Check out an excerpt of THREATS in Vice. THREATS will be out in March! Sorry, you must wait. I wish I could beam it into your brain beforehand. Wait a second, I’ll try.
Did that work?
I’m not very good at this.
Archive for the 'AM/PM' Category
Some exciting events coming up:
BROOKLYN: September 18 as part of the BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL. St. Francis Volpe Library (180 Remsen Street) 5:00 P.M. Short and Sweet (and Sour). Short Story weavers Clark Blaise (The Meagre Tarmac), Seth Fried (The Great Frustration), Amelia Gray (AM/PM) read from their works followed by Q&A. Moderated by Steph Opitz.
FAIRFAX: September 22 as part of the FALL FOR THE BOOK Festival at George Mason University. Student Union Building II, Rooms 3, 4, 5, (4400 University Dr, Fairfax, VA). 8:00pm-9:15pm. Breakthrough Fiction Panel. With newly released works of fiction, short-story writers Matt Bell (How They Were Found) and Amelia Gray (AM/PM) and novelist Michael Kimball (Us) discuss the art, craft and business of fiction today.
AUSTIN: September 24 is my going-away party and reading and open-house at the WriteByNight Writing Center (1305 E. 6th Street, Suite 4) starting at 8pm. Come check out WriteByNight and throw a beer at me while I read a story about feelings.
SAN DIEGO: October 13 as part of &NOW. Atkinson Hall, UCSD. 5:00pm-6:20pm, FC2 Flash Fiction Reading feat. Joseph Cardinale, Lucy Corin, Jeffrey Deshell, Brian Evenson, Amelia Gray, Noy Holland, Matt Kirkpatrick, Lance Olsen, Matt Roberson, Joanna Ruocco, Elisabeth Sheffield.
SAN DIEGO: October 15 is VERMIN ON THE MOUNT and I don’t know what time it is yet but Rikki Ducornet is going to read too, and Ben Loory, so you’d better just take whatever you’ve got on the calendar that day and wipe it.
LOS ANGELES: October 19 I’m co-hosting the LITERARY DEATH MATCH with Todd Zuniga at Busby’s East. Doors at 8. Jill Soloway is judging Beau Sia, Charles Yu, Jillian Lauren and Margaret Wappler.
AM/PM is the prize for Free Book Friday this week at LitDrift. Simply comment on the post over there by noon on June 4 to be entered.
Still working through the Wigleaf Top 50. My favorite from the latest batch is Joshua Cohen’s “Identical City” from Fanzine. The #3 “single” blows my mind a little more each time I read it.
Woke up singing Ke$ha’s summer jam “Your Love is My Drug.” It’s another day in the life of the president of hot dogs.
I read this terrifying article about salt. A cup of Cheez-Its contains a third of your RDA of sodium, because there is salt in the dough, salt in the cheese, and salt atop the cracker. Without salt, the processed foods you may know well (cornflakes, chicken soup) taste metallic and medicinal. Sometimes when I read articles like this I want to immediately buy and eat a box of Pop Tarts.
I just learned I’m reading at the Happy Ending series in NYC on July 7 with Shane “Shanke” Jones. Party hats for everyone. Party hats for the animals and the people alike.
Life is one extended game of Oregon Trail and we have full power to choose the members of our traveling party. I’m glad to have someone in my wagon who can eradicate the viruses from my computer after I’ve downloaded too much Madonna. Our hearts are light, our machines clean. Onward!
On Saturday I was a lucky duck to have three smart and talented ladies in my Dzanc Day workshop. We sat around the fireplace in Mary Sledd‘s lovely new studio and drank mimosas and talked about dialogue and openings and working through the block. Thanks to Brittany, Lesley, and Sarah for being wonderful and showing me your work. Thanks also to Dzanc for putting it together across the country.
SXSW happened. I was happy happy to make it down south to see Trespassers William play music so beautiful it put me into a trance. The woman sitting next to me on the couch was under the same spell. She kept saying “Yes” real quiet.
Zach and Ally visited from Chicago, Autumn from NYC. Good finds this year included The Middle East, Free Energy, Lisse, and Givers. I was happy to see The Low Anthem shine in a smaller venue. The Gary rocked their brunch show. Ally and I watched a guitar girl while we sat on chairs like old ladies. Mary and I walked through a dark neighborhood until we found a stage set up in someone’s backyard, accordions and violins backing pretty singers for a crowd of 75 or so.
Tyson’s Whiskey Rebellion was excellent. I had the honor of reading with Tyson as well as Bill Cotter, James Hannaham, Stephen Elliott. Feeling kind of overwhelmed just thinking about it. A band of young men called The Shake played and some homeless ladies jumped over a wall. It was a fine week in total! Back to work in the morning.
You should read Kyle Minor’s story The Truth and All Its Ugly, for it is heartache in paragraph form. Beautiful work.
And lastly: a kind review of AM/PM over at Broken Pencil. Thanks very much to Jack Cena for the consideration.
- It would be cool if I could live my life with a giant bulb-lit DAMN flashing behind me at all times
- The NYT is doing their Year In Ideas. So far my favorites are The Advertisement That Watches You and The Kitchen Sink That Puts Out Fires.
- I’m writing a story about a house that was in my dream last night
- I don’t like writing best-of-year lists but I do like reading lists written by other people. It does give me a little worry, like maybe we’ll forget about the things on these lists now that we’ve listed them.
- Full disclosure everyone, I did make two important lists: My shrimp tacos were on Aaron Burch’s list, and my “walking down a staircase” behind an Ellsworth Kelly sculpture was on Adam Robinson’s list. I’d like to thank the Academy.
- AM/PM made a couple too. I am pleased. People remember the book even though it came out in February, which is akin to the dawn of time as far as these year-end lists go.
- AKIN TO THE DAWN OF TIME.
Thanksgiving was fun. There was a brine emergency but then everything was solved and the turkey turned out fine and everyone brought a delicious dish. I’m on day three of leftovers and sad to see them go. I do also sort of want a taco.
Now I’m trying to win an award for laziest house-cleaning. If I go an hour between mopping each individual room, I’ll advance to the semifinals. I was thinking just now while I was mopping that most every adult in the world has spent some time in his or her life cleaning in some small or large way. Even your worst enemy (if you’re into that sort of thing) has likely put some hours into mopping or at least washing dishes.
Has Kim Jong-Il ever cleaned? It is a mystery
Patrick Wensink, author of the funny book Sex Dungeon For Sale, is holding a coloring contest. The winner receives a copy of AM/PM plus Fool (Christopher Moore), Help! A Bear is Eating Me! (Mykle Hansen), and Tales Designed to Thrizzle (Michael Kupperman). Looks fun and the pictures are neat. Check it out.
My cat and I invented a game called “helicopter cat” where I tie her favorite toy to a string and you know what, this story isn’t even worth finishing
Sean Lovelace offers a thoughtful and good review of AM/PM with cool pictures. Thank you Sean. Dan Wickett reviews the beautiful Annalemma #5 and my story therein. Thanks Dan.
- My ears are still buzzing from the show last night. I feel like there are metal teacups making an acoustic hoop around my head
- A man in the store said I looked too sad to be there
- “It’s a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to write or speak very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work”
- I intend to sing Hank Williams Jr. before an assembled crowd tomorrow
- I’ve been keeping a handwritten list of things I would Tweet if I had a Twitter
- Tell me your favorite Hank Williams Jr. song to win a copy of Annalemma
- Currently feeling mildly freaked out by the phrase “group dinner”
I got out of the house and enjoyed the whole of the Austin City Limits festival this weekend. Danced through Phoenix and Girl Talk, marveled at Ghostland Observatory’s lasers from a quarter mile off, stood hours in the weepy rain for Bon Iver. Ate maybe five chicken cones. The grounds turned to treated-sewage sludge by the third day, making the cross-park trip, as Sean O’Neal put it, “not unlike walking across a giant chocolate cake.” This morning I woke up early and shopped the MT Supermarket with twenty silent housewives. Organic soy. Fish heads.
More links: Three Guys One Book took a kind look at AM/PM and Lindsay Hunter’s fresh-to-death My Brother. M Review is live, kindly including the largest excerpt of AM/PM you will find on this Internet. Here’s a recipe for Thai spring rolls. I’m doing a panel at the Texas Book Festival called “Writing in the Shadows” that happens at the same time as an interview with the No Impact Man.
Also, excitement: I am doing a LITERARY DEATH MATCH with Kyle Beachy, Jeff Martin, and Jason Sheehan. The NYC show was part of the inspiration for Five Things and I’m excited it’s coming to town, more excited (impossibly excited) that I’m a part of it. It is happening in a church on Halloween. I am hopping from one foot to the other with excitement.
In closing: The marching band down the street is practicing late tonight with a loud metronome. My cat ate a housefly out of the air. I’m going to go watch the end of Monday Night Football because at first I was not ready but now I am ready. I am ready for some football.
A little feather-ruffling over at Featherproof:
“Have you read AM/PM? Cleverest review on Powells.com or Amazon.com
Yesterday’s early-morning dialogue looks a bit like a lamp, doesn’t it? If I had the multimedia skill and an attention span longer than an addled boll weevil, I’d make a Flash-based interactive room of objects that, when you zoomed in, were all concrete poems. Zoom in more and the letters themselves would be concrete prose. A chapbook of a room, a collection of a house.
Monica McFawn wrote an interesting and good review of AM/PM in the latest issue of Rain Taxi. Favorable comparisons abound. Serious good feelings.
This article places two loves under the same blanket. Everything is the same even if it’s different.
My “c” key has fixed itself but the obstruction has moved to the “ctrl” key. This makes it very difficult to copy and paste, which makes me realize that I copy and paste all the time.
Here’s a good idea for dinner: boil wheat pasta, drain, add tuna fish, kalamata olives, lime basil, a small can of tomato sauce, and parmesan. Get some red pepper flakes in there. Toss and serve.
This is pretty funny, though some of them make me really want to read the books. “Five months ago, the kaleidoscope of power had been shaken, and Aringarosa was still reeling from the blow” is a hilarious line. Some of these Serious Readers of Fiction need to take a weekend.
