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interview

Sheldon Lee Compton: You move back through some of your formative years in your memoir My Father, the Pornographer. How much of that time was spent feeling out of place as a sensitive, creative young man in what can seriously be an extremely manly region? Or if you didn’t feel this, tell me: how did you pull that off?

Chris Offutt: As a young child I assumed everywhere else was just like it was in the hills. It didn’t occur to me that it was an unusual place, full of natural beauty and freedom. I believed that cities had more people and taller buildings.

The thing about sensitivity is this: I didn’t know it at the time. I had no idea that I was perceiving the world differently from most other kids. I didn’t necessarily fit in, but I could always “read” a situation, know the emotional dynamics, and negotiate them.

I went through eight grades of school with the same kids. I liked to draw, and beginning in 4th grade, I wrote stories. I also began keeping a journal at age nine, and made attempts at comic books. None of this set me apart. The kids in our class all loved and accepted each other. That my interests were different from theirs didn’t matter. I was a consistent discipline problem at school, which the other students probably appreciated. Insubordination mostly. I talked back.

I didn’t fit in at the county high school. The things I was interested in were unavailable. High school had no art classes and no theatre classes. Everything was geared toward football, basketball, and baseball. I liked sports but at 4’ 11”, I was way too short for anything. At 18 I believed that if I left, everything I sought would be readily available. That didn’t turn out to be the case. I missed the woods terribly.

I never thought of it as an “extremely manly” world at the time, though I recognize now that it was. I talked constantly and wasn’t threatening. I learned early to be funny, which helped. I was always genuinely interested in others and whatever task they were doing, willing to help. In this fashion, I learned a lot, especially from the adults.

From Chris Offutt’s personal collection. Photos courtesy of Chris Offutt.

SLC: That’s really interesting how you used your emotional sensitivity to make reads on people. A handy trait, no matter what region you’re from. So much of your work, especially the memoirs, have what I would call moments of literary absoluteness – a good example is the section from My Father, the Pornographer where you and your father piss on the barn the same way he and his father had done. Do you recognize these moments as literary material when they’re happening? Or, rather, does this event ripen into something literary as part of the process, only in reflection while writing?

CO: As a boy I wanted to be a spy or detective. I understood that the skills of observation, listening, and remembering were necessary to both occupations. I began trying to develop them. Unfortunately, those careers eluded me. But the habit had begun. It helped me later as a writer.

As a young man, I often engaged in activities that I thought would later bear literary fruit. Usually reckless and spontaneous, often pretty dumb. Afterwards, I wrote long journal entries, often two or three times per day. That practice helped me remember, and helped me learn what was worth paying attention to.

As far as the scene with Dad goes: it was the only time we were ever alone together for a prolonged time. He rarely left the house and never entered the woods. A trip to his old childhood log cabin was a big deal for me. He didn’t often talk about his childhood, and when he did it was usually bad—lonely and miserable. He was close to his mother. His father was a very manly man—a hunter, fisherman, and farmer who could fix anything. He didn’t like his son.

On this trip to the cabin, I was particularly attuned to Dad’s behavior. He’d told me about pissing on the barn with his father before; it was an example of how cold it was that winter. It was the only interaction with his father that wasn’t negative and he wanted to replicate it with me. That night I dutifully wrote all the details in my journal.

I think anything has the potential to, as you put it, “ripen into something literary.” The key is to pay attention to everything all the time. Next is to choose the most important events, those that will deepen character or, in the case of description, that will enable the reader to see more. I still listen and observe, like Harriet the Spy and Sherlock Holmes. The other day I heard someone say “She let down her back hair.” I loved the precision and the old-fashionedness of the phrase. I wrote it down, transcribed it into my computer later, and already tucked it into the new novel.

SLC: Those memorable phrases are great. My grandmother always said, “I don’t understand all I know about it.” There’s that nice wordplay and the honesty that made it memorable for me, because I’m the worst at keeping a journal and having it be a useful tool. I usually lose them within the first week. But, like you mentioned, most writers have that filter that recognizes a lot and stores it one way or another.

CO: You can always save cool phrases on your cell phone and email them to yourself. I do that sometimes. I still carry pen and paper, but it’s not as discreet. Once a guy saw me writing on an index card and said: “What are you doing, writing a book?” I laughed and laughed.

Jug of wishbones with brick.

SLC: We’ve talked often about the general state of Appalachian literature over the past several years. Catch me up on where your thoughts are now. And, on the off chance you can, how much will you share about this new novel? I always like to hear you’re working on a book.

CO: The new novel is set in the hills of Kentucky—surprise! I have a policy of not talking about fiction I’m working on. Too much gets away from me. It’s better to keep it in my head until it hits the page. Non-fiction is different because there’s no invention, nothing to lose verbally.

SLC: I absolutely get not talking out the story. I think some of the creative energy gets lost that way, for sure.

So what about the general state of Appalachian literature? I think we talked last year about an underappreciated novel by Perry County, Kentucky-native Jesse Lee Wooton called Into the Hills, the Garden. I’ve met Jesse a couple times in Hazard at readings and he’s definitely a talent, but I’ve not read the book yet. Where do you see things going with literature from our area? Who else out there should people be reading?

CO: First, every Appalachian novel is underappreciated.

Second, the genre of Appalachian Literature seems to be expanding north, south, and west. I mainly read writers from eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, East Tennessee, and the hill part of North Carolina. Culturally, these areas are closer to my region. I’ve read all the fiction that’s come out of these places. The “canon” of Appalachia is relatively small, which makes it easy to cover.

Literature of the hills falls into two loose groups—my own designations, not scholarly distinctions. The first books written and published until around 1970. After that, life in the hills changed drastically due to the War on Poverty, the completion of the Interstate system, and the Vietnam War. Books written and published after 1970 are the second group. I believe in the future there will be a third group—Appalachian books after the Internet, cellphones, and cable TV.

My recommendations are to read them all. They will lead each individual reader to the books they like. Chris Holbrook is a good place to start.

Beyond that, my favorite writers are Jean Rhys, Joan Didion, Graham Greene, and Robert Stone. Not Appalachian, not southern, and only two are American. But my gosh, they are great, great writers. The quality of prose matters more to me than subject matter.

Nests in Kentucky glass.

SLC: Yes indeed, Chris Holbrook’s short stories are solid. A reader couldn’t go wrong starting there. And it does seem there’s a lot of Appalachian literature floating around, in particular what’s known now as Appalachian Noir. I think anything written and set in Appalachian has to be noir by virtue of the region itself. It’s pretty much still like the Old West where I’m from. I was born and still live in Pikeville, by the way, the very town your dad once sold Procter & Gamble products.

CO: Appalachian Noir is a marketing term that has no firm definition. The term “Noir” was used by French critics to describe American B-movies from the 1940s and 1950s due to a lot of dark shadows. The French loved these movies. In their language, word noir means “black.”

Eventually Noir was used by pulp magazines and paperbacks for the men’s market. These days, Noir often describes books that rely on extreme violence instead of character or quality of prose. If it helps get readers, great. But most of what’s called “noir” is no more noirish than the books called “Southern Gothic” are gothic.

SLC: You’ve mentioned in your work that you once had thoughts of becoming an actor, even relocating to New York City. What would success at acting have looked like for you? What were your goals and plans?

CO: I was nineteen at the time I moved to New York City to be an actor. My idea of success was the standard boy’s fantasy: fast cars, beautiful girlfriends, tons of money, top shelf bourbon, and good dope. In other words—I had no goals or plans. I didn’t know the first thing about becoming an actor. No resume. No headshots. No training. Nothing. A good recipe for failure, which I did.

I eventually got a degree in Theatre at Morehead State University, where I acted in fifteen or so plays. What I liked about acting was the abandonment of the self. I could be someone else for a while and at the end of the show there was applause. I liked the attention. I needed it.

I later acted in a few short films and one feature called The Slaughter Rule, that is available online. Ryan Gosling was the star. I played a bus driver.

