Here’s My Baby!

From the publisher, Press 53, led by the wonderful Kevin Morgan Watson.

Welcome, Anybody, the debut short story collection by Jen McConnell will ship early February and we are taking pre-orders now for signed copies.

Tara Ison, author of The List, says, “The luminous, compelling stories of Welcome, Anybody capture our yearning for connection; McConnell illuminates those rare moments in life we find both fleeting and transformative with the eye of a master jeweler.”

Lewis Buzbee, author of The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, says, “The characters in these stories stand absolutely still in the middle of their lives while the world spins around them, chaotically and often dangerously. There is an intensity of vision here—both riveting and haunting—that will remind you of Carver’s stories, but the territory McConnell has staked out is unquestionably her own.”

“Welcome, Anybody exquisitely distills the emotional landscape of ordinary people. The life in these stories is remarkable. A true gem of a collection from a writer with real heart.” – Rebecca Rasmussen, author of The Bird Sisters

Click here to pre-order your signed copy for $14.95.

 

It’s Official: My Book Will Be Out in March!

My collection of short stories, Welcome, Anybody, is being published by Press 53 and will launch in early March.

Writing that sentence makes me happy beyond belief.

A little more than a year ago, Press 53′s wonderful editor Kevin Morgan Watson accepted my book for publication. I didn’t tell anyone except Dan at first; then only told a few people here and there.

I signed the book contact quite a few months back, but still I was hestitant to tell too many people. I am truly afraid of jinxing things.

• Don’t talk about no-hitters after the sixth inning.
• Say “break a leg” not “good luck.”
• And don’t talk about things until you are sure they are going to happen.

But, well, it looks like this is really going to happen!

The book will debut at the AWP Conference in Chicago in early March (brr!). I can only imagine how it will feel to have my published book in my hands. Say what you will about e-books and PDFs, but when I dared to dream about publishing a book, it was bound, with a cover, and I could it hug to my chest.

The collection includes 14 stories, written during a span of just over a decade. Twelve of them have been - or are slated to be - published.

The first, Debris, was published in 2000. The last, Earthquake Weather, will be published in fall of 2012. I was amazed and overjoyed when the first story was published, just as I began Goddard’s MFA program. I am equally, if not more, shocked and overjoyed that the whole collection will now be out there in the world.

In the spring, I’ll begin a couch-surfing book tour that will last for at least a year, or while funds last, spread around family and work schedules. If you are up for hosting me for a day or two, let me know. I’d love to do a reading in your town!

The other day I finished reading Haruki Murakami’s amazing and otherwordly new novel, 1Q84. While reading and after, I had that familiar feeling of intense envy and supreme disappointment that I will never write like that.

But then I remember that my book is coming out. It’s my best work. And I am thrilled… elated… crazed with joy… by that.

Stay tuned for details about the launch and how YOU can order your own copy!

 

Visiting Writer

“This is Jen McConnell, our visiting writer,” my friend and fellow writer, Kevin Rabas, said to everyone we met. I secretly loved hearing it each time.

I was in Kansas, at Emporia State University. Kevin, whom I met during our Goddard days, is a professor there, and co-director of the creative writing program. He had arranged for me to come to campus to speak to a couple of creative writing classes and give a reading in the evening. My first public reading. And I would be paid for it!

During my reading at Emporia State University

I flew into Kansas City and drove two hours to Emporia, marveling how the flatness of Kansas made Ohio look positively mountainous. Kevin and his family were delightful hosts and in the morning we were off to campus.

Professor Amy Sage Webb was kind enough to let me sit in two of her classes. Despite my usual nervousness, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the students’ work and talking with them during class and at lunch.

My reading was set for seven o’clock in the evening. During some downtime at the hotel, I practiced the stories I would read – changing my mind a few times based on their length and what I thought would be most interesting to the students.

All was well until about five minutes to seven.

Students had started to file into the room – there was a combination of small talk and awkward staring at each other. Suddenly I was gripped with the ‘fight or flight’ feeling – except for me, there is never any fight. It is 100% “I have to get the hell out of here.”

So I left the room, walked quickly upstairs and paced the deserted hallway. I would be fine once I began to read and to talk about writing. It was those dead minutes beforehand that made me want to run away.

