Is getting nominated for a Pushcart Prize something to brag about?
While marketing my debut novel, We Take Care of Our Own, I have made a couple of unsettling discoveries.
Before posting it here, I showed this cover to two people—my wife and an old friend—and on both occasions the first thing out of their mouths was, “What’s that thing in the background?”
Since finding publication for my novel, I’ve started writing stories and sending them out to literary journals again. The rejections feel the same, so far, but the writing feels different this time.
It’s one thing to torch people’s time, it’s quite another to torch their faith in humanity.
Yesterday, Publishers Marketplace published an item about my debut novel, We Take Care of Our Own, in its “Deals” section. Exciting stuff.
His ability to speak and write on jazz, “America’s music,” was singular. His ability to not only back up but expand on his strong opinions about music, race, and art was deft, enlightening, genius.
Probably the biggest influence of The Men Who Stare at Goats came via my decision to feature a goat in a particularly bizarre and gruesome chapter of We Take Care of Our Own.
On Killing is a hefty one — my paperback edition comes in at nearly 350 pages — and yet it’s extremely readable, with mind-blowing insights every few pages.
There’s nothing I find more fascinating in a book or movie or whatever than a group of people discussing the making or breaking of human lives in purely practical terms.