Jim Nelson's Blog, page 26

The Gray Lady dances with The Obituarist: “Obituaries for the Pre-Dead”

I now owe Eric Zassenhaus twofold, both times in relationto my short story “The Obituarist”. (Shameless plug: “The Obituarist” is inmy in new short story collectionA Concordance of One’s Life, now available as an e-book at Amazon, soon to be available at Kobo and Apple’s iBook store.)

The second time Eric came through was this morning. Healerted me to a New York Times Insider story that went up on August 29th, two days ago. “Obituaries for the Pre-Dead”, penned by Times staff obituary writer M...

North American Review: “Origins of The Obituarist”

The North American Review blog has posted a piece I wrote for them, “Origins of The Obituarist”. In it I detailthe inspiration and creativeprocess I worked through to write my short story “The Obituarist”, which NARaccepted and published in their Summer/Fall 2009 issue. A sample from the original short story:

My editors and my fellow obituarists have a little list, The Nearly Departed we call it, celebrities and politicians and artists and authors whom we agree are not long for this world. The...

The craft of funny

Ask me my favorite movie moment and I’ll tell you a scene fromIt’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Before this morning I would have told it like this:

Phil Silvers and Jonathan Winters are in a private prop plane and the pilot has conked out. Silvers convinces Winters to take the wheel and fly the thing: “How hard could it be? Just put your hands there and there and your feet there. Now keep it steady while I go in the back and fix up anOld Fashionedlike granddad used to make.”

Winters fumbles with...

The Tusk’s Fiction First Friday: “Roast”

I’m pleased to share that The Tusk has published an excerpt from my upcoming novelEdward Teller Dreams of Barbecuing People. Titled “Roast”, it’s the novel’s opening chapter and introduction to the narrator, Gene Harland. Here’s the opening grafs:

The Petrenkos were barbecuing people. They barbecued in sweaters and jeans, they barbecued in swimming trunks and bikini tops. The first clear weekend of the year, they rolled their venerable Weber out from its corner in the gardening shed and ratche...