\m/ New Hotness \m/

Sara Rauch takes on familiar territory in her short story collection What Shines from It, out next month from Alternating Current Press, and also unfamiliar territory.

For the most part, Rauch’s stories read like Raymond Carver’s—two people intimately involved in one another’s lives; the deep tension that can bring those two people at odds, and how both men and women handle such interactions.

What Rauch brings that is new is a view from more than just the husband and wife relationship. In her stories there are female couples who are trying to figure out where they stand on having a second child, complete strangers spending an afternoon trying like hell to connect to something, as well as a couple who are faced with a decision about a pregnancy that becomes just as complicated as those kinds of decisions can become.

Creating life, creating cohesion in life, connections, missed connections. It’s all here. And it’s handled with the deft hand of an author confident in her voice and what she has to say.

In “Addition,” a story that follows Alex and Rose and they deal with daily pressures while not dealing with a big decision: whether or not to have another child. Rose delivered their first and, due to circumstance, Alex would need to deliver their second. Alex’s failure to commit to one or the other becomes a point of contention. Through Rose, Rauch poses a question that speaks to anyone struggling to sync up to another human being as Rose, near her wit’s end, says, “At some point, not making a decision is a decision.”

And herein we have that familiar territory Carver, Updike, Cheever, and others explored during the heyday of kitchen sink realism, but with a contemporary concern and a richer, more elaborate landscape. Throughout What Shines from It Rauch expertly lays out this landscape as well as any author writing today.

In another story, “Slice,” we have a front row seat for the slow dying of a relationship that had hardly had time to get started. Emmeline and Sebastian. The couple. Names are important in this story. The entire rise and fall of their strained relationship is on display. It is in this story that Rauch shows how well she can stir nuance to create heartbreak on the page. During a phone call, we get an incredibly insightful moment in which Emmeline recognizes one of the first signs. She’s making plans with Sebastian.

“Can I come over? and I said, Of course, but I have to finish the buttons tonight, and he said, I won’t stay. What time? and I said, Seven. We hung up, and I stared at my phone, trying to remember when we’d last made such specific plans for no reason.”

The formality feels like the first tiny heartbreak on the road to a much more significant moment for both of them.

What Shines from It, which borrows its title from a line in Anne Carson’s The Beauty of the Husband, is a collection of razor sharp stories from a writer with something important to say. And what she says certainly does shine.

February 16, 2020 0 comment

\m/ New Hotness \m/Fiction Hot Damn Spotlight

IN THE DARK

written by Sheldon Lee Compton

by FRANK REARDON

She stood underneath the green plant hanging in the corner of the living room. I could see she was shaking inside her skin. Vibrations that reached out from her sickly body and entered my brain like one of those long ago LSD trips I had taken in the 90s. “You don’t have to pay child support today,” she said, “if you buy me a bottle of vodka and hang out with me.” I could see that she was lonely. She was always lonely, and making up stories to keep me hanging around.

Against my better judgment I reached inside my black suit jacket and pulled out a bottle of three dollar vodka I had purchased earlier. Like every other time I knew it would come down to the vodka. From across the room her vomit filled eyes lit up like a child seeing a birthday cake full of candles. I then reached into my wallet and pulled out a check I had written for a few hundred dollars. I leaned over to her coffee table and placed the bottle on top of the check. She stood there waiting on my permission. I pointed to the bottle and she went straight for it. She didn’t even bother to look at how much I wrote the check out for. She unscrewed the top of the bottle and took a swig. In an instant she was fine. Shakes gone. Esophagus, stomach, and brain, a happy family again.

She walked past me and into the kitchen where I heard her go into the fridge and fill a glass. She returned with her fruit juice cocktail chaser. “Tommy,” she said, “how about you go across the street and get yourself some of those beers you like? We can hang out, play some music, just like old times?”

The booze had destroyed her looks. It had aged her. Turned her fifteen to twenty years older than she was. “We can play cards if you want,” she said. She didn’t take the time to blow dry her hair anymore. Her clothes had holes in them and her teeth had gone from straight to crooked. I knew she was somewhere in there, but it wasn’t in me to look for her. I had given up looking soon after the divorce.

“Lucy, I can’t stay here,” I told her. “You know I have people to see. It’s my job.”

“They’ll still be there tomorrow, just stay. We can drink and talk about anything you like.”

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I have obligations.”

She took another hit from the vodka bottle and chased it with the fruit juice. “Fine. Go see your stupid little people.” I let it slide. I knew it was the booze and bipolar talking.

I nodded my head yes and turned around to leave. Then, like always, she let me have it. “Last night I sucked one of my co-worker’s cocks. It was thirteen inches long. Hard as a rock and he stuffed it in my mouth real good.” I didn’t want to take the bait and ask, Why do you do this to yourself? I grabbed the knob of the door. “In fact,” she uttered, “I’ve decided to make cock sucking my new fetish.” I nodded again, opened the door, and left her inside with her booze, her music, her tall tales about big cocks.

I had driven a slow sixteen miles from Lucy’s home in Max when it dawned on me that I was running late to see a man in the hospital. He had been dying of lung cancer and requested my presence. He had asked me to sit with him because he had no one. I hit the gas and headed for Trinity Hospital as fast I could.

Cancer wards are some of the worst places to be. Over the years I have seen it all: babies pulled dead from a screaming mother. Soldiers back from the war, their minds and bodies ruined. Prison cells with men and women who had murdered people in cold blood. You name it, I’d been there, but nothing rips me to the core quite like a cancer ward in a hospital. There’s little hope, and if you see hope in someone’s face it’s usually to mask the fear that’s deep in their souls. Boris Ivanov was such a man.

“Father Tom,” he shouted, pulling himself up in bed.

“How are you feeling today, Boris?”

I hated asking questions like “how are you doing?” What are they going to say to me? “I’m fucking dying? The morphine’s wonderful? Have you tried the hospital’s peach cobbler?”

“Not too bad, Father. Not too bad.”

I took a seat in the green chair, kitty corner from his bed.

“That’s nice to hear,” I told him. I slightly grabbed his knee like he was an old buddy of mine, but he wasn’t. I hardly knew the man until he got sick. He sat in the back of the church every Sunday. He was a loner. He didn’t speak to anyone. He didn’t attend any education classes. He wasn’t involved. I can’t blame him though, I lost my faith years ago. I have been in the dark for years, shortly after I had taken my vows, really. It had been some fifteen years since I had heard God’s voice speak to me.

“Father can I ask you something?”

“Have at it Boris.”

“You’re not from here are you?”

“Minot?”

“Yeah, you’re not from here.”

“No. I grew up in Bangor, Maine. Out in New England.”

“I knew it!” He shouted, “I was talking to Addie, that nurse who comes in here,” he leaned in to tell me a secret. “Between you and me, Father, wow, what a looker.” I halfheartedly smiled and he continued. “I said to her, that Father Tom, the one who visits me. He ain’t from here. She said you were from here, but I said there’s no way, and you know what? I was right.”

His victory tickled him something fierce, and in a strange way it let my faith pass through me like a brief wind. It returned for a second, then it was gone, again. Light to dark in a half-of-a-second.

“I have another question for you, Father,” he said underneath a hacking cough.

“Maybe you shouldn’t talk, Boris, just relax. I’ll sit here with you and pray if you’d like?”

“Later on…later on,” he said. “All I do is sit here in silence wondering when the Good Lord is going to take me home.”

I agreed to let him ask his question.

“You have a daughter, no?”

“I do. Her name’s Rebekah.”

“How does a priest come to have a daughter? I thought all you guys had to keep it in your pants?”

“I used to be a Lutheran Preacher years back, but I lost my way. When I discovered the Catholic faith I converted. And since I was married and with a child I was allowed to become a Catholic priest with a family.”

“They do that?” he asked with a blood soaked tissue close to his shocked face.

“It’s rare, but it happens.”

“You are divorced, too?”

“Even more rare, but that too also happens.”

“Why are you divorced?”

I wanted to open up to this man I hardly knew. I wanted to tell him about Lucy’s cheating, and the booze, and millions of big dicks floating all around her head. I wanted to tell him about her violent outbursts and how she chased me with a knife. I wanted Boris to hear it all. I wanted him to be my priest, but I kept it locked inside a place of hurt, loss, and regret.

“That’s a story for another time, Boris.”

He wasn’t pleased with my response.

“Mr. Ivanov,” a nurse said. “Time for your treatment!”

“Saved!” I thought. And he wasn’t wrong, the nurse was a real looker.

I leaned over Boris and made the sign of the cross. I blessed him with a simple prayer and left a small card with a photo of Saint Padre Pio on it. He looked on the back and saw the prayer of intercession. It pleased him and with my help he got into the wheelchair the nurse had brought.

The rest of my afternoon went like all other afternoons: I blessed a house for a woman who thought she had evil spirits living in her home. I received a few texts from Lucy about big cocks in her mouth. I had tea with a group of elderly women who viewed me as some kind of hunky B-movie celebrity. And I prayed The Liturgy of The Hours with my two fellow priests from Saint Michael’s, Father Greg and Father Brian. They’d been hardcore about the God life since birth. I hid my doubts from them best as I could.

It was my free night, so I drove to the North side of town where Mindy lived. She cooked us a crock pot soup, then we drank beer, and made love several times. I liked Mindy the moment I met her. She was curvy with an enormous smile that excited me. She was also an amazing artist. She painted these pictures of horses that punched and tickled me. Not some stupid horse standing next to some foolish barn, but horses in places they shouldn’t be. Like a horse on a surfboard. Or a horse floating around in the middle of a colorful galaxy. Or my favorite, one horse mounting another horse in a Buddhist Temple. Whenever I looked at it, I thought that’s where I’d like to mount Mindy, in some far away temple in Thailand or Japan.

“You know we shouldn’t be doing this, Tom,” she said, but it went in one ear and out the other because she said it every time after we had sex.

I decided to change the subject.

“I have some free time how about we go on a trip somewhere?”

“Where are we gonna go?” she asked.

“I dunno, some place warm. It doesn’t matter. I’m tired of the negative temps.”

“That sounds wonderful, but you know you can’t. You’re needed here. Besides what’s everyone going to think if you’re not at Saint Michael’s and neither am I? And what will they think if we return to church at the same time? We can’t do it, Tom. What we’re doing now is bad enough. It has to remain a secret.”

“I could leave all of that religious nonsense behind,” I told her. “We could escape together. Live together, and be together.”

She looked at me like I committed a crime.

“Don’t be a fool, Tom. You know your faith is what attracted me in the first place. That deep seeded faith you hold in your heart. You’re a saint. you know?”

“A saint?” I asked her. “Don’t make me laugh.”

“You are, but you don’t see it. You make people happy. You help people during the hardest times of their lives. You don’t get involved in the politics that surround faith. Those politics are there to make people forget their faith, but you don’t fall into those traps.”

“Thank you, I guess.”

What turned her on was the fact that I was a priest. Would she still want me if I was Tom the Garbage Man? My thoughts didn’t matter anymore when she rolled over and tugged at me to kiss her.

I knew she was right about it all. Once I was granted a divorce, I had to agree to become celibate, but what was I supposed to do? God hadn’t said as much as “hello” to me in fifteen years. Was I supposed to live the same life as Father Greg and Father Brian? A couple of nerds who lived their lives to pack the church basement with old ladies so they could play bingo? No! All I wanted was Mindy, in between the sheets with me, but all she wanted was to screw a priest’s brains out in secret. I had no choice but to settle and be a part of her fantasy. My whole job was to settle for less. I wasn’t allowed to argue. I had to suck it up and agree with everyone’s desires and wants and needs for how I was supposed to live my life. She turned out the lights, the room went dark, and I let her know that she would always be in control when I returned the kiss.

Soon after I received a text from Lucy about some huge balls she tugged on about an hour ago, I was in my simple room in the rectory. It wasn’t much to look at: a twin bed, a dresser, and a bookcase resting on a dark yellow rug. I removed my copy of The Lives of the Saints from the bookcase. Maybe a little reading in bed about miracles and good deeds and people helping others would restore me. I made it two paragraphs into the life of Saint Patrick before I closed the book and returned it to its spot. I opened my curtains and looked out the window into downtown Minot. I watched the snow fall on cars, their windows icing over. I watched a man kiss a woman outside of a bar. They pulled apart and looked glowingly at one another. They made me think about Mindy. Her freckles, her pale white skin. I was aroused and touched myself, then I stopped when I saw an old man outside in the cold looking up at me. I wasn’t sure if he noticed my evil deed at the window or not. He kept walking and vanished into the night.

Down the hall I heard Gregorian Chants coming from Father Greg’s room. In my mind the words, “what a loser,” floated around, but I changed them to, “I remember when that music was popular when I was a young man in college.” My friends and I would take MDMA and we’d listen to the popular music of the day at Gay Peter’s house. I never liked calling him ‘Gay Peter,’ but he was in fact gay, and all my friends called him ‘Gay Peter,’ because he introduced himself as such. Some of that music was Gregorian chants mixed with ambient trance-like sounds. I still had no idea what to call it. I was a Pink Floyd fan, but we all danced to it for hours. Some of us vanished and had sex. Didn’t matter if it was straight sex, or gay sex, or lesbian sex, or an orgy. We did what we did. We were loose and experimental. Back then we felt like we owned the world, that we could change it one song, one sexual position, one doped up philosophy at a time. I missed being that way. When did I become so rigid? So cold? Why did the passion for being alive leave me? I held onto the past a little longer, then I let it go like it never happened. I pulled on some shorts and decided to go see what Father Greg was up to.

“Come on in,” a happy voice said after I knocked.

I entered and found Father Greg writing down personal notes from the bible. I was not to find an orgy on this night. He was wearing his Notre Dame college sweatshirt, and his dark rimmed glasses, the same kind hip young kids wore in Starbucks. You’d think everyone had lost their sight. Me, with coffee in hand, forty-three years old, and apparently the only person in Minot with 20/20 vision.

