My Life As An Animal by Laurie Stone

Here's the first interview in our new series this month, which I'm calling: October 2016 is Short Story Month. Laurie Stone has a lot to say about her new short story collection, My Life as an Animal (Triquarterly Books), which is due out this week (October 15th). Plus as a bonus, you can read a story excerpt from the collection here.

WR: When did you first start writing the stories in My Life as an Animal?

Laurie: They developed from a writing practice I began ten years ago when I met Richard Toon at an artist colony. We got to know each other by trading stories, and we still write at a café every day when we are together. We pick a subject, work in our notebooks for 30 minutes, then read aloud to each other. We agreed when we started that each piece would be a scene or a meditative essay. No diary or journal entries, no reviewing the day, no summary or analysis. We practice narrative techniques—dialogue, a sense of place, sensual detail, and most importantly shaping a narrative voice that thinks in two time frames. Something happens, the narrator reports a response at the time it happened, and the narrator also weighs in on the incident now—at the time of the telling—whether the look back is five minutes later or 20 years later. Animal developed from this practice.

WR: How are stories different from (the same) as your other writing?

Laurie: Pretty much everything I write these days is a story. The pieces in this book and elsewhere are dramatic narratives. I am not especially interested in things that happened because they happened. I am interested in whatever I find sexy, scary, surprising, strangely ordinary, or ordinarily strange. My work incorporates elements of fiction (scenes, dialogue, the build-up of dramatic revelations, etc.), memoir (some of the stuff happened in some form or other), criticism (my narrators enjoy thinking about art and politics), and nonfiction (some of the reporting is journalistically verifiable).

WR: When did you feel it was a collection?

Laurie: The stories are linked, and they have the same narrator, so it’s not a collection in the standard sense. If you think of a novel as bowl, and you throw it against a wall, the shards are these stories.

WR: How many revisions did you write?

Laurie: Hundreds. Stories emerge slowly for me, and I work at the level at the sentence, no prewriting or planning. Something has to happen while I am thinking about language.

WR: Who reads your drafts?

Laurie: This is a good question. I think you have to protect your work from people who tell you to make it better by writing like them. I want to know if something is alive or dead. Richard makes great suggestions, also my sister and another friend who are not writers but have learned to read experimental, hybrid, and fragmented pieces.

WR: What is your worst rejection story? 

Laurie: I'm curious why you ask this question, and I am going to answer in a way you may not like. Every life is filled with disappointment and rejection.  This is not a special category for writers, and to make it a special category disrespects other kinds of disappointment. You have to love what you do.  The value of writing has to come from that. I need recognition from the world. I want to be part of the public conversation, and that means a lot of the time someone says to me, "No thanks," or "Get lost." At this stage of my life, I think about whether they are right and I need to make the story better.

WR: Actually, I quite like your answer. LROD was started in 2007, and a lot has changed in the literary world since then, and a lot has stayed the same, too. Writers seem to accept disappointment and rejection more easily as part of the gig—thanks in part to the ongoing discussions here and elsewhere. It's a learning process, isn't it? But, changing the subject, what advice would you give a writer wanting to publish a story collection?

Laurie: Believe in the short form if that is how your mind works. If an agent or editor tells you to shape something for commercial ends, leave that person. I used to make a living as a writer. I don’t anymore. I don’t know how you are going to support yourself while you write stories, but find a way. I have a follow-up to this book called The Love of Strangers. It is even more fragmented and hybrid than Animal. I’ll let you know if anyone bites. 

A #Literary Tribute: 13 Amazing #ShortStory #Collections Being Published in October

Dan Wickett co-founder of Dzanc Books posted on his FB page that there are 13 stories being published this month, including Pretend I'm Your Friend.  Many of them, as you see, are small press books, where interesting experiments are taking place. I am, therefore, declaring it Short Story Collection Month here at LROD. I will get some of these books featured here with author interviews in the Victory Over Rejection label, as many as I can. Perhaps you will take part in the month and buy a few to read and give as gifts, as 'tis almost the season.

Here is a list of books, authors, and publishing companies:

• The Great American Songbook by Sam Allingham - A Strange Object
• Pretend I'm Your Friend by MB Caschetta - Engine Books
• It Turns Out Like This by Stephen Coyne - New Rivers Press
• The Babysitter at Rest by Jen George - Dorothy, a publishing project
• Of This New World by Allegra Hyde - University of Iowa Press
• Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar - Sarabande Books
• Story of Love in Solitude by Roger Lewinter - New Directions
• Jimtown Road by Dennis McFadden - Press 53
• November Storm by Robert Oldshue - University of Iowa Press
• The Jungle Around Us by Anne Raeff - University of Georgia Press
• Public Library by Ali Smith - Anchor Books
• My Life As An Animal by Laurie Stone - TriQuarterly Books
• Dog Years by Melissa Yancy - University of Pittsburgh Press

New #Book Happy Dance--#PretendImYourFriend

via GIPHY
 
When you get to see the final page proofs of your new book--only 51 days until #bookrelease!

Second #Book--Or, Why I Am Having Trouble Getting My #Promotional Ass In Gear

Listen, I'm the one who whined for years and years about not being able to get my books published, and now here I am on the verge of publishing book number two, a linked collection of stories I wrote quite some time ago, I must admit to a little ennui. Mice: Have no sympathy, empathy or compassion for me. You can even stop reading right here if you are rolling my eyes at my stupid feelings. I am, however, going to discuss this issues as a human phenomenon, which is really no excuse, more like a sociological/psychological anecdote of the crazy that is my head.
     Here's what I propose: When you put so much of your professional worth into a single novel and a follow-up book of short stories, and then try for a decade or so to get someone (anyone!) interested in publishing it, you probably cannot achieve the kind of results that will live up to the weight of your career hopes and dreams. (I use professional and career to also stand for identity and self worth, unfortunately.) This is not to say that I am disappointed in the results of the novel; I was in People Magazine as a pick of the week with Stephen King and Annie Lamott, for shit's sake. It's just that somehow I thought it would all amount to so much more, or a different me, or something. And so approaching the launch of book number two (pub date: this November), I am finding it hard to make such a huge investment. Is that wrong? Of course it is, but I don't think anything will really do what I want it to do. I need a spiritual awakening or a spiritual practice or something that does for me what a published book will not.  Anyway, just thought I'd share.  I will get my ass and gear and this too will pass. Just seems kind of ironic to feel this way after all the LROD complaining, right? Well, maybe it's just today. At least it is raining in the Northeast; we need it for the trees and gardens.
     Life never ceases to amaze, does it?

What Does This #Librarian Actually Think? #Literary #Book #Review #Assistance Needed, Please!

I got my first review for Pretend I'm Your Friend from Kirkus Reviews, always so prompt and proper. I love me some librarian brains, and this is a very intelligent, thoughtful, evocative review, so I am grateful. The only thing is that there's not really a single extractable blurb in there, and, you know, it makes you wonder if those discerning librarian reviewers go out of the way to avoid giving a compliment, which of course, the publisher is looking to use for the back of the book. Though, really, people, since when is it about compliments; why must I fall prey to the capitalist mind-set of wanting only to sell books. I mean, we strive to have our work taken seriously, collected in the great halls and libraries of this great nation, not to have our egos stroked, right? Right.

Therefore, I submit to the mice nest, The Review for your consideration. Would this review make you want to read the book, buy the book, or see it on your library's shelf? Also, compare it, please, to this review, which did have one good word about the craft, namely "polished."

Okay, but anyway, who am I to judge?  You, please, be the judge, for me, if you will, micycles, so that I will know what to think:

Kirkus Review: Pretend I'm Your Friend
Short stories that frequently touch on endings—of love, relationship bonds, even life itself—link back to one another in surprising ways in this collection.

In “People Say Thank You,” Violet’s gift of extrasensory perception carries surprising consequences. During an argument with her husband she blurts out, “Oh, go to Georgia,” without knowing she’s essentially sanctioned his affair. “Hands of God” follows two friends on a vacation; Helena hopes to distance herself from her boyfriend’s affair with another couple, while A.J.’s attempt to get lost in a one-night stand only reminds her of an inescapable past. Caschetta (Miracle Girls, 2014) sets scenes in one story that evolve in later ones. A family makes complicated arrangements to bring a dying man to a wedding only to become stranded in a snowstorm in “Alice-James’s Cuban Garlic”; what’s known about their history turns out to be only a small piece of the story, revealed during the ceremony in “Marry Me Quickly.” Another pairing begins with a woman’s cancer diagnosis and the shameful wishes it inspires; later, the same character is in hospice, and it’s her family’s reactions as she dies that shape the story. Dialogue between characters is seamless in its realism, heightening the tension in uncomfortable exchanges. “A Line of E.L. Doctorow” traces Lorena’s emotional journey from betrayal to jealousy as her husband makes a move on the nanny she’s grown possessive toward; the couple use the children as chess pieces or forget them altogether, and the terse exchanges between the points in this triangle are chilling.

The confrontations and losses can be gutting, but the ways they tie to one another create a strengthened bond among the survivors; there’s hope amid the ruins created here.

                                                                                                           --Kirkus Reviews

A #Retrospective on #Blogging, Or Why All These #Literary #Rejections Are Important

Something occurred to me this morning: totes random, for sure, but still worth sharing. For years on this blog, smart alecks from all corner of the InterWebs told me that I should stop blogging (read: complaining, moaning, bitching, and whining) and get back to writing my opus. The sentiment behind the dig was: "Why do you spend ALL this time blogging when you COULD BE writing."  I consistently rebuffed the implied insult by saying, "I spend plenty of time writing, thank you." And in truth, I am always writing to deadline for my paid consulting gig as a medical writer, and in my spare time I am always writing as fast as I can on my own creative projects. How else would I have a published a book of short stories (okay, granted: when I was a mere child of 28) and then a published novel (okay, so I'm slow: nearly twenty years later when I was 47) not to mention the collection of linked stories coming out in the fall?  I barely even dare to mention the unpublished book of essays no one wants, the nonfiction travel book at a silent retreat and spiritual journey that I can't get any traction on, and the book about being disinherited that is kicking my ass: I'm on version 5 and I STILL don't like it (That's right: version five; tone is everything in this book, and I'm getting closer, I think.) So, yeah, I write plenty. I happen to be fast at it, even though the publishing has come slowly.  And also, here's something I learned recently, all those years of so-called "wasted blogging hours" (that someone was always pointing out to shame me) WERE contributing absolutely to the ultimate success of my so-called literary career. I mean, people LOVE a literary genius (if you happen to be one, which I am not) but they don't come looking for you, and they surely don't let you sit around and be brilliant without dusting off the old dog-and-pony show and taking it on the road virtually and IRL.  So, in essence, though maybe the whole enterprise is pretty insignificant in the world of the written word, I don't regret a single minute I spent on this blog. Especially because--this is important--it is hard to find community and comfort and consolation as a writer, or just a regular person, in this culture. And I found that here with all the patchy, scratchy, and sometimes illustrious mice who came around to complain or boast or start a fire.  I really needed you guys on my darkest days, and on most of my light days, too. So, thanks, you all, for being part of LROD. Even the trolls who used to drive me crazy and don't come around any more.  I miss the days when blogs were relevant, and maybe they still are. Surely, I still come around to write a word or two here, even if you can find literary rejections and iterations of this dumb idea all over the floor of the Internet. I guess, you could say my work here is done in the initial sense of pulling publishing out of the closet and into the light a bit.  Or whatever the hell this is.  That's all for now.  Keep writing and plugging away and sending your work out and believing in yourself (even when you don't...and especially then) because before long you will look back and see that it amounted to something very important: your life. 

A Little #Book #Trailer, #Anyone?

Wait...why does it look so sucky when I use the blogger video feature?  You can see what it really looks like here.

Anyway...trailer.

Someone told me no one does them anymore and no one watches them. Guess I'm always 10 minutes behind the literary fashion.  Typical.

Hundreds of #Literary #Rejections Later, Yet All Is Not Lost #Pretend I'm Your Friend

How far we've come from the days when the stories in my ill-fated (until now) collection were roundly rejected by everyone in publishing town!  Remember?  Do your mammalian minds reach back as far as 2007? I sent those stories out individually, and as a collection, and then as two collections, and still nobody wanted them.

"Publish a novel," they said. "Then someone might care about your collection."

"But these stories are special," I said. "They're linked!"

"Who cares about rejection?"

It didn't matter, though, because those were the days of rejections, so many of them, adding up to years. Now I can look back at them fondly because they are in the past. At the time, though, as you know, I wailed and lgnashed my teeth and pulled my hair.

Finally I published the novel in 2014. And, guess what, mice: they were right! As you can see above I now have advanced reading copies of the linked story collection, which my publisher calls "entwined."

The advanced reading copies arrived on Saturday to my front porch. I took the above picture as proof that there can be a pay-off to hanging in there and being persistent.  Like a cockroach, a literary cockroach.

There are worse things. Never say die, right?

A Little Advanced Praise? #PretendI'mYourFriend @elizmccracken

It may be true that I've lost my LROD edge due to the very act of having to promote another book, as I've been so accused just this morning, but here I am again.  Call me soft, but this blurb from my all-time favorite story writer, made me cry big cartoony tear drops:

"There are, I suppose, stories full of brilliance, hilarity, and longing—the stories in MB Caschetta's terrific Pretend You're My Friend are full of all these things—but I can't remember when I've read a collection so full of life. Actual life: the bad jokes, the astounding velocity, the sweetness and darkness. You will love the characters here the way you love your own family: complicatedly, with tenderness, understanding, and consternation. The only difference may be how willing—and eager—you are to introduce them to friends. Good heavens, this book is good." --Elizabeth McCracken

Elizabeth McCracken!!! Dang, Mice. That doesn't happen every lifetime now, does it?

