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Tag: other writers

  • Part One of Three Dialogues on Literature with Pablo D’Stair and Caleb J. Ross, live at the Sunday Observer

    Part One of Three Dialogues on Literature with Pablo D’Stair and Caleb J. Ross, live at the Sunday Observer

    Increasingly, one of my favorite things is dialogue(ing) with Pablo D’Stair. He’s the sort of arm-chair thinker/drinker, literary critic type that I get on well with. Recently, he and I had yet another email back-and-forth, this one for the Montage section of the Sunday Observer (“Sri Lanka’s English Newspaper with the largest circulation”), where we wax on about genre vs. literary writing, the sound of language, what constitutes success, and more. Dare I say that this series is perhaps our most interesting dialogue yet (though, I reserve the right to someday find hidden genius in our past discussions).

    Head over to the Sunday Observer now get all icky with Pablo and Caleb sticky.

  • Because if I can’t have Tom Waits read my story…

    …Phil Jourdan is a damn good runner-up.

    Here he reads a page or so from my story “Click-Clack” which a lot of people seem to really like (both the story and Phil’s voice).

  • Video review of Matt Bell’s Cataclysm Baby (Video Blog Ep 004)

    Video review of Matt Bell’s Cataclysm Baby (Video Blog Ep 004)

    Click the image to watch the review on YouTube

    After watching, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel to stay updated on new videos

  • Put this one on your radar. Psychosis, an Anthology

    Put this one on your radar. Psychosis, an Anthology

    This one has been in development for  awhile and is getting closer and closer to seeing print. I hope, anyway. While I wasn’t able to put something together to contribute to the collection (the editor approached me; I originally intended to, but life got crazy so I couldn’t do it…not literally crazy, not crazy enough to be appropriate fodder for this anthology…just metaphorically crazy).

    Add this to your RSS reader and keep an eye out for it. Based on the website, it appears we’ve got writing from the following authors to look forward to: Bryan Howie, Rebecca Jones-Howe, Dakota Taylor, Jessica Taylor, Kenneth Goldman, Liana V., Nicholas Wilczynski, Josef Van L., Richard Thomas, Renee Asher, DWG, Bradley Sands, Rachel Cohen, Sam Jackson, Martin Garrity, Cristiana Zanelli, and Sarah Davenport with Traci Foust, author of Nowhere Near Normal: A Memoir of OCD, writing the introduction. I don’t know most of these authors, but I soon will.

  • Ryan W. Bradley Fails the Internet: The Code for Failure blog tour.

    Ryan W. Bradley Fails the Internet: The Code for Failure blog tour.

    When I told Ryan that for the blog tour stop here I would write a bit about my own strange affection for convenience stores/gas stations he, in more eloquent words, told me I was crazy. Well, perhaps I misrepresented him. His actual words: “I like the nostalgia factor. I like the smell of gas but I’ll tell ya, the nostalgia goes away when you work there.”

    Perhaps so. But if the work experience is anything like that of Code for Failure’s narrator, then I’d say nostalgia is but one type of memory you’ll come away with. This guy gets laid like a disembarking Hawaii tourist.

    The novel is less a single, cohesive story and more a collection of vignettes all related to the narrator’s job as a gas station attendant cum oil changer, or gas station attendant cum to married women and teenage girls, as the case may be.

    Back to my gas stations. Why do I look back so fondly on convenience stores? Growing up in a small town of 3,500-4,000 people, shopping took place between two grocery stores and three gas stations. The gas stations felt consistently new and comforting. Why? I’m not sure. Perhaps the understanding of temporary fuel, of gaining sustenance where I probably shouldn’t. Is this a comment on my fatherless childhood, needing to thrive in less than optimal conditions? Probably not. But I have no better reason.

