TBR: The Ways We Get By by Joe Dornich

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe! 

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

The Ways We Get By is a linked short story collection that uses humor as an entryway to examine loneliness, consequence, and the commodification of compassion. Each of the stories in the collection centers on the narrator’s job and the measure of compassion – physical, emotional, psychological – that that service provides. Characters work as camp counselors, certified cuddlers, professional mourners, and animal conservationists. Others capitalize on people’s pleasure with the familiar by dressing up as super heroes and religious figures. What I have found in reality, and what I hope to explore with this book, is that when it comes to this specific kind of economy there is an irony at play. Those tasked with doling out compassion, with being nurturing vessels of support and encouragement, are often lacking these qualities in their personal lives. This absence of support and compassion in their personal lives, and the ways in which it complicates their professional ones, serves as one of the unifying themes of the book.

 

 

Which story did you most enjoy writing? Why? And, which story gave you the most trouble, and why?

My favorite story to write was, “Camp Vampire Kids.” This is one of the stories that resulted from me having a hands-on experience, in this case as a volunteer for the Xeroderma Pigmentosum Society’s annual summer camp. Meeting these kids and their families was such a unique and rewarding experience and one of the reasons that made me want to be a writer. When it came time to rework my experiences into a short story it came quite easily.

The most challenging was probably, “The Yellow Mama Experience.” Of the nine, this was the story where I had the least amount of direct experience and proved to be the most difficult to research. I was (and still am) fascinated by odd objects and the stories behind them, but working those into a larger narrative with characters that felt believable was a bit of a slog.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

I have been truly fortunate. Black Lawrence was the first press I submitted to and they are the ones publishing my book. I’d heard of Diane and BLP in graduate school and was eager to work with them. I had missed the window for their annual contest and so I submitted to their open reading period, which I believe is in November. By May I had signed a contract. I have friends who have taken years to get their manuscript published, others who are still looking, and so I know how lucky I am.

The biggest challenge now is how to promote a book in the middle of a pandemic.  We were hoping to do a tour and bring the book to AWP, and now we are revising those strategies.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

In The Writer’s Notebook II: Craft Essays From Tin House, Ben Percy has an essay titled, “The Importance of Work.” In it, Percy suggests giving your characters a job. He reminds us that, “Whether we like it or not, work defines us. Work dominates our lives.”

I see employment as an opportunity for empathy. First, everyone has, or at least has had, a job. Also, regardless of workplace specifics, there are a number of commonalities: jobs we’ve hated but feared losing; jobs that were beneath us and made us question our self-worth; rude clients/customers or selfish/cruel/foolish/myopic bosses that made us feel a myriad of emotions; workplace crushes that did or did not evolve into relationships; financial instability; jealousy, envy, and resentment. The list goes on and on. I lean on these familiar aspects to hopefully generate empathy from my readers, and then I try to test the strength of that empathy and upend reader’s expectations about where that empathy may arise. I believe that once a foundation of empathy is established (and revisited throughout the narrative), I can add a structure that, no matter how foreign or silly, won’t “lose” a reader.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

How enjoyable it is to write mean characters. There is something cathartic about inhabiting that mentality for a bit and having a repository for all of those snarky jokes and cruel comments that come to mind.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 All of the stories are told from the first-person point of view, and so I wanted the “We” in The Ways We Get By to reflect that chorus. There isn’t a story with that title, instead it is meant to represent the ways in which these people are getting through the day. The stories are also loosely linked, and so the “We” also represents that singular world in which the characters inhabit.

 

****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK: https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/the-ways-we-get-by/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9781625578303/the-ways-we-get-by.aspx

 

READ A STORY FROM THIS BOOK, “The Reluctant Son of a Fake Hero”: https://mastersreview.com/reluctant-son-fake-hero-joe-dornich/

 

 

 

TBR: Prometeo by C. Dale Young

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe!

 

 

We don’t expect an elevator pitch from a poet, but can you tell us about your work in 2-3 sentences?

Prometeo is a reckoning with history: personal; familial, and communal. It is my attempt to understand inheritance in its many forms. It was a way for me to explore how a person can carry the joys and sorrows of one’s family, even without realizing it at first.

 

What boundaries did you break in the writing of this book? Where does that sort of courage come from?

