I am (seriously) working on some longer material for this blog, a few pieces about rejection and point of view and some other stuff that I hope to have ready within a week or two. Or maybe three or four, who knows. But in the meantime, since it’s been so long since I’ve posted and I’ve got this spiffy new layout going on (thanks, Eric!) I figured that I’d just add a quick note about two new stories I’ve just had published.
The first is a flash piece I wrote some months ago called “dmv.” It was inspired–surprise, surprise–by a trip I took to the local DMV for some dreary task or another. A group of children in back spent the entire time I was there chanting some silly song that I’d never heard before, and that was all it took. The chant I used in the story is actually pretty close to what I heard that day; I’ve taken a few liberties with it, and then very generous liberties with everything else. You’ll find the story here, posted on a little online journal called The Camel Saloon that’s run by a man named Russell Streur, with whom I’ve had some very interesting and informative email exchanges. More on those in another post, somewhere down the line.
The second story is one I wrote several years ago, during my time at Johns Hopkins. It’s entitled “Crawl,” and it’s been circling about looking for a home for quite some time. It landed, finally, here, in the second issue of The Meadowland Review, and I couldn’t be happier. The journal looks great, and the material in it is pretty high quality across the board. I’m proud to be a part of it.
Congrats, Pete!