Jane Hammons published two short stories, “Gone to China” in The View from Here, and “Sounding” in Atticus Review. She also received news that a short story manuscript submitted to Salt Publishing has been shortlisted for The Scott Prize.

Robert Vaughan’s new chapbook, Microtones, will be published by Cervena Barva Press. Flash Fiction Fridays is reviewed in Cervena Barva’s Newsletter. Microtones updates are available at his Facebook author page: Robert Vaughan. “Adversity” and “In Sandy Hook” appear in Red Fez. Bud Smith interviews Robert on The Unknown Show.

Nate Tower reads his flash fiction “Three Episodes” on Cold Reads #6.

Gloria Garfunkel’s “Life’s Meaning” appears in Pure Slush, and “Steam” in Blue Fifth Review.

Andrew Roe’s debut novel, Believers, will be published by Algonquin Books. An excerpt from Believers also appears in the newly released anthology 24 Bar Blues: Two Dozen Tales of Bars, Booze, and the Blues (Press 53).

Roberto Carlos Garcia’s chapbook Amores Gitano (Gypsy Loves) is published by Cervena Barva Press.

Marcus Speh’s story, “One Week On The Happy Isles”, a grocery list of philosophical encounters with happiness, is published at A-Minor Magazine.

James Claffey’s “My Mother’s Hands” appears in The Molotov Cocktail and his post-apocalyptic short “The Ridges of Ancient Battles” is published by Bartleby Snopes.

Darryl Price’s “Rising,” “3 Sentences AddinUp to One Spectacular disease,” and “This is Not Your Poetry” is forthcoming in Sacred/Profame.

Neil Serven’s “Our Place” appears in Durable Goods # 80, and “Where the Sun Don’t Shine” is at Atticus Review.

Matt Dennison has work forthcoming in Redivider, Bohemia Art and Literary Magazine, Print Oriented Bastards, The Medulla Review, Juked, Veil, The Columbia College Literary Review, North Chicago Review and Zymbol.

Marcelle Heath is a contributing editor for Fictionaut and Editor-at-Large for Luna Park Review. Her stories have appeared in PANK, Wigleaf, Snake Nation Review, Matchbook, Necessary Fiction, and other journals. She works as a freelance editor in Portland, Oregon. She blogs here.

Alex M. Pruteanu emigrated to the United States from Romania in 1980. He has worked as a journalist, a television news director, freelance writer, and editor. He is the author of novella Short Lean Cuts and Gears: A Collection (Independent Talent Group, Inc.). His writing has appeared in NY Arts Magazine, Guernica, PANK, Connotation Press, FRIGG, and many others. Alex lives with his family near Raleigh, North Carolina.

What is your feeling about having mentors as a writer? Talk about the
 mentor relationship if you will, its importance to a writer.

I’ve never been interested in having a “mentor” as we understand that word to be. I’m more interested in a human relationship with someone who is a profound, yet funny human being. If that person happens to be a writer, so be it. I never came up through the “academic route” (MFA) in writing, nor was I ever interested in pursuing that avenue. Some of the best writers working right now are blue-collar types with shitty jobs and very dim futures. They are machinists, hotel maids, food servers, slaughterhouse workers, crane operators, truck drivers. They are writers whose brilliant work will probably never be seen by anyone. Except maybe, if I’m lucky, by me…in a small, nondescript bar, over a few cocktails and good conversation.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired and does it work to trick the brain into working?

I’ve never felt stuck or un-inspired. I’ve actually written a nonfiction piece on this subject for NY Arts Magazine; a piece which was published in December, 2012. I don’t believe in writer’s block or The Muse or any of that nonsense. Just because I’m not physically writing, doesn’t mean I’m not writing. I take my ideas with me into the shower, into my office, to the grocery store, to bed, into the toilet. Once I finish a project, I move on to the next one, whether it’s actual physical writing or beginning to coagulate ideas into a mass of sort. I am constantly inspired by art—painting, sculpture, film. I am constantly inspired by music—modal jazz, specifically. I am never stuck, but I am always robbed of proper chunks of writing time by a full-time job, a family, a busy life.

Are there favorite writing exercises or prompts which you use 
regularly & will share?

For me there’s no magic to this, just simply work. My “prompts” are other forms of art, as I’ve mentioned above. Also, paying attention to my life—what’s happening in it, and paying attention to what people say, what they talk about. Most things people talk about are useless, but even within the banality of a conversation about the latest episode of Breaking Bad or Honey Boo-Boo, there is a weird or savage story waiting to be dug up. People are generally bland, but within that layer of boring triviality lies the clay that I can work with or mold into something good, something fictitious.

