Has it really been four months already? Here's some shit.

1) The job I spoke about previously as being a possibility, barring background checks and whathaveyou, totally happened. Now I spend five days a week telling four-year-olds about wrestling and Ozzy.

1b) I acted like I only tolerated it at first, but it's really awesome. I wore an Anthrax shirt in my school pictures, because time won't change for me and vice-versa.

1c) My phone is a veritable cesspool of adorable pictures of kids helping me cook lunch. I'm worse than a grandmother.

2) I got the NUMBER ONE HIGH SCORE on the South Park pinball machine at the bar. Suck it, automated high scores that come pre-loaded onto the machine.

3) I've been watching a lot of wrestling. I realized there's a lot of stuff from right before the Attitude Era that I haven't seen all the way through. Here's to Survivor Series '96 and The Rock looking like a Ribbon Dancer tried to fuck a pineapple.

4) I started a band and joined another one, bringing the count to an unnecessary, over-committed FIVE BANDS.

4b) This is much less impressive when you consider that, much like other prolific songwriters--not that I'm really one of them--of previous and current times, I really only write three or four different kinds of songs. I just sort of change the nuances a bit to fit what I'm doing, because I'm a liar, essentially.

5) My friend Kylie and her friend Matt (who is kind of my friend, too, though I barely know him) made a documentary about me. It's just called Werner and it's about twelve minutes long, which is all it takes to sum up my life, including gag reel.

5b) It's actually a really well-made documentary, and Kylie and Matt did a great job. I was worried I'd look like I was too serious or too much of a joke, but she blended it well. Better than I do in my life, at least.

5c) It'll be available to watch online sometime in the near future once all the paperwork and red-tape of whatever goes along with these sorts of projects is cleared. They're film students and this was for a class, so I'm not sure exactly what needs to all happen. Other than CGI enhancements of my abs.

6) I saw Charles Bradley play a show in Madison and it was pretty incredible. I still need to see the documentary about him.

6b) I missed Lee Fields the month before, though. Only so much soul I can handle, apparently.

7) I downloaded Snapchat and don't understand it. Why wouldn't you just text someone? On the bright side, I wish all selfies had a built-in disappearing point.

8) My computer died. Just flat-out fucking ate shit. Luckily, I have most of my important stuff--music, wrestling, writing, porn--on an external hard drive. The stuff I deserve to get bummed about losing is some writing and pictures. Everything else was pirated. Even I'm not delusional enough to think I had a right to that.

8b) David Atkinson is a beautiful man with a heart of gold, and he hooked me up with a replacement right quick. Buy him cigarettes and coffee and build a statue of his out of a meat of your choice. Then feed it to a homeless person, because the world needs more people paying it forward.

9) I got a hat that says BOOB POLICE on it for Christmas. Happy birthday, Jesus.

10) I became an uncle. My brother and his girlfriend had a kid and named it Maddux, which is a cool name spelled in a fucking dickhead way.

10b) My brother spells his name "Nikolas" with no "c" in it, so whatever. Hereditary, I guess. I'm just glad I'm not "Ryen" or some shit.

Writing-wise, I'm doing better than I was when I last checked in. I've written six stories since then and five of them have been picked up. The sixth one is a really bad retelling of a Kenny Loggins song about Winnie the Pooh that Matt Burnside suggested I write about for Cloud Rodeo, and I never submitted it because in addition to being mind-numbingly shitty, I lost it in the computer crash. If I need to find it, I'm sure it's in an e-mail or Facebook message, but I might just call this one a loss. (Sort of.)

Some of the stuff I wrote is already up. The surge in writing came from the Cease, Cows contest for Halloween. They had a 1000-word cap and a theme of "hallow/hallowed" that stories needed to fit into. One submission for $5, three submissions for $10. I wrote three stories and got an honorable mention with one. (And a Pushcart nomination!)

The winner of this batch according to Cease, Cows was the story "Atavism." I started writing this under the theme of "hollow" instead of "hallow" because I'm a goddamn idiot. I gave the woman empty bones and then, when I realized I was writing about the wrong word, just decided to keep that idea and work around it. So, a haunted house, some hollow bones, and the things people do when they're afraid.

