Craig Lancaster's Blog, page 8

Quasi-NaNoWriMo 2011, Day 2

Here are the latest tabulations as I keep myself accountable on a novel project I'm tentatively calling Rayfield:

Date: November 2
Number of words at the start of writing today: 3,738
Number of words at the conclusion of writing today: 4,828
Words written today: 1,090*
Words written in November: 2,160

* — This is why I'm calling this Quasi-NaNoWriMo, because 1,000 words represents a very productive writing session for me but is far short of the mark if one wants to put down the 50,000 words necessary to be a "winner" at National Novel Writing Month. To turn that many words in a single month, you have to write an average of 1,667 daily words.

So I'll say this once and be done with it: I'm not interested in 50,000 words in November. I'm not interested in a daily minimum. I'm interested in a solid month of progress, and that's it. To those of you striving for the NaNoWriMo benchmarks, I give you a hearty salute, because I've been there.

In 2008, when I wrote the entire first draft of the novel that became 600 Hours of Edward — all 79,175 words of it — my daily counts looked like this (the daily totals are in parentheses):

Nov. 1, 2008: 5,763 (5,763)

Nov. 2, 2008: Off

Nov. 3, 2008: Off

Nov. 4, 2008: 11,183 (5,420)

Nov. 5, 2008: Off

Nov. 6, 2008: 13,721 (2,538)

Nov. 7, 2008: 16,963 (3,242)

Nov. 8, 2008: 20,439 (3,476)

Nov. 9, 2008: Off

Nov. 10, 2008: 23,085 (2,646)

Nov. 11, 2008: 27,293 (4,208)

Nov. 12, 2008: 30,744 (3,451)

Nov. 13, 2008: 34,558 (3,814)

Nov. 14, 2008: 39,886 (5,328)

Nov. 15, 2008: Off

Nov. 16, 2008: Off

Nov. 17, 2008: Off

Nov. 18, 2008: 43,846 (3,960)

Nov. 19, 2008: 51,811 (7,965)

Nov. 20, 2008: 54,816 (3,005)

Nov. 21, 2008: 60,837 (6,021)

Nov. 22, 2008: 63,957 (3,120)

Nov. 23, 2008: Off

Nov. 24, 2008: 73,208 (9,251)

Nov. 25, 2008: 79,175 (5,967)

I don't know what that looks like to you, but to me, it can only be defined as insanity. I'm glad I did it, glad what came of it, but I don't ever want to do it again.

Happy writing!

NaNoWriMo: I'm in! Kinda. Sorta.

As I write this, National Novel Writing Month — known by adherents as NaNoWriMo — is sixty-four minutes old. Hundreds of thousands of would-be, never-will-be and most-definitely-are novelists are taking to their keyboards and trying to pound out a minimum of 50,000 words over the next thirty days.

I already have the only NaNoWriMo badge of courage I need: I wrote the entirety of 600 Hours of Edward in November 2008 — nearly 80,000 words — and watched as that mania-fueled manuscript changed my life. I have no desire, and probably no ability, to relive that experience. And yet, the idea of setting aside thirty days to write with abandon, to dump the contents of the mind onto the table and see what possibilities are there, has a great deal of appeal. So I'm using NaNoWriMo 2011 in an unofficial way to jump-start a novel project I've been contemplating for weeks now. I started it several weeks ago, then set it aside for more brain seasoning. I think — think — it's ready to go back in the cooker now, and I'll be using my blog here as a way to keep myself accountable over the next month.

So, for those keeping tabs at home, here's the scoreboard on a story I'm tentatively calling Rayfield:

Date: November 1
Number of words at the start of writing today: 2,668
Number of words at the conclusion of writing today: 3,738
Words written today: 1,070
Words written in November: 1,070
Chapters completed: 1

 *****

At long last, I have final copies of my new short-story collection, Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure, in hand. They're sporting a couple of nice cover blurbs: one on the front from Craig Johnson, the bestselling author the Walt Longmire series of novels, and one on the back from one of my favorite people, Megan Ault Regnerus, the managing editor of Montana Quarterly, where a couple of these stories have been or will be published.

Here's what these good folks have to say:

"Have you ever felt in your pocket and found a twenty you didn't know you had; how 'bout a hundred dollar bill, or a Montecristo cigar or a twenty-four-karat diamond? That's what reading Craig Lancaster's Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure is like — close and discovered treasures." — Craig Johnson, author of The Cold Dish and Hell Is Empty

"Craig Lancaster understands the human condition, all of it. The funny, the absurd and the fault-ridden awesomeness that is each and every one of us — or at least someone we know." — Megan Ault Regnerus

The book will be in Montana bookstores soon, and if you're a Kindle or Nook person, it's available now for just $3.99.

