This has been a strange week. If you’re following my daily word counts, you’ll see a lot of spikes and dips: on days I teach, my word count plummets, sometimes into the mere hundreds; then, on days I don’t teach, it leaps up as I try to make up for lost time. So far I’mContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo 2011, week 2”
Category Archives: fiction
The sounds of my NaNoWriMo
Long-time readers know I love having music while I write. Sometimes it’s just background noise, but often it’s a specific set of songs, and in the case of whole books (like my story collection or two of my novel projects), it’s full-blown soundtracks, with each song selected and organized to reflect what’s going on inContinue reading “The sounds of my NaNoWriMo”
A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo 2011, week 1
I’m on day four of National Novel Writing Month. And it’s been a good but strange few days, because while I have a table of contents already and a relatively solid idea of what I’m writing about — the apocalypse, and, now that I’ve done some quick-and-dirty background research and settled some things in my head,Continue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo 2011, week 1”
Writer’s Notebook: Coffee story (with apologies to Orhan Pamuk)
This is not done. It’s probably not even good. But it’s been an interesting exercise. But I’ll explain more later. I can tell you only a little about the man and woman before they entered my shop. They both were new, you see, and so much of what I know about them I know onlyContinue reading “Writer’s Notebook: Coffee story (with apologies to Orhan Pamuk)”
Writer’s Notebook: Holiday story
I’m sort of semi-cheating this week. I am working on an exercise, but the story I’m working on will eventually show up online as a story, so I’d rather keep it under wraps while I work on it. Still, I want to offer something along the same lines here, so behold, a quick excerpt fromContinue reading “Writer’s Notebook: Holiday story”
New fiction from Riley Michael Parker
So, Portland author and generally cool guy (you should see the reception this dude gets at readings) Riley Michael Parker has released his novel, A Plague of Wolves and Women. And seriously, that should be all you need to rush out and buy the book, because with a title like that, how could you goContinue reading “New fiction from Riley Michael Parker”
Faulkner-Wisdom 2011
Last year, I was thrilled to find myself in a couple of finalist lists for the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society’s Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Competition. So this year, I took a chance and sent in a new story, “Curl Up and Burn.” I’ve been waiting all summer for the results, and now I’m thrilled once againContinue reading “Faulkner-Wisdom 2011”
New fiction from Darin Bradley
My friend Darin Bradley, whom I interviewed a little more than a year ago about his (very cool!) novel Noise, has a piece of experimental fiction in the inaugural issue of Coffinmouth. It’s pretty cool — the story and the `zine. Go read it.
11-11: Western review (Elmer Kelton)
Wow! I haven’t posted an 11-11 reading update since March! But I have been reading from the list, gang, and I’ll be playing catch-up in my reviews every few weeks from now on. And since I just finished a Western novel, Elmer Kelton‘s The Time it Never Rained, I might as well start with it:Continue reading “11-11: Western review (Elmer Kelton)”
New publication
Remember when I was sitting in at Ryan Werner’s Our Band Could Be Your Lit project? Well, as of today, one of the stories from those sessions appears in issue 24 of the excellent Jersey Devil Press. The story is “Colony.” And I’m super-psyched, because JDP is awesome. You can also download a .pdf ofContinue reading “New publication”
Samuel Snoek-Brown 