The first chapter of my novella, THE LAWS OF RHETORIC AND DROWNING
Maybe, she’ll buy a one-way ticket to Seattle and throw her dirty underwear off every bridge. And maybe, she’ll buy a ticket to Montréal and then OD on Oaxaca smack in the Greyhound bathroom like the lead singer from Blind Melon.
Read MoreToday, I got the great news that a chapter from my novella, The Laws of Rhetoric and Drowning, was accepted by Hobart, which publishes fantastic fiction and interviews, among other things. I'm really happy to see this piece put in the public eye! Stay tuned for more deetz.
"Castaways and Worry Dolls," one of my self-contained chapters from my novella The Laws of Rhetoric and Drowning was accepted today by Joyland magazine and will be published in October 2016. While you're there, check out my friend Bonnie Nadzam's piece "4 Ghost Stories."
I got the good news recently that my flash fiction piece "Living in the Future," which is part of my short story collection Atlas of Tiny American Desires, was accepted in the literary journal Arts & Letters and will be appearing in either the Fall 2016 or Spring 2017 issue. Nothing like a short story acceptance to keep my spirits up.
Spring 2016 Issue
My short story "The 12-Step Program for Yuki Hiramoto," which is part of my second collection, Atlas of Tiny American Desires, was published this week in the Santa Monica Review. This literary journal has always been one of my faves in the whole country (and has been for many years now). I remember as a MFA student flipping through copies of the SMR in the creative writing office and thinking how someday I'd love to publish one of my short stories in it. Now, I can scratch that off my list of things to do. Baby steps, bro.
Remarkably, it's been ten fucking years since I've been back at AWP. The last time was in Atlanta in 2006, back when I was a confident, driven, ambitious, but also paradoxically naive, trusting, and hyperidealistic MFA student whose only aspiration at the time was to publish short stories and essays in the best literary journals possible. The idea of publishing novels was fundamentally foreign to me for the simple reason that I hadn't written a novel yet, nor a collection of short stories. There was no lofty expectation because there was no product.
Ten years later, I'm both amazed, horrified, and also humbled by how differently I look at the publishing industry in general and at my literary ambitions in particular. Unlike ten years ago, I have a bunch of stories and essays published in a number of legit literary journals, but it's no longer enough for me anymore. Also, unlike ten years ago, I have several manuscripts that are ready for publication. I have more than a few realistic publishing possibilities with several awesome indie presses (though they remain merely possibilities until those manuscripts become material objects of art for public consumption). I have--I always seem to have--several agents and a senior agent at a major New York publishing house reading my novels. I have two rad lecturer positions at UCI and CSUN teaching literature, writing, rhetoric, research, and creative writing. I have probably too many advanced degrees now, but whatevs. I have a network and a community of friends (many of them APIA writers, but certainly not all of them). I have some fans who follow me on Twitter because of the things I've written. Most importantly, I feel--possibly irrationally, possibly delusionally--that I finally have momemtum in my writing career. So, I apologize for this self-indulgent recollection, but the point I'm making here is that I see this conference in such a different way than I did before because I bring a different emotional and professional technology than before. I feel like I can almost touch my future, as absurd as that sounds.
Among other things I did at this year's AWP, I got to:
1. Attend readings from Claudia Rankine, Eula Biss, Jonathan Lethem, Geoff Dyer, Leslie Jamison, Maggie Nelson, my friend and mentor Percival Everett, Shonda Buchanan, Judy Grahn, Joyce Carol Oates, and Peter Ho Davies, which were all pretty amazing.
2. Attend a fascinating (and inditing!) panel by Adam Atkinson, Lillian Yvonne-Betram, and Sarah Vap (an SC student) that presented the results of its survey and data collection about race and racial representation within PhD programs in Creative Writing.
