Fiction

CCLaP Virtual Book Tour: Mark R. Brand Edition

Submitted by Jacobsknabb on Fri, 07/20/2012 - 17:44

ACM's love-affair with CCLaP continues today with tour stop #3 of Mark R. Brand's Life After Sleep virtual book tour. 

Today we get an all-access inside peek at Mark R. Brand's personal work space, a true delight. Brand has just recently been named [along with ACM publisher Curbside Splendor] one of the top 5 Chicago indie authors & publishers to look out for, so this is your last chance to see Mark's space before he ends up on MTV Cribs.

Ever wonder what inspires this amazing Chicago writer to write (I'll give you a hint, it rhymes with "cheese")? Ever wonder how long it takes Mark to solve a rubik's cube (I'll give you a hint, 2:26 flat, HAPPY NEW YEAR!)? Check it out:

I acquired the monolithic slab of mahogany that is my writing desk in 2004 when my wife's parents moved from their large house on Lawndale in Evanston to a smaller home in Wilmette. This desk belonged to my father-in-law (the artist, Dennis B. O'Malley) when he was a vice-president of a now-defunct Evanston bank several years ago. Their new home had no space for such an admittedly massive desk so, being the opportunist I am, I snatched it up, and with me it has remained ever since. I took some photos when we moved it into our former home and I went through about two bottles of Liquid Gold making every surface of it glow.

(FUN FACT: ACM Editor-in-Chief Jacob S. Knabb also owns an old, massive, wooden desk inherited from his father, who used it as a work desk when he employed by a now-defunct coal company. Old, inherited wooden desks are the way to go it would seem.) 

The desk is 3 feet deep and 5.5 feet wide, made of solid mahogany with brass drawer pulls. It has nine full-width drawers that pull 3 feet out to reveal several large interior storage spaces. The top, as you can see from the photos below, is removable, which is good because by itself that piece probably weighs around 100 lbs. I use a regular protective office blotter pad over the top of it because it's of the variety that will instantly show marks if anything cold or hot or wet is left on it, let alone scratches from my metal-bottomed keyboard.

My computer is a  2010 MacBook Pro i7 that I use with an external Apple keyboard and mouse and a 

23" Samsung HDTV as a monitor that also handles the XBOX 360 nestled behind it. I have a Brother wireless laser printer that I got when I enrolled at DePaul, and KOSS headphones so I can listen to music at suitably high volume and not disturb my wife or son when they're sleeping, which is when I mostly work. 
 
Can I solve that Rubik's Cube? Yes I can.
 
 
 
 
When we recently moved into our new home, I picked up a set of bookshelves at IKEA that hold roughly half of my book collection if double-stacked. The rest are, regrettably, in storage, but God-willing someday I'll have an entire wall-sized bookcase to get them all out. Our space is limited at the moment since we live in a relatively small two-bedroom apartment, but I like to keep a few things out that inspire or amuse me. If you happen to have been around in the 80's, and you look closely, I'm sure you'll recognize a few friends from that era, plus pictures, a couple of sculptures, a first-edition printing of Jack London's The Iron Heel (My personal all-time favorite book), and my grand-uncle's binoculars brought back from the European campaign of WWII. Those babies are incredibly rare and interesting because while the binoculars themselves were made in Japan, they were carried by a sailor or officer of the German Navy, and an identical sea-case can be viewed in the U-505 exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry.
 
One of my most treasured workspace ornaments is a hand-written letter from Mrs. Joan 

Thomas, widow of the early 20th century Catholic anarchist Ammon Hennacy who was quoted in the epigraph of my first novel, Red Ivy Afternoon. Mrs. Thomas, who was in her early 90's at the time, is a delightfully friendly and kind woman who corresponded with me a number of times about the book and who followed it with some interest after giving me permission to use his work in my own. 
 
(From left to right, postcard print by Dennis B. O'Malley, mid-80's vintage Star Wars Gonk Droid, postcard from Joan Thomas, pewter castle, and wind-up Robby the Robot from "Lost in Space")
 
One fun fact about my workspace that doesn't have much to do with writing (or maybe everything, depending on how you look at it) is that I like to eat when I write. Typical combinations include Shiraz and almonds, Corona Light with chicken wings, or--and my fellow writer Amy Guth loves to tease me about this--white cheddar cheese and orange juice. I have no idea why these particular combinations seem to be inspirational or helpful, but they are.
 
 
by R. Kelly Pearce, web-editor

CCLaP's Online Book Tour Stops in at ACM w/ a Novel Excerpt from Katherine Scott Nelson's HAVE YOU SEEN ME

Submitted by Jacobsknabb on Mon, 05/28/2012 - 12:45

The cops came to my front door at about eight in the morning. I didn’t recognize either of them. The older one had a full belly that he practically used to wedge the door open, and the younger one, who stood behind him, had a jarhead haircut that made his whole face look pudgy and prepubescent. I’d been sitting at the kitchen table with one of my library books, and I jumped when the front porch stairs creaked. The older cop knocked on the screen door and said, “We’re here about your friend, Amanda Mayward. May we come in?”

Like everyone else, the cops refused to use Vyv’s real name. Vyv and I were used to this. I glanced toward the living room, where my mom was still asleep on the couch, and toward the hallway to my parents’ bedroom, where my dad would be pacing and muttering to himself. I put on my hoodie and stepped outside to talk to the cops.

I leaned up against the wall while the older one flipped through his notes, loudly and slowly. I crossed my arms and ran my fingers across the leaves of my mom’s potted ferns. I knew their game was intimidation and I knew that you could win by coming prepared.

I had spent the last few days perfecting my lines. “I haven’t seen her since the end of the school year,” I had whispered to myself, as I ran hot water in the kitchen and worked on the stack of crusted pots and pans. I practiced a concerned expression in the bathroom mirror while brushing my teeth. “If I had to guess, I’d say she ran away,” I’d think, as I wrote a draft of a letter to the food stamp office for my mom.

He asked me, “When was the last time you saw Miss Mayward?”

“Around the end of the school year,” I said. “Why?” It flew out of my mouth like a tape-recorded message. I stuffed my hands into my pants pockets. I knew I couldn’t do this.

But the cops didn’t flinch. They went on to tell me what I already knew: not home since Sunday, missing persons report filed, foul play not currently suspected, and so on. I confirmed their physical description of Vyv: five-foot-five, about 150 pounds, just enough weight for inconvenient curves that she hid under long jackets and baggy sweaters. Hair: red. Not natural red, but the kind of purple-red that comes from two boxes of L’Oreal Feria that she’d bring home from Grand Island every month. A thick sheet of semi-curls that reached to dye-scorched ends at her waist. Wrist-Cutter Red. Blowjob Red. Girl With Problems Red.

“Did she ever talk about running away?” the younger cop asked.

“She talked about it all the time,” I said. “But I always figured it was just talk.”

“Anyplace in particular?”

Everywhere, I thought. Vyv and I were walking barefoot down our town’s main street, and she was telling me about the beaches in Tangier, where writers arranged their future classics and the best weed on the planet got passed around. We were picking clover out of the grass on the school playground, and I was listening to her go on and on about Siberia, where the trees exploded in the sub-zero winter and the trains hurtled on through the darkness for weeks. We were at the mall, and she was trying on black clothes, like suits of armor, to prepare herself for New York City.

“She’d been talking about Seattle a lot,” I said.

One of the cops whipped out a pen and wrote SEATTLE? in block letters. “Does she know anybody out there?”

I shook my head.

The younger one cleared his throat and said, “What do you know about her friends in Lincoln?”

“I never really met them.” I crossed my arms. “Besides, she hasn’t talked to them since this winter.” I considered adding more, but held my breath. It wouldn’t do any good to bring up that whole mess with Sonia and Grant. I thought of that morning in homeroom, when Vyv had lifted her head from her desk and moaned, “This weekend was so fucked.” She never went into specifics. Something about heroin and screaming at the driver of a car as he blew through red light after red light.

The cops nodded and took it down. One of them asked, “Was she having problems at home?”

I swallowed. “She doesn’t get along with her stepdad. They’re always fighting about something.”

Why were all of my words so inadequate? “Doesn’t get along with” to illustrate the cloud of rage that followed Vyv around on some days? The weight that seemed to settle on her whenever she bit back tears from another long row? “Always fighting about something” to imply that she often spent afternoons staring at the shotgun mounted above her parents’ couch, loaded with potential vengeance?

“What exactly happened at the end of the school year?” they asked.

“We had a falling out,” I said.

The older one flipped through his notes. “Uh-huh. Did you and Amanda fight often?”

Oh shit, I realized. They think I’m Vyv’s boyfriend. Or at least one of those guys who hung around her for sex. It explained why I, the former Eagle Scout, would associate with Vyv, with her antique boots and top hat and alleged Satanism.

I tried hard not to squirm. If Vyv were here she’d be collapsing in laughter, right on my front porch. “No, we were pretty good friends,” I insisted. “I was gonna call her and apologize soon.” I thought I could see it in their faces. I wondered if they knew.

But they didn’t say anything. The older one handed me a business card and said, “Most of the time they come back on their own, once they see what it’s really like out there. Give us a call if you hear from her.”

I put the card in my pocket and promised I would.

“Hey, I grew up on this block,” said the younger one. “In that yellow house.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Was a great place to grow up. Different then, of course.”

I said nothing. I’d always rather liked the shuttered houses, the distressed yards, the sinking pines, and I hated it when people shook their heads over the state of my street.

The cops turned and loped across my front yard, back to the cruiser. I went back inside. My mom was curled up on the couch under the heavy wool throw blanket, where she’d fallen asleep in front of the TV last night. I pressed her shoulder. “Hey Ma. I’m making breakfast. You want anything?”

“Just coffee,” she yawned.

I put on the coffeemaker and set up two mugs with milk and sugar waiting in the bottom. I cracked two eggs into a clean skillet and sliced chunks of potato into sizzling fat. Hey Vyv, I thought as I stirred the potatoes. Did you see that? I sent the trail out to Seattle for you. I pictured her on the Greyhound, riding east into the hills. She’d be looking out the window and listening to The Gits in her headphones, or reading the copy of Jane Eyre she’d swiped from Goodwill. I was happy for her.

                    

Katherine Scott Nelson is the author of the novella Have You Seen Me, a current nominee for the Lambda Literary Awards. Hir work has either appeared or is forthcoming in Confrontation, make/shift, and Fiction at Work. Ze lives in Chicago, blogs over here, and is currently on a 'Virtual Book Tour' online as a lead-up to an actual physical tour, along with other CCLaP authors, in New York City!

 

 

 

A conversation with Lindsay Hunter

Submitted by Jacobsknabb on Wed, 03/23/2011 - 22:12

 

photo by: Jacob S. KnabbAs part of the release of the two volume “Another Chicago Issue,” Another Chicago Magazine will be featuring interviews with some of the Chicago-based writers featured in the issue. The first in the series is an interview with Lindsay Hunter, author of Daddy's and co-curator (alongside Mary Hamilton) of the ever-popular fiction-dominated reading series Quickies. Hunter hails from Florida and her work bears the mark of that influence, exploring her concerns with sexuality, food, disgust, violence, family, and obsessiveness. Daddy’s is her first published collection of fiction and has generated a great deal of excitement both here in Chicago and nationally, receiving reviews in a slew of reputable places and a good deal of buzz in the book world for both the innovative writing style Hunter employs as well as the inestimable design elements of the book that have made featherproof books an industry standard. We sat down to talk with her about some of that, as well as topics ranging from religion, 80s wrestling, personal hygiene concerns to her approach to preparing for and delivering amazing public performances of her work. --Jacob S. Knabb
 

Another Chicago Magazine: Were you messy as a child? We bet you were messy as a child.

Lindsay Hunter: I think I was messy, but I was also extremely particular about stuff. Like, once I threw a holy tantrum because my grandmother bought me a dress without a belt. I was 4 or something. Another time I was arranging items on my dresser so excruciatingly precisely that my mom had to tell me to stop. I was maybe 6 or 7. I’ve always had ideas and compulsions like that.

ACM: How old were you the first time you cursed? Do you recall the circumstances? Did you get into trouble?

LH: I don’t remember the first time I cursed I don’t think. I do remember riding bikes with my twin best friends and trading Shits back and forth and feeling like the queen of awesome. Once, on a family vacation, my mom yelled at me or something, and I was standing outside our cabin muttering about it and I said something like, What a bitch, to no one I thought, just said it to the forestry and the shadows, but turns out my dad heard, and he took me into one of the rooms, sat me on the bed, and grilled me. Did you call your mother [dramatic pause during which I internally fearbarfed]...a bitch? I just kept insisting that I’d said witch. He didn’t buy it I’m sure.

ACM: What is your fascination with fishing? Preferred bait? Personal record catch?

LH: Strange - I don’t think I’ve fished but once or twice. I like the word fish though. I’m also a vegetarian and it pains me to see a fish on a hook, flopping. I guess I like the idea of it though, the glittering water, the slippery life underneath, you a asshole human looking to catch dinner or prove yourself or commune with nature or what have you...I also like the idea of a tackle box and all it could hold. You could learn a lot about someone by what’s in their tackle box, especially if it’s mostly not tackle.

ACM: Grosser when stinky: ass, crotch, feet? Why?

LH: Crotch. Ass and feet are supposed to stink on occasion. If your crotch is fragrant there’s a medical issue no one wants to get near. Get you a suppository.

ACM: What is it about the short story, and for that matter, the short-short, that you find so compelling?

LH: I like making a world you can view all you need to view in a couple pages or less. It’s economic. I like how you don’t have time to sprawl, how you need to be sure you’re choosing the exact right word and putting it exactly where it should go in a sentence. The pleasure of writing, to me, is the exactitude. And I love crafting a glimpse into a character’s life, into a world. Sometimes that glimpse stays with you longer than any binocular-aided 200-page stare.

ACM: Have you ever been caught stealin’? Did you try to steal then?

LH: I once stole a neopolitan candy on a shopping trip with my mother. I was maybe 5. I showed it to her in the parking lot and she marched me back inside to give it back and apologize. I remember being confused, like why couldn’t I just take it? There were tons of other times when I’d steal with my friends, but I didn’t get caught. Once, when I was visiting my cousins, we broke into a tiny general store and stole candy. I think we even broke the window to get in. Then we broke into the church and rang the bell. Just bored is all.

ACM: What is your approach to performance?

LH: My approach is to entertain. I hate being bored and I hate watching people read their stories like they’d rather be anywhere else but have to drone on and bestow this gift upon you first. I get excited before a reading, and nervous as hell, and I can feel the audience crackling around me, and I want to reach them with my story, I want them to get excited too, I want them to listen up and hear me. And if you’re having fun reading a story, the audience will probably have fun listening. That doesn’t mean your story has to be funny, not at all.

ACM: Dogs, cats, both, or neither? Why?

LH: I love all animals on this earth and if I was mauled by a leopard tomorrow my ghost would come back and declare that it was all my fault. I have a beloved dog, Lulubelle, who’s been my soulmate for 8 years, and I make it a point to meet every dog I come across. I’d have a dozen dogs if we had the apartment space, and cats too, if Lulu wouldn’t eat them at first sight.

ACM: What is the biggest misconception that people about white trash culture that you think is total bullshit?

LH: That white trash people are stupid, that they are glaze-eyed dummies with no inner lives.

ACM: What is the biggest cliche about white trash culture that you think is spot on?

LH: That they love camouflage.

ACM: Do you think that hosting the Quickies series has left a mark on your work?

LH: Yeah, for sure. You learn pretty quick what kind of sentences are boring to read out loud and what kind are fun to read out loud. It helps you be a better writer, reading your shit aloud to people. And maybe what I take from that brief time in my life when I thought I was a poet is the sound of words, and how they sound strung together, is just as important as their meanings.

ACM: What is it like meeting the challenge of preparing a new piece for each Quickies?

LH: I love it. Deadlines like that are necessary for me. I love constraints and pressures and demands--I do some of my best work that way. Once, I waited until the night before a reading to write something for it, and I destroyed my living room out of fear and anguish, and then I sat right down and it poured out of me. I also have this odd self-imposed mandate that I cannot read anything I’ve read before at a Quickies. It has to be new each time, or else I’m a cheater and a fraud. That’s just the challenge I want to meet I guess.

ACM: Do you sometimes know right away that a story is going to be better read aloud? Or on the page? Or are the two one and the same, really?

LH: I think they’ve become one and the same for me. A while ago I got obsessed with the idea that I couldn’t write something just for the page, like I’m a live audience addict and everything I write is tainted by that, and therefore I’m a joke, and so I made myself write stories just because, like stories I wasn’t writing for an upcoming reading or something, to see if I still had it. It was a huge relief when that first story got done. And then I went ahead and read it at a Quickies. Guess I showed me.

ACM: Twister or Limbo?

LH: Fuck both of those. Nimble is not in my wheelhouse. If there is a jut I will slam my head into it. I cannot touch my toes. I am knock-kneed.

ACM: What’s your biggest guilty pleasure when it comes to music?

LH: Adult contemporary. God, I love it so. I’m talking Hall & Oates, Fleetwood Mac, Steve Winwood. There’s a radio station back home, 98.9 WMMO, and they do not fuck around when it comes to lighting your life up with a/c music. Time for. A cool change. I know that it’s time. For a cool change. A cool change, what the hell is that? I don’t care, it’s wonderful.

ACM: There is a lot of eating and tons of food mentioned in your stories. What are some of your favorite things to eat in the following genres (Genres in bold, Lindsay’s answers follow):

   Junkfood: candy candy candy candy candy candy candy Doritos candy

   Cuisine: Olive Garden

   Pub Grub: jalapeno poppers, anything with the word “battered,” not onion rings though, slimyass disappointments that
   they are

   Mommafood: breakfast burritos, egg sandwiches, cream cheese dip

   Ima make me a real nice meal: always pasta. Pasta is like a steak for me. I also enjoy a veggie burger on a pretzel bun
   with some onion, tomato, avocado. Wine in a jelly jar. And dessert must follow dinner or else the whole thing is a huge  
   failure.

   If you make me this meal you might get to 2nd base: anyone that cooks for me, I’ll give it up pretty easily. A good
   friend made me a spicy peanut butter sandwich once and I wanted to cry. My dream would be for someone to make me
   some truly southern macaroni and cheese and a big vat of sweet tea.

ACM: If you were King of Chicago, what would be your first act upon assuming the throne?

LH: Put up a wind wall. Delete snow. Get rid of those pay-for-parking things. Demand a ribbon dance from a constituent, every day.

ACM: Speaking of thrones, what’s your favorite petname for the toilet?

LH: The crapper. Hombre. Toids.

ACM: Best oldschool wrestling association: WWF or NWA or AWA

LH: WWF all the way. I watched Summer Slam religiously when I was a kid. Huge crush on Bret Hart.

ACM: What is something that an old man once told you that you have never forgotten?

LH: About 7 years ago my grandpa told me he was “in the zone,” meaning he was in that chunk of time when all his friends were dying, and when he’d accepted that his time was nearing as well. It shocked me to hear him say it. He’s still alive. I think about it a lot, I hope I can be that calm, have that kind of grace about death one day too.

Also when I was little that same grandpa told me he didn’t know everything and I was shocked. I figured by the time you were old you knew everything.

ACM: Do you have groupies?

LH: I don’t think so. I’ve never met them if I do. No one’s offered me any sexual favors or wanted to stroke my hair or something. However Tim Jones-Yelvington told me he wanted me to don a strap-on and tend to his sexual needs, but I think he just said that because he knows I’d probably do it.

ACM: Do you pray?

LH: All the time. Mostly to say thank you or express gratitude. Or when I need to be reminded that my problems aren’t all that goddamn interesting.

 
photo by: Jacob S. Knabb

ACM Fiction

Submitted by Jason on Thu, 01/27/2011 - 12:49

Carnival

Roy William Scranton

 

A story starts with a sad child. A story starts in front. Flat in contrast, numbers well within range, okay, right, go. Here come the clowns.

            The clown breathes heavy, wet air into a red balloon, a pink balloon, a green or purple balloon, the fleshy stretch tightens expanding with each huff and hew, he ties them off squealing. The child watching with whom our story started still watches, no less sad but at least distracted now. He’s seen this kinda crap before, but he still doesn’t know how he gets them long like that then twists them, squeak, squeak into giraffes. Hey, look at that.