Selected Shorts is one of my favorite ways to pass the time in the car. Their podcast is free on iTunes and has some amazing quality stories and readings of those stories. Their late host, Isaiah Sheffer was one of the greatest voices I’ve ever heard. When I’m writing short stories I often try and hear them read in his voice, because if it doesn’t sound good when he’s reading it it’s likely not going to sound good when a reader is reading it.
I have a few targets on my mental writing cork board, those stretch goals to hit someday, and one of them would be to get a short story of mine produced by Selected Shorts and read live, on stage, at Symphony Space in New York City. So here’s hoping…
P.S. By ‘wish me luck’ I do mean that, if you should see me wandering in your general vicinity today you should attempt to rub my belly, like some emaciated Buddha. And if I’m not in your general vicinity you should rub my belly *with your mind*.
Written by Douglas Adams, the text-based game is based on the text-based novel and text-based screenplay of the same name. It’s a game from the time when games were games, men were real men, and women were real women. Kumquats didn’t exist. Lemurs were simply a rumor. Tacos were mythical things that hunted in packs on the Mexican river banks. The world had yet to resolve into actual pictures, which is why all of our games were simply letters and empty space strung together.
It’s got Douglas Adams’s trademark humor and is engrossing to play, and I’m doing all I can not to play it right now, because I need to finish editing my book. And the more I talk about it here the more I’m going to want to play it. So I’ll just say that you should really, really check out this game, take a trip down memory lane, even if you’ve never seen or played this game before. Unless you’re working on a novel. In which case, you should work on that, first, then you can go play your video games. Consider it a carrot at the end of the tunnel.
I’m typing this to you from an undisclosed location on a stolen WiFi signal (rigged, MacGuyver-style, from a coffee filter, three paperclips, a filling from one of my teeth, and a pencil) so my minders won’t know that I’m not feverishly typing away at Butterfly.
So, for whatever reason, I subscribe toOne Story, the magazine. You may, too, for all I know. If you don’t you may want to. It’s a short story a month (plus one extra, I believe, daylight savings story, we’ll call it), which I think I enjoy because of the high risk the publishers have taken. One measly story per month? What if it’s a dud? There goes a whole month with that dud of a story on your hands, like a bloodstain you just can’t get out and then there are these witches at the door and Lady MacBeth… You can see how it could spiral out of control.
One, err, Two Stories
So I’ve been meaning to mention the last story they published, because I think you, whoever you are (hi, Mom!), will get a kick out of it. It’s called “Mastermind,” by Jen Fawkes. I loved the concept and the voice Jen Fawkes uses for the story. It’s endearing, in an evil genius kind of way. The conclusion of the story left me a little bit wanting — it seemed a bit over the top for such a finely constructed scenario, but, as she mentions in her Q&A, she sort of substituted Chekhov’s gun with a volcano, so there you have it.
This month’s issue is the first shot in the B.J. Novak barrage which seems to be well-timed to detonate for the publication of his collection of short stories entitled One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories. His story is called “A Good Problem to Have,” and again, I loved the premise. Loved the old man in the story, who is the original inventor of the “a train leaves Chicago for Cleveland at 2pm, traveling at 60 miles per hour, at 3pm, a train leaves Cleveland heading for Chicago at 3pm, traveling at 85 miles per hour…” problem. There were a few sentences that I recognize from my own tendency to run on a bit that didn’t seem to get left on the cutting room floor, but overall it was a cute, fun story.
I’ve made it through two of the stories so far, and both of the readings are excellent, but the late founder of the Selected Shorts program, Isaiah Sheffer, reads a James Thurber short story and it just sparkles and is more than worth the cost of the bandwidth it will take to download the podcast.
More often than not, when I imagine a short story of mine read aloud I imagine Sheffer’s voice — he was just an amazing reader and takes such an obvious delight in Thurber’s very funny story about the ghost in the apartment.
Go directly to WYNC, do not pass ‘Go’, do not collect $200, just go listen, quick.
As a meager thank you for reading these very words, I want to present to you the Mona Schreiber Prize-Losing short story, “Saint Patrick’s Next Trick.”
4 Miles to Lahinch
It’s a story about the truth behind Saint Patrick’s miracles, especially out on the west coast of Ireland. You’ll learn things you maybe only suspected in this gripping tale of snakes, the absence of snakes, and the Cliffs of Moher. As I mentioned, it’s no winner, but on this holiday, aren’t we all really winners? Sure, sure we are.
Just click on the image below and you should be on your way to enjoying the PDF production of “Saint Patrick’s Next Trick.”
I hope you enjoy it, and a happy holiday season to you and yours.
