University of Iowa has a short fiction contest, awarded to a first book of fiction, so yesterday i sent DEFIANCE OF OBJECTS, my first, and more experimental collection of short stories to iowa city, all 234 pages of it, for the short fiction award. i'm also planning on sending this collection to one or more of the following first book contests in the next few months:

1. umass juniper prize
2. FC2 prize
3. bakeless prize

I'll continue working on a second collection of short stories very soon that is more plot and character-based, with more controlled language, that i hope to get ready to submit in the spring. i'm aiming at one or more of these first book contests:

1. ohio state prize
2. the flannery o'connor prize
3. the pitt prize

Ginny, one of the editors at simon & schuster told me she was really impressed with my novel. she called it a great novel and had some insightful suggestions on making the ending more potent, so, right now i'm following a lot of her suggestions, and i have to say, she's right. her ideas are making the climax stronger, and the novel, simpy better. thanx ginny.

I wrote an email to my friend, bdg, at hachette/grand central publishing, who is a senior editor there, and i asked her, hey do you know these two agents, one is Michael Chabon's agent, the second is junot diaz's agent, and bdg, was like, yeah, i know them, i know them well. . . SOOOOOO i asked her if she could talk to them and get them to check out BLANK, and she said, god bless you bdg, lemme read your novel first jackson so i have something to talk about, and then i'll talk to them. let it be known that my internship is STILL changing my life for the better.