“How are you, Father Tom?”

“Can we stick to Tom and Greg? It’s just the two of us.”

“Good idea,” he said with a nerdy smile on his face.

I walked around his room. It was much the same as mine, except he had more religious art on the walls. My room had one simple crucifix hanging above the bed. “You ever go dark?” I asked.

“How do you mean?” He asked me.

“Do you feel Christ with you at all times?” I replied, looking at the spines of his religious books.

“Always, Tom. Always! Jesus hasn’t left me since I was a boy…Do you have doubts, Tom?”

“Not doubts, really,” I said. “More like questions that I’ve waited years to be answered.”

“Maybe I can help?”

“I don’t think so, Greg.”

“Sometimes priests will have a crisis of faith. Not that I ever experienced it before, but I’m willing to listen and help.”

It had always been Father Greg’s weakness, his overly excited response to helping others at all times. He could have the worst case of diarrhea, ass literally exploding all over the room, and he’d go out of his way to save a snail from the wheel of a car. “Every living creature is of God,” he’d say. And I have to admit, I enjoyed his zest for life and humanity, but sometimes you have to be closed off. You have to depend on yourself. You have to do what you need to do to get through the thick muck of the years. Open hearts often lead to unwanted suffering.

“I was just curious what you were up to, Greg, never mind.”

“Are you sure, Tom?”

“I’m sure,” I told him as I turned to leave, “ And Greg?”

“Yes?”

“For what it’s worth, thanks anyways.”

Me thanking him for doing pretty much nothing pleased him a great deal. I closed the door and left him to his studies.

I returned to my room and got on my knees in front of the simple iron Jesus hanging from the cross above my bed. I folded my hands. “Jesus,” I asked, “what do you want or need from me? And why am I so filled to the brim with questions and no appetite to do what you called me to do?” I sat there in the dark quiets of my room as if he was going to reply, there wasn’t one. All I could hear was my breath and the snow plow on the street. I didn’t know what I should do next.

I continued my simple prayer and question session for a few more moments until my phone lit up the room. I walked over hoping it was Mindy. While I had been in Greg’s room I had received many texts. One from Rebekah. One from Mindy. Both pleased me. Rebekah was in Utah hiking with friends. She sent me a rock climbing photo. It moved me to the point of joy to see my daughter so happy and daring like I used to be. Mindy sent me a photo of her in a new green bra. It excited me and I saved it for later. Then there were numerous texts from Lucy. The first few were about the white cocks, black cocks, Mexican cocks, hippie cocks, that she had sucked off. Then there was an apology text. She asked me to come on over so we could talk. When I didn’t respond she continued about random cocks. I asked Jesus to help her with her disease, and I decided to go to bed.

It was nearly eight-thirty when I finished Wednesday morning Mass and I had to open for office hours. I didn’t care for office hours. People would come to complain about what they didn’t like: their kids, or wives, or husbands. They came to ask me if I was behind the President, or for or against abortion. Not many came in to talk about faith, compassion, kindness, or forgiveness. It was always a complaint of some kind. I couldn’t blame them because I’m full of complaints, but they’re my complaints and I keep them to myself. I don’t want to deal with their bullshit, but I have to. I get a roof over my head, decent health insurance, a simple Honda Accord, and my burial plot is 100% free. I guess the trade-off is worth it, but then I think, is it? I can’t help but think “What happened to the Christianity I learned about? When did it become us vs them, especially now in our own country?” Every day I look around the church and see pews full of people with so much hate in the hearts that it leaks out from their eyes.

Thou Shall Not Kill, doesn’t apply to only unborn babies in the womb, but they think it does. It also applies to our soldiers in war, and not just our soldiers but the soldiers from other countries also in the fight. It applies to people sitting in prison cells awaiting the death penalty. We drone-strike entire villages, killing children, fathers, mothers, entire families, to get one guy. I never could understand it.

Our Bishop even backs the senseless world we live in. Just last month he came to Saint Michael’s for a meeting. He had dinner with me and Father Greg and Father Brian. He went on about the children in cages at the border. How he supported the President, because it’s all about American pride. And he said it all while jamming chunks of rare roast beef into his mouth. Blood oozed out the corners. He didn’t even bother to wipe the bloody mouth river from his face as he tried to rationalize babies being separated from their mothers and fathers. I tried to switch the conversation to our local Saint Vincent De Paul, how they’ve handed out hundreds of meals to the poor and needy. I told him about our winter coat drive and how we collected a bunch of coats from local merchants to hand out to families who couldn’t afford them. I wanted him to know about the Good Works we had done and continue to do. He looked at me like I had eleven heads, like he wanted to say, “How dare you interrupt me with that insignificant do-gooder B.S.? I’m talking about God and country, mother-fucker!” He continued to stare right through me, until I shut up about it. I couldn’t finish my meal. I was sick to my stomach for the rest of the night. Later on, I prayed to Jesus before bed and asked for guidance. Like always, none came.

I had enough of everyone and everything so I traded nights off with Father Greg. He was more than willing to have tea with the old ladies’ group. He didn’t mind being treated like a celebrity if he was allowed to tell them all about The Faith. I needed a drink, something strong. I hit up the Lamplighter and upon entering I was greeted by drunks, gamblers, and sports fans. Everyone knew who I was in one way or another. I was dressed in my New England Patriots’ hoodie, Pats’ ball cap, and jeans. I thought they’d have no idea who I was, but they knew. I ordered a whiskey on the rocks and tried my best to sit in the far corners of the bar, away from everyone because I knew sooner or later the alcoholics would ask me questions about faith and morality. They’d look for me to tell them it was okay to be wasted if they had a good enough reason, but I didn’t care if they were wasted or not, I just wanted to be left alone with my thoughts.

Half-way through my drink Mindy texted me. I told her I was at the Lamplighter and she should come out, too. She reminded me that we couldn’t be seen in public together, but she had something special to send me. I drank the rest of drink, ordered a tall beer, and the text arrived. It was a photo of her. She was wearing a light blue corset and garters and stockings to match. Her thick red hair fell on her shoulders and touched the tips of the lace. Underneath the photo was an emoji kiss with the words: “I bought this for next time.” I didn’t even respond nor save the photo. I knew in my ragged soul it would never be. Texts from Lucy started to show up. I didn’t even bother to read them. Her house could’ve been on fire and I didn’t care. I was tired of her bullshit, too. I motioned to the bartender for a shot. He knew I wanted Jim Beam.

A voice rang out, “Father’s getting drunk tonight!”

I couldn’t see who it was, but I replied, “Go fuck yourself!”

There was this silence. This incredible, on-going silence. Like I wasn’t allowed to feel pain, or regret, or loss. As if me putting them back meant I wasn’t who I said I was.

“Well fucking excuse me,” the voice replied.

The President was on the television giving some speech about some bullshit, but they all bought into it. I took the shot and downed the beer, and ordered another beer.

“And fuck that asshole on the television, too!”

