Matthew Salesses is my friend. I am being upfront about that. He also has a chapbook out from PANK, a book forthcoming from Flatmancrooked, and is possibly one of the most well-adjusted writers as a human I’ve ever met. He edits The Good Men Project which donates proceeds to humans who need help, and is going to be publishing Kim Chinquee and James Franco shortly. Super talented nice guy, belongs to Fictionaut.

Q (Nicolle): Matthew Salesses! You have started a Fictionaut Group here for the Good Men Project. I hear GMP is a non-profit of sorts? What is the Good Men Project?

A: GMP is indeed a non-profit. It gives back through Street Potential, The Boys and Girls Club of Boston, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay, and other organizations.

The stated goal is to examine what it means to be a “good man,” but we’re not trying to tell men how to be, or even to be, good, though of course we all hope that men will be good. For the fiction, I’m not looking for stories with a theme of “goodness,” or even “maleness.” I’m just looking for stories that present males as they are. The amount of goodness or badness is up for interpretation. The fiction will run every weekend, so we’re looking for a lot of stories, but stories compelling enough to reach as many as possible of our million or so monthly readers.

Q: So if Kim Chinquee’s in it, that means that women can submit also? Is GMP running work by solicit only? (One time, a wizard behind the curtain of Fictionaut and other internets got me a present which was tickets to a Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson concert for the PEN events. So I sit down and to my right was Walter Mosely and to my left was James Franco. Not shabby, actually. This is barely relevant to this interview). Will Franco be guest editing or contributing for this one issue?

A: Women can definitely contribute (please!), though the stories should include men. Kim’s story is wonderful and features a female protagonist and two, shall we say, male suitors.

Solicitations are a part of any magazine, but we’re hoping to get as much work as possible through unsolicited submissions. Submit here.

James Franco contributed a story entitled “Yosemite” for the launch. The other story in the launch is the amazing “Saint Roger of Fox Chase” by Sean Ennis.

Q: What is your role with GMP specifically?

A: I will be serving as Fiction Editor, but I am also a contributing writer. I write a biweekly column, “Love, Recorded,” about myself and my (now pregnant) wife and our two cats.

Q: Is GMP in print or exclusively online? Free or fee?

A: Exclusively online. And free.

Q: Where do you see GMP in five years? (Obviously we hope the Fictionaut Group helps in this lovely mission).

A: Fiction-wise, I’m hoping we will provide the kind of big-magazine outlet that has mostly disappeared. Fiction used to be far more prominent in The Atlantic, Esquire, etc. The weekend fiction section is about giving fiction a larger audience, especially among men, who it is said do not read.

We’d also like to be one of those places online that people trust with longer content. There are very few sites where I am willing to read 8,000 words. We’d like to be so good that people know we are worth their time and attention when so many other tabs beckon.

How the Fictionaut group can help: post stories that speak to the ones we publish in the magazine; join the discussion; submit.

Q: Please tell us more about you, your projects, anything else you’d like to talk about here. One random fact would be good, we like nice things.

1. I wrote a chapbook, Our Island of Epidemics, but it’s a lot different from most other things I’ve written, like this, or the Flatmancrooked novella I’m currently working on.

Which means, I’m open to anything and everything fiction.

2. I like stories with a lot of ambition, as long as it is pulled off.

Nicolle Elizabeth checks in with Fictionaut Groups every Friday.

Murray Dunlap‘s work has appeared in about thirty magazines and journals. His stories have been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, as well as to Best New American Voices, and his first book, Alabama, was a finalist for the Maurice Prize in Fiction. He is currently working on a collection of short stories called Bastard Blue that will be published by Press 53 next year. The extraordinary individuals Pam Houston, Laura Dave, Michael Knight, and Fred Ashe taught him the art of writing.

Q (Meg Pokrass): What is your feeling about having mentors as a writer?

It is crucial. No one lives in a vacuum. You need a wise few individuals who will tell you if what you are doing works, or not, and if not, why… It seems critical. I have yet to meet a writer who thinks feedback is useless.

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

I first try to keep after it, and see what happens. But if I’m really blocked (as I am now), I try to give myself an exercise. I.E. -attempt to recreate what mentors in the past have done.

How does getting published change the feeling a writer has for their own story?

It is validation for me. It means the story worked in the right ways. It doesn’t mean it is perfect -and I have in fact made changes seconds prior to it going live.

Tell us about the experience of making What Doesn’t Kill You, your survivor story anthology just out from Press 53?

It was a genuine lifesaver. I had been in a horrific accident (including a coma and a wheelchair) so I was entirely undone and lost. Then Kevin Watson of Press 53 and I began talking, one thing led to another, and the next thing you know I had about 3,000 stories in my in-box. It was a long process, but entirely worth it. I truly believe we found and published some real gems. I am proud to be in there. And with a story written post-accident, which I have to remind myself of everyday, as I fear I can’t write well anymore.

How has your incredible but slow and hard recovery impacted your writing?

Much. I’m afraid I have a much harder time now, as my memory has been drastically impacted. But as I have not been able to go to any 9-5 job, I have more time to work now than I ever have…

What would you like to tell other writers who are battling through a curve ball time… others who are overcoming injuries and trying to write again after some absence…?

