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Posts Tagged ‘Arts’

Nothing like an unexpected BACKHAND!

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Check out “The Judgment of Venus and David,” by yours truly. This little piece reached out and whacked me from my email inbox this morning. It appeared, once again, in the THE BACKHAND WEEKLY DIGEST. Surprise! Surprise!

A favorite I discovered from BACKHAND eons ago: “Things Trapped and Frozen,” by Emily Roth. Give the wrenching romp a read. It’s worth the hurt.

If you like either flash piece, or others on the site, subscribe to THE BACKHAND WEEKLY DIGEST. They’ll whack you weekly too, right upside your noggin, and leave you with a fistful of  little gems.

~ N

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A microfiction blast from the past: “August at the Fair” was named a Top 3 in Micro Fiction by Paul McVeigh for his Hawthorne Citation…back in 2012.

I just realized this is the second time I have been listed alongside one of my favorite writers, Bruce Holland Rogers. The first time? We were finalists for the The Micro Award with “Aglaglagl” and “Revisions.”

Thanks for the mention, Mr. P. McVeigh! You may never happen upon my name again, but once upon a time you did and you just might again.

~ N

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sideways chocolate fountainNot that I want more competition, but this is too sweet to hog all to myself!

Jonathan Cape Ltd. (associated with Random House) is open to prose fiction submissions by new writers this month. Yes, OPEN to NEW writers. You don’t believe me. Here’s proof: Cape Open Submissions. See. Told you.

Send your first 50 pages of prose fiction from a novel, novella, short story collection, or graphic novel. But, here’s the sweetest little nugget: The pages can be a finished work or a work in progress. Yes, a work IN PROGRESS.

Really now, people. What do you have to lose? It’s always a ‘no’ unless you try.

Sweet submissions!

~ N

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ty for smoking cigars only
Read Kathy Fish’s “Why I Write Flash.” You may understand me, and many other writers, better.

Here’s another tidbit about me: I like cigars, on occasion. As “a shy[ish] person in a big family” where “everyone’s a talker but” me, a cigar occupies me while I sit on the back deck, “on the periphery, [half-]listening” to my brother-in-law “tell the story of the long family road trip as if it happened last week,” all the relatives visited and towns passed. My mind will drift from the conversation though, like the curling smoke from my lips. I won’t be far. Don’t worry. I’ll have drifted just a little way off to contemplate what Kathy Fish calls “moments,” the “stillness and what shatters the stillness. The unguarded way people look at each other sometimes. The filled-to-bursting seconds before everything changes. The small, ugly, beautiful flashes of life.” So, now you know something else about me: On occasion, you won’t have my full attention. Sorry about that.  No insult intended.

Thank you, Kathy, for a well-written read.

~ N

P.S. I snapped the THANK YOU FOR SMOKING CIGARS ONLY pic at Hemingway’s Cigar & Tequila Lounge in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. It was just across from the Cabo Wabo rear entrance, but–sadly–I hear the great little spot has closed.

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Discovering something late is better than never discovering it at all, I suppose, as long as it’s kudos stashed away on the internet and not a rotting pastel egg a niece or nephew never found—or didn’t find on purpose—when you packed 43 bodies into your home for the family Easter brunch.

My discovery, thankfully, is of the kudos variety: “August at the Fair” was named as a Top 3 Micro Fiction finalist by Paul McVeigh for his Hawthorne Citation…back in 2012. This is the second time I appear alongside a favorite author, Bruce Holland Rogers. The first time was for the The Micro Award with “Revisions.”

Thanks for the mention, Mr. P. McVeigh! You may never happen upon my name again, but once upon a time you did and you just might again. So, I will keep writing in a way that would make you proud of mentioning a little-known writer back in 2012, in the event you do happen upon me again. ~ N

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Out of over 825 entries, this ‘ultra-short’ (under 150 words) was selected as an honoree in the 9th Annual Ultra-Short Competition sponsored by The Binnacle, which has published literature and art for over fifty years. “Here Lie the Chicken Bones” is out now with the other fifty-two honorees and, of course, the four winners.

Congrats to the winners!

Eric Svehaug – Married Love, Year Thirty (Poetry)

Cynthia Tracy Larsen – The Loyalty of Legs (General Fiction)

Lisa Ricard Claro – A Twisty Thing (Humor)

Jordan Gilletti – Roots (UMM Student Winner)

 

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So, you say, you want to write short stories? Novels?

The first mystery, where novels [and short stories] are concerned, is how anyone manages, ever, to write a book that’s any good at all.

Sure, go ahead, simulate life, using only ink and paper. Take the words offered by the dictionary, the same words that are available to everybody who can read, and arrange them so strategically that they simultaneously illuminate and deepen the mystery of human existence.

Do so in a way that’s cogent and compelling, that grabs readers with the opening line and doesn’t let them go until the final one. Don’t make it too neat and tidy—that will come off as trivial. But don’t make it too messy and sprawling, either—that won’t feel like much of anything at all…

~ Michael Cunningham on The Pilgrim Hawk by Glenway Wescott, a Recommended Reading from Electric Literature

Still want to write after that?

If your answer is ‘YES!’: you’re crazy, but I understand. You must read-read-read and write-write-write though. So, start now:  subscribe to Electric Literature’s Recommended Readings, read Wescott’s The Pilgrim Hawk, or check out these suggested shorts (bottom of the page). You’ll be glad you did.

Oh, yeah, and then write. You have to because–remember?–you’re crazy. But, people like me understand.

~ N

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