one of gf's background shows is saved by the bell and she JUST pointed out that professor lasky is patrick fabian is better call saul's howard hamlin and I'd never made the connection and am feeling ROCKED

I didn't write a ton this year, but published a handful of pieces (incl. one more coming in December!), all of which are kinda my fave, each in its own way. This one from back in January caught myself by surprise in ways that felt real exciting. doric-literary.com/2025/01/01/r...

I didn't write a ton this year, but published a handful of pieces (incl. one more coming in December!), all of which are kinda my fave, each in its own way. This one from back in January caught myself by surprise in ways that felt real exciting. doric-literary.com/2025/01/01/r...

The Lowdown is perfect.

huge shoutout to crow, who helped with hooking up Short Story, Long with a HAD-style "read a story from the archives" link! tinyurl.com/randomSSL

‘It takes a lot of energy to be an asshole’ Steven Soderbergh knows the score. Interview by @mattzollerseitz.bsky.social www.vulture.com/2017/11/stev...

he just like my students

this album is great, and every time I listen, this version of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night," with Kurdt on guitar (and backing vocals) (and Novaselic on bass) catches me surprise, it's such a treat

love the day when I introduce borrowed/found forms / "hermit crab essays," the final unit in my Art of the Essay class

I'm not sure I've read many (any??) new releases this year. (sure there's something I'm forgetting...) what are some of y'all's faves?

Sub Pop didn't always do minimal design, but when they did, man they fckin nailed it.

sending out some blurb request emails, and these are often mentioned as stressful and awful, and they 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘢 are, but really they're mostly the excuse and push I needed to send some fanboy emails that I've been wanting to send anyway

for *maybe* (??) the first time in 20 years, I was actually on top of my shit enough to reserve a room yesterday at one of the conference hotels with the conference discount!

The Lowdown! Excellent television! Sterling Harjo is a generational talent.

I just make all my stories strong ones, but I'm built different.

just got the ARC pdf; guess I can toss these marked up edits from my last readthrough!

I *almost* redownloaded bsky on my phone to joyscroll some before bed last night! (Instead, I read a short story in a new indie press paperback and fell asleep.)

hella excited for the couple books I got in the last few days

been thinking about this since I saw it a couple days ago. just might keep on thinking about it forever.

"Sometimes it’s the white space in stories, the things that might have but didn’t happen, that we remember most." fun new interview up on Short Story, Long with contributor David Norling, about his great story, "Hands of Wine." esp love this answer ashortstorylong.substack.com/p/a-short-in...

on top of all the other myriad of ways he sucks, I find it incredibly annoying how much cuomo is making me care about a mayoral race for a city I enjoy not caring about

sometimes writers are really just gonna writer

this is one of the best albums, and also one of the most underrated, and also one of the sexxiest

"Often people lie to themselves to escape reality." Grabbed this from the friends of the library bookshelf for a dollar and a previous owner marked it up a decent amount. Is that a summation of the stories, something the book made them think, or just a stray observation they needed to write down?

One big takeway from reading comments on submissions from SSL readers is how one of the biggest differences between a story that doesn't work and one that does is that in the latter you don't notice or don't care about all the kinds of things that extra jumped out at you in the former.

"HAVE FUN, MAKE ART" fuck AI

margo price covering maggie's farm?? yes, please!

idk, i let all my darlings not only live but thrive, and just kill my shit that sucks, but i'm built different

I meant to share my recent spooky story yesterday for Halloween, but maybe it will be even better paired with a handful of day-after pilfered candy! Thanks again to @aaronburch.bsky.social and Short Story, Long for giving it a great home! ashortstorylong.substack.com/p/man-next-d...

one fun thing you can do when writing is include little references to stories by friends, and if you've edited literary journals, sometimes these stories by friends can be stories you edited and published (and were included in best american short stories)

Got the "final" PDF layout for my book, which is helping me see how to finally make some of these sentences good...

craft class where you spend all semester just watching 100 foot wave and listening to mike birbiglia's working it out podcast

writing tip: write a story that makes you feel like you just set the needle down on the vinyl exactly where you'd wanted to

As a Halloween treat, you can now listen to my iconic nasal timbre as I read my Halloween time-loop story “Not Another Time Loop!” at beautiful Short Story, Long (founded and edited by my favorite @aaronburch.bsky.social).

she also shared one of my new fave pieces of movie trivia: for the locusts scene in Days of Heaven (achieved entirely in-camera, shot almost only using natural light), they painted peanut shells black and dropped them from a helicopter and reversed the footage

Happy Halloween!

another NYer story morning; really dug this one from back in May! www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

not by a single person I know!

Saw Lorrie Moore read tonight, and it was wonderful, of course, but what most stuck with me was from the Q&A where she mentioned currently teaching a class where they talk about adaptations, and they read Whitehead's Nickel Boys & Proulx's Brokeback Mountain &, *swoon*, Chiang's Story of Your Life.

"What's the beginning of a piece of art or the process to get to the piece of art vs. the piece of art itself? Doesn't matter. The day that you've had a good time making something and were a happy person. That's the product." —Matt Berninger ON writing/making art

been on a real Birbiglia pod kick lately, and there's a moment late in this ep where he asks Gary, a pretty new comedian, if he has a bit they can talk through and work on together and its one of the best examples of revision and feedback and digging deeper into something creative I've heard

listened to a new ep of tyler dempsey's another f'in writing podcast and he said he's gonna be ending it soon. wheaton isn't doing lives of writers anymore. book fight just ended. I miss lindsay's and alex's i'm a writer but... getting dangerously close to thinking the below is actually a good idea

this one is maybe my own closest thing to horror flash? hexliterary.com?p=2778

Also, speaking of stories... not sure yet if I wanna do "Old Joy" or "Train Choir," but wanna do a Jon Raymond story as the next "That Was Awesome" short story club zoom hangout. Thinking... maybe Nov. 20?

Haven't updated my reading log since... May (!!) but have read three stories in the NYer in the last week or so and might need to re-up the blog!

This feels a little like when I went to Vegas with a buddy for his very first time and taught him how to play craps and our first night at a table, we played for hours and hours and finally left both up ~$1500, and he was like, "this is so fun and great and easy, I should do this all the time!"...