“Listen, Father,” a six-foot bearded man to my right said. “I know you’re a priest and all. And God knows I have all the respect in the world for him. But in my mind it’s all about God and Country! And I don’t care who you are, you don’t go disrespecting my President,” he went on with a finger pointed right at me, “and your president, too.” Everyone to his right and throughout the bar agreed with him.

“He’s a hypocrite!” I shouted. “He separates families. He doesn’t give a damn about women, or the poor, or the sick, or the mentally ill. He claims to be Christian, but he’s not. You name me one Christian thing he’s done, truly done, and I’ll buy everyone a round.”

They thought about it for a second, hard and long. I could hear the one collective brain cell they all shared grinding away in the air. It was painful for me to watch. “And you know what else?” I asked. “Fuck the God and Country speech, save it. God doesn’t choose sides. He doesn’t pick countries. To say he’s only loyal to one country goes against everything God stands for.”

Several tall men, also with beards, walked over to me. They surrounded me. “Look, I don’t care that you’re a priest,” the one in the middle said to me. “You say one more bad thing about this country and I’ll personally throw your ass out the door.” He took a sip of his beer and slammed his mug down. “Not one more negative word about my country and my president.”

I stood up, a little more off balance than I thought I’d be and made the sign of the cross over the three of them. They looked at me funny. “I’ll pray for the three of you tonight,” I told them. It seemed to please them enough that they started to walk away from me and the smell of the stale popcorn machine behind me. “I’ll pray that the three of you will stop being in denial and be who you truly are.”

“What’s he mean, Rick?” One bearded man said to the guy in the middle. Truth be told I couldn’t tell any of them apart. They looked the same.

“I think he’s calling us faggots,” Rick replied. “You calling us faggots?”

“I didn’t say that,” I said, “But now that you mention it…”

Before I could finish my sentence I found myself being dragged out of the bar. People clapped and hollered. One man yelled “Kick his ass, Ricky!” They tossed me out the door and I landed on the icy parking lot. It hurt so bad that I looked up at the winter moon and looked for God inside the craters. I hoped he’d save me from what I knew was coming next, but he didn’t. One boot after the other, one punch after the other hit my body with perfect movie-like sound. I was then dragged to the outside of my car and kicked some more. My skin ached, my bones screamed out.

They left me there and went back into the bar. For a moment I could hear the drunkards cheering on the victorious warriors who beat me up, then the cheers faded. I saw a woman push her way through the door and watched her light up a cigarette. Her breath in between exhales matched the smoke in the frigid air. She pretended I wasn’t there, but she knew I was. She was like the rest of them. I picked myself up and got into my car. I looked in the mirror and gazed at the welts that would hurt a lot more tomorrow. “All that punishment for telling the truth,” I said to someone, but no one.

I went to the liquor store and bought a pint of whiskey. The clerk took my money and looked at the bloody bit of tissue I had jammed into my left nostril. “You okay, Father?” The young man said, handing me the bottle he’d put inside a little brown bag. “You look real messed up.” I thanked him for noticing.

I drove myself and the bottle close to the rectory. I didn’t want to go inside. I didn’t want Greg and Brian see me beat up and half-drunk with a bottle of booze in my hand. They’d call the police and I didn’t want that kind of trouble. I decided to go have my drink inside the church. I locked the doors behind me and walked around the silent and dimly lit hallways.

Outside the sanctuary I noticed things I never cared to look at before: photos of me unloading food trucks for the soup kitchen with a big goofy smile on my face. Photos of me at the softball tournament for M.S. I struck out every time I got up to bat, but I looked happy to be doing so for some odd reason. Photos of me baptizing children, or photos of me preparing food for the soup kitchen. Photos of me eating with the poor because they’d been my friends. Photos of me standing with them in front of a Christmas tree. And I looked happy in every single photo. How come I never noticed any of the photos before? How come I don’t remember feeling like that? I took a massive gulp from the bottle and noticed a photo of only me. A head shot that looked like a high school year book photo. Underneath it, on a little gold plaque, it read: Father Thomas O’Reilly, Pastor of Saint Michael’s Catholic Church, Minot, North Dakota. I cringed at the ridiculous smile I was making in the photo and made a mental note to have that photo removed.

I staggered into the sanctuary. It was quiet and dark. In the back, above the alter, I could see plain as day the giant crucified Jesus hanging from the wooden cross. I took a seat in the front pew and enjoyed the feeling of only me. I took several more swigs from the bottle and put it down next to me when my stomach began to churn. I didn’t want to pray or think about anything or anyone. My heart ached for what once was, for who I once was. My back hurt from carrying around my heavy burdens for decades. A feeling of shame blanketed me. The pain from the beating I took started to set in. I didn’t want to carry any of it with me anymore. It hurt. Everything hurt. I looked up at the giant wooden Jesus I had stood under so many times before, but never gave much thought to. Life had turned from joy into a series of complaints, grievances, and anger. The same day over and over again. I wanted to leap out of myself and purge everything clean, but I couldn’t. I was who I was. I had become what I despised, what I wanted to cleanse from the earth. I was both loved and hated for it. There was no going back. I had set the series of events that are my life in motion the moment I gave myself over to the dark quiets that I have been forever trapped in. No one listened to me because I was the one who had to always be ready to listen them.

The wooden agony on Jesus’ face gazed down on me. The giant tree that some person used to carve the hanging statue felt like it was going to fall down on me and pulverize me into the ground. The weight of it all has become so unbearable, so other worldly, then so realistic, that I had nothing left inside of me to give to myself or anyone. All I wanted to do was climb up there, put my arms around the wooden statue, and ask, “Why don’t you love me?”

***

FRANK REARDON was born in 1974 in Boston, Massachusetts, and currently lives in Minot, North Dakota. Frank has published poetry and short stories in many reviews, journals and online zines. His first poetry collection, Interstate Chokehold, was published by NeoPoiesis Press in 2009 as well as his second poetry collection Nirvana Haymaker in 2012. His third poetry collection Blood Music was published by Punk Hostage Press in 2013. In 2014 Reardon published a chapbook with Dog On A Chain Press titled The Broken Halo Blues. Frank is currently working on more short fiction.

February 10, 2020 0 comment

\m/ New Hotness \m/Review Small Press

An Appreciation of Fin Sorrel’s Caramel Floods

written by Sheldon Lee Compton

Caramel Floods

335 pgs.

Pski’s Porch Publishing

$25.00

In an age of literature where irony is dying out faster than you can say Tao Lin, author Fin Sorrel is teaming up with Pski’s Porch Publishing to prove that, for some, it’s as alive as ever.

Sorrel saw the release of his new short story collection Caramel Floods this year and to call the work surreal doesn’t really begin to cover it.

Take the following for example:

“Been tendrils, snake wired effects, snore from lungs, the leafless tree at seventy miles an hour, and falling / The skin is the leather, the hands are the stories to little rock — An orange mist in the eye — A giant and a puppy —

It took the length of mazes to thin purple crushed velvet almost a century even trade avocado to the tongue and feed the mind its alphabet, Conway sign is pointed out pebbles and the semi’s are like wandering cows and make the mud flaps into curled lips.”

