I’m feeling seriously out of touch with what is going on with my friends and I’ve only been gone for a week. Being without a computer and email was nice, to be honest, but still I am treading water to catch up. Anyway, here’s some cool stuff that’s going on:

The fabulous Ellen Meister has just updated her PM page with a quote on her forthcoming book. The quote is from Lisa Kudrow (yes, THAT Lisa Kudrow!). Can you stand it? And I have read this book and tell you that it is fucking brilliant and is going to be a big hit. In fact, I’m going to wager that by this time next summer you will have already read it and bought a copy for your best friend.

In other Ellen news, she has a story live at 3AM. Go on and read it: Summer Job. Also in 3AM, Elizabeth Glixman interviews the fascinating Dennis Mahagin.

The amazing Kat Denza has a story out in the new issue of RE:AL. You can find out about ordering a copy of the journal here.

Last but not least, the multi-talented Leigh Hughes has a piece live at Salome: Lesson One. Go on and read it and leave her a comment, why don’t you?

As I stated earlier, some of the comments people are leaving are getting lost in the shuffle between blogger and haloscan comments (argh! I wish I knew more about CSS so that I could figure this out quickly) and so I’m trying to figure out how to change my template so this doesn’t happen.

I’m incapable of doing so today for various and sundry reasons–not the least of which is that my brain is fried.

With that said, I didn’t want this comment, made by the lovely and talented Jordan Rosenfeld, to get lost because her radio show kicks ass (and so does she) and we, as a listening public, are extremely lucky to have access to her archives online–here she is commenting on my Steve Almond/B.B.Chow review (see below):

At the risk of seeming like an attention hog, I also interviewed Steve. You can hear his interview at Word by Word’s archives here: http://www.pcmg.tv/krcb/wbw/wbw.htm

Just scroll down to find steve’s.

After an amazing week at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Workshop in the Sierra Nevada mountains, I’m home in steamy New Hampshire. It is hot here. Very hot. Fucking hot. And damp. Humid. Moist. Sultry. Think Louisiana swamp in July and you might start to understand the weather here.

Still, it is nice to be home.

The flight(s) was uneventful, except that I was able to catch an earlier flight to Boston when I changed planes in Chicago and so was home two hours before expected. This is a good thing, as I had stayed up late on Friday and had, perhaps, one too many glasses of wine at high altitude (and on not much food). So, I was going on not much sleep and the beginnings of a fierce hangover by the time I got my plane in Reno.

I’m still processing the entire experience, so I’m not quite ready to debrief. Let me just say this: it was, once again, life-changing. In fact, much more so than last year, which proved to just be the appetizer. This year was the main course.

Anyway, thanks for stopping in while I was gone (and thanks for your comments, which brings me to another point. Some of the comments are mysteriously going into blogger comments instead of haloscan. So, if you post a comment and it doesn’t show up on the main page–that’s why. Sorry! I’m going to investigate when my brain has moved back to East Coast time and see if I can fix it).

One more thing… here is a lily from my garden.

Okay. I’m out of here from now until Sunday, August 14th. I’m on my way to the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Workshop and I couldn’t be happier. This will be my second year attending and if this year is anything like last year I will return ready to write my ass off (I will also be ready to kiss my husband, hug my dog, sleep, watch television, eat crappy food).

A full report of my time at the workshop will be posted on this blog upon my return, but until then I will not be posting.

Bye!

Steve Almond is a funny, funny man, or so his short stories lead me to believe. Many of the stories within his newest collection, The Evil B.B. Chow, are laugh out loud funny and the ones which did not make me laugh out loud, did make me groan or nod at their precise depiction of the sad and cringe-filled human experience.

And, really, what more is the writer’s job than to allow us this connection–where we see ourselves in all of our saddest, most private, and shameful moments? Well, there is beauty, too, that the writer may feel responsible to, and empathy. And Almond does a great job of showing us gorgeous glimpses, moments of understanding and empathy.

All of the stories are great but my top three are:

“The Evil B.B. Chow”–the story of a tough-as-nails woman who has inexplicably fallen for the wrong guy and lost her heart, in which Almond NAILS the voice of the female narrator. I am in love with the end of this story:

There is so much time in this life for grief. So many men lying in wait. And here, tonight, there is a harvest moon, which hangs so heavily yellow above the sea it might be God, or my heart.

“The Problem of Human Consumption”–a haunting story in which a father and daughter finally share a moment of grief–thirteen years later–over the death of the wife/mother. There are certainly a lot of layers to this story–sexual, psychological, mythical–which add to its richness. I found this bit–in which Jess, the daughter, catches her father, Paul, in her room playing with his wife’s wedding band, which he discovered there–to be quite touching:

She sees that he is hunched over something shiny and that this shiny thing is sliding back and forth, between her father’s fingers. There is an instant, the tiniest of instants, in which she too believes the object is floating in the air, and this possibility of magic is a thread that connects them.

