Tagged with fiction …

Feb 14 2012
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poetry, publication news

Happy Valentine’s Day

On this day of love, I give you so many gifts. The first and biggest is this.

This is a project I worked on in 2010 and 2011 and these are some of the stories that came from that project. It’s a semi linked collection of stories where relationships are destroyed in a fucked up version of pay it forward. To get an idea of what you’re in for, check out “Quality Control“. Please buy a copy and listen to The National’s High Violet album while reading it.

PANK was named as a literary heir by the New York Times. I’m floored and honored to be their Interviews Editor every issue. Also, shout out to Annalemma for making this list, as Annalemma was born in Orlando.

I have a poem in the debut issue of FeatherLit, which you can check out here.

I make a return to Safety Pin Review here.

Janey Smith gave a nice review to the first issue of Heavy Feather Review here.

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Jan 26 2012
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performance calendar, performances, poetry, publication news

This Is For Fighting, This Is For Fun

Ronald Stowers was nice enough to record my poem during the slam I was in this past Tuesday. You can watch “The Genealogy of Irvine Welsh” below.

I’ve been working on my longest project yet and I don’t really have a deadline for it, taking it 500 or so words at a time. The current word count for it is about 15,540. Unlike some of the fiction I’ve written, I’m not mining anything from my life and surrounding it with out there concepts. I’ll be glad when I get the first draft done and start combing through it.

The project I’m currently working on spun out of a flash piece called From Jesus Christ, Boy Detective: Everything Must Be Slashed and WordPlaySound was nice enough to pick up the audio version (while red lightblubs picked up the text version). You can listen to it here and then I recommend listening to the rest of this podcast.

My boss over at PANK, Roxane Gay, wrote this incredible article about running her micropress Tiny Hardcore. Read it. You’ll learn a thing or fifteen.

I won’t even talk about the bullshit shut out of Drive. I enjoyed the book tremendously and am actually not mad how the movie revised the story to a degree. The movie is gorgeous and one of the few movies I have bought on the day it comes out on DVD. (There Will Be Blood is the other).

Next week starts a deluge of shows. Here they are, linked for your pleasure.

January 31 - 15 Views of Orlando Release Party

February 10 – Culture & Cocktails

February 11 – Our Hearts Are Power Ballads (Workshop on writing love poems)

February 14 – There Will Be Words #10

(All but the February 10th show is free)

Finally, you’ve got until January 30 to vote for the best of the first year of There Will Be Words. You can vote here.

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Dec 21 2011
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publication news

I Bring You Gifts

Last night, I read as my tween lit paranormal romance author persona J. J. Curry Ford at Speakeasy over at Wills. You can check out what I read here and here.

My non-fiction piece about seeing The Cure last month in New York was picked up by Monkeybicycle. You can check that out here.

An excerpt of my second novella, We Have Such Lovely Parting Gifts, is up this week at A-Minor, which you can check out here.

The Squawk Back has put out part two of my third novella, Dancing with Steinbrenner, which you can read here.

I’ll do my retrospective stuff next week as the year closes out. 2011 has been really good to me. I can’t wait to see what I can get done in 2012. Enjoy your day.

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Dec 15 2011
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publication news, self assessment, Writing

On Dancing On Graves

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.

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Nov 18 2011
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publication news

Zounds Bitches!

My second fiction chapbook, We Will Celebrate Our Failures, is now on presale over at NAP Magazine. You have until Sunday to buy a copy with free shipping for just $4. The best part is that you get this in February, so if you want a twisted Valentine’s Day present for your lady/man friend or you want to say “we’re through” in the most creative way possible, get your copy here. If you want to know what you’re in for, it’s a linked short fiction chapbook about people breaking up other people’s engagements. You can read this story to see what I’m talking about.

15 Views of Orlando from Burrow Press is also now on presale. This is a fiction collection linked to various locales in Orlando and all of the writers in the collection have ties to Orlando as well, including myself, Lindsay Hunter, and others. You should pre-order it here and then come to the release party on January 31 to celebrate its release. All proceeds will go to Page 15, a local children’s literacy nonprofit that provides free tutoring and creative writing programs to Orlando public school students.

I’ve been listening to The Twilight Singers Live in New York album almost on repeat. It’s a good live album, then again I’m a big Greg Dulli fan.

I’ll be updating the Shows page soon. I have dates to announce where you can see me rock your face off with words.

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Oct 20 2011
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fun with audio, poetry, publication news

Hands On The 9 & 3

I don’t drive. I can drive and have driven in an emergency situation or two but I don’t drive. Originally, it was a rebellion thing because I didn’t feel like being my mom’s gopher but it stuck. I’ve lived a life without a car for a very long time and while it has its challenges (like my impending moving day), I don’t regret living without one. It makes you think on your feet, sharper, especially in a city like Orlando where public transportation is ok at best.

What I am damn good at driving though is shopping carts. I know how to pick a good shopping cart. The IKEA shopping carts are my favorites because of their four-wheel drive (you can ghost ride the cart…sideways son). And so in 2004, I wrote a poem about my mad cart driving skills and it in my slam poem rotation and I eventually retired it. And then I cleaned it up a little and it found a home in the latest issue of Stymie Magazine and it is a gorgeous home. You can check out the issue here and you can hear me read the poem here.

NAP Magazine will be publishing Once, I Was An Angry Penguin, the final part in what I call the Leigh trilogy. This trilogy consists of A Patchwork of Rooms Furnished by Mistakes and Our Hearts Are Power Ballads. I am trying really hard to get out of the business of writing poems to women based on patterns and so far, I’m doing a good job. It just allows me to focus on fiction more.