In all this holiday focus on the Mayan Ball League, end of the world, and novel editing, some of you may be crying out, “But what of Verano the fish, that lovable scamp of a fish!”
Well, here’s a partial answer:
And there’s your reason W.C. Fields said, “Never work with children or animals.” She did nearly complete the text on the page, though, to her credit.
It’s also now super-short, just like it was before! You’ve heard of novels, right? Well, this is like a really short novel you could read in a sitting.
So rush right on out, because there is an excellent chance that the Mayan Calendar simply had daylight savings year built into it and this is the year the whole shebang is going to end and I would feel really bad if you hadn’t read “The History of the Mayan Ball League” before the world ended.
You can even gift the booklet (let’s call it a baby novel) to your friends, family, and acquaintances, since it also happens to be the season of giving. And and AND if you give someone something they may feel they owe you something in return when the world is actually ending.
* Void on Amazon, where I can’t make it free or can’t figure out how to make it free without making it an Amazon exclusive, which is probably all my fault, and I feel a deep and abiding shame for this.
[Look, I’m not supposed to even be writing this. If I had a decent publisher or agent, say, for example, a non-imaginary one, of either, they’d be plugging this for me and I could just be writing away, editing Butterfly, a novel, which some have already called “Murakami in Massachusetts.” Others have called it less kind things, but we’ll ignore those comments for the moment. At any rate, I would be much obliged if you would just go download the story so I can finish Butterfly before the world actually does end and I spend eternity in a really foul mood for not having finished the damn book.]
I was given a review copy of this book (The Hereafter Gang, by Neal Barrett, Jr). Joe Lansdale gave it a plug on Facebook, asking people to drop the publisher a line to help get this book the attention it deserved. So I dropped them a line and got my copy. This is the first book by Neal Barrett, Jr. that I’ve read.
Don’t Judge the Book by Its Cover
So the book starts out a little like 50 Shades of Grey for Men. I say this having not read* 50 Shades of Grey.
But it’s what I imagine 50 Shades of Grey would be like, were it told from the point of view of a man.
But (like that’s off-putting, for some reason, and for some people it may be), Doug Hoover, the protagonist, has got a great voice. A great, authentic Texan/Oklahoman voice. Now, I’ve got to warn you, I’ve only accidentally been to Texas before, and that only on the inside of an airport, a hermetically sealed airport.** So I have no idea if this is a true authentic Texan/Oklahoman voice. But it was to me. Doug’s having trouble with his wife, Erlene and her unfortunate lineage (though that may only be a part of the problem), and that part of the story, the unraveling marriage, is interesting enough, and understandable enough, given Doug’s proclivities, but the journey just sizzles, along the way. In particular I enjoyed the part in chapter 6 in the bar where they start discussing Cherokee Indians and new black Stetson hat. In Kindle terms, and I have no idea what this really means***, it’s at location 522 or so.
I loved the little anecdotes like that one, and when a particular habit of Doug’s involving the rich Texas soil is revealed as the secret to his youthful glow the story gets even more interesting.
It soars, however, when Doug meets Royce, the young boy at the Hanging Judge Barbecue #7 and stumbles upon James McArthur Dean Hill, the possible cautionary tale, and finally Sue Jean, his perfect little package
I like the history of the Old West and feel like a complete ignoramus compared to the vast knowledge that Neal Barrett, Jr. slops out there without a second thought, along with a good heaping of World War fighter plane battle history, but I enjoyed the quick lessons through osmosis.
I suppose I won’t go into the second half of the book for fear of ruining it for you, but it was my favorite part, by far. Barrett captures Doug’s disorientation as his life falls just a little bit apart and I love the humor and imagination and tenderness with which he handles the aftermath. The basketball-playing (or obsession with it) and tennis games in the latter half of the book had me laughing out loud.
I hadn’t expected much from this book, to be honest, even though the recommendation came from Mr. Lansdale. But, in the end, this was a great read, and I’m glad it’s getting new life as an ebook. This is the second zombie ebook I’ve read this year where an older, out of print book that simply faded away, the first time around gets a second chance (the first being Michael Joyce’s amazing “Going the Distance“), and I’m very glad I got the chance.
* I swear.
** I also swear.
*** I really do swear, and I swear that this is the first time I’ve ever had a book crash on me. I was reading this on a borrowed Kindle Paperwhite. The future!
.
). Joe Lansdale gave it a plug on Facebook, asking people to drop the publisher a line to help get this book the attention it deserved. So I dropped them a line and got my copy. This is the first book by Neal Barrett, Jr. that I’ve read.
“), and I’m very glad I got the chance.