Melanie thought that humans descended from birds. Back in the middle of her snap, she paid an old man strung out on heroin fifty bucks to read her past lives, to do a palm reading on the place where her hand was supposed to be but wasn’t. So he ran his finger down the scar that sealed the end of her arm up and then he told her that God created sparrows and some evolved into humans.

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The other new thing that went up already is the story "My Friend Wallace Eating a Candy Apple at the End of the World." I wrote this last for the contest, in a quick burst. It's the shortest thing I've written in a long while, maybe the shortest thing I've ever had published. As is the way with DOGZPLOT, it's under 200 words, so I'm not going to excerpt it. You've got time to click a link.

"My Friend Wallace Eating a Candy Apple at the End of the World"

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The non-story I got published recently is a review of my bro Dena Rash Guzman's debut poetry collection Life Cycle. It's a damn fine book made by a rough-neck that might also possibly be a red-neck. Part ghost and part glitter, part sweet and part bitter. (Not everyone gets the Macho Man Randy Savage-style intro, DRG.) Check it.

Guzman’s vision is true to itself, right down to the faults. This is proof that the book has been nurtured and then shot out, more creation than craft and goddamn all the better for it.

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I almost forgot that I had a story get published right after that last blog went up, the aforementioned "There Is No Joy between the Last Thing and the Next Thing" up at Jersey Devil Press. It's about friendship and trust and moving forward, always.

When they called on me to testify, I told them I didn’t know Eugene to have a history of violence. What I meant was that spent knuckles and a dozen years of broken glass don’t add up to bank statements or toe tags, but, there they are.

The rest of the stories will be up in the months to come. "If There's Any Truth In a Northbound Train" was the second story written for the Cease, Cows contest and it'll be up at SmokeLong Quarterly in the spring. It's about twins and fate and what it means to be an older brother, if it means anything.

I also got solicited for a couple stories by Meg Tuite, one for the Sante Fe Literary Review and one for Connotation Press. SFLR will be publishing my story "Mexico," about sleep and reality and what happens when the amounts of each get thrown off together. Connotation nabbed up my story "Banzai Skydiving" about the difference between a lack of opportunity and a lack of skill. Both of these will be up fairly soon, if I understand it right.

The Indiana Review with my story "Shoot Out the Bright Lights" arrived in the mail the other day and it looks awesome. I've never been in a big journal like this, something with history and very slick production values.

I can't really do a year-end book round-up because I didn't read shit this year. Or, to be more specific, I read a bunch of shit this year, but not a lot of it in book form. I spent a fair amount of time reading manuscripts for Passenger Side and reading stuff online trying to find stuff I loved to solicit for manuscripts, but as far as books go, I didn't have a lot of luck or time.

The two books I put out on PSB that weren't my book are my favorites. They had to be and have to be and are. Justin Lawrence Daugherty's Whatever Don't Drown Will Always Rise is brilliant, the biggest heart of the hardest warrior. Matthew Burnside's Infinity's Jukebox is really that: the tunes of a lifetime, every lifetime. (ORDER HERE!)

Aaron Teel's Shampoo Horns is my favorite book I had nothing to do with other than sitting down and reading it cover-to-cover. It's dirty and tender and says a lot about what it means to grow up with nothing more than yourself and the people around you.

I read Brian Allen Carr's Vampire Conditions, too, and really dug it. Blake Butler's Scorch Atlas did nothing for me. I didn't even finish it.

I don't know why I didn't read, other than time. I know my old job killed a lot of my creativity and ability to focus on creative endeavors. Maybe next year will be better. It kind of has to be, right?

I always forget that reading and writing go hand in hand, and in a year when I played a bunch of shows with a bunch of different bands and wrote a lot of music, some strange and some in the box, for several groups, I can name a list of a dozen killer records I spun over and over again. One feeds into the other, which doesn't make it less of a struggle to think of something to pull from the air, but it does make the air a bit thicker.

There's a stack of books I bought this year from a lot of great writers. Amber Sparks, Matt Bell, Jon Konrath, David Atkinson, Sam Snoek-Brown and on and on. I know they're all talented and enjoyable. This one's on me.

Hopefully I'll tune in sooner than every four months to this thing, but incase I don't, here are my new tour dates, reading in a city near you. (Maybe.) March 2014! NO COAST SPRING BREAK!

