Bad Faith

Bad Faith Book Party is this Month!

| Ted Wheeler

box o booksIf you’re in the area of Omaha, Nebraska on the evening of June 30 your presence is requested at Pageturners Lounge to help celebrate the release of Bad Faith, my debut collection of short fiction!

Here’s the Facebook event page. If you’re planning on coming and can RSVP that would help immensely with planning.

There will be a short reading, donuts, and ample celebration. Have a drink or two, buy a book, and get a personalized inscription. Omaha poet and writing-group-buddy Felicity White will emcee. Copies of Bad Faith will be available for purchase courtesy of The Bookworm, weeks before it is available for purchase in stores, by the way.

I hope to see you there!

–

Bad Faith Early Release Party
Thu June 30, 7pm
Pageturners Lounge (5004 Dodge St)

Bad Faith Cover Preview!

| Ted Wheeler

Bad Faith final pngCheck out the awesome wrap-around cover for my short story collection Bad Faith! The cover was designed by Brian Mihok with artwork by Michael Mihok. Brian does all the covers for Queen’s Ferry Press, and I’m really excited about what he’s done with Bad Faith. This definitely has the QFP feel to it while also representing the book pretty well too. Thanks to Brian and Michael, and to QFP Editor Erin McKnight for all her hard work in helping to get everything just so.

PS: I heard that the advance reader copies went out to book reviewers last week, so we’re getting there.

PPS: Check out my events page, as some book tour dates have been added. I’ll be out on the road reading with Tyrone Jaeger (So Many True Believers) and Dave Madden (If You Need Me I’ll Be Over There) in early July, with stops in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Iowa City, and Des Moines, in addition to Omaha and Lincoln. Thanks so much to QFP publicist Kelsey Hall for setting these up. I’m hoping to secure a few dates on the coasts soon too, so stay tuned.

Bad Faith Blurb Preview

| Ted Wheeler

12400715_10102357215153903_1410032962247269600_nAs the July release date for my story collection, Bad Faith, inches ever closer, we’ve been pulling together some of the promotional materials. Here are the blurbs, if you’re interested. Thanks so much to Jonis, Amina, Brent, and Mark for their generosity in taking the time to plug my book! (And check out below for a teaser of the front cover that I’ve been sending out on postcards.)

“These stories turn the reader’s expectations on their head as Wheeler spins stunning arabesques, scoring the surface of his characters’ reality to reveal the malice, confusion, and ultimate frailty of us all.”     – Jonis Agee, author of The Bones of Paradise

“Theodore Wheeler’s debut collection of fiction Bad Faith is a perfect lesson in perfidy, deception, and duplicity, a contemplative exploration of the vagaries of the double-minded human heart.”     – Amina Gautier, author of The Loss of All Lost Things

“Wheeler’s characters occupy the edges of their lives, the gray places of the heart. They yearn for inclusion at the same time that they feel pulled into isolation. At the heart of this brilliant book is the desire to connect—with others, with the world around us, and with the lost parts of ourselves. Filled with powerful insights and a nuanced understanding of human nature, Bad Faith is a major achievement, and Theodore Wheeler is a writer to be reckoned with.”     – Brent Spencer, author of Rattlesnake Daddy: A Son’s Search for His Father

“Superbly chiseled prose conveying extraordinarily hardscrabble lives, Bad Faith explores dark alleys within the epiphany that some of us are more fated to hell than heaven on earth. Theodore Wheeler is the real deal and then some.”     – Mark Wisniewski, author of Watch Me Go

 

 

March Updates

| Ted Wheeler

bad faithThings are coming along as the July release of Bad Faith gets closer. After a few rounds of edits and cover design meetings and inside design meetings and proofreading and proofreading, we’re almost to the galley stage. Then, some proofreading! The process has actually been pretty cool, and I’ve really enjoyed working with editor Erin McKnight. That the book ended up with Queen’s Ferry Press was a real stroke of luck. More on the book soon, including a preview of the cover in a few weeks.

-My short story “The Missing” (published in The Southern Review last year, and in Bad Faith) was featured on a new book podcast called Story Buds. The series has an interesting premise: the hosts re-imagine the plot of a published story going off of only three sentences from the beginning, middle, and end of the piece in question. (NSFW)

-Last month I mentioned how Julie Iromuanya’s novel Mr. and Mrs. Doctor was named a finalist for the PEN/Bingham Prize for debut writers. Not satisfied with only one major nomination, Julie’s novel was recently named a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award! Pretty cool stuff for a Lincoln native and UNL creative writing program grad. If you haven’t yet picked up a copy of Mr. and Mrs. Doctor, do so soon.

