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I Love You All

Well, after just over 5 years here, a load of stories, interviews, books, reviews, recommendations, writing tips, music and moaning (and the rest) I've decided to pack up and leave for some place new.

You can pop over to my new online home, with blog, here at nikperring.com - do say hello, I'd love to hear from you.

And a HUGE thank you to each and every one of you, for reading, commenting and putting up with me for such a long time. I honestly can't tell you how much I appreciate it. It's been a pleasure to share a huge chunk of my life with you. Really, I love you all. Especially you.

I hope you'll join me for the next stage. I think it's going to be an exciting one. Well, I hope it's going to be an exciting one.

Thank you. 

Nik x

The Tiny Wife

I reviewed Andrew Kaufman's wonderful 'The Tiny Wife' a little while ago (you can read what I had to say about it all here). I loved it, big time. And today, it's published. Hooray and hurrah. Do have a look.

Freaks!

On Tuesday I put the almost finished Freaks! cover up here, saying that it was a couple of tweaks away from being the finished article.

Well, my friends, those tweaks have been tweaked and I am thoroughly thrilled to present the official, finished cover, in all its wondrous and splendid glory. I love it. As well as being rather striking, I think it sums up what's inside the book brilliantly. Each of the characters in the 50 stories Caroline Smailes (who talks about it here) and I have written have super powers (or want them), and most of them aren't the usual kind. Most of the characters aren't the usual kind - they're all different, unusual, not quite fitting in - I hope that that makes them, in some way, familiar. And each of those 50 stories and their characters have been illustrated, brilliantly, by Darren Craske (who talks about it here) - it's a genuine thrill to see some of them here, coloured in.

It's such a relief and a joy to have a cover, and illustrations, that I'm as proud of as I am the stories and the book as a whole.

So, here it is - the cover. I hope you like it. I do. A lot.

Now, all we need to do is wait for April for it to be published!

Sneaky, Freaky Peek

The cover of Freaks! is almost done. And when it is done (it's still a few minor tweaks from being the finished article) it might just look a little like this...

Pretty awesome, no?

Edit To Add

Just a brief one today, as I'm up to my eyes in work. And it's a rare plug...

As you'll possibly know I do a little bit of editing work over at The Story Corrective. I set it up to specifically help with short stories but I do, on occasion, help with longer stuff too (mentoring and editing full length mss). It's not something I've ever mentioned publicly before, so I thought I'd mention it now. If you're interested you can drop me a line here.

That is all.

Janet Mitchell Interview

And today I bring you an interview with the very lovely and very talented Janet Mitchell, the author of the wonderful collection, 'The Creepy Girl and Other Stories' which, I reckon, is a bit special...

Welcome to the blog, Janet. It’s a great thing to have you on here. I’ve been reading, and thoroughly enjoying, your short story collection ‘The Creepy Girl and Other Stories’ – could you tell us a little about it?

Want to tell you first off, Nik, how the collection got its name because it didn’t win the prize—thanks Ted, Lance, again—with that title.   I won’t say what it was but basically the editor and my then-agent didn’t like the title, and I remembered what a classmate of mine, Holly Brickley, said about my work: she pulled at the skin on her wrist and said, “Your stories just get under my skin and stay there.  You are the Creepy Girl!”  I found it to be high praise—the part about my stories getting under her skin, not that she thought it was creepy that they did so—and the editor and then-agent thought it was a great title, and so…  Though, I have to say, I never have really imagined myself as a stone statue, in wax perhaps, though.

These stories are very interested in language, its rhythms, its possibilities.

They came out of a place that wasn’t always pleasant to be—sometimes when I’m reading one of them out somewhere, I can feel myself want to cry as I did when I was writing them, but I don’t; well, I haven’t yet —and so they are where my heart was when I was writing them.  

Why do you write? How did it start?

I have always written and been encouraged to.  My mother was always telling me excitedly that she had a writer.  She kept most of my writings from when I was very young and I still have them.  I can still hear the teachers telling me that I had such a wild imagination.   A crazy head.   I don’t think of my imagination as wild or crazy because it is just who I am, how I see things.

If I am not writing, I don’t know who I am.  I lose my way.

And why short fiction?

I love short stories, the way you can sit down and read one and carry its feeling with you for the day, hopefully longer.   

Novels are wonderful too, and I’m working on one now.   We’ll see how long it takes.  

How would you describe a Janet Mitchell story? Do you think the short form gives you more opportunity to write in the Janet Mitchell way and to address the themes you address?

A story that is interested in language, at times word-drunk and wants to be read out loud.   Lyrical but also tough and pulling no punches.  My stories cost me and I want them to.   I like to dig myself a hole and then get out of it.   And there is probably something about my mother, a mother, someone’s mother.   She was one of the loves of my life and she was taken from me too soon.

