Victor D. Infante's Blog, page 212

The ever unsinkable to-do list

Between the holidays, work stress and general life stress, I'll be the first to admit that I've been teetering close to a complete meltdown, in the "kind of meltdown you're OK admitting to in an unlocked Livejournal post" sort of way. This culminated last night with being totally unable to deal with life after my ATM card wouldn't work anywhere. (The magnetic strip has been going for weeks.) It was just a straw, but I was, nonetheless, the proverbial camel.

And that's where it all sort of came...

Chiron Review!

I haven't received my contributor copy yet (they were mailed today), but I'm terribly excited that my short story "John Peel Died For Your Sins" is out in the new issue of "Chiron Review." As a few people in Worcester may remember, I was reading excerpts from it occasionally at Worcester Storytellers (when it was upstairs at Village Arts Center), and was very much set on it going to a good home. And it has. (Big thanks to editor Michael Hathaway and guest editor Sarah Daugherty!)

Here's what M...

Don't Try

"You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it." -- Charles Bukowski

Dark thought on poetry

Sometimes, it's hard not to think that the urge for fame or success, for validation, makes tame monsters of us.

Thursdays are for pimping

I feel like I'm busy all the time, but it doesn't always feel like I've accomplished anything. Still, I turn around and there's something or other I wrote, or was interviewed in, or edited, or whatever. It's as though the process has become so commonplace that I fail to register it. This is not a good thing. Becoming jaded is dangerous, at least for me: it robs the writing process of its magic, makes me stop caring. None of this is good, and it's an impulse I need to watch out for.

***

This w...

Checking In ...

Had a lot on my plate, lately. No time for blogging or being social or stuff like that. Still, thought I'd take a second to congratulate Write Bloody Publishing's Pushcart nominees:

1. Andrea Gibson for Crab Apple Pirates in The Good Things About America
2. Robbie Q. Telfer for Clowns in Spiking the Sucker Punch
3. Steve Abee for Hail Invisible Things in Great Balls of Flowers
4. Derrick Brown for Grocery List in Scandalabra
5. Sarah Morgan for Death as Language in Animal Ballistics
6. Matty Byloos...

Congratulations to Nov3rd's 2009 Pushcart nominees!

The editors of "The November 3rd Club" are pleased to announce the journal's 2009 Pushcart nominees:

Fiction
* “Habaneros” by Eduardo del Valle (04/2009)

Poetry
* “broad day light (for condoleeza rice)” by Ebony Noelle Golden (01/2009)
* “A Different Polar Explorer: Lady, Last of the Enderby Island Cattle — 1993,” by Elizabeth Bradfield (04/2009)
* “In Which the Author, For the Forty-Seventh Time, Forswears the Love of Straight White Men,” by Corrina Bain (09/2009)
* “A...

Congratulations to Nov3rd's 2009 Puschart nominees!

The editors of "The November 3rd Club" are pleased to announce the journal's 2009 Pushcart nominees:

Fiction
* “Habaneros” by Eduardo del Valle (04/2009)

Poetry
* “broad day light (for condoleeza rice)” by Ebony Noelle Golden (01/2009)
* “A Different Polar Explorer: Lady, Last of the Enderby Island Cattle — 1993,” by Elizabeth Bradfield (04/2009)
* “In Which the Author, For the Forty-Seventh Time, Forswears the Love of Straight White Men,” by Corrina Bain (09/2009)
* “A...

Ritual sacrifice. With pie.

It's a holiday of ironies, isn't it? On the one hand, taking a day to take stock of the things and people in your life that you're thankful for is a good thing to do, to remember the family and friend, colleagues and mentors that have made an impression on your life. And I've been blessed by many -- too many to list here. I'm thankful to all of them, and cherish having them in my life.

But still, I've never been a sentimental sort, so I'll let Mr. Burroughs speak to the other side of the holid...

Happy birthday, mom!

If I'm worth a damn as a person, as a writer, or as much of anything else, it's because of your unblinking support and courage. (And Lord knows I didn't always make that easy.)

Thank you, and I love you. May you have a beautiful day in California.