-Michael Catherwood has a new collection of poems coming out later this spring, If You Turn Around Quickly, that’s currently up for pre-order at the discount price of $8 at this link. Mike writes the best poems about Omaha going (not to play favorites) and his previous collection (Dare) is one I’ve gone back to many times.

-Richard Burgin’s newest short story collection, Don’t Think, came out from Johns Hopkins University Press a couple weeks ago and continues a solid run of Burgin books the last few years. Be sure to check it out!

41sm3ftriyl-_sx322_bo1204203200_In Don’t Think, his ninth collection of short fiction, Burgin offers us his most daring and imaginatively varied work to date. The stories explore universal themes of love, family, and time, examining relationships and memory―both often troubled, fragmented, and pieced back together only when shared between characters. In the title story, written in propulsive, musical prose, a divorced father struggles to cling to reality through his searing love for his highly imaginative son, who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. In “Of Course He Wanted to Be Remembered,” two young women meet to commemorate the death of a former college professor with whom they were both unusually close―though in very different ways. In “V.I.N.,” a charismatic drug dealer tries to gain control of a bizarre cult devoted to rethinking life’s meaning in relation to infinite time, while in “The Intruder,” an elderly art dealer befriends a homeless young woman who has been sleeping in his basement.

January Pub Updates

| Ted Wheeler

ptl back doorSince it’s been a while since I offered a general state of the blog type post, here’s the latest in the world of the uninitiated.

-A pub date has been set for Bad Faith! My short story collection will drop on July 12, 2016. And while you’re hurriedly marking your calendars, I’ve also set up a pre-release party at Pageturners Lounge for Thursday, June 30, which will the first opportunity to purchase the book, have it signed, and toast with the author.

Between working through final edits on the book, the first blurbs coming in, and setting up events for later this year, it’s been an exciting, sometimes nerve-wracking experience. There will even be a cover before long. It’s happening!

-A few of my short stories will be coming out in the next couple months. “Violate the Leaves” in the spring issue of Boulevard, in March; “The Hyphenates of Jackson County” in Artful Dodge, by the end of February; and “On a Train from the Place Called Valentine” in New Stories form the Midwest.

-You may have noticed a few updates around the site. The last year I’ve slowly been transitioning this space from its blog roots to more of a proper web site befitting a published author with multiple books to his name. Or something. The process should be finished shortly, with a static front page and all that. I’ll still be blogging here every once in a while, maybe even a little more frequently. The whole “travel” part of the blog kind of took a backseat the last couple years, as I wasn’t traveling much, saving up money for potential book tours and bigger trips. Posting the same photos of me at Royals games over and over didn’t quite have the same panache as the posts from my summer touring Europe.

-One last thing, I want to include a note about the success we’ve seen with the literary pub quiz I’ve been putting on at Pageturners with buddies Ryan Borchers and Drew Justice. The turnout has been great, and it seems like the enthusiasm grows each month. The next edition is in a week, on February 3 with guest host Wendy Townley of the 1877 Society. We’re getting some great guest stars lined up for the spring/summer season, and I can’t wait to share the lineup. But I will wait, and hope to have that posted here soon. The series has been a lot of fun and I’m psyched to keep this going through the rest of the year. If you’re around Omaha the first Wednesday of the month, stop on in and talk some literature with a copacetic group of bookish folks.

“On a Train” Selected for New Stories from the Midwest 2015

| Ted Wheeler

new20stories20201320front20cover20201420aug2016The last days of 2015 are dwindling, but there’s still a little time to sneak in some good news before the calendar turns. So…I’m happy to share that guest editor Lee Martin has picked my story “On a Train from the Place Called Valentine” to appear in the New Stories from the Midwest 2015 anthology!

The story was originally published in Boulevard and is now part of the title/anchor novella of my short fiction collection, Bad Faith, that will be out this summer from Queen’s Ferry Press. Here’s a post I wrote about the story before, and this one too. In short, “On a Train from the Place Called Valentine” is a psychological thriller that follows heroine Amy Gutschow after she jumps a freight train outside Aurora, Nebr and through her confrontation with a pathetic but dangerous ladies man, Aaron Kleinhardt, after she hops off the train in Valentine, Nebr.

Stories of mine made honorable mention in the two previous editions of New Stories from the Midwest. (“The Approximate End of the World” in 2012 and “The Current State of the Universe” in 2013.) I’m super excited to have one of mine make it in this time!

New Stories from the Midwest 2015 should be out in three months or so, and I’ll have more links, photos, and ordering information closer to the release.

Thanks so much to the Series Editors, Jason Lee Brown and Shanie Latham, guest editor Lee Martin, editor of Boulevard Richard Burgin, and New American Press for publishing the anthology!

