Jumping Rooftops, my first full-length story to be published, is now LIVE at Necessary Fiction. This is kind of a big deal, I think. Tonight I’ll celebrate with a peanut butter and chocolate shake.

Thanks to Alden Jones for workshopping the hell out of it and Steve Himmer for believing in it.

Next up: world-conquering?

I had my second story workshopped in class a few days ago. It was pretty much the best workshop I’ve ever had. I really like the story and so did (most) of the class. Wonderful comments, too:

• I am so glad you didn’t go down the path I thought you would, “young boy shot in fatal gun accident” or whatever. That would have been…preachy? It doesn’t matter, you didn’t do it. Thank you.
• The story breaks my heart.
• It’s fucking hard to write children but damned if you didn’t do it well. Enjoyed it.

Then, one major naysayer:

• Would work great as a short film I think but less so as a short story. Very little is accomplished, nothing is earned. Work on your pacing and plot.

He’s the same guy who hated my first story. I don’t think I’ll ever please him and I’m more than ok with that – his style is much more plot-centered than the intricacies of my prose. My point for bringing it up is that I think I’m in a better place, personally, now than when I started at Emerson, when I would’ve tried desperately to make him like a story. Now I don’t care. I’m going to do what I do until it gets good enough to find a home.

That said, I have high hopes for this story. I’ll sit on it for a week or two, do some edits, sit on it for another week, and send it out. Hopefully editors will agree with the first bunch.

I got Sam Pink’s book, I Am Going to Clone Myself Then Kill the Clone and Eat It, in the mail a few days ago and have started reading it. I’m on page 41 of 168. I’m kind of surprised the book is that long, because I was expecting it to be a chapbook. But this is a happy surprised because I like it and I’m glad there’s more of it to read.

I carry it around with me and read bits between classes. This is easy to do because a lot of the pieces are small (yet big, where it counts). People say “that’s weird” when they ask what the title of the book is and I tell them, but that’s their problem.

So far my favorite line was on page 18: “I used a net to catch some butterflies. I put the butterflies into my mouth and whispered them into your ear.” I really like those two sentences. And most of the other sentences.

Sam’s website is here.

I like David James Poissant’s “Lizard Man” because the guy who shouldn’t be teaching anyone anything is the one who does the teaching. And it’s nice to see a father get past his son’s homosexuality.

But I’m not sure how I feel about the crocodile. Or the girl with the balloon (though an extremely haunting image).

I’m going to do something a little different: I’m going to blog my way through a book. And maybe I’ll do this a lot. I don’t know. But I’m going to do it with Best New American Voices 2010, which was edited by Dani Shapiro – and I just got it.

Anyway, there are 16 stories in the book, written mostly by students in the top MFA programs across the country. I figure it’s important for me to read them since a. I hope to be them in a few years and b. they have a pretty good shot at becoming famous and I like being first on the bandwagon.

Also, SPOILER ALERT: I’m going to be discussing the endings. A lot.

The first story in the collection is “Bethlehem Is Full,” by Boomer Pinches (what a name!) of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. It is good. The basic premise, looking at how a relationship can survive (or not survive) after an abortion, isn’t particularly new, but certainly isn’t stale. But dropping the couple on a whirlwind Australian vacation immediately after the procedure is pretty cool.

I think the strength in this story comes from the little dog that follows the couple around. It’s diseased and they take it to a pound (a considerable detour) in the hopes of saving it. Of course this trip puts a strain on their relationship and, when coupled with the abortion trouble, the relationship’s strength is tested to the breaking point. But the ending, I think, of Keith asking to put the dog down himself, proves to me that he, at least, will do whatever it takes to make the relationship work – letting this dog die, while not exactly equivalent to performing an abortion, shows an attempt on his part to understand what Amy went through. It’s sweet, in a morbid kind of way.

But I’m really confused about the part with the crocodiles. Why he jumped in the river with them is beyond me. Yes, he was stressed, but I don’t think that’s enough to put your life in such danger. That didn’t detract too much from the story, it just made me wonder how, well, sane this guy is – when I probably shouldn’t have been.