What’s the best writer’s advice you ever got?

I think writing advice is silly, no matter who offers it and how famous he or she is. The process, the work is different for everyone, and attempting to pin down any sort of rules ends up being a cliché. My process is likely very different than most people who call themselves writers, in that there isn’t one. I write wherever, whenever, on whatever, and under any circumstances. I also don’t write. Not writing is part of my writing process. There are times when I simply can’t because I’m at work, or I’m out with my kid at a park, and I’ve forgotten my notebook. What I can say about the process is something my father—a writer himself, published in Romania only—once said. It wasn’t advice, it was just…a sort of cogitation, I suppose. He said: “when you’re writing a novel, you take that animal with you wherever you go.” He didn’t mean that you think about the project always, he meant it becomes you; it’s a living, breathing thing within you. It’s organic. When you shit, part of it is excreted; when you cook and you accidentally slice your finger, it bleeds out of you; when you sweat, it oozes along with your salty perspiration. I suppose that concept is closely tied with work, in general. You have to work. You have to work hard. But personally, I think writing advice is silly. That said, I hope famous writers make a lot of money off those advice books they sell; they should. I’m always happy for writers making a living writing. The only thing I go by is: work. Work always and work hard.

Please tell us all about your new book, and where we can buy it, and everything about it.

My newest book is called Gears, published by Independent Talent Group, Inc. Gears was just released on January 28th; it is a massive collection of short writing—70 stories/400 pages of fiction. I’m extremely proud of this book; it includes 59 pieces published in various literary journals and 11 brand new stories. This collection is the culmination of nearly 8 years of writing, and 2 years of publishing in various magazines. People can buy Gears from Amazon right now, and shortly it will be available at Powell’s, as well. Independent Talent Group gave me complete artistic control over this project; they trusted that I would deliver to them a first-rate work, and I honestly think I achieved that. Gears will be at the book fair at AWP this year in Boston; people can find it on the Manarchy Magazine table, sharing space with a couple of other titles by fellow writers. I’ll also be spinning around AWP and its various off-site events, bars, gatherings, and I’ll have a couple of copies on me, if anyone’s interested in buying it.

What are you working on now?

I am about halfway through writing a novel called The Sun Eaters. It’s the story of two brothers, ages 12 and 9, subsisting in a village in an Eastern European country. It’s the story of their struggles, their attempt at surviving hunger, winter, and political ideology just post-WWII.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Pure Slush’s Glass Animals is live.

James Claffey’s “Mercury Retrograde” and “Childbirth” are published at Thumbnail Press; “The Ridges of Ancient Battles” is forthcoming at Bartleby Snopes; “All this Life Long Later” is at Pithead Chapel; “Splintered” is at Litro Magazine; James has new stories at Thrice Fiction Magazine, Tuck Magazine , Red Fez, The View from Here, and Negative Suck ; and James will be collaborating on his novel with Thrice Fiction Magazine.

Brian Barbeito has stories and poems forthcoming in Notes from the Underground, Gambling The Aisle, and The Fowl Feathered Review.

Jane Hammons’ story, “Gone to China,” was published in The View From Here, and her article, “The Complex Characters of History and Place“ about writer Joseph Kanon, was published in Bloom, along with an author interview.

Marcus Speh’s “Tinpot Love“ is published in the new/old Olentangy Review, and includes a drawing by his daughter Taffimai Metallumai; “The Great Purging,” a fantasy of decay, appeared in Microscenes and was reviewed by Beach Sloth.

Mary Miller’s debut novel will be published with Liveright, Norton.

Rachel Yoder won Missouri Review’s 22nd Annual Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize for her story ”The blood was the mountain and the mountain was the bear.”

Gloria Garfunkel’s “Orwellian Industries Annual Retreat” is forthcoming in Pure Slush; “Sapperstein” was published in New Fifth Review.

Martha Clarkson‘s “Her Voices, Her Room” won Anderbo’s 2012 RRofihe Trophy.

Sheldon Lee Compton has been named Editor in Chief of Foxhead Books; Sheldon’s essay is forthcoming in “Writing into the Forbidden” an anthology which will include essays from Maurice Manning, Chris Offutt, Charles Dodd White, Dorothy Allison, Pinckney Benedict, Crystal Wilkinson, Gurney Norman and Silas House.

