The Mumpsimus

The marvelous Interfictions Online has now published my short story/prose poem "On the Government of the Living" . The piece, which takes its title from Michel Foucault but is not otherwise especially erudite, began purely as an exercise: I wanted to see if I could take what the Turkey City Lexicon calls "White Room Syndrome" and actually make it a viable, necessary element of the story. (Whenever a writing guide says, "Don't do this!" I inevitably want to try it out...) The effect, perhaps unsurprisingly, is rather Beckettesque.

  Interfictions Online is doing some crowdfunding so that they can continue to pay contributors and not charge readers. Not only am I in favor of paying contributors and keeping material free for readers, I'm also a fan of Interfictions in all its various incarnations, since many of my friends and writers I admire have appeared there, are editors there, etc. And I'm not entirely selfless in passing on the appeal: I had a story in the first Interfictions anthology, and I've got a story coming out in a future issue of Interfictions Online . You don't have to be selfless, either, though, because there are various items offered to people who give money, including a great set of new e-book anthologies. So head on over to the Indiegogo page and see what's up!

I meant to say this quite a while ago, but it got lost in the shuffle (Paul Witcover's post reminded me)  -- the faculty for this year's Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop is extraordinary .  The Clarion workshops always have great faculty, but for this particular Clarion in this particular year, I can testify to their extraordinariness because I've worked with four of the six instructors on writing projects, and they're people I continue to learn a lot from. I have never met or interacted with Dale Bailey or George R.R. Martin, two of the instructors in the middle weeks, but I've read the writing of both, and I'm sure they will have a lot to offer. Delia Sherman is one of the best editors I've ever had for a short story ( "A Map of the Everywhere" ).  She did what the most talented editors do: made comments that let me see the story with new eyes and shape it accordingly.  She's a very good writer herself, but when ...

I've been meaning for a while to record a reading of my story "A Map of the Everywhere", first published in Interfictions , because when I've done a reading of the story, the response has often been somewhat different from the response to the text on the page -- many people have told me they hadn't realized the story was humorous until I read it aloud. Here, then, is an mp3 of me reading the story. It's not particularly high quality -- the microphone I have is one step up from something in a Cracker Jack box. I'm also a better reader with an audience. And there are some glitches in the first minute or two. But for what it's worth, here is "A Map of the Everywhere". Here's a direct link to the file.

The Interfictions Auction continues (though it is nearing its end) with a pair of earrings by Sarah Evans that are inspired by part of my story "A Map of the Everywhere". Follow the link for more information about bidding, etc. It's been exciting to see how the words and images from stories have led to such an array of creativity from the various artists, and I'm particularly thrilled (and humbled!) that my weird little story has proved inspiring.

Ellen Kushner and Tempest Bradford both let me know that not only is the Interstitial Arts Foundation holding an auction of jewelry based on stories from Interfictions , but one of the pieces of jewelry is, in fact, based on my story "A Map of the Everywhere": "A Map of the Everywhere -- Boxcar Diner" by Sarah Evans. I've tried to write something eloquent and thoughtful about how pleased I am anyone would find inspiration in something I'd written ... but basically all I want to say is: Wow! That's so cool! In other cool news, Mumpsimus fave Chris Barzak has been nominated for the NewNowNext Awards from Logo, which is, apparently, a TV station (I don't have a TV). Chris is nominated in the "Brink of Fame: Author" category, which apparently means he's on the verge of becoming a contestant on a Bravo show. Or something. I don't know. But what I do know is you can go vote for him! Don't let Barzak Day in the Blogosphere have...

I will be joining the line-up for the Interfictions reading at KGB Bar in Manhattan on Wednesday, June 20, at 7pm. Don't let this deter you from attending -- the other readers are all geniuses, and I promise not to read for more than a few hours, so you'll still have time to hear them.

There is a now a blog associated with Interfictions , an anthology in which I have a story. The anthology is the first from the Interstitial Arts Foundation , and I'm looking forward quite a lot to reading it, because I really don't know what "interstitial fiction" looks like. Niall Harrison has pronounced himself an interstitial skeptic , and there's been interesting discussion in the comments to the post. Here's what I submitted when asked for an introduction to my story that would explain how it is interstitial: Today the only labels I like for what I write are Wishes and Exorcisms . Sometimes the two labels overlap, like searchlights finding each other in a dark sky. A few months before he died in 1904, Anton Chekhov wrote to his wife, an actress in Moscow. He was forty-four years old, living in Yalta, and in the last stages of tuberculosis, a disease he had suffered from for almost half his life, a disease that had claimed his brother, Nikolai, in 1...