For ten years I wrote screenplays in Hollywood, living out there for months at a time. I learned how hard a job it is to be an actor. As a writer, the rejection used to be by mail, nowadays it’s often via email. It hurts, of course, and my work still gets rejected, but a manuscript is at a slight remove from me. They aren’t rejecting Chris, just the work. It’s much worse for an actor. The rejection is always personal—height, weight, face, voice, walk, etc. I don’t think I could have handled that, which really means I didn’t want to be an actor badly enough.

When an actor finally get a role in the movies, it’s very different from theatre. Often they don’t rehearse. An actor has to show up fully prepared with all the lines memorized, then play a scene, often with strangers. Each 2-person scene gets shot a minimum of ten times. Each time the actor has to get the lines right. If you take off a jacket and set it on a chair, you have to remember exactly how you did it, then do that action the same way every time. If it’s an emotional scene you have to cry on cue, or get angry, or scream, or express genuine love. Ten times in a row!

When the scene ends, nobody applauds. The crew prepares for the next scene. Actors change clothes, and drive home.

Nevertheless, sometimes I watch movies late at night and think—What if I’d stuck with it? But then, I think the same way about my failed attempts to join the Army, the CIA, and becoming a Forest Ranger. What if I had? What would my life be like now? I’d not have spent the last thirty years alone in a room. I probably wouldn’t have written books.

SLC: I finished rereading My Father, the Pornographer earlier this week and I imagined you with this mountain of books and papers, all your dad’s obsessions, both professional and personal, and I wondered what your daily schedule was like with all that research. Also, did you have a memoir in mind during the process, or were you carrying out your dad’s secret will to you with no other thought than fulfilling that obligation? I consider it to be your most courageous book to date, and I’m interested in when and how you stepped up to that challenge.

CO: My initial motivation was simple. Dad had never put together a bibliography and I thought every writer deserved one. I began by going through all 1800 pounds of his archive. In the living room, I shoved three big tables together to form a horseshoe shape and began making piles.

Dad had written more than I knew. He also changed the titles as well as his pseudonyms. There were hundreds of manuscripts. To keep track, I kept extensive notes on laptop computer. As I worked, I began remembering more things about Dad and from my own childhood. I added these memories to a separate file in the laptop. After three months, I emailed the document to myself so I could open them on my main computer, a big desktop job in my writing studio. When I opened them in that context—the room in which I wrote—it occurred to me that there could be a book.

For two and a half years I worked twelve hours a day. During revision, I cut a third from the manuscript, about 150 pages. I have no idea what’s in the book now. I never read it after the final revision and doubt I ever will. In my mind everything’s still in there, everything I cut, everything I remembered, every thought I had. Sometimes I wish I’d chosen a different title. It turned out to be about my childhood as much as about my father.

Courage? People have said that about the book, and I accept that it’s perceived that way. During the writing, I often wished I’d never begun the project. That doesn’t feel courageous to me. It’s possible that I finished the book because I was too cowardly to quit. I wrote it out of despair, sorrow and love. I wanted to understand my father. I couldn’t have done it while he was alive. Dad’s death meant he could no longer hurt me. That in turn provided compassion.

SLC: I’ve read in a couple places articles that made a pretty big deal that Country Dark was your first work of fiction in almost two decades. I get the sense you don’t keep track of that sort of thing.

CO: The gap between books of fiction appealed to the publicity people. Plus, it’s true. However, during that time I completed several other books. An experimental book about my childhood that was a complete mess. Two other novels didn’t turn out very well, one set in Lexington and one set in Louisville. Lesson learned—set my work in the hills! I wasn’t playing to my strengths with those books. They weren’t bad, but mediocre isn’t good enough.

During that 18-year gap, I continued to write and publish short fiction, enough for a collection. It is now a completed manuscript. In addition, I have two books of essays—one serious, one humorous. I trust the process of writing, make the prose as good as I can, and operate on hope. I’ve been lucky.

SLC: I can say that Country Dark moved about as smoothly and quickly as anything I’ve read in the last few years. That smooth flow is a quality in your writing that’s always there, so it never mattered to me if I was reading one of your collections, a novel, or a memoir. Those small moments like Tucker using the bleached out turtle shell as a bowl are good examples of that smoothness.

We spoke earlier about your occasional hunts for turtle shells and bird nests and some projects you’re working with those things. I always think it’s interesting when non-writing projects find a way into our narratives. Tell me a little bit about your nest and shell collection. Are there creative links between these activities and your writing?

CO: A long time ago I figured out that anything I did would wind up in my writing. It then made sense to limit my activities to the kinds of things I wanted to influence my work. I spend a lot of time alone, often wandering around the woods. I also enjoy outdoors labor—as long as it’s on my own land. I’d had enough of labor for other people.

Couple that with this: I’ve had the “collecting bug” since I was a child. There’s an urge to gather, arrange, display, etc. Unfortunately, I never had any extra money for that sort of thing. I wound up collecting what was free. That meant rocks, feathers, animal skulls, bird nests, snake skins, and turtle shells. Oddly enough, the key to finding these artifacts of the woods was NOT to look for them. Once I start seeking, I never found anything. It’s similar to writing. I write to see what I find.

Anyone can find an old white turtle shell, but I prefer one with the scales still attached. They will eventually peel off. I spend a lot of time gluing them back together. I then spray them with polyurethane.

Bird nests are another favorite. I spray them multiple times, letting them dry between sprays. Then I trim off the stray twigs. I spend days on these projects. My wife calls it “busy work with intense focus.” She says I need it.

Feathers & nests.

SLC: In your new novel Country Dark, there’s this great moment when the state worker Hattie remarks on her boss Marvin’s unease as they pass from the blacktop to dirt road implied marker of west to east Kentucky. In those early scenes you make so many great points about the difference between city folk and country folk in Kentucky. Only an eastern Kentuckian could understand those differences enough to write about them so accurately and with such insight. I know you moved back to Morehead earlier in your life (partly the subject of your fantastic memoir No Heroes). Was that the last move home, you think? If so, do you anticipate the area featuring more heavily in your work or fading out and replaced by others as the years pass?

CO: There is a popular myth that elephants go to a special place to die. I used to think that way in terms of Kentucky. I concocted a complicated fantasy of arranging to travel there, limping off into the woods and lying down. Realistically, it’d be impossible if I were an old man, nearly dead.

I no longer have any family in the hills. To visit home means staying in a cheap motel on the Interstate. A few old buddies live there, but many are dead or in prison. I moved back home four times. The last two I bought a house, believing it was permanent. I didn’t last a year either time. Perhaps it’d been different if I’d moved to Lexington, but when I think of home, I think of Haldeman, Kentucky—four square miles. But Haldeman is gone now. The ZIP Code has been changed, my grade school torn down, and the general store closed. It’s not even on maps any more.

The hills are in me, deeply imprinted. There is a directness to hill culture, a no-nonsense approach—even when being playful. I miss that style of communication. You never have to interpret what people say or worry that you’re missing something, because people are very direct with each other. Since leaving, I’ve encountered a great deal of social problems due to my directness. People often think I’m mad when I’m not. It puzzles most folks that I have absolutely no tolerance for small talk. Life’s too short to waste on chit-chat.

I get homesick every day. Writing is a way of going home. I can envision my beloved land. I can talk to all the people. I can smell the trees and hear the birds. I can climb the hills and feel the strain in my legs—all this without leaving my room. I will write about the hills of Kentucky to my dying day.

August 15, 2018 0 comment

Conversation Spotlight

Upcoming: Two Reviews and an Interview with author Chris Offutt

written by Sheldon Lee Compton

Over the course of the next week, I’ll be sharing reviews of Chris Offutt’s last two books — the memoir My Father, the Pornographer and his latest novel Country Dark. In addition to these reviews, I’ll then have a full interview conducted with Chris over the past couple of weeks.

