Jeffrey Ricker's Blog, page 38

Interview by Juliann Rich now up!

This went live last night but for anyone who missed it, there’s an interview with me by Juliann Rich now up over at her blog Rainbow Tree. Check it out!

Juliann has a YA novel coming out in June called Caught in the Crossfire. I’m really looking forward to reading it:

Two boys at Bible camp; one forbidden love.

That is the dilemma sixteen-year-old Jonathan Cooper faces when he goes away to Spirit Lake Bible Camp, an oasis for teen believers situated along Minnesota’s rugged north shore. He is expecting a summer of mosquito bites, bonfires with S’mores, and photography classes with Simon, his favorite counselor, who always helps Jonathan see his life in perfect focus.

What he isn’t expecting is Ian McGuire, a new camper who openly argues against phrases like pray the gay away. Ian is certain of many things, including what could happen between them if only Jonathan could surrender to his feelings. Jonathan, however, tosses in a storm of indecision between his belief in God and his inability to stay away from Ian. When a real storm hits and Ian is lost in it, Jonathan is forced to make a public decision that changes his life.

Keep an eye on her author page at Bold Strokes Books for preorder information. I’ll be doing a Q&A with her closer to the release date for her novel. She’s both a PFLAG mom and the daughter of evangelical Christians, so I’m really looking forward to a conversation with her on sexuality, identity, and faith.

And her two chronically disobedient dachshunds, as I have a little experience with those myself!

Billy was trouble

The Unwanted doesn’t officially come out until next month, but advance review copies have gone out and I’ve gotten my first review, which is by my fellow writer ’Nathan Burgoine. To say that he liked it would seem to be an understatement. On his blog Sunday he also highlighted one of my short stories, “Tea” in the new anthology Foolish Hearts: New Gay Fiction.

As I’ve mentioned before, the three main characters in The Unwanted—Jamie, Billy, and Sarah—first appeared in “The Trouble with Billy,” a short story in the anthology Speaking Out, published in 2011 by Bold Strokes Books. That book was recently included on the list of Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults by the ALA’s Young Adult Library Services Association. It’s a great anthology with a lot of wonderful stories in it.

I’m thinking of ways I might try to offer “The Trouble with Billy” as a bit of a free taster for the characters in The Unwanted. It’s a much more realistic story than the fantasy of the novel, and I’ve changed a few things about them between the story and the book (Sarah’s dad is a single parent in the story, but not in the novel, for example), but I think it would be great to give people a chance to meet the characters that way too. I’ve been reading a lot about e-publishing on your own and have wanted to give it a shot anyway.

And hey, who doesn’t like free? Personally, I love free.

‘The Other Man’ Goes Over the Rainbow (List)

Every year, the GLBTRT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Round Table) of the American Library Association publishes a list of the books that “exhibit commendable literary quality and significant authentic GLBT content and are recommended for adults over age 18.” And whaddaya know, but one of the books I have an essay in made the list! That would be The Other Man: 21 Writers Speak Candidly about Sex, Love, Infidelity, and Moving On, edited by Paul Alan Fahey. My essay “What If?” appears in the anthology, and apparently that wasn’t enough to keep the book off the list, so that’s a good thing.

Check out the whole list here. (You’ll also find Lawfully Wedded Husband: How My Gay Marriage Will Save the American Family by the delightful Joel Derfner.) Congratulations to Paul and all the other authors who contributed to the anthology! And if you don’t have a copy yet, click the picture or this link and get yourself one.

Goal for 2014: Drink more coffee!

OK, not really. However, I think increased coffee consumption will be one of the necessary byproducts of my schedule for the next couple months. Let’s add it up, shall we?

Contests, contests. This is actually an improvement, as before it was contests, contests, contests, but now the the literary magazine’s non-fiction contest is concluded, I’ve only got fiction and poetry to worry about. The deadline is today, so if you know anyone who has a story or a poem (or three poems, even) that are looking for homes, tell them to give us a try. They get a year’s subscription to the magazine to boot. (I’ve already mentioned how my American and international friends should consider wading into the Canadian literary competition pool.)

Workshops, workshops, and more workshops. I may have mentioned earlier that I’m taking a year-long fiction workshop. This term I’ve also picked up a radio drama workshop; my first submission is due tomorrow. I’m also enrolled in a course to help prepare for my post-graduation career. Assuming I’ll have one, of course. (More on that below.)

The thesis. Although I’m listing this third, it’s looming large in my mind. I’ve got my advisor’s feedback which was very positive and also very constructive, and now I need to begin the process of revision to make it ready for my second reader.

The Unwanted. You know, it just occurred to me that if you read the cover of my next book without stopping, it says “The Unwanted Jeffrey Ricker.” But I’m trying to be more of a glass-half-full (of coffee?) kind of guy, so let’s point out instead that the novel is currently available for review via NetGalley. If you’re a book blogger or know someone who is and would like to review it, you can request an advance copy there (and thus earn my undying gratitude).

Post-graduation. As if I don’t have enough to occupy my mind before I fall of this bridge, there are a couple fellowships/residencies that I’m planning to apply for. Not to mention that whole looking-for-a-job thing….

Stories, stories stories! I’m still revising stories I wrote over the past couple years and sending them out. I’m thinking that my next book (after the thesis) I would like to be a collection of short fiction. As of now I’ve got 19 published or on their way to being published, and a similar number either in process, in revision, or done and under consideration.

I’m thinking of giving up sleep for Lent.

Numbers Game, or “Why my American writer friends should enter more Canadian lit contests”

So, recently I entered a story in The Missouri Review‘s fiction contest. (I’ll spare you the suspense: I didn’t win.) Contests are the way I typically renew my subscriptions to literary magazines; most of the ones I enter offer each person a year’s subscription to their journal in exchange for their entry fee. I love writing and reading short stories, so it only makes sense for me to support the sorts of magazines that help keep this form plugging along.

It’s no secret to anyone who’s been paying attention that I’m managing the writing contests this year for PRISM international, which is a Canadian litmag based in Vancouver. The deadlines for the fiction and poetry contest are coming up on January 23, and apart from the fact that entering gets you a year of a pretty damn good magazine, the prize money isn’t too shabby either.

Here’s something a lot of people outside Canada (or even inside) might not know about Canadian literary magazines. Many of them get funding from a place called the Canada Council for the Arts. Think NEA but, well, Canadian. (As an aside, read about the hijinks that ensued when Gary Shteyngart put his foot in his mouth about CanLit and funding and was forced to eat crow. Or in this case, poutine. Which he did, hilariously.) The Canada Council is, quite rightly, responsible for promoting Canadian arts and thus expects much of the content in magazines funded by the Council to be, well, Canadian.

With contests, though? That pretty much gets thrown out the window. Whether you’re from B.C. or Nova Scotia or Burbank or Upper Volta, every entry is judged blind.

Here’s another thing you might want to consider: that Missouri Review contest I entered had more than 2,500 entries in their fiction contest. PRISM‘s fiction contest last year? Around 300 entries.

If I were eligible, I’d be entering.

Things not often said to writers: “You’re the most logical person here”

As I’ve mentioned before (and will probably mention a good few times more), while I’m at graduate school I’m living at a residential college for graduate and Ph.D students and post-docs. The best way I have to describe it is “dorm life for grown-ups.” It’s rather bucolic looking (I think that’s the right word, “bucolic”) and situated near the woods overlooking the coast, and the dining room is a large, long space with rows of long tables and a vaulted wood-beamed roof, so I also describe the place as Hogwarts, only with fewer floating candles.

No floating candles, actually. I wish somebody would work on that.

Where was I? Oh, right. Anyway, part of the complex is a communal kitchen, where residents can fix lunches during the week and meals on the weekends, when the dining room’s closed. It’s often… interesting watching people cook. Some folks are practiced hands and make elaborate meals, while others reheat leftovers and go. (I am often in the latter camp.) There are also the folks in the middle, who sometimes give the impression that maybe they’ve never cooked before in their lives.

Sometimes it gets a little scary.

A couple weeks ago, my friend S. was getting ready to fry a steak and put a skillet on the stove. I was standing at the sink washing a pan, my back to the stove. I heard a whoosh, felt a sudden flare-up of heat, and saw flames reflecting in the door to the microwave oven. No, S. wasn’t making the steak flambé-style. He put cold oil in a hot, hot, hot frying pan (word to the wise, kids: heat the oil and the pan at the same time, and use something with a high smoke point—peanut oil is one) with the obvious reaction: fireball.

So there we are, four or five Ph.D.’s—and me—standing in a kitchen with a flaming pan and all of them making a lot of noise. What do we do? Where’s the fire extinguisher? It’s gonna set off the sprinklers! Get some water!

Thankfully, no one threw water on the grease fire (sigh) before I finished drying the pan I had in my hand. So I flipped it over the flaming skillet, which put out the fire. Sadly, it also meant I had to wash it again.

Recounting this story later, my friend A. said something creative writers don’t often hear: “You were so calm. It’s like you’re the most logical person here!”

“And that’s a sad thing,” I replied.

2014 goal: use some of these notebooks

“You really write?” someone asked me recently. They mimed a pen scribbling in midair, said, “As opposed to” and then began miming typing in midair. It was kind of funny to watch and also made me realize that maybe not a lot of people write with pen and paper, longhand, anymore.

Take this blog post. I’m starting it on my old iPhone (which is more of an iPod touch now since I don’t have it hooked up to a phone account), and I’ll probably finish it on my laptop. (In fact, when my friend did his miming routine, I said, “Sometimes I even” and twiddled my thumbs in the air. So there you go.) There have been times, though, when I’ve started writing something in a notebook that later became a blog post. In the informal writing group that my friend Sugar and I run a the college where we live, most people write in their notepads. Oddly, I write on my laptop in that group, and they’re always surprised at how much I can write in the space of 30 or 40 minutes.

I can type a lot faster than I can write.

Sometimes speed is not what’s called for, though. That’s when, if I’m home, I’ll shut the laptop and pull out my trusty Remington Quiet-Riter, and when I really need to slow it down, I’ll pick up a pen and a notebook.

Right now I’m filling up a spiral notebook like the kind you’d use in class, as well as a Moleskine whose cover looks like an audiocassette. (And if you know what one of those looks like: congratulations, you’re at least as old as I am.) I’m looking forward to finishing those off because for Christmas I got a new set of pocket notebooks, which included this one:

Naturally, once I opened it I had to write this inside:

Round Robin Writing

I don’t collaborate very often. This is not to say that I’m difficult to work with (you’d have to ask any of my former co-workers about that, and I bet you’d find a couple who would!), just that collaborative projects don’t come along all too often.

So, when a Goodreads group I’m a member of decided to do a Round Robin writing project for this year, I figured “what the heck, why not?” and threw my hat in the ring.

Then I picked up my hat and put it back on and sent a message, which was much more effective.

The first installment of the story was posted this week, and it’s fantastic and hilarious. The theme?

Library Pirates.

Yep, it’s right up there with Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. I can’t wait to get to my part, which will be in February. I’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile, go read part one.

Goal for 2014: submit more

So, like I said before, I’m not big on resolutions. Goals are more my speed. Is that a difference without a distinction? Maybe. Anyway, call them whatever works for you. It’s good to have goals, right? Let me tell you about one.