From my crazy experience, I will say to be sure and follow up on all leads. You never know what is going to turn out meaningful. For example, it was a regular “friends of Press 53” email that got me started talking to Kevin about an anthology. This has been the most rewarding experience to exist after my accident… and what eventually led to me having a writing life when I really had no other kind of life at all.

I know you worked with Pam Houston, whose writing I adore. What was working with Pam like? Also, if you can tell us a bit about your friendship/mentor relationship with Michael Knight…

Working with Pam Houston was exceptional. She had wisdom and plenty of exercises (I have amnesia, so I can’t give examples). Plus she is a fantastic human being and fun to work with.

Michael Knight has been a good friend since I was about 15. He and my brother have always been pals, and I starting hanging out with them when I was old enough to do stuff. The thing about Michael: he is a truly gifted writer that I am only now able to appreciate how lucky I was to have as a mentor. Man… my first stories were bad! But Michael hung in there with me and has given valuable feedback my entire writing career. And the name of What Doesn’t Kill You… was his idea!

Tell us about your new collection and when it will be out!

It is now called Bastard Blue. It has been a project in-the-works since I was in college. I am so happy that all the years of work have been validated.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday — and over the holidays, every Saturday — 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” will be out in February from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Happy New Year! I’m thrilled to be bringing you the new Luna Digest while Travis takes some much-needed time to spend with his family. So, if you have any news to share, feel free to pass it along.

In my virtual travels over break, I was happy to see Madras Press get some press in David L. Ulin’s piece on unbound codex, print-on-demand, and e-books in his article on books vs. e-books in the Los Angeles Times. Madras distributes the proceeds of their individually bound short stories and novellas to charitable organizations of the author’s choosing. (Madras Press’s The Moors by Ben Marcus pictured at right.)

Speaking of giving back: Metazen’s Christmas Charity E-Book is available here.

Over at the Leonard Lopate Show, One Story’s Hannah Tinti, Keith Gessen of n+1, and Little Star’s Ann Kjellberg discuss the literary magazine’s (surprisingly) thriving future in the digital age.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out Virginia Quarterly Review’s Fall 2010 issue, which is dedicated to Kevin Morrisey, the managing editor who committed suicide this past summer, Ted Genoways (whose own tenure at VQR remains unclear after the university recommended “appropriate corrective action” regarding his role in Morrisey’s death) writes about the underlying environmental cost of the paperless revolution. One single e-reader = 50 books.

Necessary Fiction is ringing in the new year by emulating the Scottish Hogmanay custom of “first footing” by inviting former contributors to take the last line of a story as the first line of their own. As Editor Steve Himmer explains:

Those borrowed lines and the gifts they offer will set the course for new stories the participants write in response, and the rest of us will have a month of good luck and good reading to kick off the year.

So what does the New Year hold? According to the NYT’s Year in Ideas, we are in the age of “Literary Near-Futurism.” Let us rejoice!

Marcelle Heath is subbing in this week for Luna Digest, a selection of news from the world of literary magazines, presented every Tuesday by Luna Park, a magazine founded on the idea that journals are as deserving of critical attention as other artistic works.

Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels including Private Life, The Age of Grief, The Greenlanders, Ordinary Love and Good Will, A Thousand Acres, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, Moo, Horse Heaven, Good Faith, Ten Days in the Hills, and the young adult novel, The Georges and the Jewels, as well as many essays for such magazines as Vogue, The New Yorker, Practical Horseman, Harper’s,The New York Times Magazine, Allure, The Nation and others. She has written on politics, farming, horse training, child-rearing, literature, impulse buying, getting dressed, Barbie, marriage, and many other topics. She is also the author of the nonfiction books A Year at the Races, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel and from Penguin Lives Series, a biography of Charles Dickens. In 2001, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 2006, she received the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature.

Q (Meg Pokrass): Mentoring for other writers: At one time… were you mentored? Do you have thoughts relating to the mentor relationship for a writer or the role of mentoring?

I don’t feel that I was mentored, though I had supportive friends. I am a little suspicious of mentoring because it can become contaminated by whatever the personal relationship is. I prefer the library method–the kid or the young person reads and gleans and learns from reading.

A mental ex-lax thing, do you have tricks to move things through when not feeling as inspired?

Ride a horse. Take a bath. Read something. Eat a piece of candy. Set the clock for an hour and tell yourself you only have to work that long.

What is exciting about this time as a writer w/ the internet and what it offers.

Easy research! I love that part. You can find out a lot on the net itself, or you can order all sorts of books.

What is (conversely) not so good about it?

Distracting. I am a serial email checker. I need to actually get into the hot tub or the bathtub to read a book.

Any favorite writing exercises ?

Eavesdrop and write it down from memory–gives you a stronger sense of how people talk and what their concerns are. I love to eavesdrop! Gossip. The more you talk about why people do things, the more ideas you have about how the world works. Write everyday, just to keep in the habit, and remember that whatever you have written is neither as good nor as bad as you think it is. Just keep going, and tell yourself that you will fix it later. Take naps. Often new ideas come together when you are half asleep, but you have to train yourself to remember them.

What writers, artists, musicians (dead or alive) do you turn to again and again for inspiration?

Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens, Nancy Mitford, George Eliot.

What is happening now for you? Tell us a bit about Private Life, what it’s about for those of us who haven’t read it yet…

Private Life is about a long marriage between a well-trained, good-natured, and basically normal young girl to her town’s genius. It takes place between 1880 and 1942, and is really about how a relationship evolves as one of the partners realizes that his dreams of stardom are slipping away from him. He IS a genius, but he has the wrong ideas for his time, and he finds this unbearable. He is very dynamic, though, and never gives up. This, I think, is a common American pattern, whether the genius is a scientist, or an artist, or a prophet of some religion. I was interested in the cost to be paid by his wife, who comes to realize that as energetic as he is, he is wrong.

What is in the works?

More girls’ horse books, and a trilogy of novels called, The Last Hundred Years.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday — and over the holidays, every Saturday — 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” will be out in February from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Susan Tepper: Marcus, just recently I wrote to you on Facebook that I was a little afraid to read your story “Le Sucre Brun,” as I have a problem with violence at the level of genocide. Yet I did read it and was captivated.  What prompted you to write such a timely story?

Marcus Speh: I understand your hesitation because, frankly, I feel the same. A couple of months ago I took a wrong turn on my way home and ended up almost right in front of the former site of a concentration camp near Berlin, now an impressive memorial site, Sachsenhausen. I spent an entire morning walking around the site. When I came home, I had found a topic for a longer piece that I’ve been working on ever since, centering on a camp. The immediate prompt for this very short flash story was the photo by my friend Oleuanna from Scotland. It exudes a vulnerability and a strength that, in connection with the subject of camps, directly prompted me to write “Le Sucre Brun.” (Oleuanna also provided the title).

ST: Isn’t it interesting how the environment often factors into our decision to write a particular story, or from a certain perspective.  “Le Sucre Brun” takes place in a camp far from Berlin.  Your opening line:  “This is what I heard, okay?” sets up a personal tone that pulled me in immediately.  What made you open this way?

MS: You describe it well – “a personal tone.” I felt that the horror, both explicit and implicit in the story, needed a filter, a dampening of the fall into a cruel reality. At the same time, the narrator indirectly refers to the fact that many people’s reaction to deeds of evil are disbelief – probably as a matter of protecting themselves. By integrating this disbelief into the story, I help suspension of disbelief along, which I also need later in the story.

I strongly resonate with your remark on the environment – in this case, intuition led me to the site of the former camp exactly at the time when I was looking for a subject. But I’m equally comfortable with the more spiritual view that the field around us helped me find it so that the story could be brought to life. I relate to the view that others have held that the story finds us, not the other way around.

ST: Oh, yes, the story finds us!  I also love your two views about intuition leading you to a specific place, and your other point regarding the spiritual view of the “field around us.”  This is a beautiful phrasing: “the field around us.”  Would you talk more about that please?

MS: “The field” is actually an established concept in two disciplines that are dear to me: psychology  and physics. In physics, the theory of quantum fields, and in psychology, the Lewin’s field theory, constitute frameworks to pose difficult material or behavioral questions. Some systemic therapists and coaches (like myself) believe that there is another field, the so-called “Knowing Field“, which may or may not be rooted in quantum theory, which our unconscious accesses all the time to tap into memories or even facts. The idea is akin to Jung’s collective unconscious, which postulates that some “truths” or cultural facts, or memes (whatever name you prefer) exist between and not just inside people. I happen to believe that and when I’m dreaming lucidly or when I’m writing, I am usually aware of being in touch with more than just my sorry little brain. Some serious channeling going on there, I think, for all of us who create.

When Coleridge was upset about “the person from Porlock“, he was angry at the guy having severed Coleridge’s connection with the field, if you wish.

ST: Wonderful, these extra insights and facts.  To talk more about your story, what made you choose a “woman” as central?  You made your female character delicate.  Do you think a woman is more vulnerable to torture and insult to the spirit, the life-force, than say a man would be?  Are women more vulnerable to the insanity of the world?

MS: That is a question as delicate as its subject. Interestingly, the camp in my novella is an all-male affair – women are spectral, they’re almost unreal, a little like in the prison world of Jean Genet. I was surprised myself at making that choice since I like to write about female characters. The immediate choice to write about a woman came with the sentence “The camp hadn’t been built for women like her”, which was the first fully formed sentence of the piece from which all the rest flowed. I don’t think women are more vulnerable to torture or “insult to the spirit, the life-force” (well put!) than a man: if anything, I think the opposite. I think women come equipped with more of that magical life-force, they carry it. My heroine clearly shows, in the end, what powers she carries and will use when forced to. Men, if I may extend the thought, probably need to work harder for that kind of power. You can kind of see this in the works of the great male writers – and of the lesser ones (who don’t get there). I know I’m on slippery ground here – but I did see my wife bear a child, which comes closest to a first-hand experience of divinity. (And like in all divine acts, there’s light and darkness at once).

ST: Your ending comes as a shock.  I still don’t quite understand it, but I felt much better after reading the ending.   I found myself thinking:  well there is some justice, after all.  Even if only in stories.  The Darfur genocides go on, as do others.  Do you see an end to this violence as the world evolves?  Or do you think it’s the same play performed over and over and over into time?