Finally, I am in LOVE with “Larsen’s Novel”–a story so fucking hilarious that I can’t even begin to tell you how funny it is. It’s the kind of funny (especially if you write) that you almost feel guilty laughing at. But if you have ever been handed someone’s first draft novel (or, cringe, handed your own first draft over to someone) then this story will completely, utterly resonate with you. The novel in question is quoted throughout the story and it is not unlike novels and stories I’ve read in workshop before. Oh, it is bad (and you will laugh when you read it). But the story really isn’t about the novel, rather it is about the protagonist, Flem and his inability to read the novel–and here is where the tale becomes universal. Finally, through counselling and his own pathetic soul-searching, what he realizes is that he’s jealous of his friend Larsen for writing it. (Who among us has not felt jealousy for those who try something we would like to try? Or who actually succeed in doing something we, in our secret hearts, considered our domain?) Once Flem admits to himself that he is jealous, he is able to read the novel (and reconnect with his friend):

Still, there was a certain undeniable momentum to the proceedngs, once you got beyond the prose. Red wanted a lot of things and he got all of them, with little struggle. Larsen’s novel was unlike life in this regard, and it lacked the tension that often accompanies life. But it was gripping in a wishful, overblown way. By the end, a cloying family scene in which Daddy Bones announces that Red is his “oneliest son” (thus allowing Red to no longer feel different), Flem felt, if not identification with the hero, then at least not the overt hatred that had been his initial reaction.

Outside his study, dawn was creeping in, blue and hopeful, the stars punching out. He felt an odd fondness for Larsen, and imagined him pecking away at his keyboard in the faint morning light, grinning stupidly at his metaphors, smacking his lips

This collection is an enjoyable, fast read–so don’t miss it.

In the meantime, why not read a couple of Steve Almond’s short pieces from one of my favorite ezines, Smokelong Quarterly:

The Evening of the Dock
Pornography

Hershey’s Dulce de Leche Kisses are to die for. If you are a fan of Hagan Daz Dulce de Leche ice cream (or Dulce de Leche anything), these will not disappoint. I was sceptical and worried that they might be a bit gross, but they are delicious. Trust me! I have only seen them at Target. Go on and get yourself a bag and eat the whole thing.

New at Salome, a prose poem by the remarkable Katrina Denza: An Afternoon Under a Plum Tree

Mary Guterson‘s debut novel We Are All Fine Here offers us a fresh new voice that is one part Lorrie Moore and one part Helen Fielding.

The narrator, Julia, is funny, neurotic, and brutally honest (at least in her internal monologue). In short, she is real–take this bit for example (which could be a scene from my own life, as I once told a nurse that she had just given me my best pap smear ever):

The lab technician took blood from my arm, and I got all teary and told him that he was a prince among blood-takers, that I couldn’t even feel the needle in my arm. He thanked me, but it was a hesitant thanks. The kind of thanks that means, “Please do not attempt to have a conversation with me.” The kind of thanks that reminded me I was getting too old to say stupid things to cute male blood-takers.

Julia is as flawed as flawed can be–a married mother who thinks she’s failed at raising her son, in a dead-end job, who is pregnant with her ex-boyfriend’s baby (although the paternity could easily be in question as soon after fucking her ex in the bathroom at a wedding, her husband brought her on a dismally romantic weekend during which they had sex several times). Despite her flaws, though, she is charming and easy to spend time with–even though sometimes, maybe, her passivity gets annoying. But that’s the point. It’s supposed to so that when she changes we see it.

This book offers us glimpses into the beauty and brutality that make up our most cherished relationships–those that we hold with our family and closest friends. And while the plot may be nothing new, the voice is exquisitely fresh and in that this book is a winner. Ultimately, it does the best thing a book can do, makes us laugh, makes us cry, and allows us to witness a life in progress.

New at Ink Pot:

Taking Comfort, an excerpt from Roger Morris’s forthcoming novel

&

Steve Hansen interviews Lit Pot Press author, J. Eric Miller

If you are like me, your computer screen is usually filthy and you don’t notice this until you are in a public place with your laptop and someone’s looking over your shoulder noticing all of the dust and food bits on it. Not pretty.

Well, your problems are solved when you use this new-fangled, high-tech screen cleaner.

(note: the download may take a while but it is WORTH it. Also, make sure you turn up your sound.)

The winner of the 24th edition of SJSU’s Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (which is a contest for the worst first line) is Dan McKay of Fargo, ND. And here is his winning sentence:

As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.