3. Talk to editors of several of my favorite indie presses and do a tiny bit of politicking (almost all of it unplanned and unintentional)
4. Make new writing friends and also do some networking (which never hurts in this business)
5. Most importantly, meet up with and reconnect with former professors and old friends from my MFA and PhD years, many of whom I haven't seen in years and whom I've missed, sometimes terribly, including Steve Tomasula, Marc Irwin, Joshua Bernstein, Chris Santiago, Lily Hoang, Gwendolyn Oxenham, Casey and Denise Hill, Heather Dundas, David St. John, and Percival Everett (who hugged me and then said, "What's going on, brother?")
6. Buy a shitload of books and literary journals from indie presses
7. Remember again why I'm a writer, a writer before I'm anything else in the professional and artistic domains
Bryan Hurt
My Interview with the hilarious and talented fiction writer Bryan Hurt (who is both a friend and a classmate of mine from SC) was published today at Full Stop. In some ways, it's less of an interview (which tends to be stuffy, formal, and intellectually demonstrative in like an annoying way) and more of a playful conversation I could easily have had with Bryan one random night at a swanky wine bar or something in DTLA. As far as "interviews" go, this one has a great flow to it I think.
Dear Jackson Bliss,
Sincere thanks for sending us " . . . " for consideration. Your work impressed the editorial staff with its unique blending of Spanish and English. Though not selected for publication, the piece makes us hope we'll see more of your writing in the near future.
Sincerely,
The Editors
At this point, it's just a request for a full manuscript. Nothing more, nothing less. Still, it's hard not being a tiny bit giddy when Frances Coady, one of the two stellar agents at Nicole Aragi's top-shelf agency, asks for an exclusive of your debut novel (which I couldn't give her exclusively since I already have three other agents reading full manuscripts). I know that Frances Coady is a widely respected, admired, even feared former publisher at Picador and Vintage. I know she is a hands-on editor who works with authors line by line if necessary to strengthen not dilute a book's force. I know she values and understands the importance of the graphic elements of a novel (e.g., the cover design, the format, possibly even the font). I know that in the publishing world she is an absolute giant, both equal to but also complementary with, Nicole Aragi. I know all of these things and honestly, it makes my head spin. But I don't know the most important thing, namely, whether she'll like my novel. That's the only thing that matters. The only thing I care about right now. I'll do my best not to freak out, but that's pretty much impossible . . .
Well, if there's one thing I'm completely sure of right now, it's my ability to write a decent query letter. I now have three (plus) agents reading full manuscripts of my debut novel, The Amnesia of Junebugs, which is pretty damn exciting. I'm not surprised that AMNESIA is getting lots of interest from agents considering it's a transnational, multicultural, multiracial, urban, character-based, literary novel. Right now, multicultural novels (and multicultural narratives in general) are in with America's changing demographic. Linked short stories are in again too and AMNESIA straddles the space between a novel and a collection of linked stories (that come together at the end). I'm cautiously optimistic (as I always am) because I think this novel is finally ready for prime time, but only time will tell. Stay tuned!
My big wish for this upcoming month is that literary agents who state they want literary fiction in their agent profiles actually want literary fiction and not commercial fiction with a few literary flourishes. I say this because having looked at some of the good rejections I've received the past couple of years, I've noticed most of these rejections were by literary agents who said they wanted literary fiction on their website but still rejected my manuscripts for being, well, literary and stuff. It's complete speculation on my part, but here are some possible reasons for that:
1. The agent prides her/himself on representing literary fiction but most of her/his client list is actually (or has become) commercial fiction, so including the category of "literary fiction" in their list of desired genres is more about how they see themselves as an agent and less about the kinds of manuscripts they actually sell to editors these days
2. The literary agent has a divergent definition of literary fiction (that more and more resembles uptown fiction or top-tier commercial fiction), which is why s/he gets snarly when you declare foolishly that "literary fiction doesn't sell"
3. The agent doesn't want to feel like a complete and absolute sellout because who does?
4. S/he is keeping her/his options open, but literary fiction has become more aspirational than vocational.
5. The term literary, as all other genres, just doesn't have stable genre conventions and doesn't mean shit anymore, so it's almost impossible to define and just as impossible to exclude other overlapping genre conventions
