Monday, March 18, 2024

The 40 But 10 Interview Series: Sheldon Birnie

 


In 2023, I decided to retire the literary Would You Rather series, but didn't want to stop interviews on the site all together. Instead, I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!



Sheldon Birnie is a writer, dad, and beer league hockey player from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and the author of Where the Pavement Turns to Sand (Malarkey Books, 2023). He can be found online @badguybirnie

 




What do you do when you’re not writing?

I’m a reporter by trade, so my weekdays are spent interviewing, researching, and writing stories about the community I call home. I have two small children, who keep the rest of my time pretty busy with various activities and day-to-day stuff. I play hockey an evening or two a week, occasionally get the old band back together to play some music, and generally just hang around home or the vicinity of my neighbourhood, reading and writing for fun when possible.


What’s the best money you’ve ever spent as a writer?

I bought an office chair from Costco a couple months back. $90 I think. Beats the hell outta the kitchen chairs I’d been sitting on to work/write for the past few years.


How do you celebrate when you finish writing a new book?

A nice size glass of the good bourbon.


Describe your book in three words.

Gritty, grimy, weird.


What is your favorite way to waste time?

If you can spend 20 minutes just laying around, doing absolutely nothing, just watching the leaves blow in the wind, that’s time well spent if you ask me.


What are some of your favorite books and/or authors?

Impossible to single out even just a few, but I’ll giver a go here… I was a big Ray Bradbury and Stephen King fan as a kid, and still enjoy their stuff today, and can see how early exposure to their work, particularly short-stories, informed my own writing even today. In my late teens, Philip K Dick was a big influence, then in my early 20s, I became obsessed with the work of Raymond Carver, Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, and Cormac McCarthy. Over the past 10 years, I’ve tried not to let any writers in particular exude such a smothering effect on my own work. I’ve come to really appreciate the work of Margaret Laurence and Alice Munro, while trying to read as widely as I can, both contemporary and older writers I’ve somehow missed. Paul Quarrinton’s a beauty, both Whale Music and King Leary are top notch. Over the last couple years, I’ve been digging on Shirley Jackson, William Gibson, Kazuo Ishiguro, Denis Johnson, Charles Portis and Raymond Carver, among many others lately, and am excited everytime I see something new from Willy Vlautin, Bud Smith, Claire Hoppel, Andrew F. Sullivan, Jon Berger, Kyle Seibel. The list goes on and on forever, really, and the party never ends.


What is your favorite book from childhood?

Was a big Lord of the Rings fan too back in Grade 6/7, but have found it impossible to get back into it since then, even just in reading The Hobbit to my son, who is 8 (we both agreed to put it aside, try again later) and I’ve never even made it through those three films. I’ve found that The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy holds up as an entertaining read, and I’d have to say that reading Trainspotting in junior high blew my young mind, back then, and I’ve enjoyed re-reading it a few times since.


What are you currently reading?

Right now, I’ve got Saga of the Swamp Thing Book 5 by Alan Moore on the go, loving it. I’ve also been working my way through The Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols and Liberation Day by George Saunders, enjoying both on the whole. I also just started in on The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker, after seeing some chatter about it online, and though it’s early going still, I’m digging it.


What genres won’t you read?

Self-help, though I could probably use some.


What songs would be on the soundtrack of your life?

Hard to say, but I hope my buddies will play Todd Snider’s “Play a Train Song” at my funeral when I die, if I haven’t outlived them all.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~




Ride along on a journey with these 20 stories by Sheldon Birnie through the wild and wondrous backwoods of the Canadian prairies, out to where the pavement turns to sand and the possibilities are as endless as the horizon…

From close or would-be encounters with extraterrestrials, lycanthropes, bigfoot and the Ogopogo, haunted hockey skates and more, Sheldon Birnie’s new collection of short-fiction Where the Pavement Turns to Sand takes readers on a midnight cruise through the Canadian prairies before dumping you back on your doorstep, unsure as to what exactly just transpired.

A golf pro claims he was abducted by aliens before the big local tournament, though townspeople figure he finally fell off the wagon. A line cook comes face-to-face with something from his worst nightmare only to be mocked mercilessly by his peers. A beer league hockey player worries he didn’t do enough to help a former teammate, with tragic consequences. In these 20 stories, the mundane and the menacing meet over a pint at the local rink on the darkest night of the year, or around a midsummer bonfire beneath the stars on the shores of a deep forbidden lake.


