Moving Forward, Always Forward

Today I decided I'm not waiting any longer for destiny to call.  I've waited long enough, been a patient + understanding writer, taken my disappointments with enough grace, licked my wounds + played the patience game as best as I know how.  I think most people would have folded  by now, found a different vocation, taken out life insurance.  To be honest, I don't begrudge them at all, I understand where they're coming from + why they stop setting themselves up for heartbreak.  But writing is the one thing I'm awesome at + I won't give up.  I just don't know how.  This is why I can't wait any longer for journals + literary agents to get back to me, I've already given them enough of my time.  I've paid my dues.  Now, I'm moving on.  Something in the future will work out.  As for the past, I'm not convinced that's where my future is anyway (excuse the temporal paradox).

After waiting for a small eternity, deluding myself into thinking that patience was akin to loyalty, I've decided I'm gonna send out a flurry of new query letters + fiction manuscripts this week.  I think the best response is to keep moving forward + not look back, because we all know what happened to Eurydice.  I'm looking at Gary Shteyngart's + Patricia Engel's agents, I'm looking at the Virginia Quarterly Review again, at The Paris Review, the Missouri Review + the New Yorker again, I'm considering every option now.  I think I've waited like a champ, stuck to the positive (irrational), hoped for the best.  But not anymore.  It's time for my next move, wherever that takes me.  Ultimately, I want what every aspiring literary fiction writer wants: artistic materiality.  Or said another way, I wanna see my writing in print.  Besides that, I guess I want readers, passionate readers, I want snarly critics trying to outstylize my own novels with blistering manqué book reviews, I want online interviews, a flirty movie option that never comes to be, I want a date on Fresh Air, a little name recognition in an indie bookstore + some annoying fan letters written by readers obsessed with my characters.  A book tour would be nice too, maybe a free lunch now + then, a master class with a few undergrads.  But for now, I'm cool with just seeing my writing in print.  That's the only thing I actually need.  That's my future.  That's the uncanny dream.  So now I'll dream it as hard as I can + not look back in anger.

My 2013 Ranking of Literary Journals

Ranking literary journals is a subjective bizz.  To read my spiel about what I see as the unavoidable filter bias of journal awards + the inherent subjectivity of literary journal rankings, please see last year's entry about this topic.  No need to repeat old opinions.

So, here are my new rankings of literary journals with the following caveats:

1.  These rankings are totally subjective but at least I can admit it.  I tend to focus my own submissions on journals I'm especially enamored with, meaning I tend to read stories in those journals more, which means I'm much more aware of how good they are. This is my roundabout way of saying there's probably lots of great shit I'm not reading but I have a life + I have my own stylistic, conceptual + editorial biases (as we all do) . . .
2.  My only criteria are quality, voice, audacity + originality.
3.  These aren't actually rankings.  In fact, I'm going to list them randomly in order to deprivilege the journals that are listed earlier in the list
4.  This list is intentionally incomplete.  I'm not comfortable including journals I haven't read

2013 Haphazard Literary Journal Ranking

Slate (okay, just for poetry, but whatevs)


2nd Story Accepted in 2013

I was kicking it with LB last night, watching The L Word, eating snacks + drinking ocha when I saw this email on my iPhone.  Then, I got insanely happy.  One of my short stories is gonna be published in Tin House for the Flash Friday set at the Open Bar.  I can't even begin to tell you how stoked I am about this.  Can I get a woot woot?  Here's the email:

Dear Jackson,

I just finished reading "Cabrón" and would love to run it on the morning of September 26th on The Open Bar.  Does this sound good?  Can I gift you a subscription to the magazine or a book from our catalog?  

Best,

M****

M**** C******
Associate Editor
Tin House Books
2617 NW Thurman St.
Portland, OR 97210
www.tinhouse.com

Why the New Yorker Sometimes Feels like the Old Yorker

I know it's not the smartest thing in the world to criticize one of the glossies, especially when said glossy is iconic in the literary fiction community + happens to be one in which you're hoping to publish a self-contained novel chapter in the distant future from your awesome second novel.  At the same time, being a Chicagoan with a shitload of New York friends, I know for a fact that some New Yorkers actually look down upon the rest of the world for not being New Yorkers.  I'll never forget the time the coworker of an ex-girlfriend of mine once told me he "forgave" me for not being from New York, a comment that was supposed to be smug + biting in just the right way, but which actually made me want to beat his ass with a monkey wrench until he was spitting out teeth (+ I'm a Buddhist + a pacifist, mind you).

