Fictionaut Blog

It’s always good to keep your agent happy. [Read more]

Recently:
   Luna Digest, 3/9
   Fictionaut Faves, 3/8
   Line Breaks: “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried” by Amy Hempel

My first mentor would probably be my mother and all that reading and love of the classics. [Read more]

Recently:
   Fictionaut Faves, 3/1
   Tweetable, 2/27

When I was younger, I started to work with metals and became a welding apprentice and what I found was my writing got tighter because working with my hands provided my mind the ability to wander. Not a great idea when you’re operating a 6,000 degree blowtorch, but good for the writing. [Read more]

Recently:
   Line Breaks: “Credentials” by John Holman
   Luna Digest, 2/23
   Fictionaut Faves, 2/21

Kirk Farber is the author of the debut novel Postcards from a Dead Girl (Harper Perennial 2010). Postcards is a March 2010 “Indie Next” selection, and was previously a semi-finalist in the first Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. [

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

Recently:
   Luna Digest, 2/16
   Fictionaut Faves,

2/15
   Checking in

with Hypertext Fiction

I like to think we have a lot of writing teeth. Some are slow and painful or impacted, and you pay a lot of attention to those. But then you wake up the next morning and you’ve cut a completely different tooth that you didn’t know you had. And the trick is to let all the teeth fall out on their own. If you try and pull them, the gums retain the memory of that loss. [Read more]

Recently:
   Luna Digest, 2/9
   Fictionaut Faves, 2/8
   Checking In with Deckfight

Gina Frangello is the author of the novel My Sister’s Continent (Chiasmus 2006) and the collection Slut Lullabies (forthcoming from Emergency Press in 2010.) The longtime Editor of Other Voices magazine, she co-founded its book imprint, Other Voices Books, now an imprint of Dzanc Books, in 2005 and is currently the Executive Editor of the press’ Chicago office. [Read more]

Recently:
   Luna Digest, 2/2
   Line Breaks: “The Line” by James Robison
   Passing of an Icon

What story or book do you feel closest to?

I would sleep with Calvino anytime.

Recently:
   Luna Digest, 1/26
   Bid on Nicholas Rombes’ Music Box
   Fictionaut Faves, 1/25
   Checking in with Short Story Challenge
   Line Breaks: “We” by Mary Grimm

Susan Tepper is the author of Deer & Other Stories and the poetry chapbook Blue Edge. Her work has appeared in Salt Hill, American Letters & Commentary, Green Mountains Review, Crannog, Poetry Salzburg, New Millennium Writings, Snake Nation Press and many other journals. [Read more]

Recently:
   Luna Digest, 1/19
   Fictonaut Faves, 1/18
   Checking in with Opium

“In advertising, we have a name for writers who get stuck: unemployed. I have a pretty workmanlike view of the creative process. You take what you’ve got, even if isn’t the “big idea” you’re searching for, and develop it and until your crappy little ideas turn into somewhat better ideas, and so on. Eventually you get there, but it’s all about putting in the work.” [read more]

Recently:
   Luna Digest, 1/12
   Fictionaut Faves, 1/11
   Checking in with First Lines We Love
   Line Breaks: “Shopgirls” by Frederick Barthelme

What makes you want to read a story and how soon does a good story capture you?

Every good sentence in a story buys you about three or four sentences of reading from me. If you follow the math, we’re talking exponential: one sentence buys four, next sentence buys the four after that, and whoa.[read more]

Recently:
   Luna Digest, 1/5
   Fictionaut Faves, 1/4
   Checking in with Underwater New York