It’s been a pretty intense year, writing-wise, since I last posted. I visited Texas A&M in Texarkana, where ENTRY LEVEL: STORIES was chosen as the All-Campus Read for 2023. I attended my first Jane Austen North America general meeting. I went to AWP in Kansas City, where I primarily just hung out with friends, people-watched, sold out my signing at the Autumn House Press booth for the second year in a row, and ate a bunch of BBQ. I also went to Barrelhouse’s most excellent Conversations and Connections in D.C. with the effervescent Corinna Makris and met a bunch of new friends, as well as giving my first Plot Candy presentation (I’ve given it in different forms but I’ve been refining it to its current state).
As well as continuing on with This Thing We Do on Zoom most Monday nights at 7:30 pm Central (IYKYK), I’ve set goals to send out my author newsletter on a regular basis and be more active in building/nurturing the writing community here in my little neck of Wisconsin, including hosting the first reading in eons at the community arts organization where I volunteer regularly.
Another of my goals was to read at least 5 new books (Long Covid Brain has been very bad for my eyeballs and concentration levels so I’ve been mostly listening to audio books while driving, but I did notice that I’ve been more able to read traditional books again over the summer, so I’m making up for lost time now) as well as update my author newsletter at least 12 times this year. I’m on course for that (and well over my book goal already), but the cost for my newsletter is that this blog doesn’t get much love.
It’s been a pretty intense year outside of writing too — we gained a pet, we lost a family member, we lost a pet, a parent had a heart attack (but has recovered), we lost more family members, family members lost more pets, and surprise, we bought our old house back.
So, I’m a bit exhausted, to say the least, and that’s before all the election business. Hopefully you’ll forgive this reprise of the most recent newsletter.
Unbelievably, Entry Level: Stories has been out in the world for two whole years! Crazy business!
Speaking of anniversaries, happy 15th anniversary to Electric Literature, which should be in every indoorsy reader’s daily check in. I was very honored to see that my short story “Ghosting” is one of the fifteen most popular stories on the site of all time. If my math is correct, it was the fifth most read piece (in just two years!) in the site’s fifteen years of history. Gracie has come so far, despite being such an unlikeable narrator.
“Ghosting” was a super tough story to get published, to be honest. I kept trying and trying and trying. I think it was declined over 30 times. Then the first time I worked with Dan Chaon in workshop, I submitted it for discussion, trying to figure out what the actual problem was. It was missing a very short scene, in his opinion, and also, that workshop began our friendship.
Dan actually came up with the name Entry Level for my collection, which was so much better than my working title “Shitty Jobs.”
The story did finally find a home in the lovely print journal Non-Binary Review, the Alice in Wonderland theme issue. I had a line in the story about the Red Queen, but of course the story overall has allusions to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party too, and growing and shrinking. It was a good accidental fit to the theme. And then when Kristen Arnett suggested it for the Electric Literature feature, Doug Julien at Texas A&M read it, bought the book and then chose it for the all campus read, which then involved me going to Texarkana last year, so I got a ton of new friends from Texarkana too.
For an unlikeable narrator, Gracie has done a lot of good in my life. She might be difficult to love but I love her dearly.
Speaking of friends I love dearly, the always amazing and gracious Tonya Todd asked me to return for her podcast special on Banned Books. Even despite me crying on camera a little bit when talking about Charlotte’s Web last year.
This year, she asked me to be part of the discussion on Kazuo Ishiguro’s absolutely stunner Never Let Me Go, one of my favorite books of all time. I studied this book during an independent study during my Masters program as I was developing my study on unreliable narrators, and it was the seed that brought me to make “unreliable narrators” a primary part of my doctoral studies. It very much is a touchstone for me when I think about how voice, perspective and language drive the reader’s emotional response to a narrative, and I was thrilled to take part in this discussion.
One of the delightful things that Tonya does with these podcasts is we have NO idea who else will be on the discussion with us, so I was surprised and delighted to join Kat Fieler and Brandon Mead on this discussion. I almost never rewatch things I participate in (I hate my voice, my hair is doing SOMETHING BIZARRE, and I often regret my face on Zoom calls) but I’ve rewatched this one. Tonya has put together an entire series in a single week, and if you haven’t subscribed to Tonya’s channel, be sure to do so. I can personally vouch for many of these guests!
I couldn’t get enough of Tonya and her Femme On podcast, so I agreed to record another episode where I had the chance to rant about a bunch of my literary Inconvenient Truths, including Plot Candy, my intense loathing of Percy Shelley (and William Godwin for that matter), my love of The Cure’s Disintegration, and a bunch of other randomness that Tonya and I get after when we’ve been chatting for more than ten minutes. I cherish our friendship so much and if you listen to this, you’ll start to realize that we’ve both forgotten that we were being recorded about twenty minutes in (when all the f-bombs start dropping).
In this episode, Tonya’s guest Dr. Wendy Wimmer (author of the short story collection Entry Level) explains Plot Candy, reveals her discovery of Mr. Collins as a salty snack, and goes on a Ria-style Rant about her beef with Percy Bysshe Shelley.
https://www.femmeon.show/episodes/femme-on-creatives-wendy-wimmer
And here’s a link to that banned books episode — great stuff here if you love Kazuo Ishiguro too!
https://www.femmeon.show/episodes/banned-books-conversations-never-let-me-go-by-kazuo-ishiguro-2005
An opinion* you did not request
My favorite plant-based dips, in no particular order
- Bitchin’Sauce in original, pesto and Bombay
- Trader Joe’s Ultra Smooth lemon hummus
- Cherry salsa from Door County
- Garlicky guacamole
- Toum (if this were a ranked list, this might be number one)
- Extra garlicky Sabra hummus
- Vio-Life French Onion Dip
- Anything made with Hellman’s plant-based Mayo (which is better than the regular, I swear)
- Peanut Butter in all forms
- Bean dip with extra red sauce
- Hidden Valley plant-based ranch dressing
- Pesto made with nutritional yeast instead of parm
*I am not plant-based as a rule but I realized that I eat plant-based far more frequently than I realized.
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