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What you did to me on those long nights with short skirts . . .

8/20/2013

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"Jamie" by The Bismarck, from their new album "Wild Prairie Rose"

I guess it's been about three months. Lots of things have happened.

1) I quit my job as a janitor at Wal-Mart. It was really bumming me out because, in addition to the inherent shittiness of a title like "Wal-Mart Janitor," my boss was a dick, I was forced to do things that were blatantly not my job, and I didn't have time or patience to write or read anymore.

1b) To be fair, I spent the majority of my four years there sneaking off to a non-monitored office or the family restroom (which locks) and reading books. I still did some work occasionally, at least as much as they deserved for the shit pay and shit treatment, but that majority is barely a majority. Most of the fuck-around time took place in the first two-and-a-half years. After that it was Buttfuck City.

2) I went on a cross-country tour of the US with Justin Lawrence Daugherty. We did readings in ten different states over the course of two weeks, putting almost 4000 miles on his Toyota Corolla, also known as the Toyota Rock 'n' Rolla. A full recap of this will be up on the Sundog Lit blog soon.

3) I moved out of my parents' place.

3b) Again.

3c) It's not that I didn't like living at the farm, something I hadn't done in about eight or nine years, but the driving was killing me. And I hate my mom's cats and choice of television shows that she must blare on televisions in two separate rooms simultaneously. But yeah, I fell asleep at the wheel a couple times from the half hour drive back and forth on long, boring country roads and was spending so much money in gas each month that I could actually afford to rent an apartment in the city I was driving to and come out ahead on cash.

4) I went on a week-long tour of the Midwest filling in on guitar with the Oakland-based band Victory and Associates. I also did some sitting in with our tour-mates, Louisville-based riffers Trophy Wives. Playing a lot was rad, but even better than that, I met a bunch of cool, old school punk rock dudes who proved my theory that punk rock and having your shit together are not mutually exclusive.

4b) We played with a band in Minneapolis called Gay Witch Abortion.

4c) We also played the surprise 50th birthday party for Jeff Moody, one of the coolest dudes in music. He's the sort of guy who only wants to talk passionately and positively about the things he loves, and is worth listening to for those and several other reasons.

4d) Kentucky seems like an odd place.

5) I got a rollerdog grill. It's like the ones in the gas station but it has a bunch of gaudy plastic shit all over it to make it look old-timey.

6) My girlfriend moved in with me. We're currently arguing about who is more poorly dressed in an attempt to get out of answering the door, which has been being knocked on for a minute or two now.

7) Summerslam was great, I just wish Randy Orton wasn't the guy they're going with for this "Daniel Bryan is a B+" thing. He's fucking boring. I think the "R" in "RKO" stands for "resthold." And he looks like the wall of a tattoo shop threw up on his arms. He's six or seven years past his two or three year prime. The angle is good and it broke my heart in all the right ways, but Orton's a clowndick.

7b) If any of this results in the Evolution theme being used again, all is forgiven.

8) I got the number 4 score on the South Park pinball machine at the bar I work at. That means I'm fucking awesome.

9) Barring a background check and fingerprints and all the paperwork that needs to happen when you're going to work with kids, I might have an additional job as a cook at a Montessori school, because life is weird.

9b) I was going to just work at the bar and tighten up spending-wise and then just tour as much as I can, but this kind of seems like an opportunity I can't pass up. It's only thirty hours a week and I'll be done at 1:00 every day. That means I can still work at the bar and have time for band practice. Plus, with seasonal breaks and all the other times kids get off for essentially no reason, I'll be able to tour about as much as I would anyways. My only real sacrifice is having to hang out with kids all the time and make up lies out stuff that they will no doubt believe, because they are dumb.

10) Gwen Beatty got published. This is cool because she's a great writer and that aforementioned girlfriend and there's no better return on the good karma she's created by having to see me naked on a regular basis than by having her talents be recognized. You should read her story "I Thought About How the Sea" and then send her stories to read for her new gig at the journal Cease, Cows.

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Do you even be gross, bro?

In this time, I've done very little writing. Or reading. I've read manuscripts for PSB and done edits on other people's stuff, but I haven't done much of anything for my own work. This is called an "excuse" because I'm "lazy" and "currently mostly playing computer games."

The whole "write every day" thing is an idea I try to live by it. It seems to be the one piece of advice that almost everyone agrees upon. There a part in the Comedians of Comedy documentary where Patton Oswalt talks about being obsessed with doing stand-up, to the point where it was all he did for two or three years. Open mics, crafting jokes, listening to other people do it. He says that every serious artist probably goes through this at some point, just drowning themselves in their craft.

I did that already. I did that when I was 20 and 21 and 22 and 23. I stayed home on weekends and revise stuff. I spent my entire Spring Break when I was twenty writing for six or seven hours day. I wrote before work and after work and couldn't think of anything but narrative and character whenever I watched television or a movie.

This was to no immediate benefit to the outside world. I was working on a novel that I knew wouldn't get published, something uneven and very blatantly the first thing I'd ever written. The last page is infinitely better than the first page, because I learned everything I know about writing just by working on that one giant thing.