Originality & Impact: When Other #Blogs Rip You Off Without Knowing It #thievingblogs

You know you are a Sarah-Palin-style maverick when everyone blogs your content without giving you any credit. This is particularly amusing because the same originality is what makes it impossible (nearly) to get published these days. You anonymice all remember back in the day (2007) when we started this blog, yes? No one thought it was a good idea to post, let alone discuss, rejection letters. They called us names; they sent threatening legal notices; they wanted to shut us down. It was unseemly for an artist to air her dirty laundry.  Now, not so much any more.  It is fun, expected, and entertaining--almost everywhere you look.  I suppose that is progress....or something.

Check out all of these:

Huffington Post
Mental Floss
Click Hole
Flavor Wire
The Atlantic
Thought Catalog
Business Insider
Buzz Feed
Esquire
The New Yorker
MSN
Reddit
Go Think Big
Bustle 
Open Culture

Plus, so many, many more....

I don't even really blame these dudes for not giving credit where credit is originally due. Who can go back that far when everything is an iteration of an iteration of an iteration of an iteration? There's a huge hunger for content on the World Wide Web, so much so that it's just like manufacturing cheeseburgers. People like to know exactly what they're getting, something they know pretty well already.  

From me, A New Book Out This Fall 2016 #PretendI'mYourFriend, #Fiction, #Shortstories, #EngineBooks

Remember all my moaning and groaning about not being able to get my second short-story collection published? Remember how everyone in the publishing world said, "Write a novel first. No one cares about a second collection unless you've written a novel"?  Well, guess what, Mice? Those bastards were right! Coming this fall to a book store near you is my second collection of short stories entitled PRETEND I'M YOUR FRIEND.  Yes, sirree.  I wrote and published those suckers individually when I was a mere third-gendered lad/lass of 30, for the entire decade of the illustrious 1990s. (Some even won some fiction prizes, and all ended up in sweet literary journals...good ones).  Alas, I am now a lot older than I was in my 30s, so when I go back to edit the stories (which are linked by character cycles), I am rather surprised at what my mind was like back then. Mostly it was filled with sex. The stories are very obsessed with the topic, but I guess that makes sense on certain biological and social levels. Well, so, hold onto your hats for a new book from me this coming fall.  By the way, it is also fantastic to have this book come out at long last. The stories are pretty good.  Also, mice, it is the same publisher who put out my novel, Engine Books.  So I am a lucky, lucky literary ducky. What do you think of the awesome, retro cover design? I'm kind of excited, myself

Pay-To-Enter #Literary #Book #Prizes: What's Your Beef, Bro?

It's always cool to win a prize, especially when its a book prize. The USA Best Book Awards are mainly for independent books, though I noticed some of the winners this year were from mainstream publishing houses, which is to say, maybe everyone with any kind of cash leftover in the promotional budget enters into what some people like to call "vanity award" contests. It's not an inexpensive proposal: $199.00 to enter a book in a specific category. Still, someone, or some panel, reads the books and picks a winner, so it's not entirely vanity.  ( I mean, if I paid and automatically became a winner, or if I picked my book as a winner, that would be vanity.) So, criticize all you want. I'm never going to win a National Book Award. So I am delighted that Miracle Girls won a USA Best Book Award. And I'm especially happy that it won in the Literary Fiction category. That just makes me happy. What can I say?