Anyway, I bring up a few details from my experience with New York for several reasons.  One, New York is a city I love very much (proven by the fact that my first novel BLANK takes place in nyc).  Two, sometimes, New Yorkers think everyone else is less smart, less urbane, less hip + less international than they are (+ of course, they'd only be partially right).

Anyway, I'd like to believe that in some strange, mysterious way, this ethnocentric ethos of New York also pervades the New York literary establishment, and why shouldn't it?  New York is still the undisputed mecca of fiction writers.  The creative writing faculty at NYU could fill an entire bookstore.  Some of that cachet is absolutely merited.  And some of the best stories I've ever read have been in The New Yorker.  Some (but not all) were written by Bolaño too.  And then there's Junot Diaz, Jennifer Egan + many other writers I really admire.  At the same time, I'm trying--desperately--to understand why it is that such a prestigious literary magazine like The New Yorker feels it doesn't have to respond to unsolicited manuscripts.  I realize some people are getting form rejections, which sucks, but at least it's something definitive.  That crappy form rejection leaves absolutely no doubt that you're not getting to second base.  But I'm not even one of those people.  I've sent six fiction manuscripts to The New Yorker since 2010 + I only received one response (albeit, a good one).  That's a response average of 16.6% (not an acceptance rate mind you, which is probably .0001000).  Or said another way, that means TNY hasn't deigned to respond to 83.3% of my submissions in the past 3.5 years, which frankly, is ridiculous.

I realize almost no unagented fiction writers almost ever pass that sacred threshold into the kingdom of glossy self-edification.  I realize that if I snag this one agent in particular who asked for a rewrite of my 2nd novel (s/he will remain nameless until I hear from her/him), the first thing I'm gonna want them to do is send one of my novel chapters to the TNY because I'll have a completely different set of rules + privileges available to me that virtually all unagented fiction writers don't have.  But that said, I'd like to know why right now The New Yorker is so bad simply responding to fiction manuscripts.  I won't even get into how prohibitively difficult it is actually getting one of your stories accepted by the this magazine.  I'll leave that for another day . . .

Dr. Now What?

So, a lot has happened in 2013.  I finished Dishonored . . .
I played the shit out of Borderlands 2 (including all 4 expansion packs--what a dork!).  Personally, I like the Siren.
I published a lyrical essay in the Kartika Review about the last days of my Japanese obāsan's life + her battle with dementia.
I finally received my contributor's copies of my short story that was published in Fiction International
I defeated the final boss in Final Fantasy XIII-2, which was fucking hard, man!
For the first time in my adult life, one of my two fave college football teams was ranked #1 in graduation rates + #1 in the BCS at the end of the regular season (before getting their ass kicked by Alabama).  The national championship game may not have been pretty, but I'm still crazy proud of ND for going 12-0 against four ranked teams.  I think this augurs well for Brian Kelly + Irish fans.
I saw the Chagall mural that literally changed my life as a Chicago teenager (+ also heard the Smiths playing in my head)
I experienced a real Winter for the first time in four fucking years.  Here's Zoe captivated (horrified) by Chicago's brutal wind chill
I flew back to LA for my thesis defense, hung out with some great friends + walked around Venice Beach (pictured)
I passed my thesis defense with flying colors (or so my committee chair said)
I turned 39, which really scared the fuck out of me, but at least both numbers are divisible by 3 (my fave number, dude)

I  finished my dissertation + became a doctor!






I finished playing Bioshock Infinite on both medium + hard levels (not 1999-I kept running out of $$$).  And maybe, just maybe, I had a small crush on  Elizabeth.  I also fucking loved the quantum mechanics narrative at the end, which was brilliant.

So yes, by all means, I've had a few seminal moments in my life since the beginning of 2013, some of them huge, others simply fun + self-defining.  But the problem with getting your PhD (if getting a PhD can be a problem) is that you go from have a clear-cut path for 4-6 years (4 in my case) with guaranteed funding, amazing conversations in + outside seminar + a sense of purpose, you get to vaporize a shitload of life-changing novels (which you can't really appreciate because you're reading them too fast), evolve intellectually, work with some of the best fiction writers + scholars in the whole damn world, live in a cool (+ totally unsustainable) city like LA + exist in a perfectly linear trajectory for all of grad school.