Then I fell into an easy sort of routine--Mark Doty said he only write 400 words a day, so that's what I did. I've even shortened it in the past year or so: 100 words a day and one perfect sentence. I usually end up doing more than that, but sometimes I don't, which is fine. The one rule of writing is "feel good." I figured out how to write--or at least how I write--and I do that and it's very satisfying, the ways I still manage to surprise myself, running with the same themes and motifs and building up a series of personal archetypes the way Bob Dylan or Jason Molina or Raymond Carver did.

That I do the same thing they did, on a smaller, less successful level, is still incredible to me.

But recently, I haven't done shit. I've been preoccupied with other endeavors, some creative and some not: bands and a micropress and Twin Peaks and making dinner and pinball and all that stuff. Even now that I've been working a mere twenty hours a week I've only been writing four or five days of it.

Back when I was neck deep in my writing, I couldn't go two days with getting panicky about not writing. I just went a few months without doing much of anything, and I feel all right.

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything other than I don't know if I'm becoming less self-obsessed or if I actually might not write forever. I don't like to think that I can be perfectly happy not doing something I spent so much time grinding my life around.

"There's too much fucking perspective now."

Still, I managed to write a few things during a brief explosion of productivity. One of the stories will be for a special issue of Jersey Devil Press. I get my old Our Band Could Be Your Lit project up and running again for ONE NIGHT ONLY, thanks to a suggestion of "write about a Lita Ford song if you can't think of anything" by Mike Sweeney. From that has come the story "There Is No Joy Between the Last Thing and the Next Thing." It's based on "Shot of Poison" from Lita's pretty-awesome album Dangerous Curves. It's about friendship and emptiness and the big, scary future. Look for it soon.

(Unfortunately, I missed Lita Ford when she came to the casino in town. I made a promise to my pubescent self that I would have sex with her, but bailed at the last minute because I didn't want to take off work and Lita kind of looks like old dinner rolls now.)

Another thing I wrote and managed to get published right away in a kind of silly "the internet is a wild place" sort of way is an essay called "How to make -$1377 the Hard Way" about starting a micropress, booking my own cross-country book tour, DIY attitudes in indie lit, jealousy, success, satisfaction, and other things I secretly and not-so-secretly obsess about when it comes to writing. The ever-badass Jennifer A. Howard picked it up immediately and pushed it through to publication right away for the Passages North WRITERS ON WRITING column. I'm very happy to be a part of it.

Punk rock means that not only do all the eggs go in the basket, but you decide what the eggs and the basket are. Anyone who understands this probably doesn't need the reminder and anyone who doesn't understand it probably isn't going to have a revelation concerning it, so I’ll stop being indignant before I get wet under the arms about it.

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Some other things I wrote awhile back that were published during my period of soul searching/watching Agent Dale Cooper eat pie include this story about brothers and pro wrestling and what the truth really is and what it's good for. It's called "A Comprehensive List of the Least Worst Way to do Everything" and it's up a Necessary Fiction.

I watch my dead brother’s wrestling matches and try to count the number of times he gets hurt for real. In one, a wispy tattooed man hits him with a monitor from the commentary desk. In the rematch, he hits him with the commentary desk.

I’ve got one of his boots on either side of the television. Maybe there’s a heart attack resting in my
chest, too.


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And this review of Ken Nash's The Brain Harvest, also up at Necessary Fiction.

What this really taught me was the same thing that The Brain Harvest by Ken Nash taught me: precision and compression and crazy hope, how if we zoom in far enough in anyone’s life, the absurdities reveal a depth of honesty and wonder. There’s something amazing in everyone’s life, something historic in everyone’s town.

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And, lastly, this review of Adam Marek's wonderful short story collection The Stone Thrower, up now at Heavy Feather Review.

Before even reading Adam Marek’s short story collection The Stone Thrower­—a book that openly states its themes of parental protection and vulnerability right on the back cover—I began to worry that I would be slogging through a dozen or so stories written by someone who has been made soft and sentimental by the idea of what they do to nurture their offspring or, perhaps even worse, stories written by someone who has been made hard, writing for the aforementioned softies.

Thankfully, The Stone Thrower is none of that.


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Most of any tour is a variation on this picture of an unclean Justin Lawrence Daugherty devouring a burrito with gravy in it at a truck stop somewhere in northern Idaho at 8:00 AM shortly before describing some guy's balls as smelling like nuclear fallout.

A very nice review of my chapbook, Murmuration, went up at Heavy Feather Review. Austin Hayden was too kind.

Ryan works life’s incongruities. The Midwest he puts on the page is at once vast and closed-off. Even (at times, especially) alongside his friends, or girlfriends, or family members, his speaker is alone out there. His POV character is calloused but endearing. Both sarcastic and earnest. The yin and yang of Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld meshed into one voice.

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And, actually, now that I think about it, a killer review of Justin Lawrence Daugherty's Whatever Don't Drown Will Always Rise went up at HFR a bit before mine, thanks to the wonderful Kate Kimball.


There is a bridge that dogs jump to their deaths from that symbolizes the broken heart of a man. A man swearing there is a bomb on the lawn, which later, the character who believes him tries to pry the metal from the earth. A teenager works on competitive eating to impress a father who is a Marlboro Man in Japan. Whatever Don’t Drown Will Always Rise introduces unexpected situations, but is able to create a strong affect in those situations. Daugherty’s characters are believable, endearing, and refreshing. His use of ironic humor, believable dialects, and uncanny conflicts work to symbolize the innate human quest for rediscovering nature.