Where the Pavement Turns to Sand is a collection of working class, everyday heartbreaks and bad decisions. In a refreshing rural Canadian setting, the characters in these slice of life tales stumble through divorce, debt, bad sex, and boring jobs, but also curling robots, aliens, jackalopes, wendigo, lots of legs wet with urine, and (maybe) sasquatches with an unexpected whimsy. What makes it work is Birnie’s signature dark humor and conversational style that makes every story feel like it was your neighbor telling it to you over a beer around a campfire, or at the rink. Surprising, entertaining, grimy and weird.

– Meagan Lucas, author of Songbirds and Stray Dogs and Here in the Dark, Editor in Chief of Reckon Review.


Buy it here:

https://malarkeybooks.com/store/pavement

Monday, March 11, 2024

The 40 But 10 Interview Series: Rick Berry



I had decided to retire the literary Would You Rather series, but didn't want to stop interviews on the site all together. Instead, I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!


Today, we are joined by Rick Berry. Rick is a British author. His debut novel, Kill All The Dogs (SpellBound Books, 2024) is a satire that deals with trauma, loss and political dysfunction. Rick’s short fiction has been published by Cafe Irreal, Bandit Fiction, Dream Catcher, The Letters Page, Planet Raconteur and  elsewhere. In his day job he works for the Mayor of London, and he has also written widely about politics for various publications. Rick is originally from Greater Manchester and now lives in London. Find him at rickberry.co.uk.

 





What made you start writing?

I've been writing books for as long as I can remember. Putting words down on the page has always felt like the most natural form of communication for me. I owe a huge amount to a brilliant English teacher, Miss Huntington at Reddish Vale School, who always encouraged me and made me see that I had a talent for it. Even from a young age I was thinking about the practicalities of writing as a profession. I remember an author visiting our school, and when I was picked to ask him a question, I asked how much he earned. Despite realising later that this wasn’t the most lucrative career path (the visiting author tactfully declined to answer my question), I have never given up on it.


What’s the best money you’ve ever spent as a writer?

A number of years ago I wrote a non-fiction book about independent politicians. I travelled the length and breadth of England, spending a fortune on train fares, interviewing local mayors and councillors. The royalties didn’t come close to reimbursing me, but it was worth it to meet so many interesting people. Like Stuart Drummond, who worked as a mascot for his local football club, wearing a monkey suit and dancing around the stadium, but stood for mayor of the town and won. Or Martin Bell, a war reporter who stood for Parliament to oust a corrupt politician. It was an important lesson for me as a writer, too, which I kept in mind after I decided to focus primarily on fiction. I’ve always had a good turn of phrase, but writing is about telling stories, and lots of other people have fascinating stories to tell. It’s part of my craft as a writer to find them.


Describe your book in three words.

Nasty, brutish and short. One for the Hobbesians.


Describe your book poorly.

Kill All The Dogs is a book about killing dogs. 


If you met your characters in real life, what would you say to them?

The protagonist of Kill All The Dogs is Nathan Hyde, a young man who is unable to move on from a childhood trauma. I would want to speak to him as a child, and get him the help he needs before he lets this one event dictate the course of his life. Of course, then there would be no book. I work in politics, and I often see variations of Nathan Hyde. Good people, but with demons they are trying to battle, sometimes with negative consequences for society. Having said that, if I met Nathan as an adult I would also tell him I admire the audacity of what he is able to pull off, and how he is able to exploit the weaknesses in our political system.


If you could spend the day with another author, who would you choose and why?

I subscribe to Margaret Atwood’s view that wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté. But my son is named after Kurt Vonnegut, so it might have been interesting for the three of us to get together, so my Kurt could meet his namesake. I will have to settle for encouraging him to read Vonnegut’s books.


What are some of your favorite books and/or authors?

An almost impossible question, given the large number of writers that have had a profound impact on my life and writing. As well as Vonnegut and Atwood, Ursula Le Guin, José Saramago, Haruku Murakami, Cixin Liu, Thomas Hardy and Sally Rooney stand out as favorites. In the past few years I’ve also rediscovered a love of children’s literature from reading with my son: Michael Morpugo, Pamela Butchart, Roald Dahl, Francesa Simon, Beverly Cleary and others have been thoroughly enjoyed.


 If you could go back and rewrite one of your books or stories, which would it be and why?