Thanks for reading.

Memories of the Texas Rangers

I've never held myself out as much of a baseball fan. Part of it, I'm sure, is that I grew up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and everything there — particularly when I was a kid — began and ended with the Dallas Cowboys. I also imagine that the state of the area's professional baseball team, the Texas Rangers, had much to do with it. Simply put, they've been bad most of my life.

Emphasis on most of. They certainly aren't bad now. For the second consecutive season, they're in the World Series, and they head into Saturday's Game 3 against the St. Louis Cardinals with the series tied 1-1.

This later-in-my-life success by my hometown team has made me an eager and unapologetic bandwagon jumper. For a bit of perspective, I turned to my stepfather, Charles Clines, a former sportswriter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram who, as a beat writer covering the Rangers in the 1970s, had a front-and-center seat for that bad bit of baseball theater.

Here are a few memories from Charles:

Charles Clines

I don't remember a whole lot, except for some of the crazy stuff. I don't remember the players focusing on winning their division, or even talking  about it. I think they were just happy to win a game every now and then, though several of them had other things on their minds when out of town.

The team had several guys who I would classify as self-centered losers. There were a few of the players I respected, though, with Jim Sundberg being at the top of the list. And a couple of them were fun to be around and who didn't mind associating with a sportswriter.

Of course, there wasn't a great fan base because the team wasn't winning. That's the main reason they showcased David Clyde, the pitcher just out of high school. I was lucky enough to be one of the writers at his pitching debut, the first sellout ever at Arlington Stadium. It was quite an outing for Clyde, who struck out and baffled some great hitters. (Here's the boxscore from that game.) Too bad the Rangers didn't protect him better and bring him along at a slower pace, but they needed the fans and the money at his expense.

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David Clyde

What I remember the most is how immature many of the players were. Remember many baseball players come right out of high school, and they have never had a lot of media or public contact. Sometimes on the team bus when on a trip it was like being on a high school bus with unruly teens — maybe worse.

I don't know how to compare those players with the current Rangers because I have no contact with the current team. But they obviously are MUCH more talented and hopefully much more mature, and they seem as if they are and they not only talk about winning their division, but winning the World Series. That would have only been in the dreams of the teams that I helped cover.

Awards and other jazz

Lots of great literary news from the weekend.

I'll start with something not great but okay nonetheless: The Summer Son, which was up for the Utah Book Award in fiction, didn't win. Congratulations to Gerald Elias, who took home the prize for Danse Macabre.

Here in Billings, the High Plains Book Awards were handed out at a ceremony Saturday. Some great books and authors were recognized:

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Alyson Hagy won the fiction prize for her short-story collection Ghosts of Wyoming. I love this book and love the way Hagy writes. Her publisher, Graywolf, puts out a ton of great stuff, none better than Alyson's work. Check it out.

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Ruth McLaughlin, whose Bound Like Grass has already won the Montana Book Award, added another with the prize for best first book. I've already sung the praises of this book, but I'm happy to do so again. Get it.

The High Plains awards added a new category this year: art and photography. Dan Flores' Visions of the Big Sky, published by the University of Oklahoma Press, was the winner.

In the nonfiction category, Rocky Mountain College professor Tim Lehman won for Bloodshed at Little Bighorn. I've seen Tim do readings from this book a couple of times, and his command of the history and narrative is just amazing. Last year, when 600 Hours of Edward won in the first-book category, I was told that I was the first Billings author to win a High Plains Book Award. I'm pleased that the club is no longer exclusive.

Henry Real Bird, whose tenure at Montana poet laureate just ended, was the winner for poetry with Horse Tracks. Henry's an amazing storyteller and chronicler of his time and place. His book is well worth your time.

Finally, in the best woman writer category, Susan Kushner Resnick took the prize for Goodbye Wifes and Daughters, her account of the Beavercreek Smith Mining disaster. It's a fine, fine book.

Congratulations to all!

Off to Missoula and other adventures

I told you I'd be back.

A few quick things …

The Montana Festival of the Book is this weekend in Missoula. Actually, it starts today, and in a cool collaboration, it's being held in conjunction with the annual conference of the Western Literature Association, which means Missoula will be crawling with even more literary luminaries, if that's even possible.

If you're within driving distance of Missoula this weekend, I implore you to check out the incredible list of events and deliver yourself unto them. It's going to be a great couple of days, and I'm proud to be able to join in the fun.

A few programming notes:

On Friday at 1 p.m., I'll be at the Missoula Public Library with David Abrams (the forthcoming Fobbit), Keir Graff (The Price of Liberty) and Jenny Shank (The Ringer) to talk about literature blogs and how they're influencing the lit world.

