anguished english
letter from a dominant goddess
Carolyn's letter was found in the attic of a house in Paxton, Mass. I suppose this also qualifies as today's short story waiting to be written.
usa today's blue christmas
"So pour yourself a drink, put on Elvis or your own Christmas-mix CD, and give Blue Christmas a read as a welcome break from the usual holiday routine."
nest of a mud dauber
Nest of a Mud Dauber on the Back of a Picture Frame
In the photo, my uncle pours water on my head from a metal pail. I’m standing ankle-deep near shore, and I’m laughing. We’re at a tiny beach on Wallum Lake in Douglas, Massachusetts. Someone has written July, 1951, George and Johnny on the picture. I’m three and George is handsome and sober and can’t see ahead to the murky years, to the strokes, the disappointments and estrangements, to the death of the wife he has yet to meet. On this same lake in winter, in another year or two, Uncle George and I will auger our ice-fishing holes, set our tilts, and skate into the wind right across the lake into Rhode Island. We’ll heat the foil-wrapped sandwiches that Memere has made for us in our fire by the shore. We’ll drink cocoa from our Thermos bottles. On the back of the frame, I see where some black-tinseled, trowel-jawed dauber has built her adobe nest, and I know that spiders are entubed there, entombed, alive and immobile, fresh meat soon for the fat little grubs.
thanks
A kind mention of LP&L. And here Blue Christmas.
a wild night and a new road
My story from Blue Christmas appears at Salon.
johnny dufresne's blue christmas
"She drives home with her fake Ray-Bans on and the radio blasting. Power 96! Amy Winehouse or someone like that. This s Saturday, Christmas Eve, in South Florida, and, still, you could just die from the heat. At the light on Federal by the high school, she changes the station to oldies. The Stones' 'Miss You.' She csranks the volume up to twenty-nine. She sees a woman outside the Dixiewood Motel, wearing snug red shorts, a Santa T-shirt that says HO! HO! HO!, polester antlers, and Rudolph nose that lights up whenever a car appraoches."
"A Wild Night and a New Road"
John Dufresne is the author of four novels, two collections of stories, two books on writing fiction, two screenplays, and a play. He edited the anthology Blue Christmas. And he is I.
We had a great SRO Blue Christmas party at Books & Books in Coral Gables. Blue mojitos, a blue Christmas cake, and readings by Lynne Barrett, Diana Abu-Jaber, Robert Goolrick, and Les Standiford.
Lynne and Jon Clinch and Colin Channer and Ann Hood and I will all be at Newtonville Books this Thursday at 7 P.M. if you can make it. And if you can't, you can buy the books here.
jon clinch's blue christmas
"Into the riverman's life the dog enters like a thing freely given.
The man awakens in his frozen bed one morning and he stirs up the fire from weary embers and he steps out onto the porch all swept about with snow to assess the dawn, and from down along the riverside the thing barks up at him as if she has him treed."
"The Dog"
Jon Clinchis the author of the novels Finn and King of the Earth. He's been an English teacher, a metalworker, a folksinger, an illustrator, a typrface designer, a housepainter, a copywriter, and an advertising executive. He and his wife live in the Green Mountains of Vermont.
Join us at Books & Books in Coral Gables for a Blue Christmas Party tonight December 10 at 7 p.m.
If you can't make the event, you can still buy the book here.
tit-bitical journalism
While waiting for my Mongolian beef, extra spicy, and steamed dumplings at Hunan Wok, I read through the latest issue of Tidbits.
I was surprised that the "Hallandale Beach Hollywood & Dania Beach" newspaper was read by over four million people a week. Tidbits apparently has an "Any Roosevelt in a Storm" policy. The story's about FDR, the phot is Teddy.
But then again, as a Tidbits ad suggeste, why are we reading at all in the 21st century.
"Tidbit," by the way, was originally "tit-bit" and comes from "tid," weak and fragile, and "bit," a small horse. The OED has the word hyphenated with either the d or the t and suggests that the d form is chiefly North American these days. It can mean "a small and delicate or appetizing piece of food[like my steamed dumpling]; a toothesome morsel, bonne bouche." It can also mean"a brief and isolated interesting item of news or information; hence in plural, name of a periodical consisting of such items."
Henry Fielding wrote in Miscellanies: "My Farce is an Oglio of Tid-Bits."