I am constantly re-writing my first novel. It is essentially a fictionalised account of my childhood. I have a twin brother, Craig, and the book tries to explore the strangeness of our relationship with each other, and the relationships we have with the outside world, as a pair and as individuals. Turning something so personal into fiction is not easy. There have been different iterations of the book and I am always coming up with new ones. I will probably never be able to get every nuance of this story onto the page, at least not in a single book. In fact, a small part of our story features in Kill All The Dogs, with the Sophie and Sadie characters.


If you were on death row, what would your last meal be?

My partner Lucy asked me this when we were dating and my instinctive, drunken response was to say I'd ask for a bowl of Coco Pops (Coco Krispies in the US). I will stick with that answer. But I would be sad if it didn't also come with a side of Yorkshire puddings and gravy.


What songs would be on the soundtrack of your life?

I am quite parochial in my music, so my answer is going to be dominated by bands from my home city of Manchester, England. The first would be Flashbax by Oasis, which Noel Gallagher starts with a line about sitting on a fence trying to write a story. Then it has to be Half a Person by The Smiths, about a clumsy and shy teenager moving to London (I was older when I moved there but it resonates). Skipping forward to how I feel now, I would pick Now That I'm A River by Charles Watson, formerly of my favorite non-Mancunian band Slow Club: for me, this is a song about the feeling of freedom that comes with self-realisation.

 

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Are we defined by the things that happen to us, or the things we make happen to others?

 Ten-year-old Nathan Hyde is playing in a tree house, when he witnesses a vicious attack on his best friend’s younger sisters. Life is never the same again.


Many years later, Nathan finds himself in the lower reaches of a government department, when an opportunity to confront his demons and enact revenge presents itself. A mystery illness is taking hold in the population, at the very moment a scheming, attention-seeking politician becomes Nathan’s new boss.

It can’t happen, can it? In the farcical world of politics, anything is possible.
Nathan Hyde is going to kill all the dogs.

Part psychological drama, part political satire, Kill All The Dogs is the story of how of a personal trauma becomes twisted into a national tragedy.

 

 Link to buy:

https://www.amazon.com/Kill-All-Dogs-psychological-political-ebook/dp/B0CQ535QXT


Monday, March 4, 2024

The 40 But 10 Interview Series: Robert McKean




I had decided to retire the literary Would You Rather series, but didn't want to stop interviews on the site all together. Instead, I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!


We are joined today by Robert McKeanAlthough each book works as a stand-alone, populating Robert's novels and stories are some five hundred characters—all residents of Ganaego, a small mill town in Western Pennsylvania. McKean’s short story collection I’LL BE HERE FOR YOU: DIARY OF A TOWN was awarded first-prize in the Tartts First Fiction competition (Livingston Press). His novel THE CATALOG OF CROOKED THOUGHTS was awarded firstprize in the Methodist University Longleaf Press Novel Contest. The novel was also named a Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. MENDING WHAT IS BROKEN is being released by Livingston Press. Recipient of a Massachusetts Artist’s Grant for his fiction, McKean has had six stories nominated for Pushcart Prizes and one story for Best of the Net. He has published extensively in journals such as The Kenyon Review, The Chicago Review, and more. McKean is a graduate of The University of Chicago. He now lives in Newtonville, Massachusetts. For additional information about McKean and his Ganaego Project, please see his author’s website, robmckean.com.




What made you start writing?

I grew up in a small mill town in Western Pennsylvania. At the center of the town’s economic life was the immense steelworks. In a small town everybody knows everybody, or thinks they do. On my father’s side were wonderful storytellers, my grandmother, my father, my aunt. I remember dinners where the tales—usually touched by irony, the follies and foibles of human nature—wound round and round the table. On my mother’s side were scholars and teachers. My grandfather, a classical scholar who read Latin and Greek, chose to work in the steel mill, but remained a thoughtful reader all his life. One of his daughters, my aunt, was a renowned English teacher for more than forty years and a poet. On that side of the family, writers were extolled and books revered. My oldest brother went into business, my middle brother opted for math, and so it fell to me, I decided, to be the family’s writer.

 

Describe your book in three words.

Rueful, truthful, pixilated.


Would you and your main character(s) get along?

I think of the five hundred or so characters that I have created as a vast repertory company. I usually get along with whichever characters in the company with whom I might be currently working, some famously, some at a respectful distance. Now Peter Sanguedolce, protagonist of my latest novel, Mending What Is Broken, is a Rittenhouse Manhattan man and I remain a Bombay white label martini man, but, once we put that noble difference aside, we would talk of family myths and burdens, swing and classical music, the perils and pitfalls of business life, the greater perils and pitfalls of married life, and books, books, books. Peter and I share the same laconic sense of humor. I’d recommend that he lose some weight; he’d be disappointed in my sales.

 

What are you currently reading?

I always am reading at least two books. I call them my morning read and my afternoon-evening read. The morning read is something I work my way through a few pages at a time every day as I eat my oats. Much more enlightening than the cereal box. Tomes usually, e.g., The Essays of Montaigne, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Herodotus, Thucydides. My current morning read is A History of English Prose Rhythm (1912) by George Saintsbury (1845-1933). Could be the most insightful book I have read on what makes prose stutter, sing, or soar. This is my second time through it. My latest afternoon-evening read was the first volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle. I am now reading Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories.

 

What’s the single best line you’ve ever read?

The broken, heart-sick King Lear kneeling over the body of his daughter Cordelia (V, iii) confronted with the bleak recognition that he has squandered his kingdom and his pride and now has lost the one child who loved him, all through his arrogance and vain foolishness. He asks his slain daughter why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life and you no breath at all? He whispers that she will come no more, “Never, never, never, never, never.” Five nevers, an unutterable, unbearable line.

 

What is your favorite book from childhood?

The Wind in the Willows. Mole, Ratty, Mr. Toad, Mr. Badger, and Kenneth Grahme’s gorgeous prose have never been far from my side.

 

If you were stuck on a deserted island, what’s the one book you wish you had with you?

A devastating question. A writer without books is a lost soul wandering the wilderness. Do recall John Donne, Death is the ascension to a better library. But if I must, I’ll take The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, the battered, trussed, and much beloved volume I have carried everywhere since graduate school, 1969. But might I plead for a two-week sabbatical every year to revisit my bookshelves?

 

What are some of your favorite books and/or authors?

Let’s limit it to authors of fiction. 17th Century: Cervantes. 18th Century: Sterne, Austen. 19th Century: Tolstoy, Thackeray, Flaubert, James, Elliot (Mary Anne Evans), Chekhov, Melville. 20th Century: Woolf, Paustovsky, J. Roth, Joyce, Mahfouz, Faulkner, O’Connor, Bulgakov, Calvino, Bellow, Lowry, Wright, Nabokov, Grass, Marquez, Trevor, Döblin, DeLillo. 21st Century: P. Roth, McCarthy, Mantel, Saramago, Saunders, Livesey, Wilson.

 

If you could remove one color from the world, what it would be and why?

My wife and I decided that in our first apartment we would paint the living room a vivid elegant green. Ignorant of painting techniques, we were not aware that such brilliant colors requite a color under primer. And oddly enough, the hardware store to which we kept returning for additional cans of paint as we put down layer after layer futilely trying to cover the mottled streaks didn’t tell us, either. Exasperated at last, we painted the room battleship gray. Not long after, the living room became my office as I founded a business. The business was successful, but the gray walls were like living eight to ten hours a day, seven days a week, in a prison. I hate gray, I loathe gray, I would cast gray into the deepest pit in hell. Why not, instead, substitute one of the three new primary colors we know nothing about that Muskull discovers on Arcturus?

 

What do you do when you’re not writing?

I have been baking whole grain sourdough bread for fifteen years. And still learning. I was sympathetic during the pandemic as I read about neophyte bakers bemoaning their rocklike loaves, “Why aren’t my sourdough loaves rising? What am I doing wrong?” Ah, let me tell you what a delicate and brutal art the manufacturing of sourdough bread is. White flour, easier, if not a cinch; whole grain, no less treacherous than mountain climbing. One needs to keep in mind the three T’s: temperature, time, touch. The first two are mechanical. Controlling the temperature in winter in a cold, drafty house may be a challenge and an even greater challenge in the humid days of summer, but can be managed. Patience is learned, or, for the truly obtuse, hammered in. The third, like writing fiction, constitutes a lifetime Sisyphean journey. 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Peter Sanguedolce, big-hearted and far too trusting, thinks he is only fighting to save his shared custody rights to his daughter, Jeanette, only to realize that he is really fighting to save her, the person whom he cherishes most in life. Overwhelmed by life’s challenges, Peter ultimately finds his way through. In this bittersweet story about the families we make and we lose, about working class towns and fading dreams, Robert McKean gives us a subtle riff on The Merchant of Venice, as well as the touching and often funny story of a man creating his own second chances in life.

Thursday, February 29, 2024

What I Read in February

It feels like January just ended, and here we are at the of February already. I read a total of 9 books and I liked the books that I read this month a bit better than the ones I kicked the year off with. So at least that's a positive!!