Wheeler’s Debut Novel Sold to Little A

| Ted Wheeler

The last week has been pretty exciting around here.

First off, the announcement from Publishers Marketplace:

Creighton MFA Theodore Wheeler’s KINGS OF BROKEN THINGS, that follows two young immigrants to and through the Omaha Race Riot of 1919, shedding light on a tragic period in American history, to Vivian Lee at Little A, for publication in spring 2017, by Stephanie Delman at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates.

I couldn’t be happier that Kings of Broken Things has found a home with Little A, and I’m thrilled to be working with Vivian Lee. After spending eight years researching the history and creating characters who could not only live within the existing history, but also bring out the events in a compelling way, I’m finding great comfort that Kings has found a home with a publisher who can both push the work further artistically and find a wider audience to expand its reach. (Check out The Hundred-Year Flood by Matthew Salesses for a standout example of a book Vivian edited.) If you’ve followed this blog over the years, you’re with me. From the first drafts of The Hyphenates of Jackson County to the middle stages of The Uninitiated and the brief term of Red Summer and now Kings of Broken Things, a lot of well-meaning words met their ultimate demise to make this possible.

Friday happened to be my birthday. Receiving an offer to publish my novel was quite the way to celebrate! (Publishing this post from the press file room at the DNC debate is kind of cool too.)

Really, it’s been quite a year. A second trip to Germany to perform Omaha Uninitiated: Stateside Race Riots & Lynching in the Aftermath of World War I, which coincided with the publication of my chapbook, On the River, Down Where They Found Willy Brown, by Edition Solitude; Queen’s Ferry Press accepting my short story collection Bad Faith for publication (in July 2016, it’s coming up!); a string of publications highlighted by my first story to be featured in The Southern Review and more of my historically-based “hyphenates” fiction about German-Nebraskans winning an AWP Intro Journals Award; some amazing travels in Europe, New York, Chicago, Kansas City; the Royals winning the World Series; Notre Dame in the hunt for a national championship. I’m one lucky dude, obviously.

The success I’ve had the last couple years in getting this story about the Omaha Race Riot and these old immigrant communities has been very encouraging. The three months I spent at Akademie Schloss Solitude in 2014 were instrumental to refining Kings of Broken Things in a way I couldn’t have done otherwise. My experiencing Esprit Solitude really did wonders for this novel, and for my next novel, which was largely written while I was in Germany. Beyond that, Akademie Schloss Solitude helped create a wonderful platform to gain exposure for this historical project of mine, this redemptive art, as we called it, by publishing an excerpt of the novel in chapbook form and supporting a multi-media performance (Omaha Uninitiated) that focused on historical and cultural documents as objects of creation. Thanks to Director Jean-Baptiste Joly and literature juror Maxi Obexer for bringing me to Stuttgart and facilitating my work in such a generous way.

This is about to get sappy, but there are so many people to thank for their help reading, critiquing, and talking about the manuscript, and their sticking with me through the grueling process of writing a novel. Obviously this is far from over. But I should take this opportunity to thank my wife Nicole. She puts up with a lot, being married to a writer. I don’t know what I had to endure in a previous life to deserve her generous and enthusiastic love, but I’ll take it. My mother-in-law Karen West was instrumental in my writing process, tending to our girls during the day when they were little and understanding that time is something very precious to a writer. My own mom too, Marta, for being there and helping out whenever help is needed, and for teaching me to read and write, and for imparting the belief in storytelling as something sacred. My grandmother, Cleo (Blankenfeld) Croson, for all the work she’s done passing on a rich family history, and for her openness and honesty when discussing the finer, sometimes tawdry, elements of our history, a rare quality. My agent Stephanie Delman for championing the book and her tireless work in finding a great home with Vivian Lee and Little A. Also, “Country Club” Bill Sedlak, Amber Haschenburger, Ryan Borchers, Drew Justice, Sam Slaughter, Gregory Henry, Nabina Das, Mary Helen Stefaniak, Brent Spencer, Susan Aizenberg, Dave Mullins, Jonis Agee, Kwakiutl Dreher, Bob Bergstrom, Shannon Youngman, Jenn Ladino, Dave Green, Devin Murphy, Doug Rice, Darren Keen, Timothy Schaffert, Nicole Steen, Travis Thieszen, Miles Frieden, Arlo Haskell, Mary Morris, Richard Burgin, Lee Martin, Robert Stone, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Key West Literary Seminar. I’m sure I’m forgetting to include some vital people in this cloud of gratitude, but this is just the pre-acknowledgement acknowledgments.

