The Pushcart Prize...

I want to thank Robin, the editor at Boston Literary Magazine, for nominating my poem, Needed Rain, for a Pushcart Prize. Thank you so much!

The Good Men Project

A huge thank you to Robert Duffer, editor at The Good Men Project, for publishing my short essay  about unsuccessfully refereeing my daughter's soccer game. Check out the essay here.

I am very excited about this. Tomorrow night, at Quimby's Bookstore in Chicago, I will be reading my short story, the first one in a series of nine short stories, all of which will be podcast weekly. It should be a blast. There will sound effects, just like an old radio show. So cool.

New Poem Published

I want to thank Boston Literary Magazine for publishing my poem, "Much Needed Rain". Click on the link and scroll down to read it. There's a lot of great poems there too.

Podcast Dreadful - CCLaP

Jason Pettus, executive director of Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, is putting together a twelve part podcast of short stories penned by some great authors, and I have the privileged of being included in this very cool, creepy collection/podcast. I will be debuting the first selection of my six part short story live at Quimby's Bookstore on September 21st. CCLaP's press release is posted below. Come one, come all!

 CCLaP:
Every autumn, CCLaP is proud to present another themed anthology featuring the short work of a variety of writers across the US; but this year the center is trying something special, releasing this compilation as a free 12-part serialized audiobook through its popular podcast, every Monday in September, October and November. Entitled "CCLaP's Podcast Dreadful," the series has been designed in the fashion of an old Victorian "penny dreadful" publication, including cliffhangers at the end of each chapter and a dark, weird tone throughout. Hosted by Christopher Sullivan and featuring brand-new pieces by Kate Cullan, Jason Fisk, Kevin Haworth, Jacob Knabb, Keith McCleary and Sophia G. Starmack, John Reed, Jason Riley, Jim Ruland, Davis Schneiderman, Ben Tanzer and Karl Wolff, as well as new music by Ken Kase written specifically for this project, it is sure to be just the right ticket for a cold, scary autumn night.

Mark R. Brand - Life After Sleep Tour 2012

Today, I have the honor of hosting Mark R. Brand and his rowdy traveling blog tour for his novel, Life After Sleep, published by CCLaP. I had never really been a big fan of science fiction until I had the privilege of meeting, and becoming friends with, Mark R. Brand. He introduced me to the world of speculative fiction; a world where future possibilities are very near reality, a place where ideas from the future do not require a giant leap of faith. Brand's Life After Sleep inhabits this world. The novel maintains mainstream literary credibility while cultivating a realistic science fiction plot. I recently had the opportunity to send Mark some questions about Life After Sleep:

JF – As a writer, I'm always interested in how other writers work. Can you tell me a little about your writing process for this novel.

MRB - This novel actually began as a short story; just the Dr. Frost segment written in first-person perspective with a weirder, darker tone and a different sequence of events as he slowly goes insane from sleep deprivation. When I floated the idea to Jason Pettus at CCLaP about expanding it into a longer work with more characters I initially added Lila and Max and intended for the finished product to be shorter and more like a novella than a novel (hence it being inconsistently referred to as both a novel and novella). During the revision process, though, it became clear that those three characters and the tangential ways they interact with each other through most of the story weren't going to be enough. Something was still missing, and that something turned out to be a fourth character named Jeremy and his extensive conversations with Dr. Suri, another key but mostly-unexplored character. Once these two pieces fit into place, the story started to reach for something bigger and more interesting we felt, even though in its final form it's really closer in length and scope to a novel. In any case, the entire process was one of building and layering until I got it right, and that was something new for me creatively. Ironically, though he was added last and mostly as a way to connect and strengthen the rest of the book, the character my readers seemed to like the most and gave me the most positive feedback about was Jeremy.

JF - Is there actually more to Life After Sleep that the reader hasn't seen? If so, how much more?

