On Susan Tepper’s “Course” and Walter Bjorkman’s “Fragments“
by Dorothee Lang

I still remember the day I read Susan Tepper’s poem “Course” for the first time: a Saturday in January. I was out for a walk through melting winter ice. Thought of this special mood out there. Tried to put it in words. And back home, found it captured in Susan’s poem, in 12 lines that encompass the transition of seasons, life, and our identity in this world – “we have learned to take our name / pushed shoreline to shoreline”

I was taken by the complexity of “Course”, and by the way it reflects on the duality of the world from an own, almost autonomous place. It’s a poem I kept returning to, one that remained with me, and it was fascinating to follow the comments, and to read Susan’s own view of the poem some days later: “it is a light and dark poem, that’s how I see the world, that’s my theme even with fiction, presenting that dichotomy between light and dark, good and evil.”

Another poem that remained with me since I read it is Walter Bjorkman’s “Fragments“. The poem induces a kaleidoscope of associations, evoked by the images it includes and by its experimental structure. It invites different approaches to read it, and keeps changing on the page even while you read through it. I printed it, pinned it on a wall to capture it, and couldn’t escape the feeling that this might be a modern koan: “[These] do to (one) heaven / (Wonder love)You want (hurtin’ everlovin’ you)”

What also struck me was the author’s note: “Conceived and Composed in 1974.” First seen in MiPo Zine Volume 8, 2002. And there I was, in 2009, reading it, and captured by it.

On Andrew Roe’s “Stalling“
by Christian Bell

When you have kids of your own, your sensibilities do change, and writing that once may not have affected you ends up flooring you. Maybe, as a parent, you just become mushy or squishy; maybe you’re just a borderline emotional wreck, worried about all possibilities in the lives of these small people that you’ve been allowed to take home from the hospital.

Andrew Roe’s story “Stalling” is a story that hits the parent part of you. The opening line—”My son, six, is practicing dying.”—is as concise as you can get and still compel the reader to hang on to every word that follows. It opens up that world of possibilities mentioned before, and for me, the first time I read that, I felt both excitement and dread. Excitement at where Andrew was taking me with this story; dread that he was going to take me to a scary place, where the child is going to meet an unfortunate end. Thankfully, he defies those expectations and instead takes me to a moment that is all so familiar to parents. A child questioning, trying to make sense of the world with weighty questions, with it conveniently happening right at bed time. In so few words, Andrew gives us so much—emotion, rich dialogue, family history, a tender father-son relationship.

This story is powerful enough that I think it would touch non-parents as well. Like much great flash fiction, I think it succeeds in drawing readers into a world that they may not inhabit and convinces them of its authenticity. It’s a brief journey but one that will be remembered long after.

Fictionaut Faves, a series in which Fictionaut members recommend stories on the site, is edited by Marcelle Heath, a fiction writer, freelance editor, and assistant editor for Luna Park. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Thought I’d chit-chat with Tracy Lucas. Smash Cake, good reads. David Erlewine Fictionauter represent, holla. Ask me for a copy of the 12 am project btw I have like 80 and will mail one to you. He is in it. More on Tracy below, and writing. That thing we do.

That whole “Ingredient X” thing might play more pretentiously than I meant it to, when I hear it out of context like that. Let’s hope not.

What I meant by it is that unmistakable something; that vibe that transcends a decent explanation and reaches everyone at an instinctual level, regardless of shared experience or commonality. Think mosh pit throbbing, or a real experience in a sincere church, or the moment in every Olympics where the guy gets back up and wins one for his dead whoever. That pull to common humanity is what we’re after, though it’s hard to regulate and even harder to explain without sounding silly.

Basically, we want passion. That’s the closest word.

Oh. And also, I have to like it.

Who are you Smash Cake people? Give us a history of the Smash Cake peoples. Please do it in a Soviet accent.

Ve are das aditoor uf das maggazheen… yeah, I’ve got nothing. Great question, though. (If you want it in Spanish, I could probably do that. Call me.)

Smash Cake is a one-person shop at the moment, though I’ve got to give props to all the folks out there who are avidly supporting us. It’s been overwhelming.