So I’ll stop with this: It feels pretty great to be able to remove the aspiring part from aspiring-novelist. I can’t wait to bring this book to you in Spring 2017!

More soon. For now, cheers!

Boulevard Will Publish “Violate the Leaves” in Spring 2016 Issue

| Ted Wheeler

Boulevard No 81I’m pleased to share the news that my short story “Violate the Leaves” has been accepted for publication by Boulevard and will appear in their Spring 2016 issue!

This will be my fifth story with Boulevard. I’ve written a lot in this space about what the journal means to me, so I’ll keep it brief this time. Thanks to Editor Richard Burgin and Managing Editor Jessica Rogen for everything. (Subscriptions, which include the next three issues, start at $15, btw.) Also, a special thanks to CCB, Amber, and everyone in the winter workshop last December (Amy, Amy, Brian, Bob, Felicity, and Ryan) for their help working on the story. You guys are the best!

“Violate the Leaves” is a story I’ve been working on for quite some time, with parts of the original idea having been developed circa 2003 when I was in undergrad. It’s something I picked at every once in a while until the right elements finally came together last summer when I was at Akademie Schloss Solitude. It’s a father-and-son story about how the two deal with each other during a summer when the boy’s mother is overseas, in Iraq. The story is told in a fragmented voice, something I’ve been experimenting with a lot the past couple years. A spare, reticent voice has almost always been a hallmark of my work and I this story tries to push things further in that direction. This was the first thing I worked on while a resident of Schloss Solitude, so it should come as no surprise that the major features include: 1) a parent who leaves his/her family for an extended period, 2) a central character who is nearly incapable of expressing himself verbally, 3) an examination of nationality, and what it means to be a later generation German-American, if anything.

The story is also featured in my collection Bad Faith, forthcoming from Queen’s Ferry Press in July of 2016, and will be a good preview of the book for the dear readers of Boulevard. I have a couple stories coming out this fall and it’s nice to have next year’s calendar starting to fill in a bit as well.

Here’s an excerpt:

In the evening there were video calls with Mom. She was just getting up. Or just going to bed. I don’t remember what time it would have been over there. She was tired. My father dialed in the PC that sat on the floor next to the television, but he went outside before she answered. I brought the fishbowl downstairs to brag how I was keeping my goldfish alive.

She talked about the food she ate, once the PC was dialed in, the kinds of equipment she had around her neck and in the pockets of her med kit. Her stethoscope, her thermometer. Rubber gloves. Her voice digitized, sometimes doubling over itself in echoes. She always wore her hair up, over there, wore khaki tee shirts that fit tight around her. She smiled big when she saw me. So big the video broke up in pixilation. She asked how my day went and told me about her day. She tried to tell me about the people she worked with, or the bunker she rushed to if the Sense & Warn detected incoming, she said; and the geography, the mounds of desert that blew in under the doorways; and on the airplane going over, watching the sunset and sunrise only three hours apart over the Arctic Ocean.

I didn’t hear any of that. 

If she told me to shut up about asking when she was coming home, I would.

TW’s Debut Book to be Published by Queen’s Ferry Press!!!

| Ted Wheeler

After a couple weeks of keeping this under my hat, I’m thrilled to share some superlative news today.

This week I signed a book deal with Queen’s Ferry Press to publish my debut collection of short fiction, Bad Faith, in July 2016!

I’m not sure what else to add. This feels like a commencement moment–a capstone of sorts, but more than anything a hopeful start for bigger and better things.

Check out the press release here. Also, here’s a great profile with Editor Erin McKnight on the Ploughshares blog. Queen’s Ferry Press was founded in 2011 in Plano, Texas, and releases 6-12 collections of literary fiction a year. In only four years they’ve already attracted talents like Phong Nguyen, Ethel Rohan, Kristine Ong Muslim, and Michael Nye, with books forthcoming from writers like Sherrie Flick and Tyrone Jaeger, among others. That this caliber of author is being published by QFP was the big appeal of the press. I’m ecstatic that Bad Faith will find itself among this company. Thanks so much to Erin McKnight for the opportunity. (Thanks as well to the editors and journals who helped make this possible by making a home for my work: Boulevard, The Kenyon Review, Five Chapters, The Southern Review, Midwestern Gothic, The Cincinnati Review, Gargoyle, Confrontation, Weekday, Fogged Clarity.)

Obviously there’s a lot of work yet to be done before Bad Faith hits shelves, and then that’s just the beginning of evangelizing to put the book into the hands of new readers. I’ve enjoyed the support of so many of you to get to this point, something I’m truly thankful for, and will need to continue to earn that support to make this book a success.

All right. Enough politicking. Cheers and thanks! I hope to see many of you soon so we can celebrate properly!