Saturday at 11, I'll be back at the library for another panel — this time with Keir, publisher and poet David Ash, author and e-publisher Kathy Dunnehoff and publisher Dave Batchelder — to talk about the wild world of independent publishing and self-publishing. The bottom line, at least for me: Between the gold standard of the Big Six and the wasteland of poorly conceived, horribly written vanity projects, there's a big, vibrant, thriving world of publishing. I can't wait to chat with these folks about it.

After that, I'll choke down some lunch and be back at Festival of the Book World Headquarters (aka, the Holiday Inn) for a reading from The Summer Son at 1 p.m.

****

Speaking of The Summer Son …

It's being featured this month as one of Amazon's hot 100 reads priced at $3.99 or lower ($2.99, to be exact). So if you've been holding out or you just bought one of those snazzy new e-readers, now is a good time to jump.

****

Speaking of e-readers and e-books …

Just this week, I made a new e-book available for the Kindle and the Nook. It's called Scenes of Suburban Mayhem, and it's 17 very short stories that you might remember from The Word series here at the blog (which I've mostly taken down, now that many of them are compiled in this e-book). I originally wrote 21 of the pieces, but some of them just weren't up to snuff. These 17, totaling about 16,000 words, are the ones that were best received here and other places I posted them.

For a cool $2.99 — less than a cup of designer coffee, and better for you — it's yours.

To purchase for the Kindle, go here.

For the Nook, here.

See you next week!

A new direction: over and out (for a while)

On May 2, 2011, with this post, I began everyday blogging around here (well, Monday through Friday, anyway). For nearly five months, with the exception of a legitimate week's vacation, I made sure something new was up every morning at 8. On Fridays, I even posted off-the-cuff short stories, inspired by words suggested by my friends.

I did this … why? To be sure, no one was clamoring for it. I did it because new authors — and I'm certainly one — endure this barrage of advice about building a platform, self-promoting, cutting through the muck and the mud of the publishing world and making a name. Daily blogging is one of the pillars of the author platform, or so we're told. So I blogged. Even when I had little to say. Even when I needed the ample muscles of a friend.

And then, last week, I stopped. I did one last short story, big turd that it is, and that was that.

I'm done. Which isn't to say I'll never be around, never have something to say. In particular, the opportunity to bang the drum for other books and other writers is appealing to me — because of how interesting those folks are and because my daily wankery is not on display. Expect to see much more of those things and much less of the other, lesser stuff. This note aside, I'm tired of listening to myself, tired of reading my own facile words in this forum. It's time to step back, shut up, and get busy doing what I'm here to do, which is to write stories. Social media, for all its wonder, has its hooks in the wrong parts of me, and the tweets and Facebook posts and blog posts and other nonsense have come to take up far too much of my time. I have a full-time job and a going-blind father and a sideline publishing business and a wife who'd like to see me once in a while, and I have books to write, too. There's not room for everything, every day, and mine is not the sort of personality that can easily impose moderation, so we're going to give this austerity thing a whirl.

Interestingly enough, I'm going be on a panel discussion about the role of literature blogs during the Montana Festival of the Book later this week.  I promise, this screed aside, I'll have something cogent to say.

The Word: Mercurial

The drill: Each week, I've asked my Facebook friends to suggest a word. I then put the suggestions into list form, run a random-number generator and choose the corresponding word from the list. That word serves as the inspiration for a story that includes at least one usage of the word in question. This week's contribution is courtesy of Lisa Roberts, and it's the 21st and final installment of this series. For previous installments of The Word, click here.

I don't much care for people who don't come out and say what they mean. You want to come at me, come in a straight line. Roll your thoughts out there, in simple terms with precise meanings, and I'll meet you in the middle and hash it out some way—even if I hate you for what you've said, even if I disagree with you to the ends of the earth. I'll respect you. At least I'll do that.

Uncle Forrest, I don't much care for him. Here we are, at my grandma's house—his mother's house—for her ninetieth birthday, and here he is, thinking it's the time and place to try to figure me out. He's lived no more than a mile away my whole damned life, all eighteen years of it, and has never shown much interest. Why here? Why now?

"You're a mercurial fellow, aren't you, Everett?" He shoves a slice of German chocolate cake into his hole as he says this. How I detest him.

"What do you mean?"

"You don't know what 'mercurial' means, Everett?"

The son of a bitch (no offense, Grandma).

"I want you to define your terms. Is your context elemental? Are you saying I'm a poor conductor of heat? That I'm a heavy metal? That I don't react with most acids? That I'm good at forming amalgams? I just want to understand you."

Forrest licks chocolate from his fingers.

"Or maybe you're speaking in mythological terms. I'm a messenger with wings on my feet. I stole Vulcan's net to catch a nymph. Is that it, Forrest? It's your dance. I'm just trying to understand the rules."