Here's what words my eyes absorbed this month: 



Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin

A 1990's conversion camp with a sinister secret? Sure, sign me up. A group of queer teens battling a horrific evil? Uhm, of course I'm all for it.

Cuckoo is simultaneously tender and cheeky but also quite dark and twisted. Imagine an 80's summer camp horror movie and Invasion of the Body Snatchers mashup and you'll get the gist. It's not write-home-to-mother good, but it's definitely worth a read.




The Devil's Grip by Lina Wolff

Lina Wolff is one F'd up writer. Her stories go places no one else's does and I am sooo here for it!

The Devil's Grip follows a woman who goes by the nickname "Minnie" and chronicles her slooow mental unravelling as a result of the destructive, hellish relationship she finds herself stuck in. The more time passes, the more she falls victim to incredibly unhealthy behaviors - her own obsessive love, bouts of intense jealousy, infidelity, verbal and physical violence - and becomes convinced that both her and her boyfriend's bodies have been inhabited by demons intent on destroying themselves.

It's an intense and twisted look at gender dynamics as it relates to romantic relationships. It digs deep into the muddiness of love and asks the tough questions of us. When we're knee-deep in it, are we thinking rationally enough to know when we should stay or go? Can we clearly determine what's worthy of forgiveness or assess when enough's enough? And then there's the horrors of what happens if we misjudge and stick it out just a little too long...

Ahhhh... This book infuriated me!! I wanted to kick Minnie for every decision she made but I just could. not. stop. reading. I ate this up in practically one sitting.




Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice

Moon of the Crusted Snow is an incredibly slow burn of a novel. It's quiet and heavy, much like the wintery blanket of snow that covers the isolated reservation our characters have built a home on.

When the cell phones and internet cut out, they don't think much of it. Those were novelities recently introduced to the community, and were not yet completely stable. But when the power goes out, and shows no sign of coming back on, they start to worry that something much bigger is going on.

This is a survival story. A story of community and working together for the greater good. Of protecting those you know and fearing those you don't. While the pages don't contain a lot of action, they are full of human compassion.

I liked the book well enough as a stand alone, but I'll probably not be picking up the sequel. Carry on survivors... wherever the road takes you.




I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

I saw this book popping up from time to time in my bookstagram feed. I was honestly shocked it had flown under my radar for so long because it sounded amazing and oh my god it did not let me down.

I Who Have Never Known Men is the story of a young woman who was locked in a cage below ground in a bunker with thirty nine other women. They do not know how they got there, where they are, or how long they have been there. Their memories are muddled - they recall screaming and chaos, and then this. They know they are being guarded and are being kept alive but they have no idea why.

One day, as the guards are unlocking their cage to feed them, a siren goes off and the guards immediately evacuate. Our narrator wastes no time in retrieving the key, opening the cage door, and heading up the stairs with the other women, out into the strange new world that awaits them.

Where did the guards go? Will they come back? All they can see, everywhere they turn, is a vast dry landscape, empty and barren, with the exception of the cabin they just escaped from. Is this Earth or are they someplace else? Are there others out there, locked away like them?

There are so many questions and not one single answer. We know only what our narrator knows, which is absolutely nothing and that's ok because we're here for it.

Is it post-apocalyptic? Is it science fiction? Is it psychological horror? Is it futuristic or is it set in a distant past? Yes, maybe, all of it and none of it.

If you've read Brian Evenson's The Warren, or Armageddon House by Michael Griffin, or The Divine Farce by Michael SA Graziano, then you'll understand how sometimes, when the writing is this good, and the setting is this strange, and the narrator is this pure, it's all about the journey and who cares what we learn or whether our questions get answers or how it ends... we're just sad that it had to end at all.




The Hearing Test by Eliza Barry Callahan

Some of you may know that I've struggled with severe hearing loss and permanent high pitch ringing in my ears (like ever present static), an issue I spent the better part of 15 years compensating for, and ignoring, until finally seeing a specialist three years ago. The dr's believe mine came about as a result of Lyme disease, and though it doesn't appear to be worsening, there's always that worry that one day I'll wake up to complete and utter silence.

So when I saw The Hearing Test, I requested a review copy from Catapult. It sounded intriguing and I was hoping to find bits of myself in the protagonist, who awakens one morning with hearing loss in one of her ears. Unlike me, though, this prompts her to seek out immediate medical attention, and sets her off on a year long journey of self discovery, and clinical trials, and more and more tests, always carrying around the fear of deafness, which hovers over everything she does, like a dark cloud she cannot shake.