In terms of short form vs. long form, I believe that a story, the writer, will know its length. Kind of like the way a sculptor sees a piece of marble and can see what is inside there.

As to themes, I’m interested in families, especially mothers, for the reasons I said.

What’s your writing process?

 Sitting down and peeling away until I get to a sentence I can go forward with.  Same time every day is what I prefer and for as many hours as possible.  I prefer same place as well.

What does the word ‘story’ mean to you?

‘Story’ means to me giving testimony, the utterances that only you as the writer could give.  Your fingerprint, as it were, in lines on a page.

I do have preferences in the kinds of stories that I want to read.  Such as not wanting to read something that anyone could have written and that goes from A to B to C without any risks, any costs to the writer. 

I want to be taken places where I haven’t gone before and many times I want to fall in love with what I’m reading.   I want to be taken by the hand by the write.  I do.

Also, I don’t need a ‘story’ to always tell me a story.   They can be just a few lines but if there are the right few lines I’m satisfied.

Whose work do you most admire? Is there anyone who’s particularly influenced your writing?

Jack Gilbert for years now.  I take him me.  He’s essential.  Zbigniew Herbert too.

As for prose writers, Marilynne Robinson.  HOUSEKEEPING is essential for me and I read it every few years.  The silence in it.  That train.  Those characters.  Those sentences.

Who else?

Harold Brodkey.   Barry Hannah, dear Hannah.  Mark Richard.  Marquez, especially CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD.  And Faulkner.   And Kesey.  And W.G. Sebald.

There are more.   There are always more.

What’s next for you?

Working on the novel.  Have a story coming out in the next GARGOYLE, “Scenes From A Funeral.”

Could you recommend a short story collection to the readers here?

Mark Richard’s THE ICE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD.

Purdy’s 63 : DREAM PALACE.

Anything you’d like to add?

Thank you for having me on, Nik.

JANET MITCHELL received her Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from Columbia University, where she was the Bingham Scholarship recipient.  Her work has appeared inThe Brooklyn Rail, The Quarterly, and The Pomona Valley Review and has been optioned by Lifetime Television as well as by independent producers.  

She earned her Master of Fine Arts in Film Production from the University of Southern California.  Here she won the John Huston Award for Best Director and a Paramount Pictures Fellowship. Her award-winning short film “How Does Anyone Get Old?” starring Mark Ruffalo  and Mina Badie was featured on IFC’s “Inside the Indies” and on NBC’s “Starwatch.”  The film has been widely acclaimed, including praise from directors Bob Rafelson and Ivan Passer.  Her educational video “Behind Closed Doors” won a Cine Golden Eagle and is currently being used in over 250 schools and domestic violence centers nationwide.
 
She received her Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth, where she was awarded many honors, including Highest Distinction in English for her creative writing thesis.

She was born and raised in South Jersey, where her heart still resides.

THE CREEPY GIRL was chosen as 1 of the 12 best books of 2011 by the staff of small press distribution.

A Thing Of Great Beauty

Now, it's no secret that I like my music. I do. It's important and it's brilliant and wonderful when it's done well. And, thanks to places like Jango and Amazing Radio I've made a number of very cool discoveries over the past few years.

And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that last week's discovery could well be the best.

'These Friends Of Mine' is Rosie Thomas' 4th album (I think). It was recorded in a house and released in 2006. Its sound is small, almost a whisper at times, but it's so strong and honest too. And beautiful. I think that's the best way to describe it. It is a thing of great beauty. The words, too, are the same.

It's so good, in fact, that after buying the album from iTunes I went on to order the actual CD. I can't remember the last time that happened. Mariee Sioux was one who received that treatment way back in 2006 and I bought a Jaymay CD last year.

I am more than a little bit in love with it. Here are a few reasons why.










As you were.

Tiny Wife, Huge Triumph

I was lucky enough to get my hands on a proof copy of Andrew Kaufman's 'The Tiny Wife' a little while ago. And folks, let me tell you, it is absolutely brilliant.

A man robs a bank. But instead of making off with bags of cash he takes one thing from each of the customers there: one thing which holds the most sentimental value.

The bugger gets away with it and disappears with his swag.

And then odd things start to happen to the folks he's stolen from. A woman's lion tattoo becomes an actual lion and chases her all over town. Another lady wakes up to find that she's made of candy. And, amongst others, a man's wife discovers she's shrinking. Those who've read Not So Perfect, or are fans of Aimee Bender or Etgar Keret or Michael Czyzniejewski, will not be surprised that I like it. But I don't just like it - or to be more accurate, LOVE it - for its imagination. It's, in my humble opinion, the perfect modern fable. It's about love, it's about life, it's about problems and it's about seeing the bigger picture. It's about people. It's brilliant. It's told with delightful imagination and it's exactly the right size.