MRB - In terms of subtext and hidden easter-egg type material, there are several characters in this book named after my real-life friends, and a number of characters and events are amalgamations of various people I know or things I've experienced, particularly in the medical field. An example might be the scene where Dr. Frost's nurse has to barter clinic supplies with nurses in other wings of the office to get what she needs to treat her patients. I actually worked in an office once where the supply guy was under the thumb of a particularly sociopathic office manager whose idea of cost cutting was to never have enough of things like needles and gauze on hand at any one time. There was no way to deal with this other than an insane little micro-economy where when supplies would come in, the nurses (I was a medical assistant, which isn't a licensed nurse, but serves a very similar purpose) would hoard and then barter supplies to get what we needed. You need paper exam shorts? Give me some of your Kenalog. It was exactly the sort of crazy bullshit that makes the TV show "Nurse Jackie" so great, except it was real, and at times even wilder and less plausible than what ended up in the fictionalized version.

JF - Have you ever thought of writing a prequel? 

MRB - I think that by and large the story as I intended it is all here on the page. Several reviewers mentioned the brevity of the book, and that they wished it was longer, but the length of it was partly intentional as well. I think eBooks are likely to move in the direction of shorter, punchier work simply due to the fact that people's eyes can't handle digital screens for 500 pages as well as they can regular paper, and since my book was one of the first paper editions that CCLaP came out, it wasn't clear when I was writing it if it ever would have a print version. I liked the idea of keeping it a comfortable, entertaining book that didn't overtax my hypothetical readers. Now that it's done, though, and I re-read it, it feels complete to me and the length consideration is more of a happy coincidence. 

JF - Thanks for stopping by Mark. Check out Life After Sleep.

                                            

Mark R. Brand is a sci-fi author and an editor at Silverthought Press. His novels include Life After Sleep and The Damnation of Memory.

Today, we have the honor of hosting Katherine Scott Nelson's book tour for hir debut novel, Have You Seen Me from the ever fabulous CCLaP. You can download the book here. I recently had the opportunity to send Neslon some interview questions about Have You Seen Me.

Jason Fisk - In a job interview, it’s illegal to directly ask people certain questions, so interviewers circumvent these restrictions by simply asking then interviewee to tell them a little about themselves. I realize that this isn’t a job interview, but I do think the question gives the interviewee the freedom to say whatever they want to say about themselves. So… tell me a little bit about yourself.

Katherine Scott Nelson - Call me credulous, but this is the first I've realized that "tell me about yourself" was a way to get a job interviewee to answer illegal questions. So with that in mind...

*adjusts tie, unstraps messenger bag and places feet on desk*

Hi, nice to meet you. I'm a writer who needs a steady paycheck and some free health insurance.
I take it you've noticed that I am gender-variant. At this workplace, I will do things like use freaky-sounding pronouns, ask where the gender-neutral bathroom is, and cheekily add my name to the end of "Dear Sir or Madam." Whether or not this is a problem will largely depend on the number of tightass bigots you have working for you.

I've also lived with extreme depression and anxiety since early childhood. I manage it really well, and you'd probably never guess this about me... until your insurance premiums triple. What can I say, the pharmaceutical companies have us crazy people over a barrel.
Oh, and the second I get bored, I will start listening to audiobooks.

Whew! That was really fun. I think I had a lot of pent-up frustration about the job interviews I've been to over the past year.

JF - You interviewed me earlier in the year and you asked me a question about wether I considered myself an outlaw or not (due to my past). I thought it was a great question, so I'm throwing it back at you. Do you consider yourself an outlaw?

KSN - It's always been really complicated. When I was a little kid, I was terrified to break rules or be
different, and in a lot of ways, I still am. But my favorite comic strip was Calvin and Hobbes, and I wanted to be just like Calvin. The tension between the Normal and the Other, Good Kid and Bad Kid, the Village and the Forest, have been huge influences on me, both personally and artistically - you can see this all over Have You Seen Me. The first book that ever spoke to me on a grown-up level was The Scarlet Letter, if that tells you anything.

At this point, I don't think I have a choice anymore about whether or not I'm an outlaw. The person I am and the life I've chosen have made me one regardless, no matter how ambivalent I might feel about it.

You've got young kids, so I'm assuming you've seen the X-Men movies? I always think of this scene.  I feel like Nightcrawler, but I'm trying to be like Mystique.