Hearing issues aside, there wasn't much else I connected with. This is going to fold perfectly into the sad girl genre - that passive aggressive okayness to just play out the cards that have been dealt, not quite miserable but not really happy either, aimlessness of most present day twenty something female characters. Days turn into months, there are texts and phone calls and meals at restaurants and virtual hypnotherapist visits, but it's 159 pages of a whole lot of nothing really happening.

There's a line in the book that I'm going to manipulate for the purposes of this review because it's just so damn perfect: It's between her and her ex-boyfriend and it says "Your paintings are like my films. About nothing. But with precision."

Yes, Callahan, yes. This book was like all of the other sad girl books. About nothing. But with precision.




State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg

Another stellar novel from Laura van den Berg and one in which the jacket copy fails to do it justice.

It's a post covid Florida, in which the goverment took advantage of everyone while they were isolating and got them hooked on a new meditative, immersive technology called MIND'S EYE, and where people are suffering strange side effects that are believed to have been caused by the crazy high fevers they survived. Our narrator herself discovers that her outie is becoming a cavernous innie and her sister's eyes have completely changed color.

As she deals with these subtle physical changes, and ignores her mom's strange antics, and puts off urgent requests from the assistants of the author she ghosts for, MIND'S EYE users all around town begin mysteriously disappearing, as though into thin air... her sister being one of them. Some of the missing begin reappearing days later, a little dazed, not much worse for the wear, but with strange stories of where they've been. And our narrator's sister is one of the ones who've returned. She swears she entered another reality at their dead father's bidding and she's determined to return, with or without our narrator.

This book was just so deliciously weird. It's a fabulous mashup of grief fiction, sci-fi post-pandy fiction. Much like Florida and the pandemic itself, State of Paradise is a humid and feverish thing and oh gosh I was sooo there for it!




In the Sight by Tobias Carroll

Read in one sitting.

A strange little story about a guy who travels from gas station to gas station hooking his clients up with a homemade drug that messes with their brains and turns them into someone completely different.

A gig that was working out pretty a-ok for him until, at one particular drop off, he's informed that someone is coming for him. And suddenly we're on a road trip from hell, hotel hopping across country as our dude reconnects with old friends and tries to stay one step ahead of whatever nightmare is following him.

Though with one last pill in his pocket, there's the hope that he can continue to run... until he can't, and then... well...





Hum by Helen Phillips

When Helen Phillips puts a new book out, I'm first in line to request it!

Her lastest, Hum, is a creepy peek into a futuristic world in which natural forests and wild animals are things of the past and robots called hums intermingle with humanity.

May is a wife and mother and she's just lost her job to AI. Unsure when she'll land her next one, she decides to undergo experimental facial surgery that will alter her appearance just enough to confuse the ever present cameras throughout the city, but will beef up their bank account with nearly a year's worth of cash.

Only, she can't seem to stop purchasing friviolous things. No sooner does the money clear her account, with her skin still raw and painful from the surgery, she finds herself in line purchasing a weekend getaway for her and the family to The Botanical Gardens - a HUGE financial splurge, but one she's excited to share with the kids and her husband. The perfect retreat from the anxieties of the real world, a relaxing few days spent in an artifical woods complete with waterfalls, flora and fauna, and a much needed break from their cell phones and electronic addictions. But the trip quickly devolves into a mother's worst nightmare as she's forced to put her trust into one of the hums when her children go missing.

Phillips is a master at threading unsettling, atmospheric undertones throughout her stories. It's a bit foreboding, and feels a lot like stepping through the looking glass: where the horrors of consumerism, climate change, our obsession with technology, and the unrelenting guilt and pressures of motherhood all come to a dark and cryptic head.






Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter

Listened on audio and enjoyed the company of it while driving to and from work. Didn't love with it as much as I did Book of X... but...

Sad-girl fiction is having a moment and Ripe definitely claims its seat at that table.

Much more mainstream than its predecessor, we meet Cassie, a young up and coming marketing drone, working long hours, putting up with shitty bosses, who also spends some quality time with her anxiety and depression and an actual, physical black hole that hovers above and around her.

As if that's not enough to stress us out, she gets involved with a super sweet guy, but just as she finds herself falling head over heels for him and realizes her period is running late, she learns that he's in an open relationship, and he's really just exploring things because his wife wants to explore other women too...

Just when you think things for our poor girl Cassie can't possibly get any worse, they do. They really, really do.