MS: I can see that. It shocked me, too — I didn’t plan on it. But even before that fully formed sentence, the magical act at the end came to me right after waking up as a wordless image on the morning when I wrote the story. It was most certainly not inserted after the fact to make anyone feel better. Rather the other way around – the beginning is an excuse to celebrate the ending.

You’re asking the most serious of questions here. I don’t know if I’m the person to answer it. With Gardner, who has taken a lot of heat for this view, I do believe that fiction ought to be moral. Perhaps there’s no a priori reason why we carry this gift of writing but if we don’t throw our weight behind life, decency and humanity, we’re nothing but word clowns.

As for the future, I do believe that where there’s light there must be shadow. “Shadow” being another one of C G Jung’s favorite archetypical concepts: just like we cannot rid ourselves of our personal shadow (the part of ourselves that lies in the shade, that we don’t like and don’t enjoy looking at), I cannot conceive of a world without the political shadows — be they torture, war, racism or sexism, as much as I’d like to. Good and evil, hard to resist when facing wonderful or horrible deeds, really are too simple to describe all that’s going on between heaven and earth.

Having said that, I am someone who, by genetic condition, sees the glass as half-full no matter how full my eye says it is. This vision you mention, of a play being performed over and over, seems to underlie the work of the great minimalists and the artists of the absurd, like Beckett. And yet — the bleaker the picture they draw, the more they seem to write about hope, too. About the fullness of the human experience rather than about the struggle of good and evil. I guess that is my position: yes, the madness will go on and on forever, but there’s so much hope and we must give hope a strong voice – for example by writing about the shadow, too — even if it upsets the bigots.

Read “Le Sucre Brun” by Marcus Speh

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 and hosts FIZZ, a reading series at KGB Bar.

Nicolle Elizabeth interviews herself.

Q: Nicolle, you are a truly despicable woman why are you interviewing yourself?

A: Despicable but a marketing genius, Nicolle. I am interviewing myself to discuss some group things, such as groups in general and some groups in specific.

Q: You’re annoying me, elaborate.

A: While many of the groups are thriving, I figured I’d re-go over the groups concept for new members before the new year. The groups are pods within the pods. Many writers who are fans of or subscribers to specific journals or have published in specific journals have joined that journal’s group for example etc. Many groups also serve as their own writing projects with specific prompts and rules etc. The groups take the larger community and provide an area to hang out in which may be a tad bit less expansive. Some people have messaged to tell me they hate the groups. I personally hate eating dairy. Speaking of specific prompts and writing projects I have started a group for the 12 am writing project journal. This is an annual journal which is very experienced and seasoned because I started it last year. The concept it two-fold. It’s a published DIY/punk black and white ‘zine in the original tradition, and it’s also an experiment in collective thought to see if writers write to the same place or away from the same place when including a prompt. I have a grant for publishing costs so I’m taking as many excellent submissions as possible. Contributors also get a re-printing of last year’s ‘zine which was awesome and available at many bookstores domestically.

Also the groups are totally used for workshopping which rules. They become threads within the threads where people can work, offer advice, read, it’s casual yet actually pretty serious in its own way. We’re like, a free workshop or something, but cooler because like, internet camaraderie. People take the advice they are giving and give very seriously, and it is a beautiful thing to see. Less use of the word like: You (theoretically) post a story to a group, as you would post to the main story page (theoretically), and people can comment on the story, as on the main story page, but in the group setting. In the group setting there is a level of intimacy which can foster a direct attention to the work and a place for specific workshopping. Additionally, there are settings which actually offer the option to make the groups private for people who want to offer specifically targeted subject matter. We have an all women’s group going, for example. SOLIDARITY TO MY SISTERS. No offense, fellas. No seriously no offense, I love men. Attn: Men I am single. The idea here is look around, and join groups which you feel best suit you, represent you, interest you, intrigue you. How you interact on Fictionaut and in the world, for that matter, is entirely your call, we just offer you a place to talk about writing.

Q: Despicable. You suck so bad.

A: I could also tell you about Fictionaut Group Metazen for Metazen literary journal, which every year including this year does an e-book on Christmas fundraiser, and that all of the proceeds go to an orphanage in Cambodia?

Nicolle Elizabeth checks in with Fictionaut Groups every Friday.

Daniel Handler is the author of the literary novels The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, and, most recently, Adverbs. Under the name Lemony Snicket he has also written a sequence of books for children, known collectively as A Series of Unfortunate Events, which have sold more than fifty-three million copies and were the basis of a film starring Jim Carrey. His intricate and witty writing style has won him numerous fans for his critically acclaimed literary work and his wildly successful children’s books.

Handler has worked intermittently in film and music, most recently in collaboration with composer Nathaniel Stookey on a piece commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, titled The Composer Is Dead (the book with CD will be released in 2008). An adjunct accordionist for the music group The Magnetic Fields, he is also now a member of the post-punk combo Danny & the Kid. He is the screenwriter of the film Rick, a revamp of the Verdi opera Rigoletto, and the film adaptation of Joel Rose’s novel Kill the Poor. He is the author of Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Biography, The Beatrice Letters, and Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid. Handler has also written for The New York Times, Newsday, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Believer, Chickfactor, and various anthologies, including The Best American Mystery Stories 2005.

Q (Meg Pokrass): Have you had mentors?

My flesh-and-blood mentor is Kit Reed, with whom I studied as an undergraduate. She saved my life and taught me to write and continues to do me large, undeserved favors which I try gamely to repay. But I think the best kind of mentoring is the study of the work – and, sometimes, life – of artists one admires. I’ve learned as much from William Maxwell and Sun Ra as I have from Kit or any other writing teacher.

A mental ex-lax thing, to you have tricks to move things through when not feeling as inspired?

A brisk walk in fresh air; in extreme cases, listening to the Flying Lizards. But for the most part I’m in favor of staying at one’s desk and writing anyway. Writing four pages of dreck is an excellent way to write one good sentence.

How does your work as a musician affect (or balance) your writing if it does?

For the most part my participation in music is subservient; I play whatever people ask me to play and pass largely unnoticed. It is the exact opposite of writing and it is good for the ego to be in a situation in which I am not the artiste. It’s also a good place from which to spy on the artistic processes of artists I admire, which is very helpful. If Picasso would hire me to wash his brushes I’d do that in a heartbeat.

Tell us about your what you are working on now.

I am putting the very last touches on the second of my collaborations with the illustrator Maira Kalman. The first is a picture book, !3 Words. This is a novel, in the form of a long letter from a girl to a boy, returning the souvenirs (painted by Ms. Kalman) of their relationship. The novel is called Why We Broke Up.

What inspired you to write Why We Broke Up?

I asked Ms. Kalman what she wanted to paint. She wanted to paint a variety of small objects that felt like the detritus of a romance.

What makes characters likable? I know this is an absurdly complex question.

This question usually makes me rant. I’ll try to keep it brief.

For one thing, I’m always mystified by discussions of likable characters. Characters are in books; you’re not going to have lunch with them. Moreover, the best books are full of trouble, so the characters are either in trouble or causing it. Most people aren’t likable in such situations.

Even if by “likable” we just mean “characters we enjoy reading about,” rather than “characters who seem like people we’d like,” then we’re not really talking about characters at all. Otherwise, the characters would be fully portable, and readers would find Lady Macbeth equally compelling in a Harlequin novel and in Macbeth. (I suppose there are people who consider Han Solo to be an equally compelling character in Star Wars novels #12 and #43, by separate authors, but, um, give me a break.) It’s like saying that the great thing about Kind Of Blue isn’t Miles Davis, but the trumpet itself. Such a compelling instrument!

Thus, character is bunk. There is plot, and there is voice, and they conspire to create an illusion we call “literature.” It is a glorious illusion and a compelling one. When a writer tells me they’re worried about a character they usually mean there’s a flaw in the plot, or the prose just isn’t pulling things together.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday — and over the holidays, every Saturday — 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. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Q (Nicolle Elizabeth): Hey Matt. How is Australia?

A (Matt Potter): Summer. Though the weather is variable. The big heat will kick in, in the new year, as it always does. Christmas Day is usually warm in Adelaide, but not hot.

Q: Do you need to wear a lot of suntan lotion or is the ozone layer we humans have upset back yet?

A: I never wear suntan lotion, but I stay out of the sun. I like it sunny … so I can sit in the shade. I don’t believe the ozone layer is any better.

Q: What exactly is ‘the outback’ like?

A: I have no idea, having never been there. Like most Australians, I live in a city. I have little interest in the Outback. That’s what Oprah and other hysterical tourists like to visit.

Q: Have you ever worn a safari hat?

A: I have worn many hats and own dozens, but never a safari hat. I am unsure what exactly you mean by a safari hat, now that I think about it, but if it is what I imagine it to be, it’s not that attractive. So no, I wouldn’t wear one anyway!

Q: Is it true that koalas, while adorable, are actually horrendously mean-spirited?

A: They do have a low-pitched murmuring growl, and if you can hear that while patting one, I suggest you stop patting it. They have claws.

Q: Have you ever fought a koala?

A: Once, in my short-lived porn career.

Q: One time, on a surf trip on the North Shore of Hawaii, I met a dude from Australia who told me that Australians have a long-standing feud with Kiwis (people from New Zealand). Is this like a Yankees vs. Red Sox thing or like a heavier than that thing?

A: You would have met a “bloke” from Australia, not a “dude”. There are half a million New Zealanders living in Australia, so as to the feud? No, not really, though the television they produce is worse than even ours. We have similar accents but New Zealanders have an even flatter ‘i’ sound on words like ‘six’ and ‘fish and chips’, which Australians make fun of at times. (‘Six’ can sound like ‘sex’ or ‘sux’ with New Zealanders.) You could joke that Australia is the arse (not ‘ass’) end of the world, and New Zealand is the sphincter. Perhaps the problem lies there …

As to the Red Sox Yankees deal, isn’t that baseball? If so, then I know even less about that than the Outback.

Q: Wait, doesn’t the water in your dish drain flow in the opposite direction from mine on the US Eastern Seaboard? Coooooooooooooool.

A: It’s a hemispherical thing.

Q: What is Pure Slush?

A: Pure Slush is a flash fiction website I started recently. The tagline is ‘flash … without the wank’. If you want to know all about wank, look up the explanation on the site: http://pureslush.webs.com/slushwank.htm

Q: Why did you start it?

A: It was really more a question of ‘when’, not ‘if’. I like to take on new projects and I thought, well, if others do it, I can too. I thought about it for four weeks or so, and then when the name came to me during a rainstorm, I knew I had the impetus to move ahead with it. So once the name was chosen, the rest followed very quickly, and the first story went on-line two days later, Susan Gibb’s “Black Bears and Green Broccoli Trees.” Stories for the first month – I asked writers whose work I knew and admired – were quickly gathered together. It was very quick but also very thorough.

I also wanted a non-north American voice out there in Flashland. Plus, I wanted to bring some politeness back into the whole submission / rejection equation. I resent receiving rejection emails and letters with no explanation as to why beyond the usual ‘your story is not for us’. And I thought, here is a way I can redress that, if only slightly. I hope my idea about this is not ridiculous and I can always explain why I am (or Pure Slush is) saying no, and also why we are saying yes … and here are our suggestions for changes! Most writers whose work I have edited, loved receiving that attention and yes, it made their work better. Just before I started Pure Slush, I asked a flash site, after three rejections in a very short time, what it is they’re looking for, after being told the usual ‘this is not what we’re looking for’. (The site has quite publicly asked for contributions all over the flash world.) I am still awaiting David’s reply.

I do think some site editors don’t like or distrust ‘funny’ too.

And finally, I am interested in clear communication. Clever language can get in the way of communication at times. Frankly, some of it’s just wank. I think Australians have a well-deserved reputation for a low tolerance of bullshit, and the Wank-o-Meter is always on at Pure Slush.

Q: What is Pure Slush’s thing, Matt, what is the deal with Pure Slush?

A: Fun, humour, attention, absurdity, humanity, love, sex, more fun and more humour and more absurd humanity. (Wank, wank!) Stories big and small, but not too big, hence the 500 word limit. Maybe some posturing, but definitely not macho posturing, which happens a bit in the flash world, all those testosterone-infused keyboards! We may start some non-fiction too, that might be fun. Plus, we don’t change the spelling. If it’s British or American or South African or Canadian or Australian spelling you use, then we run with it. So readers can expect Australian spelling in the editorial blurbs, because I write them.

Q: 100-500 words, you say? I’m into it. Who are some flash writers Pure Slush admires and why?

A: I love having people ‘fave’ my stories on Fictionaut but can claim to have only done the same very few times, as much due to a lack of commitment as anything. But I also want that click to really mean something. I admire clear story-telling, and usually writers who make me laugh, especially out loud, but also those stories that are funny but human. Stories about sex usually get my vote too! Michelle Elvy’s stories I recently described as “so fucking sad and gorgeous,” which she loved. (It’s also true.) Robert Vaughan’s stories at times remind me of looser versions of my own – we both don’t shy away from dialogue, which I believe many flashers do. I hesitate to name any more because I am reading new-to-me writers all the time. (That is one of the things about Pure Slush so far, the submissions have really been of a high standard.) But I have to now mention Marcus Speh, because I met Marcus when I was last living in Berlin, we were part of the same great writing group, and through him I entered the online world of flash which really turned things around for me. So Marcus, natürlich! He laughed – genuinely – in all the right places at my stories, and I was lucky to have found his stories as equally amusing and inviting.

Other flash writers who have been very supportive of my work and whose work I often admire also are Susan Gibb, Linda Simoni-Wastila, Catherine Russell, Al McDermid and John Wentworth Chapin – through ‘52 / 250′ particularly – and Berlin writer-friends Claudia Bierschenk and Luisa Brenta, for exactly the same reasons.

But the first story I read that made me think Fuck! I wish I had written that! was Susan Tepper’s “Stickers.” It was a benchmark for me. I still re-read it and feel jealous that she wrote that story before I did. And of course I have read many of her stories since, and loved them.

Q: Take one story from one writer mentioned on this admiration list and cut and paste the story or a part of the story for us here, and break down why exactly Pure Slush likes this story. We’ll look at this as Matt Potter gives us a brief fiction lecture but doesn’t get any money for doing it.

A: “Stickers,” by Susan Tepper

So my sister hooks me up with this girl who just got out of the looney bin. I’m not shitting you. Lucinda, the girl’s name. A situation straight out of a horror movie. Except my sister says she’s a very cool girl who got screwed by life.

Anyways … we make a plan to wear red T-shirts and meet near the sign outside Chuckie Cheese.

And she’s not bad from a distance, her blonde hair in a perky pony. I wave and she waves. But then we get close and she’s got these little stickers stuck to her face. A few on her cheeks and three lined up across her forehead.

I’m reading some really small letters and numbers on them. I’m wondering if they’re passes to get in and out of the looney bin – like they stamp your arm to get in a club.

She looks straight through me. “Fruit stickers, William, if you must know.”

“What?”

She taps her forehead reciting: “Lemon from Chile, Sun World Black Plum, 4038 California avocado.”

“You wear fruit stickers on your face?”

Lucinda smiles beatifically. “I only eat fruits and vegetables.”

I scratch under my T-shirt cursing my sister for setting me up with this sticker chick freak.

“Um. Do you think you could peel them off for the movie?”

She squints. “Why should I?”

It is a good question. I’ll give her that.

She’s waiting; her face looks hungry.

“I believe in meat,” I say.

I started to break this down but grew bored, it’s better to look at it as a whole. Or Skype me and I will tell you. I love the way the narration sounds so real and spoken, and that the relationship is doomed because they wear the same t-shirts AND meet outside Chuckie Cheese. You can’t get more hopeless than that, unisex clothing and something as bad sounding as Chuckie Cheese. The narrator sounds not such a great personality and the woman seems completely in her own world. She looks OK but soon, the ridiculous stickers – a barrier to intimacy with anyone – become the focal point of their interaction. They will never move past them. The woman’s logic is wonderful – “Why should I behave like you want me to, even if we are on a date?” – and then the amazing punchline! Who says things like that? Only people on the edge. This story as it unfolds is all so absurd and hilarious but also so real. They are people I love to read about, obsessive nutjobs, though not to meet: I love obsessions and hysteria in fiction, and write about them a lot myself.

Q: Please tell us more about you, your own work, and anything else you’d like us to know here.

A: I’ve ‘written’ since I was 12, so for almost 33 years. I have a partner who has two daughters, and also two grandchildren (2 and 3) whom I simply adore. I have hardly written about them but my partner is an infrequent presence in my work. Like many people, I get ideas from all sorts of things, often NOT my life. I find it difficult not to write comic stories, and I have an eye and an ear for the absurd. My writing is often cinematic, but I was also a film school student and made a number of short films, so that fits. I enjoy writing dialogue and hearing someone say something absurd or stupid will often trigger a story idea. I have a variety of qualifications and experiences to my name – my CV is very comprehensive – and at the moment am teaching English to refugees in Australia. I always ask my students in Australia (I have also taught English in Germany) what sort of English do they think I will be teaching them, and one of them eventually says “Australian English,” and I usually answer “Beeeewdiful.”

I also have a great mistrust of most forms of patriotism, Australian included.

Q: Did you know that there is a street and subway stop in Brooklyn New York named after your Mount Kosciuszko?

A: No, but I am sure they are named not after the mountain, but the man the mountain is also named after.

Nicolle Elizabeth checks in with Fictionaut Groups every Friday.

Michael Knight is the author of two novels, Divining Rod and The Typist; two collections of short fiction, Dogfight and Other Stories and Goodnight, Nobody; and a collection of novellas, The Holiday Season. His fiction has appeared in publications such as Esquire, The New Yorker and Oxford American. He teaches creative writing at the University of Tennessee.

Q (Meg Pokrass): Mentoring for other writers: At one time… were you mentored? Do you have thoughts relating to the mentor relationship for a writer?

I’ve been lucky to have good teachers my whole life. Back in the days when high schools didn’t have creative writing classes, a world class English teacher named Nancy Strachan was willing to read my stories on her own time. In college, Susan Pepper Robbins convinced me to apply to grad schools in creative writing. In grad school, Frederick Bartheleme taught me how hard it really is to write a good story-not just a story good enough for workshop but a real story, one with legs. I guess mentor means something slightly different though. Mentoring suggests a broader kind of education, being made to feel like a peer, learning what matters in a larger sense, etc. I wouldn’t be the writer and/or person I am today if not for my association with all of the above people but when I hear the word mentor the first name that comes to mind is George Garrett. George was my teacher and friend at UVa. I learned a lot about writing in George’s workshop but I learned just as much hanging around in his garage or driving him to readings when his vision started to go. From George, I learned how I wanted to live in the world as a writer. I still address most of my professional quandries by first asking, “What would George do?” It’d be nice to think I could have a similar effect on my students and on younger writers but I’m no George Garrett.

A mental ex-lax thing, do you have tricks to move things through when not feeling as inspired?

I read. It’s sometimes hard to convince people that laying around in the middle of the day reading is a vital part of my process but I really have found that if I just keep reading good fiction, good writers, I’ll eventually come across some perfect image or airtight scene, something that strikes the necessary chord and sends me running back to my own work, that makes me excited about writing again.

What is exciting about this time as a writer with the internet and what it offers. What is (conversely) not so good about it..?

To be honest the whole business terrifies me. I should admit that I’m near a Luddite, not by philosophy but by habit. I just recently got my first cell phone and that was only at my wife’s insistence. I should also say that my fear is not born of any kind of certainty. Quite the opposite. I don’t think anybody in the publishing world really knows what’s coming in terms of the internet. It just might be that the internet saves the short story, which I love, brings new readers to the form and provides an outlet for good story writers as more and more print markets dry up. It also might be that the internet will kill off brick and mortar bookstores, a particularly fresh wound as our local independent, Carpe Librum, is preparing to shut its doors and that makes me sad sad sad.

What are your favorite literary sites? What sites do you find yourself going to to read? Or your favorite web sites?

narrativemagazine.com is my favorite literary site. And this might be an old-fogey approach to the question but I also love the access the internet gives to print magazine archives. I’m a pretty frequent browser of The Paris Review and New Yorker sites as well.