I think the reading went terrific. There were laughs where there should be. Appropriate sighs and clicks of the tongue at poignant moments in the stories. And then it was time for questions – my favorite part. I love to hear students’ ideas and thoughts, and learn about what they write and why.

During the three days I was in Kansas, I was completely, and solely, a writer. The same delicious feeling as when I am at Clockhouse Writers’ Conference. I am not a mom or a wife, no one cares what my day job is. I am only my writing.

Of course, that makes returning to reality – being a wife and mother with a day job – a slap of reality, but it also rejuvenates me to give more of my ‘regular’ life to my writing life. Whenever and however I can.

 

Just Get it Out There. Get it in Libraries.

There is a scene in the movie “Sideways” where the dejected protagonist – a writer – is being given a pep talk by his best friend, a womanizing dolt. The writer had just been rejected by his last-hope publisher and was ready to throw himself into the sea. The friend says (paraphrasing) “Forget them. Just get your book out there. Get it in libraries.”

The look that the writer, played to perfection by Paul Giamatti*, gives his friend is priceless – a mixture of scorn, anger and amusement. As if you just walk into a library and hand them your book.**

But in fact, I did just that a couple weeks ago. And it was thrilling, in a small, quiet way.

When I returned some books to our local Rocky River Library, I took a signed copy of the Press 53 Spotlight. Half of me was shy and self-conscious about doing such a self-serving thing; the other half (the professional marketing/communications half) knew that this is what I need to do to promote myself.

The woman who took my book was very kind and flattering, which made me even more embarrassed and, of course, pleased.

I also sent a copy of the book to the Cleveland Public Library.  Now, just because I can’t find myself or the book in their online catalogs doesn’t mean the books aren’t there, correct? I wrote, therefore I am, or something like that.

A few nights ago, I went to a reading at the Rocky River Library by a local and best-selling author, Dan Chaon. He is originally from Nebraska but has been in Cleveland for enough years now that he considers himself a native and most of his fiction, stories and novels, is grounded in the area.

He was a fun reader, and his story was captivating (although he only read half of it - great motivation to buy his new book next year!). There were about 25 people in the audience, an older crowd, who had all read his last novel and asked very good questions.

I couldn’t help daydream a bit though, about myself reading to an audience at the library sometime next year after my story collection comes out. Part of me is shy and self-conscious, but that other half knows that self-promotion is what comes after the writing.

While I enjoy the part about “getting my books out there,” it is putting myself out there that makes me nervous. Heck, I blushed head-to-toe reading a children’s book to my daughter’s first-grade class the other day. I can only imagine how self-conscious I will feel reading my own words in front of adult strangers. Harder still to imagine what story of mine would be appropriate to read to an older, Rocky River audience.

_____

* Paul Giamatti also starred in my all-time favorite movie about an artist, “American Splendor,” which was about Harvey Pekar, another Clevelander. Sometimes it seems like destiny that I ended up here.

** In this scene they also discuss John Kennedy O’Toole’s “A Confederacy of Dunces,” one of my favorite books.

 

Inspiration

This is a photo of the corner of O’Farrell and Stockton, in the heart of Union Square, San Francisco, circa 2000.

Welcome, Anybody

I’d probably gone downtown to shop, even though I had no money because I was in grad school and only worked part-time.

I’m sure I was just looking out the window of the bus at the people moving on the street – tourists and workers and street vendors. Everything that makes a city so electric and alive to me.

That first time, I didn’t have a camera with me (long before they invented cell phone cameras). I saw the sign and bam, it hit me. This was the title for a chapter or section of the novel I had begun to write.

Returning another time with a camera, I snapped this photo.

Soon after, I scanned it and turned it into black and white. I have since lost the original color photo but I prefer the black and white anyway. And the fact that everyone is walking away from the viewer.

Odd that no one was crossing the street toward me as I took the photo. But that speaks directly to what I was trying to capture in the story.

I’ve always imagined that the person who made that sign or owned that store meant “welcome everyone” but that an error in translation led to the more specific and meaningful “anybody.”

The novel didn’t worked out (not yet, anyway) but the story did, and “Welcome, Anybody” has been the name of my story collection since I first started thinking about my stories as a collection.

When Dan and I were back in San Francisco last fall, we walked by this corner. The “welcome anybody” sign was gone, but the same anonymous electricity of the city was still there.