The recipient of a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, recognition from the Academy of Arts and Letters, a host of published novels, short story collections, and memoirs, and many other accolades, Chris, a Kentucky native, is our local boy made good. From Hollywood to the famously exclusive halls of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Chris has been there. But the road started in Kentucky and returned several times to the same, and I have no reservations telling you he is the best our fair commonwealth has to offer in literature.

I was first made aware of Chris’s work as a senior year in high school, but not in the classroom. I visited my uncle, Gayle, who, at that time, wrote poetry under the name G.C. Compton. Gayle was my first literary hero. The winner of four consecutive Plattner Awards from the journal Appalachian Heritage, he was also the first and only Appalachian writer I had ever read. That changed when he handed me Kentucky Straight, Chris’s first collection of stories. “This guy has it right,” my uncle told me. “He knows what he’s doing.”

My uncle’s words were true then and they’re still true today. Chris has it right, in so many brilliant and simple ways. It’s Chris Offutt Week here at Enclave. So relax and enjoy the bird nests and turtle shells and a look at our greatest Kentucky author. You heard me: bird nests and turtle shells. And the greatest Kentucky author. Wait and see.

August 8, 2018 0 comment

Conversation Future Literary Darlings

An interview with Brian L. Tucker, author of the illustrated novel POKEWEED

written by Sheldon Lee Compton

Brian L. Tucker has written a lot of books, and his most recent, Pokeweed, is special and unique in its own way, not only apart from his other work but apart from a lot of southern and Appalachian literature. In the tradition of Robert Gipe (cited by Brian himself as a source of some inspiration) Brian worked with a fantastic illustrator named Katerina Dotneboya to add a ton of amazing artwork to the novel. The result is a piece of historical fiction that is at once unique and almost melancholy in all the good ways.

This the Twitter section of an interview that took place over the course of an afternoon earlier this month. To read the full interview, visit plumbjournal.wordpress.com.

***

Sheldon Lee Compton
If you want, let’s start with where you’re at. I’ve heard tell of writers working in coffee shops, but it’s something I’ve never been able to do very well. It keeps me from getting into the trance state I need. That makes me sound insane, but I probably am by any standards.

Brian L. Tucker
Hey Shel. Definitely. I think mostly everyone I’ve met in Chattanooga prefers their home/apt. I’m an odd bird, because I need to see people while writing. There’s a spot on Dayton Blvd. in Chattanooga called ‘The Meeting House.’ They have bottomless coffee and it’s a big, open room with lots of space. I think it’s connected to a church somehow. I love the space and endless mugs of caffeine.

Sheldon Lee Compton
It does sound cool. So tell me about Chattanooga. Is it a writer town? Do you have a community there or is it like in Eastern Kentucky – a long, hard journey alone.

Brian L. Tucker
Sure thing. Chattanooga is very artsy. It reminds me of a bigger Berea, but I’ve found support in writers who write a lot of different genres. There’s a group called the Chattanooga Writer’s Guild I just joined. They do writer fairs, workshops, and things that make me think about the EKU writers studio I used to have. I’m like you though, and I’m writing about Kentucky while being in TN. It does feel isolated at times, especially with how few write about the mountains and home. My co-worker writes a superheroes series, and I think because we write such different things, it allows us to talk about the process of writing without ever really cramping each other. It’s not competitive of anything and that’s good. Haha. He helped me get started in 2014 with the first collection and navigating Amazon for the stories. Since then, I’ve gone to him for help with things on Kindle, etc.

Sheldon Lee Compton
That’s a good setup for sure. So quick question: You mentioned having a name that is sort of common and how that can be challenging for a writer. I have to ask – what’s the L. stand for, bud?

Brian L. Tucker
Me and you share the same. 🙂 My dad is a Lee and his dad. My parents didn’t mean to but I came away with the ‘BLT’ combo. Haha. I’m a sandwich. Albeit a good sandwich. Yours flows though. I always shared the joke of Bruce Lee…then Brandon Lee with The Crow. I started as B.L. Tucker then moved to Brian L.

Sheldon Lee Compton
I swear I honestly suspected it might stand for Lee. But, yeah, I think you’re name works well. So, if you could pick your ideal publisher for the next book, which publisher and why? Have you had any brushes with New York’s big six?

Brian L. Tucker
Thanks man! I appreciate that. Yeah I shouldn’t hide the L. This book is the closest I’ve come with interest from multiple publishers interested. Not big 6 mind you. And Wheelman came out when human trafficking topics were really in the media. It got a few nods and gained some traction down here in Chattanooga (close to ATL and those news stories that came out). That book was advertised on campus news sources and NPR combination. But, no single story has made it to Harper Collins or such. I like HC, because they do sometimes pair with religious fiction, and my previous two had YA and religious combos inside them. Pokeweed’s illustrations added to it joining the ‘visual’ market. I’m optimistic that it’ll get more reviews as it nears 9.20. Do you know anyone in NYC? haha.

Sheldon Lee Compton
I really wouldn’t know if I did know anybody there. I’ve had contact with a few agents from there but with friends on Twitter and Facebook, etc. I never can remember where everybody’s from. At the risk of sounding odd, if folks are from anywhere besides Kentucky, they pretty much might as well live in another country for all I know. Harper Collins, indeed a fine publisher. Well, your next book Pokeweed is about the drop. Tell me a little about getting that book into print.

Brian L. Tucker
Pokeweed. I submitted it to roughly fifty publishers. Most of rejections fell in the first couple of weeks of sending it out. Some were really good about responding within the first day or 2. So, with an Excel sheet open to tally up the Ys and Ns, it went quickly. Unlike Wheelman & Swimming the Echo, I didn’t use http://pw.org or http://newpages.com to find this one. I used http://author.me and a few other places. I’ve done these works unagented and it’s worked well so far. Black Rose has been around for a while and they were right before another publisher to say yes. I had said no to one before them that didn’t look like the best fit. I tried to analyze website, marketing, and other things the publishers did on their sites and Amazon. The production team at BRW has been stellar so far. We’re still a little ways away from Sept. But with my wife and me expecting our first baby in Aug. I needed all the help I could get. 🙂

Sheldon Lee Compton
Hey congratulations! Sorry to skip right to the baby, but that’s how I roll. Ain’t nothing better in this world than a child, man. Pure innocence. Staying with the ol’ name game, what have you got lined up for this young Tucker?

Brian L. Tucker
I had a nanny I always loved. She took care of pretty much everyone in Wayne Co. haha. Her name was Zella (meaning blessed). We went with Zella Rose. Leah loved the name too. I was ready for the boy with all kinds of names, but when we discovered it was a girl we had to regroup. she’s due in about a month.

Sheldon Lee Compton
Oh man that’s nice. Really happy for you, truly. And Zella Rose. Wow, that’s a winner. That name is a champ, son. Okay, so I have a question related to something I’ve struggled with due to having family members who belong to church….Tell me about being a Christian and a writer. Is it ever limiting? Writing about Kentucky, one is bound to write themselves into a situation where certain vices might become necessary to make an honest character. I’m curious how you handle that.

Brian L. Tucker
Thanks. She will be ready for all kinds of trips from grandmas. I’m glad you asked that question. Writing true scenarios is something I always want to do. With Wheelman I wanted to be objective to the ills in the world, but I also didn’t want to be preachy. The publisher for it, Vox Dei, was a Christian imprint to the larger company, and they gave a lot of freedom to write how a family of recovering faith would handle such adversity. It was a nice outlet. Since then, I’ve tried to write scenes as honestly as I could. I think Flannery O did such a great job of being transparent with evils and faith encountering one another. She was so good at staying in the thick of it, wasn’t she? I feel the limits you mentioned, because I always want to take the easy way out in scenes and say ‘Then they prayed and everything was better.’ But, often the danger stays in the room. Pokeweed has some seriously greedy/vile things happening around the Snopes family. I wanted to keep the warring factions present throughout the book’s entirety. Evil didn’t go away when preacher man showed up, but he was the calm solace for the two boys. He was a soothing voice of reason. I liked when he stepped onto their path. But, it’s a constant balancing act of saying what is believable and true and avoiding preachy over the top stuff.

Sheldon Lee Compton
That makes good sense, especially your point about Flannery. She was of the faith in a big way and still went to those places in a genuine way. Nice. And I think you’ve managed the same thing in Pokeweed. So I noticed the surname Snopes right away. Are you a fan of Faulkner? If not, who are some of the writers you lean to when you need a refill on inspiration or prodding?

Brian L. Tucker
Man, there have been so many ‘new’ voices for me in the past year that are largely rather old. I found Thomas Merton and he’s been my inspiration outside of fiction centric books. I read his New Seeds of Contemplation and underlined pretty much every other line, and I never read non-fiction. Lol. But, for fiction I’ve latched on to Harriette Simpson Arnow’s Hunter’s Horn and loved it even more than The Dollmaker. Found a first edition online and snatched it up. It features maps of the homestead and just embodies everything about e. KY that I love. She really was an under-appreciated sage. Then, I read Maugham’s Of Human Bondage last week and it hit home much like some of Hemingway’s larger works. It fused nonfiction stuff with fiction, and I loved the balance of the two and Philip Carey made his way around England and France. But, I find a lot of great reads on Kindle too. John Rector is a great thriller writer. The Wolf Road by Beth Lewis is a lot like True Grit and The Road conjoined. I read all over the place, and I mix it up from something heady like Merton to something light like Roy Blount Jr. And of course, there’s always Wendell Berry. He sits on the shell alongside Merton. They always bring nature and God and life into one happy, thoughtful space. If you pair those two together, be prepared for a sudden urge to run into the woods and not come back for a while! I know you read a Large variety of books too. Much larger than me. If you read those two, be prepared to unpack it slowly. 🙂

Sheldon Lee Compton
For sure some powerfully good reading right there. I need to check out more Berry. I read a book of his years ago but haven’t revisited. I tend more toward the Larry Brown, Harry Crews direction with southern literature. One last question and I’ll leave you to the coffee, my friend. Tell me how we can get our hands on Pokeweed when it comes out. And let me say it has been great talking with you and that we should keep in touch. Thanks, man!

Brian L. Tucker
Shel, I definitely want to keep in touch. You are a well-read man, and I’ve loved your works. You bring so much to life inside your stories and novels. I agree Brown and Crews are some fabulous writers to come out of the South or anywhere worldwide. Larry Brown and Tom Franklin’s Poachers bring me to that ‘happy place’ of reading for enjoyment and understanding story construction better. Pokeweed is up for pre-order already at the publisher site: http://www.blackrosewriting.com/childrens-booksya/pokewood

July 20, 2018 0 comment

Conversation

Chaos Questions #15 – Nathaniel Tower

written by Sheldon Lee Compton

SHELDON LEE COMPTON: You’re in an alternate universe where instead of presents people give celebrities for Christmas. In fact, it’s not even called Christmas; it’s called Celebmas. Who do you give? Who is on your list?

NATHANIEL TOWER: Well, I think I might start by giving my wife Justin Timberlake and myself Rachel McAdams. Then we’ll all get it on together. We’ll be so busy that I’ll forget to give any celebrities to anyone else. I had planned on giving Kanye West to someone, but I left him wrapped up under the guest bed. Oh, and my dad would’ve gotten Neil deGrasse Tyson, but someone else gave him away first. So I’ll give him Rush Limbaugh two weeks after Celebmas. Oh, and I would also give that lady from Supernanny to my kids.

COMPTON: The dentist accidentally pulled three of your front teeth and you have a reading that evening. You’re ashamed and want to give them a good story about how it happened. What’s your story, you toothless wonder?

TOWER: I was curbstomped by one of those Westboro Baptist asshats in the parking lot on the way into the reading. He said something about my book being the antichrist.

COMPTON: You just discovered that all medicine is nothing more than bullshit placebos, always have been. There’s a huge chance people are going to think you’re just full on crazy, but you have to share the knowledge. What do you do?

TOWER: I head to the five nearest drug stores and buy out their entire stock of meds. I go home and take five pills a minute for the next month, filming every second of it. Then I make it into one of those time lapse videos that always go viral. The soundtrack to my video consists of Placebo’s “Song to Say Goodbye,” “Meds,” and “Bitter End.” When people see how none of that shit has any effect on me, they’ll know the truth. And Placebo will become super popular.

COMPTON: You’re in the white Bronco with O.J. speeding down the freeway. What do you say to him?

TOWER: Dude, why the fuck are we riding in a Bronco? All that money and this is the shit you’re riding in? Whatever. Let’s stop at Arby’s and get some curly fries. And can we drive a little faster maybe? I’m hungry. And how long is this gonna take? I promised my wife I’d be home by 6. Can’t piss off the wife, ya know.

May 28, 2017 0 comment

Community Conversation Fiction Literary Scene Writing

A FOLKLORE OF FICTION: An Interview with Arielle Tipa

written by Sheldon Lee Compton

SHELDON LEE COMPTON: Thanks for agreeing to talk with me, Arielle. Let’s start with how I first got to know you, through your online lit journal Fair Folk. It’s a journal that, for my money, really seeks to find the imaginative in storytelling today. Share a little about the journal and also about how did the idea for it started for you? Where do you see it going in the coming years?

ARIELLE TIPA: Fair Folk began as an “I know this has already been done before, but I’m gonna do it anyway” type of thing, since there are thousands and thousands of lit journals out there seeking out similar content. The fantasy genre has always been a favorite of mine since I was a kid, both in film and in literature. I was obsessed with series like The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper and The Unicorn Chronicles by Bruce Coville, and my favorite movies included Thumbelina and The Neverending Story. I was always that weird kid who scoured through the (pitifully small) mythology section of a Catholic school library just for fun. As I grew older, I began to question why people were so enthralled with the mystical concept of being or even existing, as well as the complexity of what it is to be human, and speculative fiction was really the only collective genre which echoed my own curiosities. Fair Folk, all in all, really stemmed from this attraction to the enchanted and the unknown, which still grows with me today.

I never had the courage to submit to literary journals until late last year, and that was very much a catalyst for developing Fair Folk – it was almost as if I wanted to do something worthwhile during my waiting period of getting a “yay” or “nay” for my lit journal submissions. To be honest, I was very insecure while starting this journal, since I really couldn’t consider myself a published writer (I really wasn’t, save for some contributive articles). But, I realized that starting Fair Folk wasn’t about me. It all boiled down to sharing diverse voices of speculative fiction, and yes, it does seek to find imaginative storytelling, which is needed now more than ever as the world today seems to sink further into a lecherous love affair with political chaos and correctness. The journal seeks out not only escapism, but a temporary alternative to reality. I believe a story is only worth reading if we are able to forget our own for just a short while, which is essentially Fair Folk’s purpose.

In the coming years, I hope to see the journal doing what it has been doing since its inception, and then some. Do I see it becoming more successful? Absolutely. Do I see it going into print? Maybe not. I have been (to an insurmountable degree) honored by having the chance to read some of the greatest spec fiction by international writers which both adheres to and shies away from the mainstream, and I cannot wait for more submissions to pile up. Being an editor-in-chief (as some will agree) is very rewarding.

COMPTON: Of course I agree that there needs to be a little more imagination in today’s fiction and poetry and, well, everything else, really. It’s a worthy goal, I think.

It’s interesting you should mention that you’re not really seeing Fair Folk becoming a print journal. In addition to the fact that realism has sort of had its day, so to speak, I also think the same can nearly be said of the print journal. I can remember hoping to get into a print publication back when I first starting writing, thinking, of course then, that it was more esteemed. I’m of a completely different mindset today. Print doesn’t begin to compete with online in terms of readership. And readership is the whole point, I believe. So Fair Folk remaining on online venue to me seems like the perfect situation. We need more of those, not less. Who needs another print journal that takes 437 days to reply to your submission and only accepts stories via snail mail. Man oh man, those days are way over in my book. What are your thoughts?

