- what’s up 2010
I’m back in Texas. Last night we drank Johnny Walker Blue Label and walked home with the wind at our backs. Dick Clark is an animatron with a dual directive to kiss ladies and count backwards.
On the drive back from Tucson I read most of Elmore Leonard’s Escape From Five Shadows aloud. It was an early book, just his third novel, and it shows a bit in word repetition and other little things, but it’s a good book. It made me wonder about writing westerns. You have to write close enough to feel familiar with the genre but you can have too many suntanned faces peering out from under curled hat brims. Familiar but not too familiar.
My Christmas story is up at Everyday Genius, which was guest edited this month by Sasha Fletcher. The third paragraph used to be its own story, which I was calling “Things To Do With Fifty-Three Poinsettias.” It was kind of a downer so I condensed and re-appropriated. EWN said some nice things about the story. Thank you Sasha and Adam and Dan.
I’m excited to read the latest Sleepingfish, edited by Gary Lutz and Derek White and featuring a lineup I’m proud to be a part of, including Ryan Call, Anna DeForest, Sasha Fletcher, Nina Shope, Rachel May, David McLendon, Eugene Lim, The Brothers Goat, Lito Elio Porto, Adam Weinstein, Diane Williams, Dennis Cooper, Elliott Stevens, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Alec Niedenthal, Matt Bell, Eduardo Recife, David Ohle, Evelyn Hampton, Émilie Notéris, Ottessa Moshfegh, Cooper Renner, Christine Schutt, M. T. Fallon, Daniel Grandbois, Julie Doxsee, Terese Svoboda, Blake Butler, Stephen Gropp-Hess and Ali Aktan Askin. The cover looks great:
- it is inside you
The new Sonora Review is also out and ready for order. It has a lovely cover and work from me, Colleen O’Brien, Steven Church, Michael Tod Edgerton, Amanda Warren, Joshua Robbins and more. Sonoran Desert represent.
- creatures
Now I’m learning about the Corpus Days Inn where Selena was murdered. When MLK was shot in the Lorraine Motel they made it into a museum, but the Days Inn is still a Days Inn; they just changed the numbers on the doors.
yr story was goddam bangin and i was beyond proud and excited to help adam give it to the whole internets as a christmas present from us to the internets.
happy new year champ.
i miss you.
you’re cool sasha. I appreciate your face. Your piece in sleepingfish is awesome. I think some of it should be screamed or in all-caps.
okay ordering some sleepingfish right now, couldn’t pass it up, so many great writers in this issue, people i’m getting to know – thanks as always, amelia
i think ja is going to have a lot of caps. we just got some cover sketches in, and i am pretty excited. and thanks for saying that. it means a lot from you, as i think you are the bee’s tits.