JF - In reading Have You Seen Me, I was struck by the fact that you didn’t shy away from many of the difficult issues that young people wrestle with today: homosexuality, cutting, friendship, the struggle to understand the world around them, homophobia, family dynamics, etc. I admire the stances you took, and the honesty and relevance of the issues resonates with me. What can you tell me about where that came from, and how it came to be?


KSN - Almost everything in the book - abuse, drugs, self-injury, an acquaintance's suicide, queer self-loathing - either happened to me or to a close friend of mine before I was 25. I tried to stay very faithful to how it felt to live through it at the time.

But these things aren't particularly specific to young people today. When I was going through a period of intense self-hatred brought on by queerphobia, I reached back to texts written by people who'd experienced the same struggles decades or centuries ago. This 1887 sonnet is one of my favorite poems: "Carrion Comfort" by Gerard Manley Hopkins. I think it's one of the best descriptions ever of what it feels like to fight with one's own internalized homophobia.

What's contemporary about the emotional and interpersonal issues in Have You Seen Me are the ways in which they're expressed - the expansion of communication through technology, for example.


 JF - Have You Seen Me is a finalist in two categories (Bisexual Fiction and Gay Debut Fiction) for the 24th Annual Lambda Literary Award. What does that mean to you? What has that done to/for your writing? (A big congrats to you!)

KSN - Thanks! I chose the two categories because they represent the material that's in Have You Seen Me. Initially, I entered it in Bisexual Fiction, because [SPOILER!] and because I'm pansexual - it seemed like the most likely fit. Turns out that they let you choose a second category if you come from an underrepresented part of the LGBT.

Becoming a finalist has changed my entire life. I can say that with no exaggeration. Before, I always kind of assumed that I'd get a book published and then return to toiling in obscurity. It's changed my family, my community, my whole sense of myself in the world. It's opened up a completely different future to me. I've started thinking "If this can happen, what else can?"

A lot of people have asked me how I feel about being labeled as an LGBT writer. I don't see an issue with it. I think any perceived stigma is a function of that old narrow thinking - that you're a lesser artist if your work can't be located within the cultural defaults of straight, white, male, cisgender. That there's such a thing as "writers who happen to be LGBT," who make real art, and then there are "LGBT writers" who make PR. That just isn't true.


JF - I love telling people that I think pus is beautiful. They usually cringe and say something like, “That’s just gross,” but if you think about it, it’s your body sacrificing neutrophils to fight infection. I guess it’s the idea of sacrife that I think is beautiful, and I see that manifested in pus. Crazy, I know, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? I see that same sort of beauty in Have You Seen Me. The journey may be gritty at times, but it is the beauty found in unexpected places that makes this such a rewarding read. Tell me about the aesthetics of Have You Seen Me.

KSN - Wow, that's amazing. I'd never thought of pus that way. I think the final couple of scenes are really the heart and soul of the book. One of the best compliments I've ever gotten is Jason Pettus admitting that the ending made him cry almost every time we went over it.

I'm proud of it because it takes the things that have haunted our protagonist and elevates them to a kind of cosmic significance. The boundaries between human and animal, man and woman, straight and gay, life and death, all dissolve or get left behind. The ecstatic enters. The universe expands a little bit. To me, those are core queer values as well.


JF - The main character, Chris, befriends an older man, Albert, who lives on the outskirts of town. I have always been taken with the idea of the outsider, of which Albert would certainly qualify, and the unique perspective that their position as an outsider offers them. What can you tell me about Albert’s role as an outsider?  Do you believe that where one stands in relation to society affects their understanding of the world around them?

KSN - So, last weekend was the NATO summit in Chicago. I had to pass through downtown to get to work, and it was tense and surreal - police everywhere, no one on the streets, helicopters overhead every second. I kept wondering what I'd do if I saw Albert backing an Econoline van into an alley. I wondered what Chris would do.

Absolutely, I think that people living outside of the mainstream of society can often have the most profound understandings of it. They can also, unfortunately, lose a sense of connection with and
responsibility towards their fellow humans - and Albert has both of these characteristics. I tried to make it as difficult as possible for Chris, and for the reader, to tease them apart.

