-We had a baby! More photos of Clara Lynne Wheeler and family can be found here.
Personal Rejection Notes, Requests for More, and Other Nice Versions of No Thanks
Five Points for “Forget Me”; Massachusetts Review for “Attend the Way”; One Story for “Impertinent, Triumphant”; and, of course, “Shame Cycle” is a finalist for the PRISM Fiction Contest.
Just Finished
The Sojourn by Andrew Krivek. Pretty good. Character deaths seemed to occur at very convenient times, plot-wise. A small thing that is quite common, but it wore on me in this novel. Maybe because death was so frequent.
Out of more than 300 submissions, my short story “Shame Cycle” has been selected as one of ten finalists for PRISM international‘s 2012 Short Fiction Contest! Read PRISM‘s news release here. Jessica Grant will judge the finalists. Final results are expected within a couple weeks.
This is the second time “Shame Cycle” has been short-listed for a Canadian fiction prize. The story received finalist consideration in MatrixMagazine‘s (Montreal) LitPop contest. PRISM international is based out of Vancouver and published by the Creative Writing Program of the University of British Columbia. Apparently Canucks enjoy my tale of shame and transgression. God love ’em for it.
Boulevard 81, the new home of "On a Train from the Place Called Valentine."
My contributor copy of the Spring 2012 issue of Boulevardarrived in the mail today!
Not only does the issue contain my short story “On a Train from the Place Called Valentine,” but there’s also fiction by Stephen Dixon, non-fiction by John Barth and Josip Novakovich, and poetry by Albert Goldbarth, Andrew Hudgins, and Floyd Skloot, among many others. (Did I mention John Barth?!) It’s a pretty stellar lineup. One I feel incredibly blessed to be a part of.
Boulevard puts out such a consistently great product. It’s hard to believe this is my third story published by them. “Welcome Home” appeared in the Spring 2008 issue–before it was anthologized in Best New American Voices 2009 and received special mention in the back of Pushcart Prize XXXIV. “The Approximate End of the World” was in the Spring 2010 edition, and will be noted as a “Distinguished” story in a forthcoming edition of New Stories from the Midwest.
Here’s an excerpt of “On a Train from the Place Called Valentine”:
It isn’t until later, when the freezing wind cuts through her, that Amy Gutschow actually considers what she’s doing. This is late December after all and she’s riding north on the bed of a railcar after sunset. She nestles into her downy black coat, shoves her hands deep into its pockets, and waits for the train to pass through a town where she can jump into a grassy ditch and roll away from the rails. She’ll have to call her father, wherever she lands, and beg him to pick her up, the way she did in college. A tall man with a dopey mustache, her father would wear gray sweatshirts and blue jeans, if he came for her on a weekend, or a tweed jacket and corduroy pants if he had to take time off from work. He never asked why she needed him, but just came for her, humming almost happily as they returned home. “My baby girl,” he’d say, as if it were part of an old song. “What has happened to you now?”
I’ve decided to fly in the face of Leap Day and post my review of the past month a day early. (Try to have a safe holiday out there today, folks. We don’t need a replay of four years ago, with all the accidents and alcohol poisonings. Use the extra day wisely!)
February was a month of good news. There was my appointment as Web Editor at Prairie Schooner. I’m still not sure my family believes that I actually get paid to work for a literary journal now. Actually, I’m not entirely convinced myself yet, direct deposit aside. The job has been a lot of fun, although a bit frustrating at times. It’s been a long time since I started a new job. There’s a lot to learn. Hopefully I’m picking it up right. … Next came word that two of my published short stories will be mentioned among the “Thirty Other Distinguished Stories” in the New Stories from the Midwest anthology series. “The Approximate End of the World” (Boulevard, Spring 2010) will be noted in the back of the 2011 edition. “The Current State of the Universe” (The Cincinnati Review, Summer 2011) will be noted in the back of the 2012 edition. This is a new series, but one that looks very promising. I’m excited to break through in some small way with them. Hopefully it’s only the start of bigger things. … That same weekend I learned that my review of Yannick Murphy’s novel The Call was accepted for publication in the Pleiades Book Review. This is my second review Pleiades has taken, and it will run in their Summer 2012 issue.
March brings a lot of promise. There’s AWP in Chicago. Spring is here, apparently. (Our daffodils have breached!) ZZ Packer is the writer in residence at UNL and will make a couple public appearances in Lincoln. Also, lil’ Clara Lynne is due to join us.