TIPA: Although I really, really prefer to read books in print, since it’s more intimate and concrete that way, my preference for literary journals is the complete opposite. Because content on the internet seems to be so much more easily accessible (and affordable) nowadays, the reason why I’d prefer the journal to stay immortalized through pixels and magical data is pretty much a no-brainer. As far as this modern, new-agey kind of era of reading, I really admire digital platforms like issuu, where you basically have the best of both worlds – a virtual print publication. I may (may) consider converting Fair Folk into virtual print and make it more like a seasonal type of publication. For now, WordPress is the easiest and most affordable option.

COMPTON: Let’s talk about your own writing. You were mentored by literary folklorist Ruth B. Bottigheimer at Stony Brook University. How did that experience bring you to the type of work you do today, especially in terms of the stories and so forth that focus on, in your own words, “fabulist to feminist, macabre to bizarre.” How much of that kind of writing did you bring to Stony Brook with you?

TIPA: To be honest, I barely even wrote anything besides scholarly papers while studying for my B.A. I was basically in starvation mode as far as writing for fun rather than for grades. I studied Comparative Literature and English, so the material I was required to read was extremely diverse: philosophical texts, cultural theories, biographies, nonfiction, sci-fi, Shakespeare, Freud, the works. While reading to get my degree, I was also, of course doing the usual – blogging, writing rough drafts, and leisure-reading on the side, and that same leisure reading included my personal favorites: fairy tales and dark fantasy, appropriately. This ultimately led to me into gathering ideas for my research project.

I ended up getting paired with this Professor Bottigheimer by the head of the Comp. Lit department and was like “Oh, cool…..who is she?” I then proceeded to Google her name at home, and basically lost it at “She has been hailed as ‘one of America’s foremost Grimm scholars’”. I became so intimidated that my anxiety was at an all-time high during the 4-month period of writing this gargantuan research project. But, meeting and working with her was rewarding. We ended up coming to an agreement for me to read and research the tales of the Grimm Brothers and Giambattista Basile, and to write a lengthy, comparative analysis of their usage of bird and tree imagery in as far as gendered functions and so on. That experience with Bottigheimer very much encouraged me to continue this obsession with writing and the fantasy genre, and to use it to the best of my abilities no matter what odd job I’m getting paid to do.

COMPTON: That is fantastic. I am now inspired to go back and read all the Grimm Brothers material. Dig deeply, you know?

So what’s coming up in the future for Arielle Tipa. What are some of you serious plans and then what are some of your pie-in-the-sky plans. For instance, my serious plans are to finish a collection of poetry and a third collection of stories by the end of the year. My fantasy plan is to retire from the day job, move to Norway, and write and play guitar for the next twenty years or so.

TIPA: Well, it’s been a while since we last have spoken, and a lot has changed in such a short period of time. I’ve been unemployed since last October, and these last six months have been some of the worst I’ve been through. But, I recently got a job as a full-time fashion and music writer for a small publication on Long Island. I love it so far, and I feel so fortunate to (finally) get paid to do what I love. I actually gained interest in fashion writing three years ago, and it became something I wanted to hone and delve deeper into. Since then, I’ve contributed for a few small sites, and I love that I get to incorporate my literary and poetic impulses into this type of journalism. This is a big leap for me and a stepping stone for my career, since I’ve wanted to work for some type of publication since community college, whether it was focused on fashion or music or any of the arts in general. Of course, I’ll still be writing poetry and short stories in-between.

As for my pet project, Fair Folk, I was recently thinking of making it into what I like to call an “inheritance” publication. That is, I would like to eventually step down as EIC and pass it down to someone I find worthy *queue villainous laughter*. Because I’m working now and have less down time, I would like to publish a few more stories and poems for Fair Folk until I feel that my time has come to an end. I’m currently tweeting updates as they come.

Lastly, I am also (as you, Mr. Compton, already know) working on a small, in-between endeavor of translating every Marilyn Manson song into Shakespearean. Seriously, like, straight-up Elizabethan stuff. Except it’s Marilyn Manson. I guess this would count as my pie-in-the-sky plan, but with the artist’s permission (followed by giddy and tearful fangirl reactions, since there is a personal, emotion connection I have with his music), I would like to publish these translations into print. Imagine that. Just imagine a printed discography of Manson’s songs bounded in tanned leather or sheepskin. If that’s not NYT #1 Bestseller material right there, then I don’t know what is.

May 2, 2017 0 comment

Conversation Literary Scene Writing

INTO THE DEEP AND INTO THE WEIRD: An Interview with Hugo Esteban Rodriguez

written by Sheldon Lee Compton

SHELDON LEE COMPTON: Really happy to have the chance to talk with you, Hugo. Thanks for taking the time. I want to start with your story “The Ritual.” I was proud as hell to get the chance to publish that at The Airgonaut the summer of last year. It tore me down in the best way possible. I knew right away I was in the hands of an extraordinary imagination. Do you mind starting with how that story took shape?

HUGO ESTEBAN RODRIGUEZ: It’s really an honor to me! I’ve always found that my fiction is a little bit weird and a little bit strange and when The Airgonaut gave me a chance I felt like I finally had that validation. On to the story! It’s really what happens when you get one particularly strong image and have it chug a whole lot of Julio Cortazar. In this case, the image was that of a diving board at a swimming pool I used to visit when I was a kid. I might have jumped from it once, but just once, and what I remember the most was how high it was, and the paint chipping off the blue metal rungs leading up to the platform. There wasn’t a diving board, either, just an elevated platform. The image stuck with me for a long time after, in a little folder in my head of random and disconnected images.

A few years ago, as a student at the UTEP’s online MFA program, I had the fortune of having Daniel Chacón as both professor and thesis advisor because he exposed me to the works of Julio Cortazar and Jorge Luis Borges and the power of magic realism, where the line between the real and the fantastical could be blurred to create the most powerful images and stories. One particular story we covered in class sticks out: Cortazar’s La autopista del sur. What Cortazar does with the concept of time and place in that story basically told me: “You want to get weird? Let’s get weird.”

So I wrote an entire manuscript with those ideas, with my heart set on releasing a book that would put me in a literary space somewhere between Raymond Carver, Neil Gaiman, and Sandra Cisneros. But The Ritual, for all its weirdness, didn’t feel like it belonged there. Once I made the edits to the manuscript, it was the first story removed. Coincidentally, the second story removed from the manuscript eventually became This Nocturne of Misplaced Questions, published by The Airgonaut earlier this year.

But on to “The Ritual” even after I had made some more edits free from the constraint of continuity or of the manuscript, something was not quite there. It wasn’t until I heeded the call for submissions from The Airgonaut that I realized what my problem with the story was. It wasn’t what I wasn’t saying, but rather what I was saying, and using the sharp 1,000-word cut-off requirement, I took a scalpel and removed all the excess fat from the story, resulting in what you see now. My belief with “The Ritual” was that there should be an emphasis on the real part of magic realism, where there was more creativity invested in writing something concrete than in something ethereal, vague, and abstract.

To sum it up “The Ritual” came about as a vivid image frozen in time bolstered by learning about magic realism and then using a scalpel to remove unnecessary detail in a weird story that’s both an ode to the Latino greats that influenced me and an introduction letter to the literary world broadcasting that I’m going to bring the weirdness.

COMPTON: I like that – an introduction letter. It has the feel of a story that is announcing something important, the arrival of a genuine storyteller. You mention some of the Latino influences such as Borges (who I’ve read extensively) and Cortazar (who I have not read at all, as of yet). I wonder when writing in proximity to these huge shadows of magical realism and innovation how does a writer manage to create his own voice and his own style, and so on? It’s clearly something you’ve managed to do very well. I only wonder was there a great deal of effort that went into it or were you able to open up in original ways without much problem?

RODRIGUEZ: I have kind of a simple view on things like that. I don’t see it as daunting or intimidating. I see what’s been done by people like those two and I think to myself: “Wow, that’s really cool! Now how can I do something like that with my own twist?”

