Two (Tiny) Watershed Moments for me

Two small things that mean the fucking world to me are now true! Or said another way, I get to tick two more boxes in my life goals list as a literary (non)fiction author.

I’m in The Rumpus at last!

One, I’ve been submitting short stories and essays to The Rumpus for over a decade. I’ll continue to do so in the future as well. But one of the things about having a great publicist is that they open up doors to you that you can’t open yourself, which is part of the reason that great publicists are worth their weight in gold, and for me, that means being in a dope interview in The Rumpus about one of my books. In this case, DREAM POP ORIGAMI.

I’ll be reading at the Woodmere Library (the Main Library) in TC!

Two, I’m going back to Traverse City, Michigan later this week to give a reading at the Woodmere Library from DREAM POP ORIGAMI as a published author and Brilliant Books, the awesome local bookstore in TC, is going to be selling my memoir. This is something I’ve wanted and daydreamed about since I began my MFA back in 2007. Every time I’d looked up tickets to TC, they were way too expensive. Actually more expensive than flying from LAX to Rome. But after spending time with an old friend of mine from Traverse City in Portland, Oregon, of all places, I got the hookup. This opportunity just kinda fell onto my lap and now I’ll be able to see old friends, classmates, crushes, and ex’s for the first time in thirty years. Can you believe that shit?

Amnesia of June Bugs is a Bookshop New Release Title!

A Bookshop New Release!

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A Bookshop New Release! ::

I know it’s all about the little victories as a small press author, so of course I’m fucking ecstatic that Amnesia of June Bugs was one of just nine books included this week in Bookshop’s new releases! Sharing space with Viola Davis and Vaishnavi Patel, among others, my debut novel is off to a rocking start and I’m so grateful. Support your local bookstore by buying your copy here.

Amnesia of June Bugs to be Published in 2022 by 7.13 Books

I’ve been holding on to this secret for a little while now after signing and returning the publisher’s contract because I wanted to wait until the moment felt right to me, but the day has finally come! I sold my very first novel, Amnesia of June Bugs to 7.13 Books

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2nd Piece Accepted in 2016

Matthew Salesses runs and directs an awesome column at Pleiades about workshop craft and workshop pedagogy and I'm happy to say that my essay "The Velocity of Flying Objects" about my own workshop methodology will be published soon on the magazine's website.  Stay tuned.

Writing at the Powell's Café

I'm at Powell's right now, sitting in the café and looking through the window across Burnside.  This is a view (dream) I've enjoyed many times in my life, especially the three years I lived in Portland, back when my only dreams concerning my writing, was publishing my short stories in great literary journals and someday getting into a legit MFA program.  Eleven years since I was here last, I can't help but take a personal inventory of my life, noting the achievements I've fulfilled and those that I'm still trying to achieve.  Among other things, I realize that:

1.  Contrary to what I assumed in 2003, when I took my first fiction workshop at the age of 28 at Portland State, publishing a short story in an excellent journal, even publishing a bunch of short stories in many respected journals, doesn't mean you've "made it" at all as a literary fiction writer.  Or maybe it did once, but then you begin moving the goal posts with each tiny success

2.  Getting accepted into a legit MFA program doesn't mean you've "made it" either

3.  Ditto with a legit PhD program

4.  Ditto studying with famous authors (all of who have tried, each in their own way, to get their agents to pick me up as a client)

5.  One of my biggest fears since the day I realized I wanted to be a literary fiction writer, was not publishing my novel, short story, and memoir manuscripts.  My second greatest fear was being one of those professors who teaches writing, but who hasn't published his books.  Right now, these two fears resonate with me, not because I think I'll never publish my manuscripts (actually, I think I'm incredibly close right now because I have many agents reading my first and second novels and just as many indie presses reading similar and different manuscripts), but because before you're a published author in the book sense of the word, you're nothing.  Or at best, you're simply a published author in the literary journal sense of the word, which isn't the same thing.

6.  As I was talking to my good friend Leigh, two nights ago, at this vegan trattoria, it hit me that as a fiction writer trying to make a career publishing his novels in hard copy, I'm essentially fighting for a lost world.  A world that doesn't even exist anymore to anyone except literary fiction writers

7.  I need to find an illustrator and a coder and then finish my electronic novella, Dukkha, My Love, as soon as possible because I can still leave my mark in that medium, regardless of how long it takes me to publish my other work

8.  On the flip side, at the cost of sounding smug, I'm happy with life right now.  I'm in love, I'm married, we have a bomb loft apartment in DTLA and two small dogs that we absolutely adore.  I have an awesome gig teaching hybrid class of lit, creative writing, rhetoric, and comp, at a great school (UC Irvine).  Besides that, I'm healthy.  I get to travel with my boo at least once every year.  And with the exception of this annoying reoccurring red patch on my cheek (that is either eczema, seborrheic dermatitis, or rosacea--and makes me feel like an angry lush clown), I think I look pretty good for my age.

9.  I think I'm at a very major threshold here.  I'm hopeful, shamefully, possibly even unjustifiably hopeful about my future.  My hope is that in a few years, I get to come back here to Powell's not as a customer, but as an author.  Until then, I keep fighting, keep submitting, keep improving my manuscripts