Take a look at those shorts

By Steve Weddle

Load up the audio version of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. Ready? OK. Go to the part where the lion roars and start to play it backwards. You'll hear that guy from Judas Priest saying, "The short story is dead."

Which doesn't make much sense to me, because I've been reading some great short stories recently.

I'm working on a series of short stories and found myself being drawn to the form. (Sheesh, that sounds corny. Do people say 'corny' anymore? Does that make me a square?)

So I ask a few folks for their favorite short story collections. Lyrical. Rural.

Jedidiah Ayres shoots me a list of about 83 collections.

JESUS' SON by Denis Johnson. I bought this one at a local bookstore and went on the webernet to download the audio version of "Emergency." The stories in the collection are about a young man named Mr. F. Head and his crazy life. I listened to "Emergency" while I was cutting the grass one day. Fantastic. Then I read through the rest of the book -- all 124 pages -- in one sitting. The stories are first-person some the mind of this drugged out character, falling in and out of beauty. The connectedness of the stories works here, never feeling gimmicky.

REFRESH, REFRESH by Benjamin Percy. Hell yeah. That first story that starts out with two kids in a backyard fight that isn't really a fight and the military aspect and the recruiter and the sled at the end. Wow, that's a good one. And you can read that story online for free here.

KNOCKEMSTIFF by Donald Ray Pollock. "Real Life" and "Knockemstiff" are two fantastic pieces of fiction. The first one is all about a father and son beating the crap out of a father and son in a toilet. Well, that's not all it's about. There's some thinky stuff in there, too. And "Knockemstiff" is one of those ugly, beautiful stories of hope and horror.


VOLT by Alan Heathcock. I was a bit worried about this one when I started the first story. Dead child. I'm not fond of reading about dead children. So I skipped that one. The rest of the book is spot on, you know? "Lazarus" is probably one of my top ten favoritest stories in the world ever in the whole world. Bonus: The NYT review of VOLT was written by Donald Ray Pollock.


MIRACLE BOY AND OTHER STORIES by Pinckney Benedict. Just hell yeah. As they say over at Bookslut, "This collection is timely and timeless with heart and cowardice and tenderness rolled into one very human whole." Damn right.

OUT OF THE WOODS by Chris Offutt. The story in here called "Melungeons" had me running to the webernet as soon as I'd finished. Are these people real? Turns out, yes. And they might be from the very county in which I work. Friggin small world, huh? "Barred Owl" is great -- about a couple of guys who "made it out" of Kentucky, but, of course, didn't. This is a book about place. About belonging. About what makes you part of something, and what makes something part of you. A great book if you're interested in short stories that tie together without feeling forced.

OK. There's what I've been reading that past couple weeks. How about you? You reading short stories? How about we share, huh?

Meet Steve Ulfelder and Purgatory Chasm

by: Joelle Charbonneau

There are drunken assholes, and there are assholes who are
drunks. Take a drunken asshole and stick him in AA for five or ten years, maybe you come out with a decent guy.

Now take an asshole who’s a drunk. Put him in AA as long as you like. Send him to a thousand meetings a year, have him join the Peace Corps for good measure. What you come out with is a sober asshole.

Tander Phigg was a sober asshole.


From the opening lines of Purgatory Chasm, Steve Ulfelder sucks the reader into the world of Conway Sax. Conway Sax is a mechanic, a former professional race car driver and a recovering alcoholic who belongs to an AA group known as the Barn Burners. It is his relationship with the Barn Burners that pulls him into meeting Tander Phigg and starts him on a path filled with dangerous characters, an interesting mystery, self-discovery and quite of bit of violence and blood.

Yeah – it’s pretty great. So great that I thought the readers of DSD should meet Steve. So, I roped him into answering a few questions about himself and his writing. And if you have a question for Steve - ask away! I'm betting he'd be happy to anwer!

(Me) Welcome to DSD Steve. I can’t tell you how excited I am about the release of Purgatory Chasm and I’m certain the Do Some Damage readers are going to be pretty stoked as well.

Hi Joelle – It’s an honor! DSD is on my bookmarked list of must-visit-every-day writing blogs, so I’m pretty damn thrilled to be mentioned here.

Conway Sax is a fabulous character. He has demons that he is battling, but I find it interesting that it is his thus far successful battle with alcoholism that leads him into trouble in this book. Can you give everyone who isn’t lucky enough to have gotten an advanced copy (yes, I’m gloating) a quick introduction to Conway and the trouble he’s found himself drawn to in Purgatory Chasm?

Conway Sax was once a promising race driver who looked like a future NASCAR star. But he drank away that opportunity, along with his family and his pride. He spent many years as a full-on bum knocking around hobo camps, county jails and the like.

Conway believes his life was saved by the Barnburners, the unconventional Alcoholics Anonymous group he stumbled onto just in time. As the book opens, he’s got a good chunk of sobriety behind him. Loyalty is one of Conway’s traits; to repay the Barnburners, he has a personal policy of helping any member who gets in a jam, no questions asked.

Tander Phigg, a Barnburner who Conway doesn’t especially like, needs help recovering his vintage car from a shady restoration shop. Conway reluctantly agrees, and gets his head bashed in for his trouble. That loyalty I mentioned, plus stubbornness, prompts him to look harder at the case, and next thing you know there’s a dead body hanging from a pipe – and Conway’s the prime suspect …


I admit that I am able to check my tire pressure, check my oil and that is about it so your background as a race car driver and now a race car builder has me in awe. But I have to ask, race car driving and building sounds glamorous and exciting. With that kind of cool job, why did you sit down one day in front of a blank screen and begin writing?