We’re planning another trip next April and I think I will take another photo of that corner and see what else has changed and what hasn’t.

 

The Clockhouse Review

I’m thrilled to be involved in the re-launch of the Clockhouse Review, a literary magazine begun many years ago by my friend and fellow Goddard grad Tim Kenyon with the support of the Clockhouse Writers Conference.

The first issue was published in 2004 and included stories, poetry and non-fiction exclusively by Goddard graduates. It was a wonderful issue and we assumed we would continue to produce an issue each year.

Well, of course, life got in the way. Seven years, two kids, and a move to the Midwest later, Tim, with new managing editor Chris Mackowski, has produced a 2011 issue, again featuring Goddard grads.

Now they are working on the first open-submission issue of Clockhouse, due summer of 2012. Here are the guidelines if you are interesting in submitting your work.

You can keep up to date on CHR at both Facebook and Twitter.

For Goddard MFA grads, even if we didn’t attend the program at the same time, what binds us together is our love of writing and reading.

With Tim and Chris managing the details of CHR, other grads like me are eager to help by reading submissions and suggesting which ones to consider for publication.

Personally, reading submissions helps me keep my own writing focused.

All writers know it in theory – make the opening interesting so readers will want to keep reading – but few translate it to the page. Don’t sacrifice your story just for a good opening – but if the opening isn’t interesting, why is it there?

Most stories can be lopped off by at least a page and be much stronger for it. I know that every time I cut the beginning of one of my stories, I never put it back on. While I HATE cutting anything from my stories, they are always strong after some tough-love editing.

It’s tough rejecting stories that you know the writer poured her/his heart into. I’ve had work rejected dozens and dozens of times. But you have to get beyond the disappointment and keep going. Find somewhere else to send it. I truly believe that if a piece of writing is really good, it will find a home out there.

 

Old, Interesting & Cheap

I love coming up with titles for stories and other pieces of writing. Actually, I hardly ever make them up – they usually come right at me.

Like “Old, Interesting & Cheap.” Could be a thousand different bad jokes there. But actually, it was a small sign on a remainder bin at our local Half-Price Books.  Every writer’s nightmare – not only are your books being sold at a second-hand store for at least half-price, they don’t even rate being INSIDE the store. At least they are “interesting,” right?

Though, actually, being in a remainder bin means you were actually published, so there was some very good news along the way at least.

Anyway, I always have more titles than stories.  And often I have many pieces of stories but none of them are complete.

Last week, I had an idea for a story and pour about a five-hundred words out into my journal. As I was adding to it the other day in my journal, I realized that the beginning of another story I’d written was part of this story. I just didn’t know it at the time.

So today I am joining them together. 

I have two ideas for titles of this story but neither are quite right or even very good: “Empty and Idle” and “Insert Tab A into Slot B”. Other titles floating around: “Satan Cashed the Check” and ”What We Most Resist.” I’m sure the stories will come along sooner or later.

I do have some wonderful news about two of my other, completed stories (with great titles, if I do say so myself):

• A Divorced Man’s Guide to the First Year will be published by Flint Hills Review in early 2012.
• Earthquake Weather was accepted by Terrain.org  and will be published online in fall of 2012 (so long to wait!).

So I write on.

In the morning, I travel to my parents’ house on the west coast for “vacation,” though I will still be working my day job remotely. Hope to write plenty though, and especially get to work on another draft of a novel.

 

I Don’t Hate Nature…

…it hates me.

Or maybe it likes me too much.

Every time I venture out (usually dragging my feet like a five-year-old) into nature, I come back with scratches, bug bites and/or that phantom feeling that critters are crawling all over me.

The boardwalk through a wetland at Maumee Bay State Park. This "nature" was okay because I didn't have to actually touch anything, though every flying bug in the state was touching me.

My husband is from Ohio. I am from California. He swears there aren’t bugs in California – it was one of the first things he noticed. And he’s right. Because they are all in the mid-west.

I like the beach. That is my nature. The salty air. The warm sand between my toes (So Cal).  Footprints in the wet sand when the water retreats (Northern Cal).

It took some getting used to but I’ve come to prefer the cold, rocky northern California beaches to the hot crowded sands of Newport Beach. Mostly because in Northern Cal, I would wear jeans and a sweater to the beach, not a bathing suit, which – being fair, chubby, and red-head - I was never comfortable with during adolescence.