The party has stopped now, and everyone is looking at us. Grandma has full eyes that look like, God help me, mercury. Mom is standing on the other side of the table, fists on her hips, crimson-faced. Aunts and cousins and neighbors are staring at us, agape. And I keep going.

"Or perhaps, Forrest, you're just relying on the common, Webster's definition. You think I'm subject to sudden or unpredictable changes."

He's edging away from me, smiling stupidly, unwilling to say what he means.

"What is it, Uncle Forrest?"

"Let's just drop it."

"No."

Mom comes into it now. "Yes. Drop it or leave, young man."

So I do the thing that requires integrity. I kiss grandma on the cheek—she's full-on crying now—and I leave.

I stand on the porch, and I tremble. I am not Mercury. I don't have the speed. I don't have the cunning. I am a boy who doesn't fit in. But I am strong. Stronger than Forrest, for sure. Stronger than all of them. I am Mars.

I am going back inside.

Q&A: David Abrams

David Abrams

David Abrams' The Quivering Pen blog is a friend to writers and readers everywhere, politely but persistently banging the drum for literary fiction, giving authors an outlet to write about their experiences and giving exposure to recently released and upcoming books (as well as the occasional tune).

Along the way, David has occasionally updated folks on the progress of his own novel, Fobbit. Earlier this month came the most welcome news of all: Fobbit has been acquired by Grove/Atlantic. Even in his happiest moment, David was plugging for others. Here's a snippet of his e-mail announcing the acquisition of Fobbit: "All I can say is, I am honored and thrilled to have my manuscript accepted by the same publishing house who brought you A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler, Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes, Peace Like a River by Leif Enger, and Lost Nation by Jeffrey Lent–all books I count among some of my favorites."

David was gracious enough to answer some questions. Here we go …

Give us your 25-words-or-fewer elevator pitch for Fobbit.

Elevator Pitch #1: Two groups of soldiers muddle through the Iraq War: infantry "door-kickers" on patrol and cubicle-worker "Fobbits"–those who never leave the security of the Forward Operating Base.

Elevator Pitch #2 (if we were going up another couple of floors): It's the love child of Catch-22 and The Office.

Where did the idea for the novel come from?

It's an explanation which requires some backstory, so bear with me.  In January 2005, while serving on active duty with the 3rd Infantry Division, I deployed to Kuwait and then to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  I was a sergeant first class with the division's Public Affairs Office and would be working media relations in the task-force headquarters.  After being in the Army for 17 years, this was my first combat deployment and I had no idea what to expect.  Most of my co-workers had already been to Afghanistan or Bosnia-Herzegovina; some of them had felt the hot wind of bullets flying past their heads.  I felt inadequate, completely out of my element.  Here I was, a senior non-commissioned officer, and I was supposed to be a level-headed, decisive leader able to clearly see ahead to the next step and the next step after that.  Instead, I was a bundle of nerves.  On the plane ride into Baghdad, I was crammed into the hull of the C-130 with everyone else, the weight of the Kevlar helmet crushing my skull and the flak vest cracking my ribs, and thinking I might die–not from a terrorist's rocket-propelled grenade but from a stress heart attack.  I won't lie: I even let out a couple of nervous squirts of urine in my underwear.

By the time we landed and walked out into the hot Baghdad sunshine, I'd worked myself into a lather of anxiety.  But when I reported to work at the task force headquarters the next morning, I was surprised to find I was working in a cubicle jungle–something that resembled a call-center at any U.S. corporation's customer service.  Replace the chatter about grid coordinates and roadside bombs, and we could easily have been working the Turkey Hotline at Butterball on Thanksgiving Day.  Here we were, supposedly in the white-hot center of war, and people were sitting around designing PowerPoint presentations, filling out spreadsheets with statistics from sniper attacks, and playing computer solitaire.  Off to my left, I swear I heard the hiss of an espresso machine at someone's desk. My vision of war had suddenly turned into a farce.  Not that I was working with clowns and buffoons or that we weren't deadly serious about the business of war–we were, believe me.  But there was so much comic potential to be mined here that I knew I had to capture it in words.

Fobbit started as a series of journal entries I kept during that year in Baghdad.  I was under the delusion that I'd be the Ernie Pyle of the Iraq War.  But instead of going out with soldiers on the business end of rifles–the GI Joes of Pyle's world–I ended up staying back at the Forward Operating Base (the FOB) and it wasn't long before I realized I was one of those despised "Fobbers" or, more popularly, "Fobbits"–rear-echelon Hobbit-like soldiers who rarely left the protective shire of the FOB.  Fobbits were a bit of a joke over there–one officer even went so far as to design a Fobbit "combat patch" (I can't remember what it looked like, but it was probably a pair of crossed pens and a pillow set against a Twinkie-yellow background).  I went around telling myself, "I may be a Fobbit, but at least I'm not out there playing the Death Lottery every day."