But now what?  I just went from one of the most pivotal moments in life ("I'm so awesome!") to being unemployed ("I'm so sad!).  I went from knowing exactly what I wanted to do with my life to having no idea what I'm doing, from having enough cash to buy so many books + posthipster clothes my heart could almost burst, to being gradually poorer, from hoping for the best situation with academic jobs to considering the crappiest comp jobs you could imagine at the lowliest community colleges, just to get by.  It's something you don't wanna think about while you're pounding away on your dissertation because you can't even think straight when you have a soft deadline for your thesis defense + a hard deadline for submitting your dissertation to the Graduate School for formatting.  But once you're done with all that, you look around + you go:  fuck, now what do I do?

Don't get me wrong.  I'm an eternal optimist.  I believe in people.  I believe in myself.  I believe that good things will happen.  I could get a literary agent next week.  My second novel could be accepted for publication by an indie publisher next month.  My collection of short stories could be accepted for publication sometime in Autumn.  I could get an email for an interview for one of the many academic jobs I applied to, like tomorrow.   But the thing is, my life as an aspiring literary fiction writer + professor-to-be is one big contingency plan, a perpetual lesson in professional + existential uncertainty.  Things can work out.  I believe things will work out.  But right now, I have to say it kinda blows.

Good Rejection from Narrative

Dear Jackson Bliss:

Thank you for sending your work to Narrative. We are always grateful for the opportunity to review new material, and we have given " . . " close attention and careful consideration. We found many strengths to recommend your work and, overall, much to admire. We regret, however, that " . . . " is not quite right for us. We encourage you try us again in the future, and we hope that you will.

Sincerely,

The Editors

Lucy Carson Requests Full Manuscript of Ninjas

After a month, I thought Lucy Carson had erased my query letter.  Because I have my shit together (I'm OCD), I keep a linear log of all my submissions (both to agents, literary journals + CW jobs), with color coding based on the final results of each submission.  Black = manuscript still in play.  Orange = manuscript being reviewed (useful only for submishmash/journals with online submission manager).  Light grey = rejection (because it's the easiest on the eyes).  Green = acceptance.  Blue = withdrawn.  Red = who who the fuck knows what happened?  The point being, after a week, I'd already changed my query status for Lucy Carson from black to red because I hadn't heard a thing.  Usually, when agents don't respond within a week, they don't respond at all.  That's been my experience 99.999% of the time.  But today:  Jackson, meet exception.  Exception, Jackson.

Today I got a very gracious response today from Lucy Carson requesting the entire novel.  She also thanked me for my kind words for one of her clients, Ruth Ozeki, who I read at USC + mentioned in my query letter.  Some of the clients at The Friedrich Agency include:  The Pulitzer prize-winning Jane Smiley, Esmeralda Santiago, Ruth Ozeki, Carol Muske-Dukes (a USC poet, no less) + Elena Gorokhova.  Not bad at all.  But to put things in perspective, statistically speaking, the number of literary fiction writers + male writers at this agency is slim.  So, I'm not going to delude myself into expecting miracles here.  But, I def appreciate the full manuscript request.  Now let's see if it's a good fit for her.  If not, I'm certainly flattered nevertheless that a tech-savvy agent like LC showed interest in my novel. 

Shoutouts from the Universe Part 2

I'm still not sure how Google alerts missed this one but I won't complain.  I feel I should be grateful to get any press as a writer, moreover relatively good press.

Here's the part about my experimental short story, "When Silence is an Old Warehouse and Love is a Pocketful of Rocks":


In case you can't read that because you're not an Air Force pilot/weren't born with x-ray vision/never got the cyborg optical enhancements for your Sweet-16, here's what it says:

Many of the most interesting pieces of fiction examine or undermine ideas of speaker, information, or the traditional narrative arc. One notable love story about communication and art, by Jackson Bliss, labels each paragraph as either "Cubes," "Spheres," Cylinders," or "Cones." The speaker is self-consciously prolix, by turns witty and earnest, and the drama he recounts over an uninitiated conversation is handled nicely. 

Now, to be honest, I find nothing insightful about this review.  I don't personally think the narrator is prolix, though I agree he's self-conscious. I'm not convinced that my short story is about "communication + art" either as much as I think it's about the male gaze, invented alternative realities + romantic speculation.  It's about the way in which art theory/art history filters the way we understand + identify our reality.  It's also about the delusional genius/endless violence of the human mind.  Lastly, this short story is about one-way love.  The educated observer/narrator is in love with a girl he's never talked to.  She's in love with a painting.  They mirror their one-sided relationship both to each other + to their objets d'art.  But like I really care?  More than anything, I'm just glad someone's reading my shit.  On that level, I'm ecstatic. 


