piece is quite strong and I was drawn in by the first sentence. However, I found the second sentence rather hard to swallow - it felt tacked on, somehow. Coming from the humor and accessibility of the first sentence to the stark, simple, and hard-to-believe second sentence was somewhat jarring and I almost stopped reading.

However, I found this to be an interesting flash showing me something about identity, desire, and the loss we sometimes incur as a result of progress.

I find Ms. Blakinger to be an interesting writer and I am curious to find more of her work in the future.

Review of: Skip, Patch, Eye, Brownie, Chalk by Randall Brown

2009-04-09T16:17:00.000-07:00

Cricket Online Review

Again, Randall shows a story, finds a story, dealing with the very act of writing and exploring. Moving from a prompt, Brown finds a story necessarily wrapped up in the prompt words. A story discovered in a chain of words which deals with youth, abandon, and with our place in the cosmos.

Wasted youth, wasted on an ancient battlefield. Running over again the patterns, the mistakes, the triumphs and defeats of their parents.

I will add this to my growing collection of favorite Randall Brown flash fictions. If you would like to find more of his work, please look to his webpage/blog: http://randalldouglasbrown.blogspot.com/

Brown's story has now inspired me to look to prompts to find my next story.

The Power of the Author

2009-03-29T11:24:00.000-07:00

Along for the Ride

2009-03-01T23:40:00.000-08:00

3:AM Magazine » He Was So Clean Otherwise

Straight away, Chinquee pulls me into this piece. I'm caught in a fast rhythm, moving through the market, to the "meat place" for sausage. That language really sells it, tells me that we're in a rather gross place. Add that to the title which puts up my antennae for some filth and there we are at the market with Carlos, in the life of Carlos. Stuck with Carlos.

One thing I would have to criticize in this piece is that this seems to be a day like any other. There doesn't seem to be anything special going on to make Carlos particularly vile on this day. Since this is a very narrative flash, I would like there to be some central event to set things off. And I wanna know why the veins in his forehead are throbbing - is he exhausted? angry?

Without some real defining elements I'm simply left looking at a woman who doesn't really like her boyfriend. She made a mistake and now she's with this rather gross guy. I don't find this to be really compelling fiction.

I usually enjoy Chinquee's writing. I admire her quite a bit, actually. However this flash just doesn't do it for me.

Please comment if you have another view.

Meg Pokrass: Needles

2009-02-15T16:56:00.000-08:00

Find Meg's latest at w i g l e a f : (very) short fiction.

I love a good Pokrass story. I also love saying that I love a good Pokrass story.

Ahem.

Here, Meg tells a tale about needles. Things that needle and fester, needles that release, and the actions we take which prolong pain; actions which numb ourselves to the needles of both pain and relief.

Pains from childhood, pains acquired as an adult. I love the bulbous man in the story who drives a Mercedes but who cuts his own hair. He nails it for me, shows me that the narrator is pepetuating a cycle, one more time around, taking her out of her element into a foreign world where she is a Martian, a willing martian on display for his camera.

Well, just go read it.

Flash a Thon

2009-02-09T16:51:00.000-08:00

This week in the Zoetrope Flash Fiction wing, there is a flash-a-thon going on. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, it works thusly: for a week, you attempt to post one flash per day. For each flash you post, the system requires that you review 5 flashes.

Sounds like a tall order, and it is. However, this is a great way to push yourself or to take up those abandoned fragments and see if something can be salvaged from them. That's what I did during my first flash-a-thon as a Zoe newbie last summer. Heck, I was just coming off my first residency for my MFA so I was a virtual newbie to (serious) writing.

So, if you can't catch up enough to participate this time around, do get a Zoetrope account and poke around. Then, when the next 'thon comes around, you'll be seasoned and ready.

Don't forget to buy a silly t-shirt at FlashFrenzy!!!

Dripping Humanity

2009-02-05T15:41:00.000-08:00

Fish: 'Swicks Rule!'

Kathy Fish has an uncanny ability to depict humanity in a very real, raw way. Her characters always seem to have a bit of grease on their nose and maybe a pimple on their neck. Not grotesque necessarily, though she does go there on occasion, but just very human.

Here, your heart just breaks for the narrator, sensing his tension and pain. He's being a good sport, surviving horrible heartbreak and loss. Just read it and let Fish show you.

I suggest reading this story and then heading to Google to find Fish's other works. You won't be disappointed if you do.

Don't forget to visit the main Wigleaf page, either.

Elvis by Hobie Anthony

2009-02-03T19:57:00.000-08:00

Elvis by J. Hobart Anthony

I hoped they would change the pen name, but no dice. No biggie, it's still me and it's my story.

I based the dog after my friend's dog Elvis who has all four legs but who is a lab. Their earlier dog, whose name currently escapes me, was in fact bitten by a rattlesnake and had one of his back legs removed. So, I combined the two dogs, removed a leg et voila: Elvis!

I'm considering a rewrite here. I'm conceiving a collection of stories set during Chicago's infamous heat wave of 1995.