This whole magazine endeavor is something I’ve always wanted to try. On my desktop menu, I have a perpetual text file (which originated on a brand-new Windows 93 system, if that tells you anything) of future literary journal titles I was going to present to the world at large someday. Thankfully, none of you will ever read “Frazes”, which was the lead horse during junior high. (I am so sorry.) The Smash Cake name stuck, as could probably be guessed, while watching my son decimate his first birthday cake with a royal vengeance and sheer, terrifying glee. His eyes were crazed, and it was all about the experience in that second, that moment. That seemed to sum everything up perfectly, so “Smash Cake” we became.

As far as publishing chops go, I’ve taken turns as a reporter, photographer, graphic designer, columnist, publisher, freelance manuscript editor, layout chick, group facilitator, obituary-typist, author, poet, book publicist, and assistant editor for a glossy, bilingual kids’ health magazine. (I’ve also managed ten pizza restaurants, but that’s not exactly relevant, I suppose.) Most of these stints were for small local companies or individual authors, but they taught me how important a good work ethic is. When you’re the small guy, you’ve really got to sweat for your piece of pie. I value those lessons a lot.

I started Smash Cake because I wanted the freedom to be totally eclectic and to give rise to the passionate voices among us. Craft and technical expertise are important, and I look for those; but they’re not the whole equation. I want goosebumps and vomit.

Name three Authors Smash Cake adores and why.

Of the current fiction set, I’ve long been a fan of David Erlewine. I first discovered him by stumbling across his story “Not Really” at his blog, http://whizbyfiction.blogspot.com. I sobbed my ass off. And then I read it again. And again. The feeling reminded me of crying as a kid, that hard, out-of-breath, gut-punch kind of crying when your dog dies or your favorite toy appears in a yard sale box. Then I stepped back and realized that he had done all of this emotional damage to me in less than a thousand words, as a total stranger. That’s genius, in my book. And I’ve never read anything weakly-written by him either; that’s the craft part. He’s incredible.

Another personal writing hero of mine in the litmag world is Kaolin Fire. While our tastes can be very different at times, his marketing approach is truly something amazing to watch. The guy is a freaking workhorse, and unbelievably generous. I am quite impressed with the crazy promotions he thinks up for Greatest Uncommon Denominator, but somehow, they’re always spot on and they work. Most impressive, though, is his willingness to put his neck out and help others. He takes the thousand-fan theory to the extreme, yet always feels wholly genuine. I look up to that, and have told him (and others) so.

Favorite author I’ll never meet?  Todd Snider, musician. Hands down. (Google his stuff if you need to. Then send me stories that are as smart.)

Name a Red Sox player Smash Cake adores and why. You can research at www.boston.com

This is going to cost me some readers, alas, but I can’t do it.

I went, I researched, I tried. Just can’t.

Cubbies fan, all the way.

(Again, so sorry.)

Tracy, what drew you to literature in the first place?

Whew. I could write a book on this one.

The short answer is that books liked me back. Without being too dramatic, let’s just say that I was not a popular kid in school. I told jokes no one got, wore knitted vests (yes, vests), and had zero social skills.

The one thing I could always go back to was writing. I started reading when I was three, and taking creative writing classes at a special school in Chicago when I was four. (Trust me, this did nothing for my popularity status.) I’ve been told my first poem had a snowman in it. I couldn’t say.

But when things got rough–really rough–in junior high and high school, I turned to books and music, though it was always the lyrics that got me going more than the beat. It seemed like the authors I was reading knew more about life than the kids I had so much trouble dealing with on a day-to-day basis, and I started choosing printed company over human. Of course, it all worked out okay. I still feel infinitely more comfortable in type than I do, say, on the phone or at a party, but that’s more of a minor quirk than a hindrance these days. My books taught me the social skills I have, and I can fake it pretty well now.

If you could re-name that Icelandic erupting volcano what would you name it?

Elmer. Nobody names anything Elmer anymore.

Anything else you want to tell me here. Go big or go home, be brave, be proud, be loud.

My favorite mantra is, “Leap, and the net will appear.”

It’s scary as all hell, but it hasn’t failed me yet.

Nicolle Elizabeth checks in with Fictionaut Groups every Friday.

James Kaelan is the author of the novel We’re Getting On, also known as the “zero emission book,” which he’ll be touring up the west coast this summer, from Los Angeles to Vancouver. When he isn’t touring, he teaches at Pepperdine University (though he’s very much not religious). His short fiction has appeared in a number of places, including but not limited to Opium and Monkeybicycle. You can get a copy of his book, which grows into a tree, by launching him over at Flatmancrooked.

James, there is absolutely no reason to not start this off with asking you how your Zero Emission Book project is going – and also to tell the Fictionaut members about this project.

For those of you who haven’t heard about the ZEB Project, it is, maybe, the most overly-ambitious book project ever undertaken. Flatmancrooked Publishing is putting out my first novel, We’re Getting On. Taken at face value, that doesn’t sound very ambitious, but I promise you it is. The first edition of the book, if planted in the ground, grows into a tree. Seriously. The cover has spruce seeds embedded in it. On top of that, I’m doing a book tour from Los Angeles to Vancouver, starting in July — on a bike. During the tour, in keeping with some of the novel’s Luddite themes, I won’t be using any sort of electronic devices (e.g. cell phones, computers, televisions, etc.). For that matter, I’m not even allowed to sleep inside.

Some of you might be familiar with Flatmancrooked’s Launch program. If not, Launch is a first-time author support program where patrons can invest in a writer and a book. I got Launched on Monday, which means if you go to my Launch page you can buy a share. There are different investment levels, but if you go for the big one, you get a bunch of rad stuff. One of the give backs is a live album I wrote and then recorded at a strip club. Definitely worth hearing, at least for absurdity’s sake.

Are you going to make it on to Colbert? How can we help?

I’ve vowed not to end my bike tour till Stephen Colbert books me on the Report. That means, of course, that once I get to Vancouver, I may have to continue on to New York. But that’s something I’m willing to do. In order to get Colbert’s attention, we’ve created a Facebook group called If 10,000 people join, Colbert will book James Kaelan on the REPORT! It’s growing pretty quickly, but we could absolutely use everyone’s support.

You spend way too many hours on the computer, tell us how you hope to live five years from now? What would be your ideal amount of “connectivity” to live a balanced life?

That’s a damned good question. The major under-current of my novel concerns the abandonment of technology, whether by choice or by force. Consciously, I’m far too dependent on digital media these days and would love, if a little more successfully than my characters, retreat a bit from being constantly connected. If I could have it my way, I think I’d like to build some sort of artist retreat in the woods, or in a burnt-out city like Detroit, where I could read and write and play music with a bunch of wild men and women. I hear the median home price in Detroit is something like $20,000, so perhaps in five years I’ll be there making leather shoes and composing novels.

How did Flatmancrooked come about? What are your favorite parts about that experience?

Good old Flatmancrooked. Some time in 2007 Elijah Jenkins whelped the company, and I helped him rear it starting in March 2008. I’d finished grad school in Boston six months before, and after a detour to the Middle East, I went home to Sacramento. One day I was browsing Craig’s List ads and found a post seeking help to run a digital magazine. I responded (to Elijah, as it happens), and we met for coffee. After that we borrowed $5,000 from a wonderful woman Elijah knew and used that to put out a book. I’d worked at a couple journals before, but this was the first time I’d been in co-charge of an entire operation. Somehow, we landed a story from Ha Jin, and another from Jorge Luis Borges. The company sort of took off after that. Deena Drewis came on in the late summer of that year, and she now holds my old position at the company. She and Elijah are both the greatest. I used to put them through hell when I was at the company. Elijah and I fought famously. Every time we were about to release a book, he and I would have some difference of opinion, and one of us would end up threatening to quit. We both just wanted the company to thrive. And yet, somehow, we always worked through our differences. Conflict is the backbone of art, of course, but it’s also apparently the backbone of good business.

Flatmancrooked is sort of blowing up, now. And that’s not a product of luck, either. Their ideas are revolutionizing the way books are marketed in the 21st Century. But the coolest thing to me, still, is that the company never borrowed another cent; the whole damned thing germinated from a $5,000 seed. Try that, CitiGroup.

