The Evolution of an Idea

In the summer of 2014, I took a flash fiction writing workshop as my final class of grad school. I needed the credits to graduate, and I wanted to go out on a class I would enjoy with an instructor I really liked. At the time, I knew that it would likely be my last class as a student (that has so far remained true), and I thought it would be fun, and certainly not difficult, as I enjoy writing fiction, but I didn't think that the class would impact me to make flash fiction the focus of my creativity for any length of time.

However, here I am, two years later, with multiple short shorts published online and in print, and in the process of putting out not one but two flash fiction chapbooks. The first one is actually out now (see last week's posts) and the second one has yet to be given a specific release date---although, I am shooting for early next year, possibly January. The idea to do these chapbooks actually came during the class when I was putting together my final portfolio. The title of the second, Dispatches from the Information Age, came directly from that project, and quite a few of the stories in it did as well, albeit many of them have been edited and/or rewritten.

Dispatches from the Information Age will not only contain many of the stories from that class, but all of my stories that have been published over the past two years, and many more along those same lines, which I think is my future direction as a writer. Fast-paced, weird, angry, and (hopefully) humorous, it can be described as what would happen if Kurt Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury got together with the members of Monty Python and wrote a flash fiction chapbook. At least, that is the aesthetic I am going for with it.

In order to accurately reflect this aesthetic, I have carefully considered the cover art, and it has evolved over the development of the project. At first, I was going to have my brother design it, but then I started playing around with a few ideas, and came up with a couple of my own.

These were meant to be stand-ins while my brother worked on his idea, but I liked the direction I was going, and decided to continue working on it. After all, I have designed all of my other covers, and while not many writers can really do that effectively (at least according to the advice blogs I read), I think it is something that I have actually turned into a strength.

This week, I finally realized the one that I had been seeing in my mind's eye, but couldn't quite capture, and of all of the ideas I've had, it fits the best with the contents of the collection:

A good friend and confidant described it as "Warhol for the 21st century," and I could easily refer to the set of stories as a form of pop art, so it fits. I am really trying to capture the absurdity of life in our culture today, and I think that anyone who sees this cover will be able to gather that.

This direction, while my natural inclination as a fan of satire, science fiction and dark humor, and my calling as a dissident intellectual and highly educated poor person, it also came in part from the reaction to these stories by my classmates and my professor, who only encouraged me further down this path.

Before that class, I spent my time working on a novel, and several short stories, but nothing has really connected for me in the same way as flash fiction. It just goes to show that you never know the direction you are going to take as an artist, and sometimes, you just have to go where life takes you, and trust your instincts.

While my writing will not exclusively take the form of flash fiction, it is a form that I really enjoy exploring, and I will continue to do for a long time to come. It has all of the elements that I enjoy about writing: it's fun and challenging, I can be poetic and experimental, and people actually sometimes take the time to read what I write. Additionally, as more and more of our culture is absorbed and transformed by the internet, it is a growing and popular form for fiction, as people have much shorter attention spans, and there are more places to publish it and fans for it than ever.

If you are faithful to the process, what you're working on might turn into something great, but hopefully, at the very least, you will have fun with it. That is the most important part.

Let's Make It Official...Unofficially

I'm not, like, announcing a date or anything like that, but, as I mentioned in my previous post, my flash fiction chapbook, "The Ever-Present Moment," is coming out this summer.

The concept is pretty complete; the stories are pretty much done and the layout/design is more or less already finished. I just ordered a proof, which should be here in a couple of weeks.

I do actually have a specific release definite date in mind; however, while it wasn't my original intention, I have decided to do this guerrilla-style.

There isn't going to be much in the way of a description or explanation. Being only 28 pages, it doesn't feel necessary; plus, it is one of those things that just is what it is: nothing more, nothing less.

Anyways, since I have already shared the photograph that is the basis for the cover, I don't see any harm in putting out the actual cover.

Flash Fiction Featured in Issue#78 of Red Fez

My short short story, "Invasion," is in the current issue of Red Fez. Please check it out, as well as the rest of the issue. This is a great magazine, and I feel honored to be included in it. Thank you to the editors!

Escapes, it shall be!

I am making it official: June 1st, 2015. That will be the magical date that it will appear for sale. 

That will also be when the sales of the first edition end--so if that is the one you want to read, and you haven't bought it yet, you have until then to do so. If the final edition catches your fancy, you will be able to relieve those impulses soon.

The new novel is coming along slowly, and I am writing more short fiction, so things are looking on the up and up--at least as far as my hobby is concerned.

As far as my career, well... I am working on it. We'll see what happens. I just have to be diligent. I just have to keep applying. Keep up hope. Believe in myself. In spite of my lack of success right now, I am still confident that I will find the right job soon. You never know, it could happen tomorrow. I just have to keep trying to make it happen until it does happen.

