I’m pleased to announce that my novel The Bee-Loud Glade will be published by Atticus Books in April 2011. I had a great conversation with Atticus’ Dan Cafaro recently, and was impressed by not only his vision for the press but also his plans for realizing them, so I’m really excited to be part of that process.

I’ve made the novel its own page on this site, with a bit of description, links to a couple of excerpts, and some comments from folks who have read it (well, only one comment so far, but it is from a Booker-listed author).

On the Clock: Contemporary Short Stories of Work, an anthology edited by Josh Maday and Jeff Vande Zande, is now available from Bottom Dog Press (or from Amazon, but it’s better for the publisher if you order directly).

The collection includes my story “Lights Out,” and I’m honored to be included in such a great list of contributors: Jim Daniels, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Daniel Orozco, Kennebrew Surant,Rick Attig, Lolita Hernandez, Michael Martone, Matthew Salesses, Matt Bell, M. Kaat Toy, Sean Lovelace, Billie Louise Jones, Lita Kurth, Anne Shewring, Dustin M. Hoffman, Tania Hershman, Nick Kocz, Michael Zadoorian, Peter Anderson, and Pete Fromm. Mine may not be the most recognizable name in the bunch, but I remain hopeful that my contribution offers the highest dead birds per page ratio in the collection.

My story “Twice Stung” is at Monkeybicycle this week. It’s yet another from my ongoing series exploring tall tales, though in a different way this time than in some of the others.

Thanks to Tara Laskowski for some terrific input on this story.

My story “Crock” is in the Celebrity Issue of Northville Review. It is another — the first written, actually — from the series of tall tale stories I’ve been working on. Hopefully, they’ll all be available together in book form sooner or later.

I was interviewed for Dark Sky Magazine by the wonderful Ethel Rohan. Secrets were revealed, hilarity ensued, etc. There’s even a sentence where I apparently trailed off without saying anything (whoops!).

And while you’re at Dark Sky, why not check out this story of mine they published a while back.

I wrote a sentence about a sentence I love, over at Big Other. It’s from Flann O’Brien’s The Poor Mouth.

The online bonus materials for Hobart #11: The Great Outdoors! have been published, including my own “Appendix 3B, The Instructive Incident Of The Lawn And Its Necessary Lessons.” If it piques your interest, pick up the print issue to read the story it appends, “An Encyclopedia of Urban Farming.”

And if it really piques your interest, go read Ted Steinberg’s book American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn.

My story “Calamity Comes Home” appears in Emprise Review #14 alongside stories and poems by some fine writers.

“Calamity” is part of an ongoing series of shorts about American tall tale figures. “Big Blue,” about Paul Bunyan, appeared recently in Camas: The Nature of the West, and stories about Mike Fink, Davy Crockett, Pecos Bill, and others are in the works or in submission.

Meg Pokrass was kind enough to interview me for the Fictionaut Five series. I said witty things like, “who doesn’t love a novel with a lion?”

Who indeed!

I’ve admired Hobart from afar for about as long as I’ve been submitting short stories, and have received several thoughtful, generous rejections from editor Aaron Burch over the years. So I’m thrilled to see my story “An Encyclopedia of Urban Farming” in Hobart’s “Great Outdoors” issue, alongside the work of so many great writers.

And yeah, if you detect shades of Stanley Crawford in there, you aren’t imagining things.