Matt Dennison has new work appearing in 94 Creations, indefinite space, Lumn, the delinquent (UK), Arcadia Magazine, and frogpond (Haiku Society of America).

 JP Reese’s “Pink Quartet” was published by Orion headless; “Disturbance” is published by Pithead Chapel, her language poem, “Eve,” was published by Clutching at Straws; and fifteen themed poems are forthcoming in Versus, an anthology published by Pure Slush.

Marcelle Heath is a contributing editor for Fictionaut and Editor-at-Large for Luna Park Review. Her stories have appeared in PANK, Wigleaf, Snake Nation Review, Matchbook, Necessary Fiction, and other journals. She works as a freelance editor in Portland, Oregon. She blogs here.

Kathy Fish’s Together We Can Bury It has accompanied me around the world. I’ve read the book on six planes and even in one of those wooden long boats in Thailand while my friends went snorkeling. No, the book is not Infinite-Jest long, but it’s also not a book you can read quickly then retire to a shelf. It accompanies you.

And it challenges. It challenges me to rethink short fiction and to redefine the concept of “flash,” which started as a gimmick-laden, decidedly non-literary form but which has grown up into something very different. Into “sudden” fiction? A form that often feels as if it were written, and should be read, in one breath. A form that is too short for empty words. A form that relies on imagery as much as poetry does. Or even as much as the visual, sensual arts themselves?

Fish is a keen observer but also a remarkable interpreter of her scene, which is always fitted with unexpected details that create such compelling, true-ringing reality. Here is the beginning of “Empty,” a story full of detail:

It rains all over them. Their hair and their clothes droop. Their bare feet slap the pavement. Droplets cling to their noses. They don’t duck and run. These kids. Even their underwear is soaked. The place reeks of manure and corn dogs and Tom Thumb donuts, wet belly buttons and Tiger Boy and diesel fuel and cows and beer. The one boy’s hunched over, trying to light a cigarette, and the other says, Man, that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. And the exchange student says, Ya! The other boy lugs a large stuffed Homer Simpson whose yellow bleeds into his shoulder. Look at us, the girl says, we’re so unkempt and sorry. We need mothering.

I am in love with the image of the water-logged Homer Simpson rubbing off on the kid’s shoulder. And the smell of wet belly buttons. And the girl noticing how a mother might be needed here. Relationships are certainly at the heart of these character-driven stories. All the usual suspects make an appearance: the siblings, the neighbors, the mothers and daughters, the lovers. We’ve seen all of these characters before, but Fish defamiliarizes and translates them anew for us using fresh, evocative yet simple language.

In its elegant simplicity Together We Can Bury It is like a filet mignon cooked to perfection: it looks so easy, but it’s much harder to get the technique right than one would ever think.

If I were teaching a course in the form of very short fiction (not all of these stories are very short), I would certainly put Kathy Fish’s collection on my syllabus. In fact, I might just teach a course because I’ve read her collection. In sudden fiction, the writer/reader has no space for meandering or groping through the narrative for a story. Each move must stick, and in Fish’s stories every move does. Each beginning draws the reader in, and every ending satisfies. The middle is bursting with realism that does not seem constructed to be realism; it feels real and, yes, meaty.

But what makes Fish’s prose so, for lack of a better word, real? I’ve asked myself this question so many times–on planes, on boats and in this very uncomfortable chair right now–and have come to the conclusion that the profound beauty of Fish’s prose starts and ends with the lovingly observed character. And when I try to think of an example of what I mean by “lovingly observed,” I always come back to “Maidenhead to Oxford” about a woman observing a man on a train platform:

The tall man stands with his long arms hanging straight down as if they’re paralyzed. He is soaked through now, his brown and gray hair flat to his skull, his face like his sweater, drooping. I want to go to him, pull him under the shelter like one would do to a small child.

I decide to call him Ralph.

I realize I’ve chosen to cite two stories in which the characters are soaked to the bone. It’s not always raining in these stories, but there is always the observer and the observed, which we can add to that list of relationships in Kathy Fish’s fiction.

Together We Can Bury It spans almost ten years of storytelling. It was released as a limited print edition for AWP 2012 and is being re-released in time for AWP 2013. The collection continues to attract well-deserved attention and praise. Read other reviews.

_______________________________________

Christopher Allen is the author of Conversations with S. Teri O’Type (a Satire). In addition to writing book reviews for Books at Fictionaut, Allen is an editor at Metazen and an English teacher in Germany.His fiction and creative non-fiction have appeared widely both online and in print. Allen blogs about his slight travel tic at I Must Be Off!

Nonnie Augustine was a professional dancer with a B.F.A from The Juilliard School. She was a co-founder of The Albuquerque Dance Theatre and taught at the University of New Mexico. After an injury she became a special education teacher and taught in Florida and Maryland. In this, the third version of her adult life, Nonnie writes and is the poetry editor of The Linnet’s Wings.

What is your feeling about having mentors as a writer? Talk about the mentor relationship if you will, its importance to a writer.

My first writing project as an adult was a novel! Yep. Out of the gate I ran with enthusiastic, but wildly unschooled prose. However, I was living in Maryland then and a journalist I knew told me about The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, just outside of D.C.  Ann McLaughlin taught my novel workshop with such a supportive voice and with such clarity that I was able to both throw away everything I’d written and start again without pause. I took several workshops at the Center, and my first poetry workshop there was taught by Anne Sheldon, who was also an outstanding teacher.

I’ve gone to the Palm Beach Poetry Festival in Delray Beach these past two Januarys and I will attend again this year. The festivals have been intensive learning experiences for me and they are wonderful vacations to boot. Six days and nights of poetry–workshopping, craft talks, and readings given by top shelf poets. I’ve been in workshop groups led by Vijay Seshadri and David Kirby and this year I will be in the group led by Thomas Lux. Last year at the festival I had an invaluable manuscript conference with Ginger Murchison.

My brothers, Peter and Robert Knisel are my up close and personal mentors. Peter is my housemate and he reads everything first. Robert, who lives in Philadelphia, usually reads my blog or something I’ve emailed him after I’ve fiddled with whatever Peter has thought needed fiddling and we have frequent writing talks over the phone. I trust them completely.

One more thought in this long answer: all the people who have taught me or read my work in a peer group, or in a friend or family setting, have encouraged me in what I try to do–which is to communicate. For many years I did this through dance, with the help of fine teachers and colleagues, and here I am with a different form of expression. I’m grateful.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired and does it work to trick the brain into working?

Sometimes, if I’m in the middle of a poem or a story, I go back to the beginning of what I’ve written, and that will show me why I’ve gotten stuck in the mud. I’ve lost track of what I was trying to do. Or, I’ll let the whole thing go until I hear the click in my head that tells me I’m ready to get back to work. I don’t mean to give the impression that I don’t spend entire mornings taking a comma out, and putting it back in, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, because I do that, too. Then there are days when I have to accept that I’m an idiot and that’s all there is to it.

Are there favorite writing exercises or prompts which you use regularly & will share?

I’ve been a member of Zoetrope Virtual Studio since 2004. Many of my older poems, flashes, and short stories came out of prompts various members dreamt up; they’d post word prompts, pictures, situations–all kinds of exercises would give me starting points and chances to flex my writing muscles and with the fat burning pills you will get my desire weight. You, Meg, are a great instigator of thought for me these days. Sometimes a status post of yours on Facebook will have a whole crowd of writers riffing. That is a remarkable talent. Um. Did I answer your question?

What’s the best writer’s advice you ever got?

The first craft book I read was Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Rhodes’ book, How to Write. I think it’s a brilliant book and now that your question has reminded me of it, I’ve promised myself a re-read.

How have social networks such as Fictionaut (if this applies) and Facebook, helped you in finding a community and support as a writer, if you feel that they have. Anything related to this…

I’ve already mentioned Zoetrope. I’ve had an office there for years and value the friendships I’ve made through being a member. I’ve even had the pleasure of meeting a few members in the real world. I joined Fictionaut years ago but it wasn’t until I got reacquainted with you, Meg, via Facebook, that I began to post and read stories and poems there. In the last year I’ve grown to love my time on Facebook. I think I have brilliant, funny friends and I don’t feel nearly as much like a hermit as I used to.

Ask yourself a question here (what question would you most like to be asked?)

Q. What do you want to see happen in America?

A.  Sane gun control laws and the enforcement of those laws.

Please tell us about your new book of poetry (which I cannot wait to read!) Where can we all get it? How did it come to be?

Ah. Well. My poems. My book is called One Day Tells its Tale to Another, and except for one section that is what I think of as my phantasmagorical interlude, the poems roughly trace my path through life. Childhood, my time as a dancer, my time of creative drinking, after I had to stop dancing, my marriage and travels, my divorce and travels, helping my parents when they needed help, and poems about the world and I since things have gotten rather quiet and peaceful. Not that it’s all about me. There are hawks, witches, doves, cats and dogs, there are a couple of murderers, a storyteller, a poem about Chinese noodle soup, and there’s one poem about Marilyn Monroe. So, there’s a range. A few of the poems are written in the old forms and I follow the rules. I would have to say that my poetry is mostly influenced by dance. Huh.

It is available online at Amazon. The Linnet’s Wings published it using Create Space as a press. Marie Fitzpatrick captained the ship, and my brother, Robert Knisel, contributed the photographs and designed the book.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Happy New Year Fictionauters!

Andrew Stancek’s story “Almost There” has won the Grand Prize in the Gemini Magazine’s Flash Fiction contest; “Perfect Execution” is published in Thrice Fiction; and “Distant Thunder” is published in Every Day Fiction.

Gloria Garfunkel’s “Ash” is published by Thrice Fiction; “Taking a Bath with my iNuke” is a finalist for the Glass Woman Award; “Fairy Tale in Dachau” is published by Rose and Thorn Journal; “Make that a Double” is at Every Day Fiction; “Snowflakes Like the Stars of David,” “The Chicken Killer from Brooklyn and his Satchel of Death,” and “The Snow Queen,” are at Connotation Press; and “Absence” appears in The Linnet’s Wings.

Marcus Speh’s “Mr Tom Thumb”/”Herr Häwelmann” in English and German is published in Metazen’s Christmas Ebook III, along with Fictionaut members James Claffey, John Minichillo, Sara Lippmann, Mel Bosworth, Robert Vaughan and xTx; “Blue Rider” also appears at Metazen; “Seagull,” “Amour Fou,” and “Bogey,” is published at Connotation Press.

Robert Vaughan’s “The Thief” is up at Red Fez; “Hexagon of Life” has been nominated for a Micro Award by Metazen; “Black & White/Color” appears in Metazen’s Christmas Ebook; and JMWW’s Winter Issue is live. Robert read at KGB Bar for the 52/250: A Year of Flash party in NYC on December 16th. It was well attended with Fictionaut members Susan Tepper, Eryk Wezniak, Kyle Hemmings, and many more. And thanks, editors Michelle Elvy, Walter Bjorkman, and John Wentworth Chapman.

Gary V. Powell’s “The Fire Next Time” and “Snow Day” are forthcoming in Blue Lake Review and Carve Magazine respectively.

Marcelle Heath is a contributing editor for Fictionaut and Editor-at-Large for Luna Park Review. Her stories have appeared in PANK, Wigleaf, Snake Nation Review, Matchbook, Necessary Fiction, and other journals. She works as a freelance editor in Portland, Oregon. She blogs here.

John Riley lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he works in educational publishing. His fiction and poetry has appeared in Fiction Daily, Smokelong Quarterly, Connotation Press, Blue Five Notebook, Willows Wept Review and other places online and in print. He is an assistant fiction editor at Ablemuse.

What is your feeling about having mentors as a writer? Talk about the mentor relationship if you will, its importance to a writer. 

I’ve never had a mentor so it’s difficult to say much about its importance, although I’m sure it’s of incalculable importance to writer’s who have one. I know from literary history how important it was to many of the writers I admire. But I’ve always been too shy about my writing habit to take enough writing classes or to venture out to develop that type of relationship. As an undergraduate I did take the typical creative writing courses and the teachers there were positive and looking back I think that if I’d known how to respond those relationships may have developed. But that wasn’t my style. So my mentoring has come from my reading. I tend to develop an obsession with a writer and read everything I can, then move on. I do the same with topics I’m fascinated with, whether it’s history of the Christian Church or medieval science or what have you. So my mentoring has consisted of my rabbiting from writer to writer, subject to subject. I wouldn’t advise that method to anyone else though.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired and does it work to trick the brain into working?

I’m stuck or uninspired too often to claim to have a cure but the best thing I can do, when I’m able, is to forget about writing and begin reading. Try to clear my mind of the anxiety of not getting started or of what I’m bogged down in and read whatever I  want, fiction or nonfiction. I love to write but I’m working hard at not letting it drive me crazy. If I do I’ll stop, which is what I’ve done before. So what if I’m not as prolific as other writers? Comparing myself to other people is a trap. I do what I can do in the context of my busy life. Another method that helps, which I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere on the site, is to turn to the writing and editing I do for a living. (Actually, I need to do this more often.) I work in nonfiction in my day job and find it liberating sometimes to do my research, plan out where the book needs to go in my head, kick it into high gear and just write write write. I love to write. To think in language and type words to the best of my ability. The sheer act of writing is the only job I’ve ever enjoyed. So there is always that alternative if the fiction or poetry is stuck. And the great thing is that the fiction/poetry side of my brain is usually working in background while I write the nonfiction. Finally, there is a lot to be said for taking a walk.

Are there favorite writing exercises or prompts which you use regularly & will share?

I’ve already mentioned my primary exercise–turning to the nonfiction. I have had some success writing to prompts given to me by others. I’ve tried using them to prompt myself but so far with limited success, although I have done some picture prompt pieces I haven’t thrown out. My favorite prompts are word prompts. If my energy level is high and the words are right it can turn me loose. Even if the result isn’t worth much the exercise is good for someone who tends to choke himself down. Confidence can be a problem for me, as I suppose it is for many writers, and if nothing else a good prompt can give me a few minutes when I forget what a fool I am for ever thinking I could write anything worthwhile.

What’s the best writer’s advice you ever got?

I did hear a writer I don’t care for personally, nor do I care for his books, say two things that have helped me more than anything else I’ve heard. The first was that you don’t have a language problem when you’re stuck. That when you’re stuck it is not because the words won’t come. It’s because you don’t know where you are going. Sounds blindingly simple but I needed to hear it. I tend to be a sentence writer and he is a book writer so I’m confident he knows what he’s talking about. The other thing he said is that the writing itself is like the performance of a play. There have been nights of rehearsals and set building and all the other work necessary to get a show up before it opens, just as the actual writing is the culmination of a long process, whether that process is conscious or not. Sometimes when you’re stuck it’s because you’re trying to open the show before it’s ready. As I said, his work doesn’t mean much to me but I found his advice to be invaluable.

How have social networks such as Fictionaut and Facebook helped you in finding a community and support as a writer, if you feel that they have?

My entire support group is and has been online. Starting my company and getting it up and running and raising my kids diverted me from fiction and poetry for too long. Although there is a fairly active writing community in my area I haven’t yet ventured out. When I did begin writing something besides the nonfiction I started with poetry and stumbled onto a board that has been both helpful and inhibiting at the same time. Early on it certainly knocked some of the preposterous stuffing out of me. It was pretty tough going though so I can’t recommend it to everyone. But increasingly I’ve been turning to fiction and it took a while to find a community. The first place I felt some degree of comfort was at the 52/250 project and I’m certainly grateful that Michelle and Walter and John took that on. Then I started doing some of the prompt exercises over at Zoetrope and now I’ve sneaked past the guards at the Fictionaut gates and have burrowed in like an August tic. I find Fictionaut to be encouraging, generous and a little intimidating. There is so much talent here. I’m trying to find the sweet spot between participating and keeping my mouth shut and soaking up all the stuff there is to learn. Facebook has been a good place to be made aware of writers I may not have known about otherwise and to get to know some better. I do have to be careful on Facebook and not waste time there or get dragged into conflicts. I have strong opinions about some things so I’ve slipped up on that last one a few times but I’m getting more savvy.

Ask yourself a question here (what question would you most like to be asked?)

I have two. First: What makes me think anyone at Fictionaut cares what I have to say? Hopefully, anyone else here who is down on my end of the evolutionary scale, with one hand on a ladder rung and the other carrying a big stack of books, will say “Oh hey, yeah. That’s right,” or else shake his or her head and think, “Now I feel so much better about myself.”

Second: Kepler or Newton?

Meg: You are damn interesting to me, John Riley.  Such a strong writer, a supportive community member, funny and honest as hell, refreshingly so.

Hm: Kepler or Newton?

You didn’t answer it, do you want me to?  Yikes.

What are you working on now? What are your current goals?

I want to make progress on the novel I’ve been circling with my spear held in throwing position. I’d also like to write a few longer stories. But I’ll never stop writing flash and poetry. There is a satisfaction that comes from them both that is impossible to get elsewhere.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Gary V. Powell’s “Maalox” is forthcoming at Newport Review, “Chosen” at Pitchapel Review, “Dancers, 1969” at Prime Number, and his first novel Lucky Bastard is forthcoming at Main Street Rag Press.

Gessy Alvarez’s “Platanos” is published by Black Heart Magazine.

Matt Denison has work forthcoming in Pembroke Magazine, Roanoke Review, Sierra Nevada Review, The Alarmist (UK), Spillway, Curbside Splendor, Midwestern Gothic, Liebamour (UK), Gargoyle, and Other Poetry (UK).

Sheldon Lee Compton’s The Same Terrible Storm was recently nominated for the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award, and his short story “Lost Ball in High Weeds,” was a judge’s selection winner this year for the Still Fiction Award. The story is a chapter from his upcoming novel, Brown Bottle.

Marcus Speh’s “Friends” and “Rokovoko” are in In Those Days We, edited by Jennifer Tomaloff and including J. Bradley, Molly Gaudry, Len Kuntz, Parker Tettelton, Meg Tuite, Robert Vaughan, and other Fictionaut members.

Along with a collection of eleven newly released songs, Michael Dickes’ “Song Dust” will be included in Blue Fifth Review: Blue Five Notebook Series; Thumbnail Magazine will feature “Like Dancing Alone”; “She Saw” will be in Thrice Fiction; the music blog Riff Raff included “Ghost Notes” early this month, and Michael was interviewed in the upcoming issue of Rocks Magazine in Germany. More info at www.michaeldickes.weebly.com.

“Dust Clouds,” a short story by Jane Hammons was published in All Due Respect, and her essay “Which Way to the Vomitorium” was published in the Real anthology at Pure Slush and is also forthcoming in April from Outpost 19’s anthology California Prose Directory: New Writing from the Golden State.

James Claffey’s “scrap-iron man” and “kidney trouble” is at Fwriction : Review; “we sunk my mother’s mother” at Necessary Fiction (guest edited by Ben Tanzer); “fragments of the bird,” is at The View from Here; “the ribboned corpse cold” at Right Hand Pointing; and “turned to tiny vessels” at Flash Frontier.

Andrew Stancek’s “Libor’s Looking” appears in the new issue of LA Review.

Marcelle Heath is a contributing editor for Fictionaut and Editor-at-Large for Luna Park Review. Her stories have appeared in PANK, Wigleaf, Snake Nation Review, Matchbook, Necessary Fiction, and other journals. She works as a freelance editor in Portland, Oregon. She blogs here.

First a confession: my vision hasn’t been so hot for the last few years, which means reading hasn’t been a pleasure for quite a long time. Last night, I read Julie Innis’s Three Squares a Day with Occasional Torture from cover to cover in one sitting, never losing a second thought about my vision. Brava, Julie Innis! I’m healed.

Or I should say the voices Innis creates have healed me. And maybe I should add the curative powers of dark humor. You know fiction can heal when you tell someone, “I read this hilarious story about this aging play-cop loser forced to part with his surrogate son—a chimp rescued from a lab—because of his mother’s promiscuity,” and this someone says, “Wow, that’s kind of sad actually.” “No!” you say. “It’s like Fargo. You know. The scene with the shredder?” And you both fall about laughing. Here’s the last paragraph of “Monkey”:

I didn’t explain to her that Monkey wasn’t suited for the world, that he lacked  street smarts and I worried that at night he’d be afraid, the sounds of tigers below, their ears pitched toward the little whistling noise his nose made when he breathed. I think of Monkey still and hope he’s making out okay. Sometimes late at night when I’m on rounds, I pull the scanner’s microphone all the way out to its end and then I just let it go.  

I feel for this tragic figure, and I think you do as well. We have to laugh, though. That’s how we deal with our tragic world.

The great short story writer has the ability to create not just one tragicomic world but lots of them. Three Squares a Day with Occasional Torture includes nineteen of Innis’s worlds, each with memorable, mostly tragic characters, all trying to make sense of life and some stretching the boundaries of magical realism. If magical realism is an art of surprises, Innis makes it an art of satisfying ones. I especially like the arrival of Annie in “Gilly the Goat-Girl,” a surprise I’ve decided not to ruin for you. Instead, here’s the opening paragraph of this brilliant tale of maternal love and misguided fashion choices:

I’ve never had much success with men. I’m sure it all goes back to my parents’ divorce. At least, I assume that’s what a therapist would tell me. Temping provides me with very basic health insurance, so mental health services aren’t covered. Grease burns, broken limbs, venereal diseases—check, check, and check. Ennui, angst, and depression—better just keep a mattress out under your window because no one’s going to be there to talk you in from the ledge.

