Reading and Writing in 2013

What did I do in 2013? On the Reading and Writing front, that is.

Well, I read some books. Sixty-nine of them, according to my Goodreads stats (that's 21,112 pages, an average 306 pages per book), a big increase over the forty books that Goodreads thinks I read in 2012. (I'm currently reading Tom Wolfe's doorstop THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES, and still have about four hundred of its 659 pages left to go, so at best I'll barely make it to seventy books by the 31st.)

To eleven of those books I gave a five-star rating, the highest available on Goodreads. Here's the list (alpha by author):

THOSE WHO SAVE US, Jenna Blum
ANOTHER DAY IN THE FRONTAL LOBE, Katrina Firlik
THE APPRENTICE, Tess Gerritsen
THE SINNER, Tess Gerritsen
SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE, Austin Grossman
THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2012, Tom Perrotta, ed.
THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS, Jon Ronson
THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS, Rebecca Skloot
HEADS IN BEDS, Jacob Tomsky
THE WORLD WITHOUT US, Alan Weisman
THE LAST POLICEMAN, Ben Winters

Of the above, I'd have to say my favorite work of fiction was THE LAST POLICEMAN, a pre-apocalyptic police procedural, while my favorite non-fiction book of the year was THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS, about medicine, racism, cell culture and, well, cell culture in popular culture.

Eyeballing the remainder of 2013's books, I estimate at least two-thirds of them are fiction. Based on the above ratings, I suspect I'm judging the fiction harder than I am the non-fiction, a possible bias I'm going to keep an eye out for in 2014. I only gave a one star rating out to a single book (Thomas Pynchon's THE CRYING OF LOT 49, and I would gladly have given it a zero), and only a couple of two star ratings, all to works of fiction.

As far as my own fiction writing and writing support went for the year, one of my writing groups more-or-less dissolved itself, but the other is still going strong, as is the Grub Street writing community and various spin-offs from it, such as the unofficial Facebook support group organized by Cathy Elcik for November's novel writing efforts. And although I only ended up with a woefully incomplete seventy-seven page beginning of a lit-noir novel set in Las Vegas, November was an interesting experience for me, a month of writing every day, for at least a few hundred words, on the same large work. To be continued, I hope. (Although I have to confess the daily writing thing that I thought was getting to be a habit has already gone on the skids as holiday activities have ramped up.)

Short story writing is, however, still closer to my wheelhouse, as they say, and probably will continue to occupy most of my writing efforts. This year, I had various short fiction publications including a bit of Las Vegas flash in Prime Number magazine, a one-sentence piece of literary erotica collected in the Go Deeper Press anthology, Dirty Little Numbers, and a spoken word piece recorded at the Boston Book Festival and then published in The Drum.

It should go pretty much without mentioning that I also had a large number of rejections in the year, including a least one for all of the pieces that were eventually published this year (writers, take heart) as well as rejections for those yet to find a home. Which only means I need to finish writing more pieces, and send more out, in 2014.

Thanks for Reading, and Happy New Year!

Stephen

Back to School Questions

Bit of a blogging drought this summer for me, eh?

Well, at least you can enjoy my flash fiction piece, "Bee Noir" now up at Prime Number magazine. Go ahead, read it. I'll wait.

So, that's pretty much it for today. What about tomorrow, you ask?

Actually, tomorrow is the first day of September, and between late summer warm days with a hit of fall at night, the general back to school vibe and stationary sales, and the (not-at-all-coincidental) re-opening of all the university-sponsored lit mags to submissions, September just might be my favorite, and most-productive, month.

We'll see.

Thanks for reading,

Stephen

The Usual Stuff.

Obviously I haven't been blogging lately, so you might ask, what have I been doing? Oh, you know. The usual stuff.

Writing.

The writing's actually been going well. New, and some newly revised, stories are out on the rejection circuit, and there's a longer piece starting to bake, inspired by Mark Fogarty's one-day Grub Street seminar about using Joseph Campbell's "Monomyth" theory of the universal story for inspiration. And I'm proud and happy to say that Go Deeper Press will be including a little one-sentence (one loooong sentence) flash piece of mine, "Inappropriate Footwear," in their forthcoming flash erotica anthology, Dirty Little Numbers. You may have heard me read an earlier version of "Inappropriate Footwear" a couple of years ago during Grub Street's Muse and the Marketplace conference, at the Beyond the Margins cocktail party open mic.

Reading.

Penny's been traveling back and forth to Pennsylvania this year to help care for her mother (who's doing well now after a serious stroke), and while I'm home alone I tend to spend more time reading. Twenty-two books since March 1st, well above my usual average of three to four per month. Too many good ones to list them all here (and if you're a friend of mine on Goodreads you've already seen them), but Tim Powers continues to impress me with his alternate world historical urban fantasies (go read Expiration Date, if you're at all interested in the genre), I finally read Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (fascinating), and Steve Martin's memoir about his stand-up career, Born Standing Up, shows what it takes to succeed at not only stand-up, but pretty much anything (spoiler alert: it's practicing, learning from people who are better than you, and sticking with it). And I'm working through The Complete Idiot's Guide to Taoism (laugh while you can, monkey boy), at one chapter per night.

That's pretty much it.

Oh, and working, running, eating, drinking (have you tried Deep Eddy vodka yet?), playing games, walking the dog, and the other usual suspects, too. But I'm assuming that's not why you're reading this.

Hey, why are you reading this?

Well, whatever it is, thanks.

Stephen

My AWP: Lessons Learned

I was in the middle of writing up a rather longish convention report for AWP, covering the panels I attended, who I heard reading (and what they read), tucking in my lessons learned for the benefit of future attendees, when I realized that most of you really don't want to hear about any of that. Really. You're just saying you do to be nice.