Sorrel is clearly tossing narrative out the window and plot devices, for the most part. What he’s replaced those with are acrobatics the likes of which I’ve rarely seen before. While reading his collection for review I often stopped to read parts to friends. More often than not, those listening would be equally as confused as they were impressed. This is a kind of success difficult to attain.

To be as linguistically inventive as Sorrel manages to be so consistently in Caramel Floods takes a lot of hard work. And I can’t stress the trait of inventiveness enough. The language pouring through the collection is an endless parade of fireworks, fireworks in which every explosion is entirely unique from the one immediately before it.

Take as another example the beginning section of the story “Year In a Seahorse”:

“My mind is still a balloon full of helium. I am wandering the shale cliff, I store a few balloons, and a dream, like a good idea, in your home. I found a glass of water in the forest vines, and filled my wandering legs without a doctor.”

In perfect honesty, it took me a few stories into the book to warm up to Sorrel’s pacing and loop-de-loops. My writer mind, no matter how experimental and fun-loving, still seeks out a semblance of formed plot and character development, et cetera. And that’s not to say there isn’t some of that in Caramel Floods. But it is at all times secondary to language.

With a creative abandon unmatched by most writers working today, Fin Sorrel jumps boundaries and builds new ones and then hides them in this story collection. He creates new phrases and immediately puts them up for adoption to the reader’s mind. The risks at play in Caramel Floods is, I can safely say, charting a new course in literature for its author. And I have a notion that’s exactly what he was hoping for.

PURCHASE CARAMEL FLOODS

December 11, 2017 0 comment

\m/ New Hotness \m/Conversation Future Literary Darlings Literary Scene Writing

An Absurd So Close To Reality: An Interview with Mannequin Haus Editor Fin Sorrel

written by Sheldon Lee Compton

FIN SORREL is the founding editor of Mannequin Haus, a journal publishing surreal and innovative writing. I sent MH one of my footnote poems earlier this year with little hope that it would be accepted. I’ve written a handful of these kinds of poems over the past year and they’ve been roundly rejected across the board. I know they’re good poems and innovative in a way that’s interesting, so it had been really hard to get those particular rejections. But Fin accepted one and has since published it at MH. An editor willing to go places other editors won’t was immediately intriguing to me, so I was happy to talk with him about MH and more about his aesthetic and how he came up with it. The interview took place over the course of a week and, as far as I understand it, on his cell phone for Fin, for the most part.

SHELDON LEE COMPTON: Hey Fin. Buddy it’s good to get a chance to talk with you. I feel journals like Mannequin Haus and a handful of others are the lifeblood of literature right now. Fiction and poetry has never moved an inch forward or in any interesting direction at all by playing it safe and moving away from the risks. Any writer or any journal doing this, working the front lines of change and innovation, has my immediate attention and loyalty. How much of this kind of thinking was at play for you when starting the journal?

FIN SORREL: A ton of thinking about the literary norm, the accepted status quo, and formalities had made me very angry as I cautiously, and with great disdain, began sending out my first book. Ten years prior, writing for me was an escape from the status quo, (I was reading Les Chants de Maldoror and living on the street, it was not a business, it was my passion, another an act of creation, just like painting was, or drawing. I was not as much the authority (or author) but something else, the wizard, casting long, aimless spells of reality-bending- surrealism like in Teacup Galaxy, a story I wrote during that time period, which is being released in a collection from Pski Porch Press in October. That story is a good example of how I approached the conversation with the literary underground world. As the rejections poured in for the first ten years, I realized I had to tighten up my style, or go back to painting, and normalize my experiments, if I wasn’t very strong, this would have killed me. I might have given up, and I think this is a real danger with some these journals, they are trying to act all coy, they act unapproachable, kind of reminds me of a yuppie attitude, looking down on a homeless man or woman. I saw a whole platform for the elite, and powerful, and rich. I felt the underrepresented people of this country and the world needed a journal they could send their weirdest, most ridiculous out of control, surreal writing to and have acceptance. That is why I started Mannequin Haus.

SLC: That’s an amazing reason for starting a journal, to give voice to the under-represented in the literary world. So you’ve went a level further than indie and started focusing on the underground, which is great. I’ve most frequently thought along these lines when considering journals such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, etc. You’re not getting into to those places unless you meet certain strange criteria. I say strange, because exposure shouldn’t really depend on having already been exposed. But there is certainly a level of this sort of thing in the lower tier journals. So what if Mannequin Haus received a submission from George Saunders? Would you give him serious consideration or would you actually prefer work from new writers doing new things with new tools, so to speak? And, building on that question, what is the near perfect or perfect submission for you as an editor?

FS: If George Saunders submitted something to us, I’d probably be interested only if his work showed me something curious. Personally, I am a fairly moody reader, some days I want to read ancient Chinese fiction, and some days I want to read Harmony Korine. I publish a lot of authors who are experimenting with formatting, and I really enjoy seeing some new spin on how an author tells a story or presents a scene in a play, the voice they choose, diction, and I do really look for experimental authors who are breaking any of the rules. I get a lot of submissions from people who consider what they are doing experimental, and it is not anything of the sort, I also get a lot of stuff where people think cruel scenes of violence is surreal, I don’t normally take these kinds of things, unless the work can somehow reveal both sides. A perfect submission would be something that pushes the reader outside of themselves, and takes them to a new place. I really like the work Kobo Abe, and I would love to publish an author who is doing something similar to what he was doing. I’ve yet to see that.

SLC: I read Kobo Abe earlier this year (The Woman in the Dunes) and didn’t care for it very much. But I’m eager to read The Box Man. I feel like I was maybe in the wrong head space to read him at the time. I did enjoy his style, though. What aspects of his work are you thinking of when you say “doing something similar” for writers out there working? And building on that thought, do you think innovation in writing comes from experimentation or more from a sense of originality?

FS: I guess I shouldn’t name drop too much here. I haven’t read The Woman in the Dunes, but I saw the movie, and it wasn’t the best. I read The Box Man, and I loved it. A Face of Another is also good. Kangaroo Notebook was my favorite. I feel like authors today hide behind their voice, they maybe milk it too long. It’s interesting to see someone who can write many different styles, blending them together. I guess they call this a hybrid, which I like. It’s like a mixed media painting, art work. I request literary art writing in my submission page, so I call it literary art, but hybrid is similar, I suppose. Innovation in writing comes out in quite a few different forms. Sometimes it is from a life in academia, personal study, or diy. But the point is the innovations usually come way after the experimental stages, when an author has tried all the known styles and can now come into their work knowing how the will approach. Others may be natural story tellers, who once they can create a flow working with equipment like computers, recording devices, can delve deep into subterranean worlds and take us on wild rides. There are some who cannot see their work become too absurd, who create this other kind of absurd that is so close to reality that it almost breaks us in two, choosing which reality that we need to occupy.