Set right at the very beginning of the virus outbreak that would soon bring the world to its knees, Ripe is jam packed with toxic work environments, mental health crises, unhealthy family dynamics... all the things that make us keep turning the pages even though we know full well where the book's going to lead us...



Monday, February 26, 2024

The 40 But 10 Interview Series: Chin-Sun Lee

 


I had decided to retire the literary Would You Rather series, but didn't want to stop interviews on the site all together. Instead, I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!


Joining us today is Chin-Sun Lee. She is the author of the debut novel Upcountry (Unnamed Press 2023), and a contributor to the New York Times bestselling anthology Women in Clothes (Blue Rider Press/Penguin 2014). Her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in The Georgia Review, The Rumpus, Joyland, and The Believer Logger, among other publications. She lives in New Orleans. More at www.chinsunlee.com





Why do you write?

I write to process questions I have about the world and myself. It’s the way I examine moral and social dilemmas or indulge in my curiosities by imagining how my characters might respond in any given circumstance. In a way, it’s an extension of how much I loved playing with dolls as a kid (apologies: as I write this Barbie has taken over the universe). I didn’t just dress up my dolls—or undress them, cut off their hair, paint on new faces—I put them in situations. It’s imagination and problem-solving, self-entertainment and exorcism.

 

What’s the most useless skill you possess?

I can pick up—and drink from!—a glass of wine with my toes.

 

If you could have a superpower, what would it be?

Teleportation: I would love to be able to instantly transport objects, people, and myself somewhere just by wishing it so!

 

How do you celebrate when you finish writing a new book?

I am so close to finishing my second novel now, and when it’s done, the first thing I’m going to do is clean my house from top to bottom, then have a celebratory dinner out with friends. After that, for at least a week, I want to do nothing but just read whatever I want.

 

Would you and your main character(s) get along?

Hmm. Of my three main protagonists, I would get along best with April, for her no-nonsense manner and caustic sense of humor. Claire was initially based on someone I actually disliked, so even though I grew to love her as a character, in real life I’d probably still find her too prickly. As for Anna, the young naïve Korean cult member, I’d want to either shake her or hug her. Maybe both.

 

If you could cast your characters in a movie, which actors would play them and why?

Such a fun question! Carrie Coon is absolutely my first choice for Claire—she’s wonderfully flinty and neurotic, but has a humanity and intelligence that could soften the character. I could see either Reese Witherspoon or Elizabeth Banks play April; both are sassy blond beauties capable of looking and acting weathered. For Anna, I love Han Ye-ri, who played the young wife in Minari; she has a quiet intensity and stillness.

 

What are some of your favorite books and/or authors?

Henry James, W. Somerset Maugham, Paul Bowles, Flannery O’Connor, Jean Rhys, Marguerite Duras, Vladimir Nabokov, Haruki Murakami, Lucia Berlin, Mary Gaitskill, Javier Marías, Roberto Bolaño, Denis Johnson, Laurie Stone, Chris Kraus, Ottessa Moshfegh, Rachel Kushner, Sigrid Nunez, Rachel Cusk. . .the list goes on and on.

 

What’s the one book someone else wrote that you wish you had written?

Only one?!—impossible. This would change depending on the moment, but in this moment, I’ll say that Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 is a freaking masterpiece. It’s a beautiful mess at times, but that whole WWII section is feverish brilliance. . .he must have been touched by the gods while writing it.

 

Do you think you’d live long in a zombie apocalypse?

NO. I wouldn’t want to. I’m so easily terrified, I’d probably take myself out before encountering one of those ghouls.

 

Are you a book hoarder or a book unhauler?

