time crook

Thirteen Sticks in the Snow

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 17:52:00 +0000

Thought I'd brush aside some cobwebs on the blog and post this story I recently wrote and read for a horror/flash fiction-themed edition of There Will Be Words.

---

Dolan preaches a devil’s sermon. This starved man. This bone cage for black heart. Thirteen searchers circle him in the blizzard’s aftermath. Half his congregation is snowblind, pupils glare-blown wide. Their eyes twitch like the kick of animal nightmare. Months without a proper meal, food is their myth, their desperation.

“Listen close to this world we stumble through,” says Dolan, hand at his ear. “Wind rises from the void and disappears into nothing. All without design or purpose.”

Gusts carve the mountains and creak the trees. The men exhale steam-crackle. Their world is gray ceiling and white floor. Only snow-swirl and starvation exist between. The party shrivels with understanding. Lemuel, the boy, rattles inside his tattered coat.

“Without food we will die on this mountain,” continues Dolan. “How many of us have taken rifle-bead on a buck to see the body sharpen to boulder, the antlers to bush? How long will we suffer such cruel mirage before we too expire like the wind?”

Dolan’s words find purchase and lure the group closer. Hunger has softened them malleable. He will sculpt their future, their salvation and sacrifice. He scans the group. Snow flecks beard and brow. Veins river beneath translucent skin. Every second that came before has brought them to this moment. As an unplanted seed already holds the color of its blooms, Dolan has always existed to convince these men of what must follow.

“We require a volunteer,” says Dolan. “There must be a martyr among us whose sacrifice will feed the others.”

In the distance a bough snaps beneath the weight of snow. Three grown men lurch from the sound. The circle widens from Dolan. He must whisper them close again.

“We’re all afraid, lost in the freeze. You’re right to step away. It’s better we let God choose. We’ll hold a lottery. The chosen will go quickly. All the horrors of this world dispelled with the quick mercy of a bullet. It’s the survivors who must darken their knuckles with blood, witness spirit twisting from warm innards, and finally bear the abomination of human flesh in their bellies.”

It’s the exclusion of Lemuel from the lottery that finally convinces the last of the dissenters. The boy is sent far to burrow thirteen sticks in the snow. The shortest drawn will mark the sacrifice. Lemuel is efficient in his task. The dark sticks rise evenly from the ground. Branch shadow scissors black against white. Lemuel wonders where his soul might fall on these deathly charts. He judges himself harshly, crumples beneath his burden and begins to sob. Moans of cursed hunger howl from him. He blinks rivulets of tears. In his crying, he misses the approach of Dolan. The boy doesn’t hear the cock of the revolver or the explosion that follows. He never sees the red mist that hangs stagnant before falling softly to speckle the snow, the boots of ravenous men.

---

The story is very loosely based on a search group that was part of the Donner party. For me, stories with a certain level of verisimilitude tend to be the most frightening, so if you were wondering about the lack of ghosts and ghouls, that's the reason.

Happy Halloween,
H

The Gentlest of Bends

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 13:52:00 +0000

Photo by Jan Tribe

"A cluster of afternoon traffic rose up from the distance where the road was a shimmering black sea. Perkin hotboxed his cigarette and flicked loose the cherry in a burst of orange embers that ashed the sidewalk, tucked the un-smoked portion into the front pocket of his t-shirt. He eyed the still roost of overhead stoplights and readied his Need Work, Hungry sign." - From The Gentlest of Bends

My story The Gentlest of Bends is up over at Burrow Press as part of their 15 Views of Orlando project. You can read the story here. It's part 5 (of 15), so be sure to check out the previous and forthcoming stories.

A big thanks to Ryan Rivas and Nathan Holic for giving me the chance to participate in such a fantastic project!

15 Views of Orlando

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 14:35:00 +0000

15 Views of Orlando is a series of (loosely) linked stories that all take place in the Metro Orlando area. There's an impressive list of participating authors including Philip Deaver (Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction), Lindsay Hunter, Susan Hubbard, and others.

The first story is "Tunneling," by Gene Albamonte. It's an excellent story to kick off the series, so check it out and grab the RSS for the weekly updates.

Thanks to Ryan Rivas at Burrow Press and Nathan Holic of UCF for putting this together and giving me the chance to participate alongside such a talented group of writers.

Annalemma

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Sun, 22 May 2011 23:44:00 +0000

I recently renewed my subscription to Annalemma as part of their subscription drive, and to help spread the word about this fantastic literary magazine, I'm doing a giveaway of a brand-spanking-new-still-shrink-wrapped copy of Annalemma Issue Seven. All you need to do to participate is leave a comment (before June 1) with a link to a website or email address where I can contact you for mailing address particulars should you win. Sometime during the first week of June, I'll draw a random name from the comments and update this post and reach out to the lucky winner for their mailing address.