So instead, I've broken the story. Edited it down to a few snippets of text, key lessons learned, photos found and photos taken, random beverages consumed. I present it to you here in a mosaic or chiaroscuro structure, if you would like a label for it. (Writers like labels.)

It might not give you a true picture of what AWP is all about, but it does bring you a little closer to my rather blurry state of mind during and after that recent event. And maybe that's something.

Wednesday, March 6th.

Lesson Learned: Pre-register, and show up on the first day of registration if you can. (Bonus lesson. The fee for a replacement badge is $50. Do not lose your badge.)

Sonsie Boston in their Wine Room. Because, you know, wine and cocktails.

I look up and see another introverted male standing not far from my corner, glancing up from his own smartphone. We quickly look away after that terrifying moment of recognition.

He is wearing a porkpie hat.

Lessons Learned: Don't go to parties where you don't know anybody if you're not willing to make the effort to get to know people. Don't wear porkpie hats.

Beverages Consumed: One glass cabernet sauvignon.

Thursday, March 7th.

Lessons Learned: Use the Coat Check. Have Second and Third Choices on Your Schedule.

Looks like 80% of all AWP attendees are female. Why does the VIDA report continue to be so bad?

Lesson Learned: Take Better Notes. Go to Lunch with Sally Bunch. Don't Grow a Beard.

Seventeen pounds. Here's most of it.

Lesson Learned: Don't Go Crazy in the Bookfair. At Least, Not on the First Day.

Thursday Night, Grub Street's Get Lit party at Storyville in Boston.

Lesson Learned: People You Know Will Introduce You to People They Know That You Don't. Cathy Elcik is a Trusting Soul.

Beverages Consumed: Two Dunkin' Donuts regular coffees, one medium, one large. Two vodka collins's, two vodka gimlets.

Friday, March 8.

Another eight pounds.

Craft panels in small rooms with large audiences.

I win a Sundog Lit mug.

Back to Storyville, readings sponsored by The Drum.

Was Chris Castellani wearing orange pants?

Ask a roomful of fiction writers to tell you their greatest transgression. What are the odds they're making it up?

Beverages Consumed: Two Dunkin' Donuts regular coffees, one medium, one large. Three bottles of random German white beer.

Always stay awake for Richard Russo. Buy Amy Bloom's book.

Is this Saturday? Rise and shine, Sunshine. 

Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right, Stuck in the Middle of the Story.

Handouts! Much sage advice.

Sex writers like reading their own work.

Sex scenes structure themselves. Desire, rising action, climax, afterglow.

Book Purchases On-Site and in my Amazon Cart:


DEVANGELICAL, Erika Rae
WHERE THE GOD OF LOVE HANGS OUT, Amy Bloom
DELICATE EDIBLE BIRDS: AND OTHER STORIES, Lauren Groff
NEWS FROM HEAVEN: THE BAKERTON STORIES, Jennifer Haigh
PRACTICAL MAGIC, Alice Hoffman
HOLY GHOST GIRL: A MEMOIR, Donna Johnson
CHARITY GIRL, Michael Lowenthal
THIS IS NOT YOUR CITY, Caitlin Horrocks
ANGELS: A NOVEL, Denis Johnson
NARRATIVE DESIGN, Madison Smartt Bell
THE ABSTINENCE TEACHER, Tom Perrotta


Final Beverage Consumed: Mudslide in a Red Solo Cup.

The End.

Thanks for Reading,

Stephen

No Excuses

Thanks to Painted Bride Quarterly, I have no excuses:

Thanks for reading,

Stephen

New Year Musings, and a Best Books List

Well, the first month of 2013 is almost over. But between being set back two weeks with a case of whatever plague virus is burning through the Northeast, and various delays pushing off the meetings of my two different writing groups, my personal writing year has barely begun.

Despite the slow start (which means I've once again fallen out of the habit of regular writing), I'm still hopeful that it will be a good one. I've got my Nano Nano file of story beginnings to flesh out, two stories currently making the submission rounds and two more stories that are almost there, and I'll be going to both the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference and Grub Street's own The Muse & the Marketplace conference in the first half of this year.

Maybe a summer writer's retreat or conference, too. And a trip to Vegas. And a family trip or two... hmmm. How many days off do I get? (Don't forget to subtract the two sick days that I already took in January.)

Of course, you can't have writing without reading. (Really. You can't. And please, don't even try.) There were a lot of Best Of lists being circulated at the end of the year, but one kind of list that I enjoyed seeing is rather timeless – writers' lists of their 25 or 50 best reads. Not necessarily "great" or "important" works, but books that were a joy to discover, to read, and to reread. 

And so, in the list below are 25 of mine (As of today. Subject to change. Your mileage may vary. Book series considered for one listing only. Void where prohibited by law.) 

A lot of these books are in the SF/F genre, and over half of them are books I read as a very young man. Some I remember well from where they lived on my mother's bookshelf, home of the first grown-up books I ever read. (Little Women, Tarzan, the Swiss Family Robinson, and Sherlock Holmes were all on that bookcase, under the stairs leading up to my room.)  It's not a list that is necessarily reflective of what I'm reading today – but I'll still defend any one of them as a great read.

Enjoy. I did.

Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Dresden Files, Jim Butcher

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill

Neuromancer, William Gibson

Lord of the Flies, William Golding

The Princess Bride, William Goldman

The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris

Pilgrimage, Zenna Henderson

Jesus Son, Denis Johnson

Shadow Over Innsmouth, H.P. Lovecraft

The Complete Works of Saki, H. H. Munro

The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien

Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers

Straight Man, Richard Russo

Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien

The Sword in the Stone, T. H. White

Thank You, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse

The Swiss Family Robinson, Johann Wyss

Nine Princes of Amber, Roger Zelanzy

Thanks for reading,

Stephen