Failure Loves Company

The idea for Dancing with Steinbrenner started in a GChat with a friend last year, whose name I have hid. (All of my spelling errors have been preserved).

me: I have figured out what the next film that allows Jimmy Fallon to be a star in

[redacted]: what is that

me: Dancing On Steinbrenner

a buddy comedy where four die hard sox fans sneak into the cemetary where Steinbrenner is buried to dance on it with wacky results

[redacted]: haha

wow

me: Jimmy Fallon as a widower whose wife was inadverntantly killed by a foul ball hit by Alex Rodriguez

[redacted]: lol

me: Shia Lebouf as a post op FTM whose father killed him self in 1986 after Bill Buckner let the ball slip through his legs

Chow Yun Fat as a millionaire who made his fortune on the 2004 AL Championship Game

[redacted]: you are on a roll

me: and Amy Adams as the non-offensive friend who is in love withLebouf’s character but doesn’t know he was once a she

[redacted]: lol

me: it would either be a great movie

or a train wreck

especially when I cast Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Joe Torre

Some ideas you have to hold onto for awhile and I wasn’t quite ready yet to create something so bizarre. At that time, my divorce was finalized and I was a seeping wound, writing about the divorce and the failed relationship and about destroying other relationships. I was just getting back to fiction after a decade or so hiatus so I was rebuilding atrophied muscle. Then, HOUSEFIRE challenged me to write a novella in six weeks, and I did. I challenged myself to write a novella in a month, I did. I was finally ready to bring Dancing on Steinbrenner to life as Dancing with Steinbrenner. I don’t want to talk about it too much because it’ll give too much away. You can read Part One here. The rest will come out in future issues.

Ben Tanzer’s latest collection So Different Now through CCLaP Publishing is so fucked up and dark and awesome, an antithesis to my favorite book of 2011, his novel You Can Make Him Like You. So Different Now is a gorgeous e-book and it’s worth kicking in a little money for. You can check out more information about it here.

2011 has been pretty awesome. Let’s talk about why some other time.