Hmm, the racing business doesn’t seem so glamorous when you have 30 minutes to change an angry customer’s transmission on a 105-degree day, or when you’ve got 72 hours to drive a trailerload of cars from Sacramento to Boston! I was actually a journalist for 20 years, and racing was a hobby. When some friends and I formed Flatout Motorsports, I went for a midlife career change: I quit journalism, began putting a lot of energy into the racing business, and took a night class on writing novels.

The funny thing is, when I was a journalist I could never build momentum for fiction writing; by 5:00, I was all worded out! The contrast between the writing and the racing stuff seems to give me plenty of energy for both.


Race car drivers get a reputation as people who like living on the edge. They also take a lot of calculated risks, which Conway Sax certainly does. Those risks sometimes pan out, but he takes a number of lumps along the way and doesn’t seem overly concerned about his own health. Is that part of the race car driver mentality as well? And because I asked that, I have to ask what is the worst injury you ever received as a result of driving race cars?

That’s a good observation about Conway. He’s definitely a tough guy, but I never wanted him to be invincible. He can and does take a beating here and there. His history has taught him there’s always somebody tougher (or in possession of a bigger gun) than you, so these beatings don’t bother him much; rather, they are occupational hazards.

Now here’s the dirty little secret about auto racing: It’s actually very safe! Everything about the cars, from the stout roll cages we build to the harnesses and the HANS devices and the fuel cells, is designed with safety in mind. We wear fire-resistant gloves, suits, shoes, even underpants.

Having said that, I admit I’ve had my share of wrecks. The only notable injury I’ve suffered was stretched ligaments in my neck when I backed into a concrete wall at about 105 mph.


What’s the first thing you did after you got ‘The Call” that Purgatory Chasm had sold to Minotaur?

Warmed my fingers! It was February, and I was outside the shop hosing off race wheels. I nearly missed the call because my hands were so numb. See what I mean about the racing business not being as glamorous as it may look from afar?

My fantastic agent, Janet Reid, enjoyed that call as much as I did. She worked so hard for two years, through a bankrupt publisher and the usual near-misses, to sell a book for me. I’m eternally grateful.


And most important – what is your favorite drink? We want to make sure all your fans know exactly what to buy you when you are saddled up to the bar at conferences.

I’m a cheap date; it won’t surprise anybody to learn that my favorite beverages are non-alcoholic. Buy me a Dr Pepper and I’ll be your friend for life.

Check out Purgatory Chasm at B&N, Indiebound, Amazon or at your favorite local bookstore. Trust me. You won't be sorry!

Dance With Them What Brung Ya

by

Scott D. Parker

What do you do when you get really off-kilter with you writing?

While I won’t say I’m too off kilter—as I am writing and making progress—I’m not making the progress I think I should. Thus, I diagnose a problem that may only exist in my head, but, nonetheless, is there. One thing I’ve done to see about increasing my productivity is go back and review what worked before.

As I wrote my first book, I compiled all my thoughts and notes and the occasional chapter into one of those college composition books. These are the ones with the mottled black-and-white covers. I put just about all my thoughts in there up to and including the day I wrote “The end” on the book.

I took a look at that old comp book the other day, trying to glean some of the tricks I must’ve used to complete my first novel. I even called my fellow writing buddy. He and I wrote our first books together and, so the joke between us goes, “It has taken us longer NOT to write the second book than it did to write the first.” During our conversation, I realized that my lower productivity level really is an actual thing. For some reason, I’m writing slower. Now, slow-but-sure will ultimately cross the finish line, but I just want to get there faster. Why? I’m not sure.

Two things struck me this week. They are not big revelations, but writing is a profession that seems to require constant reinforcement via basic thoughts to the neurotic people who perform the task. One, the encouragement he and I provided each other in the form of weekly “assignments” proved invaluable. Said assignments was to deliver marked-up copies of last week’s chapters and deliver new, fresh chapters. Like my friend said, it was peer pressure because he didn’t want to be the dufus who didn’t have anything prepared. Motivation. Why is it that writing needs motivation?

The second thing was much more personal. All throughout my old comp book, I started encouraging myself. I’d write little affirmations and prayers that I could get the book completed. It’s actually a bit charming to re-read that stuff, knowing how it all turned out. But that’s what helped me cross that finish line. That’s how I did it in the old days.

In the years since, I’ve tried different ways to stay organized, electronically as well as manually. My iPod Touch is a great device and, with a few apps, I can maintain and sync story ideas and note across multiple delivery sources. I didn’t have that in the “old days.” I had a comp book. And with the comp book, I wrote a novel.

I’m the type of guy whose life experiences often involve doing things the hard way or the long way. Not sure why. The very apps and electronic devices that are supposed to make writing easier have, I think, flooded my brain with too much information and too many options. Thankfully, I’m not the kind of writer who needs the special this or the special that just to make prose. I can and do write anywhere. I’m beginning to think, however, that I need a comp book to keep my ideas and notes in one place and I need to make many of those notes in longhand. Something about that just seems right for me.

Do you have something that just works for you and your writing? Have you ever tried a different path? Did you succeed?

Currently Reading: The End of the Matter by Alan Dean Foster. Completely not crime or mystery related, but I'm re-reading this book (book 3 of a trilogy) for the first time in 30 years. He was my entry into written SF and he holds up remarkable well.