Dave K.'s Blog, page 4

stay in the safety zone

First of all, this article . Read it. It's about theatre, but it's good for everyone in the arts to be reminded that they can work at their own pace, and that it's okay to try big and fail.

In other news, I read Garrison Keillor's Homegrown Democrat towards the end of the recent presidential election, and I came away from it not liking Keillor as much as I did. He wrote Homegrown Democrat in an attempt to get people to vote for John Kerry instead of George Bush, and more generally to extol the...

become unsettling in fantastic ways

Just finished Jessica McHugh's PINS, and thought I'd share my thoughts about it here, especially since I haven't updated this blog in almost a month. In my defense, I've been hitting the gym and trying to get a steady exercise routine together, which the recent hurricane screwed up by shutting down city streets for two days. But I digress.

PINS is about Eva Finch, aka Birdie, a 21-year-old college dropout and frequent job quitter who decides, after breaking up with her over-serious boyfriend S...

my dreams for big book shelves

Blake Butler wrote an interesting piece for Vice Magazine, which is not ordinarily interesting,  about modern literary realism and how sick of it he is . I agree with most of it, and I was particularly pleased by his raging against "the obvious and mindlessly repeated unanswerable question that seems to run through all safe, traditional narrative fiction: what is it to be human?"

When I read that, I was reminded of what Steve Albini said about early punk rock: it wasn't about writing the ul...

saying yes is too simple

Just a quick update to link to The Committee Room because they chose "How to Adopt a Cat," the opening story from stone a pig, as their Story of the Month for September . Cool, huh?

The novel, by the way, is starting to pick up steam. I've swapped out the laptop for writing with pen and paper on my living room floor, and it's done wonders. About time, I say.

calling out to the aether

Baltimore poet and literary mainstay Chris Toll died last week, and I went to his memorial service yesterday. Seeing how many lives he'd touched, and how many of us learned something new about him from this, was illuminating. The Baltimore writing community already misses him. Adam Robinson put it very well last night: "I don't want to remember him at all. I want him here."

In fact, I kept expecting to see him during the reception at Thai One On in Towson, because everyone else was there and h...

today ends at midnight

A conversation I recently had with someone about life as an artist/writer/creative type reminded me of Salon's Art in Crisis series, specifically this article about the lack of sympathy for, or even coverage of, how the "creative class" is handling the shitty economy (i.e. we're all going broke).

I don't think too many artists are looking for sympathy, per se, but the least America could do is not go into apoplexy about "useless liberal arts majors" every time it's mentioned that we're strugg...

other compounds act on molecules

More press! The lovely, talented, and alliterative Lavinia Ludlow (author of alt.punk) was kind enough to interview me about stone a pig, and followed that up with a very complimentary micro-review. I feel like I flubbed the "what's your writing process" question, but the real answer would have been way too long and my process isn't a consistent one anyway.

It's interesting to hear which stories individual readers liked best, too - it's quite the wide range. I had some idea of which stories we...

everyone thinks it's a terrible idea

CL Bledsoe, who is a regular at the Artichoke Haircut reading series and might be the funniest writer I know, was kind enough to review my book the other day, and said some pretty awesome things about it.

I'm also going to be featured at The Committee Room pretty soon, because they picked "How to Adopt a Cat" (published in Cobalt, as we all know) as their story of the month for September, which is immensely flattering. I'll link to that when it goes up, of course, but check out their site in t...

we means us

My buddy Goodloe Byron drew this caricature of me for my birthday! This picture would also work as a caricature of my dad, and it actually looks more like him than me, but I was touched by the gesture. And he NAILED my crazy eyebrows.

who exists in the shadow of flashy

It would seem that Emily Giffin, author of Something Borrowed, Something Blue and Heart of the Matter, has a posse, and some poor lady on the Internet found this out the hard way after giving one of Emily's books a not-positive review on Amazon. Here's the full account of what happened , and if nothing else it's a pretty damning account of an author who is a huge mark for herself and obviously never got any advice about responding to reviews that aren't drooling praise.

Here's my advice on the...