As I’ve mentioned before and will probably mention at least a bajillion times more this month, my day job is managing the writing contests for PRISM international, the literary magazine published by UBC’s creative writing program. The deadlines for the poetry and fiction contests are coming up, and this month we should be announcing the winner of the creative non-fiction contest, which closed last month. As was the case with the non-fiction contest, I suspect entries will trickle in until the final week, when they’ll come flooding in, and in the meantime I’ll bite my nails and worry that no one will enter and I will be a total failure.

I know, way to make it all about me.

What was I saying? Oh, right: entering contests. Or more broadly speaking, submitting work. I didn’t do nearly enough of that last year. I sent two stories in response to anthology calls, and one was accepted, and I submitted four times to contests. Two of them I haven’t heard back on, and the other two were no’s.

Any way you look at it, six ain’t a lot.

So, what this means is I have four stories that are ready (in my opinion, which is highly biased and prone to error) for prime time… or at least late night syndication. They need to get sent out more often this year. I won’t say that my goal is to get X many stories published (hey, just one would be nice), but my goal is to have those out in circulation as constantly as possible.

I did have some luck with that at the end of last year. When one story came back to me, I sent it out again the same day. I’m going to try and make that a habit.

What I’ll be reading this year: fewer straight white guys

I have a book addiction. This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, has seen my bookshelves, or remembers this post with the picture of my nightstand back home in St. Louis. I’ve tried to cut back, I’ve told myself I’ll only buy a book once I’ve finished another book, I’ve culled five boxes of books from the shelves back home, I’ve taken to buying e-books to reduce the sheer bulk of clutter in the house, and yet this is what my bookshelf in my bedroom looks like at the moment:

It’s not pretty. And this isn’t even everything! I’ve got another book ordered and on the way (Maggie and Me by Damian Barr, ordered from Pulp Fiction Books—I’m probably the last person in Vancouver to discover this very cool bookstore).

In other words, I have my reading cut out for me for 2014. However, after reading this blog post by writer Ayelet Tsabari, I’m planning to tailor my reading priorities for the year. I want to get out of the straight white guy whirlpool (wait, that sounded better in my head than it looks on screen; well, never mind, we’re moving on). Part of my grad school experience has involved gaining greater awareness and exposure to Canadian literature, and I’ve discovered some writers I really enjoy a lot.

People who have been reading my blog for a while know that I used to keep a running tally here of the books that I’d read/wanted to read. Thanks to the wonders of sites like Goodreads (go add me as a friend if you haven’t already), it’s even easier for me to keep track of my reading. Last year, I read thirty-two books—check out the list here. When I look at the list myself, a few things jump out at me:

1. Pretty covers!

2. Of those thirty-two, only ten were written by women.*

3. Except for two books, they were all written by white people.

Frankly, I don’t think that’s representative enough. The great thing about reading is being transported into characters whose backgrounds and lives are vastly different from our own. I want to challenge myself to continue reading authors outside of my own realm of experience, but particularly I want to seek out writers outside the typical straight-white-male sphere.

So, here are a few books that are on my to-read list for the coming year:

Blacker than Blue, by Rebekah Weatherspoon

Clearwater, by Kim McCullough

Funny Boy, by Shyam Selvaduri

The Hungry Ghosts, by Shyam Selvaduri

Sucuoyant, by David Chariandy

Maggie and Me, by Damian Barr

The Queen of the Night, by Alexander Chee

Half Blood Blues, by Esi Edugyan

Dogs at the Perimeter, by Madeleine Thien

The Best Place on Earth: Stories, by Ayelet Tsabari

Given how slowly I tend to read, this should keep me busy for several months, at least.

At first I did wonder about choosing my reading selections this way, because it seems so arbitrary, but as Ayelet Tsabari points out in that blog post, it’s no more arbitrary than any other reason someone picks the books they read. The analogy that comes to mind is going out to eat: If you go to the same restaurants and pick the same things off the menu every time, it gets predictable after a while. Why not pick something new, right? That’s what I’m doing.

So, what’s on your to-read list?

*Of those thirty-two, three were multi-author anthologies, so they could be counted one way or the other, but I’m not going to count them.