"Everything Sounds Better on Vinyl:" New Fiction in Gulf Stream Magazine

Good morning, y'all!

I have a new short story up today. You can read "Everything Sounds Better on Vinyl" in the Spring issue of Gulf Stream Magazine.

Thank you to editor T.C. Jones for being such a warm, enthusiastic editor. He and the other editors and readers have put together a wonderful mix of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction that I can't wait to spend time with this weekend.

This story means a lot to me because I first drafted it in an undergraduate creative writing course. That first attempt was terrible, and the previous version is either lost in my ancient family computer or typed out in fragments stuck in an old binder I keep under my desk. The story always stayed in my head, and I started over from memory last year, and now it's a complete, published story that I'm very proud of.

Have a great weekend. Happy reading.

Chicago Flashbacks: A 2013 Interview with Ben Tanzer

Two weeks ago,my girlfriend and I moved from Chicago to Lafayette, Louisiana, as she prepares to embark on her PhD studies at the University of Louisiana. While this is an exciting new phase, in a fantastically different landscape from the Midwestern lives we've been used to, there's also the challenge of immersing myself in a new literary community, one concentrated in what feels like a small town (in reality, Lafayette is the fourth biggest city in Louisiana, I believe; in addition to the University, there's a beautiful downtown and fantastic restaurants sprinkled in unexpected areas off the main roads).

I'm going to be teaching two English composition courses at the university, and once I get into that groove, and once we explore the city (and hopefully nearby New Orleans in due time), the transition will feel more complete. For now, though, I still feel pang of homesickness, and I remember why I started this blog in the first place: back in 2008, I impulsively moved to Washington state, and thought this would be a log of new landscape experiences. Instead, it turned into a film and book review blog, and the upkeep of this site led me to renew my focus on creative writing. Eight (!) years later, I have my MFA, I have a novel draft that's almost ready to send out (Hi agents! Hi publishers!), and I'm about to start teaching at the university level.

Where am I going with these ramblings? I've neglected this space pretty heavily over the last three years, updating sporadically, mainly showcasing my publications when they happen. I don't want to make any goals on how I'll dust off this blog, but I'd like to start with a piece of writing I recently unearthed. Back in 2013, I had to do an interview as part of a creative nonfiction assignment, and I reached out to Chicago writer Ben Tanzer. I'd read his work, loved it, and found him to be gracious and hilarious on social media. To my surprise, he readily agreed to take time and meet with me. Little did I know that I'd end up doing readings with him, and fostering what became a genuine friendship. In 2015, we read together for the book launch of Steve Karas' Kinda Sorta American Dream. After, we went out for drinks, and Ben insisted I ask him whenever I had questions about publishing, writing, or life in general. It doesn't matter if I end up moving back to Chicago or just end up visiting sporadically. Ben will always be a warm link to Chicago for me, and I'll always be grateful for his guidance as I stumble toward life as a professional writer (whatever the hell that means). So here's the transcript of my first meeting with him. I've edited parts (mainly to clean up some bad writing of mine), but almost three years later, I think this reveals some good ideas. Thanks, Ben.

Also, Ben has a new book out: Be Cool is now available from the great people at Dock Street Press. So if you'd like, read this and then order the book from your favorite independent bookseller.

Ben Tanzer Interview: October, 2013

The rise of social media has made it possible to blur the definition and distinction of "stranger." Last fall, I became acquainted with Chicago writer Ben Tanzer after I read and reviewed My Father's House, a novella published by Main Street Rag. Mr. Tanzer shared my review on his website and his social media feeds and sent me a thank-you email for my review. Since then, we've followed each other on Twitter and have been Facebook friends without actually meeting in person; however, I've met him twice in the last week.

I attended a book launch last Saturday at City Lit Books in Logan Square for Friend.Follow.Text., a collection of stories about digital culture, and Tanzer read his excerpt. The previous week, he agreed to meet with me as the subject for this interview, and I talked to him after the reading. We finally introduced ourselves, and actually had proper faces to put with our social media handles. We met the following Monday at the Starbucks on Wabash and Jackson. I wanted to interview Ben for a variety of reasons. In my opinion, his fiction explores contemporary masculinity in complex ways, not shying away from negative aspects. This is a subject I want to explore more in my own fiction and creative nonfiction writings.