What books/film/music are you closest to?

I could die happy reading John Cheever’s collected stories and nothing else. But for We’re Getting On I read and thought about Samuel Beckett the most — specifically the Three Novels, and more specifically, Malone Dies. These days I’m reading 2666, which I think is our generation’s War & Peace. Regarding film, I’m effectively a cinephile. In my Los Angeles neighborhood, I’m within easy walking distance of two independent, single-screen theatres. If I can afford it, I see what both are offering each week. To speak, though, of older films, I always give a shout out to Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire. If you haven’t seen it and think you hold in your mind the Platonic form of desire personified in film, you’re wrong. Go see it. Finally, to speak of music, I love Americana. I’ll tell you a little secret. I’ve been re-writing Taylor Swift singles with the intention of reclaiming them as mean, country songs. Mean pop. Look out.

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 an editor at Smokelong Quarterly, and her stories and poems have been published widely. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

I want to write this week about the great number of people and publications interested in lit mags recently. For example: The New Yorker‘s Book Bench blog has continued its weekly look at lit mags, “The Little Review.”  This week, TNY takes a closer look at recent issues of N+1, Lapham’s Quarterly, and Bookforum.

Then there is, of course, Kevin Larimer’s well established “Literary MagNet” column in Poets & Writers, where he has recently taken over as editor. Each issue, Larimer chooses 6 or so mags to highlight, this time looking at the new magazine Little Star, the 10th anniversary playing card issue of DIAGRAM (portions of which are pictured at right), Amy Hempel’s issue of Alaska Quarterly Review, and others.

Laura Pearson, Editor Emeritus over at Is Greater Than, has begun yet another series for the magazine on indie presses, this time to be called “Pressing Issues.” In the first installment yesterday, Pearson discusses the exciting re-lauch of The Baffler, the great fortune at Bellevue Literary Review‘s press offshoot, Bellevue Literary Press, and more news from other small presses.

PEN America magazine blogs about “Literary magazines here and abroad, now and in the future…,” discussing N+1‘s unique Magazines in the Americas project, Massachusetts Review‘s plan to publish more work in translation, and PEN America‘s own upcoming roundtable on international literary magazines.

In their latest issue, Guernica published the essay “Third Degree Burns” by Jay Baron Nicorvo from CLMP. The piece is an even-handed rebuttal to VQR‘s Ted Genoways’s much more hasty condemnation of a good portion of contemporary fiction and literary magazine publishing earlier this year at Mother Jones, “The Death of Fiction.” Nicorvo still finds fault with much literary publishing—but not with writers or lit mags. It is rather the structure and expectations of contemporary book publishing that Nicrovo sees as the problem, writing:

At commercial publishers, blockbuster books pay the bills and earn the promotions, and so editors, if they want to keep their jobs, acquire for the mass market. If you pay attention to who’s coming and going at the commercial publishers—and there’s a hell of a lot more going than coming—the business comes to seem like a game of musical chairs. When the music stops, the editor who isn’t on the acquiring end of a New York Times bestseller—Poor Little Bitch Girl, anyone?—is left without a desk chair.

And—last but not least—over at Luna Park we have a new essay on gendered editorial work by Kirsty Logan of Fractured West and PANK: “You Girls (pt. 1).”

Every Tuesday, 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.

Every now and then, people ask us about “Fictionaut success stories.” We do our best to keep up with member news and spread the word when Fictionauts get published in, say, The New Yorker — but we would love to collect more examples of good things that happened to writers because of Fictionaut. You see, it’s a lot easier to brag when you have the specifics.

So, we’d like to ask: have you been contacted by agents, publishers, or editors who noticed your work on the site? Did a print or online magazine publish a story you first posted or workshopped on Fictionaut? Did our community’s suggestions help you sell your novel?

We’d be grateful if you’d let us know in a quick email.

Last month, we featured Stacey Richter‘s story “My Date With Satan” in Line Breaks. Today, as a bonus, we are pleased to post “The Chair of Rejection” as recommended reading for any writer who has suffered the agony of rejection (yes, that’s all of us). I solicited this piece from Stacey for an issue of Mississippi Review and when it arrived in my inbox I read it immediately, then collapsed on the floor, laughing. Oh God, it’s good. She’s good. Now she’s here. Enjoy.

“The Chair of Rejection” was written as a response to a request from the Mississippi Review to write something about literary magazines for their anniversary issue. This was a tough assignment—writing about writing is not the easiest task—but I tried to make the best of it. Then, luckily, I remembered how I’d always wanted to write about The Chair. The Chair! I loved that chair, or at least the idea of the chair. The piece didn’t conform to the assignment that well, but I hoped, given the subject matter, that the magazine wouldn’t reject it. Or maybe it would have made more sense if they did?

Line Breaks is a regular feature in which accomplished authors introduce and share their first published stories with the Fictionaut community. Line Breaks is edited by Gary Percesepe.

On Julie Innis’s “Sanctuary“
by Beate Sigriddaughter and Michael Dickes

“Sanctuary” is my number one favorite of many stories I have read so far on Fictionaut. It is a huge world in a tiny story. It is told with such stunning simplicity and impact that it still has me reeling days after I first read it. Setting, title, words all work together to create their own sanctuary, including the loneliness of sanctuary, and the dull pain of this loneliness, the aching betrayal of self when something close to the heart cannot even be expressed, because it will not be heard or validated, not with the respect and compassion and outrage it deserves.

There’s the beauty of the world and there’s senseless violence seeping through it, and the wish to ignore the violence cannot be granted, but leaves an unbearably lonely discomfort. Congratulations to Julie Innis for this wonderful piece of writing.

– Beate

I have found Fictionaut to be such an amazing community of writers that share and lend words of advice and encouragement to each other. I have only been a member for a short time, but I have already grown as a writer myself and been filled with so many great stories as a reader.

It would be difficult, at this point, to choose one favorite to expound on. With writers like Meg Pograss, Matt Dennison, Finnigan Flaunt, and others…I have been given so many wonderful stories to read. If I had to choose one now, though, it would be “Sanctuary” by Julie Innis.

Anyone can write a story. Everyone should. But, when a writer knows what words to use and in what order, a certain kind of magic happens. Rhythm, metaphors, assimilation and taking the time to pull the write word or phrase out of your toolbag: That’s what makes a story stick. Getting it to stick in a readers heart is what matters, whether it be with tears, laughter or a knife to the heart.

In “Sanctuary” Julie Innis uses these tools beautifully. I read a lot and it really takes a great line to stick to my insides. “Even snakes give back bones” offers not only a great bookend to “Sanctuary” but is simply the perfect example of a writer who knows what she’s doing.

“That such a horror could be swallowed whole so that the next day no mark remains on the cobblestone path or in the hollowed ground beneath the weeping willow? Instead she accepts the plate from her lover, his face a mass of irritation: “don’t act like this now.” Later she will try to explain her sadness at it all–that nothing remained–why, even snakes give back bones.”

– Michael

Fictionaut Faves, a series in which Fictionaut members recommend stories on the site, is edited by Marcelle Heath, a fiction writer, freelance editor, and assistant editor for Luna Park. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Finnegan Flawnt is a fictitious writer and purveyor of fine podcasts, who lives under Milk Wood with two females and a bad conscience because of his continued deep social media procrastination. First published in June 2009, his flash fiction has appeared, or will appear in: Metazen, Bull, fourpaperletters, Foundling Review, Wrong Tree Review, divine dirt quarterly, elimae, Litsnack, notfromhereareyou, Rejection Digest and the Mad Hatter’s Review.

What story or book do you feel closest to?

Right now, I feel close to Hilary Mantel, whose collection learning to talk I picked up a couple of days ago. I only discovered Mantel a few months ago and I’m reading a little by her every day because I’m afraid I might run out of it – it’s like a drug, really, doesn’t happen often to me – last time, it was another British author, David Lodge, and before that I had a crush on Michael Chabon.

Books I feel closest to at all times include Ulysses by Joyce, The Idiot by Dostoyewsky, Der Stechlin by Fontane (a book little known outside of Germany where it was published in 1897, translated into English first in 1995), Mercier et Camier by Beckett, and anything by Gertrude Stein, Camus, Borges and others. This is a large collection whose members stand around me like the ancient monuments of Stonehenge: a burial ground, yes, but dead, no.

While I read Mantel breathlessly and without interruption, these others are more like good old friends: I look at and into them almost daily and come back refreshed and inspired.

Do you have a mentor?

Not as such. I’d like to think I’m too old for mentoring. (Is that true? Anybody out there willing to support an old geezer with a wheezing cough?) I’ve got many wonderful friends though, including a number of very talented and generous fictionauts from whom I continue go learn.

My parents supported my earliest writing: the first story I remember writing – in German – was called “Leopold Wundersam goes into inward emigration”. I was six years old then and I think my parents might have been afraid for my mental stability. I’d like to think I tapped into some collective unconscious Holocaust memory there. However, later my father persuaded me to learn a straightforwardly paying profession which is how I ended up getting a PhD in physics.

I was given the first and so far last direct literary mentoring at the end of my last masters exam. The mathematics (!) professor, whom I greatly admired, asked me what I wanted to do with my degree, and when I replied “I was going to get a PhD”, he said “I’m surprised. I always pictured you as a novelist.” I’d like to believe him.

How do you stay creative? What are your tricks to get “unstuck?”

Fortunately, I haven’t needed any tricks for quite a while, certainly not since I began publishing online. While it can be distracting at times, I find the almost continuous dialogue with readers most stimulating to my creativity. When I feel as if I’m sinking creatively, I go on “artist’s dates” as Julia Cameron calls them – usually involving non-verbal, non-written art – or I write “morning pages”, a tool recommended by Dorothea Brande, trance-like early morning writing in longhand that you don’t ever read again. On an ongoing basis, I need a musical cocktail while I write, which includes music that, to most people, sounds as if cats were tortured, like string music by John Cage or Michael Finnissy, or vocal music by the Hilliard Ensemble. I am also a great friend of Philip Glass, Terry Riley, John Adams and other minimalists – their music helps me float along during that first draft. When I feel more specifically stuck for words, any of the authors above will help me get afloat again, but Gertrude Stein, being a literary equivalent to the musical minimalists, is invariably helpful. I enjoy writing mini reviews, too, and though I have only recently begun, I have a hunch that the editorial work does support my own writing if only because it helps me get away from my own head.

Reading my own work and the work of friends and putting it out there as podcasts also keeps me going – another way of going away from the page that I find refreshing – with your own penchant for podcasting, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

My family has cabin in the woods where I go without a laptop as often as possible to write in longhand or simply sit around and watch it all happen rather than trying to pin it down with a pen. That gets me unstuck.

If nothing else helps, Ms Flawnt, who is an ex-editor, stands at the ready for a fight. We have a tumultuous relationship that pays off beautifully in creative terms.

What are your favorite websites?

I am a sucker for social media. I might be worse than you! I’m not only on facebook with a friend and a fan page, twitter etc. spend some time moderating a fledgling online flash fiction workshop of virtual writers and, since very recently, editing for the exquisite Metazen, which was also featured on fictionaut blog last month. Fictionaut is my most regular community hangout – especially with all the challenges – I even organised the St Patrick’s Day Challenge (in the Paddy Whacker group – a marvelous experience). Though I’ve got a couple of friends at Zoetrope, I’ve not really made use of the workshops there. Otherwise I put time into my own two online blogs for longer and for very short fiction. When I feel like I’m using all of these too much for procrastination – or when, like right now at the beginning of term, I’m totally out of time – then I take a break from all things web, usually for a few days, and go to our cabin.

What are you working on now?

In mid-February, I began to develop a distinct taste for the regular publication of flash (away from magazines) – and I’m still doing that, pretty much every day – it will keep me limbered up and creative while it’s fun, I guess.

A couple of mags that I respect have kindly asked me for contributions in the form of short prose and rather than throw something old (nothing I have is all that old) their way, I am working on these “commissions”, which is slow going because I am rather meticulous – I write quickly but I tend to agonise over tiny details for quite a while. I suppose it is also a way of teaching myself how to edit.

I have put the first draft of a novel that I bore under great pains last November (during NaNoWriMo) aside for the moment because I repeatedly fell asleep when trying to read it through – this began to look like a sign that I hadn’t found the right approach to the longer form yet. I am forever experimenting with different ways into the novel while trying not to lose my appetite for the very short story, which I have increasingly come to appreciate. An example is the cycle of flash pieces that I wrote at the end of 2009, which covers twenty-four time zones on Christmas day. These are the literary children that I currently nurse and rear.

Being in constant contact with such a great number of incredibly talented people – on fictionaut and elsewhere – has had a humbling effect on me and I rather like the idea of taking it more slowly now. Since English is not my mother tongue, I have more of a toolmaker’s attitude towards the language – in English, nothing comes natural to me: I have to work on the smallest detail and the tallest thought alike.

I am a great admirer of your video readings. Your voice strikes me as the voice of a trained actor, and even better – a voice-over natural. Have you dabbled in this area?

Likewise, Meg! I love what you do with video, color, background in addition to your voice. I get that a lot – the suggestion that I should go be a voice-over professional – very satisfying but about as useful as the suggestion to make money as an ass model (I’ve got nothing against ass models and I’ve got a great ass, Ms Flawnt says, so there’s another thing the world did not really need to know).

In fact, I used to want to be an actor for the longest time and briefly went to acting school as a young man. Later when working in London, I was Messerschmann in “Ring round the Moon” by Jean Anouilh, a delightful play, which was performed publicly in Saddlers Wells, a rather large, well known London venue, but I realised then and there that theatre wasn’t for me.

I don’t think I’d want to do what you do so well – appear on camera. But radio and voice work fascinates me and I have a drawer full of unfinished radio plays.

How in the world did you end up with over 4,000 twitter followers? I marvel… I have come to see you as a social media guru…

4744 followers as of today, to be exact – most of which undoubtedly are sales duds. Still, twitter drives traffic to my blogs and the re-tweeting mechanism is like a show of hands that lets me know if I’m going in a “readable” direction. Which is an interesting notion – the great temptation of social media for a writer is to write for instant gratification – so easy to obtain, and yet, how meaningful is it? I noticed that the number of people I can actually dialogue with hardly ever exceeds 10-20: this is just like in real life – and not so different from my experience on fictionaut either. The dialogue does sustain my writing. Since I’m not famous, it is also based on exchange of ideas, kindness, attention and critique – all of which keeps me on my toes.

As to how I got to that number of followers: I simply put the time in. Went on twitter around the same time that I began my literary blog so I worked the equation: presence + content = audience. Today, I rarely post more than 5 tweets a day, but when I started, I did a lot more.

Overall, social media is not free attention. I’ve been at this for a long time – more than twenty years in fact – and networking on any platform, virtual or real, takes time. For me at least an hour every day (a precious hour that I don’t write or rest or relate to my loved ones). You’ll only succeed if you enjoy doing it. I happen to prefer the web to going to cocktail parties. It got nothing to do with writing though it may be a road to getting published – I’m looking forward to finding that out!

I know that Flawnt is a pen name. How has having a pen name affected your life (positive and negative)? What has it allowed?

I originally developed Flawnt because I felt that he would allow me to say things I couldn’t say as the me that I already was in the world. I didn’t want anybody to come up to me and say “Hey, you crazy son of a gun, how dare you write about…” – though I’ve got tenure, I felt a little vulnerable. This part of the deal has worked out – only a few friends and family know my identity. Another positive effect has been the focus on the issue of existence and identity, which is the center of my moral interest as a writer. Flawnt also keeps me literary: I am forever looking at myself from the outside. My development of the “serious writer” character in a series of shorts is a result. A lot of my work is autobiographical but because of Flawnt it doesn’t look that way. I don’t know if that’s a good thing?

I’m not really aware of any negative aspect to working under a pseudonym – except the time lost having to explain and conceal myself simultaneously. My daughter doesn’t like the pseudonym though – I think she’s jealous because the father of one of her classmates is a famous writer.

For an “old geezer” you sure have spunk!!

Thanks very much. What a great word – “spunk”. I am actually not that old…age is one of the existential attributes I like to play with – old age leads to death – and Flawnt’s own ageless beauty (and his great ass) permits me to do this. The real me is neither young nor old, doesn’t smoke or drink or overindulge in anything except obsessive writing. Flawnt is “practically perfect in every way”, as his auntie, Mary Poppins, herself quite spunky, was fond of saying.

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 an editor at Smokelong Quarterly, and her stories and poems have been published widely. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

For many of us, the main reason to go to AWP’s annual conference is that it is the greatest grouping of lit mags this side of early 20th century Modernism. Not even Powell’s Books has as many lit mags in one room (not even with their small press shelf and magazine racks combined). The following are some mags and editors I ran into at the event:

The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review is back. Not that it ever left actually, only now it has shifted gears with new editor Nathaniel Perry (who also edits Lyric).

Booth, formerly only published online, produced an elegant print edition of its first issue for conference swag.

The editors at PANK—M. Bartley Seigel and Roxane Gay—are some very nice people, who also seemed to have a good time at the event.

TriQuarterly availed itself of the opportunity to unload some of its fantastic back issues, unparalleled by most contemporary lit mags—such as the special Vladimir Nabokov issue (of which I bought the last copy they had). Browsing, I couldn’t help musing on the fact that these were the last of the mag’s print life.

Editors from Juked, Hobart, Lamination Colony, NOO, Tuesday: An Art Project, and Memorious joined together for an inspired Indie Lit Mag panel discussion about why we should publish, well, anything at all (a discussion that included Blake Bulter’s quotable bit of advice for publishers: “Do whatever the fuck you want”).

For Ninth Letter‘s latest issue they brought some of the past designers back, and a large chunk of artwork, “Immovable Property (U. S. A.),” can be downloaded on the mag’s website.

And Lumberyard magazine’s new book publishing expansion Typecast sounds pretty awesome. (They also seemed to have a fantastic time.)

Every Tuesday, 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.

On James Robison‘s “Mars”
by Ann Bogle

A favorite Fictionaut short story I have chosen to discuss is James Robison‘s, “Mars.”  The story is technically flawless. Charlie and Denise in their kitchen conversation become: an objet d’art. The story bears re-readings and never tires. Denise’s Charlie is “inarticulate.” Her word for it renders him “poor” — poor in spirit, poor in pocket (though he works), and poor in vocabulary for remembrance. The story is a cast of words that paint in memory.

Nowhere is there better fiction dialogue:

“She was basically telling me about our rockets in the USA and saying like, we pretty much have the best rockets. Like she was talking about plums or what has the best cookies. She’d been working for the Defense Department.”
“Don’t go into her leather jeans. I mean, if I have to hear. I’m warning you. Big deal! I got news for you. Men are stupid.”
Denise looks angry.
He says, “I wasn’t. Who said jeans-”
“Anybody can buy red leather jeans.”
“I never said.” His voice goes falsetto on the word “never.”
“Oh, you’re so impressed by that. Give me a break.” Denise looks at the back of her hand. “So what — Maria Pizzatory.”

Poetic language, never poetic for its own sake, advances the story, particularly the element of character within the context of culture:

“His coffee cup is a heavy white mug. Denise’s coffee cup, empty, and her saucer are so thin as to be translucent and from a China pattern registered by brides-to-be, called the Devonshire Platinum. But Denise had wanted, and bought from the Saks 5th Avenue department store at the Deerfield Mall, only a bone China cup and saucer, just one of each, white with platinum trim. Her purchase caused a stir. One woman who sold wedding things had said, loudly, “Wait. She wants just the Devonshire cup and saucer — Just one of each –” She had said this loudly and as if Denise were an insane woman to want a coffee cup and saucer and not gravy boats and salad and soup bowls and place settings for sixteen or something.”

The story performs a fiction that clarifies life.

Fictionaut Faves, a series in which Fictionaut members recommend stories on the site, is edited by Marcelle Heath, a fiction writer, freelance editor, and assistant editor for Luna Park. She lives in Portland, Oregon.