The Problem With #Family: A #Literary Dilemma

So, I've written three drafts of my next book based on this essay, but I hated the way it sounded (too whiny), so I started over entirely. Blank page. And now I am on page 234 of the new and improved version, which is from a much deeper point of view, much more internal. I am getting ready to head into the second half of the book, which deals with disinheritance. I have to say I'm a little overwhelmed at the idea of delving a new into such a hairy topic, but here I go anyway. What makes things all a bit unfun is the fact that my family wants me to stop writing about the topic. I think they wish I would shut the F*** up, or fall off the planet, but I have to write this book. I have to figure out what exactly happened to me and why. I've even found a decent literary method for never mentioning any of them by name: I write about my brothers as The Three. How about that for clever? But, whatever. They don't get it, and never will.
     If they had the capacity to understand, I probably never would have been disinherited (by surprise) in the first place. Someone would have warned me. Anyway, they are all seemingly insulted by the essay, which I think is fairly gentle, to tell you the truth, and not even technically about them. There's barely a mention of them, but everybody has a right to his or her own opinion. Mostly, I've heard from them on the fact that they think we didn't have THAT many guns in the house when we were young. (!) (!!) (Huh?!) (What are you loons talking about?!) We had plenty of guns, believe me, more than I ever hope to see again in one place.
     And you know what else is freaking weird? The members of my entire family have all managed to act like the novel I wrote and finally published did not ever exist. No one has said a word about it to me or to anyone else. They must not ever run into anyone from the old home time: like, the English teachers who have written me notes, or my classmates, or my childhood sweetheart's encouraging family who posted a picture of them holding my book in the local Barnes & Nobles. My family must not go to the dentist either, because it was right there in People Magazine next to Stephen King and Annie Lamott. (My novel did exist. It did exist. I know it existed.) Ah, forgive my crazy: I grew up in a family without mirrors. No one ever reflected anything back at me that seemed even remotely recognizable. Maybe that's why they don't recognize my written version of them. Maybe I am actually in the same bind as The Three; we are blind to one another. I wish we could join together to work our way out, but that is just another fantasy I sometimes have on a Monday afternoon when I am feeling a little blue.
     Sometimes all this is a bit of a head trip, as you can see, but I know I am not the only writer who has ever dealt with the literary dilemma of having a family. Anyone want to share some wise advice, or links on the issue, or general thoughts, encouragements, criticism? I guess I'm feeling a little lonely in all this. Hoping there are still some mice out there to respond.

#Publishing A #Novel: What To Do When The Future Is Behind You

As you may know, dear mice, the effort to get my novel published has been a long and grueling, sweaty workout. I have spent many, many years looking ahead to the time when the book at last would have its day. Today, approaching the year anniversary of the novel's launch, it occurs to me that now all the forward-looking is behind me now.
     This is unexpected, friends.
     It's not that I am light on understanding the temporal and linear nature of the physics of time, or anything; it is, instead, that I am just so used to looking forward for glory, not backward. 
     It's all a bit disturbing to realize the thing I have toiled over has already come to fruition, had a lovely day in the glare of media attention, been read by several people in the world, and is now a thing, separate from me, and in my past.
     Now what?
     I need to look forward to something new. I am writing the memoir, but it's different--maybe just knowing that another book will not be the magic answer to all my human woes makes it so. I invested so much shiny hope into the novel; I believed so whole-heartedly that it would change my life once and for all!
     But no one ever tells you about the year after you publish your first novel. No one ever tells you that seeing the light of your first novel getting published will bring you to a sad realization. And the realization is that there is no actual "it" just around the corner that's going to change who you are and how fantastic your life is. Publishing a novel won't do it, nor will all the fame and fortune in the literary world. (And I'm guessing here based on a tiny, tiny taste.) Nothing does that. So you might as well get right with yourself as you are.
     This is one of the many secret they don't tell you.
     But I will tell you, oh rodents, because here I am, living proof that I am still I, still here, still the same with all the same issues and problems.
     I find this realization both comforting and depressing. I also know that you will not listen to me until you have gone through the experience yourself.  But when you get there, I hope, at least, you'll be a little more prepared for this cold splash of water in the face than I was.
     Peace out, for now.

#REJECTEDBOOKS.COM: A Call For Your #Rejected #Books (Sort Of)

Got an email from some enterprising young Swedish fellows, announcing a need for YOUR rejected book titles:

Established as well as unestablished authors from across the world are invited to contribute to the art project Bibliotheca Non Grata — an imaginary library of rejected and thus non-existent literature — with titles of their own literary works that have been rejected by a publishing house or an institution and thus have not been published.

We call for titles of rejected literary works in any language and of any writing genre, fictional as well as nonfictional. All submitted titles of rejected works will be included in the public online catalogue of Bibliotheca Non Grata. A selection of submitted titles of rejected manuscripts will be printed on the spines of 365 hardbound empty book covers—one for each day of the year—which form the physical representation of the rejected and thus non-existing literature which constitutes Bibliotheca Non Grata.

Titles can be submitted on the project's website, where you can also find more information about the art project.  Find out more on facebook. 

Bibliotheca Non Grata is a public art project by artist Måns Wrange and architect Igor Isaksson, commissioned by the city of Umeå in Sweden, in memory of journalist, activist and author, Stieg Larsson’s work for democracy and free speech as well as against discrimination and racism. The artwork Bibliotheca Non Grata will be placed in Umeå city library in the newly constructed and the Kasper Salin architecture prize awarded cultural centre Väven.