SLC: That sounds really interesting, an absurd that is so close to reality it almost breaks us in two. What are some examples of work like this? If there are certain writers you’re thinking of, who are they? Do you have any links to their work you could include here? In regard to the second question, you are the one and only editor who has accepted for publication one of my footnote poems, the poem “Psychedelic Death Shroud” and for that I’m eternally grateful. I had given up on those poems (I have others and am working on a collection of them now) finding homes due to rejections that had piled up. Do you actively seek out work that seems innovative to the point of strange?

FS: I don’t actively seek out much work. When Cassidy Rios Kane was on board as editor, he did actively troll the internet in search of some of the most amazing authors. I leave it up to authors to approach me, but there is a rare case when I will approach an author, requesting submissions. I do, though, look for in people’s submissions, for something a bit amiss, something off in it. Something vulnerable, and strange and human.

PILL COLLAGE 2017 By FIN SORREL

SLC: At what point will innovative writing require a return to traditional forms and concepts? Or do you feel this circular tendency doesn’t apply to literature?

FS: I think it returns to traditional forms all of the time, and will most likely always do so. I think in anything there is a point where you get to diminishing returns, and a lot of experimental writing can risk this danger, I enjoy writing that follows some kind of theme, but goes off into many unsettling areas and returns in a way back to the place, I feel like there is a danger to go off the rails and lay there crashed. Instead of getting back on the line. The end, end of story, I find this to be a bit of a waste of time, and energy, but it happens to me personally in my writings all of the time. There is always this idea for me that I am having fun with it, so there are no risks, just the act of writing or not writing. If I am not writing, why should I beat myself up, I am not interested, do not have a plan, or the energy, if I am writing, why should I always push myself to make something like a Hollywood movie, or a Stephen King story if that is not how I write, I mean if I cannot get published so be it, I will continue to write no matter what.

SLC: Tell me a little about the first few months operating Mannequin Haus, the early stages, those first few weeks reading submissions. At what point did submissions begin matching the aesthetic?

FS: My first call was an awfully quick return, everyone in my circle is pretty odd, so it makes sense. I was staying with friends in a hotel room in Biloxi, Mississippi, basically draining off the gambling world, for free rooms and drinks, buffets, we had it made for a week. After three years of traveling, this was much needed down time, and I had already been getting submissions, Anyway, they have these free printers and computers that you can use if you’re a guest at the hotel, so I printed out my manuscript for Caramel floods, (Pski Porch Press, 2017) and built the first issue of Mannequin Haus. They tried to kick me out, the security thought I was a vagrant who had wandered in and was using the computers, which I essentially was, but not this time. I had a room number and they had to apologize to me personally, that was how i knew this would all work out in the end.

SLC: How often do you work closely with submitting writers on aspects of their work before publication? It seems editing is a disappearing art in the independent lit world. Do you accept a piece that shows promise but might need a little editorial guidance? And lastly, do you traffic in form rejections?

FS: I do not use rejections, I simply accept or you do not hear back, (unless I lost the email, this means I cannot use your work). I hate getting rejections, it slows my wave of madness. Creative intentions have a flow; rejections are a waste of time, and a waste of words in my opinion. I don’t want to do that to others. they will find publication somewhere, on their way to the top, if they send out only one thing at a time, I wouldn’t want to break someone’s heart, because it breaks mine to see half of the journals reject my voice. Timing is a big thing. If I have a ton of time and an author requests to work on their piece with me, I would be more than happy to help, or add my two cents, but no one has really done that yet.

September 16, 2017 0 comment

\m/ New Hotness \m/Poetry Spotlight

“poems (& possibly other forms)” an interview with Amy Saul-Zerby

written by Alexandra Naughton

In this interview, Alexandra Naughton, editor in chief of Be About It Press, speaks to Amy Saul-Zerby, author of Paper Flowers Imaginary Birds (published by Be About It Press in January, 2017).

Alexandra Naughton: Okay, so I thought I would start off by asking: when did you first start writing this book? What was the impulse to create it, or what was the inspiration? And what has the journey been like from then to now?

Amy Saul-Zerby: The book came into existence gradually over the past four years or so. In 2012, I’d just gotten out of a six year relationship, and had also just stumbled upon this community of young writers & poets sharing their work with each other online. I’d been writing poetry since college, but the poems in this book began to come when poetry was really becoming the center of my life in a way it hadn’t been before then.

While creating a full-length collection was always a goal, I didn’t set out to make this book. The collection of new work just kept growing until I had enough raw material to begin to think about whether it could even become a cohesive whole. Because the work is so confessional & draws so much from things I was going through during those years, I was able in early 2015 to create something that felt cohesive from the previous three years of very constant writing.

The key realization that really enabled me to craft the manuscript from all that work, which really surprised me at the time, was that the narrative arc was already there. All I really had to do at that point was arrange the pieces to tell the story that it honestly felt like they already wanted to tell, if that makes sense.

AN: Totally makes sense. When did you write it? How did you write it? Do you set aside time specifically to write? Describe a place that reminds you of making this book.

ASZ: I was jumping between occupations during that time, so my schedule wasn’t consistent. I wrote what I could when I could. When I began working on the book, I was helping my grandfather care for my grandmother, who had Alzheimer’s and to whom the book is dedicated.

If there is one place that reminds me of the making of the book, it is probably the house they lived in, where I would stay while taking care of her. She had been hugely encouraging of my writing since I was a kid, and would often ask me to read her my latest work. (My mother is also very supportive, so I am lucky for that as well! But Louise & I shared a very unique bond.)

I also spent six months in Austin, TX, working in publishing, and a good chunk of time in Philly working as a hostess and then an office admin in the restaurant industry. So my work schedule has changed several times, but I write whenever I can, which will always, always be the case no matter what else I’m doing. & which has really always been the case since I decided in (I believe) first grade that I wanted ‘to be an author’ when I grew up.

AN: That’s awesome that you’ve known since the first grade. I feel like that is when I discovering my passion for writing, though I didn’t take it seriously until later.

What kind of writing career would you enjoy the most? Do you see yourself writing as an occupation?

ASZ: I have a lot of hopes & goals with regard to my writing. Experimenting with forms other than poetry is a long-term goal, but I also feel that I have so much work still to do with poetry. I’m a huge fan of Melissa Broder’s work, in terms of content but also in terms of the breadth of forms she utilizes. I could see myself enjoying having a column, writing personal essays, experimenting with short-form prose / flash fiction. Screenwriting & playwriting are also really attractive forms, though somewhat more intimidating because they’re so foreign to me still.

But to answer your question: yes, I want to write as an occupation.

AN: What kind of stuff did your grandmother like to read? Was there a piece you wrote that she was especially fond of?

ASZ: Oh, she liked to read everything she could get her hands on, but I think short stories & novels were her favorite.

She was a very early riser, and one of my earliest poems was about reading with her in the mornings as a kid before anyone else was awake. She had me email her a copy of that one, printed it out directly from AOL (with the subject line and everything), then framed it and hung it in her study. So I think it’s safe to say that one was a favorite.

AN: Are you enjoying this interview?

ASZ: Yes, I am enjoying it very much, thanks!

AN: Who do you want to read this book? Who would you like to see holding a copy of your book?

