Some excellent news to share on this Friday, as the marvelous online journal Five Chapters has selected my short story “Impertinent, Triumphant” for publication!

If you’re not familiar with Five Chapters, it’s a pretty unique publication, as they serialize a single short story every week, running the piece in, you guessed it, five chapters, one per day, Monday to Friday. And they’ve been doing so since October of 2006. (Read an interview of FC Editor David Daley here for more info.) To go along with that impressive consistency, FC’s authors include a who’s-who of young writers, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, PEN/Faulkner award, among others, like Jennifer Egan, Ron Rash, Lauren Groff, Julie Orringer, Nam Le, Rick Moody, Peter Orner, Ben Greenman, Samantha Hunt, Patricia Engel, Lori Ostlund, Dean Bakopoulos, Jami Attenberg, Marcy Dermansky, Teddy Wayne, Jacquira Díaz, Molly Ringwald…really, so many great writers it’s foolish to try and list them all. You get the point: a very high quality fiction publication on a small scale. I couldn’t be happier that “I,T” will find its way into these ranks in a few months, sometime around March.

As for the story itself, “Impertinent, Triumphant” is sort of a newish one. I haven’t put as much time into my short fiction the past few years as I used to, as the novel took more and more of my focus. That being said, I did manage to give a good deal of attention to this a few other stories along the way. This one in particular was fun to write, as it started off as an homage to Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog,” a style of drafting I’ve never really tried before.

Here’s an excerpt:

“She looked beautiful, of course. She had a long neck and a small face, lovely gray eyes. That’s why I kept looking. Her hair was wavy from some chemical treatment, and a dull, dull orange meant to be blond. She wore a terrycloth shirt, khaki shorts and leather sandals. She was really quite common. Modest chest, soft legs, a little bump where her stomach rose. I’d never seen a grown-up look so bored before. She was childish. I thought she was stunning.

“There was a toy radio she listened to at her table, a tier below me on the hotel terrace, three patio umbrellas over. I noticed because the radio wasn’t an iPod. It was just a yellow plastic toy with a drawstring that fit over her hand, black rubber grips, and built-in speakers so everyone had to listen to what she played, a political call-in show.

“I couldn’t turn away. Her face was round. Baby fat on her cheeks made her look younger than she was. She was nearly thirty, I’d learn. Her skin was firm and limpid as she sipped an Arnie Palmer with lips imperceptibly open.”

More on this later, of course, when the story starts to go up. Special thanks to David Daley for selecting the story, along with Amber Mulholland and Country Club Bill for their help in pounding this story into shape.