If you're familiar with the magazine, then you know about the great fiction, art, and photographs that grace its pages. If you aren't familiar, check out their website and a couple of excellent samples from their online archives:

The Dictator is Drinking Alone, by Amber Sparks (Named one of Wigleaf's Top 50 [Very] Short Fictions of 2010)

Missing the Next Inch, by Brad Green (Named to Wigleaf's Long List)

Again, just leave a comment on this post to enter yourself in the Issue Seven give away. Of course, you can guarantee your victory right now by heading over and grabbing an annual subscription that will include issues seven and eight.

Update: Letisia is the big winner. Thanks to everyone for playing.

Ten Rejected (Fictional) Morrissey Song Titles

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Thu, 19 May 2011 19:42:00 +0000

1.    Gap-toothed Gertrude
2.    The Fop Has Touched Me
3.    Narcoleptic Nigel
4.    Grave Tomorrow
5.    All My Friends Have Passed
6.    I See Them Laughing (At Me)
7.    Pretend I’m a Pretty Girl
8.    I Used to Love You (Now You Make Me Nauseous)
9.    It Always Rains on Your Birthday
10. The Same Kind of Snowflake

---

The Smiths and Morrissey were very much my go-to music when I was younger, so when I ran across a few fictional Morrissey song titles in the comments section of an Awl article on the 85 best Morrissey songs, I thought I'd lift the idea and try a few of my own.

In the coming days, I plan to do an Annalemma Issue 7 giveaway on the blog. I'll probably do an easy contest or pick a random name from the comments and mail it out to the winner (in the US and Canada). It's a beautiful magazine. If you like short fiction and art/photography, keep an eye out for my next post, or head over there now to check out their website and subscribe.

decomP OnE

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 13:57:00 +0000

The very good folks at decomP have a Kickstarter campaign to fund an upcoming print issue. Check out the excellent video featuring past work. The skinny on the campaign is below. Consider becoming a backer. It's good karma.

"Since 2004, decomP has been publishing new prose, poetry, art, and book reviews as a monthly online magazine at www.decompmagazine.com. Now we want to venture into print. decomP onE will be a paperback that, like our online component, features great writing. Everyone who donates will have the option of listing their name and one URL in the issue. Submission details to be announced."

The One That Got Away

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:10:00 +0000

Dear Former Follower,

I look back on our time together with an almost irrational fondness. I remember the first time you stopped by and looked around. Everything was so shiny and new back then. We were on our best behavior, and the world was all possibilities.

You read a post or two. You thought it strange that the blog was such a hodgepodge. You wondered if you could ever truly enjoy a blog with no discernable unifying theme, but somehow something resonated with you. I even thought I heard you giggle once.

Your cursor lingered over the follow button, teasing and caressing it, promising untold ecstasy. Then we consummated our relationship with the click of a mouse. We were officially an item.

And leaves returned to barren branches.

We were so good together those first few days. But then you stopped even checking to see what words I’d crafted for you. You went from mildly amused lurker to apathetic ignorer. I felt the distance between us grow, your celestial orbit breaking free of gravity. So I wrote for you. It was meager food, but all that I had was yours to consume.

I heard that you were reading and commenting on other blogs at the same time that you were following me. And I wanted to crawl under my bed and hide. You may not have ever commented and said it, but I knew we really had something special.

You left me anyway!

Those other blogs won’t love you the way I do. They won’t know how to do that thing you liked. You know the one. Believe me, you’ll be sorry. But it’ll be too late. When you come crawling back, I won’t be here waiting. It’s your loss!

Please come back. I miss you. Maybe if we tried to spice things up? Maybe role-play? I could blog like a sexy cop. Or you could wear a blonde wig while you read. We could both follow a blog that’s been tagged for adult content. If we just tried a little harder, we could make this thing work.

What’s that? No, you say?

I thought you might react that way. But I hope you understand that I’ve gotten used to a certain number of followers. Nobody forced you to click that follow button. And I’m not giving up the lifestyle to which I’ve become accustomed. You philanderer!

I’m sorry. I promised myself that I’d keep my emotions in check, but I guess it’s okay, since it’s factually accurate to call you a philanderer.

I want half of your online empire. You’ll be hearing from my unfollow attorney soon.

In the meantime, I’ll be following your best blogger friend. And we’re going to follow so hard that you’ll miss what the two of us once had.

I love you. I hate you. I’m so confused.

Sincerely,
Hunter

---

This is a re-post from over a year ago. I believe that in internet time that makes it new again.

Anyway, I'm not surprised to see the follower numbers dip off. Even the original post was tongue in cheek. That said, I did spruce the place up some, so that's something.

Hope everyone is doing well. It's springtime, so get outside and play.