 It is not that I ever forbade myself to write personal poems, but I have always found strategies to reveal the personal while not being direct. In Prometeo, I stepped across that boundary. I chose to be direct. It was actually panic-inducing at first, but in the end I would never have been able to write this book had I done what I usually do while writing poems.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

Prometeo is my sixth book, my fifth poetry collection. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have an amazing and dedicated publisher, Four Way Books. I finished the manuscript, sent it to my editor Martha Rhodes, and then waited. She took it. I freaked out and immediately asked to push back publication one year. I am sure she laughed. I think she once told me I am the only author she has who asks for delays rather than moving up the pub date. But we have worked together for so long I almost think she expected me to ask for the delay.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

"If you the writer aren't surprised by something you are working on, why would you expect a reader to be surprised?"

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

As with each of my poetry collections, I wrote roughly a third of it before I had any sense whatsoever of what it was. So, almost three years into writing it, I realized the book was a way for me to reckon with my personal history. And so, the more I pressed the more the book evolved to include my family’s history and then history on a larger scale. I have always avoided “the personal” in my poetry collections, but despite the fact I was wrestling with history, what I produced is the most personal collection of poems I have ever written.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

One of the recurring images in the book is fire. And the title poem, an ode of sorts to the machete, points out how it is a product of fire but also an instrument that can be used to create fire. The machete is a kind of Prometheus. I titled the poem “Prometeo,” and as time passed, it became the title of the entire collection. For a long time, the book lived on my hard drive as Between the Dragon and the Phoenix, a title I will point out that also relates to fire.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 The only food I can think of that makes an appearance in the book is in a poem where I show the influence of the Arabs on Europe by showing how they brought Sugar to the continent. I mention eating a Sicilian pastry filled with ricotta. The pastry is, of course, the Sicilian Cassatelle.

Here is a link to the recipe: https://www.mangiabedda.com/sicilian-cassatelle-ricotta/

 

***

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK: https://fourwaybooks.com/site/c-dale-young/

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: amzn.to/2KaSpzR

 

READ A POEM FROM THIS BOOK, “Between the Dragon and the Phoenix”:

https://poets.org/poem/between-dragon-and-phoenix

 

 

TBR: Made to Explode by Sandra Beasley

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe!

 

We don’t expect an elevator pitch from a poet, but can you tell us about your work in 2-3 sentences?

 

This collection presents a strange catalogue: tater tots; NASA; topsy-turvy dolls; the lies of monuments; pinto beans; bacon; disability; marriage; cats. My poems are always distinctively infused with research, and Made to Explode explores the particular intersection of the speaker’s cultural inheritance with a larger American history. I pay a lot of attention to shaping—sestina, prose poem, Golden Shovel—because form enacts content, and can create conversation across centuries.

 

What boundaries did you break in the writing of this book? Where does that sort of courage come from?

Brilliant writers of color such as Toni Morrison and Claudia Rankine have called on white writers to interrogate whiteness on the page. The moment I type out that sentence, my blood pressure surges—uncomfortable with the phrasing, with the danger of applying monolithic handles to racial identity—and that exact discomfort has been many a white poet’s excuse to avoid the topic or find some other way into the material, often through appropriated dramatis personae. I titled a poem “My Whitenesses” and thought, Okay, then, guess I’m going there. But truth be told, I was already headed there.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 The toughest part about assembling any collection is working toward that moment when I sense a critical mass, both in terms of drafts that I like and an emergent set of themes. My work editing the 2018 anthology Vinegar and Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance became key to jumpstarting this project. Because I was spending days with others peoples’ food poems, I began writing food poems of my own. To write about culinary traditions is, invariably, to consider the larger landscape of history.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

The poet Erika Meitner, who was paraphrasing Voltaire, who was evoking an even older Italian proverb, gave me this essential life advice: “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” This suggestion applies to chores, teaching, and writing.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

Isn’t it simply a surprise, every time, that we have another book in us? Here’s one thing I’ll report: my mother says this is the first time she has sat down and read a poetry collection of mine straight through, page to page, as if it was someone else’s novel. I was surprised and delighted to hear that.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

One title of this manuscript was “Second Reckoning,” a phrase from a food allergy poem; then it was “Miraculous Swarm,” from a poem commissioned by the Academy of American Poetry, which captured my grandfather’s time with the space program. My team at Norton hesitated. We needed a title that would make quick, explicit impact. Trusted reader Maureen Thorson was kind enough to dive into the collection on my behalf. She pulled out about ten phrases for consideration, including “Made to Explode,” which I recognized had the quality of telegraphing our immediate political moment. Steve Attardo’s stellar cover design fit the last puzzle piece into place.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

I love cooking legumes—black-eyed peas, Fordhook limas, black beans, pinto beans—because they’re inexpensive, it’s a multi-step meditation, and the result feels hearty and warming. Pick up a bag of any dried bean, heirloom if you can get it. Start the pot with chopped and rendered bacon, fat included, or else a swig of olive oil on medium-high heat. Add a diced onion, garlic, and jalapeno, stir and soften; add 3-4 sliced carrots and celery sticks; add a few bay leaves, and dashes of sweet paprika, smoked paprika, cumin and/or cayenne if you have it. Stir in the rinsed beans. Cover it all with water, so the water line sits 2-3 inches above ingredients. Sometimes I’ll punch up flavor by stirring tomato paste into the water, or using chicken broth, but it’s not essential. Turn the heat up high and bring beans to a hard boil for 10-15 minutes—this is what gets you past needing an overnight pre-soak—and then simmer on low, pot lid mostly on, until tender. The first time you’re cooking any variety, give yourself two hours, but it might take as little as one. Don’t add salt and pepper until the beans are already tender.

 

***

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: http://www.sandrabeasley.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://bookshop.org/books/made-to-explode-poems/9780393531602

 

READ A POEM, “American Rome”: https://poets.org/poem/american-rome

 

 

 

TBR: A Year of Mr. Lucky by Meg Weber

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe!

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

A Year of Mr. Lucky is a memoir of submission, loss, and longing. When Meg Weber - a recently divorced, queer, single parent - realizes she's ready to date again, she comes across the profile of Mr. Lucky, a smart dominant with similar interests. But not all goes as planned.

 

What boundaries did you break in the writing of this memoir? Where does that sort of courage come from?

 

This book pushes the limits of the epistolary form to include the modern modalities of email, texting, and dating app messages as well as the transgressive content of a kinky relationship. My memoir also breaches the boundaries between two aspects of my life I’ve distinctly kept separate: my involvement in consensual BDSM and my relationship with my family. Living the events of this book - the relationship with Mr. Lucky, the death of my sister, meeting Molly – returned me to my writer self which gave me the courage to tell this story.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

It took me roughly six years to write this book. Most of it was written 2500 words per week for deadlines in online writing classes with Ariel Gore. It was rejected by 41 agents and presses before it was picked up by Sincyr Publishing, a small press which had already published some standalone pieces of mine. Other adventures in publishing this book included: hiring an editor for the first full draft of the book, which led to a challenging and tumultuous three year romantic partnership with said editor; obtaining explicit permission from Mr. Lucky to use his emails as he wrote them, as well as his general blessing to publish this story the way I wrote it; deciding to use my own name and not my pseudonym; coming out to my siblings about my involvement in kink; and discussing the book with one of my therapy clients before this client ran into the book due to our overlapping communities and connections.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

“Words matter. Write to learn what you know.” -Writing advice from my friend and mentor Mary Anne Em Radmacher

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

 

The ending of the book surprised me. I didn’t know precisely where I’d end it until I heard myself say the words that set me free. I knew in that instant that this would close the story.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

The title is a bit of an inside joke with myself, which is weird but true. I often say that I can’t count, and there’s a bit in the book where we’re playing a word game and I struggle to add up my score. The events of this book take place from roughly March of 2013 to August of 2014, which is definitely more than a year. Calling it A Year of Mr. Lucky reflects my sentiment that I can’t count. Also, folks often mistake the title as A Year With Mr. Lucky. It’s always been of in my mind. One could argue that other than the six times we played, and the three other times we shared space in person, I was never really with Mr. Lucky.

 

****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK: https://www.megweberwriter.com/a-year-of-mr-lucky

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK:

https://bookshop.org/books/a-year-of-mr-lucky/9781948780292?aid=19085&listref=books-by-me-34eb60c2-02c5-4ab8-9bba-f99cdbad32c0

 

READ AN EXCERPT, “Wardrobe”:

https://rabblelit.com/2018/01/01/wardrobe-meg-weber/