ASZ: Honestly, I want whoever would get the most out of it to read the book. Whoever needs it, anyone it might help in any way.

I don’t want to see anyone in particular holding a copy of the book. I just want it to reach people with whom it might resonate. I would rather hear back from someone who found something helpful in one of the poems than see my book in the hands of a literary idol or a public figure or celebrity.

AN: BUT IF YOU COULD SEE IT IN THE HANDS OF A PARTICULAR PERSON, WHO WOULD IT BE????

ASZ: Haha, OKAY FINE, but I didn’t want to have to say this… it’s a tie & I would like to choose both Lena Dunham & James Franco.

AN: Why those two?

ASZ: It would just mean a lot to me.

AN: Okay, fair enough. There are lot of great pieces in Paper Flowers, Imaginary Birds. Lots of funny and sardonic quips. My favorite piece is probably the Craigslist missed connection. It’s too real.

What’s your favorite piece in the book?

ASZ: That’s one of my favorites too. Currently I really like ‘Celestial Bodies’. A lot of the poems in the book were written during such a different time in my life that I feel somewhat distant from them now, but that one still feels like me.

AMN: It’s so weird to see stuff written from years or even months ago. It can feel so foreign, like did I really write this. Do you see any growth in your writing now to some of the pieces in the book? Or maybe not even the poems, but personally?

ASZ: Absolutely. My writing has changed a lot, and I’ve changed a lot as a person, even just since putting the manuscript together in 2015. So the poems in the book from as far back as 2012 feel very foreign to me now. For me personally, the book feels like a kind of time capsule. It never feels like I didn’t write the poems, because I remember the things I wrote about so vividly (to the point where it’s almost painful to read parts of the book). It’s more like, ‘Wow, I feel so far from where I was when I wrote this.’ And I am grateful for that distance, and the book reminds me of how far I’ve come, which I often forget.

AMN: All right, let’s wrap this up. What do you think? We’re indie writers who work with indie presses, right, so that means we have to do a lot of our own promotion. What are your plans for promoting the book? Are you going on tour? What are your hopes for 2017? Any fun plans? Any fun projects in the works?

Also, please use this space to say whatever you’d like that you want to talk about that I didn’t ask about or whatever. 🙂

ASZ: Yeah! I’m doing a bunch of readings in Philly, including a release party. Working out the details of a release event in NYC, as well. And I’m in the planning stages for a west coast tour this spring! I’m fortunate to have a lot of energy to devote to book promotion at the moment, so I’m really just throwing myself into it.

I’ve also just started working for a local literary mag here (Apiary Magazine). So I’m looking forward to involving myself further in the Philly poetry community, continuing my work with Voicemail Poems, and touring / promoting the book.

And, as always, to continuing to work on new poems (& possibly other forms)! There have been times when I’ve really questioned the value of what I’m doing and let my self-doubt get the better of me, but at least for the moment, I feel motivated & determined to keep working at this.

AMN: Thank you for doing this interview. What did you think of it? Any areas in which I could improve as an interviewer? Please be honest.

ASZ: …
Amy Saul-Zerby is a Philadelphia-based poet. Her first collection, Paper Flowers Imaginary Birds, was published by Be About It Press in January of 2017. Her writing has also appeared in TheNewerYork, Painted Bride Quarterly, Spy Kids Review and The YOLO Pages, and she is managing editor of Voicemail Poems & multimedia editor of APIARY Magazine.

February 23, 2017 0 comment

\m/ New Hotness \m/#7daysofcoping Announcement Community

WE’RE OUTTA HERE #RoadtoCoping2016

written by Michael Seidlinger

Ever just want to walk away from your desk and never again return (like that Onion article)? Or better yet, get into a car and just drive without any clear destination beyond the determination to forget, at least for awhile, every shred of responsibility and pressure that awaits you in your professional life? Well, that’s how this all started—the idea tossed around between myself and Janice Lee via our various CCM/Entropy Skype meetings. All it takes to turn an idea into something instantaneous and necessary is the mutual enthusiasm for said idea by friends and confidants, in this case Chiwan Choi and Zachary Jensen.

So we’re going to turn that idea into a reality.

From August 5th through August 7th, the four of us will get into a car, heading north of Los Angeles, with only the will and willingness to get away.

Coinciding with CCM’s #7daysofcoping series, Janice and I will be livetweeting this experience; additionally, I will be posting and tweeting our coordinates in hopes of direction—that is, me (us) reaching out to you—be it a place to stay (seriously, we’ll need places to crash), a place to eat, or even a chance to write and read our latest work.

This is all in the name of four tired and wired writers looking to cope with the exhaustion of the dead heat of summer with a few long days behind the wheel of good times and good words.

We’re outta here and we’d like to bring you all along. We’re coping.

July 26, 2016 0 comment

\m/ New Hotness \m/Fiction

REVIEW OF AMERICAN MARY BY ALEXANDRA NAUGHTON

written by Jeremy Hight

Experimental prose that plays with form can be an exhilarating exploration of breaking form, playing with the fourth wall, breaking down text to parallel emotional collapse or motion. The play is an intellectual exercise and when done well it adds context, layers, meta-textual commentary and the raw excitement of form breaking with cohesion and intent. The rarer work is the one that both plays with form in fresh ways and resonates emotionally with the experimentation building the resonance. In her new novel American Mary, Alexandra Naughton has told a narrative that is emotionally raw and profound with ruptures of form throughout the text that are both conceptually exhilarating and immediately rich with emotional resonance. The novel is a moving and at times harrowing ride through the journey of a young woman in the world and relationships as well as a thrilling example of the emotional and intellectual ballast of experimentation with blank space and form.

April 27, 2016 0 comment

\m/ New Hotness \m/Announcement Literary Scene Random

Interview with Alexandra Naughton

written by Jeremy Hight

JH: What made you want to become a writer?

AN: I have always been writing. Since I was like 4 years old I have always been making up songs or writing poems and stories and putting on shows for people or imaginary friends. When I was a baby my parents put a video camera in my bedroom for an afternoon and called the video ‘Allie takes a nap.’ It’s basically an hour of me mugging for the camera and walking around in my crib and singing to myself.

I don’t think it’s something I ever really decided to do, I’ve just been doing it. Something like ten years ago I started to take this shit a bit more seriously and got more involved in getting my work published and doing readings, but honestly it all feels like a compulsion. I wrote about this feeling of being compelled to write a while ago on htmlgiant and someone commented saying ‘you’re not a writer, you have an addiction.’ And that’s chill and all. Not everyone can be like me.

September 14, 2015 1 comment

\m/ New Hotness \m/Small Press

Interview with Wendy C. Ortiz

written by Alex Kalamaroff

Over at Entropy, we just explored Wendy Ortiz’s new book, Hollywood Notebook, from Writ Large Press. Now let’s talk a bit about its genesis and also where’s the one place you should visit when you swing by LA. (Read the review at Entropy: here.)