It goes beyond those writers I mentioned and extends to poets and journalists and songwriters and what they’re able to do with words. That’s what inspires me and gives me the fuel to figure out the how to make my voice unique. And to answer that question, I think I benefit from an outsider’s approach. I only started writing literary fiction in 2013 and then only because it was part of my Advanced Fiction Writing workshop. Before that, the bulk of my writing experience came from six semesters as a journalist for my alma mater, angsty online journals, and writing bad genre fiction and even worse fanfiction. So you take that and then you add the fact that my main social circle isn’t writers or poets but rather accountants, engineers, IT professionals, and teachers and you get a guy who has no idea what rules and norms The Literary Establishment™ has set and decides to instead carve out his own place. That comes easy to me. The effort and the real fun*, I think, comes from the trial-and-error figuring out which inspiration will work with which weird/vivid imagery. I compare this to cooking, another hobby I go into with the same reckless abandon. Sometimes the idea will work, like the years-long process that’s helped me develop the best gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches. Sometimes the idea will crash and burn spectacularly, like the time I thought adding marinara sauce to ramen would be a good idea.

It wasn’t, and the effort resulted in the next two hours being spent in complete misery, but it was still fun attempting it.

*writers have quite the masochistic view of fun.

COMPTON: You say angsty online journals. I feel like I can relate. An online journal should be the rebel torch in the literary darkness right now, I think. Not a throw-away jumble of hasty ideas spread all over the place. Can you expand on what you mean and also share your thoughts on online work in general, especially as opposed to the increasingly uptight world of print?

RODRIGUEZ: Oh, to clarify, I meant angsty online personal journal sites, such as Xanga. However, there is one thing in common that those monuments to my teenage angst have with stories I’ve seen published: self-serving, navel-gazing bullshit. Not that there isn’t great work out there, because there is, plenty of it, but I feel like it gets buried in mountains of stories about sad people feeling sad about sad things.

Last year, I briefly worked as an assistant editor for the literary magazine Bartleby Snopes and one of the things that I loved the most about it, besides the fantastic people I got to work with, was that they weren’t afraid to push into the weird to get awesomely engaging stories. Editor Nate Tower had set a few submission guidelines for things that we would be wary of: “Stories written in present tense (especially third person present tense); stories with graphic dead baby scenes; stories about writers; stories about struggling marriages; stories set in bars; stories with more backstory than plot; stories with undeveloped characters; stories that are overly reflective; and stories that rely heavily on second person usage.”

It didn’t mean we weren’t going to publish stories that had some of those things, it just meant that writers should take risks and Bartleby was going to do its best to take away as many crutches as they could from those who submitted. That’s how the final issue’s dialogue contest winners included stories-in-dialogue about: a Godzilla-like monster who recited haikus; two men talking about pillows; two AIs talking at a bar; and one about a store receiving magical unicorn polish. I repeat: Bartleby Snopes was not a genre magazine, but it was a magazine that wasn’t afraid to get weird.

I’m a traditionalist in the sense that I prefer to work within rather than without the Literary Establishment™ to change things. Why? Because a lot of the criticism levied against it is completely valid. One of the biggest problems is the one you mentioned: We’re very uptight. We don’t want to mess with what’s established. We don’t want to take risks. We don’t want to try and take notes from the indie crowd when it comes to building up market. We act as if being able to interpret Joyce and loving the classics is the only way to enter this rarified air.

(And all of this just gives more ammo to those in the indie community who then claim we’re some sort of exclusive country club)

But these are not lofty spaces. What we do is really no different than what anyone with a passion/talent does. Success shouldn’t be defined by what you publish, awards, conferences, tenures, it should be defined by the simplest question: “Are you happy?”

And not in the blissful, okay-we-are-done-no-more-effort-required sense of happiness that’s fatal, but rather, the happiness, or rather, the satisfaction of knowing that what you do is what you want to do. That’s success. Y’all think some of these best-selling and allegedly “hack” writers give two shits that some stuffy professor with an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop thinks? They enjoy what they do.

That’s success. I consider myself successful because I get to do what I like to do on the side, but success comes with a huge side helping of hunger. There are still a lot of things I want to do and am able to do and I’m just getting started. I can’t stop. My grandfather once wrote to me: “Venado que se para, lo flechan.” (The deer that stays still gets killed)

And maybe, maybe part of it is that I just don’t “get it” and it would make sense. I’ve hated most of the classics I’ve read, I didn’t study literary theory until my master’s, got a C in the last proper English class I took in undergrad, and but for a few exceptions didn’t really like the rest of my English classes. There are things I still don’t like about the approaches: such as how anything published online is automatically considered published. Sure, Sturgeon’s Law applies but it’s also a good way to grow your market versus having to order a book that even with the author’s discount comes out to $10 if you want to show someone what you’ve written. (Don’t even get me started on submission fees)

But, to be fair, that uptightness extends to those levying that criticism against the Establishment, too. Writers who can’t take criticism at all. I have seen people say, and I’m paraphrasing only a bit: “Oh I had a story that got turned down by an editor therefore all gatekeepers are snobs. I am just going to throw a few words on CreateSpace and show it to people who’ll blow smoke up my ass and flip my shit when someone gives me three stars or less on my review.”

You have to have thick skin as a writer. You’re going to get rejection after rejection. That’s good! The first one’s always a little bit jarring but after that, they get much easier. The mentality should be that rejections are the expectation and not the exception. Eventually you start wanting to get rejections because you know every rejection is an opportunity to fix something and you know that in the end it’s a numbers game. Writers need to be able to handle that. Before I landed a book deal with La Casita Grande Editores, I had emailed around 60 different queries to 60 different agents. A year from now, I won’t necessarily remember the 60 queries or that of those, only 10 agents responded, with 9 of those being a variant of “thanks but no thanks” and one “wow sounds interesting, and thanks but no thanks”. I will remember that out of a hell of a lot of nos, I had one yes. That’s all that mattered.

This, by the way, is not a dig at the agents that turned me down. If anything, I’m thankful, because that’s 60 different look-throughs and edits that improved my queries each time. And as a Latino writer, I felt that it was my responsibility to go this way, because there is another very valid criticism about the establishment: it’s too white. You don’t see a lot of us in this space of literary journals and MFA programs. So I have to challenge my fellow POC writers who are tempted to go indie to not give up on their dreams of getting published the “traditional” way for the sole reason that by retreating we give the people who don’t want to see us there win by giving them exactly what they want.

If doors are closed, you kick them open. If they won’t budge, you open a window, if the window’s closed, you find another way in. If the space is too white, what is gained by leaving? How are you going to change the system when you can’t get traction at all? I may be just one person, but I’m there. I’m there because I saw other Latino writers and poets stirring up shit inside those literary spaces. My hope is I am able to do the same for even younger POC writers. As one friend put it: We should infiltrate, not segregate. Get your name out there, start a blog, go to events, change the system from within. I think online journals are a great way to start because it puts your story out there, one that’s vetted. Don’t hide behind paywalls. Get your work out there because people need to see it.

COMPTON: Oh man I love your views on all this. I think what you just said should be put in chapbook form and handed out to all young writers at some point in their lives, like a driver’s license, like a class ring, like a diploma.

So what’s on tap for you? What’s the realistic, day to day, version of what’s next and then what would be the next thing if you had a magic wand and could just make it happen instantly? In particular, do you have anything in book form that you might be shopping around in the near future?

RODRIGUEZ: Right now, I’m finishing up the edits to my manuscript and my editor and I are hoping for publication by February of next year, with as many readings and appearances to promote it as I can get in the fall. On the individual level, I’ll do a lot of self-promotion but I’ll do my best to be mindful not to cross over into the “we get it, Hugo, you wrote a book” point. I also don’t want to be that guy on Twitter only posting links to his book because that’s going to get old and annoying real quick. However, I’m still going to be active in my social media presence. I’m mostly on Twitter @HugoEstebanRC and Facebook (www.facebook.com/DosAguilasWrites) and I post a weekly writing-related (mostly) post on my John Scalzi/Chuck Wendig-inspired blog at www.dosaguilas.org/random-strands.