Good Rejection from Conjunctions

Good Rejections are tough, especially when you get them from top-tier journals.  In fact, you could make the argument that the better the journal, the more a good rejection stings.  I think it works inversely too (i.e., a good rejection from a meh journal feels pretty damn good).  Still, it's hard not to take away something positive from this rejection, so I'll try to stick to the silver lining here, even though I've been sending Conjunctions stories for years now.  This is the second time I've gotten a really positive response for this short story (the first being from Electric Literature) + the second time I've gotten good feedback from this journal, so there's always that.

In case you can't make out this rejection slip, it says:

Dear Jackson,

 I found your story delightful + intriguing, unfortunately we are looking for stories for our animal issue, "A Menagerie."  

Since when did Conjunctions starts becoming a themed journal?  Who fucking knows, since now, I guess.  Still, if I had to pick a reason for my story to be rejected, I guess this would be it.  I think the reader was very gracious to write these words + I'll remember them the next time I get a form rejection in the mail.

Resisting False Dichotomies (AKA a Month of Fidgeting)

I do my best to resist false dichotomies.  Not only are they warped, fucked up little distortions of reality, but they're also usually untrue.  This is why false dichotomies are considered a logical fallacy, one I taught my students at USC to identify + deconstruct.  But sometimes your life actually is one + that's where things really go to shit.  And the worst part is, this happens almost every 2-4 years . . .

When I was finishing my MFA at Notre Dame, I was waiting to hear back from a bunch of creative writing fellowships, a teaching position for the JET program + Notre Dame's Sparks Prize.  To be honest, it was scary as shit because  I knew in exactly one month I was either going to be flat broke with absolutely no job prospects, no funding, no school--my inertial dream coming to a sudden + dramatic halt--or I would live to fight another day as an aspiring writer.  The one thing I thought I had the best chance of getting (the JET program position) I wasn't even a fucking alternate for.  I guess I should have seen the signs considering the 3 people in my interview were assholes, insinuating in their questions that I was too old for the JET program, that my lip piercing made me unfit to teach English, that I would AWOL anyway (they ignored of course, my years of experience teaching English/Writing to Mexican immigrants, international students + Cuban refugees, but let's not get technical).  But the thing I thought I had the least chance of getting (the Sparks Prize), in part because I was competing against my entire graduating class + in part because my writing isn't mainstream (which was supposedly part of the judging criteria), and yet, I won that damn thing.  Suddenly, I had funding for a whole year, I got to give a reading of my novel in progress on campus + I started dating LB in Chicago.  In many ways, winning the Sparks Prize defied logic but it also made perfect sense.

Fast-forward to Buenos Aires.  After living in South America for a year + literally crying at the thought of eating another motherfucking empanada or walking into pile of dog shit, I realized that I just wasn't writing enough.  In fact, I'd only written two new short stories + revised BLANK, my first novel, in the entire time I'd been living in Cap. Fed.  So, I talked to Valerie Sayers, my thesis adviser at Notre Dame + told her I was considering applying to PhD programs in English/Creative Writing + she was like:  Go for it, Jackson.  I applied to FSU + USC + got waitlisted at both schools (which was a blow to my ego, but whatevs).  At the end of March, I got into USC, which was my dream program since I really loved TC Boyle + Aimee Bender's short stories, I was intrigued with LA + I'd be an hour and a half drive away from my mom.  Out of all my options, getting into USC was the best case scenario.  I honestly wrote it off by March.  And I knew that if I hadn't gotten in, once again, my dream to become a published novelist would slowly die with a five-day a week.  But I got in + disaster was averted.  This gave me the time to write + workshop a second novel, get some stories published in some prominent journals, work with a few literary heavyweights + read a shitload of novels.  It was honestly as awesome as I'd hoped it'd be.

Now I'm back at the same either/or fallacy:  I just finished my PhD + my MA in English/Creative Writing at USC, which is one of the seminal moments in my life + now I'm fighting to keep that dream alive for another year (or two), for another month (or three).  But the options are so dramatically antithetical it's ridiculous.  Either I score an teaching position or creative writing fellowship in the next couple months, or frankly, I start making mocha lattes dressed in an apron + barista visor.  I know that sounds dramatic.  I know that sounds insane.  I know that sounds like I've simplified my reality, but this is the continuous struggle of being an emerging writer in the US:  Trying to scrap together funding or score a teaching gig or win a fellowship or win a book prize or live temporarily at a writing residency, all that, all of that shit, just to keep your dream alive until you finally make it (which will be never), or at least, until your books are published by Riverhead.