But nature in the midwest usually means going “into” nature, i.e. a path in a forest where things fly around, bugs bite, and creatures live.

Now I don’t mind a nice stroll through the Rocky River reservation near our house west of Cleveland. There is a nice paved path for walkers, joggers and bikers to share. Darla the Pug and I often take walks there.

But Dan likes to take our daughter and dog on “adventures” – right down to the river, usually in the mud. If I go with them, I am usually on edge in “mommy panic” that Mia will fall in, that Darla will get covered in mud (and I’ll have to clean her), that I’ll get my shoes muddy, and of course, I will be feasted on by mosquitoes. It’s not really pleasant for anyone.

So we’ve come to an agreement that if I am going with them, we stick to the path. Without me, they can do what they want, just don’t tell me about it and leave your shoes outside.

My idea of nature is to find a shady, bug-free, comfortable spot, and write in my notebook. While I am more of an indoor person at heart, I do like to be outside in the sunshine (with 50 SPF sunscreen and a hat). My mind wanders, my breath slows, my shoulders relax. I sigh with relief at being away from the computer and laundry, etc.

But I can’t relax when I am swatting at bugs or afraid of swallowing one.

The irony of course is that I work for the Ohio Environmental Council. I am passionate about protecting our earth and our resources. I want to protect nature for everyone – those that love to get deep in the muck and glory of nature and those (like me) who prefer to be a few feet back from nature, admiring it without having to get too dirty.

Someday I hope I can come to peace with nature in Ohio but by then we will have moved back to California anyway.

 

I Hate it When He’s Right

My husband, Dan, is my best and worst critic. He’s ruthlessly honest when I ask for feedback on my writing, which can be hard for my ego at times, but he’s also right most (not all!!) of the time and always thoughtful and fair.

We often have disagreements about structure (he hates flashbacks) but I stick to my guns when I know it’s the right choice for the story.

I take more to heart his thoughts on specific language and “feel” of the story or novel.

A few days ago, I let him read the first part of my novel Summer in Samoa and asked for his overall thoughts. His response was that the story didn’t get interesting until around page 10.

Ouch. But he was right.

The first ten pages were mostly furniture moving (a phrase from my mentor Lewis Buzbee), introducing the characters one by one, showing exactly what was happening.

Bascially, the problem was I started at the beginning. How boring.

So I did what I had to do. I cut the first ten pages and am starting to rewrite, from scratch, only the intersting parts.

Old opening:

They landed on the island at dusk on the last Friday in June.  Maggie hung back as the others fought to be first of their group off the plane.

New opening:

The man who met us at the airport wasn’t Samoan at all. He was white and he was grinning.

Nineteen words down, only 60,000+ to go!

 

Theme: Recovery

I don’t write with themes in mind – they seem to appear after the fact. And usually someone else points them out to me. Often, I don’t feel responsible for what I write, the story just comes out. That it might have a theme or underlying “truth”…that’s just my subconscious I guess.

But I am always intrigued by lit mag contests and issues that feature themes. And very excited when something I have written falls within the scope of that theme and especially if it is chosen for publication.

That has happened with my story Shakespeare’s Garden. It has just been published in the July issue of r.kv.r.y.

At AWP in February, I met Mary Akers, a fiction author (Women Up on Blocks) and the publisher of the elegant and thoughtful online lit magazine r.kv.r.y. After reading more about the magazine, and looking over my stories, I thought Shakespeare’s Garden would be a good fit. I’m thrilled that Mary and her editors agreed!

I hadn’t thought of my story in terms of “recovery,” but reading the description of the magazine, it was as if I’d written the story to spec.

From the site:

r.kv.r.y. – comes from the dictionary definition of the word recovery: an act, process, or instance of recovering; a return to normal conditions; something gained or restored in recovering; obtaining usable substances from unusable sources.

To me, the recovery that happens in Shakespeare’s Garden isn’t the gentleman who suffers the stroke and learns to live with it. It’s his wife, who must learn to live with a life of shattered expectations. Something many of us can identify with, especially as we grow older and wonder “what could have been” or “if only”…

Reading the other stories and poems in the July issue of r.kv.r.y. displays just how broadly the term “recovery” can be applied.

I urge you to explore this and other issues of r.kv.r.y. Leave a comment to let me know what you think!