My saga of database mismanagement and genocide “All About Anyone” appears in issue 7 of The Los Angeles Review, and I couldn’t be more pleased to share this TOC with so many great writers — Rick Bass! Barry Lopez! And me?! How did that happen?

Also, this story is unusually autobiographical for me, at least up to a point (I’ll let you read it to determine which point that is).

Laura Ellen Scott was guest editor at Everyday Fiction for March, and was kind enough to end the month with a bite-sized novel excerpt of mine.

Also, thanks to Amber Sparks for these kind words, and for putting me in such fine company.

My novel excerpt “A Landscape That Never Changes” is online at Emprise Review. It’s another chapter from The Bee-Loud Glade, and in the story it comes immediately after this chapter ^* but before this one, with another chapter from a parallel plotline in between. It’s still the story of a man who gets laid off from marketing artificial plants and finds a new job as a decorative hermit in a billionaire’s garden. But it’s even better than it was the last time I mentioned it, because like a fine wine the manuscript has been aging. Maybe more like a fine cheese.

I’m a little concerned/amused that the three chapters published as excerpts so far have all taken place indoors, because after the first few chapters it’s very much an outdoor novel. So maybe these are giving the wrong impression?

Also, I forgot to mention that I was interviewed at PANK recently.

^* There’s also a later version of that chapter posted at Fictionaut.

My story “Big Blue” is in the Winter 2009 issue of Camas: The Nature of the West. It’s about Paul Bunyan, so you know you want to read it.

It starts like this:

You could hear his heart breaking like thunder. And I don’t mean “like thunder” the way a poet might mean it, no, I mean it actually sounded like thunder because he was just that damn big. And his heart was that much damn bigger. There’s nothing poetic about a man that size falling apart, not for the folks down below who may as well live in the shadow of a dam held together by cracks.

“Be Your Own Boss” is now online at PANK — it’s an excerpt from my novel The Bee-Loud Glade, about a man who gets laid off from marketing plastic plants and finds a new job as a decorative hermit in a billionaire’s garden.

An earlier chapter appeared in Pindeldyboz, and there’s also an alternate (more recent) version of that chapter at Fictionaut. Another chapter is forthcoming next month at Emprise Review, and hopefully the whole novel is forthcoming at some point, too.

The latest issue of Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore! includes my story “Earl Weaver’s Bench,” specially formulated to appeal to Orioles fans in the 1980s.

I have a story called “The Way Horses Do” in the latest issue of Reed Magazine. It’s a western I wrote because of something Sam Cornish said about cowboys, at a reading given when he retired from teaching.

Not that I can remember by now what he actually said.

My triptych of stories No One’s West is a finalist in the Spire Press chapbook contest. A few months ago, it was a finalist in the Black Lawrence Press chapbook contest. So how many more until I can declare it the finalest?

My story “Wax That Waned” is up at Monkeybicycle this week. I don’t know what else I could possibly say about this one except, “Lawrence Welk and a moose.”

I’ve recently taken over as editor of Necessary Fiction, the web journal wing of So New Publishing. I hope to start posting new stories there very soon, so keep an eye out.

I will try to keep in check my bent for bear-based fiction, but I’m not making any promises.