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In Short Stories

Subrogation of the Internal Messenger in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet

This is a big one for me and requires some explanation.

In 2017 I attended the Tin House Writer’s Conference in Portland, thrilled to have Kelly Link as my workshop leader. Kelly is one of my writing gods, for obvious reasons, master of the weird literary short story, author of Stone Animals, The Hortlak and many other all time favorite stories. I brought a fantasy story to the workshop. Kelly gave it some love. That was the highpoint of my writing career, such as it is.

I spent some time rewriting that story (whose title ended up as The Subrogation of the Internal Messenger) and sent it out a few times. No luck. I rewrote it again and sent it to Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, which is published by Small Beer Press, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant proprietors. LCRW is old school: hardcopy submission, no simultaneous subs, sit tight, they take a while. They have published Ursula Le Guin, Karen Joy Fowler, Ted Chiang and other luminaries. They are worth waiting for.

Last month I received an email from Gavin asking if the story was still available. It took me a while to remember the story. Three years and three months after I submitted it. Turns out it was still available. Some things are worth waiting for.

LCRW is a hard copy publication, but the link to the table of contents and contributors is here.

The graphic is a woodcut print that I did during the pandemic, the first in many years. Title is Corvid 19. Ha. Crows feature in the story.

This all makes me very happy, which is why I write in the first place. Major gratitude to Kelly & Gavin.

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July 31, 2022
inside of a bus
In Flash Fiction

Transit Lane in Spectrum

Spectrum (out of UC Santa Barbara) published my flash story Transit Lane in the spring edition (Vol LXV). Spectrum is the oldest lit pub in the UC system. They have published Raymond Carver, Samuel Beckett and William Carlos Williams. This is the only thing I have in common with those guys. The people at Spectrum were great to work with.

This story came out of decades of commuting on buses, which was sometimes enjoyable and sometimes an adventure. There was a woman (for instance) who kept an actual bird inside her beehive hairdo. Couldn’t fit her into the story. Maybe next time.

Unfortunately, there’s no electronic access yet to the story (hardcopy only so far).

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July 31, 2022
In Flash Fiction

Bark Hearts in jmww

New flash story “Bark Hearts” in jmww, one of the old school great flash journals I’ve been trying to get into forever.

A long time ago I read that even people with very little don’t tend to support increasing taxes on the rich because they figure someday they’ll be rich themselves. We want to move up the hill, no matter what. This is about that age old proposition: people be crazy.

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July 14, 2021
In Uncategorized

Rearranging the Bones at Pithead Chapel

Rearranging the Bones is a flash story about a walk in the woods and being eaten by a giant owl. Kim Magowan, the editor of Pithead Chapel, described it as my bizarre narrator-as-owl pellet story. Also as ‘such an oddball.’ I love that kind of reaction. She also saved me from screwing up the ending with an extra sentence.

 

This is another story that came from walking in the woods. I interrupted a western screech owl on the ground about to eat a mouse. It looked at me like he wanted to eat me for interrupting his meal. Good think he was only about a foot tall.

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July 1, 2021