In truth, I was too busy working at my desk in headquarters to go "outside the wire."  I worked 12-hour shifts 6-and-1/2 days a week and only had enough energy at the end of the day to go back to my hootch, type a new entry in my journal and read a couple of chapters in my Dickens novel.  Eventually, I had a good amount of material in my journal–enough for a book–but the problem was, it was boring.  I mean, who wants to read about a soldier whose greatest fear is getting a paper cut when he loads a ream of paper into the printer, or whose biggest daily challenge was deciding between the short-order line or the full-course option at the chow hall?  So I started to think of ways I could amp up the story of a Fobbit and soon the idea of a novel came into my head.  I could still use what happened to me over there, but I would embellish it.  Thus, I arrived at the "truthiness" of war.  When I got down to the business of writing the novel, I took much of what I had, but then I turned the volume up to 11.

How long did you work on the novel before you considered it ready to start submitting to agents?

I was incredibly lucky, pinch-me-I'm-dreaming kind of lucky.  An agent, Nat Sobel, contacted me while I was still over there in Baghdad.  He'd seen some of the journal entries I'd written which had been posted at The Emerging Writers Network website and he reached out to me through EWN's proprietor, Dan Wickett.  Almost from the get-go, Nat encouraged me to view the war through the lens of fiction.  One of the most significant and meaningful emails he ever sent me went like this: "I've come to believe that only in fiction will this insane war finally reach an American reading public.  And, only a modern day Yossarian can be that vehicle.  That's you, buddy."

I should note that while I appreciate Nat's encouragement, I'm not worthy to touch the hem of Joseph Heller's robe.  Even though the ghost of Catch-22 haunts the edges of Fobbit, and I toss it around as a comparison, I know I'm not even close to Heller's mastery.  So, short answer to your question: I started working on Fobbit in 2005 and turned in what I'd hoped was a polished near-final draft to Nat in January 2011.  It went through several more revisions after that–Nat and I going back and forth via email–until I felt it was ready to send around to publishers.  Nat started shopping it around in late August.  Three weeks later, I had another of those pinch-me moments when Grove/Atlantic made an offer on the book.  I'm still living in the glow of that Cinderella moment–can't quite believe it's real.

What is your writing process like? Do you write at a certain time each day, strive for a word count, that sort of thing?

Before Fobbit came along, I was a very sporadic writer–thoroughly undisciplined.  If there's a way to Not Write, I'll find it.  But, somewhere in the third year of working on Fobbit, I decided this was getting me nowhere.  If I kept this up, one day I'd be sitting in the nursing home telling everyone about this novel I was "writing" but still hadn't finished.  So, I hurdled some inner wall of procrastination, got my shit together, and established a daily routine for myself.  Now I set the alarm for 3:30 every morning, come downstairs and write.  For the last year-and-a-half, too much of that time has been taken up with the distraction of writing a blog, but in theory, this is the time I work on my novel and short stories.  I've been pretty good at sticking to that 3:30 to 7:30 am routine for about three years.  I never hold myself to a certain word count–it's always a question of completing a "beat" in the narrative–you know, the natural rhythmic pauses in a story when I feel I've reached a stopping point for the day.

Do you have a group of "beta readers"? How do you find reliable feedback while you're working?

Prior to Fobbit, I didn't normally send my work to others–I'm too insecure about my writing to just "put it out there"–but after the second draft of the novel, I figured I should have one of my most-trusted Army buddies read it to make sure I didn't completely fuck up the facts.  I was, after all, a Fobbit writing about infantry tactics, techniques and procedures.  That friend of mine read the manuscript and pointed out many glaring errors and places where I had no idea what I was talking about.  He saved my bacon on more than one occasion.  Which is not to say that I won't still get it wrong in places–but if I do, I'll just fall back in the safety net and say, "Hey, it's fiction–what did you expect?"

I also had another trusted reader–a former editor at Narrative magazine–who offered to take a look at Fobbit.  She helped me see the ways I could make the story better by improving the narrative structure of the book.  I owe her big time for helping me see the possibilities of what Fobbit could be and where it was headed in the wrong direction.  I've also posted a few excerpts from the novel on my blog and readers have been very good about telling me what works and what doesn't work–advice I cherish.  Now, I don't think I'll ever again send a book off to a publisher without having at least one other trustworthy reader run their eyes over the pages.  I live in relative literary isolation here in western Montana and I need that kind of feedback, that broader perspective.  Having a "beta reader" is a crumbling of pride, I suppose.

Like many of us, you're a working stiff in addition to carving on novels, writing short stories, maintaining a blog, being married. How do you balance everything?