Stretched at the Corners

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 22:24:00 +0000

The pillrattled wheeze came quick to my wife’s lungs. We’d traveled all the way to Patagonia to see the base of Torres del Paine and a cold wasn’t going to stop her. The hike was almost eleven miles and the first half included two inclines steep enough to unravel the sturdiest of breath. We were part of a small group. There were two other hikers and a guide. One of the hikers was a blond lady named Giulia. She was a journalist with a British accent. She talked of stories appearing in the Wall Street Journal and childhood riding lessons and her father’s collection of handmade shotguns. I liked her less for her lack of suffering, even if it was simply hidden by compensatory confessions. Such is my flawed character. The other hiker was a middle-aged man named Jason. He was an engineer from California. He feared the sun, hiding beneath long layers of clothing and a lazy hat. “El sol es muy mal for the skin,” he explained in his gringo attempt at Spanish. The guide was a girl named Lisi. She had dark hair and light eyes and a tiny diamond nose-ring that glinted like the loneliest of stars.

There was such beauty in that cragged place. In the wind-shorn expanses, brush like dark animals was lashed to the brown beneath. The clouds were low disks. Looking out, it was easy to believe the world was stretched at the corners, a little different from what I’d always believed. There were guanacos and condors and the blur of foxes out there. The puma was a whisper and a dusty print. Snowcapped mountains heaved their dark might against the sky. Glacier-fed streams rushed clean and their white water went smoking over the rocks.

But the first brown climb was dust. That’s when I heard the wheeze.

“Is it me or are they hauling ass?” said my wife.

I looked ahead to the sturdy gaits of Giulia and Lisi. Jason was near behind.

“They’re going pretty fast,” I said.

“Jesus.”

“Don’t worry about them. Go your own pace.”

That labored breath scared me. It sounded of small airways and asthma attacks. The worst form of powerlessness is the inability to help someone you love. I told her we could turn back but she shook her head. I stayed behind her and we pushed forward. There were many stops on that first incline. My pack harvested sweat from my back. Her breath never seemed to come. The day was hotter than anticipated.

The relief of a gradual climb eventually found us. We rounded a turn and little yellow flowers nodded in a tremulous frenzy. We filled our water bottles in a running stream and drank in the cold and then we were moving again. The pace was unrelenting. At the wind pass the air hissed and snapped and bit at our skin. Like all things tremendous it came to surprise us from nowhere, without origin or end. And then there was a lenga forest where the air was thick and damp and the light trembled where it met us. I wanted to go slow. Not to rest, but to take it in. Still we hurried. I didn’t understand.

The last push was the steepest and my wife could not breathe. She kept trying but it would not come and I was weak with the listening. It sounded like things breaking, the snap of tiny bones and the squelch of wet trodden leaves.

“Just stay here and catch your breath,” I said.

“I can’t.”

Her voice cracked with frustration. I thought she might cry but she did not.

“Go slow.”

She looked up ahead to where our group was waiting. Giulia’s impatient gaze tumbled down to meet us.

“Why are they in such a hurry?”

“Screw those people. Give me your pack. I’ll carry it and we’ll go as slow as we need to.”

She didn’t want to give me her pack but it really wasn’t a question and I strapped it to my front. I must have looked like some strange turtle as we lumbered up, climbing over the jumbled disorientation of rocks. At this point, another slightly larger group passed us. They were from our hotel, but I never caught their names. The guide was a young man who smiled his way up and down the side of the mountain. There was an oafish guy I took to be an investment banker and his young wife. She was a pretty girl but her eyes were small and dark and hard as dead winter flies. An older couple was in their group. The wife had toned arms and a lifted face. The man was an untiring goat. A Japanese couple brought up the rear, stopping for pictures and smiles. I liked their nonchalance.

And then we were there. Jagged gray fingers of rock pierced the sky. Glacial water melted and vined dark rivulets down the cliff. There was a small pond where it pooled a spectacular blue. It was hard to imagine anything more inviting. I wondered if that was an innate or trained response. I rested on the rocks and took in the sight. Some things are so beautiful that you can only stare and be glad to be alive in that moment taking it all in. I wished that we could all feel like that always. We ate our lunch of sandwiches and pea soup and drank coffee spiked with a nip of Bailey’s. Our faces were green leaves in the sun. People came climbing up over the rocks and they smiled at what they found and took photos.

And then a friend of Giulia’s came up over the pass. It was a strange coincidence. She knew him from London. I looked at his designer sunglasses and his flowery shirt with the top three buttons undone and knew he was the bastard son of a titan. I was annoyed with myself for being judgmental in what was an otherwise beautiful moment, but I stand by my assumption.

After we rested some we began the climb back down. It was faster and the groups had combined and people were happy. My wife was breathing easier. For that I was thankful. But then people began to push, to go faster and to make a contest of it. I didn’t understand the compulsion. My natural inclination when pushed like that by someone else is to get mad, to want to drive until they break and to know that I was the one who broke them. So we hurried down the mountain until I felt the first stabbing clutch of cramps in my legs. I hadn’t paid attention to my water. I was dehydrated and my bottle was empty and so was my wife’s. The group went snaking off into the distance. I could only stop and stretch the needles from my quadriceps. Every few steps the muscle rolled and clutched at bone and there was pain. To know that I was the one who broke was an inexcusable flaw. And so I hobbled until we found them again and eventually there was water and the groups split as most raced forward and my wife and I were slow in the going, but we were together and we eventually made it.

