12 Reads of Christmas -- Collectable Collections

Being on the diminutive side, I remain partial to all things small, including my reads. Here, three of my favorite collections from 2010.

HINT FICTION (edited by Robert Swartwood; Norton) proves the adage great things come in small packages. Swartwood, who coined the term hint fiction, says a story of 25 words or less "should not be complete by standing by having a beginning, middle, and end. Instead it should be complete by standing by itself as its own little world." This small book delivers over 100 stories (culled from over 2,400 entries) written by award-winning authors such as Joyce Carol Oates, J.S. Konrath, Ha Jin, Tess Gerritsen, and James Frey, but also lesser known but equally talented writers, including Kelly Sptizer, Jane Hammons, David Erlewine, Roxanne Gay, and a host of others, including my novel writing buddy Jennifer Haddock.

Pregnancy Test (Jennifer Haddock)
A drop of pee. An unanswered prayer. The second pink line draws one childhood to an end as another begins.

Golden Years (Edith Pearlman)
She: Macular. He: Parkinsons. She pushing, he directing, they get down the ramp, across the grass, through the gate. The wheels roll riverwards.

Progress (Joe Schreiber)
After seventeen days she finally broke down and called him "Daddy."

WHet your appetite for more? Read HINT FICTION's oodles of accolades and pick up a copy for yourself.


I have traveled a lot the last few months, and the first item packed after my laptop is BEST OF THE WEB 2010 (DZANC Books; Guest Editor Kathy Fish, Series Editor Matt Bell). Almost 100 stories, poems, and essays covering a lot of writers -- Dan Chaon, Terese Svoboda, Robert Olen Butler, Claudia Emerson, J.A. Tyler -- published in some of the finest online literary journals -- BluePrint Review, >kill author, failbetter, Necessary Fiction, elimae, Wigleaf, Guernica, Brevity.

I have no favorite piece; I keep reading and rereading, enjoying as a reader, learning as a writer. Here, GLORY, by Cami Park, a talented author who died too young and too early (originally published in Staccato).

A woman's hair is her crowning glory, my grandmother always said. Brush it every night, one hundred strokes.

She also once told me she felt like she was drowning. We had been doing the dishes together in silence, her freckled hands wrist-deep in suds. I placed the plate I'd been drying in the rack and leaned over the sink on tiptoe to look out the window at the star-speckled sky. Searched for the Milky Way, scanned for the moon.

Purchase your copy from DZANC Books. Of course.


Not too long ago, I wrote nice things about Peter Selgin and he kindly sent me a copy of 179 WAYS TO SAVE A NOVEL (Writers Digest Books). Since he's read my work through DZANC's Creative Writing Sessions, I assumed he thought this craft book might salvage my own Works-In-Progress, and it just might. Divided into six sections such as Matters of Substance and Matters of Style, each page is like a meditation with a get tough message.

My favorite today is #48: The Quest for Happiness and Other Irritants: Two Plots -- Only, which pretty much distills all literary stories to two plots. Since I struggle with plot constantly, this message simplifies my writing life immensely. I already own every one of Peter Selgin's books (though he has a new one coming out early 2011), so I'm hoping this time he sends me an agent ;^) Purchase your copy at Writer's Digest Books -- pssst, they're having a SALE!


Next up, three favorite serious reads from the past year, and the three books I've slipped into my own stocking. Peace, Linda

Between the Black

We were blackening pages, all of us, covering them with charcoal, leaving no traces of white showing, turning them black as Con Edison smoke, as abandoned subway station platforms and third rail rats. As black as vacuum-packed blackness between stars. (LIFE GOES TO THe MOVIES, Peter Selgin)

I think of my friends doing NaNoWriMo this month, of the frenzy of blackening their pages with words, a rabble of courier and times roman and georgia fonts. The beauty of the first draft of anything, be it a novel or poem, a song or a script, is the building up. The thrill of mounting word count, of sentences bleeding into paragraphs, and paragraphs seeping into pages.

I miss the blackness.

My quest these grey November days is to create white space. To cut wide swathes through my story and leave scenes that make the reader fill in between words. When you cross a river, do you remember the water or the stones? I think of each scene as a river rock, the water raging below the page, full of unwritten tension.