Caffeine and cocaine.  Okay, I'm kidding about one of those.  Having a very patient, understanding and supportive wife is also essential.  I'd advise it for every writer.  Then again, not everyone can be as lucky as me to be married to Jean (aka The Best Wife in the World).  She's one-of-a-kind and is definitely the center of my balance.  She calls me on my bullshit, holds my feet to the fire, and greets me at the door every night after work wearing a sexy French maid's outfit and holding a glass of wine.  Who could ask for anything more?

You're an active book reviewer. In what ways has turning a critical eye to other's work made your own better?

Turning that around, because I'm a novelist I hope I'm a more sympathetic critic.  I'm a firm believer in John Updike's rules for reviewers–the first of which is "Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt."  This doesn't mean I should only write positive reviews–it's entirely a good thing to warn readers away from a bad book–but I always strive to see the author's intent and then determine whether he or she fulfilled that intent.  As far as my own work is concerned, I think every book I read makes me a better writer–even the bad ones.  Lame-and-lazy novels make me mad ("If they can publish this junk, then why can't mine be published?!") and make me determined to write a better book, give me angry confidence to pole vault over these kind of literary turds.  By the same token, good novels hold the bar high and make me want to reach for excellence.  Reading just one excellently crafted sentence written by Raymond Carver, Richard Ford or Flannery O'Connor fills me with a little despair, yes, but it also makes me want to grab the pole vault and spring into the air to their heights.

Several months ago, you had your first public reading from "Fobbit," at the University of Montana Western. What was that experience like?

Not only was it the first public reading of Fobbit, it was also one of the first public readings I ever gave in my career.  The only other time I publicly read my fiction was years ago as a graduate student at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and all I can remember of that experience was a shaky voice and rivulets of sweat trickling down my back.  The reading at UMW was phenomenal.  The crowd was small but very appreciative.  I'd go back to Dillon for a reading in a heartbeat.

You've also had a few interviewing coups, notably Thomas McGuane, who sat in your kitchen while you pitched questions at him. What did you learn from talking to him?

Tom is a very gracious, down-to-earth individual, someone who makes you feel at ease from the first handshake.  He was kind enough to sit down with me at the start of his book tour for Driving on the Rim.  We talked for an hour or more and we had a wide-ranging conversation–everything from fly-tying to Don Quixote.  The thing I took away from him?  Never stop being a good, decent human being, no matter how many books you've published or awards you've put on your mantel.

Did you have an "aha!" moment that solidified your desire to become a writer? Where does the passion come from?

God, the answer to that is complicated and long-winded.  There have been so many "aha!" moments, I don't know where to begin.  Okay, how about this?  My first moment as a writer was back in 1969.  I was in first grade and I had just published my first book, "The Lady and the Clock."  It was a masterpiece of crayons and stapled paper.  I don't remember the exact details, but I believe it involved a wealthy woman, an impoverished clockmaker and the tragedy of a broken spring.  I can still remember the satisfaction of making words which, when put together, told a story from Point A to Point B to Point C.  This was something I had cobbled together from sounds in my head!  Before I put crayon to paper, this story didn't exist.  There's a magic and mystery to that act of channeling stories onto the page, something I feel even today as I sit here typing.  Back in 1969 was the first time I felt the thrill of bringing something to life.  Years later, I would probably have said I felt a little like Frankenstein assembling his monster–making something from nothing.

What up-and-coming writers should the rest of us be reading, in your estimation?

If you haven't read Alan Heathcock's short-story collection Volt, then your reading life is incomplete.  Do it!  Do it now!  It's simply some of the best fiction–short or otherwise–I've read in a long, long time.  Other new-ish writers who have impressed me include Shann Ray (American Masculine), Cara Hoffman (So Much Pretty), Bruce Machart (The Wake of Forgiveness), Lindsay Hunter (Daddy's), Andrew Krivak (The Sojourn), Siobhan Fallon (You Know When the Men are Gone), Justin Torres (We the Animals) and William Lychack (The Architect of Flowers).  And, even though she doesn't need any more press, I'd have to recommend Tea Obreht for The Tiger's Wife.  I'm also reading the much-hyped The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach and am pleased to report that, so far, it's living up to the buzz.  Among poets, everyone needs to read Brian Turner (Here, Bullet) who has produced some of the most important writing about the Iraq War–his poems burn inside you for months afterward.

A contrived question, but I don't care: You're going to be gone from home for a month and can pull only one author's canon off the shelf and take it with you. Who's it going to be and why?

Dickens for the endless delights.

The Word: Funk

The drill: Each week, I ask my Facebook friends to suggest a word. I then put the suggestions into list form, run a random-number generator and choose the corresponding word from the list. That word serves as the inspiration for a story that includes at least one usage of the word in question. This week's word is contributed by Paige Hewitt. For previous installments of The Word, click here.