"Oglio?" Fro the Spanish olla, meaning an earthenware jar or pot used for cooking. Hence olla podria, a highly spiced stew of meat and vegetables. Oglio is commonly spelled without the g, as olio. So used figurativel, it means "any mixture of many heterogenous elements, a hotchpotch, medley, jumble."
blimp
Met Life blimp over Hollywood Beach, taken from the car on the drive to school.
robert goolrick's blue christmas
"I wake up in the dark. Au bout de la nuit. 4:06 on the LED. Take a leak. Cigarette. I know I shouldn't; I mean, in general, generally speaking, nobody should, not after everything we know, not after we've watched loved ones die, not to mention movie stars, but I do. I'm an addict. But I especially shouldn't smoke at 4:06 when I have hope of getting back to sleep. It makes my heart race."
"The Place I Really Live"
Robert Goolrick is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, The End of the World As We Know It. His first novel, A Reliable Wife, was a #! New York Times bestseller, and winner of both the NAIBA and Book of the Month Club First Fiction Award. He lives in White Stone, Virginia.
Join us at Books & Books in Coral Gables for a Blue Christmas Party this Saturday. December 10 at 7 p.m.
If you can't make the event, you can still buy the book here.
blue christmas in the news
A review of Blue Christmas in the Miami Herald. A piece here in MiamiMiamiBeach.com. And at the December 10 entry in the Sun Post. And here in Miami New Times.
tricia bauer's blue christmas
"On the way out the door I turn to Gramma's whisper telling me to take a good look aournd when we get there. I wink back at her like we do, and then I'm gone. My dad is driving us back to Cruz's new apartment because my cousin forgot to bring his Christmas gift for Gramma."
"Cruz's New Place"
Tricia Bauer's new book, Father Flashes, won Fiction Collective 2's Cathering Doctorow Prize for Innovative Fiction. She has published four other books of fiction. She works in publishing in Manhattan and lives in Connecticut.
Join us at Books & Books in Coral Gables for a Blue Christmas Party this Saturday. December 10 at 7 p.m.
If you can't make the event, you can still buy the book here.
preston allen's blue christmas
"Once upon a time, there was a dragon who took the form of a man. And the dragon who looked like a man lived with his wife and three children until they could not take it anymore and they left him."
"I Am Dragon"
Preston Allenwon the Sonja H. Stone award for his story collection, Churchboy and Other Sinners. He is the author of the novels All Or Nothing and Jesus Boy and has been anthologized in Las Vegas Noir, Miami Noir, and Brown Sugar.
Join us at Books & Books in Coral Gables for a Blue Christmas Party this Saturday. December 10 at 7 p.m.
If you can't make the event, you can still buy the book here.
james w. hall's blue christmas
"Bull Markham put up the Christmas tree every year on December first. Unpacking it from the long box that was stored in the attic. The center pole, the rotating stand that buzzed as it circled, one complete rotation every two minutes. Bull inserted the hundred and fifteen prongs with aluminum foil branches frilly with aluminum needles." "Good Forever"
James W. Hall is the author of seventeen novels, the most recent of which is Dead Last.
Join us at Books & Books in Coral Gables for a Blue Christmas Party this Saturday. December 10 at 7 p.m.
If you can't make the event, you can still buy the book here.
ed falco's blue christmas
"The house is still here, on Powers Street n Brooklyn, though now there is a pair of bicycles chained to the fence outside the basement apartment, where no doubt a couple of urban professionals live, or perhaps artists, the area ripe with artists now." "Where Are You All Now?"
Ed's latest novel, The Family Corleone, has been developed from pages extractred from mario Puzo's screenplays for the next two unproduced Godfather movies. It's due out in June 2012. He's the author of the novels Wolf Point and Saint John of the Five Boroughs and the short story collections Acid,Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha: New and Selected Stories. He directs the Creative Writing Program at Virginia Tech.
Join us at Books & Books in Coral Gables for Blue Christmas Party this Saturday, December 10, at 7 P.M.
If you can't make the event, you can still buy the book here.
lee martin's blue christmas
"The woman's in our backseat before I can say shoo. A skinny thing with too much eye makeup and a high forehead that shines in the glow from our Buick's dome light." -- "Anywhere, Please"
Lee is the author of four novels, including his most recent Break the Skin, and the Pulitzer Prize finalist, The Bright Forever. His stories and essays have appeared in Harper's, Ms., The Georgia Review, Creative Nonfiction, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere. He teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at The Ohio State University.
Join us at Books & Books in Coral Gables for Blue Christmas Party this Saturday, December 10, at 7 P.M.
If you can't make the event, you can still buy the book here.