"Brisk, light and, imagistic." The New York Stories. Necessary Fiction.

Embarrassingly moving. And much appreciated. Excerpt? Word.

"On the sentence level, The New York Stories is superb. Each line reads as brisk, light, and, imagistic. Tanzer’s stories are rich in detail, pulling a reader along from one short piece to the next." 

The New York Stories is Research Notes at the Necessary Fiction and the thanks are boundless and true.

Seriously. Big thanks to Steve Himmer and the whole Necessary Fiction crew. Excerpt? Word.

"All of which is to say, that the research for a collection like this takes place in my head, and it’s all about memory, what I remember, and what I trust to be true, and finding which stories fit together, even if no one else sees them fitting together quite like I do.

It’s also about wondering about how things work, or might have worked. Why certain decisions get made, why someone punched someone in the face or broke-up with someone when they did? When people choose to communicate, and when they just pause, stumbling over their words and actions, more focused on trying not to fuck-up what’s happening right before them, then on taking a chance to see what might happen if they just took a chance.

This research is about possibility, and looking to the future even as I look back, or a kind of future anyway, a parallel one, where people both real and make believe, grow-up, move on, get lost, and sometimes get found again."

"You might find yourself up late at night, like the book’s subjects, unable to put the collection down until you’ve read it all." The Way We Sleep gets Necessary Fiction'd. And likes it. A lot.

Yup. We are digging it. And we think you will too. So please do hit that. It just might change your life. Excerpt? Word.

“How did you sleep?” It’s a simple question, one often asked without much consideration and answered just as casually. But think about it for a moment. How did you sleep last night? Did you sleep deeply? Did you sleep poorly? Did you sleep in a bed, on a couch, sitting upright during a long flight? Did you sleep next to someone or did you sleep alone? Did you dream or have nightmares? Have you been sleeping a figurative slumber, moving through life in a kind of torpor from which you’ve only recently awoken? Are you sure you really woke this morning? Or did you sleep at all?

The Way We Sleep sets out to answer these questions and raises many more as C. James Bye and Jessa Bye take the reader on a dreamlike journey through a collection of short stories, cartoons, and interviews exploring the literal, figurative, and sometimes merely tangential elements of what the Greek’s called “the brother of death”—sleep. Along the way readers will find that the answer to our simple question, “how did you sleep?” is as varied and complex as the approach of each artist who sets out to answer the question."

Writer In Residence. Day Twenty-Eight. And more. Way more. Really.

Here. Here. Here. Here. And here. And on and on and on.

Writer In Residence. Day Eighteen. And more. Way more. Really.

Here. Here. And here.

Writer In Residence. Day Seven. Video Killed the Literary Star: Or How Caleb J. Ross Learned How to Stop Worrying and Love the Change.

Really. And totally. More here. Now. Yes.

Writer in Residence. Day Three. alt.Ludlow.

Really. And totally. Here. Now. Yes.

This is happening. For like a month apparently. And we are very thankful to the beautiful people at Necessary Fiction for making it so. Now please do expect more. Soon. Thank you.

More here. And much to come. Things that just might change your life. If only for a little while, and not even that much, but some. Which isn't bad if you think about it. So go ahead, please do. Nice.

Wherein we riff on death, tonic, research and My Father's House at the Necessary Fiction.

Big thanks to the Necessary Fiction for letting us talk death and My Father's House as part of their "Research Notes" series. Please do enjoy, though we recognize that may so not be the right descriptor. And now for some excerpt. 

"I suppose one could ask what kind of research one has to do when they write about death, or maybe more accurately, why would they even want to? Where’s the gain there? None really. I don’t think. Maybe it’s even better not to do so. There are other, better milestones to write about and research certainly. Like losing your virginity for example. It may not be pleasurable, or fun, it may even be scary, something you regret, and wish you could take back. But there will be other chances to at least get sex right, or better, or you can even choose not to at all after that. It worked for Morrissey. Initially anyway."

Hyping the So Different Now/The New York Stories hype in the most hypeful manner possible.

It's true. We are hyping the hype. Feels good. So, with that said, big thanks to the Pete  Lit, Necessary Fiction and TNBBC's The Next Best Book Blog for the So Different Now/The New York Stories hype. Much appreciated. Much love. Much hype. 

More Than Anything. Live reading at the Orange Alert Reading Series. And some Orange Alert podcast action as well.

We wanted to share a recording with you of TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer reading his story More Than Anything at the Orange Alert Reading Series. The piece was originally run in Necessary Fiction and we are much appreciative all around. We also wanted to draw your attention to this week's episode of the Orange Alert podcast which always rocks, but also includes an excerpt from Ben and Jason Orange's recent interview on WGN 720 radio here in Chicago.

Steve Himmer. Fictionaut. Goodness.

We may just be a little interview happy these days, but it was quite fun to see Steve Himmer of Necessary Fiction fame being interviewed this week at the Fictionaut. Steve was quite awesome to work with on our story More Than Anything which appeared earlier this year at the Necessary Fiction and we hope others will get the opportunity to work with him as we have. We also hope you will take a look at the interview and for your reading pleasure we have provided you with a brief excerpt below.

What do you like best about having an online lit zine in a weekly format?

The fact that it’s weekly is fairly incidental, because that’s simply the rate I can handle and it works with our flow of submissions. What seems more important is being able to focus on a single story at a time. Instead of developing an issue containing multiple stories, with some cohesive, coherent order and assembly, each individual story is presented entirely in it’s own right. There’s definitely an aesthetic emerging over time, though it’s only vaguely apparent to me what it is — and that’s a big part of the excitement: pinning down my own taste as a reader and editor only to have it upended by some surprising, incredible new submission the next day. I’m thrilled and humbled by the positive response we’ve gotten so far, and by the quality of work I’m being trusted with. I’ve enjoyed editing more than I imagined I would, and have been introduced to the work of some incredible writers. I can’t say it helps me get more of my own writing done, but that’s a whole other story.

We have new piece. "More Than Anything" is up at the Necessary Fiction and we are most appreciative.

We are quite thrilled and most appreciative to have a new piece up at the Necessary Fiction. It is titled More Than Anything and it is part of a group of quasi-interlocking stories we worked on last summer which also include Goddess at Annalemma, So Different Now at Dogzplot, That's It at CellStories and Never Said at Girls With Insurance. We would add that Spider-Man makes a brief appearance in this piece, well, the idea of Spider-Man anyway, and that for your reading pleasure we have pasted a brief excerpt below.

“So,” she says smiling, “do you think this guy is stalking you or what?”

They are going out to lunch together. She is the intern. She is young and vibrant, if a little weird and awkward, with her interest in graphic novels, Spider-Man, and him, all things he is interested in as well.

He normally makes it a point to avoid the younger employees, especially the female ones.

He wants to get to work, get what needs to be done, done, and then get home to his wife, and his real life.

Because that’s the thing, like Spider-Man he lives in two worlds, and his real life has little to do with work or who he is at work."