Nothing Every Day

Thursday’s story was called Laid Off, and I wrote it because Thursday I was laid off. Yes, it’s true: I was released from my professional position, which I had held for three years. It is okay. People were released who had been with the company much longer.

As I told myself last time I was laid off, in 2006: at least now I will sleep. I think I will also blog about my unemployment. Here are the raw numbers for the past few days:

Number of workouts: 2

Dining room floors scrubbed: 1/3

Positions applied to: ? 7?

Cities applied to: 3, with suburbs

Percentage of enormous engagement gift chocolate bar eaten: maybe 3%

Pizzas made: 2

Books finished: ugh, 0

Craigslist furniture ads written: 1

Horses ridden in video game land: many

Clothes donated to a domestic violence shelter: three sets of pants, one extra-large sweater

Last time I was unemployed was a nice run of months leading up to graduate school, in which I kicked around Des Moines with my graveyard shifting friends and ate donuts and met Sarah for lunch everyday. Here in Orlando things are a bit lonelier. I’ve invented some dances to do at the cat, which seem to confound her, and I’ve made plans to try to finish another novel before I get hired again, which, I don’t know, would be both pleasant and worrying. I also plan to go down to the library and just sit around as long as possible, just staring at patrons, which will seem entirely normal for the environment.

Burritos and Books

Go check out Uncanny Valley‘s blog, where I introduce the Burritos and Books Project, Numbers 1, 2, and 3.

Dean

A story, “Dean,” is now up at matchbook! I am really excited about this one. Matchbook is a great venue for short fiction, and each piece is accompanied by thoughts on its creation.

I’m Starting to Think the Bears May be Pineapple

I just wrote about gummy bears on the Uncanny Valley blog. Sarah bought me a bag of bears dipped in white chocolate and they are delicious and then after too many they are disgusting.

Rumjhum Biswas interviewed me about the Story Every Day project and about very short fiction. Thank you, Rumjhum, for the interview.

Moonshot Moonshot

Hiatus time hiatus time.

After long streches of hiatus time I am almost ready to pour coal into the burning flame of my genius and use the resulting energy to power a return to the Story Every Day project. I stopped writing a daily piece a few months back, when I was just sort of eezing into the ooze of my novel edits, and now I’m not finished with them but I’m finished enough that I can see my computer screen without panicking. It’s going well enough that I’m not worried the whole novel will scrap itself, I mean. A few dismal moments passed in which I hacked at angular dialogue and thin events and thought, Dmn. But it’s okay. It’s okay. The book will be okay and I will write more daily stories about eating other people.

Update: I’m typing this on Sarah’s computer, because guests are asleep in what passes for the office. I’m not used to her keyboard and accidentally typed dmn instead of damn, above. And I love it! Let’s go with this spelling from now on.

The next story, #150, will appear Monday, and will be followed by fifty more.

Update: It will probably be called “Arm Hole Dice!” What a great and awful title!

Maybe The Dice Came out Warm and Damp Each Time

Last night my cat woke me by vomiting on the bed. Then later I dreamt that my parents’ house, back in Iowa, was surrounded by zombies. The zombies wanted to, before they ate us, freestyle rap at us, and they did so in their thick, slow zombie voices. Many of them were missing parts of their faces. Finally I was like, this is too ridiculous, I’m done here, and I woke myself up.

Last night I attended Speakeasy again (you can read a past entry about it here). The night’s theme was religion, and I read stories number 126 and 147. I also said two sentences about how my father used to be a Baptist preacher. J. Bradley, Gene Albamonte, Ryan Rivas, and Tod Caviness all performed solid pieces. I drank a beer with a  turtle on the label.

I also, last night, had an idea for Story Every Day #150. It came to me in the fleeting weird anesthesia that precedes sleep, and I thought, No, no, no more of that until I finish this novel. But I loved the idea and didn’t want to forget it, so I emailed key words to myself: “arm hole dice.” Now the details are either lost or were never really in my head to start with. I think there was a father with a hole in his arm, and in that hole he kept dice to take out and roll when decisions needed making. Or maybe he rolled them as a tic, when bored or thinking, rattling them over the dining room table until somebody came in from the living room to ask him to please stop. Maybe the arm was wooden and he kept an assortment of things in it. Or maybe the arm was real and the dice came out warm and damp each time.

Freedom v. Kapitoil

Over at the Uncanny Valley blog, I wrote about the first match in The Morning News‘s Tournament of Books. If you can identify the source of the illustration, I will write a six-line poem featuring you and the mythical creature of your choice.

Summaries, Queries

Last night I received a generous personal rejection from an agent, responding to a query for my last novel, All Electric, which I’ve sent to a couple places. She felt it was too gritty for her taste, which in a way is good news; at least it wasn’t too boring, or quiet, or contemplative. Anyway, I am happy she gave it enough consideration to come to her conclusion.

The rj got me thinking about writing summaries, and of how goddamned difficult it is to convey the full scope of a piece in a very small space which sort of requires attention to plot over characterization, etc., and I wrote a quick post over at the Uncanny Valley blog. The summary is this: Man, it is hard to balance everything in one or two paragraphs. The bonus parts are these: links to the Believer Book Award shortlist and a post Mike Meginnis wrote about summarizing aboutness in literature.

Awwwwwwwwwwwww Sssssss

The new issue of Bluestem Magazine is up and it includes my essay “We Were Chased Through the City by a Blonde Woman.” I’m so excited I almost swore in the title of this post! I’m so excited I keep swearing at everyone who walks in the door. People keep poking in with arms thick with books and I swear and at one I splashed my coffee and at another I threw a fistful of papers and rubber bands and they all stare and turn faster than you would expect.

I’m not really that excited of course but I am pretty excited. This issue looks good. There are many names I don’t recognize, which isn’t saying a lot, but is interesting. I did recognize Len Kuntz’s name from Necessary Fiction and started reading his story “Baby, Baby, Baby.” I’m only like two lines in so no solid opinions yet, but the language is tight and compelling. Update: Also enjoyed Ani Smith’s short story, “Pastel Comedown.”

“We Were Chased…” is a piece of nonfiction, which I rarely write. As the name implies, it is about being chased through the city by a blonde woman. The city is Orlando.

Elizabeth Alexander

As part of her Women Who Write series, Tracy Bowling wrote a quick post about Elizabeth Alexander over at Uncanny Valley. This is sort of coincidental, because I only saw the post when taking a break from writing about Elizabeth Alexander! Maybe all those nachos I ate for lunch are syncing my mind with the universe’s central threading or something.

Alexander has written a few different things, including “On Anzio Beach,” one of the stories highlighted in a review of Monkey Bicycle 7 that I’ll be sending soon to Prick of the Spindle. There’s another really fine story in that issue that I write about in the review, so if you’re, you know, curious, be sure to click that link when I put it up.