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And while I'm on the subject of all thing Passenger Side Books, Matthew Burnside's Infinity's Jukebox has a birthday and artwork! September 9th, people. Here's one of the covers we'll be using in addition to seven other killer color schemes.
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Order all of this stuff right here at the cheaply-made PASSENGER SIDE BOOKS website.

After that Passages North essay went up, I got a lot of traffic to this site, and most of the information on it was from months ago. I'm going to try to not make it that long between updates. If you're new here now, take a look around. I'm doing things, occasionally. I hope you are, too.

With love,

RW
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August is over, so when are you coming back . . .

5/13/2013

3 Comments

 
"Younger Days" by Mount Moriah, off their new record Miracle Temple.

Another month gone that I'll never get back, because that's how time works until you're dead and it doesn't matter anymore. Here's what I've been doing.

1) I went and talked to a temp agency about getting me work in an office because I hate my job at Wal-Mart, mainly because I can't fuck around as much anymore.

1b) I realize this makes me sound incredibly lazy and part of a much larger problem concerning the new adults of America, but it's a matter of right more than anything. I signed up for a shitty job that pays under $10 an hour and has no responsibilities. Being a fuck up is built into it. It's a job for retired people who want to push a broom all day or kids in high school who are waiting for their lives to start. I'm using it as a way to have a job I can leave there when I walk out the door, which it hasn't been, thanks to a clause in my "Wal-Mart contract" that says I agreed to help out where needed, meaning that if this fucking dildo assistant manager I hate tells me to eat shit and bark at the moon, I have to eat shit and bark at the moon.

1c) That dude's a dick.

2) I saw Bret Michaels of Poison at the casino in town. It was one of the worst shows I've ever seen. He opened up with two Posion songs, so fine, I wasn't pissed. Then he went off stage to change his shirt and came on to play "Sweet Home Alabama." Then he dedicated "Something To Believe In" to the troops and the people of Boston. His twelve-string acoustic sounded like Steve Albini's Shellac tone, which was kind of awesome but entirely inappropriate. Then he changed his shirt again, came back out, and played "What I Got" by Sublime after giving a shout-out to Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray. He played for under an hour, which is kind of an odd thing to complain about--"This food is terrible, and such small portions!"--but he didn't play "Ride the Wind" so I'm pissed.


3) Some dude came into the bar I work at and stole my screen-printed, hand-numbered Melvins poster from the wall in the little room I do door in. We took a screenshot of the security footage and did a public shaming of him online. I happened to run into him the next day on the street, where I called him a fucker, asked him where my poster was, and then opened up the back door of his car to grab it while he made excuses. He's a white dude with dreads, so fuck him.

3b) I put the poster back up and it disappeared that same night. I asked the owners to check the footage the next day and they never did, so I assumed they just didn't care. A week later, I saw the poster hanging back up in the room. The middle of it was completely burned through and then entire thing was ruined. I was immediately bummed. Ten minutes later one of the owners comes through the door holding the real Melvins poster, then explains to me that he saw it on the ground that night and took it home. He went to CopyWorks, made a cheap black and white copy, stained it with coffee, colored it with colored pencils, and then burned out the middle. He and the other owner were watching the security footage to see my reaction and he ran down to the bar as soon as he saw I was about to kill myself. A total dick, but what a wonderful prank.

4) I've been eating people's ice cream out of the freezer at work because I'm a rotten human.

5) I started writing fake horoscopes under the name Dr. McCracken for a local entertainment magazine.

5b) Here are three of them:

Aries: You will argue for forty-five minutes with an IKEA representative about the best way to design a pit. Enjoy naps in lieu of the sun, which will eventually burn out anyways. Someone in your professional life will dream of lighting your shoes on fire. Life is debatable.

Taurus: A new love interest will appear and replace all of the light switch covers in your house with photocopies of your baby pictures. Do not be shaken by the unknown. Cry in your bathtub at every opportunity.

Gemini: More than ever before it is important to remember that the human body's age limitations are ultimately usurped by the fact that cancer is unavoidable in all life forms past the age of 150. You will drown your motivation with ice cream.


6) My buddy Zach made me a custom leather guitar strap that has my name written in the scoops of an ice cream cone.

7) I started watching this video series on YouTube where some Irish guys talk about old wrestling PPVs for like an hour and a half over-top the footage they're talking about. I'm halfway through the Wrestlemania I episode and yes, they make an interesting point with the placement of Lord Alfred. Very odd. And yes, my life is disappearing.

8) I found out that I'm Jewish. My mother was explaining something about my grandmother being an old Jew, which made me realize--thanks to David Cross--that if her mother was a Jew, then that means she's a Jew. That means I'm a Jew. A loophole Jew, but still a Jew.

8b) Nobody was surprised.

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Seriously.

After what felt like a million years but was actually only like two months of minor complaining about not being published for two months, I got e-mails telling me that my story "Go Says No," about pinball and the doldrums, will be going up at BULL: Men's Fiction and my story "A Comprehensive List of the Least Worst Way To Do Everything," about a dead wrestler and his brother dealing with it, will be going up at Necessary Fiction, both in the near future.


