Why I Send What I Do

Justin sug­gest­ed in com­ments I talk a lit­tle bit about pay­ment terms, as in why I sent cer­tain books to the peo­ple I pub­lish here, which seems like a good idea, as I've now fin­ished pack­ag­ing them for mail­ing tomor­row. Some sub­mit­ters I've known quite well for years, oth­ers I know only by online asso­ci­a­tion, oth­ers I real­ly don't know at all. So I'm doing a lit­tle 'net research, and bas­ing my choic­es for them on what they've writ­ten and what I can find about them.

First is Bev­er­ly Jack­son. I've known Bev well since the late '90s online, we've pub­lished each oth­er, and exchanged great swaths of email about our var­i­ous projects and pub­li­ca­tions, so this choice was easy. I sent her Out of Canaan, a book I enjoyed a great deal, a col­lec­tion of poems about grow­ing up and grow­ing wise® with­in a four-gen­er­a­tion span of a South­ern fam­i­ly. I know she's not read­ing poet­ry late­ly, though as you can see she's a fine fine poet, but I thought this book might be just her kin­da thing. Hope you like, it, Bev.

Next up is Jim Parks, who I took three short-short sto­ries from (so far). I know him only slight­ly, but he has sto­ries behind sto­ries behind oth­er sto­ries to tell, and I don't know if I've met any­one as seri­ous about get­ting bet­ter as Jim. I know he lives in the south­west, and I know he was a jour­nal­ist for many years. So I sent him Desier­to, by Charles Bow­den, a col­lec­tion of nonfiction/journalism about the South­west. I admire Bow­den more than I can say for his mav­er­ick attitude–he's, uh, very male, in the Edward Abbey/Jim Har­ri­son sense–and his sump­tu­ous strung-out sen­tence struc­ture (say that three times fast). I also, at Jim's request, sent a copy of my flash fic­tion collection.

Next is Den­nis Maha­gin. I wish he was still writ­ing his blog,but he's not. Some­body kick him in the ass, would you? I know Den­nis not all that well per­son­al­ly, though I've been read­ing him for years and he and I trav­el in many of the same cyber-cir­cles with many mutu­al friends and an aura of respect for each oth­er. I hope. So any­way, I sent him some fic­tion, Noth­ing Nat­ur­al by Jen­ny Dis­ki. How to explain this book? It's about s&m, yes, and about depres­sion, sort of,and it's sexy in a sort of uncom­fort­able way, and I've not read much like it. And so in scan­ning my book­shelves to see what to send, I thought of Dennis.

Com­ing Soon: sto­ries by Don­na Vituc­ci and Mary Akers, more from Jim Parks, inter­views with Silas House and Ron Rash, and all kinds of good­ies I have yet to think of.