At the bottom, the faster group waited. There was a cooler and they were drinking beer and stretched out on the grass. The sun was weak and the air felt good. They were happy and a little drunk and obviously pleased with themselves. I nodded to them and sat down. None of them was sick or dehydrated or hobbled, and how could it ever be otherwise?

Fragmentation + other stories

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 15:55:00 +0000

"I close my eyes and see the baby in the boneyard. It’s crying and carrying on, a purple frustration blooming as its face twists and its little hands claw at the air. It’s the only sign of life in the middle of a pile of sun-bleached bones. I see it every time I close my eyes for even a second. Makes sleep near impossible." -From Bone Dry

My story Bone Dry is now available in Fragmentation and other stories, a Burrow Press anthology.

The book includes fiction by J. Christopher Silvia, Ryan Rivas, James A. Crescitelli, Edward Bloor. Ed Bull, Jonathan Kosik, Chris Heavener, Gene Albamonte, Peg Alford Pursell, and Tom Debeauchamp, as well as original photography, a soundtrack and two covers to choose from. Go check it out!

I think an e-version might be available soon, so if that's something you're interested in check back later or drop them a note about timing.

A big thanks to Jana Waring and Ryan Rivas for putting this together and giving me the chance to be a part of it.

Interview At Dark Sky

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 23:47:00 +0000

I'm interviewed by Brad Green over at Dark Sky Magazine. He asks some thought-provoking questions about writing and literature, and I do my best to keep up.

You can read the interview here.

While you're over there check out the magazine and the books. I just finished reading Ethel Rohan's book of very short stories Cut Through The Bone. The stories are like a succession of perfectly executed jabs, crisp and stinging. It's definitely worth your time.

---

I hope to emerge from my self-imposed exile soon. These days every good idea I have finds its way into the novel, and I'm growing tired.

25 Online Literary Journals Getting Buzz

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 17:28:00 +0000

I have a guest post over at Burrow Press. It lists 25 Online Literary Journals Getting Buzz and can be found here. They have a lot of fun stuff on the blog, so I encourage you to poke around and grab the RSS.

A Year Of Books

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 01:29:00 +0000

About this time a year ago, I found Brad Green’s A Year in Reading . It was staggering. It still is. This was around the same time I was getting serious about writing. I devoted myself to reading and writing as much as possible in the year ahead.

I re-read some old classics and sought out works that were new to me. I’m glad I did. I came at the reading with a different eye, the zeal of an autodidact. And now there is a list, evidence of something learned, or at least vicariously experienced.

I tracked my reading from December last year through November this year in a Google Docs spreadsheet. Next year, I’ll likely switch over to Goodreads. For obvious reasons, my reading skewed heavily toward fiction, poetry, and writing instruction. The latter was largely a bust, excepting The Art of Fiction and How Fiction Works.

A good bit was accomplished. I read more than I had in the prior few years and certainly more than I will next year. I managed to publish a few stories in journals I admire. That was a first for me. I’m around two-thirds of the way through an extensive re-write of my first novel. Still it doesn’t seem like enough. It’s never enough. There's already a distant ache weaving its way into my bones. Over Thanksgiving, my brother mentioned the sprout of gray at my temples. There is so little time, but maybe that’s the key to forward momentum, a lingering sense of the unfulfilled.

What about you? Any favorite reads you’d suggest? Any prose stylists that are also great storytellers? What about poets? I would love some suggestions.

Notes on the list: Books marked with * denote an aborted read, usually somewhere around fifty pages in. Also, I didn’t include any magazines, literary journals, or one-off short works culled from anthologies. The list is sorted in alphabetical order by author's first name.

The List

Adam Robinson, Adam Robison
Ansen Dibell, The Elements of Fiction Writing -Plot
Barnaby Conrad, Learning to Write Fiction from the Masters
Barry Hannah, Never Die *
Billy Collins, Nine Horses
Breece D'J Pancake, The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Carl Sandburg, Honey and Salt
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy, No Country For Old Men
Darlyn Finch, Red Wax Rose
Denise Levertov, Evening Train
Denise Levertov, Breathing the Water
Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories
Donigan Merritt, The Common Bond
E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel *
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (Restored Edition)
Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway, The Short Stories
Etgar Keret, The Nimrod Flip Out
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Federico Garcia Lorca, The Selected Poems
Fred White, The Daily Reader
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil *
Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
Harold Bloom, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? *
Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
James Joyce, Dubliners
James Salter, A Sport and a Pastime
James Salter, Dusk
James Salter, The Hunters
James Salter, Light Years
James Wood, How Fiction Works
Jason Jordan, Cloud and Other Stories
John Gardner, On Being a Novelist
John Gardner, The Art Of Fiction
Kenneth Rexroth, Collected Poems
Kent Haruf, Plainsong
Larry McMurtry, Literary Life
Lewis Turco, The Elements of Fiction Writing -Dialogue
Mario Vargas Llosa, A Writer's Reality *
Matt Bell, How They Were Found
Matthew Sweeney, Teach Yourself Writing Poetry
Paul Cobley, Introducing Semiotics
Paul Harding, Tinkers
Philip Deaver, Silent Retreats
Robert Bly, What Have I Ever Lost By Dying?
Robert Frost, A Boy's Will and North of Boston
Rovit and Waldhorn, Hemingway and Faulkner in Their Time
Sam Lipsyte, The Ask
Sigmund Freud, Three Case Histories
The Paris Review, Interviews Volume 1
The Paris Review, Interviews Volume 2
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner, Sanctuary
William Golding, Lord of the Flies
William Shakespeare, King Lear