Part of why I went so long--"so long," I guess, since it really wasn't a very long time--without getting anything accepted for publication was because I didn't have a lot floating around out there, and what I did have floating around was at the big-time journals that take at least three months to respond. Nothing was helped by the responses I actually was getting, which were all rejections, one of which addressed only to "Dear [name]." I am a human, I swear.

But anyways, those should be out soon, and I'm sure I won't shut the fuck up about them once they get here. "A Comprehensive List" is the first story (that I have written, maybe not the first story in the collection) in a pro wrestling based chapbook I'm working on called The Road Becomes What You Leave, a title I pinched from a Magnolia Electric Co. song lyric, one that was actually already pinched several years ago for a short documentary about the band. (Magnolia Electric Co. singer/guitarist Jason Molina recently died after a long battle with alcoholism, and though I've been planning on using the title for years and years and Molina probably wasn't a huge wrestling fan, I'm still very dedicated to the idea of using it.)

"Go Says No" isn't a part of any collection, at least not yet, and that's somewhat exciting, because it means that in a few years, if I can keep writing, I'll hopefully have a handful of stories to pull from to make a new collection. It'll be interesting to see what themes emerge from the group of stories. I plan out what I'm writing about, at least in terms of what I want to get across emotionally or thematically, as much as I can ahead of time, so the idea that a book that doesn't exist yet is going to come together from a bunch of stories that also don't exist yet kind of blows my mind.

How inexplicable shitty this Tom Keifer of Cinderella solo album is also kind of blows my mind. For some reason.

The Passenger Side Books website is finally up and running, and the first two titles are available as fuck. Justin Lawrence Daugherty's Whatever Don't Drown Will Always Rise and my Murmuration are$5 shipped each or $9 shipped as a bundle. People said nice things about each of them, like this from Amber Sparks about Justin's book:

"Justin Lawrence Daugherty has not just a voice, but a hulking, goose-pimpling presence on the page -  like something buried in the earth too long and about to burn its way out. He is an acute and devastatingly honest observer of the current human condition, and his characters limp and bayonet their way through Whatever Don’t Drown Will Always Rise like soldiers of some wounded new century."

Or this from Mary Miller about my book:

"The five stories in Ryan Werner's Murmuration, which are dedicated to the Midwest, bring me into the heart of a world where boys drive cars off cliffs and have least favorite strippers, where dreams must be revised into "necessary shapes" by playing guitar in the street at night. Ryan writes with authority, skill, and passion, not only about the Midwest, but about youth and what it means to be young."

Get them both right here at the Passenger Side Books site.

Also, Murmuration is on Goodreads.

And so is Whatever Don't Drown Will Always Rise.


AND ALL THIS SHIT IS ON TWITTER NOW.

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Here's our logo. Isn't it rad? Order now and get a free sticker or two with this on it.

I had a couple things go online recently, despite my endless whining about not being published. The first one, my story "Back and to the Left" up at Jersey Devil Press, I totally forgot about because they're the ones who published my first book, where this story originally appeared. We worked out a loose arrangement and now it's here and I'm stoked. It's like finding twenty bucks in an old pair of pants. Anyways, this story is based on the song "Brain of J" by Pearl Jam, and it has to do with the idea that JFK didn't really die--until now--and wasn't really up to anything anyways. OR as I like to call it, REALITY, DUDE.

Aside from his relations with Marilyn Monroe and being the most powerful man in the United States for a little bit, JFK wasn’t the luckiest guy around. He was accident prone, more than anything. Still, he kept his humor. He’d call me a few times a year and say something like, “I just slammed my hand in a car door. First I get shot in the head and now this.”

The other thing I had go up is a review of Roy Kesey's Any Deadly Thing up at Heavy Feather Review. I didn't really like the book, but here's me being diplomatic.

In these large, faraway places are usually two people experimenting with the space they’re forced to cohabitate. In the portion of their lives we’re presented with, the good stuff often seems ready to arrive despite the stories all beginning and ending in odd spots, the story going on, always.

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If you liked Roy's book and you're upset that I didn't, keep in mind that this is just one of many pictures of CC DeVille I have saved to my computer.

I didn't talk much about what I'm working on because I'm not working on shit. I've been busy finalizing the PSB stuff and working and playing in four or five bands. And I hate reading more than one book at once, so I've been stuck on Ken Nash's The Brain Harvest, trying to read it at the slow points in my work day, which isn't exactly ideal or productive. However, I just finished the review for The Brain Harvest (and a review for The Stone Thrower by Adam Marek, which was wonderful), so I'm going to reread The Watch by Rick Bass and some new shit by Gary Lutz and I'm going to generally get back into the swing of writing again. Because I like writing. I think.

All right. Let's get incredible.

With love,

RW
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Come on, come on, come on little rabbit, show me where you got it 'cuz I know you got a habit . . .

11/28/2012

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The Afghan Whigs performing "66" on Conan O'Brien's show back in 1999. Dulli breaks a string!

I dressed up as the Wal-Mart Santa this past weekend and scared the fuck out of some kids. Dr. Pepper/7-Up bought the rights to Santa (in Wal-Mart), so on either side of the bench I sit on is a stack of about 50-70 two-liters of 7-Up. In addition to mini candy canes, I also gave the kids cans of soda. It was all really fucked.

