Who’ll get me a book I ain’t read….

Oh, where to begin? It seems like the publishing market — or, at least, the small press and indie lit markets — like to work in tandem, with everyone publishing stuff all at once. It’s like our literary periods are in synch or something. I say this because a lot of my friends and acquaintancesContinue reading “Who’ll get me a book I ain’t read….”

A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo 2011, week 2

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”

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”

More notes on my NaNoWriMo table of contents

On Monday, I was explaining the concept of NaNoWriMo to my students, and they asked what I was writing. So I told them about my book idea and the “table of contents” I’d come up with, and one student asked me, “How do you write from a title?” But before I could answer, another studentContinue reading “More notes on my NaNoWriMo table of contents”

A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo table of contents

In just a few days, National Novel Writing Month will begin. So of course I’m gearing up. I have a lot of explaining to do about what you’ll see on the “notebook page” below, but I don’t want to front-load all this. Better just to give you the list, and then I’ll explain everything below. ToContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo table of contents”

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)”

Why Poet Hound and Hosho McCreesh rule the Web today

A nice surprise today: I just found out I won a drawing for a copy of Hosho McCreesh’s poetry collection For All These Wretched, Beautiful, & Insignificant Things So Uselessly & Carelessly Destroyed. The drawing took place over at Poet Hound, who are awesome people in general but have become extra-special to me now that they’reContinue reading “Why Poet Hound and Hosho McCreesh rule the Web today”

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”

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)”