What kind of stuff are you going to see there? Well, writing-related stuff, nonsensical musings about food, the occasional retweet of something political, and words of praise for heavy metal and the San Antonio Spurs.

On the other writing fronts…oh man, lots of writing ahead! I’m going to keep on writing short stories and flash pieces; I’m going to finish the edits to my poetry manuscript and start shopping that around; and finally, well, I really want to start making serious inroads into the fantasy epic that I’ve been developing over the last decade and change.

If the magic wand only applies to me and only my writing, I’d probably use it on having that genre project off the ground and at the very least having a manuscript I could start querying agents with. Like I said, it’s been about eleven years since I first came up with the original idea, and I have nothing to show for it. I’ve started to write something several times and gotten as far as 70 pages in before letting the crippling self-doubt get to me and forcing me to abandon the projects because they’re burning piles of garbage. If anyone were to read them right now I’d want them to sign a medical waiver; that way they wouldn’t have grounds to sue me after the neck injuries they’d sustain from cringing so hard.

But honestly? I want to get better, and I know I really need to just devote more time to actually getting better, devoting time to the process that I love, with all its highs and its lows. If I were to flick my wrist and poof I have a completed and non-cringy manuscript…it’d rob me of all of that, so…it’d be a really tough call.

That’s really pretty much it. I want to thank you so much for your time, and for any one interested in getting to know more, please feel free to reach out to me! I love talking to people about writing, and really, anything.

April 28, 2017 0 comment

Conversation Poetry

INTERVIEW: Rusty Barnes Invites Readers to Revere in New Poetry Collection

written by Sheldon Lee Compton

SHELDON LEE COMPTON: I’m going to be honest here: I’ve always thought of you, firstly, as a poet. You just hold a line so well and have just amazing instincts with a phrase. Where does “Rusty Barnes the poet” fit into your idea of yourself and your work?

RUSTY BARNES: I began writing as a poet and that’s still how I think of myself. It looks like I write a ton more fiction than I do poetry, but that’s because the poems come between longer fiction projects. Whenever I cool off or finish something long, the poems start to come, and I write them for as long as the Muse will hang out with me, then start another novel or novella. It rounds out to writing poems three months a year and two or three novel(las) a year. This is how it’s worked for the past three years anyway. I’m in a holding pattern—this one is requiring a lot of research—with my current novel, and it feels weird not to be writing poems, but I trust everything will even out pretty soon. It usually does.

SLC: On Broad Sound is, I think, some of your best poetry. In particular, the poem “Lamp” speaks most clearly about your adoptive frame of mind in Revere. How long have you lived in Revere and what was the timeline for writing the poems in this collection?

RB: I lived first in East Boston, then moved to Revere–a move of only a half-mile or so–17 or 18 years ago. With one or two exceptions, the poems were all written in 2015 and 2016. I run in spurts. I usually take a break from fiction and write poems twice a year or so.

SLC: Do you have a favorite poem in On Broad Sound? One that stands out for you? If so, what’s the story behind that piece?

RB: I do have a favorite. My wife and I have been together for 26 years and I’ve never quite captured the dynamic of our relationship or said the things I want to say about how much I value her as friend and lover and go-to for basically everything in my life. She’s my first reader for all my poems. Sometimes we sit across from each other or move to our various places on the couch and email drafts back and forth for a couple hours a night after the kids have gone to bed. During one of those sessions came the last poem in the book, “The View from Earth,” the first poem where I thought I might have captured those feelings which usually stay unsaid. So yeah.

SLC: I love that, man. I just reread the poem. It’s one I had bookmarked as a favorite. It’s a piece that honestly does seem to pour out emotion, like an actual stream of total love, devotion, and sort of an awe for the subject matter, your wife Heather in this case, of course. It’s beautiful, Rusty. It seriously is.

After reading this collection, I’m now going to have to visit Revere, Mass. You make me want to move and take up a residence there, visit the local restaurants, stand on the shore. It’s as if you infused these poems with a hint of how it must feel to live there and raise a family there and build up years with a woman who fills up your heart. I’ve known you now for more than a decade and have thought of you in many ways as a regional writer. Do you have the feeling you’ll revisit Revere as a locale or inspiration?

RB: Thanks Shel. You can come up and visit anytime. I’ll take you to the SeaWitch and we’ll grub out on some fine fresh seafood. I hope I’ve captured something of what it is about Revere I like. It’s working-class and immigrant-rich still, but slowly gentrifying, which is a mixed bag. Still, within 20 minutes–a short subway ride– you can be downtown amidst all the culture you’d ever want. There are readings almost every night if you want to do that, great restaurants and a cool indie scene in general. For us, it’s perfect.

I will revisit Revere. In fact, I have already. My next big project coming out is Knuckledragger, from Shotgun Honey/Down & Out Books (October 2017) which takes place in Revere and surrounding towns, a book about a low-level Irish-type enforcer’s life, how he juggles his job and his women and gets in way over his head. I’m looking forward to seeing how folks like that, or whether readers will take to it knowing my past publication history, which is regional, as you say.

SLC: The SeaWitch and crashing a couple solid readings must be done. I remember telling you maybe a year or so ago that I had this vivid dream where I ended up at your house and, for some unknown reason, needed to crash there for awhile. You and Heather and the kids were awesome and took me in like family. I think I’m destined to visit Revere and hang with the Barnes family. And, of course, if you’re ever in spitting distance of Horseshoe Drive, you all need to stay for a bit on the farm. We’ll burn garbage and eat grilled ribs, just like good southern folk.

With mention of Shotgun Honey/Down & Out Books and the focus here on On Broad Sound, I have to wonder if you’ll ever wed those two sides of your writing life – the poet and the crime writer. I know you’ve been laying down a mighty amount of pages and cranking out several crime/thriller titles, such as Ridgerunner (which was solid as all hell) and the upcoming Knuckledragger (which I’m sure will be the same) but, like you said, you keep poetry there in the foreground with you. Can we expect a crime poetry collection in the future? And wouldn’t that be something that hasn’t been done before? Maybe ever?

RB: I’d love to get down to Horseshoe Drive. Someday. . .

I honestly have never thought of a crime poetry collection. This is what I know about crime poetry from my contemporaries though. Tony Barnstone wrote a very good book called Pulp Sonnets, which doesn’t quite match up with crime poetry but is, as the title suggests, full of love for pulp fiction and movies of all kinds. Also, my friend, the poet Joshua Michael Stewart–you may know him from Facebook–has had a book of very good noir poems in progress for some time. I’ve read some of them and published a couple in Fried Chicken and Coffee. The Lineup: Poems on Crime, cofounded by another Facebook friend, Patrick Shawn Bagley, is a small anthology that’s still available. I imagine there’s still a market for something like that, albeit limited. You may have just found me my next poetry project, Shel!

As for questions I wish you’d asked. . .I dunno. Now, I’ve got ideas for a bunch of crime poems, though, and I want to thank you for putting that idea in my ear and for doing this interview. Always nice to chat with one of the good ones.

SLC: Same to you, Rusty. Thanks for talking, and keep me updated on that collection!

Purchase ON BROAD SOUND.