Maybe this One by Randall Brown

2009-02-03T19:31:00.000-08:00

Word Riot

I read this one back when I first started really writing. I remember critiquing it and being somewhat of a jackass. Of course, it did need work as the piece was really a mess - written as though the author were on the way back from a Dead show with all the psychoactive implications of that.

But, it's neat to see the final form. Brown sets us up with a couple travelling and lost, a couple bound for nowhere. Free and easy out on the road until they run out of gas in a bilingual land. Love unrequited, but not by the 1st person narrator who is still yet left with something of a loss.

Check it out. Word Riot does good work, so be sure to check out the other flash pieces there.

Always Beautiful by Thomas Kearnes

2009-02-03T18:14:00.000-08:00

w i g l e a f : (very) short fiction

I've read Thomas Kearnes work for a while at Zoetrope and I find this piece to be somewhat of a shift. Not only is he writing about a woman, or with a woman in the story, but he's taking a more poetic turn, it seems.

This is a rather nice piece, it seems to me. Anyhow, take a look and then hit the Wigleaf main page to find their other wonderful treasures.

freezebubbles

2009-01-05T16:34:00.000-08:00

Links. That's about all I got until after Residency next week.

freezebubbles

I've just started 3 new flashes and I'd love to have one submittable by the end of the month if I don't explode first.

Funny Movie

2009-01-01T23:13:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I haven't been posting much. I've been busy with other stuff (silly job.) So, here's a funny video featuring a dog to tide you over. I found it at Andrew Sullivan's site (he finds some really good stuff!)

Write a flash about it or something.

Oh, if you're going to AWP in Chicago, Dogzplot is holding a flash fiction contest. I believe the prize is $200 and there's no entry fee! So you might as well enter. Say hello to them for me. I'll be surely soaking in Portland rain.

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION

2008-12-24T12:01:00.000-08:00

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION

HOLIDAY EDITION with an interesting and decidedly non-pc photo to welcome you.

Animaniacs - Twas the Night Before Christmas

2008-12-20T14:03:00.000-08:00

Father Christmas - The Kinks

2008-12-12T00:54:00.000-08:00

Updated Audio, Old Video (found at YouTube)

Funny Flash

2008-12-07T18:26:00.000-08:00

elimae

Tim Conley's, Pass the Mustard, cracks wise over a hotdog game. This almost reads like a joke, but it points to something more, something in the relationship of these two people. That thing might be funny, benign, or rather grave.

Read and laugh anyway!

Visitation

2008-12-07T16:14:00.000-08:00

Fiction: Out of Love by Randall Brown « Euphony

This is one of those portrait Flash pieces. Call it a character study. Watch the writer, too, he's in there as well.

Brown carries us through this Lucy's life like a Ghost of the Past - to be seasonal, like Marley's Ghost. We find the longing and heartbreak Lucy has endured and coped with. She's done some shocking things, but we find compassion for her.

Brown shows us in the first sentence that she is a person who deserves compassion. She's an "sympathetic character" in more sterile language. This is what I look for. This is what Algren showed me was possible: finding compassion for a person whose actions we might otherwise find objectionable.

Lucy is not a horrible person. She sleeps with her Math teacher in high school, an incident we might (legally) find the teacher culpable for, but Brown also shows what drives Lucy to that alley.

Then there's the writer, "writing her." Lucy finds him at the end, reads over his shoulder in an intimate scene so palpable I know Brown feels her breath and senses her heat. Lucy is now a ghost, visiting the lonely writer scribbling at his desk, a ghost on a visitation.

A dream made real in the writer's studio.

How Does My Story Taste?

2008-12-06T01:14:00.000-08:00

Cognitive Daily: Tasting words: A study of one of the rarest forms of synesthesia

Name Dropping

2008-12-05T18:33:00.000-08:00

The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor | Piano by Patrick Phillips

Patrick was instrumental in my deciding to pursue writing. He was gracious enough to do a complete critique of a story I'd sent to him, a story titled Transparencies. He raked it over the coals in a critique that was nearly as long as the story itself, but I was so pleased that he'd spent that much time with it that I decided to write more. I guess it was the few words of praise for a lyrical passage that really got me going.

So, check out Piano. It's a short and beautiful poem. I love the imagery so much it makes me drool. Get the podcast of it, too, I think Keillor does a great reading.

Not Flash, but Very Small

2008-12-03T21:09:00.000-08:00

Conflict

2008-12-02T01:58:00.000-08:00

elimae

The above link is to a Stefanie Freele Flash, Sisters. I'm tempted to call it a microfiction, as it's so darn small. I'll stick to Flash for the sake of consistency.

Sisters shows us serious conflict in 3 brief paragraphs. The older sister has some serious stuff boiling under the surface. The younger one may have done something wrong, the older may simply be jealous. The younger is a free-spirit, travelling around. The older is stuck at home with a baby and calls out seemingly for help, to be recognized with the 137 iterations of her own name in a text message.

Sisters is a wonderful multi-layered Flash which took my breath when I first read it. Now that I inspect it again, I find more stuff. I re-read and am intrigued all over again. The writing is so tightly wound that I know I would love to revisit this one over and over again.