Thursday, March 13: Rock Island, IL
Friday, March 14: St. Louis, MO
Saturday, March 15: Carbondale, IL
Sunday, March 16: Nashville, TN
Monday, March 17: Louisville, KY
Tuesday, March 18: Cincinnati, OH
Wednesday, March 19: Fort Wayne, IN
Thursday, March 20: Grand Rapids, MI
Friday, March 21: Chicago, IL
Saturday, March 22: Madison, WI

More info as it comes. Booking a DIY book tour without doing Universities and trying to avoid book stores and the (somewhat justified) 40% cut they take from sales is hard. I knew that going in, having booked the tour this previous summer, but I forgot how often writers don't leave their house and how many places don't have reading series. I've talked to a lot of cool, helpful people in booking this, but I've also hit a lot of odd, dead ends.

Regardless, I'll be in the car on March 13th and I'll be in these cities, doing my thing. Join me if you can.

Until then, party like you want it.

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

I bought a Jazzmaster and I shouldn't have. I don't know anything about jazz, but I know a lot about J Mascis. The way "Freak Scene" sounds is enough reason for me to go back to saltine/peanut butter sandwiches for a couple more months.

I took some time to type up the non-story pages for Shake Away These Constant Days. Got the legal/business junk and dedication (it's for my parents . . . and those about to rock) on one page in the beginning and then a page at the end for acknowledgments (yes, Shawn Michaels is thanked) and another page for the details on who suggested what song for each story. We were thinking about doing an essay explaining the Our Band Could Be Your Lit project, but I'm lazy. In the end, we decided to not pitch it as an OBCBYL book at all.

One of my dream publications finally came through. A few blogs ago I mentioned a story I wrote about a guy who just crashes cars with his buddies. It turned out to be about a little bit more than that--not much, though I do finally get a chance to use the phrase "marble dicks" in a piece of writing and get it published--and Smokelong Quarterly picked it up. When it comes to flash fiction, no place is better. They've published Dan Chaon, Kevin Wilson, Thomas Cooper, WP Kinsella, Steve Almond, Sara Levine, and dozens of other awesome writers who I love. And now me.

One of the editors there was kind enough to not reject my story wholesale despite not liking the ending, and after sending in a couple new drafts, we came to an agreement. It was kind and I was grateful, because I've been rejected a lot by Smokelong, more than any other journal. "Jalapeno Summer" was the eighth story I've submitted to them. I guess this just proves the old saying right: If at first you don't succeed, use the phrase "marble dicks."

My friend Dena's manuscript is almost done on my end. One last piece to go, and while it's the longest one, it's still the last one. She sent me a bunch of e-mails asking me why I used a bunch of fancy words, to which I had t reply, "Because I want people to think I'm smart." I had to look up "ennui" the other day to figure out if someone was talking shit about me. Turns out they were just being accurate. Dena's going to get into the real nitty gritty of editing this week, so wish her luck. Or don't. She doesn't need you. She's a pioneer, motherfucker.

On my other friendly philanthropic endeavors, my first YA workshop ditched me this week. No clue why. One of them submitted work, even. I'm trying to think if I made a bad joke about not showing up the week prior. I'm trying to think of anything that isn't "They just think I'm a weird dickhead." The second group made it just fine, though. We read "Mexico" by Rick Bass and talked about it. I'm trying to find the one thing that they'll latch onto and make theirs. "How To Be a Writer" by Lorrie Moore is on the table in the next couple of weeks, which I think they'll respond well to.

Monkeybicycle posted something on Facebook today saying that they want some new columns and features on their website. I sent them an e-mail that included this paragraph:

"I've been thinking lately about a column wherein I do an album-by-album review of an almost arbitrary band with lots of albums. Like .38 Special--also known as the dudes who sang "Hold On Loosely" and "Caught Up In You." Did you know that they have 12 studio albums and 3 live albums? Kansas have 14 studio albums and 6 live albums and one song from a Will Ferrell movie that came out 25 years after it really mattered. Chumbawamba have 20 albums. (Right Said Fred have 8, which, though fewer, is still impressive when considering that they're the band who did "I'm Too Sexy" and nobody has ever cared about them beyond the potential for using their song title to justify making a stupid joke when taking off their Marlboro jacket.) Tom Cochrane/Red Rider--that goddamn "Life Is a Highway" song that's so bad that even cover bands in small Midwestern towns won't even play it--has 13 albums. Figure it out.

I went on to explain this in detail, which, regardless of what you may already think about the idea, was most likely overkill. I also offered to review books if they agree to send me free ones. Then I offered to review anything. I'll consider any response that isn't "Please never e-mail us again" a victory.

I've got shit on YouTube to watch while I'm busy not writing. Stay handsome, America.

RW

I've been meaning to sit down and work out some new stories for the book, but I'm having a hard time making a selection. That's why I had other people pick the songs in the first damn place. It's too easy for me fall into navel-gazing fuckheadery if I pick the song, because I'm only going to pick a song I like, and if I like it that means there's something that draws me to it. Pretty soon I've got a story where two sad people in the Midwest sit in a diner and look at each other and there's a bad metaphor in there somewhere because the food is cold/the check falls from the table/it's snowing.

I'm also sneaking in revisions and new ideas between listing my entire CD collection on Amazon. That's 1400+ discs, and I'm getting rid of almost everything. (Neko Case, Thin Lizzy, and Black Sabbath get to stay, along with bands I've played with, local bands, and small indie bands that nobody really gives a fuck about but I've seen them in my hometown.) I'm averaging about $4.50 a disc after Amazon's special fistfuck fees and shipping, which is more than I'd make if I sold it all as a lot to one greasy dude, minus the sanity and time I'm losing from having to bubble/paper wrap every single CD because I'm too cheap to buy bubble-mailers. Selling Bob Mould's Black Sheets of Rain last night kind of took a bit out of me. There are some things I won't miss, though.

This money will go toward a car, which relates to writing because I hope to do some touring once the book comes out. My 2000 Saturn with 173,000 miles just isn't going to cut it anymore. I've lost some exterior parts that have definitely made it a bit more aerodynamic, but I've also lost some internal parts that don't let the car shift into fourth gear. A couple weeks ago an old friend asked me if I still have the same car and the only honest answer I could give was, "Most of it." So I'm looking at a 2002 Mitsubishi Galant with 71,000 miles. The woman at the bank asked me if it was a sports car, because Mitsubishi makes her think "exotic." It makes me think "someone in their late-20s whose mother still does their laundry and of course nobody will love them--and they're not capable of full-on, trusting love anyways--so they don't need something you can put a car seat into or even have another person ride in, which is fine because then everyone will be able to see the embroidered KISS (Love Gun era) car seat cover on the passenger seat."

But yeah, I've been having trouble trying to find a song. That Alejandro Escovedo song up top is what I'm leaning toward for the next one, but I can't think of anything for it. I also considered songs by Scud Mountain Boys and The Reigning Sound, but, again, no ideas. Aside from a review of J.A. Tyler's new novel Variations of a Brother War that I'm hoping [PANK] will pick up, I haven't sat down and written an entire story/essay/poem in almost a month. I told myself I was going to take the month of April off--I wrote a book review and three full-length short stories in March--but then the book deal came in and I started to sell the CDs and I needed to finish up writing some songs for both bands I'm in, one of which will be recording an LP and an EP at the end of this month. I think I've had my month off by now, though, so it's time to get back to doing what I do least worst.

Also, I read this killer story by Justin Lawrence Daugherty over at SmokeLong called "Blood." The beginning sucked me, and I couldn't believe it got even weirder and better. 

My father has a bullet lodged in his ass cheek. I was reminded of this as he leaned down to talk to Cerberus, our mutt, running his thick, car engine grease-covered, scarred hand through Cerb's russet-brown hair. It's all the blacks, he said after he'd been shot. It was a ricochet from a drive-by or something. 
He was training Cerb to dogfight. To tear other dogs apart. To rip their throats out. We had a stuffed dummy for practice. 

Cerb got loose and went after the dummy as if he wanted to eat it, like he had not eaten in weeks. Fluff torn from the open seams. 

"Why are we training Cerb to fight?" I asked. 

"Because he needs to rediscover his nature." 

"What's his nature?" Cerb ripped open the dummy's head. 

"This," dad said, pointing. I didn't get it. I'd seen Cerb eat his own shit once. "Like the wolf. Or, like, whatever came before the wolf, even." 

If that sounds awesome to you, go read the rest.

Thrash on, killers.

RW