All this talk of baseball writing and more got me on an archaeological kick the other day, through old Sane Magazine issues, and I found the original of “The Long, Dark Voyage.” So you can read the story that appeared in the excellent Fenway Fiction: Short Stories from the Red Sox Nation for FREE, at what used to be my (and horde of hundreds of employees) weekly creative workout.
Sane Magazine: wonderful rubbish
I’m not going to lie, it’s a little fast and loose. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But it was that first Red Sox short story that started a very long relationship with a series of publishers who wanted to publish short fiction by members of Red Sox Nation, God help us all.
Whilst wearing my internet pith helmet and wielding a mean little pickaxe I was able to unearth some other baseball stories, including the sweet, short little ode to the 2003 Red Sox called, with apologies to Stephen King, “The Woman Who Loved Derek Lowe,” which was the other candidate for the first Fenway Fiction collection.
And no one can save you if you get sucked into the old horoscopes, oh no, no one can save you.
First off, thank you for the phone calls, faxes, emails, and cakes, all inscribed lovingly with the same message of support and care in the wake of my omission from the Batter Up! reading up in San Francisco on October 14th.
But the folks at LitQuake, who seem very nice, except a bit deficient in their knowledge of baseball fiction writers who happen to be in their own general vicinity, gave me a call and informed me that, unfortunately, it’s a bit too late to get me onto the program up at the Sports Basement this year. So no more need to call them or email them, begging to get me onto the stage. I appreciate the efforts, but this year you’ll just have to wait.
And, if the Red Sox aren’t still playing, I may be at the reading, so if you catch me there I’d be more than happy to do a personalized reading, just for you.
I’ve never been to a LitQuake before, but they have a fascinating list of events lined up, and Christopher Moore alone would be worth the price of admission (free) to the baseball reading. And if it’s anything like a GrubStreet event I’m sure it’ll be well-run with lots of literate-minded folks milling about to get your fires going.
In other news, I’m slogging through the final draft of Butterfly. It’s been a long time in the works, but I think it’s my best work yet, even better than the baseball fiction (some would argue this would not be a very high bar to surpass). So there is a good possibility that someone should just lock me in my room until I finish editing and start getting it sent off like some sort of communicable disease.
Friends, dear good, great friends. I have a favor to ask of you. Maybe two.
“Oh God,” you’re saying, possibly aloud, drawing stares in the internet café in which you’re browsing Facebook. I’ve told you time and time again not to browse Facebook in internet cafés, but there you go, no stopping you. That skeezy guy looking over your shoulder, right now? He was just browsing his portfolio of GE and MSFT stocks seconds ago. I bet that just sends shivers down your spine, doesn’t it? Your spine that he’s likely nearly breathing on, right this very second.
Books, at a reading in Waltham
Anyway.
But this favor, possibly two I have to ask of you, don’t panic. It’s the sort of favor that enriches the favor-giver, and, quite possibly, the entire human race. So it’s more like I’m doing a favor, possibly two, for *you*.
So I found out, via the incomparable Christopher Moore (@TheAuthorGuy) that the LitQuake folks are holding a reading up in San Francisco that is baseball themed. “Baseball themed!” I can hear you say, “but Matt, oh God, or are you insisting we all call you Matthew now, since that seems to be your writerly brand these days — regardless, Matt, Matthew, *you* write and sometimes read out loud baseball fiction! Surely you’re reading at this event! I can’t wait, I’ll be there with bells on, &c., &c.”
But here’s the secret: I’m not. Or, at least, no one’s *told* me I’m reading at this event, and, in my experience, if no one tells you you’re reading at an event you’re probably not supposed to get up on stage and just start reading.
Now, I’ll pause for a moment, to let you catch your breath. You okay? You’re not weeping, are you? Look, I’ll be okay. Really. This is part of the favor I have to ask of you. And I am *giving* to you. I want you to help me get on LitQuake’s radar, if that’s what they use, these days, instead of a submission manager like everyone else. I want to be like a tugboat, chugging up the Hudson River of LitQuake’s literary monitoring station. “BLARP!” (That is the literary equivalent/translation of what a tugboat’s whistle might sound like, in print.)
I would be honored, chuffed, and over the moon if you would contact the dear folks at LitQuake (http://www.litquake.org/contact-us) and ask them, beg them, promise them your first born (I cannot, sadly, reimburse you for first born children lost as a result of your begging) if Matthew Hanlon, the author of short stories that have appeared in books as diverse as “Fenway Fiction,” “Further Fenway Fiction,” and “Final Fenway Fiction,” all of which happen to be about baseball, could read at this very special, baseball-themed event. The same Matthew Hanlon who has been emailing them and calling them since he found out about the reading two days ago, so they should have his contact info. But, if not, they can email him at sanemagazine@mac.com (yes, this is a throwback for some of you).
And that’s it. The end of the first favor, and in which direction I’m still not quite sure it flows, so let’s just say you owe me one.
And… speaking of owing me one, hey, how’s about, should I be allowed to read, on stage, at the same general time as the other people reading, about baseball, how’s about you come up to San Francisco, head on over to the Sports Basement, sit down for a while and listen to people read about baseball? Christopher Moore will be there, who is a very entertaining speaker. As will *I*, because of the efforts of good buddies like *you*, who called, faxed, emailed, and semaphored LitQuake to lobby on my behalf. As much as I’ve enjoyed reading to an empty room in such diverse places as the Arlington Center for the Arts and the Charlton Public Library, it would be pleasant to read to friendly faces (and the friendly video phones you’re probably going to be holding up, recording the event like it’s the Dire Straits reunion tour).
So we have a little family story, along the lines of “Verano the Fish” only much, much, much longer running.
It’s called “Nin and Ja,” for lack of a better title. It follows the adventures of these two boys, good friends, and sometimes their sisters, and the boys names are, for lack of a better names, Nin and Ja. As our kids have grown, so have Nin and Ja, usually a step or two behind where our own are. So these guys, they’ve just entered school.
And this is the sort of thing that’s typical of their stories:
Well, that old saying, “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump off it, too?” were “if three of your classmates leapt out the window into a yarn spaceship, would you do it?” the answer would be quite different, as all the kids in the classroom bolted from their desks.
My favorites of the bunch were the title story, “Dublin Express,” “The Case of Mrs. Geary’s Leather Trousers,” which was the start of Colin Bateman’s novel Mystery Man, and the screenplay, “National Anthem.” They’re very typical Bateman humor, very dark, and filled with entertaining characters. Not characters you’d necessarily want to give a hug, but ones you wouldn’t mind sharing a beer with, though possibly from across the room.
The play, particularly, contains the sort of spectacularly hapless characters who attempt to wrestle some control and decorum into their lives, but, due to circumstances and conspiracies beyond their ken, they fail in an entertaining fashion. They’re the sort of characters Colin Bateman excels at writing and make for a great read.
If you have a chance to see it or get ahold of the script it’s well worth picking up.
So for the last… well, a long time. In February, 2011, after finishing the first draft of a novel entitled “Rudyard Kipling’s Chair” which is still sitting in a desk drawer somewhere, unwieldy and cumbersome and full of far too many characters and subplots, I was taking a break. Like practicing crop rotation for the creative mind, I picked up another project that had been festering.
This project was tentatively titled “Butterfly,” and it began at 5:45am that morning.
“I work at the Magic Funtime Butterfly Ranch. I make dreams come true. Probably.”
First Reader Copy, Away!
It was the story of a man who is separated from his family and his friends, the story of their struggle to get back together, and the various paths people take to fulfill their desires.
And it still is. About three drafts later, I’m working on that final polishing draft. My first fifty pages have been handed over to my First Reader, who fled the country shortly after receiving them.
So that’s where I’ve been. And I’m still not technically allowed out. I mean, the first fifty pages out of, what, two hundred and fifty? More? Less, hopefully, after some judicious editing? That’s a lot of judicious editing to go, a lot of clean up, usually squeezed in in the wee hours of the morning.
But that’s where I’ve been, where I’m at, and I’m very excited to see it coming along, at long last.
Usually I have a browser full of windows full of tabs open on my laptop, my working laptop. There are tabs with articles about time, about how our universe is a hologram, about the FBI’s organizational structure, about Marconi Beach (all of these are related). There are tabs for story or book submissions, prospective iPhone apps (we’re hanging a bunch of pictures right now, Hang-A-Pic is one I haven’t pulled the trigger on yet but may still). Neck and back exercises, teaching credentials sites. And, most optimistically, online fiction magazines with short stories queued up.
But I usually get to those last tabs, well, last, if ever, closing them or losing them in some browser crash and a tiny little flame inside me gets blown out. This is perhaps being a little dramatic.
I enjoyed “Entity,” it was fine. [Disclaimer: Not quite for kids.] But it prompted a browse around PANK, itself. Now, the last week or so I’ve been shopping around a series of short stories, trying to find a home for these quirky little vignettes. They’re about past lives, men living up people’s nostrils, people in graves with grudges, flying llamas. So I’ve been looking for the right outlets. While “Entity” wasn’t quite in the same vein, some of PANK’s books were, and then I found this little gem:
Stash pens everywhere around your house, your place of business, your commute, and daily rounds.
They come in handy for both writing stuff down quickly and also in case you are attacked and have nothing with which you can defend yourself.
When I hide the pens, and you may or may not choose to adopt the same disposition, I like to imagine myself a sort of Easter Bunny of pens, depositing them hither and thither with the practices aplomb of a master of disappearing.
“Will I ever be struck by the spark of inspiration whilst I hack away at a bagel, its stubborn crust unwilling to give up the (hopefully) soft innards? Better chuck a pen in the knife drawer, just in case.”
“My best ideas come in the shower, better tape a pen to the wall beside the towel rack. And better stock towels on which I can jot notes, which will sell for millions when I die.”
And that thought will bring you to one of those home goods stores, scouring the aisles for good writing towels, which, surprisingly, there really aren’t any. So you head off to buy a trough and a wood chipper. (This Internet search, by the way, will bring an interruption of FBI agents to your door for a brief but ultimately unfruitful chat.)
At home, clear a room to allow yourself plenty of space to chip your wood almost directly into the trough, which should be three quarters full with a water and sugar solution. Choose a nice pine or that damned tree in your front yard that has rendered the paint on your car spotty and patchy thanks to its prolific sweating of sap.
I would also recommend ear muffs to muffle the roar of the wood chipper, unless you’ve got the Ninja series that run so whisper quiet.
Chip the wood, and slosh it around for a day or two, keeping the wood chips moving in the solution to soften up the pieces until they begin to feel an affinity for one another like gentle drunks after midnight at a party they hadn’t intended on staying at for too long, but there they are, feeling good, both with lips, drawn to the salty residue of margaritas on the other’s.
On the second day, towards the end, press down on the primordial soup as if you were trying to drown it. Press it down uniformly until the paste begins to stick to the bottom. At this point, you will need to run out to get a collection of heat lamps. Perhaps there’s a fast food restaurant going out of business near you.
Place the heat lamps, still smelling of fries, grease, and disappointment over your trough of wood chip mud. Turn them on medium high, NOT high, otherwise you’ll be putting out a wood pulp fire, which, from experience, is one of the worst kind to try and put out.
After four days, your paste will be a hideous, somewhat serviceable giant trough-shaped piece of paper. Using a straight razor, cut this monstrosity into towel-sized chunks and hang them in your bathroom from the towel rack.
One thing to note: after a few showers you may notice your new towels dissolving in a disgusting glop onto your bathroom floor from the humidity in the bathroom.
Hide a pen in your new wood chipper. If you forget about it before you begin making your next batch of writing towels you’ll have a lovely ink splotch spewed all over your wall, which you can then dip your fingers into to take notes.