Even now, all these years later, it's easy to remember when it all went down. July 1979. Jimmy Carter had just told us all that we were in a funk, only he didn't use that particular term, because "funk" isn't a Jimmy Carter kind of word. No, he said it was a "malaise," and he caught all kinds of hell for it, too. So now, I hear the word "malaise" and I think of Jimmy Carter and I think of that night in July 1979 and how my father and Roger Englund almost whipped the hell out of Rex Langley.

Dad and Roger, our next-door neighbor, worked their way through the better part of a case of beer while they talked about how Jimmy Carter was running us into a ditch. Dad said he'd be voting the next year for Anybody But Carter, and that was a hell of a thing to hear, as the old man, a union guy through and through, had voted Democratic clear back to Adlai Stevenson in '56. I remember Roger egging him on, talking up this California cowboy who was going to turn everything around, and it gives me no joy to say that, in retrospect, Dad couldn't have been more wrong. Two years later, Reagan fired the air traffic controllers, and Dad was out of a job, and Mom just indelicate enough to point out that Carter might have been a sniveling pantywaist but at least Dad had a job then.

At some point, Bobby Englund and I found our way out of the house, neither of us giving a good goddamn about Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan. I wanted to head up the street to Cyndi Ham's house, because I heard Lauri Popelka was spending the night there. But Bobby wanted to go down the street to the Tangled Briar subdivision. There was an empty lot between Rex Langley's house and Megan Witten's, with a huge, gnarled oak tree – biggest one in the county, I do believe – that we could climb into and see everything in the neighborhood. So that's what we did.

Now, I've asked myself plenty of times in the intervening years whether Bobby knew what he was going to do when he suggested climbing that tree, and the truth of the matter is, I just don't know. When I knew him – and I'll grant you, that was a long time ago – he wasn't the sort of kid who plotted out his cruelty. Sure, he could be mean and stupid, just like all of us, but I didn't get the sense that it was a compulsion deep inside him. On the other hand, I heard a lot of stories after the Englunds moved away about Bobby's mom and how she liked younger guys, and some of those stories suggested that this was why, in the middle of winter in '80, the Englunds pulled Bobby and his sister out of school and up and moved to Missouri. But it was all just talk, for all I knew, except that Rex Langley's name often came up when discussion started moving in that direction, if you get what I'm saying. So let's just say that if Rex was laying Mrs. Englund, maybe Bobby knew about it, and maybe that's why he did what he did. And maybe Roger knew it, too, which would explain why he did what he did.

All I know for sure is that Bobby had a slingshot in his back pocket and a handful of marbles in his front pocket, and when Rex Langley came outside that night, Bobby loaded up and sent one of those glass beauties into the small of Rex's back, dropping him to his knees.

"What are you doing?" I spat at Bobby. "He's gonna kill us."

Under his breath and loading up his next shot, Bobby said, "If you shut up, he'll never know where they're coming from."

He might have been right about that, if he could have held his aim. But the next shot missed Rex altogether and took out the front passenger-side window of Mr. Langley's Gran Torino, and from that Rex managed to judge the trajectory and, even in the fast-coming dark, find us in our perch.

Rex lit out, adrenaline compensating for whatever damage Bobby had done to his back, and in the next moment, Bobby and I were rappelling down the tree. We were in big trouble, I knew. The question was whether we could cut off the corner of the vacant lot before Rex closed the distance; if we could, we might have a shot at making it to the house.

I fell to the ground first and beat it out of there, making it to the street a good twenty yards ahead of Rex. Bobby, much slower than me, got to the street, too, but Rex was nearly on top of him. Bobby screamed, and I ran faster, and I heard him go down, and still I ran.

On my porch, I yelled "he's beating up Bobby!" through the screen door at Dad and Roger, and they were off the couch and past me before I could even register it, the faint traces of Miller Lite trailing them. I chased them back down the street.

What I saw next was just … well, surreal's probably the best word. Bobby sat on his rump in the street, his lip split, crying. Roger had Rex pinned up against the Curleys' spite fence, his right arm big as a maple ham against the kid's chest, holding him in place. Dad had one hand against Rex's throat and the other unfurling a spindly finger that he jabbed into the boy's nose.

"I don't want to ever catch you around these boys again," Dad said, his index finger punctuating every word. "Do you understand?" Rex, his face tear-tracked and crimson, trembling, tried to nod and couldn't even manage that.

And then, instantaneously, the fury drained out of Dad, and he released Rex – "Roger, let him go" – and he said, swear to God, "I'm sorry. Go on home."

