Posted on by TheSwan

Give Me YA Fiction

Contemporary Young Adult Fiction is a blast. The voices are real and the humor is strong. I don’t remember having this much fun reading novels written for my age when I was in high school. I had to read Flowers in the Attic to get my thrills, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t written for teens. Certainly, there was nothing for teenagers that was this frank, nothing that spoke in the voice of the teen, expressing those thoughts that we only expressed to our friends. Certainly, these wonderful books I’ve been reading these last few weeks would have never made it to press.

Are you thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy? If so, crack open Dumplin’ (hilarious and timeless) or Into the Wild Nerd Yonder (hilarious and relatable) and enjoy what you missed reading when you were sixteen, when it wasn’t aloud, when you had to tell your secrets to your friends and maybe didn’t know that thousands of other kids were feeling just like you.

C’mon. Have some fun.

Posted on by TheSwan

In the Middle of It

Where is Superman

Editors email me in the late evening, when I’m wiping down the counter, when my son is telling me about superhero motivation in film. I hear the notifications from my phone across the room, but I don’t want to disrupt the engaged teenager before me, who so expertly and devoutly critiques these super-human characters who, to both him and me, are quite real. Still, I need to check my phone.

Excuse me, I say. Just a second, I say.

And just like that, I hug this blossoming film critic because an editor from Mid-American Review is “crazy” about my story and wants to publish it, and is it still available?

Yes! I type. I am so happy, I type because it’s always such a thrill to have created this little make-believe world, a world that others then step into and enjoy enough that they want to offer that experience to others.

Thank you, MAR, for accepting “Madonna Girls.”

It comes out in November.

 

Posted on by TheSwan

Warmed by Toads

Toad Suck Review

I stayed home from work today because I’m sick, which was an opportunity to write, despite my achy body. It was an added treat to get my colorful copy of Toad Suck Review in the mail, shipped from the Department of Writing at the University of Central Arkansas. I turned the pages, which always fills me with a small amount of dread. I’m always afraid to look at my words, afraid I will see something in my story I don’t like. Afraid the editors will have made a mistake with my text.

The issue is thick, since it is annual, so I decided to go to the Table of Contents instead of paging through. “Central Market Women” did not appear under the “Fixion” category, but since they have other clever section titles, I kept looking, thinking maybe there was a “Flasch-Fixion” section as well. Instead, I found my story under “Nonfixion.” I thought for a moment about my story, about how in the story, blood spontaneously flows from wrists of shoppers; about how debit cards slip from hands and fly all the way to the rafters; about how arms spin until they rip off. I chuckled. Obviously this was a mistake. I can’t believe that the editors who chose this piece believe these events to be true, nor can I believe the young, ambitious writing students placing the pieces in the issue actually thought these things happened. No, instead, I was warmed by a different scenario. I imagined tired, hungover students throwing accepted pieces together at 2:00 am, past their deadline, not really caring anymore, and sending the issue off to production without looking back. Yes, it warmed me. It warmed me, too, to unwrap the issue, to free it from the entertainment section of The Echo, the university’s student paper. And it warmed me, before that, to first see the white, square, return-address label, Toad Suck Review, Dept. of Writing, etc., cut out and taped with nothing more than exhaustion, care, dedication and passion, just as I had done hundreds of times only with my name on the return address, shipping my story, my submission, to such places as this, in hopes that someone on the other end, in that university or basement office, would be warmed by what was inside.

Posted on by TheSwan

My Diner

2015-06-21 11.52.57

I’m going to continue doing this–writing my slipstream flash, I mean. This week, two journals have accepted stories: “Enormous Women” was accepted by Fiction Southeast, and “Central Market Women” was accepted by Toad Suck Review.

This is food. I was starving, I think, in my vast and silent, novel-writing world, where I was the only one at the table except for the occasional passerby. Well, it’s no fun to eat alone for that long. So now, it’s gluttony. I’ll keep it short and fast. I’ll keep it going and coming. I like movement. I like company. It’s my own private diner–where everyone is welcome.