Dispatch from The Uninitiated
“Sometimes I scuffled with Neal Davies and his brothers. I ran track with the two younger Davies boys. They weren’t so brazen about what they said, not like Neal had been outside the store. Mostly it was Neal who mumbled something, standing off to the side to watch us run. Neal Davies was short and podgy. He had blonde hair that laid very flat and smooth on his round skull. His brothers looked at me and laughed when Neal made remarks. I’d tackle one of them into the grass, the Davies brother who was slowest getting out of the way. A punch or two would be thrown, but that was all. Other kids would break it up. Whatever happened was chalked up to bad blood. Since I didn’t know what they said, there was nothing more I could say about it. There was lots of bad blood in Jackson County in those years, the war years. It was wrong of Davies to tease me about the ways my folks died, I’m certain. I’m not certain if I would have teased him about such a thing if the roles had been reversed. I might have. I had to give him that in my calculations. He still had his parents, if nothing else. I did not. Sometimes we believe these things are so for a reason.”
Personal Rejection Notes, Requests for More, and Other Nice Versions of No Thanks
The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski. A remarkable book about a Gypsy boy’s travels and travails in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust, based upon Kosinski’s own life story. A remarkably brutal book.
The Third Reich by Roberto Bolaño. About the ways people confront (or confronted, it was written and it is set in 1980s Spain) the lingering presence or (non)presence of Nazism in European culture. It’s not quite in the stratosphere like 2666and The Savage Detectives, but is still very good.
Jonah Man by Christopher Narozny. A very solid first novel about murder, drugs, and the intrigue of 1920s vaudeville performers. It comes out in May. I will be reviewing it.
In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway. A rereading of this classic after hearing George Saunders and Robert Stone talk about it at the Key West Literary Seminar.
Someone has clued me into the fact that two of my stories have been, or will be, noted as part of the “Thirty Other Distinguished Stories” in the New Stories from the Midwest (aka Best of the Midwest) anthology series!
“The Approximate End of the World,” which was originally published by Boulevard, will be recognized in the back of the 2011 edition, due out later this year.
“The Current State of the Universe,” which was published last summer by The Cincinnati Review, will be recognized in the back of the 2012 edition.
This is an exciting new series. I’m ecstatic to have my work recognized by them!
—
In other news, I also learned today that my review of Yannick Murphy’s novel The Call has been accepted for publication in Pleiades Book Review! The review will be in the summer issue of Pleiades, I believe, if you’re interested in checking it out. This will be my eleventh published review, and one I’m particularly excited about. I haven’t been too shy about my love of The Call, as it’s a book a feel pretty strongly about. You should definitely buy it, read it, then lend it to a friend.
Let’s go with a little bullet point action this time around:
-So I’ve decided to switch up the title of my novel with the title of it’s first part. The novel will now be The Uninitiated. Book 1 will be The Hyphenates of Jackson County. Any objections?
-I think two that I’ll combine Books 1 &2 of the novel into one, as they are of similar content and tone. The novel as a whole is coming together much more clearly now that I’ve gone through a draft of the whole book. I’m working my way through a long list of edits and rewrites now.
-We learned that Kid B will be a girl. For right now, at least, we’re leaning toward Clara Lynne for a name.
Dispatch from The Uninitiated
“Evie stayed with Jacob until he was better. It was two days. She was an impassioned nurse. She held cool rags to his forehead while she told him stories; she covered and recovered his kicking limbs in Afghans; she changed his sheets if the chamber pot spilled; she kissed his burning cheeks incessantly, even though there was a chance he might make her sick too; she soothed him, she promised he wouldn’t die, and that she wasn’t going to leave him. Somehow Marie Eigler tracked down a crate of oranges—which was a miracle, really, given the rations—and Jacob had to drink their juice, even though it burned his throat. It was a simple matter of whether or not Evie could keep up his strength. She made him drink turnip broth and a beaten raw egg every hour. Evie kept Jacob in line too. She didn’t let him forget for a second that was being taken care of, and that he was going to be fine. And then, suddenly, after two days, he was.”
Personal Rejection Notes, Requests for More, and Other Nice Versions of No Thanks
Southern Review for “Forget Me” and A Public Space for “Attend the Way”
Just Finished
Shadow Traffic by Richard Burgin. A solid collection of stories from front to back from one of our mainstay fiction writers.
Best American Comics 2011, Alison Bechdel, ed. A pretty good showing this year, the best edition since the first two. My favorites were Manifestation by Gabrielle Bell, St. Ambrose by John Pham, Nov. 3, 1956 by Joe Sacco (this one was particularly enlightening and horrifying), Soixante Neuf by David Lasky and Mairead Case, Jordan W. Lint to the Age 65 by Chris Ware, Browntown by Jaime Hernandez, The Pterodactyl Hunters (in the Gilded City) by Brendan Leach, Abby’s Road by Noah Van Sciver, The Mad Scientist by Jeff Smith, Winter by Danica Novgorodoff, Benjamin Percy and James Ponsoldt, and Weekends Abroad by Eric Orner. Maybe it would have been easier to just say the whole thing is awesome?