AK: First off, let me say how much I enjoyed Hollywood Notebook. I lived in Pasadena for a year, so I have some sense of LA as an actual place, versus as somewhere that just exists in the American imagination. Even though as an East Coast person, it was overall too sunny for me. I need more clouds and moldy, overcast afternoons. Anyway, let’s chat.

WCO: Thank you. That’s funny that you mention Pasadena, because that’s an area of Los Angeles I know next to nothing about!

AK: In many ways, Hollywood Notebook is a study of daily life, with its difficulties, frivolities, good times, and minor epiphanies. I’m wondering then, given this broad context, what compelled you to focus on the particular experiences in each chapter. Did you set out to explore a specific array of emotions or did you cull the material in any way?

WCO: The text was written on my blog Lab of Lux as it happened. It’s possible that I was unconsciously exploring a specific array of emotions, but at its core, I was trying to integrate and describe particular kinds of loss. The overall text took heavy edits later, a kind of culling.

AK: Going off that, given the diary-like nature of the work, I’m wondering if you could talk about its creation process. The timeline seems expansive, with a focus of being in your (early) thirties and the changes in perspective that brings. Was there a specific date / reason for beginning this project? Over how many years were you working on this? Could you talk a little about that?

WCO: The project began simply because my friend Karrie Higgins gave me the web space and I could do anything I wanted with it. So I started the blog and felt like my audience was mainly my friends, with a few other random spectators whom I came to know over time through their own blogs. Hollywood Notebook moves roughly in and out through parts of 2002 to 2006 but also jumps around in some vignettes, such as from 1996, 1997.

AK: The power of place — not just the city of LA itself, but specific streets, neighborhoods, bars, bus stops — is of preeminent importance here. How do you see place influencing you as a person and an artist?

WCO: I’ve only lived in two places in my entire life (not counting transitory living, like a month in Mexico, three weeks in Ecuador, or weeks on an island in Washington state). Los Angeles—the San Fernando Valley, then over the hill to Hollywood, Koreatown, West L.A., Mid-City, West Adams—and Olympia, Washington. Place to me is character. Los Angeles will always be a character in my work just as Olympia will always be a character in my work.

I was recently asked for some fiction that took place in California and realized I only have one thing, a novella, that takes place in California. The rest of my fiction takes place in the Pacific Northwest, mainly in the areas around Olympia. I was kind of struck by that because I hadn’t consciously realized that was the case. These places have left deep imprints on me and I interact with them as though they are people—sometimes as lovers, or as parents, or friends I’m in love with.

AK: Along with being a real place, LA is very much a city that exists in the American imagination as lalaland of silver-screen dreams and a certain kind of unreality. You tap into this a bit, thinking about Joan Didion and The Industry, but for the most part your Hollywood seems, well, uninfected by this fantasy. I ‘m wondering then about this distinction between LA as real place vs. LA as dreamland, and how you navigated that when writing about the city?

WCO: When I left L.A. I was a cynical twenty-year-old looking to get as far away from L.A. as I could, and in fact, I wanted to land in a forest. I was away for eight years. When I returned, I felt the infection of the fantasy, often, it’s inescapable, but it never touched me particularly. I’m often outside of contemporary pop culture so the fantasy doesn’t really do it for me. And I often felt defensive about people’s perceptions that Los Angeles is only one way. I feel less defensive now, because now I don’t care what people’s perceptions are about Los Angeles. My family, my friends who still live here, have their own perceptions that’s so far away from the dreamland that it’s occasionally forgettable Los Angeles wears that mantle. Occasionally.

AK: Do you have any favorite chapters?

WCO: Chapters one, seventy-five, and seventy-six.

AK: Music comes up repeatedly as something that defines your life and specific experiences. What are a couple songs that would serve as the soundtrack to Hollywood Notebook?

WCO: I’m working on a playlist right now that will hopefully be shared—and on that playlist there is definitely some Neko Case and Sally Timms.

AK: If an out-of-towner read Hollywood Notebook, afterward what’s the one place in LA area you’d recommend they visit?

WCO: Frank ‘n Hank, and I would suggest they take a wad of dollar bills, an entire afternoon and early evening, and me.

May 28, 2015 0 comment

\m/ New Hotness \m/

New Hotness – The Revertian Renaissance

written by Michael Seidlinger

Welcome to “New Hotness,” an ENCLAVE series dedicated to featuring new and exceedingly metal developments in the publishing industry. Given how quickly social media and the media industries at large continue to develop, it’s really easy to lose track of all the great work being produced and promoted by literary citizens industry-wide. For every well-deserved profile by a prominent blog, there are dozens of lit citizens going relatively unnoticed. Well, here’s my attempt to help draw some attention to the people, the powerhouses, operating in publishing.

The inaugural edition features one of the most prolific artists working this side of surreal fiction, experimental music, and book design. His name is Matthew Revert, author of “Basal Ganglia,” the album, “Not You,” and single-handedly the man that gave over hundreds of books a face to stand behind. I state, with no hyperbole, that without a lit citizen like Revert, indie lit would not be the strong, DIY showcase it has surely become. Revert makes more than splash with his work; he leads us to new oceans of intrigue. He’s forging new rivers of Revertian design. We are, quite possibly, basking in what could be called, a “Revertian Renaissance.”

It wouldn’t be “New Hotness” without handing over this space to the lit citizen, allowing them the ability to speak about their work, showcases some of their favorite pieces, and provide a first-hand exclusive or two to what they’ve been working on lately. Without another sentence, I pass it over to Revert.

***

“I became a designer by accident. I still don’t consider myself a designer and when people attribute that label to me, I’m not sure how to take it. Whenever something I design is made public, I always imagine real ‘designers’ who can comfortably have that label attributed to them shaking their head in bemusement when they witness my flailing attempts. Despite any opinions I may hold regarding my own merit, in the last few years I have had the opportunity to work with more labels, presses and artists than I can count. This has led to great professional and personal relationships and in that regard, I am very grateful.

“I was asked to present a handful of new designs. A good number of what you will see below have not been seen before now. They are very much hot off the press and I thank the presses and labels that have given me permission to share these pieces.

How to Successfully Kidnap Strangers by Max Booth III (Bizarro Pulp Press, 2015)

Although this design has recently been made public, I wanted to include it in here as an example of one of my very few predominantly handmade pieces. The method by which I approach a design varies wildly from press to press. Often my contact remains with the press and during the design process I have little to no contact with the author themselves. Bizarro Pulp Press operate a differently in that the design process consists of direct conversation between the author and myself. I have designed several books for Max before and enjoy a very easy working relationship with him. He is one of those who will give me a couple of general ideas and then let me do whatever my whim dictates. For this design, one of those general ideas was that of a ransom note. I liked the possible directions such a concept might take. I knew from the start I had no interest in seeking out some generic ransom note-like font and figured if I were going to go down this path, I needed to make it myself by hand. This led to every aspect of the design being assembled by hand (a hand which was cut by my x-acto knife on more than one occasion). I was very happy with the end result but knew it was out there, even for me. I thought there was a very good chance this design would be rejected and was overjoyed when Max and the press responded with such enthusiasm.

February 2, 2015 0 comment