A lot's made of word count these days (your book HAS to be this length or that length, blah blah blah) and, again in my humble, word count doesn't really matter all that much - what matters is that the words count. Stories are as long as they are. And as I say, this story's wonderful. As are the illustrations that accompany it. AND, it's going to be released as a gorgeous hardback. Seriously, what's not to love?

It's out on September 1st and it's published by the magnificent The Friday Project.

Pre-order from Amazon here.

***

And talking of 'Not So Perfect' I was rather happy to read this yesterday.

Collaborating

I'm sure I'll blog about this in greater detail at some point in the future (I don't want to give too much away just yet)  but, as we've been talking about the front cover of Freaks! this week, I thought I'd mention it a little right now.

Writing and having a book published is always a collaborative process. Writers tend to be good at writing, but not so hot on other things, and that's why publishers employ people who DO know what they're talking about when it comes to cover design, marketing, type-setting, etc, etc. But, for most (and certainly for me, for my previous two books) those discussions don't tend to take place until the book's been written.

With Freaks!, it's been different, in a few ways. The way it was written being the obvious one. Right from the off, when Caroline and I wrote the stories, we were doing it together. In fact, we were doing it together even before any of the stories had even been written - the concept of the book was a shared thing: a collaboration.

And then, once the book had been written we recruited Darren, which brought a different kind of collaboration to the table: the collaboration between two writers and one illustrator. Now, both of my previous books have been illustrated, so I am used to working with illustrators, but for those other books that's been done along with a publisher, and not with another writer. 

And, while the experience has certainly been different in a lot of ways, it's been a good one. Working with Caroline has been great fun. Two heads, in this case and for this book, have certainly been been better than one. And having Darren illustrate those stories in his style has been a new and interesting thing too. And the results are good. The results are great.The result is (I hope!) a book, an illustrated collection of short stories, that we're all extremely proud of.

As I said, we're at a stage now where we're talking about the cover with our wonderful publisher. We've seen a few concepts. One has won (after a little discussion). And I've got to say, I genuinely cannot wait to see the finished design. It is going to be awesome.

So, watch this space...

A Musical Interlude

...because I really, really like this.





Someone take me to Paris, yes...?

This Country

I'm not the sort of person who jabbers on about what this country has come to, or anything like that. For what it's worth, I think we live in a pretty cool place, with, mostly, great people. And there's a brilliant mix of people, of different religions, political views, sexual orientation, colour, race et al; that's why the world's a cool place.

Seeing shit like this, where you could potentially have to deal with the police BECAUSE OF YOUR POLITICAL VIEWS, is just plain wrong. Call me naive, but surely there's a difference between an anarchist and a terrorist. (Then again, you'd have thought there was a difference between a Brazilian chap going about his business on the tube and a suicide bomber. Others might disagree.) So, while this is happening, in our wonderful democracy (where the leaders of it are only that because of a man who controls a hugely influential chuck of the media, allegedly) we're also invading other countries and forcing it on them. The hypocrisy and the arrogance is both staggering and sickening.

My question is, how long are we going to put up with it?

I mean, we've marched and we've protested and we've signed petitions and we've been ignored. We've been ignored by the people who we've voted into a position to represent us.

And they are not (not all of them) representing us.

Is that not really, really wrong?

So what happens next? Who else will we have to tell the police about? The communists? The socialists? Marxists? Gays? Jews? Muslims? Anyone who has the nerve to openly disagree with the government? Anyone who simply THINKS something they shouldn't be thinking?

And where are they planning to send us? Camps perhaps? Or maybe they could put us to work somewhere.

I honestly feel that letting this slide will lead us all down a very dark and very dangerous path. And, I'll be honest with you, that scares the shit out of me.

And thus ends my rant.

***

ADDED...

 it 'could have been better worded' apparently. Doesn't that say it all? Link here.

The Virgin Suicides

It's not often a film adaption of a book is as good as the book that inspired it, but The Virgin Suicides is. The movie captures the mood of the book perfectly. Both get 5 stars from me. I'd recommend them both, very highly indeed.

Thanks + Someone Else's Story

First of all - a big thank you to all who sent me birthday wishes. Between here and Twitter and Facebook and email and the telephone, I received a lot - far more than I could have expected. So, yeah - thank you all, very, very much.

***

And back to writing things. I meant to mention this earlier but never seemed to have the time. Long time friend of the blog, Teresa Stenson is in The Guardian Summer Short Story Special, with her story, 'Things Which Are Not True'. It's a top story and Teresa's a top writer and very nice lady, so I'm thrilled for her. Go read.

Happy Birthday To Me

I am now thirty.

And I have been listening to this a lot.

That is all.