Dave K.'s Blog, page 2

more like people from Charles Dickens novels

Original article here.

Being the most powerful city in the world AND where Joe Biden lives

Stop right there. Look, I know the Onion's version of Joe Biden is awesome, but the real one stopped having fun 30 years ago and is a fake-ass corporatist like every other high-profile Democrat.

It's easy to see why so many cities love hating on the District.

It sure is.

One of those fair cities is located just 45min North, and you all might know it as "where they filmed The Wire".

And Homicide: Life On the S...

poem: if you squint it says dusty beards

under the bed, the marbles red
we're bowling for cryptic dreams

our brains are eggs our skulls are
bowls of sticks and grass and string

it is just hot enough here for discomfort
we have learned to fear the wind.
we cannot stop yawning

our brains are 
leaking air
venting steam
green with brown blotches

dusty boards across our cloth sky are 
lines in a hand clasped over 
the mouth of our world

we hear thunder as the cruelty 
of its laughter

good post dude keep em coming

Oh man I totally forgot that I had a Writing.com account until today, when someone commented on one of the three stories I posted there.

One of them is the only piece of fanfiction I've ever written, if a Sherlock Holmes story counts as fanfiction. I think I was 20 or somewhere around there when I wrote it, and I've learned a lot since then. Still, it's worth sharing, I think. If George R.R. Martin can trot his shitty early stories around, I certainly can.

The Letter "M"

watching the round ball

Oh dear god this Marie Calloway discussion will never end. The latest piece about her new book, written for Flavorwire by a friend of hers , is muddled by idle swats at the patriarchy and a weird insistence that Calloway doesn't have to be a good writer because she's appealing to contemporary gender/identity politics and is thus addressing Important Issues.

Which, I mean, good for her, but oppression under the brutal shithammer of the patriarchy doesn't excuse flat prose and the boring repetiti...

agents were beginning to operate on their own agenda

Finished the first draft of my western! Hooray! It feels good to have seen a project through without any third-party deadlines or MFA requirements. A few people are already reading it (at least, they'd better be) and I'll do some revising once their feedback comes in.

In the meantime, I'm returning to The Bong-Ripping Brides of Count Drugula, my 2012 NaNo project, to beef up the antagonist and pick up where I left off. My notes from work are slowly turning into something too, but I don't know...

established events from various promotions

Whoa dang! A short story of mine, Ringo Starr Is A Beautiful Man , was recently published over at What Weekly, an online newspaper covering Baltimore's art scene, which is varied enough to be considered an ecosystem.

I wrote this story for EMP Collective's Cans 'N Drafts writing workshop, and the specific prompt was to write a story about a turkey that didn't involve Thanksgiving or any other occasion where it became dinner. I decided to have a rednecky Baltimore family adopt one as a pet.

I tri...

talk about snorting ketamine with hookers

So! My MFA program invited me back to chat with this year's graduating class about life after the MFA, and how to keep writing when you don't have workshop deadlines and a built-in support network. I tried to stress that people need to get involved in the arts and go to readings and see plays and surround themselves with people whose work excites them; that way, there's always a little bit of motivational pressure to write more and better to keep up.

I don't know how much the students got out...

fight for silly things like this

So I got a new job, which partially explains the tumbleweeds blowing across the dusty, uninhabited prairie that is this blog. I'm working at Whole Foods, which is exhausting but exhilarating work alongside some really cool people. I'm still the new guy, so my primary function so far is learning everything I can and trying not to get underfoot or fuck up too much.

Luckily, I still have enough energy after work to do stuff. I was recently a guest (for the second time, even) on EMP Collectiv...

a bit too well done to be done

Oh shucks I totally forgot to mention that I got published in LOOP's February skiing issue . Man, do I hate skiing.

Also, most contemporary fiction is bad , according to J. Robert Lennon. I love ragging on literary fiction and the culture surrounding it as much as the next person, but articles like these are pretty useless for everything except driving up pageviews with artificial controversy. The author should have held tighter to the idea of writers reading widely and learning from everything...

wrong moves will be made

Whoa dang, it has been a minute since I posted here. I've been moving into a new place for most of this month, so I've been a little tied up with that (and writing, of course), which has kept me from doing the needful and updating this thing. Which sucks, because I do actually have stuff to talk about.

For one thing, Seltzer published my short story "Oh, The Meadows," about a guy who gets fired and decides to become a human cannonball.

For another thing, I got myself a copy of Tracy Dimond's So...