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RUSTY BARNES grew up in rural northern Appalachia. He received his B.A. from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania and his M.F.A. from Emerson College. His fiction, poetry and non-fiction have appeared in over two hundred journals and anthologies. After editing fiction for the Beacon Street Review (now Redivider) and Zoetrope All-Story Extra, he co-founded Night Train, a literary journal which was featured in the Boston Globe, The New York Times, and on National Public Radio, ending its ten-year-run in February 2012, relaunching in 2014 long enough to do a best of anthology and one new print issue, ending its run (again) in 2015. Sunnyoutside Press published two collections of fiction, Breaking it Down and Mostly Redneck. MiPOesias published two chapbooks of poetry, Redneck Poems and Broke. Cruel Joke Press published his poetry collection, I Am Not Ariel in November 2013. Sunnyoutside Press published his novel, Reckoning, in March 2014. Ridgerunner, a crime novel, came out in May 2016 from 280 Steps. A follow-up to Ridgerunner, The Last Danger, will be published in Winter 2017. Also in 2017, Ravenwood Quarterly will publish a novel-in-stories titled Kraj: the Enforcer. His new poetry collection, On Broad Sound, is now available from Nixes Mate Press. His flash fiction appears in Best Small Fictions 2015, edited by Tara Masih and Robert Olen Butler.

March 24, 2017 2 comments

Conversation

Chaos Questions #3 – xTx

written by Sheldon Lee Compton

SHELDON LEE COMPTON: You move to Montana to get away from it all. Turns out Ted Kaczynski, the one and only Unabomber, is your neighbor. He comes over the second night you’re there and confesses his twisted plans. What do you do?

pot-doctor

xTx: With Ted there is a warm ringing and we embrace like brothers begging before our brutal step-father. This, after our hands were writhed. A progression of understanding, compassion and love that knit the evening. His beard I breathed. This, after I shaped his jaw with my palms. A mandible meaty and wide. Strong. The beard a white cloth covering a David. It was hours I listened. The pour of wine deep between us. It was not minutes it came to that, it was one decade.

I moved to Montana a ten years-lonely woman who wanted to die underneath a sky I would never deserve. The shame in that heating my loins. When Ted appeared on my doorstep, madness in his gaze, I clung to him like a bundle of rebar thrown into a very deep lake. A quick and easy way to go down.

No one will ever know Ted the way I did. The mushroom-smell of his hair. The way he’d hitch and Gollum-sputter nonsense sounds in between monologues. How he agreed to a promise he eventually kept. How, these years later, I still keep that promise, metal-tubed and ticking underneath my mattress, Ted-set for a day he doesn’t want me to wake up. I often wonder if it will be the same day of his not waking.

I often pray for that.

SLC: Tomorrow you show up for work and the whole damn place, the entire building, is gone. There’s a note in the place you used to park that reads, “They know.” Walk me through the rest of your day.

xTx: 1. I say, “Oh shit” and get back in my car.

2. I drive to Venice Beach.

3. I find one of those “Pot Doctor” places and pay $50 for an exam so I can get a “Pot Card.”

4. I walk around without an iPhone until I find a Pot Store.

5. I go in to the Pot Store and buy pot in the shape of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.

6. I ask the Pot Store Guy if he knows what they know and he nods and hands me an envelope.

7. I leave the store and open the envelope after I eat the Pot Reese’s.

8. I start every sentence in this thing with I.

9. I find a feather smeared with feces inside the envelope.

10. I get mad at the Pot Guy because I realize he did not know what they know.

11. I drive back to where my work was.

12. I lie down in the parking lot and make snow angels against the asphalt that has no snow until my clothes wear through and my skins rubs off exposing my yellow fat and muscles and eventually bone.

13. I die.

14. I know.

SLC: The 1980s or the 1990s? Let’s talk about that.

xTx: Let’s not. But, the 80’s man……

SLC: Fifty percent of the U.S. population can manipulate one of the four basic elements. You’re among that percentage. Which element, and what will you do?

xTx: I’m not sure what elements are and I’m not going to Google it so I can just write whatever I want to write on this question.

I’m going to guess that elements are things like rain and the waves of the ocean and how those new-fangled kitchen drawers stop a half-inch from closing all the way and then slooooowly close all the way shut. I didn’t go to college so hopefully that helps explain my guess if I am, like, way far off.

So, taking the path of my guess, I’m going to say that I would probably manipulate something really small and stupid because I’m sure all of the other people picked all the cool elements (like tidal waves, Beyonce and fire smoke) and are all acting like they are bad-ass while actually they are just a bunch of sheep. So, I will pick the element of the slam dunk. I will make bets on basketball games and then control all the basketballs to be slam dunks in my favor so I will win lots of money. I will also use my powers to blow men’s minds at various playgrounds, gyms and recreation facilities all across the land. Especially at those courts in Venice Beach where they filmed White Men Can’t Jump. Man, I will fuck their shit UP over there!

SLC: Ants and humans switch size but retain their intelligence. What the hell do you do first?

xTx: Get out of the way of the ants.

November 26, 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

Community

a post about AWP I meant to post but got TOO CAUGHT UP

written by Alexandra Naughton

Okay so I’m back in sunny ass Berkeley sitting at my desk at my high-pressure job eating a tuna melt that was not thoroughly melted and looking out the window at some palm trees and thinking about all the cool shit I did at AWP this past weekend and trying to process it all. It takes me a long time to process things. This will probably be the first of several posts about AWP that I will make here.

Janice and Michael asked if I would write posts about AWP while at AWP and I meant to but honestly I was having too much fun running around with a sick posse of writers who I love going to readings and doing performances and seeing the sights in Minneapolis and basically just taking advantage of what I felt was like a vacation that I never got the chance. I meant to, though, I really did.

I’ve got a lot to say. I’m not sure how to say it yet, but I will eventually.

At this moment, I guess I just want to give a shoutout and a huge thanks to A. Razor of Punk Hostage Press and Jason Scheinheit of The Gorilla Press for working the book table and trying to get our wares out there. They both deserve a well-toasted tuna melt (or a well-toasted sandwich of their choice).

Also, I want to share these cool podcasts Jason conducted while working the table. The podcasts are all about five minutes long or fewer and are pretty funny. Jason interviewed me, as well as Amy Saul-Zerby, Jesse Prado, A. Razor, Tomas Moniz, Lizzie Acker, Hollie Hardy, Nate Waggoner, Russell Jaffe, Oliver Mol, and others. Check em out! They are short and sweet!

April 14, 2015 0 comment

Art Conversation Random

photos and theft: interview with Bay Area photographer Joe Carrow

written by Alexandra Naughton

Joe Carrow is a cool guy who comes to a lot of the readings in the Bay Area and takes photographs of local weirdos and does it all for the love of it. In this interview we talk about his photo work and an incident he had with a Canadian website and I pretend that I’m not sure who I’m talking to at first for a pathetic attempt at comedy.

Hey, so first question: who are you, what do you do, and how do we know each other?

Hi Alexandra!

I’m Joe Carrow. I work as a mechanical engineer by day, and I do more creative things at night to stay sane. I used to play drums before I moved to the Bay area in 2004, but when I got out here I found that all of the apartments were really tiny and I didn’t have a way to keep playing. I loved drums, but my girlfriend at the time needed floor space for her wheelchair and the apartment walls were too thin for so much noise. I started getting pretty serious about photography around 2008, and in 2012 I became the show photographer for Oakland Nights Live.

I was invited to take some pictures at a poetry reading in an abandoned apartment in 2012, where I met you and a few other local poets. I put out a Facebook call of “Who wants to do a shoot?” in 2013 and you wanted to do a shoot, and we’ve been doing photo stuff and going to each others events ever since.

Ah, yeah. I’m remembering now. We did a photo shoot. You’re the guy with the beard holding a camera, right? Yeah, I think you’ve shot the covers for a few of my books or something. What kind of photo work do you like to do? What do you find inspiring?

That’s right! I’m the guy with the beard and camera. I was pursuing competitive beard growth for a while, but eventually it felt ridiculous and I trimmed it off.

The kind of photo work that I like to do is to show people having cool experiences. Really, it’s the look on somebody’s face that does it for me. What’s going on? What are they up to? Who are they? Is something cool happening? I can appreciate and enjoy pictures of landscapes and skies and inanimate objects as well, but I care a lot more about people pictures. I like to catch those candid moments when people aren’t posing, when they’re having a genuine moment. Here are a few favorites:

March 24, 2015 1 comment