Fictionaut Blog

I like to invent odd situations, like a scholar who forges the diary of a Confederate soldier who never existed; a group of children bringing home an old man that wandered away from his nursing home; a young woman who donates her used piano to a priest who befriends her.

Recently:
   Checking in with Like Birds Lit

I think Anne Lamott may have had something to do with it

Recently:
   Fictionaut Five: Melissa Chadburn
   Monday Chat with Darryl Price

I like to go people watching. My favorite place to people watch is Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. Go to a train station or any place of arrivals and departures and you’ll be shocked at the people– their fashion choices their display of emotions their contrived state of being. People are wild. But some people make it so that you have to write about them.

Recently:
   Monday Chat with Darryl Price
   Checking in with Zero Faves

Anything that happens to me in this life happens in a story for someone else.

Recently:
   Checking in with Zero Faves

We should embrace the zero. Be the zero. Exalt the zero.

Recently:
   Checking in with Naked Rowdies

I am attired in north country formal for this interview: black breechcloth as opposed to the everyday penile sheath and ray bans.

Recently:
   Fictionaut Five: Tara Masih
   Checking in with Flash Party

The creative muses don’t leave forever, just for a time, and the less you worry about it, the quicker they come back.

Recently:
   Checking in with Flash Party
   Fictionaut Five: Antonya Nelson
   Front Page: July

I just recently earmarked a quote from Montgomery Clift: “If you look really close at things, you’ll forget you’re going to die.”

Recently:
   Checking in with Flash Party
   Fictionaut Five: Antonya Nelson
   Front Page: July

I loved the idea of everyone getting to see the slush pile. I’d never seen that happen before and I think it can be so instructive to writers. Also, I liked that if people read the Come To The Party section, they could latch on to a favorite writer and follow their pieces their favs each month, which is what I did, too. And as far as the Come To The Party section goes, I’ve published every single piece I’ve ever been sent. No rejection. And that was exciting.

Recently:
   Fictionaut Five: Antonya Nelson
   Front Page: July

The benefit of writing (or preferring to write) short stories is that oftentimes a character’s only showing the pointy top of his iceberg-like self, but knowing the giant mass beneath him is quite helpful and interesting to me, his creator. And sometimes he might say or do something that only alludes to that hidden business, and that seems like a very realistic trait of people in the real (as opposed to fictional) world. Then he seems as real as that guy at the grocery who yesterday lost his shit in the dairy aisle because he “cannot handle the cheese made of sheep milk, man!” apropos of absolutely nothing.

Recently:
   Front Page: July
   Checking in with 2011 and 2012 Publications
   Monday Chat with Bill Yarrow