I have some other announcements to make, but I am waiting for the appropriate time. I think you will be excited, especially if you like my short fiction. ;-)

New Flash Fiction!

The Consumers and the Consumed

Carlos paused in the middle of a crowded boardwalk to open a bottle of Coke. Much to his surprise, a genie appeared out of an explosion of foam—although no one around him seemed to notice.

“YOU HAVE AWAKEN ME FROM MY SLUMBER!” the genie thundered, folding his arms across his chest. “For that, I will grant you ONE wish!”

“Only one?” Carlos said, “I thought it was three.”

“Well,” the genie replied, shrugging, “This ain’t Disney.”

With his hand to his chin, Carlos tried to think of the one perfect wish as the bottle of Coke continued spewing out foam on the ground between them, and people walked all around them in and out of the shops and cafés, going about their day, absorbed into their iPhones and Androids. Finally, after several minutes…

“I wish for…POPULARITY!”

The genie smiled and rose up to his full height, seeming to tower over Carlos.

“Your wish is my command,” he said, raising his arms in the air, twiddling his fingers in Carlos’ direction, “ABRA CADABRA!”

POOF! Carlos disappeared and in his place sat a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, which was immediately scooped up by a passing stoner, who high-fived the genie, ripped open the bag, and popped some into his mouth.

“Mhm…Best Doritos ever!” he proclaimed as he disappeared into the crowd.

[Oh Hell, Here's another one] NEW FLASH FICTION:

The Secret Family Recipe

Duke tried to warn people for years, but the family kept him silenced.

The recipe was passed down through the generations, and millions, maybe even billions, bought and enjoyed those beans—in spite of not knowing exactly what was in them.

The secret was, after all, the gimmick.

Maybe the fact that the family had a talking dog should have clued people in a bit sooner to the fact that they were up to something a bit more nefarious than just making a profit: it’s not pork in those baked beans.

NEW FLASH FICTION:

Mr. Kool-Aid’s Lost Weekend

Mr. Kool-Aid struts down the street, boombox blasting Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

The burned out flesh and bones that was the sixties is sprawled out against the railing of its seventy-fourth floor balcony. As the last thread of consciousness breaks,  several sheets of acid slip out of its grasp and fall straight into Mr. Kool-Aid’s top as he is breakdancing for a group of school kids.

Oooh yeeah, he says.

Seventy-four-hours later, one for every floor the acid dropped, Mr. Kool-Aid wakes up in a cell with Zack Galifinakis.

They chat for a few moments and then Mr. Kool-Aid bursts through the wall, running off, his voice echoing in the distance:

Ohhhhhhhhhh Yeaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!

Life Isn't Simple, But It Could Be

Unofficially, I am participating in National Novel Writing Month. If I had more time to actually work on it, I would make it more official--but I only have a little time to devote to it. I have a little more than 2,000 words, and I am hoping to do about 500-1000 words a week, if I can manage it. This whole "work" thing just seems to get in my way.

Work is not, however, preventing me from keeping my stories in a steady rotation of being sent out. Some of them have been out for a while, some are out for the first time, and some are out for the second. There aren't any that I have sent out three times--yet. If it happens, it happens, I am just going to keep sending them all out until I can find homes for them. I have four more unpublished short and short short stories to send out yet. My goal is to have all fifteen of them out at all times until I can find places to publish them. I will tweak them along the way, and keep experimenting and editing them, until I can figure out what works--what people like, and what journals are best for my style of writing.

I do enjoy teaching--I just wish I could make more doing it. If I could find a full-time community college gig, that would be something I would latch onto and do until a better opportunity came along. Next semester, I am teaching at least two class, but hopefully at least one more. The rest of the hours I am available, I want to spend tutoring. At this stage in my career, I will benefit from both. Tutoring, you get all the benefits of teaching--working with students, getting down to business, talking about writing, editing, using your creativity--without any of the downsides, especially the long hours spent grading and lesson planning. Two is much more manageable in that regard, and three would be the ideal number.

That is not to say that I have given up on other full-time gigs. I am still applying to stuff that seems like I am reasonably qualified for and that don't require too much experience. I could definitely find more time to do it, though. I just wish that I didn't have to sleep. Maybe then I would find enough time in one day to do everything that I want to do. My day would have to be a million years long, and I would have to age really slowly. I don't think I have time on my side there, though. No one does.

That's why life should be less complicated that we, as a society let it be. It can be as simple as it could be, we just have to change our mindset, no matter how much effort it takes. It will be worth it, no matter how much we fail, because, even if we succeed just a little bit, it will make a difference. If every generation tries to make at least a little bit of a difference--you just have to keep the gene pool going--eventually, some future generation with your DNA will get to experience peace. Just ask Geoffrey Chaucer.