Definitely a hoarder.


````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````




Monday, February 19, 2024

The 40 But 10 Interview Series: Edward Belfar

 



I had retired the literary Would You Rather interview series, but didn't want to stop interviews on the site all together. Instead, I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!


Joining us today is Edward Belfar. His collection of short stories, Wanderers, was published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press in 2012. One of the stories in the collection was chosen as the winning entry in the Sports Literature Association 2008 fiction competition, while another was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  His fiction and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Shenandoah, The Baltimore Review, Potpourri, Confrontation, Natural Bridge, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and Tampa Review.  As a reader for The Plentitudes, he reviews both fiction and nonfiction submissions.  He earned his BA in history and MA in creative writing at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his PhD in literature at Temple University.  He lives with his wife in Maryland, where he works as a writer and editor., and  can be reached through his website at www.edwardbelfar.com.





Why do you write?

One reason for writing fiction is the joy that it brings me, at least when it’s going well.  In contrast to a lot of my other work, my recently published novel A Very Innocent Man is predominantly comedic in tone.  Readers have said to me that they could tell that I had a lot of fun writing it, as, indeed, I did.  To create something new that gives others pleasure is a source of great satisfaction.  At the same time, though, writing is just as much an act of discovery as of creation.  I find that building a parallel world that functions in a more comprehensible manner than the one in which we live sometimes helps me to gain a better understanding of the motivations that underlie my own actions and those of the people around me.     


What do you do when you’re not writing?

I enjoy cycling and have completed the Seagull Century, a 100-mile bike ride on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, every year since 2018, except for 2020, when it was cancelled due to COVID.  Some of my other interests include reading, playing the guitar (poorly), going to concerts and plays, and traveling.   


What’s your kryptonite as a writer?

The same computer on which I write is also connected to the web.  Having to research something for a piece I’m working on can prove hazardous because I am prone to falling down internet rabbit holes.  


What are some of your favorite books and/or authors?

I have too many to list, and my favorites tend to change depending on what I am reading at any given time.  I do have some constants, though.  My list would skew heavily toward nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russians: Tolstoy, Checkov, Gogol, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Vasily Grossman, among others.  I have read Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and Heart of a Dog a couple of times each, and even the second time around, both books had me laughing out loud all the way through.  I do have a strong predilection for dark comedy, so it is not surprising that some  of my other favorite writers include Walker Percy, whose fiction provided the subject for my dissertation, Flannery O’Connor, Muriel Spark, Evelyn Waugh, and Jaroslav Hasek.   


Describe your book in three words.

Kathy Fish, one of the writers who provided blurbs for A Very Innocent Man described it as a “twisted redemption story.” The novel covers a year or so in the life of a New York City physician named Robert Rosen, who loses everything following his arrest for selling opioid prescriptions and then attempts to reinvent himself as a life coach and motivational speaker.  His path toward redemption, though, is anything but straightforward.     


Would you and your main character(s) get along?

I probably would not get along very well with the main character of A Very Innocent Man, who is a rather unpleasant sort.  On the other hand, observing—from a safe distance—the scrapes he gets into would provide me with much entertainment.  Writing about them certainly did.  

 

If you met your characters in real life, what would you say to them?

It depends which ones.  Some of the characters in A Very Innocent Man, such as the Russian mobsters, I would prefer to avoid altogether.


If you were stuck on a deserted island, what’s the one book you wish you had with you?

That one book would have to be a doorstopper and worth reading again and again.  I’m going to say Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate.  It is a great sprawling novel of Soviet military and civilian life during World War II, by turns tragic and funny, grand in scope but acute in its portrayals of individual characters.  It is a twentieth-century War and Peace, and it makes most other novels seem small by comparison.    


What is under your bed?

I don’t want to know.


Are you a book hoarder or a book unhauler?

I am definitely a book hoarder.  My home is groaning beneath stacks of books for which I have no room on my bookshelves.

 


 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Life's going great for Dr. Robert Rosen. He has a New York City medical practice, his dreams of TV fame as "Dr. Sober-Up" are coming true, and he's making big bucks selling oxycodone prescriptions for cash. What could go wrong? Sure, his personal life is a bit rocky-his brother, mother, and son all seeing him as a swindler and a low life-but you can't have everything. Besides, he has a wonderful young assistant/girlfriend in Tamika Jones and a skilled if out of control mentor in Dr. Barry "Bulldog" Bullard, so really, who needs them?


Unfortunately, his opioid side business includes selling prescriptions to a bogus pain clinic run by Russian mobsters, mobsters who don't have a lot of respect for Dr. Rosen's position nor his fees, nor, for that matter, his apartment and personal possessions.


Inevitably, his house of cards collapses when one of his patients rats him out to the FBI and he is arrested. Out on bail, he can't work, he is hemorrhaging money, and the prospect of spending a long stint in prison looms. He's got to do something, but the more he tries to get ahead of his troubles the worse they get.


Finally he hits on a plan: reinvent himself as a life coach and motivational speaker. Once again, his fortunes appear to be on the rise. However, he finds, to his dismay, that he cannot escape his criminal past; the Russians have not finished with him yet.

In the spirit of John Kennedy Toole and Chuck Palahniuk, a Very Innocent Man is a darkly comic novel that, as with all good satire, may not be so absurd after all.


 https://bookshop.org/p/books/a-very-innocent-man-edward-belfar/19991556?ean=9798986245966