Category Archives: novels
Shark’s Teeth
1. The 2010 ‘Best of’ lists appear, like little angels of death. Little cuts on my will to get to the end of the year. Not now, I say, each time one appears. Not yet. I need to make use … Continue reading
Filed under author's own, fiction, go team, letters from away, novels, what I am working on, writers, writing
“Professors of Fiction”
1. I have a conversation with my partner Dustin’s Uncle Jack about how he fell on his good hip and, while painful, it reset his hips. The pain he’s been suffering from the former bad hip is gone. I wish … Continue reading
Filed under fiction, MFA programs, novels, politics, what is right with us, what is wrong with us, writers, writing
“I think there are a lot of American critics who try to pretend that I don’t exist at all.”
I’m at Ledig House up near Hudson, New York, with my edits on my second novel, going over them, preparing to turn them in soon. I printed it up single-spaced with wide margins, so it looks more like a book, … Continue reading
Filed under books, fiction, novels, what I am working on
On Getting Your Name Out There, Part 2: The Story That Sells the Story
For the first part of this series on authors, author sites and author blogging, go here first. When approaching an author site, what I find least interesting is a sort of bland, safe, risk-free aesthetic, a headshot with links and … Continue reading
Yield, by Lee Houck
About 8 years ago, I received fan emails from a young man and his librarian mother. Both had read my first novel, both loved it, both made a point of writing to me. Both emails were among the most lovely … Continue reading
100 Things About A Novel, Part 3
44. I think of each of them like a visitor from another planet, the sentences being like the circuits to a vast and beautiful machine that communicates the creature. 45. Or a distant relation I’ve never met, from another country … Continue reading
100 Things About A Novel, Pt. 2
[Note: Part 1 is here.] 25. Novels are hard, not like diamonds but like fate, the choice you make that reveals it was never a choice at all. 26. Then it is the novel as jailer. You in a small … Continue reading
Filed under novels, travel, what I am working on, writers, writing
100 Things About A Novel, Pt. 1
Sometimes music is needed. Sometimes silence. This is probably because a novel is a piece of music, like all written things, the language demanding you make a sound as you read it. Sometimes I have written them on subways, missing … Continue reading
January 8th, 2010
1. In a thread on Darcy Cosper’s facebook page, I learn that the New York Times forbids writing in the present tense, as it is technically a fiction, even when used in the presentation of nonfiction. 2. My old friend … Continue reading
Filed under author's own, fiction, letters to you, novels
Refresh, Refresh
During the semester I read approximately 250 pages a week, to as much as 600, if it’s thesis season–and that doesn’t even include my own writing or my email. But I also don’t notice it–I just do it, like breathing … Continue reading
Filed under author's own, blogs, books, comics, essay, fiction, fox demons, graphic novels, novels, writers, writing
