Happiness + Rejection letter = The New High

So I got a personalized Rejection letter today from Maisonneuve. It's the first non-form letter I've received, so I was pretty excited. It was for the story "Abject Objectivity Goes for a Walk," and of it they said "Everyone here who read this piece appreciated [my] ability to explore such a clever idea so thoroughly, but in the end we decided that the documentation of details becomes too tiring before the end of the story." (Oh Rod, why didn't I send this story to you for feedback back sometime in April? You said the same thing...)

In any event, they invited me to submit to them again, so on the eve of the eve of my best friend's wedding, I'm pretty happy.

Some Very Good News

So back in college, one of the primary thrusts that got me into the whole creative writing thing were the classes I took from Ann Pancake. Ann's a phenomenal writer, and her first book, "Given Ground" won the 2000 Bakeless Prize. I just found out today, that her first novel is due out sometime this October. Here's the Amazon.com Preorder link. The Novel titled "How Strange this Weather has Been" is to be about Mountaintop Removal, a topic that I know is close to a lot of your hearts. I remember a couple of years ago, Ann and her sister made a documentary called Black Diamonds about that same subject. Her fiction is very Faulkneresque with a heavy amount of grit and strong, almost poetic language. I think just about all of you would like what she has to offer. So if you're looking for a book in October, keep Ann Pancake in mind.

Oh and those of you living in Kentucky, Ann will be in Lexington in September to do a reading. Her readings are awesome, so if you get a chance, check it out. The information can be found on her blog (which you can find down in my links section)

Corey Peterman, Rest in Peace

Yesterday, my cousin, Corey lost his life in a car accident. He was 21.

He was a picture perfect ideal of the man's man. He hunted, fished, restored Corvettes, had a Harley, jumped snowmobiles at 100mph, and knew what it meant to work hard. He lived in his father's footsteps, and filled those great boots with ease. He had a sharp tongue, but aside from constantly picking on me (because I'm so mechanically useless), I'm sure he commanded a hell of a lot of respect from his friends.

Though we're five years apart, we grew up together, and I regret not seeing him as much after he finally grew up. But I guess that's the price I have to pay for living in the slow lane.

Corey, you were a good man, and we're all sad to see you gone.

Head filling, or amorphous ideas freely morph

So I'm well into my ECE research these days. I recently finished John Barth's excellent essay/nonfiction book called The Friday Book, as well as rereading some of my old timey favorites from Lost in the Funhouse and Labyrinths. I've also bookmarked a number of interesting looking articles from the library's databases (and downloaded the pdfs for casual reading). Oh and I'm picking through Barthelme's 40 Stories (and loving it.)

In short, I've been doing a frickin' lot of reading. To what end? Well, therein lies the story:

Originally, I went to residency all fired up on writing an ECE about Metafiction and authorial intrusion and the historiographic implecations of said tactics as exemplified via three stories: Lost in the Funhouse,(Barth) Theme of the Traiter and the Hero, (Borges) and The Story (Amy Bloom). Well the more I got to thinking about a thesis statement, the more bulletholes I found in the whole process....Yes, all of it works, and a good chunk of it can reflexively relate to the other stories, but 1. I couldn't think up an arguable position to justify what I wanted to talk about, and 2. there is actually four metric fucktons of critical essay data concerning the historiographical implecations of metafiction out there already....This cannot do. So,

After a brief meltdown, Sue and I got to talking and she made me do one of those mindmapping charts (of which I proclaimed I hated [until I tried doing it]), and I came up with some interesting thoughts. Namely, that I really need to actually spend my ECE talking about what Ben Marcus pulls off in the vein of metafictive authorial [albeit indirect] intrusion within The Age of Wire and String. And so, as gears change, I'm hoping that I'm onto something as I embark onto the beginning of rereading that wonderful wonderful oddity of a book.

In other news, I've recently picked up the following music:

• Buck Tick -- (for Sue actually) It's a gothy/Industrial J-Rock band that has moments of Rockabilly-ness interspersed between harpsichords and classic goth platform boots.
• Oasis - Be here now and Masterplan - I used to love Oasis; then I forgot about them for a while. Recently, I've been back into them a lot. The Song "The Masterplan" is one of my top ten favorite songs of all time.
• Emilie Autumn -- She's a sort of cross between Android Lust, The Dresden Dolls, and My Ruin. Lots of great harpsichord and string work in addition to gothy beats and occasional screaming.

I'll end with some pictures from Louisville....

In the Land of Topiary Decay, I'm Glad I Don't Have a Headache

(The Headache part will probably come tomorrow).

Residency is over, and I have to say that I'm glad to be home. Currently as Our Lady Peace belts "A story about a Girl" I'm also "waking up slowly" from the dream of being away from The Gloaming for eleven days. Tomorrow is back to work, and already I've heard from Peabody that the server is coughing and choking horribly after its near death resuscitation right before I left (you see, the server's kernel corrupted 2 hours before my shift was over on the last thursday before residency--I ended up spending 3.5 hours with it in the ICU trying to get it to come back to life....it did, but apparently the stroke caused some unseen [at the time] damage to the automation.)

So in addition to potentially 1,500 emails, and the office conversion, I'll also be heading into The Gloaming tomorrow full knowing that the Razorblade Netserver will be needing an overhaul in addition to a buncha other stuff.

But enough about The Gloaming for now (Big Brother might be watching, after all).

Residency did exactly as residency should, It gave me tons of useful feedback on my stories, a new and fabulous mentor, and strengthened all my friendships all the more. Yes, it made me an exhausted tired motherfucker, but also, it made me pretty pumped as the tail end of my MFA program slides towards me.

This semester's goal: an Extended Critical Essay on Metafiction, and hopefully a pile more fiction...ideally enough stories to start cinching the collection that I have in mind.

In other news, Sue and Molly "Marzipan" had a very nice time in Louisville, and Dave & Rod did a wonderful job into stealing our hearts and making us love Kentucky. So I say to you, State of Kentucky, Offer me a job when I graduate, Ok?

Finally, I've set up a writing collective called SWING (Spalding Writers is Not a Group). If you haven't gotten an invitation and you want to join us, send me an email.