Of course, this happened, too.

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Look at how shitty I look as Santa and then think about the fact that the person who was dressing up as Santa before me is female, stands (literally) around four feet tall, has the mental development of an 8-10 year old child, and kept pulling off her beard to take drinks of water, which would have been fine, except she "was too hot" and "about to pass out" with the beard on, so she just left it hanging from her one ear, including during pictures with the kids.

She also decided it was necessary to wear no pants underneath the Santa pants that are designed to go over the pants you're already wearing. Then she informed me that she "got really sweaty" in the suit. I realize that this has an effect on nobody except me, but come on. Goddamn.

Her intentions were top notch, but none of her physical or mental attributes really helped in the way of keeping the spirit of Christmas. You'd think that with all the fat dudes we have working and frequenting our store that we'd be able to rope someone into doing it, but that was apparently impossible. They all claimed to be bad with kids.

How to Be Santa

1) Don't molest the kid. This is a good rule even when not dressed up as Santa.

2) Ask the kid if they've been good this year and believe whatever they say because who gives a shit.

3) If the kid has a brother or sister with them, ask them who's been the baddest. If they don't have a brother or sister with them, ask their parents. If the mom is kind of hot and the dad isn't around, ask if she's been naughty, because Santa does that on stupid sitcoms and everyone's seen Bad Santa and she'll think it's funny. See if you can ask for a "snowjob" without the kid hearing.

4) Ask the kid what they want for Christmas and tell them you'll get it for them for sure. You are not their parents and this is not your responsibility.

4b) If someone asks for a kidney for medical purposes, just be really nice and tell them you'll try. If they ask for a kidney for weirdo shit, just tell them to fuck off.

5) Ask the kid if they like to play in the snow. Some kids will be a bit gunshy, but, ultimately, kids are fucking dumb, so you can really ask them anything and they'll just answer with whatever the fuck they feel like. Ask them about quantum physics or something. I bet they'll answer with a story about a time they saw a really big dog.

All in all, I'm a really awesome Santa. And you can too.

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Tis the season to suck it.

Right as I was complaining that I haven't had any work accepted in a long-ass time, I look like a dickhead by getting three acceptances in about a week.

My story "Reruns" (the second story in my cycle/chapbook Murmuration) went up at Monkeybicycle. This is a big deal because Monkeybicycle is excellent, and them having faith in my story kind of gives me a little faith in my story. This one is secretly dedicated to my friend Jon Eagle, who loves television shows more than anyone I've ever met.

"I listened to my family name off local dead people and soon enough began to wish i was one of them."

The other stories that got accepted aren't up yet. One of them is "Pyramid Scheme" (the fourth story in Murmuration). I'm stoked about this going up (at Bartleby Snopes!) for the same reason as "Reruns." That one's about a band called the Honeybreakers, reprising the role they played in my story "Sometimes We Were Young." (My friend Sam Snoek-Brown and I do this stupid thing where every story we write is connected to at least one other story we've written. It's pointless and nobody wins, but if they did, I'd be winning.) I'm working with the crew on some edits right now and even the butting-heads that we're doing on a couple spots have gone way too smoothly. The changes they suggested that I ended up taking helped the story immensely, and, as I had thought, the parts I've always been uneasy with have disappeared.

That leaves only one story for the collection unpublished, the stripper story "Cool Tits, Moxie." I've got that out at a few places now, and if none of them pick it up, I'm fine with it going unpublished. Leaves a bit of incentive for buying the book, I guess. I'll probably end up putting it out myself because I'm too lazy to send it off to publishers, but that's fine.

The other story is called "Trace," going up at 10,000 Tons of Black Ink. I've talked about that stupid asshole story on here before as being a revising nightmare. I actually even revised it after sending it off, because that's what nightmares are for. I'm wondering if I can actually broach the subject of having 10KTOBI publish the revised version without pissing them off. I'm totally going to try.

I've also gotta remember to make a stupid 10,000 Maniacs joke in my next e-mail to them.

I added some friends to the (Has Friends) page. Justin Lawrence Daugherty is a fucking incredible writer who I can guarantee you will hear more from/about very soon. He takes myths and turns them into realistic stories of the absurd. Matthew Burnside is another wizard working with myth and sorrow, one who I didn't even realize until today that I've known for years and years from a guitar forum we both frequent. (Or used to frequent, in my case, as I was perma-banned years ago for several different things, one of which included posting under the name CC DeVilled Eggs and ruining every thread with pictures of Poison's CC DeVille.) Mary Miller wrote two of my favorite books in recent memory, the full-length Big World and the chapbook Less Shiny and I'm kind of in love with her. Check these wonderful people out.

While you're checking things out, go to the website for the micro-press I've started for Passenger Side Books and consider sending me a manuscript. I've got some good work so far and look forward to reading more of it. Let's make books, people.

My (Is Published) page and my (Has Friends) page have both been retooled to be more readable. So read them.

Also, I appeared on a podcast being hosted by my tight bros in the band Victory & Associates. It's called You Can't Stop the Signal and is a must-listen for anyone who's into podcasts or has been in a band or likes talking about ASCII-styled dicks or thinks I'd be a good guy to talk to on the phone for a half hour. They play a bunch of killer angular indie rock and roll, too, so do everyone a favor and listen.