6. All literature, in one amorphous sense, is literary (right?)
7. If an agent could know ahead of time that a manuscript would sell for one million dollars, they'd probably accept it regardless of its genre, so literary fiction isn't out of the question technically
8. The agent used to look for and sell literary fiction actively, but as the market has contracted and as Amazon has taken over the world, s/he has become much more conservative in the kinds of authors s/he represents, and commercial fiction has always had a better payout. So, finding the next Pulitzer prize winner has become much less important than paying the mortgage
9. The agent, once a brave and fearless bellwether in the publishing industry (whose "experimental" authors once violated rules of form, structure, and content gleefully) has dug his/her heels in and now rejects more and more literary fiction and accepts more cookbooks and dystopian YA knock-offs because there's already a pre-manufactured audience. Yes, s/he has literary authors, but s/he's had them for thirty years and they're remnants of the golden age of literary fiction
10. Why the hell not?
I may rage against the machine when a particular rejection stings, but I'm the kind of dude that gets back up (literally) the next day and tries another way to make it work. Writing, after all, is the one thing I'm great at. Resilience is another. And Ima figure out how to get my novels in the hands of my future readers because that's who I am.
In the next month, I'll be sending AMNESIA to several indie presses that I think might be receptive (among others, FC2 and Curbside Splendor) as well to a few laser-targeted literary agents who represent multicultural literary fiction. One of them will be Zadie Smith's agent, because of the obvious similarities between The Amnesia of Junebugs and White Teeth.
With a clean break from Kaya, I have the power to (re)consider all my options, not just the obvious ones. I have the possibility of finding an even larger audience and a much more supportive editorial department. I have the right to try again and find the right press for my manuscripts as a hapa writer of fiction.
I may be bruised, but I'm still standing. I'm still going to make this work.
Yesterday, I got the good news that my short story "My 12-Step Program for Yuki Hiramoto," which is part of my debut collection Atlas of Tiny Desires, was accepted by the Santa Monica Review. Of course, this is fucking awesome, not only because I've been sending the SMR submissions since oh, 2005, when I started my MFA program, but also because it's one of the best journals out there. Certainly, one of the top west coast journals. And, while I know the publishing landscape has changed a shitload since then, I happen to know that my friend and mentor, Aimee Bender, found her agent (Henry Dunnow) after she'd published her own story in the Santa Monica Review, so there's always hope when you're getting your shit out there for the world to see.
After a concentrated two weeks where LB and I saw both our families back to back, I'm finally getting back in the groove with my writing, revising, and submissions. And today I've realized that I'm going all out.
Recently, a bunch of my friends have been getting agents, then two-book contracts, thereby fundamentally changing their literary careers in the span of literally one year. A boy can only dream . . . Of course, because I'm human, I've been waiting by the phone too for the same phone call, waiting for the same miracle to magically transform my writing career into a solid object, but so far, I've been mostly stood up by publishing industry (literary journals have been much kinder to me). Agents are happy to tell me how talented I am, but their rejections are always about the fit. Truthfully, it's hard not to feel bad about yourself, especially when you stroll through the local bookstore and you see straight up shit on the coop. But I'm an eternal optimist, obviously delusional, and also very stubborn, so I'm not giving up. Not when I'm so close.
This leads me to the whole point I was making before I digressed earlier. Now that I'm back in action, I'm going all out, man. I'm submitting queries for NINJAS to a bunch of new agents soon (I'm still waiting to hear from three agents who are reading full manuscripts, but the longer time passes, the less hopeful I get). If Kaya rejects AMNESIA (they're taking their sweetass time, by the way), I'll send a query for it to fifty agents the next week. I just sent out several novella manuscripts to Plougshares and the Massachusetts Review. I'm also sending one of my best (and fave) short stories to several literary journals. Lastly, I'm sending my memoir to a few indie presses that I think would be a good fit aesthetically, conceptually, and structurally. Instead of staggering my submissions as I was forced to do during the school year, I'm now going full force. And that's not even including a screenplay I'll start revising/continuing this weekend about two bike messengers in DTLA.
And it don't stop . . .