Fictionaut Blog

The stories in Tales of Woe didn’t get easier to write; they got harder to write. The more I time I invested in these horrendously upsetting tragedies, the more depressing the material became. I’d expected myself to harden to the stories: not the case. [Read more]

Recently:
   Fictionaut Five: Thaisa Frank
   Fictionaut Faves, 5/25: Two for David Ackley

I can go for days without writing and then work nearly around the clock. I tend to work by generating a lot of fragments, half-baked stories, and phrases. So I always have something I can do. But there are times when I spin my wheels and feel totally worthless. [Read more]

Recently:
   Fictionaut Faves, 5/25: Two for David Ackley
   Checking in with 52|250

In this great story, Ackley lulls you into a snickering half-doze with his stupid soldier jokes and then he - literally - drops the bomb on you. [

href="http://blog.fictionaut.com/">Read more]

Recently:
   Checking in with 52|250

It started from an idea I dreamed up one night, to make myself write at least one piece of flash fiction every week for a year. [Read more]

Recently:
   Fictionaut Faves, 5/20
   Fictionaut Five: Jack Swenson
   Luna Digest, 5/18

I have read many stories about mother-love that have moved me, but none as much as Pia Ehrhardt’s “Baby Hater“. [Read more]

Recently:
   Fictionaut Five: Jack Swenson
   Luna Digest, 5/18
   Checking in with Dark Sky

I ran smack dab into the work of some fine writers when I was an undergrad. [

href="http://blog.fictionaut.com/">Read more]

Recently:
   Luna Digest, 5/18
   Checking in with Dark Sky
   Fictionaut Five: Dan Wickett
   Line Breaks: “Moving Day” by Robert Olen

Butler

A few weeks ago I attended a panel of literary magazine publishers on new business models for literary magazines (things such as this recently discussed over at Bookfox). Managing editor of New England Review, Carolyn Kuebler, was one of the panelists. As most know, NER is having to change its business model in a very [...]

We got going in 2007 as an online weekly arts magazine. We published fiction and poetry and photography and visual art and some film reviews. It was fun. Now we focus solely on literature, which is also fun, and closer to the heart. [Read more]

Recently:
   Fictionaut Five: Dan Wickett
   Line Breaks: “Moving Day” by Robert Olen Butler

I wondered why there wasn’t a National Short Story Month and decided screw that, there should be, and so, declared it to be so. [

href="http://blog.fictionaut.com/">Read more]

Recently:
   Line Breaks: “Moving Day” by Robert Olen Butler
   Checking in with Negative Suck

“Moving Day” appeared in the October, 1974, issue of Redbook. I wrote it in the midst of my early, autodidactic days of striving to be an artist, when I was mostly writing pretty badly by the standards I was trying to set for myself. But this is a good story. [

href="http://blog.fictionaut.com/">Read more]

Recently:
   Checking in with Negative Suck
   Fictionaut Faves, 5/6
   Fictionaut Five: Sam Rasnake