Word Riot

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 21:15:00 +0000

My short-short Goodbye, Wynona is up in the new issue of Word Riot.

"She’d left me a note on the kitchen counter. Neatly printed on a sheet of yellow lined paper, it read: This isn’t working. I’ve moved back home. Goodbye, Wynona. Below her name stretched a ladder of blank lines and finally a red lipstick kiss."

There's a lot of good stuff over there, and I encourage you to poke around. I've particularly enjoyed work by Gary Percesepe in both the current and previous issues.

I'd like to thank the fiction editor, Kevin O'Cuinn, for his feedback and acceptance of the story.

Devotional

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 15:17:00 +0000

It started, as all great battles must—for the heart of a beautiful girl. The subtle movements of her lithe fingers coaxed heartbreak from her hardwood marionette. She cast her role-playing spells with the heave of a breast and a whispered incantation. Each group sought to possess her outright. When asked to choose between her passions, she responded with an innocent dissonance, a disbelief in the possibility of a sequestered soul.

She watched as the opposing factions met the next day to decide her fate on the battlefield. Imaginary broadswords glinted overhead with the glare of fictional suns. Puppet warriors danced menacingly on pockets of warm air. The violence began with a dare and a jolt. From somewhere between the thud of fists and the crunch of bones billowed up the agonized cries of a love first tested.

The wails continued until the last of the warriors limped away, undecided. And this beautiful girl scurried through the field, searching the blood-flecked grass for broken strings and missing teeth and eight-sided dice that looked like little plastic jewels; pieces of her first necklace made entirely of devotion.

---

Thought I'd put something up to confirm I'm still here. I expect the next few months to be slow going with the blog and short fiction as I continue work on the novel.

River Walk

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 23:51:00 +0000

From the paved walking path we could see the spark of the river current below. Turtles, big as spare tires, sunned themselves on the banks. Herons and egrets hunted in the shallows. Their beaks hovered, waiting to spear their warbled reflections. Trees and lush vegetation swelled green against the opposite edge of the path and the far side of the river.

“It’s beautiful here,” said my wife. “Wish we’d have come sooner.”

“A guy at the gym told me to check it out a while back.”

“We should’ve.”

“Was around the time that girl was killed here.”

“Oh,” she said, her chin dipping. “Back then.”

“Yeah, back then.” I took her hand and squeezed. “I can come back with you.”

We continued our walk, and I measured the faces we encountered, reckoning their potential for harm. You cannot think such things without also considering your own capacity for violence, a hundred leisurely assaults. I wondered if that was normal given the circumstances, our conversation.

A man approached in the opposite direction. His bald head glinted like a chrome hitch ball. He ran the back of his forearm over his brow and pressed it against the side of his t-shirt. From afar, I could see he was a short man, thick and compressed, like a wrestler. I’d be okay unless he took me to the ground. Best to kick at the legs, use some reach if it came to that.

The smudge of his face sharpened in approach. I recognized him. He was the man from the gym who told me to check out the park. I introduced him to my wife. He made a joke about having to exercise because he loves to eat. I’d heard it before, but it was new to my wife. We exchanged a few small pleasantries and continued on in opposite directions.

After our walk, we ate our lunch at a picnic table in the park. Then we sat in the grass just off the path and read, listening to the sounds of the river. A kid, maybe three years old, came pedaling up on his Big Wheel. Plastic growled against concrete. He stopped to say hello. Loose curls puffed and flopped from his head. His eyes were the translucent green of pickle brine. He smiled and asked what we were doing, so we told him. His father called to him from the path. He laughed and pointed toward the river at an egret.

As I thought about all his innocence and fearlessness, a leaf broke free of a tall branch. It helicoptered against the blue sky, its dizzy edges haloed by the sun. I watched as it danced and fluttered until it finally found the river and drifted away.

---

That happened yesterday. I like these odd occurrences. Sometimes they’re subtle and strange like that. Other times, a coincidence is a boot heel to the throat. I’m trying to work a few of these things into the novel. I like having the space for that, even if the writing has been a gutter fight of late. I’m about to pitch another vast chunk of the original draft. Better to cut the dead weight than to continue struggling against it.

In other news, I made a website here. It’s nothing fancy, just a placeholder for my name online. Are there any author websites that you’d suggest checking out?