Upstream Metropolis: an Urban Biography of Omaha & Council Bluffs by Lawrence H. Larsen, Barbara J. Cottrell, Harl A. Dalstrom, & Kay Calame Dalstrom. An interesting history of the city and surrounding area. There’s so much overlap in these local histories, but this one seems to have a little new and interesting information at least.
Confrontation (No. 110, Fall 2011) arrived in our mailbox today! The issue features my short story “The First Night of My Down-and-Out Sex Life,” among many other pieces.
“First Night” is part of a series of stories I’ve been working on the past couple years. The other stories include “The Man Who Never Was” (published in Weekday), “Kleinhardt’s Women” (on Fogged Clarity last December), “On a Train from the Place Called Valentine” (forthcoming in Spring 2012 from Boulevard) and a story I’ve rewritten more than a handful of times and only recently seem to have a handle on, “The Mercy Killing of Harrison Kleinhardt.” All four stories are in my unpublished collection of short fiction, How to Die Young in Nebraska. “First Night” is my first published work that’s written from the point-of-view of a woman.
Here’s an excerpt:
It was after a show at Sokol Underground. I’d been driving up to Omaha once or twice a week that semester and having a few drinks near the back of the room while the bands played. Nothing serious. Not like some girls. Just a g-and-t or two in that smoky basement venue under the gymnastics club, listening to the bands. I bought their albums, stuck their pins to the strap of my bag then drove back to Lincoln when the show was over. Things changed when I saw the Zapruder Films.
Information for ordering the issue can be found on Confrontation’s web site. The current issue is $12, a steal for the nearly 300-page journal.
Also, I’d like to issue a huge Thanksgiving salutation to the readers and commentators who helped revise this story and the others in the cycle–Amber Haschenburger, Lucas Schwaller, and Travis Thieszen. Thanks so much! And, I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank Jonna Semeiks (Editor of Confrontation) and her staff for putting together a great issue, and allowing me to be a part of it.
The big news in what turned out to be a busy month—and this is unannounced news at that, which I hope is okay to make public—is that I’ve been appointed Blog and Social Networking Editor at Prairie Schooner! This is a new editorial position in which I’ve been commissioned to take an active role in the PS blog, social media presence, and other communications with subscribers and contributors. It’s a pretty cool opportunity and I’m excited to move up to the editorial staff. Sadly, I’ll be giving up my Senior Fiction Reader duties, although I doubt anyone would stop me from reading as many slush submissions as I care to.
More to come on this.
In other news:
–Boulevardnominated my story “On a Train from the Place Called Valentine” for a Pushcart Prize, and for inclusion in a Best of the Midwest anthology. I’m usually a little wary of touting nominations, but this is awesome news, especially since the story won’t even run in Boulevard until March of next year. Wish me luck!
-My review of Rahul Mehta’s short story collection, Quarantine, appeared on The Iowa Review Online, just in case you missed it. The review is pretty good, I think. Plus, this marked the first time I’d been paid for a book review, which is something.
–The Kenyon Review is offering a new fellowship opportunity to post-MFA/post-PhD writers. It’s pretty awesome. $32,000 a year, for two years, both teaching and editorial opportunities. Plus time to pursue a significant project. Some good stuff is surely going to come out of this; I’m fully prepared to be jealous of whoever receives the first fellowship.
-I got a little love from The Cincinnati Review on their blog recently, in this post by staff member Dietrik Vanderhill about “The Burn” by Craig Davidson. Here’s what Vanderhill had to say, as an aside, about my recent work in TCR:
I’m tempted to write a recommendation for “The Current State of the Universe,” winner of the Robert and Adele Schiff Award in Prose (in the latest issue of CR). This romping story by Theodore Wheeler follows one employee of a company called Make Things Right, Inc., a sort of karmic revenge business. […] a story with passages like this—along with such a provocative concept—can easily sell itself. It provides a direct, satisfying approach to “fixing” the world’s ills, albeit on a small scale.
-And, finally, let’s not forget that October began with an awesome crossover blogger event, as Adam Peterson and I wrapped up the Royals 2011 season and, mainly, looked ahead to 2012.
“Walking the dog allowed me a kind of privacy, which is also why I enjoyed traveling so much. I yearned for the bustling lonesomeness of airport white noise, the freedom to be secluded in public—to appear deeply pensive without someone asking, ‘Whatcha thinking?’ This is also why I liked to walk, to indulge in the secret adventures of a man and his dog, cruising down the sidewalk with nothing in particular owed to anyone. Just a man and his dachshund. We were free to look in our neighbors’ windows from the sidewalk, their domestic projections lit up incandescent. We could kick and sniff at garbage left at the curb. A man walking his dog has a right to be there.”
Personal Rejection Notes, Requests for More, and Other Nice Versions of No Thanks
Paris Review and Conjunctions for “Forget Me,” and Agni for “Shame Cycle.”
Here’s a bit from Sherwood Anderson about his masterpiece, Winesburg, Ohio (from the Viking Critical edition):
Winesburg of course was no particular town. It was a mythical town. It was people. I had got the characters of the book everywhere about me, in towns I had lived, in the army, in factories and offices. When I gave the book its title I had no idea there really was an Ohio town by that name. I even consulted a list of towns but it must have been a list giving only towns that were situated on railroads.
I was so excited to come across this when rereading his collection last month. Most of my work is set in real cities and towns–in places like Omaha, Lincoln, Aurora, Valentine, McCook, Hastings, Bancroft, Atlanta–but I sometimes use a fictional town in my work–a place I called Jackson, Nebraska. (Or Jackson Township, or Jackson County.) I mostly use Jackson when I want to write about a nasty small town, so that my work doesn’t slander a real place. Notably, my novel is titled The Hyphenates of Jackson County, referring to this rural county where my fictional small town is located.
When I started using Jackson as a setting as an undergrad, with my story “The Scythian Defense,” (gsu review, Fall/Winter 2006) I checked an atlas to make sure that a Jackson, Nebraska didn’t already exist–just like Anderson did in checking to see if there already was a Winesburg, Ohio. The map and index I checked didn’t list a Jackson, Nebraska, so I thought I was in the clear. (Thanks a lot free State Farm atlas!) Much like Anderson, I was wrong. Maybe the atlas I had only listed towns that had a State Farm affiliate agent? Just kidding. Jackson is just too small and isolated to be on all maps, with a population just over 200. There are lots of places like that–and the people from these places often hold up their unmapped status as a point of pride. (There’s a town in western Nebraska that has a population of 2. It’s a must see, their house/city hall/library/school.)
I found out that Jackson, Nebraska was a real place when I started researching the life of notorious Omaha political and crime boss Tom Dennison during the early stages of writing Hyphenates. Dennison grew up in an Irish settlement in northeast Nebraska by the name of St. John’s. The settlement never really took hold and died off once its priest left–the Catholic parish still exists, St. Pat’s–but a town remained even after the settlement broke. A town named, of course, Jackson.
This was kind of weird to discover. I’d already planned, before finding this in the research, to set some scenes in a fictional town based in part on the place where Tom Dennison grew up, and I was committed to calling the place Jackson County, due to connections in my body of work that I wanted to play off of. Little did I know that the town was already called Jackson.
This kind of freaked me out, but I wasn’t too concerned about it. For one thing, the real Jackson wasn’t on the map, so it was an honest coincidence. Also, I like the connection there between Tom Dennison and my fictional lead character, Jacob Bressler, and my previous work set in fictional Jackson. I’d meant to draw that line anyway, so if it’s a little more real, so much the better, right? There should always be a distinction between fictional places and real places in fiction, of course, even if a lot of the work of the writer is to help the reader forget that what they’re reading isn’t real. Even my Omaha isn’t the real Omaha, of course.
The Blankenfeld homestead, settled in 1885.
I ended up going through Jackson twice in 2010. Jackson is only 80 miles away from Niobrara, Nebraska, where some of my family comes from and still lives. I first ended up in Jackson when headed up to Niobrara for a funeral. (The second time was for a family reunion.) It wasn’t something I planned. My brother Matt and I were just going along the highway when we happened into Jackson. “Oh, shit,” I said, seeing a historical marker about the place. We stopped for some doughnuts and Mello Yellow. It was kind of surreal to be there. My fictional Jackson County is partially based on the area around Niobrara–and my forebearers who settled there, the Blankenfelds. I was thinking a lot about the landscape as we made the drive, and about those small towns, thinking through my novel at the same time. And then we ended up in Jackson. We just happened to stop in.
Turns out I’m in good company with Sherwood Anderson. The connection between one of my favorite writers excites me, and makes a special series of connections even better. Small world.
Nebraska
Theodore Wheeler 