I’m gathering blurbs for my first novella, Bodies Made of Smoke, coming out next month through HOUSEFIRE. If you want to blurb me, shoot me an e-mail.

The fourteenth installment of my sex/dating advice column is up over at Specter Magazine. You can read it here.

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Sep 19 2011
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fun with audio, performances, poetry, publication news, self assessment, Writing

The Jujitsu of Hustling

Last Saturday was the Heavy Petting show. Here’s my setlist

Written on the back of a flyer from the venue as is my ritual.

Now in legible English

  1. These Are Vows (Dodging Traffic)
  2. Primer (The Serial Rapist Sitting Behind You is a Robot/We Will Live Like Our Ghosts Will Live)
  3. Quadriplegic (We Will Live Like Our Ghosts Will Live)
  4. North/South (A Patchwork of Rooms Furnished by Mistakes)
  5. I Will Lose Myself In Chinese Art And American Girls (A Patchwork of Rooms Furnished by Mistakes)
  6. The Monogamist Talks To History About Its Stuttering Problem (Our Hearts Are Power Ballads)
  7. Every Girl Is The End Of The World For You And Me (Our Hearts Are Power Ballads)
  8. Registrar (The Jujitsu of Macking)
  9. Rear Naked Choke (The Jujitsu of Macking)
  10. My Curse (Gentlemen)
I put together a pretty good narrative, starting with the marriage, the divorce, and then everything after that. Before starting “Quadriplegic”, half the audience left at that point (they were young). I wasn’t trying to drive them out but I guess no one wants to hear about broken relationships at that age, still believing in the whole true love/monogamy thing. That’s cool.
My fellow performers also brought it as well (Robert Walker, Thomas Patrick Levy, and Anna Claire Hodge). It was a really good show. Thank you YesYes Books for coming to Florida. I’m looking forward to start working with them on Ghosts.

From left to right: Anna Claire Hodge, me, Thomas Patrick Levy, Katherine Sullivan (YesYes Books CEO), Robert Walker

I’m reaching a level of emotional honesty that I’ve never been before about the way I am in relationships and the root of why I am who I am in relationships. The shields are on full right now and I’m not looking to be in a relationship, which if you know me is very unheard of for me to say. While editing another potential e-chap of my earlier work, it has helped me confront this, who I’ve been, where I’m going, who I am now. In order for me to truly be good for anyone, I have to truly understand myself and work through these issues.

Specter Magazine did a wonderful thing and rescued a story of mine that was supposed to be published by a magazine in their first issue but the magazine never went live without explanation. This is one of my favorites as it is 99% fiction (the 1% is the fact I see abandoned shopping carts in my neighborhood all the time). It’s also one of my longer pieces of fictions, the kind of muscle work that gave me the strength to write the novella and other projects. You can read it here and then check out the rest of the issue.

I also have two poems in Awosting Alchemy, which you can read here.

This Wednesday is a very special edition of There Will Be Words. Hope to see you there.

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Feb 19 2011
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performances, publication news

There Will Be Fiction

On Wednesday, I went to this

Urban ReThink was the site of one of my more humbling moments as a first time author back when it was UrbanThink so I was afraid that those old gremlins were still there when I heard this was going down.

I’m incredibly glad to be so wrong.

The redesign of the space is wonderful and what confirmed for me that all the bad energy was exorcised was that the release party was packed. It made me tremendously proud of my hometown that so many people came to a book release party for a fiction collection.

About the collection itself: it is gorgeously put together from a design perspective and from a contributor perspective including Chris Heavener and fellow PANK contributor, Gene Albamonte (who I also got to meet). Burrow Press has brought their a-game. They give me incredible hope for the literary health of Orlando. Thank you Burrow Press for doing something to contribute to the literary scene in Orlando. Get your copy of Fragmentation here.

The Scrambler published two poems of mine, which you can read here and here. Also, Orange Alert picked up the audio of “The Kama Sutra of Hansel & Gretel” which is in my e-chapbook My Hands Are As Thick As Dreams. You can listen to this consistently awesome podcast here.

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Jul 27 2010
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self assessment

Pulse Check

Since the divorce and up until twenty minutes ago, I wrote nothing but fiction.  Some of it will come out later this year.

The hours at work grow longer.  I feel beat, like Tina Turner.  I will be in Indianapolis for three weeks starting August 16 on business, not getting bizay.  This is a good time for hotel living.

Safety Third Enterprises is gearing up for the launch of The Serial Rapist Sitting Behind You Is A Robot. PANK, being the rolldogs they are, shouted it out here.

Next week is the National Poetry Slam in St. Paul.  I will only miss it a little.  It will not miss me at all.

My love life: none.  Writing is my new wife and she still doesn’t do the dishes, me.

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Feb 17 2010
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poetry, publication news

Room 211

I got a great Valentine’s Day gift from xTx and Roxane Gay – an invite to Fictionaut.  Fictionaut is an invite-only site where writers post new and previously published stories and poems.  It’s inspired two new flash fiction pieces of mine, “What Happens In South America, Stays In South America” and “How To Make It In America“.  I feel privileged to be part of this salon.

After my business trip in Indiana, I hope to be off the road for six weeks until Richmond and Chicago on the first week of April.  I really could use the time off at home to regroup physically and financially.  The recharge will be good for me and the missus.

I have three poems up in the February issue of Word Riot here.  You should go here.

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