Tanzer is interested in twenty-first century men, but he explained to me that he wants to write stronger female characters. This is yet another idea that I've been conscious of in my own work. With Tanzer, he explained this need not with any grand social meaning, but out a necessity for male writers to make sure they're not just exploring their own views and sensibilities.

Tanzer is very active on Facebook and Twitter, which ties nicely into his inclusion in the Friend.Follow.Text. anthology. He also maintains a blog and website, devoted to publicizing other writers and books, in addition to sharing reviews of his own work. However, he maintains a strict distinction between marketing and writing, saying "I would never market [myself] instead of write." I also asked him about his online persona. His blog is called This Blog Will Change Your Life, and online, he maintains a steadily sarcastic, hop voice. In real life, however, he's polite and expansive in his answers. He started the blog back when, in his words, "nobody was blogging," and he wanted to create a mini-universe and tongue-in-cheek "media empire," making it a fake corporate blog. This backfired on him at one point: an unnamed writer, upon reading Tanzer's debut novel, was disappointed that the book didn't literally change his life. He wrote a long complaint to Tanzer, who was perplexed that anyone could confused a literary work with an obviously satirical website.

My work with Longform.org has helped me familiarize myself with small presses and independent journals; that's how I discovered Tanzer in the first place. I stumbled upon his short story "The Gift," published in The 2nd Hand, after a random Google search for local journals. I asked him how he views the sheer number of places for writers to publish their work, both in print and online. He believes it's very good for writers, since it gives them wider audiences and readers. For readers, however, Tanzer maintains that the volume is good and bad. There are a lot of journals that publish work of poor quality, and the amount of reading available is such that one can never read everything.

This brought me to the final question of my interview. Tanzer is married with two boys, works full-time doing social media work for a nonprofit, and finds the time to write a variety of stories and novels (Orphans was released this week, with a starred review in Publisher's Weekly), in addition to reading a staggering amount of outside fiction. He's very strict about his time.

"If my wife and kids go out unexpectedly, I never look at it as 'oh, I have half an hour to myself to sit on the couch and watch TV.' I made it my writing time. I strip the fat out of my day." I asked him about this because I find myself daunted with my school activities and my day job, but Tanzer believes that, no matter how busy one is, there is more time in the day than most people realize. He makes his day segmented, balancing his outside responsibilities with his duties as a reader and writer.

This interview wasn't conducted out of a need to research a specific topic, but it was done because Tanzer represents so many intangible ideas that come up in my writings and research. I wanted to get his opinion on these ideas-masculinity, time management, and independent journals- because, combined, these make up the vast majority of my interests. For as familiar as I am with independent journals, I wanted to hear a new take on their numbers and qualities. And most importantly, I believe this interview has given me a new contact within the literary world; while Mr. Tanzer and I have been in touch over the last year, he's always been quick to answer my messages and questions.

He closed the interview by insisting that I email him with any further questions or to set up times to meet for coffee and more discussions. This was a genuine offer, and I'm confident that, should I need an outside opinion on creative matters or subjects, I have someone I can reach out to for insights and guidance. This will prove to be very valuable during the course of my MFA candidacy. So while I'm still considering various creative nonfiction projects, this interview provided me with an excellent face-to-face with a writer who touches upon my concerns.

(Belated) Halloween Flash Fiction

Hi there.

This is a little delayed, but I'm pleased to share this short story I wrote. The Gentleman won the annual Flash Fiction Contest sponsored by the Roosevelt University writing center. You can read the story here.

Included is a story titled Incredulous, penned by my fellow creative writing candidate Ryan Johnson. Ryan and I also gave our first public fiction readings in the writing center during their Halloween party. I was glad to give my first reading for a tiny audience. At some point, I'll be reading for larger groups, but getting my feet wet with seven or eight polite people was a good start. I didn't do any Mitch Hedberg-esque "reading with my back turned," but I do need to work on eye contact and not being so married to the page in front of me. It's a learning process. This is my first semester. I'm not worried.