Happy Birthday Abby

Abby

Was that you in the woods today
wildly blowing that dry brown leaf
as it desperately clung to its branch?
Did you drop the brown, gray feather
in my path as the geese climbed
hurling themselves at the sun?
I know your spirit flows
through their clean hollow bones.
I know you love the propulsion
and free fall
and wind blast
and climb
of flight.
And I just stood there
Earth bound
death hiding
in my clogged
bone marrow
and I looked for you
as the cold wind
stung my cheeks.

Salt Creek Anthlolgy, Blog Tour 2012

Well, it's all over but the crying. Today marks the official end of Salt Creek Blog Tour, 2012. I would like to thank everyone involved for their time and their hospitality. Below is a cumulative list of the participants over the past two weeks and a link to where we parked the tour bus.

Monday, 2/20: Lori Hettler's The Next Best Book Blog
Tuesday, 2/21: Delphine Pontvieux's Miss Nyet Publishing
Wednesday, 2/22: Katherine Scott Nelson
Thursday, 2/23: Amy Guth
Friday 2/24: Jason Behrends', Orange Alert

Monday, 2/27: Victor David Giron's, Curbside Splendor
Tuesday, 2/28: Pete Anderson's Pete Lit
Wednesday, 2/29: Claire Stokes' Clarity Solutions
Thursday, 3/1: Caroline Picard's Green Lantern Press
Friday, 3/2: Ben Tanzer's This Blog Will Change Your Life

Blog Tour 2012, Days Seven and Eight

Thank you to Peter Anderson of Pete Lit for hosting day seven of the Salt Creek Anthology Blog Tour 2012. It is much appreciated!

Also, I want to thank Claire Stokes of Clarity Solutions for asking some awesome, and very insightful, interview questions, and also allowing us to park our blog tour bus at her site for the day.

Day One, Week Two

A very unique blog stop to kick off week two, brought to you by Curbside Splendor. Thank you Victor David Giron and Garett Holden. Check out the video here.

Salt Creek Blog Tour - Week One

So, here's a list of the blogs that were kind enough to participate in the first week of the Salt Creek Blog Tour 2012. Thank you all very much.

M 2/20: the next best book blog
T 2/21: Miss Nyet Publishing
W 2/22: Katherine Scott Nelson
R 2/23: Amy Guth
F 2/24: What to Wear during an Orange Alert (Jason Behrends)

Thank you Jason Pettus and CCLaP for setting this whole thing up.

Day five of the Salt Creek Blog Tour 2012

A huge thank you to Jason Behrends of WHAT TO WEAR DURING AN ORANGE ALERT (one of my favorite sites) for being a great last stop of the week for the Salt Creek Anthology Blog Tour 2012.

Blog tour, day four

I want to thank the ever wonderful and talented Amy Guth for allowing the Salt Creek Anthology to stop at her website for day #4 of the blog tour.

You can snag an e-copy of Salt Creek Anthology here.

Blog tour days two and three

Oh boy. I forgot to blog the stop yesterday, so I'll post two links today.

Blog Tour stop #2, Miss Nyet Publishing. A special thank to Delphine Pontviuex for letting us have space on her site yesterday: Salt Creek: inspiration.

Blog Tour stop #3, Katherine Scott Nelson's blog, where she asks some big questions of me. I really enjoyed answering these questions. Thank you Katherine Scott: Big Questions Interview.

Salt Creek Tour 2012

I have an exciting two weeks ahead of me as I blog tour with my book Salt Creek Anthology. A big thank you to Jason Pettus of CCLaP for putting this together. I'll be on here daily with the link for blog stop of the day.

Check out today's stop, TNBBC's The Next Best Book Blog where I discuss the idea of being indie.

A big thank you to...

A big thank you to Grey Sparrow Press for publishing a short, short story of mine titled, Yellow Daffodils. This is a piece from a yet unpublished larger collection, Hank and Jules. It is a collection of flash fiction pieces about a couple, Henry and Julie. Anyway, thank you very much editors at Grey Sparrow Press.