Oh yeah. And this:

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Seasons beatings, y'all.

RW
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No one gives a hoot about faux-ass nonsense . . .

11/14/2012

1 Comment

 
"No One Gives a Hoot About Faux-Ass Nonsense" by Don Caballero, from their second, aptly-titled, album, Dob Caballero 2.

It's been a month. Here's the loose ends of what happened:

1) I went through a long streak of not writing any fiction, making me go insane and start crying while watching Wrestlemania 21, specifically the part where Hulk Hogan comes out and flexes in front of a giant, electronic American flag.

2) I started trying to watch real films so I have something to offer in conversations aside from Nicolas Cage movies. I'm starting with the works of David Lynch. Blue Velvet was good once it got into the story. Eraserhead was up its own ass. I'm watching Wild At Heart next, starring, oddly enough, Nicolas Cage. Life is a circle/highway.

3) I posted on the Facebook page for the German thrash metal band Kreator, asking if I could join their band. So far, no response.

4) I had the official book party for Shake Away These Constant Days. It went well. In the words of my friend Bob, "It wasn't runnin' a train, but it wasn't a trainwreck."

5) I bought a package of pizza flavored hotdogs, which was the second grossest food-related decision I made all month, right behind eating a pancake that I found.

6) I went to the Goodwill and saw this bootleg Michael Jackson hat, which I bought for $1.50, wore for a weekend, and then sent to Sarah Rose Etter.

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Seriously, it doesn't even say what kind of pizza.

I had the first installment in Love Dumb, my all-too-thorough chronological journey through the complete song library of KISS, go up a bit ago. There was a slight hiccup in the posting schedule, but from now on, every Thursday there will be a new column. Check out the first one:

“Strutter” makes considerably less sense than the song it started out as, a little Gene Simmons 60’s psych-rock ditty called “Stanley the Parrot.” This is significant, considering “Stanley the Parrot” had an oblique narrative about the influence of summer in making a man and a two-minute non-sequitur intro and odd bluegrass solos and it’s called fucking “Stanley the Parrot.”


I also had a review of Gregory Sherl's debut full-length collection, Heavy Petting, go up at [PANK]. I was mixed on it, for sure, but the gist of it is that the good stuff was brilliant and the bad stuff was bullshit. There's plenty of both, but as far as first collections go--especially such long ones, it seems--Heavy Petting is as intriguing as it gets.

I say this not to slight his work or age—I liked his poems and he’s only two days younger than I am—but Gergory Sherl is a poet of youth, which is to say that his debut collection, Heavy Petting is saturated with a holy-fuck-I-hope-I’m-right sort of faith.

Lastly, I'm probably the only person to who's done an interview with UW-Platteville--the college I graduated from several years ago--and referenced Motorhead and girls who do cocaine if it's free.

Q: Can you tell us about one or two high points of your life since you’ve graduated?

A: I didn't get married or have kids and it's awesome. I listen to Motörhead as loud as I want, whenever I want. If that sounds like something a fifteen year old kid would say, that's probably because it's all I've ever really wanted since I was fifteen.


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Not that I wasn't a fucking dickhead back in college, too.

After I stopped crying and started writing fiction again, I turned out a short story without a title (I'm soft-positive on "Old Winners") that leans pretty heavily on Barry Hannah, specifically his story "Water Liars." He's got an old guy going to the docks to visit other old men who lie about shit in a jovial way. I've got a young guy who goes to an arcade to visit old men who tell him how to win in a competitive-yet-empty way. There are buried problems with women leaking out of everything in both. I'm hoping that using "Water Liars" as a jumping off point--Amy Hempel calls it "response writing"--won't be obvious. But, if I'm going to rip something off, I want to rip something off that rules.

I'm finding that I like style more than I like substance, which isn't to say that I like no substance, I just like style more. There's Van Halen and there's Elvis Costello. Neither one is without traces of what makes the other untouchable, but they are genius opposites.

I haven't submitted this story anywhere yet, but I'm back on the submission train, so I'll be sending it out shortly. I've got every eligible story in my chapbook, Murmuration, out at several places each right now, just sort of waiting on replies. Of the longer pieces I worked in as a second section for the Caketrain contest, only one, the aforementioned story about a millionaire and time zones and girlfriends and ex-girlfriends and a mute Italian girl called "Run the Daylight Down," isn't out anywhere yet. Once I get done watching The League DVDs a co-worker loaned me and insisted I watch, I'll send them out.

It is pretty fucking funny, though.

I started up the micro-press that I've been threatening my life with for the past year or so. This essentially just means that I ordered a printer and a long-arm stapler and have begun the long process of trying to figure out how to use a bootlegged copy of Adobe InDesign, but those are all big, necessary steps.

I'm planning on doing 20-40 page chapbooks of fiction and non-fiction. Magic Helicopter Press and Future Tense Books are both great examples of micro-presses putting out killer chapbooks. I've read their work and am learning from it, and I hope to put out a quality piece of work sometime early next year.

I've accepted the first manuscript to be released, but what little details I have aren't worth spilling right now. I will say that, in , and a human goddamn being.

Passenger Side Books.

(Real website--or at least a blogspot--coming soon. Facebook will do for now.)