Also, I’m considering the idea of a short video/slideshow for my Rooftop Dreams story that I could post to the site. Basically, just a reading with accompanying imagery. Any thoughts on how I might get my hands on said imagery (photos, drawings, whatever)?

Emprise Review

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:28:00 +0000

My short story The Shape Of Immortality is up in Volume 16 of Emprise Review.

"It’s the girl he loves from afar, with her sad dark eyes and their thick lashes. He believes her eyes mourn for all loss, that they could understand a fatherless fisher-boy in a way other eyes could not. The boy wishes he could tell her this. That he could hold her close and whisper it into her ear and somehow backlight those eyes with a subtle joy. But the boy is still just a boy and he falls mute with adolescent fear."

The issue is huge and includes writing from folks like Ethel Rohan, Gary Moshimer and a whole slew of talented writers. I’m honored to be included in the mix. A big thanks to the fiction editor Amber Sparks. She’s doing some great stuff over there and is also Writer in Residence over at Necessary Fiction for September. So get to visiting, good stuff awaits.

In A Field Of Wildflowers

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:43:00 +0000

I had this idea for a blog post about visiting Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Cambodia with my wife. My father-in-law is Khmer. He came to the States just prior to the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot. Eventually, letters from the family he left behind stopped. He doesn’t speak of his life in Cambodia. I can imagine many reasons for this, all of them understandable in some way. And so it is, my wife inherited a lost history.

I tried to write this a few times before realizing that I am doomed to failure if my hope is to relay what it was like to visit this place. I could tell you about seeing my wife’s tears and knowing she needed them, that the pain was necessary to forge something inside her. I doubt the words would make you feel as helpless or as in love as I was at that moment. I could tell you about the stacked skulls, already yellowing with age, and how they were small enough to barely house my fist. But how could I ever hope to capture the immense fear that must have whirled inside them as they waited for death inside a prison camp?

The building, this high school - turned prison camp - turned museum, was gray and brown cement. It trapped the heat in a vengeful manner. Thousands of photographs of the deceased were on display. Their dark eyes pleaded for help that never came. I saw my wife in them, and I ached. I was ashamed for my pain, knowing it was nothing. Still, I felt my skin trapped between it and the hard push of the hot day.

I cannot write this. Writing, when it is at its best, exposes god or the devil. I don’t have it in me. I want to grab hold of life itself and peel it back, to reveal something meaningful beneath. But I cannot reach that ideal.

What I can tell you is what happened as we left the museum. After a day of the heat and feeling my insides crammed with this horrible understanding, there was a man. This beggar stood outside the museum. His right arm was missing. His skin was a burned swirl of brown and pink scar tissue. His nose had charred away to a hollow. He had two black pebbles for eyes, thumbed into that twisted face. His injuries must have been from a landmine.

He wanted a dollar. I had been told not to give money to beggars. It would be better served as a donation to a charity that could help.

“Dollar,” he said as he limped toward me, his one arm outstretched.

I shook my head no.

He must have been a little man, but in my memory he looms impossibly large. He leaned into me, following as I walked. I remember the bruised night of his mouth as he moaned the word dollar over and over. It was the stuff of nightmares.

He could see something breaking inside me. How could he not? He placed his disfigured hand on my shoulder and shook. “Dollar.”

I pulled some money from my clip. Pristine dollar bills, crisp as starched cotton. I am not sure how many. I gave them to this man. I gave him this small sum, and I hurried away. I bought something that day, but I do not know what it was. Maybe the memory of him is enough.

---

I remember the people I met in Cambodia. They were smiling and gentle as wildflowers. Yet, in their past, this incredible brutality had still emerged. If you aren’t familiar with the story of the Khmer Rouge or the genocide that occurred in Cambodia in the late 1970’s, it’s worth a look at some of the info available online. If it can happen in a field of wildflowers, it can happen anywhere.

Wikipedia Article on the Khmer Rouge Rule of Cambodia

Listen: The Moth Podcast by Andrew Solomon

Stuff I’m Digging And Random Thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 02:06:00 +0000

Stuff I'm Digging

The August issues of elimae and decomP are up. I’m especially enjoying the poetry in both. Over at Annalemma, Killing The Days by Greg Gerke is an excellent story in dialogue.

In the blogosphere, Hannah Miet’s In Peace post is excellent. I’m always pleasantly surprised when I see second-person narratives done successfully, and this one definitely worked for me.

Joshua Ferris reading George Saunders’s “Adams” at the New Yorker Fiction Podcast (from forever ago) had me laughing out loud in the middle of the grocery store. Audio is available to stream or download here.

I just ordered Cloud and Other Stories by Jason Jordan, and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it.

Check out this blurb from Matt Bell:

“With wit and compassion, Jordan offers up these odd little stories not only to entertain, but also to render the world as it might actually be: full of longing, full of hope, full of a bizarre, touching glory just waiting to be uncovered."

