Roger Weaver


Location Seattle, WA
Occupation Bookseller
Website http://copyedit.weebly.com

About Me

I'm a fiction writer, copy editor, and all-around book guy. I've been working and managing independent bookstores for over 15 years. I am the copy editor at and a contributor to seattle.readinglocal.com (Seattle's best literary blog);
I also do freelance copy editing work through my website(copyedit.weebly.com). Twice a month I DJ a spoken word hour on a local radio station. I am currently working on a short story collection.

Why do you write?

I am a writer. I'm attempting to make the leap from spoken word prose/poetry to actual prose (short stories, novel). Writing has always been a part of me from an early age but it only became my artistic path through trial and elimination- it's what I've ended up focusing on. A parallel path would be meditation but I am less disciplined there. I don't know what fuels my creativity but I can say that I had to give up political activism in order to be a disciplined writer- there just wasn't enough time or energy for both. My writing tends to have a somewhat magic realist element to it. Humor is usually a crutch in my writing and I'm trying to cut back on it. Lately I've become influenced by noir in all of its guises.

Any favorite authors? Books?

I'm currently being blown away by David Jauss' short story collection "Black Maps"(half way through and so far each story has been a brilliant gem, each one delivering an emotional letter bomb). He's also the author of a good book "Alone With All That Could Happen: Rethinking Conventional Wisdom About the Craft of Fiction Writing. I'm also reading George Woodcock's "The Crystal Spirit: A Study of George Orwell".

Recently bought Wells Tower's "Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned" and the new issue of NOON.

My books:
First off: Twelve Semi-Random Books-

Bauman, Zygmunt, Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers?
Dorfles, Gillo, Kitsch: The World of Bad Taste
Foster, Paul, Beckett and Zen: A Study of Dilemma in the Novels of Samuel Beckett
Goldsworthy, Andy, Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature
Jeanneney, Jean-Noel, Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge
Majid, Anouar, A Call for Heresy: Why Dissent is Vital to Islam and America
Nicholson, Geoff, Sex Collectors: The Secret World of Consumers, Connoisseurs, Curators, Creators, Dealers, Bibliographers, and Accumulators of "Erotica"
Plant, Sadie, The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age
Pollito,Robert, Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson
Teitelbaum, James, Tiki Road Trip: A Guide to Tiki Culture in North America
Tufte, Virginia, Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style
Wilkin, Karen, Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey
Winterson, Jeannette, Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery

Some recent books:
Tao Lin's EEEEE EEE EEEE and
Nicholas Christopher's Somewhere In the Night: Film Noir and the American City. I'm also reading The Soloist in anticipation of the movie.
Gordon Theisen, Staying Up Much Too Late: Edward Hopper's Nighthawks and the Dark Side of the American Dream
Kathryn Hume, American Dream, American Nightmare: Fiction Since 1960
Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Some favorite novels:
Adam Johnson, Parasites Are Us
Jonathan Lethem,Motherless Brooklyn
Jonathan Carroll, The Wooden Sea
Matt Ruff, Set This House In Order
Lynda Barry, Cruddy

Classics I like:
Fahrenheit 451, The Monkeywrench Gang, Catch-22, 1984, Catcher in the Rye, Slaughterhouse 5, The Old Man and the Sea

Favorite short story collections:
The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories
Adam Johnson, Emporium
George Saunders, CivilWarland In Bad Decline, Pastoralia, and In Persuasion Nation
Robert Olen Butler, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
Raymond Carver
John Fulton, Retribution
AM Holmes, The Safety of Objects
Chris Offutt, Kentucky Straight
The Stories of Breece DJ Pancake
Mark Richard, The Ice At the Bottom of the World
Kelly Link, Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Strange Pilgrims
Christine Schutt, Nightwork
Diane Williams
Lydia Davis, Break It Down
Amy Hempel
Brent Spencer, Are We Not Men?
Stephen Dixon, The Stories of
Raymond Chandler
Adam Bradford, DogWalker
Jean Shepherd
David Sedaris

Roger Weaver's Wall

Larry Strattner – Jul 12, 2009

The current rewrite of Refugees is posted. Thanx so much for suggesting. (It may not be the last either.)

Larry Strattner – Jul 08, 2009

Goddamn Roger Weaver. Thank you for being good at making me feel good about myself. I'm glad you liked whatever you liked and wondered about whatever you wondered about in "Refugees".
You're right on one factoid. Our communications these days in general tend toward the truncated.
I actually joined fictionaut to get some keyboard time on flash fiction. Occasionally the stories get longer and I don't post them here. I find I like to write brainless noir stuff. A literary novel takes me four or five days to read. A Jesse Stone novel, one day. I enjoy each but find I can read more Jesse Stone and so do. You are what you eat.
Your observations on Refugees were interesting and instructive. What I will do next - specifically based on you input - will be to decide to crawl back through the tunnel into the basement apartment next door. I'm sure there will be an encounter with Big Bobby.
Who knows what might happen. But for you I might have just let Refugees be a refugee.
Thanks again.

Larry Strattner – May 08, 2009

You know, I commented on your story, which I liked. It just ocured to me you might personally enjoy Go Go Girls of the Apocalypse by Gischler. In a number of aspects your story is better - funnier and might be lengthened into a longer form.

Although the content is different I see in your story some of the things I love about the Brown Dog series by Jim Harrison.

Cheers

Darryl Price – Mar 23, 2009

I've worked in bookstores for over half my life now. I was part of Jack Roth's Yellow Pages Poets and worked in his store for free--until he could pay me!I still buy vinyl too.Thanks for mentioning David Sedaris.

Jennifer Blowdryer – Mar 22, 2009

wow, do you want to date? just read your profile - blowdryer

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