One of the new New Year’s resolutions I’m making this year is to stay in my bathrobe for as long as I can. As of five p.m. Mountain time, I am rocking the shit out of that goal. I woke up late, made coffee, did meds, ate lunch, and then took a nap. The puppy slept through all of that, and my wife has watched somewhere around a half dozen episodes of Scandal. Here’s to a productive 2014!
But that’s not why I’m here, at my laptop, when I could easily be asleep again. No, I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. (Caeser is what I call a year; I’m still on the Julian calendar.)
2013 was kind of a tricky set of days to get a handle on. My wife and I bought a house and then we adopted a puppy. So that was awesome. But I also ended up in the hospital twice, which was not so awesome. I had two chapbooks of flash fiction and a handful of stories published, but I also had my soul crushed by a mid-scale publisher that kind of strung me along for the better part of the year. (That’s another post altogether.) My health, in general, has been up and down all year, and the miracle drug I thought would be out by now isn’t going to be around until mid- to late 2014 at best. So, pretty good year, I guess, but I’m not that sad to see it go.
Anyway, the obligatory list of publications is below. Please read them/purchase them (again, if necessary) and tell me I’m great. Because — and let’s be honest, other writers — that is the only reason we post this shit to the world. We’re not going to get rich and if we didn’t want our egos stroked — firmly yet tenderly, with just the right amount of lubrication — we’d keep these things saved on our hard drives or publish them under pseudonyms. (I guess I should mention that my other, two-part resolution is [a] to not get wrapped up in the bullshit marketing aspect of being an author and just write more, and [b] to keep my writing expectations super, super fucking low so that if I mistakenly read part of a debilitating form rejection on my phone in the middle of my friend’s birthday I don’t accidentally bring the entire dinner to a screeching, moribund halt. Sorry again, Steve!)
Chapbooks:
Storybook Romance, Red Bird Chapbooks, Fall 2013. Includes “Storybook Romance,” “Starlight,” “Too Close to the Sun,” and the Pushcart-nominated “Rubble,” as well as new, previously unpublished flash fiction.
Boy Meets Girl, Kattywompus Press, Spring 2013. Includes “Ballpoint & Boredom,” “The Arsonist & the Thief of Hearts,” “Hymn,” “Milk, Eggs, Bread,” as well as new, previously unpublished prose.
Short Stories:
Close Enough, CommuterLit, April 2013
– audio version available at DimeStories
You Non-Miraculous Son of a Bitch, Defenestration, April 2013
Storybook Romance, Jersey Devil Press, May 2013
5 Twitter fictions, Seven By Twenty, July 2013
Starlight, CommuterLit Selections, Fall 2013, CommuterLit, September 2013
Double or Nothing, Shotgun Honey, September 2013
Sandcastles Made of Salt, Bone Parade, October 2013
Gnome-pocalypse, Tall Tales with Short Cocks, Vol. 4, Rooster Republic Press, December 2013