Random Thoughts

The novel is getting most all of my writing attention these days. The rough draft is serving as a decent outline, but I have to rewrite the first two-thirds or so to make it work. I’m 15,000 words into the rewrite and feel good about how it’s coming together, so far. The draft sags in the middle, so I’m inching up on the most difficult parts. I have a way to go yet.

I’ve written blog posts featuring snakes here and here, so I’ll keep this short. I watched as landscapers killed a snake the other day. They chased it through some bushes until they cornered it. They hacked it up with a power hedge trimmer. A lot of things happened there, but the detail I found the most interesting was how they all leaned into the violence. They hunched forward, hovering on the balls of their feet. Their hands worked at the air, snatching the life as it left the snake.

I didn’t like the idea of them killing the snake. I was too far away to say for sure, but I doubt it was poisonous. Maybe that makes the detail all the more telling. I'm sure it'll make its way into something I write.

In other news, I’m excited to have a story forthcoming at Emprise Review. It’s supposed to be up in September, and I’ll link to it at that time.

I have an idea for a narrative blog post that’s marinating. I’ll post it in the coming weeks, I think.

Judging A Book

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 17:03:00 +0000

“Don’t know if I want to do this.”

“What? Why?”

“You have to ride a bicycle.” She taps an index finger against the computer monitor. “Says so right here.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Haven’t ridden a bike in a long time.”

“You know, they have a saying about riding bicycles...”

---

My wife is certainly smarter than I am, so I get a special thrill when I get to tease her about moments like the above. Another that I often give her grief about is her fascination with book covers. She has a very strong visceral reaction to book art. I don’t think she’d necessarily ignore the contents of a book based on the jacket, but there are instances where it might get dicey.

To be fair, if someone put Fabio on the cover of A Sport And A Pastime, I’d have likely missed out on one of my favorite reads of the year.

We talked about this the other night and spent some time flipping through a book on jacket design called Front Cover. Our aesthetic sensibilities generally have a good amount of overlap and we found ourselves very much agreeing on the the designs of Alvin Lustig. We also enjoyed Angus Hyland’s designs for Pocket Canons.

What about you? Any book jackets you love/hate? Does it matter? Will it change in the age of the e-book?

Alvin Lustig

Angus Hyland

Born On The Fourth Of July

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:56:00 +0000

I used to believe the words would come in a tremendous cannon arc, that they would pierce the sky, almost disappearing before the jealous earth clutched and pulled at them. Their impact would find rock or concrete, something to fissure beneath their weight. Such things would come by way of a Divine Whisper. If I waited long enough, head cocked and straining to hear a tacit tone, inspiration would arrive, and those words would follow.

Of course that was bullshit and every bit as ridiculous as it sounds. In over a decade of this philosophy, I’d cataloged roughly the following:

1. Ten to twenty poems (of the high school journal keeper variety).
2. A half dozen short (very short) stories.
3. A screenplay in which I discovered the value of rewriting. With enough churning, you can almost make ice cream from shit.
4. The beginning of a novel. It was ~ 20k words, most of which were adverbs and jokes. It lacked any depth or signs of craftsmanship, and it sat for a very long time, untouched.

This blog was born on The Fourth of July a little over a year ago. I’ll spare you the greatest hits. What is significant about this anniversary is that it marks a year of consistent writing. My first year of consistent writing. What started out as a creative outlet for mostly humor writing, somehow morphed into a strong desire to simply get better. Gone (mostly) are the dreams of inspiration. They’ve been replaced by a deeper appreciation of the process, a resignation that some words are a slow and painful birth.

I’ve written more in the last year than in the decade prior, and for that I’m grateful. I don’t know if that would be the case in the absence of starting this blog. I’m certain that having a welcoming and supportive readership online has made all the difference in helping build the momentum. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

My very first blog post talked about not knowing where this blog was going. I still feel that way. It’s clearly no longer my only creative outlet (or even the primary outlet). Most of my writing focus these days is on the novel. The printed copy of the first rough draft is a mess of red ink, and I’m about to go in with cleaver and blow torch to start hacking and burning away the many parts that don’t work. That said, I still don’t know where this blog is going. I suspect it will change. It has to. But I hope it’s around another year in some fashion or other.

Again, thank you to the people that have been by to read and comment over the past year.

Published Works

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 19:35:00 +0000

Fiction

Burrow Press, "Bone Dry (Print)," February 2011
Word Riot, "Goodbye, Wynona," November 2010
Emprise Review, "The Shape of Immortality," September 2010
decomP, "Vices," July 2010
elimae, "Rooftop Dreams," May 2010

Humor/Satire

Johnny America, "The Clash," July 2010
Feathertale, "Terminator Genesis," April 2010

Other

Dark Sky, "Spotlight On Hunter Choate (Interview)," January 2011
Indie Ink, "Strange Interactions," June 2010
MONKEYBICYCLE, "Spring (A One-Sentence Story)," May 2010

Johnny America

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:24:00 +0000

My humor story The Clash is up at Johnny America. It's about a Karate Kid confrontation between Ralph Macchio and Jaden Smith. You can read it here.