I am committing surgery, rather drastic cutting that might qualify for an episode of Nip and Tuck, on BRIGHTER THAN BRIGHT. My first novel, one I thought 'finished' over a year ago. I have murdered many darlings, including the opening scene which won me a very nice monetary prize two years ago. But the opening was cliche, dwelled overmuch in backstory, and, as one esteemed small press who actually read the first 50 pages put it, "tried to create empathy for Ben before he had earned it."

Only in hindsight. And yes, the best rejection I have ever received, as it came 16 months after I'd submitted and the house noted emphatically in it's submission guidelines that it does not respond to manuscripts it is not interested in.

So my quest is to create more white space. I have parsed 2,800 words from the first 77 pages. I have miles to go.

Peace, Linda

Life Goes to the Movies - August Debut Novel

We were blackening pages, all of us, covering them with charcoal, leaving no traces of white showing, turning us black as Con Edison smoke, as abandoned subway station platforms and third rail rats. As black as the vacuum-packed blackness between stars.

So begins this love story, told by Nigel DePoli, an American-Italian art student desperate to escape (or at least ignore) his immigrant background, about his friendship with Dwaine Fitzgibbon (‘That’s D for Death, W for War, A for Anarchy, I for Insane, N for nightmare, and E for the End of the World’). A Vietnam vet, Dwaine pulls Nigel into his dreams of making movies and living life. These dreams become nightmares as Dwaine descends into madness and Nigel must decide whether he will follow his friend’s path or his own.

LIFE GOES TO THE MOVIES (Peter Selgin, DZANC Books) is one of the rare books that make me Pavlovian-giddy before I even crack the spine to return where I left off. And if it weren’t for that nuisance called life, I would have finished the story in one fell swoop, the novel is that good.

Perhaps my enthusiasm is biased; I adore stories about young mad men with artistic bents. Perhaps it’s the book’s upclose examination of an unexamined phenomenon – the friendship of two men that has homoerotic overtones but is not homosexual. Perhaps it’s the passion Dwaine and, later, Nigel, bring to their lives. Perhaps the book wows me because of all the pretty film frames. But maybe, just maybe, it’s all about the writing. Phenomenal. Like here:

Gulls wheel under a dome of powder blue sky. Dwaine hacks city smog and cigarette smoke from his lungs. Strands of seaweed cling to our tuxedoes. The morning sun invests everything with a lemony, prehistoric glow, the kind of light that I picture dinosaurs trouncing through.

And here:

I sat there watching the candle flame flicker, wondering: what happened to me, to my life? Where was it? Where had it gone? Plummeting back to earth, wings singed off, crashed into the ocean: that’s what happens when you fly too close to the sun.

I'm always a sucker for an Icarus allusion, but this line serves as the novel's fundamental: choosing to live in the glare of a charismatic other or making your own light. Nigel’s transformation from a gullible, beige being to his own person is the strand underlying this story, juxtaposed against the seeming unraveling of Dwaine’s life. Or is it unraveling? The novel prods against what it means to be insane, and insinutes perhaps there are gifts found in madness.

I finished the book 30,000 feet over the eastern seaboard, sobbing into my cocktail napkin, alarming the suduko-playing woman beside me. I didn’t want the adventures of these two wondrous characters to end – so I started in again.

LIFE GOES TO THE MOVIES is exuberant, lush, poignant, and funny and sad as hell. Please, read it…

About the Author: This may be Peter Selgin's first novel, but it’s not his first book. Drowning Lessons (University of Georgia Press, 2008), his first book of short stories, won the Flannery O’Connor Award. He also is the author of By Cunning and Craft: Sound Advice and Practical Wisdom for Fiction Writers (Writers Digest Books). LIFE GOES TO THE MOVIES has an autobiographical edge: read this interview of Selgin in Pif Magazine, then visit his blog Dreaming on Paper .

About the Press: DZANC Books is the good doobie press of the indies. Besides having a stand-up portfolio of literary fiction, short story collections, and poetry manuscripts, the press sponsors the DZANC Prize for excellence in literary fiction and community service, and sponsors a literacy program for young people in Michigan. They’ve just sprouted a new literary magazine - The Collagist - and Dan Wickett is the proud papa of the Emerging Writers Network. Some may say the small press is dead; DZANC Books throws that convention on its head.

About the Bookstore: This copy bought at Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, the best independent bookstore ever. Period. Right around the corner? Grolier, the best poetry-only store.


Peace, Linda