*****

Late that night, from my bedroom, I listened to the voices of Mr. and Mrs. Langley in our living room, to the rise and fall of their anger, as they came in looking for a fight and left with grudging acceptance that Dad had messed up but had done no lasting harm to their boy.

I don't know how things went over at the Englunds' place, and Bobby made it clear he wasn't going to do much talking on the subject of Rex Langley, so here, thirty-two years clear of it, I don't have much more clarity than I had then.

Dad, I know, held the shame deep. The only thing he told me was that I'd pay for Mr. Langley's car window, and though I had nothing to do with it, I didn't fight him, because he had that look of finality, and I knew that all too well.

Sometimes, at night, I'll stand over my boy when he's sleeping, in the shadows so I don't cause him to stir, and in those moments, I think I can see every side of it. Dad was protecting his son. So was Roger, and maybe he was protecting something more, too. And so were the Langleys when they came to our house and asked Dad why they shouldn't just go ahead and call the cops.

I think about that night a lot, and for a lot of reasons. The biggest one, I think, is that there was a lot of anger in the air that night, a lot of anger about a lot of things, and in retrospect, we're all pretty lucky it didn't end up a lot worse for everybody.

That's when I get up and go to Eric's room. I look at my boy, and I know that, right or wrong, no matter what, I stand with him. He's my heart.

Goodbye, R.E.M.

I've had hours to consider what I'll say here, and it's still not clear in my head. I don't know how to begin to describe the emotions of hearing that my favorite band ever, one I've been with — and one that's been with me — for the majority of my life, has sent itself off into retirement.

I never saw it coming, and while I will concede that a good chunk of Wednesday was spent walking around in a stupor, I'll also say that the way R.E.M. exited the stage is entirely in keeping with what I've come to expect from them in three decades as a fan: dignified, understated, no odious farewell tour or media blitz. Just a simple statement on the band's website, and they're gone.

Whatever conflicts I'm having about what to say don't extend to the question of what to post. Of all the songs from 15 studio albums, eight compilations and two live albums, my favorite stands consistent. This one:

There's a story behind my love of "Find the River," and you're going to get that, too.

In 1993-94, I worked for a small newspaper in Kentucky, the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer. It was a good place to work (then), situated in a vibrant college town on the banks of the Ohio River. One day, I spent a late afternoon driving up the Kentucky side of the river to Hawesville, then crossing to Cannelton, Indiana, and coming back on the other side. It was one of those pitch-perfect fall days — a little chill in the air, sunny if slightly overcast, the road windswept with coppery leaves. My companion that day was R.E.M.'s "Automatic for the People," the album that probably represents the nexus of the band's widest appeal and highest art. When I got to "Find the River," I kept backing it up, hearing meaning in the words that I hadn't contemplated before.

I was 23 years old, and I had this sense, for the first time, that I was the man I would be, for better or worse. That I'd made some decisions and had defined myself in some irretrievable way, and somehow, in my mind that day, those notions hardwired themselves to Michael Stipe's words:

The river to the ocean goes

A fortune for the undertow

None of this is going my way …

In Rockport, Indiana, not far from home, I pulled over at a secluded spot and I wept. For what? I don't know, not even today. Something powerful. Something beautiful. Something inside me that was drawn out by this band that I loved so much.

(Now, of course, I look back and see an emotionally dramatic 23-year-old. Enough has happened in the intervening years to teach me that nothing is irretrievable, that there are not only second acts in life but third and fourth acts. That's what I know now. What I knew then was all I could deal with then.)

A lot of the coverage of the band's retirement has focused on just how out of favor they are now with the musical mainstream, and while that's an unavoidable part of the story, it means nothing to me. From "Murmur" in 1983 to "Collapse Into Now" in 2011, a new R.E.M. album was an event-with-a-capital-E for me. Just as I'm willing to follow a favorite author wherever he wants to take me, I've always been eager to see what new horizon R.E.M. leads me to. Some ("Lifes Rich Pageant") appealed to me more than others ("Around the Sun"), but I was always packed for the journey. As I've considered my sadness at this news, that's certainly been one of the biggest factors: No more new R.E.M. to look forward to, ever. The other biggie: Perhaps the best part of being a fan of the band was the sense that together, the four of them (and, after Bill Berry left in 1997, the three of them) were so much more as a unit than they ever were apart from that. Perhaps that's unfair. Perhaps they'll go on to great heights in their own directions. I'd love to be wrong about this. And, really, as long as they're happy, that's the most important thing. R.E.M. never lost their dignity, and I trust they knew when it was time.

But, see, I think the guys also understood the greater-than-the-sum-of-their-parts thing. I think that's why they had the foresight, when they were starting out, to say that all songs would be credited to Berry Buck Mills Stipe, regardless of individual contributions on any given tune. They knew they'd have to stand together. And they did, for 31 years.

I will miss them.