A Whole Lot of Dookie

My Dookie is missing. Upon finding out that Green Day was a candidate for this year's class of the Rock n'Roll Hall of Fame, feeling nostalgic, I went for my CD shelf, came up with the case, and... No disc.

I don't know how long it's been gone, where it went, or if I will ever get it back again. I will just listen to my wife's copy.

Whenever I hit play and those first notes of "Burnout" start blasting out of my speakers, it takes me back to the summer of 1994, when I was an awkward, lanky 12-year old, first trying to some sense out of the world. 

I had never really been outside of the rural Ohio hellscape that I saw around me. Trees and fields, nature right in my face. Nothing to do but sit around and dream about the future.

Billy Jo's lyrics spoke to me, to every 12-year old in America, and those songs became the anthems of our lives, as we played that disc, over and over again.

"Longview" was a revelation... I mean, what 12-year-old boy didn't feel bored and horny and fed up with just everything and everyone around them. Right on the verge of teenage angst, I was ready to explode.

And I did. We all did, because that is what teenagers do. We exploded on to the world, developing our own personalities and identities, exploring the world around us and inside of us, Dookie urging us forward, that "fuck you, world!" spirit boiling to the surface and fueling our mission, whatever the fuck it was anyways.

I started playing guitar and making plans for my own band, which would eventually surface as I found like-minded lost souls seeking enlightenment through blistering power chords and pulsing rhythms.

Grunge was already dead, but we were alive, more alive and free than we had ever been, and maybe than we would ever be again. We didn't feel alive and free at the time--hell, we didn't know what we felt. We just knew that we felt something, and it felt right, and wrong, and it swirled all around inside of us, and we tried to make sense of it, and somehow, through the wisdom of songs like "Basket Case" and "When I Come Around", it did in some small way. We weren't alone.

We every successive album, Insomniac, Nimrod, Warning, American Idiot (and the ones that came before, as well, Kerplunk! and 1039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours--their rendition of "My Generation" is a classic, in my book), our lives continued to be be defined, in part, through them--I mean, how many high school graduating classes didn't use, "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)"as their class song, how many anti-Bush War people didn't rally around "Jesus of Suburbia" during the second Gulf War? These songs spoke to us and spoke for us when we ran short on our own words or didn't have a voice to speak our point of view in a way that others would listen.

While they have always had their share of haters trying to say that they sold out, that they weren't punk, or any of that other crap, they have always been whatever they defined themselves to be, in spite of those criticisms. And that attitude is something that I have always tried to carry with me. Fuck the haters and the critics. What do they know, anyways? What is punk, anyways?

Current Events

My short short story, "Current Events" is featured today at Flash Fiction Magazine!

Check it out:

Death of A Stapler

Well, I still have my sanity. For now. Honestly, teaching 15 credit hours is not as bad as I expected it to be. 

Having one thing as my primary focus is very liberating, and it still allows me time to continue searching for a full-time job, work on novel#2, edit short and short short stories and send them out to publications, and do stuff with my wife. I can even mostly enjoy my weekends, even though I teach a Saturday class. It's not a good long-term plan, but it will work until I find something better. 

I do like the fact that I am gaining confidence and becoming a more articulate public speaker--two things that I needed to work on anyways. If it didn't require more schooling, I would consider doing it long term, but I have enough debt to pay back.

Another benefit, I think, is that I am becoming a better editor and proofreader. It tends to happen when you have to read and comment on 100 papers every other week, or so. Well, you either become better at it, or your head explodes. Mine is still attached, so far, but, it is only about a third of the way through the semester (how time flies!), so there is still time for that to happen.

The biggest crisis to happen so far this semester--aside from having to wait until the end of the month for my first paychecks, anyhow--has been the death of my stapler. It was a good stapler, which I bought at some point during my last few semesters as an undergrad, and, although I had to fix it a couple of times, it worked well. Unfortunately, it was made from plastic. Next time I buy a stapler, I will be spending the extra and buying a metal one. One meant for high-capacity stapling. One that will last.

Nothing lasts forever, though, I suppose. Of course, that phrase is often used negatively--such as when my stapler first died, and I was particularly distraught about it and cursing the fine people of Office Max--but it can also have a positive meaning, as when you are struggling to make ends meet  and looking for a better opportunity, and you just can't wait for change.

In that case, the fact that nothing lasts forever is a philosophy that gets you through to the next opportunity, the next phase of your life, and hopefully you have learned enough that it is better than where you were before.

Eventually, you will be able able to look back on the times that you struggled and appreciate what you have and realize that, even though things might have been a struggle, it could have been worse. It can always be worse.

Good news!

My flash fiction, "Current Events" is being published by Flash Fiction Magazine! I will keep you posted as to when it is published, which should be on September 29, but, for now, here is a link: