Kate Christensen is the author of six novels, most recently The Astral, which was published in June. Her others include The Epicure’s Lament and The Great Man, which won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner award. She has written reviews and essays for numerous publications, including The New York Times Book Review, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, and the Wall Street Journal.

Q (Meg Pokrass): What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired and does it work to trick the brain into working?

I often feel stuck and uninspired; it’s part of the job of writing as I know it. The only thing that gets me writing is sheer discipline — there’s no trick I know of except to Just Do It. I open the file that contains my novel every morning, often with a cross between bleary disregard and intense fear. Then I go through an intricate, highly disorganized series of warm-up procrastinations — email, online Scrabble, household chores, buying things online, paying bills, taking walks with my dog, making soup, and so forth. Sometime in the mid-afternoon, a focused anxiety sets in — I realize that if I don’t start now, I won’t get it done. I jump in when the fear of not writing conquers the fear of writing. And thus I fulfill my word-limit quota every day until the first draft is done.

Suggestions for making characters believable?

Believe in them yourself. Let them jump the tracks of the story and drive the train themselves to wherever they want to take it. Feel what they feel as if you were in their bodies so viscerally your entire awareness of yourself is submerged as you write them into being.

Do you know who they are before you write or do you find out who they are in the writing? Do you already know these people?

In the case of first-person narrators, I have meditated on them for a long time — months or even years — before I start the novel. Five of my six novels have been written this way — someone’s voice, not my own, starts running in my head, and as it does, his or her circumstances and desires become increasingly clear to me. Each novel starts when something begins to shift and change in their lives, to cause them to turn outward and react and affect other people, which sets a plot in motion — this gives me a running jump into their narrative. A novel’s first sentence — “All the lonely people indeed,” or “I stood alone at the front of the boat” or “Toxic water streamed with gold like the belly of a turning fish: Sunset over Newtown Creek,” emerges from a long-term cohabitation in my skull with the narrator — and from the first sentence, it’s their show.

What makes us care about characters?

All of my lifelong favorite novels contain characters who seem so vivid and complex and real, I remember each novel in terms of them — not the plot, not the stylistic devices, but the people in them. I can’t forget them, I continue to think and worry about them after I finish the book — they burst free of the novel and assume independent lives. I remember them as if they were people I’ve known well and will see again some day. They are their novels.  The House of Mirth is Lily Bart — Middlemarch is its people — A Handful of Dust is poor Tony — The Horse’s Mouth is Gulley Jimson; Jude the Obscure is Jude and Sue, Housekeeping is Sylvie — and so forth.

We care about the characters who make us feel less alone in our own flaws, yearnings, and secrets — not the noblest or nicest or most exemplary characters, and not the ones who exist primarily to manifest a plot or stylistic strategy, but the ones who are most like us, the ones who think and feel and talk and screw up of their own accord.

Tell us about your sixth and newest novel, The Astral. How was this novel born? Any background on how it came to you…

The Astral came from an original, early, inspiring (to me) image of Harry. His character and voice first arose in my imagination a couple of years before I started writing the book. I saw him as a well-intentioned, hapless everyman poet who’s been turned upside down by things that have happened to him before the novel begins; it opens with him in mid-free-fall. He’s been cast out by his wife, and he’s drifting around North Brooklyn, lost and suddenly alone.

Harry first occurred to me when I was married and living in a house in Greenpoint I owned with my then-husband. Just before I started writing the novel, my own marriage ended, and I found myself adrift in North Brooklyn, feeling lost and more alone than I had felt in many years. My novels have an uncanny way of predicting, echoing, or paralleling reality in ways I can never foresee.

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.

Susan Tepper:  Often a story begins with a word or two that pulls you in by the neck.  Such is the case, Sheldon, with your story “Where Alligators Sleep.” Your first line reads:

The husband and wife had been side by side in the whiskey light of the room for years.

Whiskey light.  I don’t know quite what that is.  But I can taste it, smell it, see its amber essence.  I was immediately hooked.  What does whiskey light mean to this story?

Sheldon Lee Compton:  Thank you for those kind words about the opening, Susan.  I appreciate it.  Whiskey light.  Well, I saw the room sort of soaked in a brownish color, in fact, I saw everything about this couple’s room in that way.  I thought of the color of whiskey when you pour a couple fingers full and the bottle tilts into the light just a bit and that brown color.  Beyond that, I’m always working to find what I think of the “first choice” words.  The obvious would have been the “the brown light” of the room.  Well, I go to my second choice, then third, then fourth and usually stick with that.  It links back to a moment in a Thomas Pynchon novel when Pynchon has someone wipe themselves after using the bathroom outdoors not with “grass” but with “clovers.”  As shown with Pynchon, even with nouns writers always have the chance to make a more original moment happen on the page.

Susan:  That is exactly how I took it in as a reader.  You accomplished your mission, not something we writers always get to do.  The whiskey light puts its cast over the story.  It gives us insights into them as characters, as well.  You named him Leviathan, her Mary.  What is that all about?

Sheldon: Of course there are the religious aspects at play there, but I took more pains in thinking of the name Leviathan than I did with Mary.  This story is the first section of a longer one I’ve been working on for awhile.  When I started thinking about it several months ago, I knew certain things about the old man.  I knew that later in the story he would transform into sort of a monstrous character.  The name Leviathan brings that home for me, and it also has the added benefit of being shortened to Levi, a common name for the region in which the story is set, Eastern Kentucky.  Mary is the Mary you’re thinking about when I say there are certainly religious aspects to the names.  And the reasoning there is that Mary will eventually be the character who brings Levi under control, calms him.  At least I think that’s what will happen.  I never actually plot any story in any way.  I just let things happen and then look back and make sure I plowed the line straight enough for a good harvest.

Susan: “…plowed the line straight enough for a good harvest” is such a beautiful way of expressing your process.

Now, you have them sleeping in a room that I feel is full of love.  And because of circumstances, this room has twin beds.  There is 6 feet of space separating them.  Why don’t they push the beds together?

Sheldon:  That’s a good question, and I’ll get to it but I just wanted to say that I’ve been editing in my head since we discussed the “whiskey light.” I remember I later refer to the light as “the old brown light” near the end of the story. So, I’ve edited in my head to delete the word “brown” from that sentence. Okay, sorry.

The twin beds. Well, that detail comes from the half-memory I’m drawing from in writing the story. For about a year, shortly after parents divorced, my mom and I lived with my grandmother who was, at the time, living with and caring for her elderly parents. They were what we’d call bedfast where I’m from. They rarely left the bed. For whatever reason this couple, the real couple, my great-grandparents, had twin beds. Maybe it was linked to the fact that couples did that way back in the day and then pushed them together if they wanted to be intimate. I’m not sure. But that’s why. And then, by extension, I realized it allowed me the opportunity to play with the idea of the two of them crossing the space that separated them in the room and also crossing the space between time, as both are beginning to lose track of the present and past. It was one of those details I thought was going to just be a detail, and then watched it become something larger I could build on within the structure of the story. I rely on those moments, those surprises. It’s what makes the process most enjoyable for me.

Susan:  There is a great deal of pain in this story, too.  You write:  “There is sadness all around, spread out like mud through a hog pen.”

Do you think contemporary literature can exist outside the confines of some sort of pain?  Real, existential, or otherwise?

Sheldon: I have to be perfectly honest in saying my thoughts on writing rarely if ever extend so deeply.  I’m just a storyteller.  There are half a dozen people who live within ten miles of me who can sit in front of a gas station and spin a better story while eating a bag of chips than I can during a three hour session at the computer.  I mean, of course I’m aware of theory, literary esthetics, etc., and other aspects of craft, but I keep a very simple approach in mind.  Pain is an often leaned to theme in my own work and I know that my writing could not exist, most likely, outside those confines entirely.  I’ve lived a difficult life and I’ve paid attention.  All of that comes out in the work, as it does for anyone doing anything creatively.  Contemporary literature does seem to deal more with the idea of pain, a pained existence, angst, and so forth, but I couldn’t explain why.  I just tell my stories and hope folks like them, connect with them.  They’re not going to be laughing afterwards most of the time, but the connection is everything, no matter the means by which we arrive there.

Susan:  “… but the connection is everything…”

Bravo!  That’s what I believe too.  Shel, thanks for a most enlightening chat!

Read “Where Alligators Sleep“ by Sheldon Lee Compton

Monday Chat is a bi-weekly series in which Susan Tepper has a conversation with a Fictionaut writer about one of his or her stories. Susan is Assistant Editor of Istanbul Literary Review, fiction editor of Wilderness House Literary Review, co-author of new novel What May Have Been, and hosts FIZZ, a reading series at KGB Bar.

Q (Katrina Gray): Hi, Doug Holder. First things first: you’re the poet and publisher, not the Republican representative of Florida’s 70^th district, right?

A (Doug Holder): Yes–I know about that guy. I first ruled “Doug Holder” on Google, but then he hit the scene and we split it half and half.
He is  a former real estate agent and very conservative– I am a poet, teacher, and mental health worker– got 10 years on the guy, and we look nothing a like. I never liked Florida–hate the heat–and I swing more to the left.

I see you’re new here on Fictionaut, but already you’ve taken it by storm. What (and who) drew you to the community, and what do you think about it so far? Dish it out; we can take it.

Novelist Paul Steven Stone formally invited me to join the group–he has been a member for awhile.  Susan Tepper, another novelist, and a well-respected Fictionaut member alerted her horde of fans and they signed up for the group.Paul is an interesting cat–he is the Creative Director for W.B. Mason a big office supply firm here in Boston, and came up with the brand “Who, but W.B. Mason?” He is the author of the novel Or So It Seems. Susan I met through my friend Gloria Mindock, the founder of the Cervena Barva Press in my neck of the woods Somerville, Mass.  Mindock is a member of Fictionaut. Susan is a well-known writer in New York City, the co-author of What May Have Been: Letters of Jackson Pollock & Dori G, as well as our Fiction Editor at the Wilderness House Literary Review. She recently asked me to be a Small Press panelist at Hunter College in New York–had a great time!

What I like about Fictionaut is that it has a serious look–a literary format. If you visit you don’t get the feeling you are at some piker site–and the quality of the members is impressive of course. I have gotten good feedback about my work already–and I haven’t experienced any unprofessional nastiness.

Now, on to the reason we’re sitting down here together: the Ibbetson Street group. What sets Ibbetson Street Press apart from others? And how did you get so many group members in less than a month? I’m impressed.

Well, I hope besides Susan’s help,  people joined because they know about our independent press and literary magazine “Ibbetson Street.” We were founded in 1998 at a Bagel Shop in Cambridge, Mass. by me, my wife Dianne Robitaille, and my friend Richard Wilhelm.  We have published over 80 poetry titles: both chapbooks and perfect bound editions, and 29 issues of Ibbetson Street. For the most part all of this has been funded by ourselves; my wife works as an R.N and I teach at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass and Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and work as Mental Health Counselor at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. We are now affiliated with Endicott College and have an office there, but before this we never applied for grants, non-profit status, etc… We survived by hustling and devoted ourselves to creating a literary community for people outside of the academy. We believe in grassroots literary activism, and Steve Glines, Harris Gardner and I founded the Bagel Bards, a literary group affiliated with Ibbetson Street that has been meeting every Saturday morning since March, 2004 at the Au Bon Pain Cafe in Davis Square, Somerville. We have everyone from professors to homeless people, young and old; we are open to anyone who is interested in writing. We put out a year anthology and have an online magazine. So I think we are more than about publishing–we are about community.

You know what else impresses me? Your CV. You ran poetry groups at McLean Hospital, where Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, and David Foster Wallace all spent time. What do you see as the link between creativity and mental illness? Is it a chicken-and-egg thing, where one causes the other?

Many of the poets you mentioned suffered from Manic Depressive Illness. Studies have shown that writers and creative people have a higher incidence of mental illness and even suicide. In fact of all writers poets have the shortest life span–go figure? Probably because they make the least money! I have worked at McLean Hospital for almost 30 years and have run poetry groups for patients on and off for many years there. Researchers are finding that artists, creative people, have certain structures and chemistry in their brains similar to Schizophrenics. Mental illness maybe latent in many creative people, and since there is so much introspection on the part of poets for instance- going near the abyss  and all that jazz–that this may be a trigger. Still it is a very gray area–much to be researched. But the romantic notion of the “Mad Poet” is just that romantic--it is a harrowing disease and I don’t think anyone would want to go through with it in the name of art. Plath wound up with her head in the oven, Sexton died of asphyxiation in her garage, with a bottle of whiskey by her side– Lowell died of a heart attack at 60 in the back of NYC cab with a picture by Lucien Freud by his side–it does a number on you.

What is it about the Boston area that inspires poetry? The history, the legendary institutions? The people? The chowder?

I had enough chowder to last a lifetime. I love the tradition of Boston/Cambridge. I mean all the great poets  who were here: T.S. Eliot, Longfellow, E.E. Cummings, Robert Lowell, Ann Sexton, and the list goes on. We have a great poetry book- store– the famous Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square run by my friend Ifeany Menkiti and formerly owned by Louisa Solano and before that Gordon Carnie. Solano told me many stories about people who passed through like Kerouac, Seamus Heaney, Allen Ginsberg, and many others. I live in Somerville, Mass. ( It is right next to Cambridge and Boston) that I call the “Paris of New England” because of all the writers who reside here. Guys like poet Lloyd Schwartz, novelist Claire Messud, Steve Almond, poet Joe Torra, poet Afaa Michael Weaver, poet Harris Gardner, writer Pagan Kennedy  live here and the list goes on. In 2003 I founded the Somerville News Writers Festival with Timothy Gager (A Fictionaut member) and we always have a great roster of writers and poets from Franz Wright to Junot Diaz, all who live in the immediate area. I also am the arts/columnist for The Somerville News, and I have had the opportunity to interview countless authors, etc… like Robert Creeley, Elizabeth Swados, Sam Cornish, Hugh Fox, Michele Hoover, Tom Perrotta, Steve Almond, Richard Hoffman, Clayton Eshleman… it is a jumping place to be! I got my M.A. in Literature at Harvard University, and studied with some top shelf folks so I am well aware of the literary traditions of the area. There are over 100 colleges in the immediate vicinity which infuses such a rich cultural sensibility to the place. I feel lucky to have lived here as long as I have.

What kind of submissions make your heart go *zing*?

Well as Auden said anything that makes me cut myself while shaving. I can usually tell if a poem is going to take me somewhere after the first few lines.  I love detail, arresting imagery, inventive use of words, surprises, humor–all the usual suspects.

Now I’m going to draw on your wisdom. You’ve been writing poetry for decades. How have you seen it change over the years, and what direction do you see it headed?

Well I have seen the growth of online magazines, etc.. I prefer print, but I think they both will co-exist in the future. I think we will see more poetry and music mixes. I am also  seeing more plays written in verse. I think the Barbarians will rush the gates of the academy– the universities, and as a result the small presses, and the grassroots literary movements will take on a new and more important role. Just look at the growth of Print- On-Demand, and Self-Publishing–I have been asked to talk about this new trend at various venues–I say it is a new age for publishing and poetry!

Katrina Gray checks in with Fictionaut groups every Friday. She lives in Nashville with the writer John Minichillo and their lovechild. She is the editor-in-chief of Atticus Review, and she blogs about mostly non-literary things at www.katrinagray.com.

Terri Kirby Erickson is the award-winning author of three collections of poetry, including her latest, In the Palms of Angels (Press 53). Her work has been published in numerous literary journals, anthologies and other publications, including The Christian Science Monitor, JAMA, Verse Daily and the North Carolina Literary Review. She was recently one of eleven winners of the international Nazim Hikmet Poetry award. For more information about her work, please see her website. You can also order In the Palms of Angels on Amazon, in fine bookstores or other Internet venues.

It’s been some months since the last Digest post; here’s a recap of some spring & summer news:

Literary magazines come and go at a rapid clip. For example: Charles McGrath once noted “the typical lifespan for a literary magazine appears to be roughly that of a major household appliance.” And when asked what the darkest moment in the history of magazine Grand Street was, editor Ben Sonnenberg answered simply, “When we ran out of money.” This past March, Open City announced it is ceasing publication due to lack of funds. In his introduction to They’re At It Again: Stories from Twenty Years of Open City, an anthology published in June celebrating the magazine’s rich history, magazine co-founder Thomas Beller questions the ability for literary magazines to be both timely and timeless. Somehow Open City managed both, pushing literary boundaries and supporting writers like Sam Lipsyte, Lara Vapnyar, and Jonathan Ames, who called the magazine “the new Paris Review” for his generation. Though its magazine arm has folded, Open City Books will continue publishing.

In The Guardian, New York Times, and elsewhere, many observe a contemporary literary magazine renaissance; thanks to the ease of online and desktop publishing, more magazines are arriving than disappearing. In May, Atticus Books launched Atticus Review under the banner “six degrees left of literature.” Such transitions aren’t new: Works in Progress and New American Review were both from major book publishers, as are Fifty-Two Stories and Five Dials today. Edited by Katrina Gray, Atticus Review is a weekly online journal bringing together “stories, poems, electric literature, and other genre-busting words of wisdom and interactive whimsy.” Interested writers should visit the submissions page on Submishmash.

The January premiere of the new Asymptote included 77 writers from 17 different languages featuring Thomas Bernhard, Mary Gaitskill, and Aimé Césaire. Its second issue in April included new work from José Saramago, Bharati Mukherjee, and Justin Taylor. Along with Words Without Borders and Cerise Press, Asymptote is part of a new strain of internationally focused online literary magazines with quality design and high editorial standards. Alongside a translation, the magazine makes the work available in its original language in both audio and text. Asymptote is continually looking for translated work and 1,500 word essays about relatively unknown authors writing in languages other than English at: editors@asymptotejournal.com.

A decade ago, David Barringer identified the “new graphic literary journal,” which gave greater attention to design and illustration to broaden audiences and “please a whole lot more.” Who doesn’t swoon over intricately designed issues of Ninth Letter and McSweeney’s? Yet Ann Kjellberg’s simply designed new Little Star stands out as an elegant exception to an increasingly flashy world of letters. Kjellberg worked on staff at The New York Review of Books and at Farrar, Straus & Giroux and is Joseph Brodsky’s literary executor, from whose poetry the magazine title is taken from. Reminiscent of another “little”—Margaret Anderson’s The Little Review, the early 20^th century one-woman show that brought Joyce’s Ulysses to American readers—the first two issues of Little Star included work from Adam Zagajewski, C.K. Williams, and Jamaica Kincaid alongside the more experimental “Manifesto” from Padgett Powell and conversations between 1930s Russian avant-gardists. Issue three is expected in November. Little Star welcomes submissions of poetry and prose to: submissions@littlestarjournal.com.

Other magazines return from the grave. Vintage Books UK is giving Graham Greene’s 1930s literary weekly Night and Day a second life. The first returning issue included Zachary Mason’s retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Paul Batchelor’s translations of Rilke, and a conversation between Ali Smith and Chloe Aridjis. Issue two is the catastrophe issue. And after nearly a year hiatus, Identity Theory is back to its regular schedule. Launched by Matt Borondy in 2000 and most well known for its idiosyncratic fiction and trove of writer interviews, Identity Theory is looking for poetry and fiction submissions, as well as some staff positions. Visit their website for information.

Though new literary magazines tend to eclipse preceding ones, nothing replaces lives lost. The Southern Review editor Jeanne Lieby died on April 19^th in a tragic single-car accident in Louisiana. The first female editor of TSR, Leiby did much to revitalize the magazine over the past three years. A memorial fund has been established in memory of Leiby; information is available on the TSR website.

On Tuesdays, Travis Kurowski presents Luna Digest, a selection of news from the world of literary magazines. Travis is the editor of Luna Park, a magazine founded on the idea that journals are as deserving of critical attention as other artistic works.

Katrina Gray: Howdy, Ames. (May I call you Ames? Because Ames John Gigounas is quite mouthful.) You have a spanking-new group here on Fictionaut called The Brooklyner, which is also the name of your new literary journal. Tell us more. Tell us everything.

Ames John Gigounas: Hi Katrina. Ames is fine.

The Brooklyner Web is where to go for a good story. It’s a new platform for literary and mixed-media narratives. The Brooklyner Literary Concern is a journal to be released quarterly, electronically and in print.

We’re happy to start a presence on Fictionaut.

How do you distinguish a Brooklyner from a New Yorker?

Brooklyners are New Yorkers but New Yorkers aren’t necessarily Brooklyners. If you give me that pen, I’ll draw you a Venn diagram.

What kind of submission would really stand out for you and your editors?

We’re interested in compelling narratives supported by language that is innovative, blunt and sincere. Authenticity, lyricism, humor. We like realist fiction, absurdity, a hard edge. The Brooklyner Literary Concern seeks creative fiction and nonfiction up to 20,000 words, in addition to long and short-form poems and art.

One great thing about The Brooklyner Web is its capacity to accommodate a broad scope of voices and concepts. We’ve posted some suggestions on the site, and hope to develop additional themes. Our dispatches section will feature nonfiction from around the world. We also want true romance accounts, office reports. One of our regular contributors will write horror stories from the Bible.

We’re at a party. A cool one with, like, a Kardashian. You say your mag is into “mediatelling.” I stare at you blankly. (Kindly keep in mind I have had maybe three gin gimlets because there’s an open bar and the night is still young.) Explain so I’ll understand.

I’m staring at you blankly because you mentioned the Kardashians. I’m drinking bourbon, smiling now.

Mediatelling. Okay, a little background first.

We created The Brooklyner to produce a literary journal because we’re passionate about supporting and preserving the narrative tradition. We also recognize that books and magazines are changing. Reading is changing.

We believe that the relevant power of social networking is its rhythm of descriptions and accounts which form the basis of storytelling. We want to be part of those cadences, inclusive of technology. The appetite for narrative is pervasive.

The Brooklyner Web is a team of collaborators with diverse creative experience – writers, editors, actors, filmmakers, artists. We invite people to grow with us in presenting new stories with whatever they’ve got.

So. At this cool party, mediatelling is bringing sexy back. It’s imagining a narrative and then using a computer, a camera, a smartphone, a microphone, to aptly communicate that story.

Is it true that Brooklyn has more writers per capita than any other place on earth? Or am I thinking of hipsters?

Possibly you’re thinking of hipsters who write. Yes, it’s true. In a Los Angeles Times profile in February, Jonathan Lethem said, “Brooklyn is repulsive with novelists,” after he defected to California. Maybe he’ll contribute a flash piece to The Brooklyner Web. I’d like to know,with what is LA repulsive?

Top five places to visit in Brooklyn. Go.

Prospect Park
BAM
Red Hook
Brooklyn Bridge Park
My house, I’m a great cook.

Katrina Gray checks in with Fictionaut groups every Friday. She lives in Nashville with the writer John Minichillo and their lovechild. She is the editor-in-chief of Atticus Review, and she blogs about mostly non-literary things at www.katrinagray.com.

Rusty Barnes grew up in rural northern Appalachia. He received his B.A. from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania and his M.F.A. from Emerson College. His fiction, poetry and non-fiction have appeared in over a hundred fifty journals and anthologies.  After editing fiction for the Beacon Street Review (now Redivider) and Zoetrope All-Story Extra, he co-founded Night Train, a literary journal which has been featured in the Boston Globe, The New York Times, and on National Public Radio. Sunnyoutside Press published a collection of his flash fiction, Breaking it Down, in November 2007. MiPOesias published his poetry chapbook Redneck Poems in October 2010. In August 2011, Sunnyoutside will publish his collection of traditional fiction, Mostly Redneck.

He is a nationally recognized and oft-solicited authority on flash fiction under all its various names and permutations, and serves on writing conference faculties and panels throughout the country, including recently with Associated Writing Programs, Somerville News Writers Festival, Writers@Work, The Parlor, and Grub Street Writers, as well as their annual Muse & Marketplace conference. He taught composition, fiction writing, and literature for over ten years in New England universities such as Emerson College and Northeastern University. His stories have been translated into Finnish, French, Polish, and Russian. His recently completed novel, tentatively titled “Three of a Kind,” is about northern Appalachia, family and community dynamics, sex, drugs, and not so much rock ‘n’ roll.

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

I didn’t have a mentor per se. DeWitt Henry at Emerson is probably the closest I came to one. I was about to bag the MFA program, but being in his workshop and having gotten some kind words from another teacher, Chris Tilghman, I felt inspired enough to continue.

I like the idea of mentors, though. After my MFA, I wrote a lot and read even more, and eventually got published. A mentor to point the way would have been nice. I depended on peer evaluation, which has a lot of drawbacks.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired and does it work to trick the brain into working? (ie unblocking things/mental ex-lax)

I’m never really stuck, I’m just not writing. If I’m feeling iffy about the process, I just jump in and starting reading what’s come in from Night Train and FCAC. Eventually  I’m motivated to write. In the past, I did a lot of writing to prompts, but since I’m writing mostly on my novel or the occasional poem, that doesn’t seem to work well anymore.

Any favorite writing exercises you can share with us here?

One exercise I’ve used in class to great effect is to have people map their home ground, or even just a place they remember well. Take 20 minutes to a half hour and draw out everything you can remember about your home when you were a child. Keep going into further detail, or do maps of every place you’ve ever lived, then start associating people with these places.  Sooner or later, usually sooner, you’ll find your way into a story or poem.

Suggestions for making characters live? Do you know who they are before you write or do you find out who they are in the writing?

I never know who they are; I discover them along the way. I try to detail them as much as possible without running over the thread of narrative. Sometimes I’d rather create characters than write the story. I find it incredibly rewarding to create a character that readers can relate to. As for suggestions, concrete and specific detail do the trick almost every time for the kinds of stories I write.

What are some good habits for a writer to develop?

Persistence and stubbornness.

What’s the best writing advice you ever got?

Put your ass in the chair.

Please tell us about a bit about  “Redneck Press” and “Fried Chicken and Coffee”

FCAC is a blogazine centering on rural and Appalachian fiction, poetry, essays, and commentary. Redneck Press is a poetry press following the same guidelines.

What else is going on, and what is next for you?

My new book, Mostly Redneck, comes out from Sunnyoutside Press on 8/18. I’m looking forward to that. I have a novel making the rounds of agents, and I’m writing another one.

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.

Fictionauters have a lot to celebrate this month. One of Kathy Conde’s stories received an honorable mention in the latest New Millennium Writings Awards. Conde also has a story along at Pure Slush. Susan Tepper and Andrew Stancek are in the new issues of The Linnet’s Wings. James Lloyd Davis’s story appears in The View From Here Literary Magazine. Nicolette Wong is in the Summer issue of MICROW and Ramshackle Review. Darryl Price’s collection Safety First is available at The Camel Saloon. W.F. Lantry’s The Language of Birds is available at Finishing Line Press. Christopher Allen’s story “The Birds of North Carolina” received an honorable mention by Glimmer Train. Jane Hammons’ story “Mapping the Territory” is forthcoming at Shotgun Honey. Ramshackle Review‘s latest issue spreads the love with work by Jen Knox, Jack Swenson, xTx, Danny Goodman, Bill Yarrow, Darryl Price, and many more. MaryAnne Kolton’s poem “Sex with Strangers” and “The Love Tap” are forthcoming from Toucan Magazine. Doug Bond reads Ramon Collins’ story “Things That Go Poink!” here. Steve Himmer’s novel The Bee-Loud Glade gets a shout-out from NPR. MadHat Press’s Wild and Wyrd Poetry Chapbook Competition is open from June 15-August 31^st. Cynthia Bechhold Hawkins is accepting submissions for Writers on the Influence of Cinema, an ebook anthology from Calavera Books to raise funds for Joplin Schools Tornado Relief: submit here.

Marcelle Heath is a contributing editor for Fictionaut and assistant editor for Luna Park Review. She blogs here. Send your news for the July installment of Front Page to marcelleheath@yahoo.com.

Susan Tepper:  Meg, I’ve read many stories about domestic issues, yet few have the “lightning strike” quality that permeates “Leader of Men.”  Their kitchen isn’t charged but super-charged!  It sizzles with danger.  I expect something to strike and burn at any moment.

In the first paragraph you write:

He was waving a butcher knife out in front of himself while he spoke, and with each thrust, the knife, a bit of a yes-man itself, nodded up and down in obvious collusion…

The man becomes the knife becomes the man…  some serious aggression going on here, in this excerpt from your brand-new novel, Domestic Apparition.  Give us the skinny on this guy.

Meg Tuite: Susan, he’s a beauty, isn’t he? I’ve always been horrified by what some women or men, for that matter, will take in relationships!! I see this man as a hell-fire dominatrix who throws his weight around in every part of their relationship, including something as inane as how to cut up a tomato! It’s psychological abuse of the deepest kind to attempt to weather someone down day by day, but I have seen examples of this, as I’m sure most people have! This kind of guy is insecure, always tucks his shirt in and wears his pants on the high-side. He parts his hair to the right and has had the same haircut since he was five, although the bald spot growing in the middle of his head disturbs him deeply. He likes to experiment with moustaches. His swagger is a body tic he’s learned to work by practicing in the mirror naked after showers and masturbating to Tom Jones. He drinks scotch on the rocks in public, though in private he likes a nice Kahlua and creme. And he’s an extremist when it comes to working out! He likes fast-walking in short shorts five to ten miles a day, pumping arms and hips, once again to Tom Jones on his headphones or Mariah Carey. And not a big fan of boxers. He tends toward the jockstrap.

Susan:  Holy crap!  I’ve heard of writers being aware of their characters, but you have this guy so fully formed in your mind that it’s scary.  Well I’m scared of him.  I’m scared of control-freak men.   Do you think he was like this from the get-go, when she first met and married him?

Meg:  I think everyone should be scared of him, except for Tom Jones. I definitely see the courtship period as short-lived. He tossed a few bouquets her way and took her out for a few nice meals and then he pulled out the ring. He yanked his psycho-Mom’s ring from her dead finger and put it on his wife-soon-to-be-punching-bag’s finger quickly– before she got to see more than a manly man with glimpses of rage.

Susan:  Since this is a domestic drama (very quirky one) and lifted from your novel of that title, I want to stay with this a little bit more.  I once read that people get the love life they deserve.  I guess a marriage could be construed in the same way.  He must full fill some need in her, or some desire for punishment.  Do you think so?

Meg: I definitely believe that we are drawn to people that will help us either grow and move on to higher ground or to grovel in the pits, until finally the one being victimized fights back. The woman in this story may not be ready for a face-to-face with this Cro-Magnon man, but she gets the final word at the end.  I see her as ready to dump the guy or have it out with him. Or, as a lot of folk do, unfortunately, which is create their quiet revolts without rocking the boat.

Susan: I’m just nuts for this couples stuff, and even more so for the triangle.  We haven’t gotten around to discussing the “third party” here, the latent watching voice: the Greek chorus.  Is yours a boy or girl, and do you know its approximate age?

Meg:  In the novel, the narrator is a young girl, in adolescence at this point. She’s watching her parents dance this dance. She’s a silent observer, who sees many things without being noticed.

Susan:  I felt it was a young girl.  There is a lot of empathy for the Mom, I could hear it just by the way the moments get expressed.   By incorporating this third party voice, the way it’s used in this story, makes for a much more dramatic scene than if it were just the man and woman written 3^rd person POV.  That would still be dramatic.  But having this girl-child get in there like a little mouse, well, that is rough.  And as a reader I became fearful of what would transpire in this household.  What the future holds for the Mom and the girl, despite the Mom taking a stand (of sorts) at the end.  I really wanted her to bludgeon him to death, he is so unbearable.  He’s one of those types you see in a café bullying his family, and you want to dump your coffee over his head.

Meg: Once I found myself next to a couple in a car at a stop sign. And he was screaming away like a banshee. And I had just finished working a 12-hr shift, and man, did I get in his face. I told the rat scum that I was calling the police and asked the woman if she was all right. She just stared at me and then I saw a little boy in the back seat frozen in fear and I just lost it. He started backing off and said no, no police, and then I stayed on his tail and called the cops and followed him until they pulled him over. I’ve been haunted by that ever since. I hope to God he didn’t beat the crap out of her afterwards. I was the glad the cops came, but hadn’t thought about the consequences for the woman who couldn’t speak up for herself or the little boy. At the time, I was just filled with rage at him!!!!!

Susan:  I hear you.  I hate that stuff.  It takes a deep soul to write what you have put down in this story, Meg, and in your transcendent new book.

Read “Leader of Men“ by Meg Tuite

Monday Chat is a bi-weekly series in which Susan Tepper has a conversation with a Fictionaut writer about one of his or her stories. Susan is Assistant Editor of Istanbul Literary Review, fiction editor of Wilderness House Literary Review, co-author of new novel What May Have Been, and hosts FIZZ, a reading series at KGB Bar.

Katrina Gray: Greetings, Benjamin Matvey. You have created a group with a brilliant theme: Couples. Tell us why you’re fascinated with twosomes-on-the-page.

Benjamin Matvey: Why thank you!

I’m sure that many writers have had the experience of going back and reading their fiction and hear it screaming something your unconscious mind wanted you to know about your own nature, interests, foibles and strengths that you were barely aware of at the time your writing it. My first story about a couple was, really, the first story I ever wrote as an adult, called Piece of Mind (I have also republished it on Fictionaut). In it I was trying to show how bad we are at guessing what other people are thinking: while one character think she’s “crazy” for having the normal sexual desires of an 19-year-old girl, the person who is the focus of her affection is quietly truly batshit crazy. From that story, I found myself revisiting this parallel format between a man and woman. It turns out that, in retrospect, I’ve been kind of obsessed with couples. Oftentimes they are romantic couples, sometimes straight, sometimes gay. Other times they have more of a parental relationship to each other, but ultimately, in my experience, the drama and comedy that I find the most compelling takes place in context of a focus on the relationship between a particular couple. But, I wasn’t really aware that I was almost exclusively writing about couples until one of my writer friends pointed out several years ago. As someone who did his best to remain single most of his life, I think it was revealing that I was constantly writing about relationships at various levels of dysfunction.

Now that I’m thinking about it, I have trouble coming up with any of my favorite stories that don’t contain couples (not limited to the obvious choice, of course–John Updike’s Couples). I think you’ve hit on something here. What are your favorite literary couples? How about your favorite works of coupledom?

It’s funny, my favorite couples seem to occur more often in movies and TV than in literature. Pnin, Crime and Punishment, Lolita, are three of my favorite books, but they all involve isolated, alienated characters. Annie Hall, however, is my all-time favorite movie. I also loved HBO’s Big Love. When it was at its best because you got a dozen possible couple relationships for the price of just one marriage! The “sister wives” one-on-one relationships with each other was always really compelling.

My husband is a writer. I am a writer. We sometimes write stories to get back at each other, kind of like an argument. Is this psychologically healthy? (Please say yes.)

No. As we all know any expression of anger in a relationship means that we will all certainly die alone and soon and that love is impossible!

Actually, I think that is really funny, kind of awesome, and shows psychological health.  I think the best relationships often involve an easy-going, unapologetic emotional honesty.

Well, that’s a fine segue into this: What’s the strangest couple dynamic you’ve ever witnessed? Did you write about it?

I think every relationship dynamic is to some extent strange and that is why they’re so much fun to write about. Everybody has ideas of their own status, worth, strengths and weaknesses that can either add to or take away from a successful relationship. I think the best short story I ever wrote (which, ironically, is still unpublished) is about a woman who discovers that her husband’s IQ is a standard deviation and a half lower than hers when her career falling apart and his is on the ascent. It becomes a catalyst for a bitter, hidden, one-way, kind of destructive competitiveness. Maybe competitiveness in a romantic relationship can be a healthy thing, but I haven’t really seen it. Umm, unless you guys are competitive with each other… then that’s totally cool.

I would ask about your couple status, but then I’d feel like I’m at a bar. So I’m just going to put it out there, if you want to tell us how your own relationships feed your writing. And while you’re at it, feel free to tell us anything else new with you: publications, projects, any good movies you’ve Netflixed.

Oh my God you’re totally hitting on me!

Just kidding. Actually, I just got engaged a few weeks ago and we just started planning our little Brooklyn wedding last week. It’s funny, I was pretty happy as a single person, and particularly happy as a single man in New York, so I’d reached the point where I didn’t really see any need to get married at all, really ever. But then I met someone who just fundamentally changed the equation. Rather than looking at a relationship as a struggle that you feel needless pressure to take on and fight your way through, I met someone who the thought of spending every day with for the rest of my life actually sounded kind of wonderful. It’s just fundamentally different than any relationship I’ve ever had before. I remember when people told me that when you met the right person it would be easy, and pretty much laughing at them. They were right.

I have to admit, though, I wonder what my happy healthy, relationship is going to do to my writing about dysfunctional ones! As for projects, I was kind of hibernating from writing (fiction, that is; I write plenty of nonfiction) until someone I had never met before invited me to join Fictionaut. Now I am working up the ego strength to start sending out the short story I mentioned earlier, and the novel I finished about a year ago, again (I can’t stand sending stuff out). The novel could be called a love triangle, but it really is about two couples, one romantic, and one where only one side ever knows that it’s romantic. I also have a screenplay that has been optioned, a musical that I would like to put back into production, and, once I get some of this taken care of, I’ve been feeling the itch to write a fanciful, sprawling, futuristic political satire. It seems like that’s the direction my writing is going, and now that I’ve obsessed over the topics of, first, regret (a major theme in my screenplay), and then couples, now on to dystopia! (Actually, the future I imagine is really not that bad, but there are still stupid people, cruel people, and my ever beloved oddballs and misfits)
As for my Netflix I only signed up for it last week, and I’m totally in love with it thanks to Roku (seriously, buy one). My fiancée (although we much prefer the term “girlfriend to whom I am engaged”) and I just started watching Breaking Bad. I love genuine moral dilemmas that spiral out of control in my drama and you can’t do much better than that show.

Thank you, Benjamin, and here’s a toast to your new couple-ness! (Endnote: I can totally vouch for both the Roku *and* Breaking Bad.)

Katrina Gray checks in with Fictionaut groups every Friday. She lives in Nashville with the writer John Minichillo and their lovechild. She is the editor-in-chief of Atticus Review, and she blogs about mostly non-literary things at www.katrinagray.com.