    When road-tripping (that’s engaging in a long-distance trip in a car, not hotboxing in a vehicle) I actually look forward to the gas station breaks. I’m not at all the sitcom stereotype father, the guy who simply wants to ‘get there’ as fast as possible. I’m the sitcom stereotype kid who wants to break every 100 miles to pee.

    But a kid’s gas station Code for Failure is not.

    You want a gas station experience like one you’ll surely never have? Order Ryan W. Bradley’s Code for Failure, now at Black Coffee Press.

    While you’re at it, check out the rest of the Code for Failure tour:

    Monday March 19
    The Next Big Book Blog
    Tuesday March 20th
    Allison Writes
    Wednesday March 21st
    This Blog Will Change Your Life
    Thursday March 22
    Dead End Follies
    Friday March 23
    Booked In Chico
    Saturday March 24
    Me
    Sunday March 25
    Monkey Bicycle
    Monday March 26
    Hawthorne Scarlet
    Tuesday March 27th
    Ryan W. Bradley

  • Kristin Fouquet offers some beautiful words about As a Machine and Parts: “I will continue thinking about this book for some time.”

    Kristin Fouquet offers some beautiful words about As a Machine and Parts: “I will continue thinking about this book for some time.”

    The always wonderful Kristin Fouquet offers some kind words about As a Machine and Parts over at La Salon Annex:

    Reminiscent of Metamorphosis and Flowers for Algernon, Caleb J. Ross takes us inside the mind of a man who is transforming. This man, Mitchell, experiences a slide from human to machine. This transformation coincides with the deterioration of his relationship with a much older lover, Marsha…Although I place As a Machine and Parts on the shelf alongside Charactered Pieces and Stranger Will, I will continue thinking about this book for some time.

    But perhaps my favorite line, just because I’m glad this particular referent story hit home with another writer:

    As writers, we must always wonder what is derivative and how many words we can truly call our own.

    Read the full review. Then, buy As a Machine and Parts. And while you are at it, round out that Amazon free shipping deal and grab Fouquet’s incredible, Twenty Stories and Rampart & Toulouse.

  • Reading Riddley Walker and Fighting a Cold. Likely Not a Coincidence.

    Reading Riddley Walker and Fighting a Cold. Likely Not a Coincidence.

    I’m fighting a cold. And losing. Viruses seem to attack at times that I otherwise have both time and motivation to write (fiction, that is, not a quick blog post). One day, I’ll write an entire collection of vignettes under the influence of TheraFlu. Until then, I’ll stick to complaining that my body apparently doesn’t want me to write fiction.

    Today’s bout comes at an especially bad time as I have two projects underway that I am damn excited about. One, I’ve hinted at a few times before (coded 4C until myself and the other writers involved come up with something better), which is about 80% complete. I can smell the maggots on the bloody horizon. The other, a project I haven’t much started but for sketching a few ideas and doing some homework reading, is already gnawing at me. The homework: read Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. The assignment: a dare to write something, anything really, immediately afterwards. The teacher: Sarah D’Stair, writer and wife of writer Pablo D’Stair. Together, they are a formidable peer pair of peer pressure.

    A couple weeks ago in Chicago Sarah, Pablo, and myself (along with an entire host of friends and writers) sat down to a few drinks at Miller’s Pub. Conversation drifted to writing, then needled down to my own writing (Sarah’s insistence, not mine, I assure you), then further pricked at my style of writing, one which was described in variations of meticulous, precise, and, perhaps, over-wrought. So, a dare to write something more lose, more free-flowing, something to explore language rather than wring some beautiful (what I think is beautiful) language drug from it. I accepted. And now that I’ve had a few days to think about my drunken acceptance, I’ve leveled, but in a way that’s made me even more excited about the project than I was when first dared.

    I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to loosen up the way Hoban did with Riddley Walker—the book reads like a mix between Middle English poetry and the ramblings of a dented waterhead—but the core concept, that of letting language, for lack of a better term, flow, is intriguing. I look forward to it. Once I get over this damn cold.