There's lots of good stuff over there, so I encourage you to give the archives a look.

A big thanks to the editors!

The Conquering

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 16:56:00 +0000

A dead turtle floated on the pond out back. My wife saw it first. She didn’t know what to make of it bobbing off in the distance.

“That a piece of trash or something out there?” she asked.

It was a dark speck against the gray morning, but I knew what it was. I shrugged. “Whatever it is, it’ll sink soon enough.”

A couple of days later, it hadn’t sunk. It drifted near the shore close to our back patio. A dirty froth surrounded it as it jostled in the shallows, floating on the gasses of its own decomposition.

I watched from the window as a water moccasin slithered through the grass and towards the water, its dark triangular head lifted high. It stopped and jerked side-to-side. Its tongue flickered and it twisted in the direction of the dead turtle.

The snake’s head never dipped. It slid into the water, its body writhing in its wake. It found the turtle, cutting a dark line in the bubbles surrounding it. The snake struck at the shell. I imagined the sound – angry fingernails against linoleum or a clink of pool balls. The snake circled, striking a few more times. Then it rested its head on the shell before swimming off.

That was the fourth water moccasin I’ve seen out there in the past few weeks. It’s made me jumpy outside, and snakes have burrowed into my thoughts as a result. At night this time of year, it sounds like a million frogs are croaking beyond my bedroom window. I imagine that snake striking at them, blinking them out like dying stars, spreading darkness.

I’m also reminded of the time my father and uncle killed a rattlesnake. That is real. That happened. But I was very young and my memories of the event are perhaps not entirely trustworthy. They are an assortment of blurred images, bleached of color, a mingling of dream and reality.

We were at the beach, a lagoon of some sort. It was surrounded by sand dunes that seemed enormous to me at the time. My father and uncle were both much younger men than I am now. Their long hair fanned out wildly in the wind. They were lean and tanned and wore cutoff jean shorts and old ratty sneakers. I think we might have been crabbing in the brackish waters of the lagoon. I remember blue crabs and using pieces of chicken for bait. If you flip the crabs over on their backs with a stick, they pass out and are easier to handle.

My uncle spotted the rattlesnake beyond one of the dunes. “There’s a rattler over here,” he said. “Come check him out!”

My father told me to stay put, and my head nodded in silent agreement. I knew enough to be fearful of what lurked beyond the sandy hill. As he joined my uncle on the other side of the dune, my chest and arms curled in on themselves. I felt myself shrinking into a ball of helplessness.

They bounced and shouted. They found large sticks, maybe graying driftwood or branches from a Texas pine. The rattle of warning buzzed up from beyond like a swarm of wasps taking flight. The sticks jabbed like spears. Voices undulated pitch as fear and resolve twisted inside the men.

“Keep his fucking head pinned like that!”

“I’ve got him. Keep cutting!”

“He’s moving. Don’t let him loose!”

“Careful. That thing can bite even after he’s dead.”

And then my father and uncle fell silent. They rose up over the dune, their shadows huddling near their feet. The serpent hung over the far end of a stick that my father carried in his left hand. The snake was long and fat and still twitching. Its head was missing and drops of blood dripped from the wound, speckling the white sand with dark globules.

My father displayed that snake’s skin in his room for a number of years after that. My parents were already divorced by this time, and he didn’t have a sensible woman to persuade him otherwise. It stretched across the wall above his headboard, almost equaling it in length. I suppose it was a symbol of some sort, a sacrifice. Maybe it was the conquering of an imagined fear made tangible, because the real ones are often so terrifyingly shapeless.

Indie Ink

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 17:20:00 +0000

My Strange Interactions post is featured today over at Indie Ink. You can read it here.

A big thanks to all the fine folks at Indie Ink!

Nincompoetry™

noreply@blogger.com (Hunter) — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 13:53:00 +0000

I put together a couple of found poems consisting entirely of lines and phrases from online message boards, comments, etc. It’s interesting how quickly the dialogue can devolve in these forums. My goal was to use the found phrases to relay a dominant or recurring theme. I’m sure other people have done this before with better results, but I doubt they’ve given it a better name: nincompoetry™.

2 Lazy Americans

dave was to kind about obama and his barnum and baily 3 rig circus
Wasn't he the Mexican midget from Fantasy Island?
quit hatin'.......HATERS!!!!
all i see next door is 2 lazy americans
living
on welfare smoking pot
all day.

World Cup –USA vs. England at Halftime

Why iis Beckham not in the game?
Beckham strained his vagina.
MALE SOCCER PLAYERS HAVE VAGINAS
Only a complete idiot would disagree with you
Only a fool.

soccer is boring for americans because their team sucks and they are gays
thats why

EUROPEANS ARE PUDS
fall down and fake injury like a little girl you perverts!!!
Watching paint dry is more exciting
...it will not always be so.