And here's a gratuitous photograph of me clutching my winning Barnes & Noble gift card. It was used to picked up Notes From No Man's Land by Eula Biss and Hill William by Scott McClanahan. Rock.

A Brief Dispatch From MFA Land

Why, hi there.

It's been over two months since I last updated this blog. One of my last posts explained this: I'm currently in my first semester at Roosevelt University, on the first leg of my MFA candidacy in Creative Writing. While I had hoped to do little "snapshot" updates over the course of these months, that hasn't happened. But I wanted to write something, for god's sake. I was honest when I said I wasn't giving up on this blog, just that doing five book reviews/personal essays a month was impossible, given my jam-packed workload of reading, class writings, workshop editing, and edits, edits, edits. On top of that, I'm one of the student editors of Oyez Review, the MFA program's literary magazine (issue #40 is above; I'm currently editing and reading submissions for #41, coming this spring).

I'm also going to be doing two blog posts for the Oyez website. I'll update those here when they're published. A slight preview of my first blog post: after reading submissions for a solid month, I want to find the editors who sent me detailed, kind rejection letters. And I want to hug them profusely. With a small team of student readers, the workload has been immense. I can't imagine the work that goes into reading for a journal that publishes all year. So when I received rejection letters accompanied by kind notes, I was appreciative, but now, I'm even more touched. The unpaid hours are really, truly done out of love and dedication. So to take the time to send a small, personalized note when time is precious shows just how dedicated the editors of my favorite journals really are.

Some other notes:

1.) The new director of Roosevelt's MFA program is writer and novelist Christian TeBordo. When I found out he was coming to the program, that's what sold me, and I'm pleased to note that his writing skills and personality are in equal abundance. He's nicer than I could have imagined, and he really, truly wants to make the program as good as it can be. So I feel like I've started at the perfect time.

2.) My fellow first year MFA candidates are talented people. There's no competition, but rather a true sense of community and a shared goal of helping each other become better writers. We're very honest with each other, and there are never any hard feelings. And even though we've been together just over a month, there's been a marked improvement overall. I'm sure there will be steps back and steps forward for all of us, but for an opening month, this has been a terrific experience. And for fuck's sake, I need to stop using passive voice. That's been one of my biggest problems as a writer, and seeing this pointed out consistently has helped.

3.) On Monday, October 7th, Lindsay Hunter gave a reading at Roosevelt. As anyone who knows me can attest, I'm a serious fan of her writing, and I was beyond excited about this opportunity. Not only did I get to meet her and hear her read (if you ever have the chance to attend a Lindsay Hunter reading, go. Just go. Her performances are equally stunning and hilarious), but she sat in on our Fiction Workshop. She offered assessments on my story, was encouraging and honest, and she's a very careful reader. To have one of my favorite contemporary writers discuss my own work with me was unexpected a few weeks ago and a reality just this past Monday. I was honored. The photo below was taken for the Roosevelt Creative Writing MFA blog.

4.) I won a $1,000 spring semester scholarship for the above story. An organization called Friends Of American writers offers this scholarship every year to a first year MFA candidate. I was humbled. I guess in a way, it's the first time I've been paid for my writing, in a roundabout way. Actually, not really, but every little bit of cash helps right now.

5.) Two classmates said my story reminded them of George Saunders. I was touched and deep down wanted to say "easy there, tone it down. I'm not even within a couple galaxies of his talent." But it was just an overall assessment on tone and style, and I was touched, even though I was heavily skeptical.

So this is just a random smattering of what I've been up to as of late. I don't want to promise more consistent updates, because whenever I make any kind of promise via this blog, that's a virtual guarantee that said promise won't be kept at all. But I'm happy, a bit overworked and dazed, but overall on the way to where I want to be as a person and as a writer. And the ultimate catch-22: I'm making progress on my writing but have no time to work on things not related to school. I better keep my ass moving during Thanksgiving and Christmas break, yeah?

More updates soon! Just not sure when, exactly.