I don't have shit going on to promote of my own, so here's a few rad things other folks have going on.

Matt Burnside has a continuation of his sage writing advice up at [PANK]. This is "11 More Inflexible Rules For Upstart Writers." The title is either misleading or I actually (sadly) know less than I thought I did, because I'm learning things, too, from reading this. Matt's fucking funny on top of being a super appreciative weirdo, on top of being incredibly smart, on top of being an exciting, solid writer. Some guys have it all. I bet he's got a dick like a Pringles can, too.

Anyways, here's my favorite of this newest batch of inflexible rules:

RULE: Fight the urge every day to be cynical

It’s easy to be cynical, but better to keep your sense of humor/humanity through it all. There are days I wake up and want to beat up a phone booth, but if I can stand back long enough to realize how bad it really isn’t, I can find it in my heart to forgive that phone booth. Cynicism is a virus from hell. It may feel good to blast the world for all its bullshit, but where does that get you, really, in the end? It gets you beating up phone booths, and they hardly deserve it. Negativity has never and will never be sexy. Not only that, cynicism has a way of digging its nasty nails into your work. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. We certainly need that in literature, and I’ve written a lot of cynical stuff, but of late I’ve found it’s much harder and rewarding to write something more earnest because the stakes are higher. Work that approaches the heart of things without all the venom and razors – like walking through a minefield where the slightest misstep could result in sentimentality – is more risky than writing something extremely dark and nihilistic and full of fucks and death and postmodern lines like: LANGUAGE WON’T SAVE US, which I’ve literally written in my work maybe five times now. Because the thing is, language will save us. I think as a writer you’ve got to believe that, even as you suspect how foolish it may be.

Read the rest right here at [PANK].

And speaking of [PANK], they've got a cool holiday deal going on where you can a bunch of stuff for like $50 shipped. I think it's three print issues, a shirt, a book, a sticker, and a button.  You'll save a little over $20 and all that stuff should be pretty rad. Myfanwy Collins (Hey, anyone reading this: What the fuck is with that name? I don't want to e-mail her and ask because I'm sure she's been getting shit about that name forever. Can a third party explain this to me? Welsh? Is it Welsh?) wrote the book, called I Am Holding Your Hand. I bet it rules, because Randall Brown said it does and he rules. Simple math. And the shirt's got a typewriter, so, you know. Whatever.

Buy all the things right here.

Chloe Caldwell of Legs Get Led Astray fame and general fucking awesomeness has a new eBook over at Thought Catlog. It's called "The New Age Camp" and I can't read it because I don't have a Kindle. I'm working on getting a PDF or whatever guys like me who still do stupid shit like listen to music on Windows Media Player need to read non-Kindle eBooks. But you should buy it and read it if you can. When has Chloe ever let you down? (I mean that as it pertains to the realm of literature. If she owes you money or puked on your rug or something, I'll apologize right now on behalf of her.)

Buy Coco's eBook right here at Thought Catalog.

(EDIT: If you don't have Kindle, download Cloud Reader and you're all set. Not sure if they have it in a fancy alpine white iPhone color, but use your imagination.) (Dickhead.)

Steven Gillis has a new short story collection out called The Law of Strings and it's worth reading, worth obsessing over. My full review for Heavy Feather Review went up Monday. Read this opening section to his story "The Society for the Protection of Animals."

Uniss had a plan. The situation was dire. No one refuted this, though we knew at first only what Uniss told us.

In her cage, on the floor of our apartment, Uniss did her best to turn. She said it was important to feel as they did, to better understand. I questioned the necessity, wondered, “If we’re supposed to be sympathetic, shouldn’t we be motivated more by instinct?”

Uniss told me to “Think about what you’re saying. How can you understand what you haven’t experienced?”

I could have argued the point, said many things were intuitive, like hunger and love and the want to survive, that understanding them was overkill, but I knew what Uniss would say. She had a way of moving inside her cage, naked and on all fours, up on her toes and fingers, her spine arched as she had learned to do, leaving room so when invited I could scoot flat on my back and lay beneath her, staring directly at whatever she chose to offer.

Wasn't that wonderful? Of course it was. Order the book from Atticus Books right here.

The only story I've got floating around right now is a 1300 word story called "Go Says No" about old men and pinball and being 27 years old. I didn't realize the title was so similar to Monster Magnet's (not that great) album God Says No, but I'm not too worried about it. It can get rejected on its own merits instead of having an ill-conceived title.

I felt good after I wrote it, but I'm worried about the same shit I'm always worried about, namely how many fucking times do I need to write about being lonely and innocent in the Midwest? I realize that lots of writers I like wrote the same thing over and over again: Carver, Updike, Bukowski, Dubus, Ford, Munro (to some extent). I also realize that reading an entire collection by them is often an endurance test comparable to waterboarding.

I don't know about the other ones, but I've read Bukowski's early letters--the ones before he hit it big with Post Office--and he was definitely aware of the ground he was treading, if not worried about wearing it thin. I seem to recall him lamenting over writing another racetrack story or writing in a frenzy to create a dozen or so drunk love poems. Still, he was writing them, and aside from a few journeys into noir, that's all he wrote.

Should I give a shit? Is this sort of deep, unavoidable rumination on a theme a bad thing? It becomes taxing on the reader after awhile, and definitely on the writer, but even if the ratio of good-to-bad ends up looking like shit, the hyper-focus might be its own end. Not Look closely, but look forever.

It's possible that my Midwest is Richard Hugo's Montana, Grace Paley's New York City, Flannery O'Connor's dark south. And I'm fine with that.

I started working on the pro wrestling chapbook I've been threatening to write. The first story, "A Comprehensive List of the Least Worst Way To Do Everything," is done. Here's the first section:

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 named Slash Blast 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.

I know that only so much of anything is true, but I get lost watching the matches. Rodney knew how to honestly tackle delusion from both sides and I just can’t do it.

Until a lump forms between the top of his trapezius and his Adam’s apple, I really am convinced that nothing is wrong when a hulking Japanese man uses the side of an open hand to knife-edge him a dozen times in the neck.


The thing I'm going to have a hard time with is not boring that wrestling fans--as if any of them will end up reading it anyways--and not going over the head of the non-wrestling fans. (Who also won't read it.)  The other stories are "Waiting For Andre" (about how the tangential trivia of Samuel Beckett giving Andre the Giant rides to school severely alters the relationship of a young couple) and "The Road Becomes What You Leave" (about a "loser leaves town" match with more at stake than the results of the match itself). The former will be shorter and the latter will be longer, but either way I'm hoping to have at least two more stories in the collection.

I'm going to go eat ice cream. In honor of the rad date I had Monday with a charming redhead, here's my revised Top Five Fictional Redheads list.

1) Jessica Rabbit
2) Jean Grey
3) April O'Neil
4) The girl on the cover of Candy O
5) The Little Mermaid

Be wonderful,

RW

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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