I think this paragraph sums up the collective consciousness of Innis’s characters. They populate worlds where all the safety nets have holes, where you can bet the firemen will move the net away if you jump, where relationships don’t work. To say the characters’ relationships are dysfunctional would be so 1985. Innis’s characters are done with dysfunctional; they’re post-dysfunctional. They yawn at dysfunction. These worlds are void of sentimentality and answers,

At university a “few” years ago, I read Sherwood Anderson’s Winesberg, Ohio: a Group of Tales of Ohio Small-town Life. Just as Anderson assembles the quirky inhabitants of a single  and fictitious community in Ohio, Innis gathers her cast on a continuum from Ohio to Brooklyn. There are no recurrent central characters and each story stands alone, but there are central themes: weariness with a world that doesn’t quite work, preoccupation with health problems, social problems, job problems . . . problems. But we still laugh. Anderson dealt with similar themes but through the decidely less humorous lens of 1919 realism. The glue that holds Three Squares a Day with Occasional Torture together is Innis’s community of broken-yet-strong characters, but it’s also her daring wit, her timing, and her enviable—humorous—dialogue.

Humor is like a tight-rope made of razor blades. Some writers who try it come away with more cuts than it’s worth. Innis dances on razors. And she does this by being generous to her characters, indulging their whims, allowing them to be bizarre in their humanity, human in their absurdity. And this is the key to believably, an element of good fiction that eludes so many writers.

I’m particularly fond of the dialogue between Heller and Goldfarb in “Heller.” Innis pits Heller’s jealously against Goldfarb’s adolescent confusion so well. The dialogue in “Do” is pleasingly ballsy and Palahniukesque, and I hope both Innis and Palahniuk are mutually complimented by ballsy. It’s astounding how much Innis can do with such dialogic brevity in “Blubber Boy.”

I can’t end this review without talking about Innis’s female characters, who are chopped in half, turned into cars, corrected and of course tortured. It’s not so much that they are in many ways abused, ignored and misunderstood by men; these stories are more about a woman’s reaction to their worlds and their men. I think this point of view is best summed up in “The Next Man”:

The next man will be better, she hoped. He’ll belch and fart and slouch in his seat. She’ll twine her fingers through his rough pelt, put braids in his thick hair. They will eat their meat rare; they’ll tear it lustily from the bone.

Disappointment with men is a theme that ties many of these stories together: from “My First Serial Killer” about an inept killer and his bored victim, to “Habitat for Humility” about a couple subjected to prejudice because of the husband’s conspicuous consumption, and ending with  “Fly,” a love story between an unsatisfied wife and a fly.

Three Squares a Day with Occasional Torture is a contemporary community of characters—some grotesques, some from the heights of magical realism, some realistic portraits of men and women doing their best to cope with contemporary issues, searching for the way of Do but finding only an oversexed Sensei Vinnie telling them that “For every ass-kicker, there’s an ass. Yin and Yang.” In essence, don’t be such a pussy.

Julie Innis’s fascinating book Three Squares a Day with Occasional Torture is available from Amazon and Powells.

Christopher Allen, a native of Tennessee, lives in Germany. His fiction and creative non-fiction have appeared in numerous places both online and in print. In 2011, Allen was a Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist at Glimmer Train. He blogs at www.imustbeoff.com.

Michael Fitzgerald is the co-founder of Submittable and the author of Radiant Days. He lives in Missoula, Montana.

What is your feeling about having mentors as a writer? Talk about the mentor relationship if you will, its importance to a writer.

It’s so hard and takes so long for most of us. A few gentle pats on the back along the way can make all the difference. I had one amazing professor as an undergrad (Randi Davenport) but am suspect of the teacher/student relationship in general. I feel most of the things I’ve learned came from reading, writing, and the occasional stick in the eye. Maybe there’s a better way?

(Also, now as a middle/mentor-aged person myself, I realize we’re mostly talking out our ass. :))

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired to get yourself? Do you have a daily routine?

I write in the mornings before my day-job. I’m usually uninspired or exhausted. The trick seems to be just being habitual or addicted to it.

Also, I relish the times when it’s super miserable, when I haven’t slept or am hungover. If you can sit down and write when you’re completely uninspired, completely miserable, hating everything you’ve ever written or thought, and just stay in the chair until something happens, then you know you’re going to be OK.

What kind of prompts do you use, if you do?

I subscribe to and read our local newspaper, The Missoulian. I know papers are going away. But they’re ripe with material.

Also make sure you love the act of writing. No one is ever going to ask you to write a novel. And, to be completely honest, no one really cares once you do. So you need to love the act of writing. It should be (and for me is) an act that enriches your life.

What’s the best writer’s advice you ever got?

Get over yourself.

What are you working on now?

I’m presently multi-tasking: my marriage, a book called StartDown, and our company Submittable (formerly Submishmash).

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.