At this point, if I could do anything else in the world to make a living, if there was anything else I was as good at, as devoted to, if there was anything else I had as much talent + passion + dedication + vision as with writing, If there was anything else that fucked me up + made me as bipolar + euphoric + as certain of my place in this galaxy as writing does, I would totally run off + do that because this writing life is nothing but a slow-mo existential crisis, a chess match with yourself, an artistic war with almost no survivors.  But dude, I can't help it.  This is the only thing I'm awesome at, the only thing that has ever made sense to me, the only thing that has kept me up at night + woken my ass up in the early morning, the only thing that I could do for days without food or water, the only thing that threatens my marriage + confuses my family, the only thing that rings inside of me like a broken campanile + gives me cosmic significance as nothing else ever has.  It's all or nothing, man.  It's all or nothing.

Reaching People in Your Writing

I got this email a few days ago, the kind that makes you feel great about being a writer.  I love connecting with other writers + I also appreciate it when strangers do kind things (for anyone).  Something as simple as forwarding my name to Roxane Gay's writers of color project is such a beautiful + appreciated thing.  And as long as there are people reading your fiction, then your writing has cultural resonance, which is what we all want on some level.  It's interesting for me to hear from people who witnessed the LROD scrap I got in (pretty much me against the world).  I can't tell you how many  friends I've made through my website.  Thank god for the digital era!

Jackson Bliss,

I've been following your writing for quite some time (I think ever since your kerfuffle with the Literary Rejections On Display blog, now defunct). I was actually also one of the ones who forwarded your name to Roxane Gay who did that list of writers of color who should be noticed (I saw from your blog that someone else mentioned you as well. Right on). I'd been a casual observer of your work, refraining from messaging you or commenting. However, this semester in the creative writing class I teach, I've assigned my students to do presentations on stories they find from online and print journals. We've just finished up the presentations from stories they picked from an online journal of their choice and are moving on to stories from a print journal. Today one of my students wanted to check in with me over a story she is going to present on, and I looked at it and realized it was one of yours, first published in The Antioch Review."What are the odds?" I wondered, and I thought I should send you this message.  I'm a writer as well. I know what it's like to feel as if the work you're doing isn't reaching people, so I wanted to let you know that your stories are reaching others. 

So, keep going, for what it's worth. Also, good luck with your PhD program. I just started one here in Missouri and jesus christ is it a lot of work.


Take care,

T****

Lyrical Essay Published in Kartika Review

It's tough writing about your family, even tougher I think writing about your Japanese Grandmother when she was the heart + soul of your family as mine was.  Years after she passed away, I'm still trying to understand how much of my own cultural identity came from her, from our conversations, our meals + our holiday traditions, from her stories of Japan + of our Japanese family in Tokyo + Osaka.  After taking a class on war + memory with Viet Nguyen at USC during my early PhD years, Viet allowed me to write a lyrical essay instead of an analytical one for our final paper, which was an amazing blessing.  After a lot of intermittent revision over two years + more recently with the CNF editor at Kartika Review, Jennifer Derilo (who I respect/adore), my lyrical essay "The Transfusion of Yukiyo Kanahashi" is now live.  In many ways, it's heartbreaking + raw + honest + powerful.  But my hope is that this essay will keep her memory alive while also providing me (+ the reader) the space to take apart our own preconceptions about our selves while celebrating the erosion of memory + even life.  I make no bold claims about this essay except that it helped me celebrate my sobo's life + the Japanese ancestry in our family while also giving me the cultural + emotional space to finally let go of her + share my imperfect memory of her with the world (reader).  If you wanna buy a black and white hardcopy of issue 15, go here.  If you don't have funds to drop, you can also read my essay on line here.

My Whole Life = Submishmash

In many ways, my life right now mirrors my submishmash status.  Not only have I been waiting to hear from  journals + indie presses, some of them forever, but I'm also waiting to hear from like a gazillion creative writing fellowships + teaching positions in the North Shore + Hyde Park, Chicago + Madison, Wisconsin + Hamilton, New York to Norwich, England.  And honestly, I have no idea what's gonna happen, whether I'm gonna be unemployed or teaching next year, whether I'll have agent or whether I'll still be stumbling through the forest of unpublished novelists.  I have no fucking idea at all.  None.  And so like I've done so many times, I'm gonna wait + hope for good news.  The only thing I have control over right now are the revisions I'm making on The Ninjas of My Greater Self, which an agent requested after reading the first draft.  So there's that, but that's the only kinetic snack food left in the vending machine, man.  And I'm fucking STARVED!

1st Piece Accepted in 2013

After a rigorous (+ very helpful) revision dialogue with Jennifer Derilo, the very sharp, very smart + very detail-oriented Creative Nonfiction editor, I'm proud to announce that my lyrical essay "The Transfusion of Yukiyo Kanahashi" will be published in the upcoming issue of the Kartika Review.  This lyrical essay is part personal narrative, part memory + neuroscience critique, + part metamemoir.  It's a non-linear work about the last week of my sobo's life (my Japanese grandmother's), intertwined with political, cultural, nostalgic + speculative narrative strands.  It's a beautiful + heartbreaking + language-driven + emotionally raw piece, + needs to be shared with the world I think. I honestly can't think of a more culturally important journal to publish an essay about my sobo's life than in the Kartika Review.   I'll keep you posted. 

Good Rejection from the Paris Review

Yo, I realize this rejection is a far cry from an acceptance.  In fact, they're not even in the same orbit.  I know, I know.  I also realize that the axis on this note is crooked, no editorial assistant or editor bothered to sign her/his name or write one incomprehensible but encouraging sentence in pen, instantly humanizing the cold, mechanical rejection process.  I'm painfully aware of all of these details--trust me.  If I paid any more attention to detail, people would stop accusing me of being metrosexual and start accusing me of being The Other Sex, to be wildly essentialistic.  But after getting nothing but impersonal form rejections from the Paris Review for years, it is just a tiny little bump to finally get a good rejection from such an awesome literary journal.  And while I think having a literary agent would make this process so much more damn viable for me, and while I've read fiction in the Paris Review that is as good, occasionally, better + also worse than the story they just rejected, I feel like it's very possible with more hard work, determination + a lot of luck, that I will get a story published in this journal sometime sooner than later.

Anyway, Paris Review, expect a new kickass story in the mail as soon as I'm done with this motherfucking dissertation chapter.  Then it's your turn!  And I'm bringing the big guns this time.  I'm gonna glock my way to publication.

It's A Beautiful Day When People Are Talking About Your Fiction

I really love emails like this.  To be honest, this is the kind of email that I dream about as an emerging fiction writer.  For a split second, I get to remember how good it feels to publish something + have people read my fiction.  Even if it's just a short story in a literary journal.  Here we go:

Hi, Jackson,

Our library hosts a short story discussion group. At our meeting this morning, we discussed “The Blue Men Inside My Head” (as well as Nabokov’s “Symbols  & Signs” so you were in very fine company!) Anyway, had a very lively conversation about your work, especially the ending. Opinion was divided equally about whether Xavier actually got back at the muggers or if that was just inside his head (to go back to the title.)  We were wondering if you had any thoughts about it that you might share.

By the way, our group read T.C. Boyle’s “Tooth and Claw” last year and really enjoyed it as well. I’ve recommended Drop City and Tortilla Curtain to quite a few people over the years.  It is easy to see, from your writing style and subject matter (and humor!) why he must be such a great mentor for you. 

Best wishes for all your writing projects!

L***

L**** C*******
Adult Services Librarian
West Wyandotte Library
1737 N. 82nd St.
Kansas City, KS 66112


Short Story Published in Fiction International

After almost a year of waiting, my conceptual short story "Silence is an Old Warehouse + Love is a Pocketful of Rocks," which is part of my short story collection, Atlas of Tiny Desires, is finally available at Fiction International.  This is probably one of my strangest (coolest) pieces, but basically it's about the male gaze + one-way infatuation.  The story is told from the point of view a male admirer who slowly falls in love with a college student at the Art Institute of Chicago.  Eventually, he learns that his love is part of a mirror of one-way love:  He's in love with someone who ignores him + she's in love with a painting.  I don't wanna give away the ending, but this is definitely one of the more experimental stories I've ever written, organized according to the building blocks of cubism.  Anyway, you can buy your copy at Amazon if you wanna read it for yourself.