Interview with a Hero

2008-11-30T23:11:00.000-08:00

Paul Auster | The A.V. Club

Auster has long been one of my literary heroes. He really turned me onto literature in a new way and it's unlikely that I'd be writing were it not for him.

Early on I tried to emulate him, but didn't quite hit the mark. Now, I'm just happy that I read so much of his work, especially his less fictional stuff which informed so much of my knowledge of literature and gave me a real approach to the craft.

I've found my own voice and am honing my vision. More importantly, I'm honing my craft and figuring out this whole "plot" and "narrative" thing.

Beginnings.

Middles.

Ends.

After reading this interview with Auster, I am left with the question of whether or not I want to tackle any issues from the "news." Topical, timely stuff. 9/11 or the past 8 years of misery imposed by the Loser in Chief.

I've spun off from certain themes which can relate to that Loser, but to hit that directly feels like biting off a LOT. It would be so important to hit every note perfectly, because interjecting recent historical facts bring up so many fresh feelings for the audience.

For instance, just bringing up 9/11 in conversation is still somewhat awkward, it seems. People don't want to talk about it. So, from that I conclude that feelings are still raw.

Cheney, et. al. Used 9/11 to their own ends. Thus, no real healing was able to occur. They used that horrible event to drive a wedge in the populace and that wedge remains, I fear.

Hmm... Perhaps this is why it needs to be written about. With compassion and with the aim of finding truth and finding the human lessons we had the possibility of learning but which were switched with the lessons of hatred and MORE violence.

I now need to find the time to read Delillo's Falling Man. Of course, Auster's A Man in the Dark is on my list as well.

Poetics

2008-11-26T11:22:00.000-08:00

Opinions: 'Sarah Palin for poet laureate' by Julian Gough | Prospect Magazine December 2008 issue 153

Ok, I admit it. I hate Sarah Palin.

Despise. Loathe. I seethe with rage upon hearing her awful, hateful, nasal voice. She is a pox on the earth.

She's a liar. She's a cheat. She's delusional.

But, she may just be a damn fine poet.

Dear Diary

2008-11-18T00:46:00.000-08:00

Today, I took a photo of Mt. Adams from the kitchen window of my workplace. Then, my Ukranian co-worker said I looked like Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (aka Lenin.)

Later, a client tried to eat a raw, frozen, turkey burger patty; he screamed bloody murder when I took his turkeycicle away from him

Gifts

2008-11-18T00:14:00.000-08:00

Well, I have been making sales over at Flash Frenzy! Coffee mugs and sweatshirts are flying out the door. Get yours now! Time's a wasting, people!

There's a new mug imprinted with a Meg Pokrass micro fiction piece, and also a new dark long-sleeved t-shirt. I take requests, too.

Fictionaut

2008-11-14T15:38:00.000-08:00

What exactly is a Fictionaut? | Jacket Copy | Los Angeles Times

Interesting development. I'm a HUGE fan of Zoetrope.com, but I'm all for more writers coming on the scene. More writers mean more readers, and vice versa. I wasn't the biggest reader prior to kicking my writing into gear, but I am now. It helps to be in school, but still...

Oh, I put up a new design on the black/blue long-sleeved t-shirt at Flash Frenzy. Check it out.

Things I Dig About Portland #1

2008-11-14T02:26:00.000-08:00

Laurelhurst Theater

Haven't been here yet, but any 2nd run movie house with the sort of line-up they currently have is all good in my book. I'm going to try and see Man on Wire tomorrow.

$3 for great cinema? YEAH!!!

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION: UNREQUITED - hobie anthony

2008-11-13T11:51:00.000-08:00

DOGZPLOT FLASH FICTION: UNREQUITED - hobie anthony

Well, this is my first publication. Not my first acceptance, as that'll publish next month at Wigleaf. Read and enjoy!

Tenderoni - A Stunning Image Seethes

2008-11-13T00:48:00.000-08:00

SmokeLong Quarterly—Issue Twenty-Two—"Tenderoni" by Kathy Fish

Kathy Fish's Tenderoni is a Flash which will stick with you. The image of the dead kitten in the rainy road will not soon leave you. The seething emotions of the characters (my read) compound the horror of that innocent life lost.

Read this one a few times. Let it seep in like rain through a Sears poncho. You'll be glad you did (or not.)

My Stuff

2008-11-12T22:48:00.001-08:00

New Design

2008-11-12T21:39:00.001-08:00

I just put up a new design at Flash Frenzy. It's only available on the baseball jersey. Let me know what you think. Fonts? Overall design?

I have a similar design with the "flash" in a more futuristic font, but I can't make up my mind.

Get 'Em now before Christmas!

Introducing... FLASH FRENZY

2008-11-07T23:21:00.000-08:00

I put up a little shop on CafePress. Flash Frenzy is there to satisfy all of your flash fiction accessory needs. Buttons, t-shirts, mugs, and sweatshirts. Let me know what you think of the designs, I'm making more which I'll rotate through. So, check back often - never know what you'll find!

What the Hell is That?

2008-11-07T21:01:00.001-08:00