This segment (starts at 2:30) from Tony Robinson’s show Worst Jobs In History was the beginning of my forthcoming novel The Bee-Loud Glade. I’d been kicking around an idea for a monastic novel after a blog back-and-forth with AKMA a few years ago, but it wasn’t going anywhere; perhaps because I was trying to somehow write a monastic novel that wasn’t religious. Then I saw the show and said, “Aha, a hermit!” and the idea more or less came together. But only the idea; unfortunately, Tony Robinson never came round to help with the writing.

Who says TV is bad for books?

The online writing community, although global, is actually very small when you step back and look at it. The amount of great work out there is stunning. And the number of books available is also stunning. It’s hard to decide which to buy. Although I’d like to buy them all, I just can’t. And I know that most everyone in our community is faced with that same issue. So it’s hard. It’s hard to market. It’s hard to sell. It’s hard to reach a broader market, a place not exclusive to writers and editors and publishers. It’s hard to reach the simple “readers,” especially coming from an independent standpoint.

~ Mel Bosworth, interviewed w/ Jessie Carty @ Daily s-Press

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).

One of the reasons why so many French novels are published in September is that it puts them into the running for the three or four big, French literary prizes which are awarded by the end of the year. The other explanation for the avalanche is that there are almost no literary agents in France to filter, or impede, would-be writers. Publishing houses toss half-way promising new novelists onto the market all at once to see which will sink or swim. Most sink.

~ Independent

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.

No, art that is behind its time is art that expresses something that is already in the air but has not yet been creatively articulated. The phrase “behind its time” is not meant to disparage it. It can be just as difficult to capture a mood that already exists as it is to indulge in conjecture about possible futures. Take Elvis. He was certainly unique, and helped to define a new era. But he was never ahead of his time, he was behind it. The western teenager, exploding with hormones and buoyed by the new spirit of affluence, was waiting to be courted. Elvis or his equivalent might easily have happened a few years earlier, in another recording studio, perhaps not quite so handsomely, but just as influential. It was in the runes.

~ Peter Aspden

Reading this, I can’t help but think of the huge cultural upwelling of ecological consciousness recent years have seen, and that it’s an upwelling still in wait (to my mind) for its galvanizing story. Michael Pollan, Bill McKibben, Rachel Carson, and others have written non-fiction that changed how we think, but what work of imagination has captured both that mass desire and mass attention? Is there a story, yet, from the environmental movement that has changed how we dream, or revealed how our dreams have changed over time, and that so many of us are dreaming those new dreams already?^* Maybe there’s some novel, or film, or poem, or — most likely, perhaps — some video game headed toward us right now like a comet, behind its time and ready to tell us what we already know and what we should do with that knowledge.

* Yes, I know James Cameron tried.

But if we are to say anything important, if fiction is to stay relevant and vibrant, then we have to ask the right questions. All art fails if it is asked to be representative — the purpose of fiction is not to replace life anymore than it is meant to support some political movement or ideology. All fiction reinscribes the problematic past in terms of the present, and, if it is significant at all, reckons with it instead of simply making it palatable or pretty. What aesthetic is adequate to the Holocaust, or to the recent tragedy in Haiti? Narrative is not exculpatory — it is in fact about culpability, about recognizing human suffering and responsibility, and so examining what is true in us and about us. If we’re to say anything important, we require an art less facile, and editors willing to seek it.

~ Michael Copperman @ Luna Park

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.