Validate me, internet.

RW
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The earth is not a cold dead place . . .

10/16/2012

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"The Only Moment We Were Alone" by Explosions In the Sky

When I need hyper-emotional instrumental music in the fall, Explosions in the Sky is the go-to. I'll switch to Sigur Ros when the first snow comes down, back to Don Cab when it all melts.

I had a new publication go up at a new publication. Justin Lawrence Daugherty started up a lit journal that intends to scorch the earth. So far, I think he's done a bang-up job. My story is called "The Ultimate Warrior, Sitting In His Kitchen in the Middle of the Night, Practicing Applying His Face-Paint in Anticipation of a Return That Will Never Happen." It's one of those self-explanatory titles. Check it out, along with great work by Aaron Teel, Edward Hagelstein, Helen McClory and many more.

"The thing about being dead is that I have no idea what it’s like.

I got a haircut and took some time off and people started to talk because they either think that life is as fake as wrestling or vice versa.

But remember that guy in the promotion who was pretending to be me? Suicide. When they finally hired the real me, he had a pity spot on the roster as my stunt double and then he got fired and then he shot himself."

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Seriously, though, if you talk about how there's been several Ultimate Warriors because the original one died, you're a fucking asshole.

My column proposal, Love Dumb: A Song-By-Song Analysis of the Nonsensical, Incompetent, Sophomoric, Confusing, Beautiful KISS Discography, got accepted over at Used Furniture Review. This, too, is fairly self-explanatory. I'll be analyzing two KISS songs every week for the next two years, at which point I will have dissected all of their songs and decided that I actually fucking hate them. I'm three songs in so far and aside from reinforcing the basics--Peter's not very good at drums, Paul's the weirdest straight gay dude ever--I've learned that I only like KISS when I don't have to think about them. If I'm just feeling the music, they're the best. The second I turn my brain on, they just turn into some mediocre Jews singing about their dicks.

In trying to come up with a name for the column, I called on my friends to help. My buddy Bob suggested, "Get a girlfriend."

Going back to pro wrestling, I'm considering proposing a column to Fear of a Ghost Planet in which I take old wrestling PPVs and compare them based on the month and year in which they appeared. So, Hog Wild '96 (WCW) would go up against Summerslam '96 (WWF). Sure, it was the beginning of Hogan's first title run as a heel and it was the end of Vader's push in the WWF because Shawn Michaels was a real cunt back then, but what about he shows themselves? I'm curious as to which one is better to just put on and enjoy, free of nostalgia, (mostly) free of wrestling-nerd snobbery.

On the surface, these two columns appear to be way more niche than the stuff I normally write: short stories, book reviews, essays. Really, I think it's about the same. It's 2012 and I'm writing stuff that mostly appears on the internet, a place that already has millions of stuffs of all kinds and doesn't necessarily need any of mine.

In short, maybe I need a girlfriend.

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"Look, I know I said 'redhead,' but I also said 'girlfriend.'"

I'm not sure why I've taken a sudden interest in writing a column, but I'm afraid it's because I'm running out of ideas. I'm not counting on my chapbook winning the Caketrain competition because they get a bunch of awesome submissions that are probably more geared toward their aesthetic, but they have to choose someone. (Every writer needs this attitude. No journal or zine or whatever exists without shit other people wrote. You could totally be other people. They have to choose someone.) So, on the extremely offhand chance that it wins the contest, I'm pretty much out of publishable material.

The more likely situation here is that it won't win, but I've already got some self-defeating bullshit for that, too. When it doesn't win, I'll shop the first half--the story cycle--around as a short, 20-page chapbook. That leaves the other three longform stories for another collection, which I would then set about finishing using a few older stories that need massive revision and a few newer ones that need to be written. Still, this is only maybe a year's worth of work. That's not a lot considering that I want to write for fucking ever.

So I'm a bit scared that I'm out of ideas. I haven't reached the point where I'm considering making some poor decisions just so I have some shit to write about, but I'm getting there. (A girlfriend? Come on. Desperate times . . .)

This is how I justified watching all of Party Down on YouTube last week. Just, you know, stirring creative juices or whatever.

"Fantasy is bullshit."

Shake Away These Constant Days, my mostly-ignored debut short story collection, is now available for your e-reader. Get the Kindle version on Amazon or, if you think Amazon is the devil, Smashwords.

Also, in an attempt to maybe get some people to buy the book, I'm going completely backwards in terms of logic and giving away two copies. Head over to Goodreads and sign up for the Shake Away These Constant Days Giveaway.

I'm selling a surprising number of books at the bar I work at. Drunk people love feeling smart. I did, however, have a better reaction to the ice cream I brought in and scooped for everyone. I knew my book couldn't compete against mint chocolate chip. Regardless, a busty girl named Floro took a picture of me scooping her an ice cream cone and texted it to her mother as a means of informing her of our inevitable marriage. We then discussed the finer points of the Aggro Crag from the Nickelodeon show Guts.

Things are fine, everyone.

RW
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I'm still hangin' 'round cause I'm a little bit small . . .

10/8/2012

4 Comments

 
Steve Earle and the Dukes performing "Fearless Heart" live on Austin City Limits.

With the exception of the working class itself, almost everything with a "working class" tag bites shit. Steve Earle does simple right.

