Back Among the Living

I’ve been on nightshift for the last six weeks, working fourteen hour clips, sometimes with Sunday off, sometimes not. Every couple of years this happens. They shut the plant down. We tear it apart, modify some of it, re-weld some of it, clean some of it, change out components, gaskets, etc. put it all back together. They call it a turnaround. You get home and you turnaround and come right back to work. They call it a shutdown. Sure, the plant shuts down, but worse, your life shuts down, for however long it takes. I’m back on dayshift now though. That just happened yesterday. I’m back among the living.

Another nice thing happened yesterday, The Baffler published my short story “Chipper” in issue No. 78. A copy arrived in the mail.

Chipper starts like this: “OUT THE BUS WINDOW Sam saw guts gored cherry into the rumble strip. Seventh or eighth time since leaving the city. The mess reminded him of human meat he’d once seen dangling in a tree.”

The April issue is for sale now, or you can read the story online here if you would like.

This is the second short story I’ve had in The Baffler, and the second time I’ve worked with J.W. McCormack, their literary editor. J.W. always has brilliant suggestions. A couple years ago, he also published my short story “Margret Lewis” which you can read here.

Lately I’ve had a run of short stories published/ accepted for publication. A couple of them have been in print and don’t appear to be online anywhere yet, and maybe they never will be—except when they wind up in a collection in the future.

“Rabies” pubped in Forever Magazine issue 7, “Selfless” in Heavy Traffic issue 5

Other than that? I’ll share news about what is happening with news of my next books … shouldn’t be too long now till I can say something.

<3
Bud