Any favorite writing exercises would be hugely appreciated.

There are two exercises I almost always use in class. I’ve been using them long enough now that I can’t recall if I made them up or stole them from somebody else but I imagine most teachers employ some variation of these regardless. I’ve also used both of these as jumping off places in my own work.

Exercise 1: Describe the view from a window, any window, bedroom, barroom, bus, wherever, as seen by a character who has just received either some very good or very bad news. Have some specific news in mind but do not mention it in the exercise. Don’t even hint at it. The reader should be able to tell, if not the exact nature of the news, then tenor of it, whether its good or bad, simply by the way you describe the view. The object here is to give the reader a sense of a character’s internal life by relying on meaningful imagery alone.

Exercise 2: Write a scene, lots of dialogue, lots of body language, lots of concrete detail, etc., in which one of the characters is keeping a big time secret. She’s pregnant. He’s got cancer. Like that. Don’t mention the secret in the scene. Instead, focus on how keeping such a secret effects your character’s behavior, how he/she reacts to the environment and to the other characters. No, this is not an exercise in deliberately withholding information. The point is that the secret itself is less important than your character’s reaction to it. Even if the reader isn’t privy to the secret, we should be able to sense the tension it causes, its emotional effect.

This will probably be obvious to your readers but in both exercises, try to avoid the obvious manifestations of a particular emotion. If, for instance, the character is sad, steer clear of storms, dark clouds, etc. If the character is happy, avoid birds chirping, sun shining, like that. Also keep in mind that the reason we use imagery and action to capture emotion instead of explaining how a person feels or what they think, the reason we show don’t tell, the reason we dramatize in the first place, is that emotions are generally much more complicated than happy or sad. In a good story, the character’s response, that original and particular and individual reaction, is the way they feel. It’s the only possible way to make clear something that’s more intricate than adjectives and adverbs.

Can you give us a reading list of recent favorites?

Nicole Krauss, Great House
Daniyal Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
Barry Hannah, Long, Last, Happy
Tom Franklin, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
Sabina Murray, An Omnivore’s Inquiry
Wells Tower, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
Brocke Clarke, Exley

What writers, artists, musicians (dead or alive) do you turn to again and again for inspiration?

Tom Waits, Raymond Carver, F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby, in particular), Flannery O’Connor, Wes Anderson, Lucinda Williams, Antonya Nelson, Ann Patchett, J.D. Salinger and on and on.

Anything you would like to share re: writing The Typist – anything about the experience of writing it you can share?

On a practical level, I set what seemed to me very modest goals for writing The Typist. I’m always hearing about writers who somehow manage to crank out 1,000 words a day or something and that always drives me crazy. I so rarely have days like that. I’m a plodder. With The Typist I tried to do 1,000 words a week. It’s the first time I’ve ever set a goal like that and it helped. I figured 1,000 words a week, 52 weeks a year, before too many years I’d have a novel. It kept me moving forward somehow, made the process less daunting.

On a personal level, I think it’s my best book. I felt ready to write it. I’m proud of my first novel but the writing was torture. Just misery. I think that’s partly b/c I’d never written a novel so I had a lot to learn but I think it’s also because I was writing that book under contract. It took a while before that novel became “necessary” for me to write. On a gut level, I mean. Does that make sense? For a while, I was writing that book for my publisher and my agent and not for myself. The Typist was different. I don’t mean to suggest that it wasn’t hard or that there weren’t times when I didn’t feel like chucking the whole thing and fixing a drink. But by and large, I felt confident all the way through that I would eventually find my way to the book I wanted to write.

Talk about writing stories vs. writing the novel.

I cut my teeth as a writer of short stories. And I still love short stories, both as a writer and a reader. Basically a short story takes a novel’s worth of emotional complication and compresses it down into this much smaller space which can make for a very intense reading experience. And stories are allowed a kind of air of mystery that I love, especially at the end. Stories generally close on an emotional upturn or downturn but all the loose ends aren’t necessarily tied up and that really resonates with me as a reader. It’s more like life. It feels more true. I think my experience as a story writer has definitely had an impact on my novels. Most of my favorite novels — The Great Gatsby, As I Lay Dying, to name just a couple — are less than three hundred pages long. I think that has less to do with a short attention span than with the intensity of the reading experience. The impact is less diffuse. And I try to bring that intensity to the page when I’m working on a novel — that sense of a emotion compressed into tight quarters, that air of mystery, that feeling that life is more complicated, more ineffable than the words right here on the page.

What is in the works?

I’ve got another novel cooking but I’m still in the germination stages at the moment. I’d tell you the details but I have a sort of teapot theory of writing — everything project has a certain amount of steam and talking about a project lets off just as much steam as writing it. I try to save my steam for the page. I’ve been writing stories the last few months. I wrote a vampire story. No joke. I wrote it on a bet with a graduate student and I actually think it turned out pretty good.

3 things and/ or habits every writer would benefit from.

Smoking. I’m kidding, of course, but truth is all my habits are bad. They’re personal and particular to my own neuroses.

Best advice you ever got.

Be patient.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday — and over the holidays, every Saturday — 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. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.