I've kept somewhat busy since I last posted, meaning that I haven't kept very busy, meaning that I still mostly hate myself.

I had a story go up at Juked called "Western v. Eastern," probably the last story from the Our Band Could Be Your Lit stuff worth publishing. (Except my story based on "A Little Longing Goes Away" by The Books, though I'm the only one who likes that story it seems.) "Western v. Eastern" is based on the song "The Running Kind" by Zoe Muth and the Lost High Rollers. I told her about it and she never got back to me. Still, she's a nice girl with wonderful songs, and I was kind of a weird idiot the both times I met her, talking about Queensryche the first time and complaining about Jackson Browne the second time. So that's understandable. The story itself is pieced together from various bits including professional wrestling, bailiff work, Motley Crue, dissolving relationships, a fear of death, smoking weed, artificial appendages, and Bullitt starring Steve McQueen. Check it out.

"Semi-important things about tort claims and a federal district court’s level of jurisdiction and some other stuff are being decided through the case of Jane Eastern and Anthony Western. The gist of it is that they were married and now they’re not and soon enough one person will take none of the blame and all of the money even though there’s enough of both to go around." - from "Eastern v. Western"

I also had a story go up at SmokeLong Quarterly, my favorite lit journal. There was a bit of plea bargaining done on the ending, but I'm satisfied with that we came up with. (I will, however, be changing it when the story goes into the chapbook.) "Jalapeno Summer" is the story, the big opening gambit in my Midwestern story cycle called Murmuration, and the story that finally got me into SLQ after nearly a dozen rejections throughout the years. SLQ staff member Josh Denslow interviewed me about the story and I didn't sound too incredibly stupid, so you should check that out. As for the story, it's one of my favorites of mine, the exact blending of all the things I want a Midwestern story to be: humor and sadness, action from boredom despite no solution.

"The summer I turned eighteen, we drove a car off a cliff every Sunday. Gas was still a buck a gallon and all of us were moving away in August to places where polka music wasn't a dogma." - from "Jalapeno Summer"

In the process of trying new things, I've got another book review up at [PANK], this time for Sara Levine's brilliant short story collection Short Dark Oracles. Anything I say about it now will just ruin it. The short of it: buy this goddamn book.

"[Short Dark Oracles] is a champion in the blowout of my soul, a reaffirmation of life through creativity and craft. At the intersection of those two qualities is a triumph of artistic merit, a testament to narrative labor and a reminder for me to pay attention, always, for somewhere in the world there is magic at work."

Okay, I'm done plugging shit. Until this other story I wrote goes up this week.

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I'm not the worst salesman ever.

Oh yeah, I also had a book come out. I talked about it a lot, so I'm going to stop now. That's what happens, I think, when you work on something. You talk about it until it happens, and then it's other people's responsibility. I've only gotten one review so far, from Joey Pizzolato over at Curbside Splendor.

The good: "These stories are subtle and delicate; it never feels as if Werner is shoving meaning down the reader’s throat.  In fact, it’s the opposite.  Readers are forced to interact with each story, and are allowed—with a modest grace—to use their own feelings about the historical moments and figures included in these stories to decide what is important."

"Each story is short and powerful, complete with terse and refined prose that are quick like a boxer’s jab."

"Coupled with the freshness and honesty by which he writes, Shake Away These Constant Days is an impressive debut from a young and exciting voice."


The not-so-great: "these stories are almost too short; and, coupled with the quantity of stories included, it’s easy for them to melt together, especially if you find yourself reading from cover to cover."

He's right on the money about the not-so-great stuff. I like to think of SATCD as a mixtape I made for someone. I love all the songs on it, but that person won't love all the songs. They'll love a handful of the songs. It's just too much to take in at once, and some stuff will understandably get lost due to simple saturation.

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Not this kind, unfortunately.

I swallowed a tiny portion of my irrational fears and submitted to the Caketrain Chapbook Competition. I realized my original chapbook, the aforementioned Murmuration, was about 5000 words short of the minimum length. So I added a second section of short stories, ones with more Midwestern themes. Here's what I ended up with.

Part I: Murmuration (A Midwest Story Cycle)

Jalapeno Summer
(869 words)
Reruns (844 words)
Cool Tits, Moxie (1030 words)
Pyramid Scheme (1382 words)
Murmuration (2305 words)


Part II: Heroics

Shoot Out the Bright Lights (5588 words)
Run the Daylight Down (3796 words)
Two Halves of a Tornado (3635 words)

This means very little to most of you, as I realize only a handful of people have read these stories, but there are things to pick up on within a table of contents. I think it'll hold up. I don't really think it'll win the contest--the genius Sarah Rose Etter won it last year, and I'm nowhere near her level--but it's something I'm happy with. When I get the rejection, I'm going to send Part I to Magic Helicopter Press. When I get their rejection, I'll probably just self-publish. So, no matter what, look for Murmuration in early 2013.

I played a lot of rock and roll in the past couple weeks. I look forward to playing more. Let's rock, people.

RW
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    Ryan Werner
    (About Stuff)
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    Writer, rocker, janitor. Lover of pro wrestling, porno, and ice cream. Hater of fingerless gloves, pictures of cats, and goodbyes. 

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