Shoutouts from the Universe Part 2

I'm still not sure how Google alerts missed this one but I won't complain.  I feel I should be grateful to get any press as a writer, moreover relatively good press.

Here's the part about my experimental short story, "When Silence is an Old Warehouse and Love is a Pocketful of Rocks":


In case you can't read that because you're not an Air Force pilot/weren't born with x-ray vision/never got the cyborg optical enhancements for your Sweet-16, here's what it says:

Many of the most interesting pieces of fiction examine or undermine ideas of speaker, information, or the traditional narrative arc. One notable love story about communication and art, by Jackson Bliss, labels each paragraph as either "Cubes," "Spheres," Cylinders," or "Cones." The speaker is self-consciously prolix, by turns witty and earnest, and the drama he recounts over an uninitiated conversation is handled nicely. 

Now, to be honest, I find nothing insightful about this review.  I don't personally think the narrator is prolix, though I agree he's self-conscious. I'm not convinced that my short story is about "communication + art" either as much as I think it's about the male gaze, invented alternative realities + romantic speculation.  It's about the way in which art theory/art history filters the way we understand + identify our reality.  It's also about the delusional genius/endless violence of the human mind.  Lastly, this short story is about one-way love.  The educated observer/narrator is in love with a girl he's never talked to.  She's in love with a painting.  They mirror their one-sided relationship both to each other + to their objets d'art.  But like I really care?  More than anything, I'm just glad someone's reading my shit.  On that level, I'm ecstatic. 

Shout Outs from the Universe

Sometimes when I'm being really narcissistic + curious about the great big world, I'll google myself, hoping to find some secret Pushcart nomination I never knew about from years ago or another blog of someone who read one of my short stories (it happens, but never enough), which usually means stumbling on some insolent/ignorant comment from some unpublished, superopinionated anonymous poster who doesn't have the courage to use her/his real name but somehow knows everything about me + the industry.  But sometimes, self-googling reveals whispers of your own existence you really want to believe in + also educates you about rad websites you didn't even know existed before you pushed the search button.  The first is a review of my short story "30 Roofies" in the literary blog The Review Review. This story was originally published in Quarterly West + is part of my collection, Atlas of Tiny Desires.  In case you're not wearing your bifocals, here's a close-up of the paragraph about "30 Roofies":

While I don't find this blurbish story review to be particularly profound, I'm very grateful for the press + also appreciate the author's admiration.  Really, I'll take whatever coverage I can get when it comes to my own writing.  As Tom has told me many times, the only thing we're trying to do as aspiring writers is publish our shit + find our audience.  Boom.

Another blog I discovered after self-googling was Ruelle Electrique that reviews literary journals, books + video games, among other things (three things after my very own heart). Ruelle Electrique reviewed my short story "$67.00 for My Favorite Dictator," (retitled "A Full Cellar" by Howard Junker), which was published in the every-snazzy, always fantastic ZYZZYVA.  "$67.00 for My Favorite Dictator" is another story included in my short story collection, Atlas of Tiny Desires.  Again, if you don't have spidievision, feel free to read the follow close-up below.  Or not:

And lastly, I discovered last month that I was included in an amazing, on-going project at The Rumpus to identify the blog or website of practically every writer of color on the face of the earth, which is no small undertaking, let me tell you that.  While I know that I'm hapa, a lot of people I've met in my life don't give me that honor.  I mean, I still have Asian friends who think they're the only Asian in the room.  It just doesn't sink in for many people because I'm not legibly Japanese-American.  So, in a small, tiny way, I found it both amazing + encouraging to see so many writers of color in this world (+ growing all the time!), + I also found it slightly empowering to get acknowledgment for who I am at such a great literary website like The Rumpus, not just for what I look like to the world.  Here's my name, in between Jabarsi Asiam and Jacqueline Woodson: