Winter at Page 99

Winter of Different Directions takes the page 99 test. If you haven't visited Marshal Zeringue's great site yet, head on over; it is fascinating reading and will introduce you to a lot of new books and authors. Also be sure to check out Zeringue's other sites including the Campaign for the American Reader.

Getting Some Plugs In

As anyone who's submitted flash fiction to STORYGLOSSIA knows, I've been a tough critic, accepting only a few pieces in the past year. So here's your chance to get your digs in on me. My flash piece "A Whiff of Grapeshot" is up in the current issue of elimae. Give it a read and post your comments here.

And for something completely different check out my satirical piece "The Herdman Interviews" [10:37 mins, 7.4 mb] on the Winter podcast. It helps to have read Nietzsche, but even if you haven't I hope you'll dig the setup and the Nietzschean rant on pain and zeros.

Cleanliness Is Next to Emptiness

For those of you not on the feed, a few days ago I posted Episode 20: Cleanliness Is Next to Emptiness.

This story went by the title "Release" through many revisions, but when I revised it for inclusion in the collection, this title, with its twist on the old saw, seemed a better fit. Mix of styles in this one. Scenes, free indirect discourse, straight narrative. Caryn's a cleanroom technician who's reached the limits of her sterile lifestyle . . .

Listen now [49:19 mins - 33.9 mb]. Right click to download and save without listening right away. On a Mac? Then its option + click to just download the file.

Winter of Different Directions now on Podiobooks

The podcast of my short story collection Winter of Different Directions has just started its run over on Podiobooks.com and popped into the charts on its first day.



So if you haven't already been listening to the podcast on stevenmcdermott.com now is the perfect time to get on board with the help of Podiobooks, which allows you to set up a customized listening schedule. The first five stories are available now and I'll be releasing another one each week until all 20 stories are available.

Podiobooks has 123 books available for your listening pleasure. So check them out!

Fresh Sludge

In all the excitement over releasing the stories for STORYGLOSSIA Issue 20 I neglected to remind those not on the podcast feed that I had started releasing new episodes of the Winter of Different Directions podcast. Ten days or so back Episode 18: Four Flash Fictions went live (Listen 25:19 mins, 17.5 mb), which, as the title indicates, is a mash up of flash pieces (previously published but not included in the collection). And then yesterday Episode 19: Fresh Sludge went live (Listen 28:48 mins, 19.8 mb). "Fresh Sludge" was published in one of my favorite literary journals, the ever edgy Thieves Jargon, edited by Matt DiGangi. No commentary on this one now because there was this post when the story first appeared. "Fresh Sludge" is in the collection, as are the stories in the next two episodes. After that I'll podcast some new stories as podcast exclusives. And then in the fall, well, I can't say because it's the super secret new project I'm working on . . .

Winter of Different Directions in Print

For those of you not listening to the podcast, Winter of Different Directions is now available on Amazon . . .





If you support independent book stores, the ISBN for ordering is: 978-0615142807.

Delisted

Episode 17: Delisted of the Winter of Different Directions podcast is now available . . . Listen, if you haven't already . . . it's a long one, clocking in at 65 minutes, perfect listening for those brutal commutes.

This episode features two guest readers: The anonymous Storyglossia staffer returns, along with Seth Harwood. Big ups to both of them for helping add some texture to the voices on this episode!

The Story Behind the Story of "Delisted" is that I wrote this story in an attempt to dramatize things I saw while working in high-tech during the bubble years. It's a mashup of a lot of different scenarios, and combined with two other stories in the collection "My Summer Vacation" and "Risk Factors," provides an insider portrait of stuff that goes down in that world. The themes of success and failure and how do you know the difference are not new in american literature, but I wanted to capture how it felt during a unique cultural moment.

In the early drafts I experimented with different structures, but ended up going with a nearly linear progression. The first section is a flash forward designed as a hook. After that, though, the scenes march along chronologically.

When I started the story I was torn between whether it should be a novel or a screenplay, and this short story version has a bit of both elements in it. Many of the sections are structured as they would be in a screenplay, adhering to the principle of entering the scene at the last possible moment and exiting at the earliest possible moment. The prose in those sections is also leaner and focused on the dialogue. Other sections reflect the pace and depth of a novelistic approach with more interiority, more back story, and more descriptive passages.

At 7800 words, this version is quite long for a short story , but I think the mix of styles makes it read shorter, and the fast-paced, screenplay-style sections provide energia. I still haven't decided whether the longer version will be a novel or a screenplay, but am trying to work that out in a sequel story.

Well, that's a wrap for the Winter of Different Directions podcast. I have a bunch of other stories and some longer projects in work and will bring those to you in podcast format later in the year. In the meantime, be on the lookout for the audio versions of the blog.

Thanks for listening and reading!

Winter of Different Directions - The Story

Episode 16: Winter of Different Directions of the Winter of Different Directions podcast is now available . . . Listen, if you haven't already . . .

This episode features an anonymous Storyglossia staffer guest reading in the role of Jessica. After recording her parts she said she felt as though she'd experienced the whole relationship in 15 minutes. I know she'd appreciate some feedback, so post comments for her and maybe she'll reveal her identity!

The Story Behind the Story of "Winter of Different Directions"—recently a finalist in the 2006 Emerging Writer's Network contest—is that I had been wanting to write another story with golf in it and while I was casting about for themes and settings Tiger Woods went out and destroyed the field at the 2000 U.S. Open; winning by fifteen shots. After that performance you could just see his fellow pro's careers and dreams evaporate. Envy and resentment became my themes. Debilitating envy and resentment. I wanted to place the story in a local context so rather than the grand stage of professional golf (already well-done in "Dead-Solid Perfect" and "Tin Cup") I made it about ex-college teammates one of whom—Skip-ski—never made the jump to the pros.

One of the fun things about writing this story was turning the narrative over to the shadow elements; literally with Skip's behavior, and then figuratively as the symbolism layered in on revision.

Also, I was working on a screenplay at the same time, so many of the scenes in the story have a screenplay style and feel to them (as do several other stories in the collection). The first draft, particularly, looked like a screenplay, but with each successive draft I built up the narrative elements. If it weren't so expensive to shoot these scenes, I think this story would make a good short-film. The actors playing Skip and Jessica could have a lot of fun with the roles.

The other thing I worked on in this story is letting the characters be defined by their actions. So there is minimal backstory. Context—Skip and Cleve being teammates, for example—but no psychological, emotional, or other biographical information about Skip. That was partly in reaction to the previous story ("Cleanliness is Next to Emptiness," which is in the collection but not being read for the podcast) that I'd worked on, which had a lot of that interiority stuff. But it also reflects an aesthetic judgement that Skip's feelings toward his ex-teammate are sufficiently explained by the context. Competition and envy and resentment are universal, are they not? "Winter" is my take on those themes.

The podcast is winding down. I'll be back in a couple of weeks with "Delisted," an encore story that will feature a couple of guest readers, including STORYGLOSSIA contributor ("What Happened to Everything" and "Tattooed People") Seth Harwood, the author of the podcast-only novel Jack Wakes Up. Seth will be reading multiple roles, so be sure to tune in for that one.

Thanks for listening and reading! Subscribe, spread the word, and provide some feedback for this episode's guest reader.

Gas Money

Episode 15: Gas Money of the Winter of Different Directions podcast is now available . . . Listen, if you haven't already . . .

"Gas Money" is the last story I wrote for the Winter of Different Directions collection. And because every story in the collection had been worked on at Carkeek Park in north Seattle—usually at this picnic table . . .



I decided to set the majority of the story at the park.

I do my best writing outdoors in a natural setting. Over time Carkeek Park became a kind of talisman for my writing. Every time I was stuck on a story I'd go to the park, hike through the woods down to the beach, and end up at what became my favorite park bench to write first drafts and revisions and make edits. Every story page in the collection has spent time on the burnished wood of this picnic table.

The Story Behind the Story . . . is that one day when I was at the park revising "Fresh Sludge" a beat-up old panel van parked nearby and a scroungy guy set up a manual typewriter at another picnic table. He spent a couple of hours pecking away and stuffing whatever he was typing into manilla envelopes (undoubtedly submissions to literary journals). He was still going at it when I left. Although I didn't start working on the story for a couple of weeks, I knew right then that I would write a story about that guy and his typewriter.

I have a couple of different versions of a story called "Fly-by-night" that is about a landscaper who has a habit of skipping town. Neither of those stories are included in Winter, but you can listen to the short-short version over on my podcast and readings page. Some of Radcliffe's—Mr. Gas Money—back story can be found in "Fly-by-night." I toyed with the idea of giving this character the novel treatment, but more likely it will be a series of linked stories, with the longer version of "Fly-by-night" as the beginning followed by "Gas Money" and one or two other stories showing his later exploits.

As with most of the stories in the collection, "Gas Money" has an open ending and reflects my ongoing attempts to resist explicit closure in short fiction. Thus at the end the story you don't know for certain whether he got the job or not. The aesthetic at work here is that the journey is more important than the destination. Radcliffe is at the bottom. The point of the story is not whether he makes it off the bottom, but what actions does he take, what character does it take, to do so. By withholding the answer to the most obvious question posed by the story, I mean to turn the reader back into the story to seek from the sequence (the journey) their own interpretation. What traits has he shown? He's on the precipice of a defining moment. Already made a break from his old patterns by admitting his situation to the bank manager. What do you think? Will he say what needs to be said to win the job? But even knowing that answer still leaves the larger question: How will he end up? And isn't that also the open ended question of our lives? Getting the job does not mean you live happily ever after. Likewise, losing the job is not the end of it all. Whatever the result of our daily dramas, the journey continues. Radcliffe knows what he needs to do and is working hard to pull it off. That's what defines him, not whether he wins or loses. Not an ending for some, to be sure, but for me, that feeling of suspension is exactly what I was after.

Next up in the Winter of Different Directions podcast is the title story: "Winter of Different Directions."

Thanks for listening and reading! Subscribe, spread the word, and keep the feedback coming.

The Bridge Back to Home

Episode 14: The Bridge Back to Home of the Winter of Different Directions podcast is now available and it's once again time to make fun of my mongrel scottish accent . . . Listen, if you haven't already . . .

"The Bridge Back to Home" is a story that I've had kicking around forever, or at least since I switched from poetry to literary fiction. (Little known fact: I published a fair amount of poetry in what are now mostly defunct literary journals. My influences then were Nicanor Parra, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, and the french surrealists. So how'd I get from there to realist short stories? That's a story for another time . . .) Anyway, parts of this story have been around for many years and many drafts. Parts of it, however, are new for this version.

The Story Behind the Story is that when I first started working on this piece I lived in an apartment beneath a couple who were always fighting. Lots of screaming and yelling, door slamming, and glass breaking. One night it escalated and he was clearly beating her so I called the police. They came an arrested him. A few days later her father and brother helped her move out. If you've listened to the story already, you know that what I just described is not the setting for the story. But it is what made me want to write the story. At the same time I was toying around with a bunch of material set in Scotland, trying to write something that captured the sense of history, especially the pagan overtones, that seem imbued in the walls and the woods, the bridges and the burns beneath them. So I took the scene of abuse I'd overheard and moved it to a Halloween bonfire in Scotland.

The problem has always been to build a story around that core incident. Some would say that the problem was that I was trying to do exactly that. Perhaps. I've lost track of how many different drafts this story has been through, but I have 21 completely different versions. Four of which have been through workshops in three different university's writing programs. The core scene is in short-shorts, and it's in a rough draft novel. In a version similar, but with a different frame, it's a story in an inwork collection of linked stories set in Scotland. Part of my attachment to this piece is that that core incident is the first great scene that I wrote. It opened up the possibilities of fiction to me. I more or less quit writing poetry after that.

Most of the early versions of the story were in the faux-memoir genre. I was trying to do a set-piece epiphany, with predictable results. Too sentimental, too melodramatic, trying way too hard to create meaning. This version has a darker edge to it. The narrator still has his regrets, his shame, but he's acted on it, is negotiating a truce with himself.

I've revised this story so many times that the techniques seem blatant to me now: the frame, the foreshadowing, the use of exposition as ammunition, the reordering of the linear sequence. But if you are into craft, they are worth a look. As an editor I'm always nagging about starting your story with a hook. The first sentence in this story is an example of what I'm talking about.

For better of for worse, it's recorded now—the final version. Give it a listen and let me know what you think.

Next up in the Winter of Different Directions podcast is "Gas Money," which some of you may have read already in Dan Wickett's Holiday Gift email, the EWNs HGM.

Thanks for listening and reading! Subscribe, spread the word, and keep the feedback coming.

Eiderdown

That's a wrap . . . Episode 13: Eiderdown of the Winter of Different Directions podcast is now available . . . Listen, if you haven't already . . .

The Story Behind the Story is that the first draft of "Eiderdown" was written as an attempt to write a "lighter" story after I'd written a bunch of dark stories. The core incident comes from something I overheard. Two friends make a trip to the coast. When they get to the hotel room he sees that there is just one bed. She made the reservations so he assumes, you know, but when he puts the moves on her that night in bed he's rebuffed. That storyline seemed a bit too familiar. So, for my story, I flipped things around a couple of ways and then started working on developing the Lori character and creating a context for the core incident.

I took an early draft of this story into an MFA workshop in which I turned out to be the only guy. So there I was, with this story written from Lori's POV, in a small room with seven women . . . . Actually received some wonderful feedback that helped with the nuances of the POV. Funny thing was that they didn't like the Lori character. Dissed on her as if she were a real girl. That's what convinced me to keep going with the story.

Next up in the Winter of Different Directions podcast is another Scotland story: "The Bridge Back to Home."

Thanks for listening and reading! Subscribe, spread the word, and keep the feedback coming.

Go

The Winter of Different Directions podcast is back in the Panic Room. Here's episode 12: Go. Listen, if you haven't already . . .

"Go" was originally published in Westview the literary journal of Southwestern Oklahoma State University. The Story Behind the Story is that I started off trying to write a golf story with choking as a theme. For the first few drafts the story's title was "Fade to Glory." Early on, though, it was too one-track, all about the golf, so I started casting about for other threads I could weave into the story. At that time I was also wanting to write something with an emphasis on place that wasn't so obviously about place. Not sure I hit the mark here, but working at Boeing is about as iconic a Seattle job as you can get, so having Carter work at the Lazy-B seemed perfect (yes, I been there, done that, too). I messed around with that for a couple of drafts, but the story still seemed to need more so that was when I added the thread about his wife going for an out-of-town job interview. I changed the title to "Can't Get There from Here" and burned through a couple of more drafts trying to frustrate Carter. The story didn't gel, however, until I changed the title once again to "Go," which came about after I wrote the current ending; a new entrant on draft nine or so. With the title change and a new ending, I went back and rewrote all the golf sections, completely recasting that part of the story.

Structurally, "Go" is quite traditional with a linear arc. What I did try to do, however, is weave the three threads—golf tournament, stowbin drama, Susan's job interview—into a single narrative without closing any of them off, so that when the story ends you are not—at least on the surface of the story— exactly sure how any of the threads resolve.

Reading this for the podcast, it seemed I may have overplayed the couple's dilemma: how to resolve the disparate needs of two careers in a relationship? But I don't know . . . it is undoubtedly a common problem now . . . that has, however, not always been the case. One reflection of how our culture has evolved . . . and that was something I wanted to capture in the story. Let me know what you think.

Next up in the Winter of Different Directions Podcast will be "Eiderdown."

Thanks for listening and reading! Subscribe, spread the word, and keep the feedback coming.

Enter Wheelchair Man

Back at you from the Panic Room with the Winter of Different Directions podcast . Here's episode 11: Enter Wheelchair Man. Listen, if you haven't already . . .

The Story Behind the Story is that many years ago while at a Metallica concert I saw a guy in a wheelchair—although now I wonder if I didn't actually make that up, too—crowd surfing the mosh pit in front of the stage. One of those moments that went into my writer's brain, a scene I knew I would write about someday. What could be that guy's story? Anyway, "Enter Wheelchair Man" is my attempt to affix a story to that improbable scene.

The story was difficult to get started. For a long time I wasn't even sure I should be writing about someone in a wheelchair. What right did I have to describe that experience? Then coincidentally—synchronicity, perhaps?— I ended up working with a guy in a wheelchair, although I never mentioned my story or the Metallica concert to him, and that demystified the disability, made me realize the wheelchair was just one fact about the person, and thus just one fact about my character to be.

Technically, this story owes some of it's structural quirks to feedback I received while working on my MFA. In the early drafts the story ended with the penultimate section—the natural ending, you might say—but that made the story seem as if it existed just for the ending, which it kind of did because I had that ending in mind from the beginning. So, in an effort to make the story about more than the mosh pit scene, I layered in all the stuff about Randy and Maryanne's relationship, used the new ending to reveal the progress of that relationship. I also put in the stuff about painting and chess as a two-headed diversion: symbolic and thematic points made, to be sure, but their real purpose is to get the story off the straight-line wheelchair dude returns to the mosh pit track.

Now if only Metallica would lighten up and let me use "Enter Sandman" as the background music for this podcast episode!

Next up in the Winter of Different Directions Podcast will be "Go."

Thanks for listening and reading! Subscribe, spread the word, and keep the feedback coming.

Oxygen

It was great to come back from vacation and see the feedback about the podcast in my inbox. Thanks! Here's episode 10: Oxygen. Listen, if you haven't already . . . This one was difficult because of the challenging vocalizations, but also because The Story Behind the Story is that one of my grandfathers was a fisherman who died from lung cancer and whose ashes found home in the water near the Burrows Island lighthouse. The specific events in the story, however, are made up. So much so that, upon reading the story when it was published in Passages North, family members accused me of reinventing history, which I was glad to hear, because it meant I had moved the narrative far enough away from autobiography and turned it into fiction. That said, my goal when I started writing this story was to discover truths. I found them amid the make believe.

Next up in the Winter of Different Directions Podcast will be "Enter Wheelchair Man."

Thanks for listening and reading! Subscribe, spread the word, and keep the feedback coming.

Seven Blocks North, Two Miles East

Keep that feedback about the podcast coming, it's all appreciated, even the snarky ones. No scottish accent this time, but how about a lisp. . . . In Episode 9: Seven Blocks North, Two Miles a fifth-grader loses his speech impediments and makes friends in a surprising way. Listen, if you haven't already.

"Seven Blocks North, Two Miles" was originally published in the January 2002 issue of Carve. And The Story Behind the Story is that this is another of those stories that began as a completely different story. Its original title was "Slipstream." In that story an executive of a high-tech startup company that is going down the tubes returns to the scene of his grade school humiliation seeking a reminder of what he had overcome. That story, told mostly in flashbacks, featured some of the scenes that are in "Seven," but depended for its story-ness on the final paragraph, where the executive takes out a can of spray paint and writes “Pisspail was here—22 swats in ‘67” on the side of a wall. The significance of those words will be apparent when you listen to the story. I loved that final line, it was, in fact, the whole point of writing the story. My teacher at the time—Leonard Chang—however, just dissed the heck out of the story, thought the ending was too pre-determined, that I'd steered everything to make that final line sing. Yep. That's what I thought you were supposed to do.

What I ended up doing was dumping the frame and writing an entirely new story that focused exclusively on the kid's arc. I also wrote another story, "Delisted"—which is also in Winter of Different Directions, although I won't be reading it on the podcast—that focuses on the downfall of the high-tech executive. So big ups to Leonard. Tough feedback to take at the time, but it led to two stories I wouldn't have written otherwise. And I still have some thematic material in those early drafts of "Slipstream" that will eventually make it into a third story. The lesson I learned was that the early drafts should be thought of as a departure point. Don't get too locked in on producing the story you thought you were going to write. Sometimes heading in the opposite direction is the best direction to head.

In the kraftwerks department I spent a lot of effort making this an accurate period piece: music, books, comics, athletes. etc. How many of you know what a hi-fi and vinyl are? (A hi-fi is to iPod as vinyl is to mp3.) And it is a quite traditional story in terms of arc, scenic depiction, and use of sensory details. It's hard for me to imagine writing such a tradional story as this now.

Reading this one for the podcast was extremely difficult because of all the different characters and the voices. I actually hadn't read it since it was published five years ago and was quite surprised with the gyrations I had to go through. Really points out the difference between a story that is meant to be read and one that is meant to be performed and heard. More on this point in future posts as the podcast progresses. Suffice to say that podcasting these stories has been a real eye-opener and I do think it will have a big effect on my writing in the future.

I should also admit that being able to podcast these stories is in some ways almost incomprehensible to me because—as with Tommy in "Seven Blocks North, Two Miles East— I, too, had severe speech problems when I was growing up. Even today, and more frequently than I'd like, a lifetime of coping strategies will suddenly vanish and leave me stuttering. That's one of the great things about writing: you can hide the speech impediments; except when you choose to reveal them in a story such as Seven Blocks North, Two Miles East.

Next up in the Winter of Different Directions Podcast will be "Oxygen."

Thanks for listening and reading! Subscribe and spread the word.

Nothingness

Thanks to all of you out there who have sent me emails about the podcast. It's a grand experiment and your feedback has made this an even greater experience than I imagined. So, now that we're at the halfway point in the podcast, it's time for you all to make fun of my mongrel scottish accent . . . Listen to Episode 8: Nothingness, if you haven't already.

"Nothingness" was originally published in the Fall 2001 issue of Aethlon: The Journal of Sports Literature. And The Story Behind the Story is that I did live in Scotland for a spell and one day when I was out hitting golf balls at St. Andrews I had a semi-mystical experience similar to the one described in the story. I tried for many years to get that experience into a story but struggled to make it work in a way that didn't seemed forced or hokey. I eventually came up with a version that has the same outline as this published version and took that with me when I did my MFA. The final draft owes much to Tara Ison and Darrell Spencer, each of whom pushed on me from opposite directions, and somehow out of that conflicting feedback I produced the version Aethlon published.

In the truth is stranger than fiction category, unlike the story, the real life mystical experience the story is based on was actually witnessed, and I originally had a section at the end where the narrator has a conversation with the witness who didn't realize what he'd been witnessing. That was part of what had always made me want to write about the experience and it was difficult to cut it from the story. But once I had cut it, and written the line about there being no witnesses, I knew the story was done. In retrospect it seems dead-on with the theme, as if I planned it all along. Ironically, the actual experience was what was hokey. The story didn't work until nearly everything true had been cut and what remained was almost completely fictional.

From a craft perspective, this story is somewhat unique stylistically for me because it contains a bees swarm worth of figures of speech. I tend to use literal and precise descriptions, relying on strong nouns and verbs, but for this story I went the other way and just loaded up on the similes. It took many many drafts before I was comfortable leaving them in. Early on I kept wanting to cut them because they seemed forced. Why they there then, you ask? As counterpoint to the awestruck language used to describe the mystical experience. Rhetorically, the contrast seems to bring the unapproachable experience within reach.

One other point of craft. If this story works, it's because I heaved this narrator into the dumper. He's doon and oot and seeking salvation from fifty or so perfectly struck golf shots. There isn't anybody—himself included—who thinks that's going to be enough . . . but he's on his way to the first tee nonetheless.

Next up in the Winter of Different Directions Podcast will be "Seven Blocks North, Two Miles East."

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My Summer Vacation

Hope you enjoyed Episode 7—My Summer Vacation—of the Winter of Different Directions podcast. Listen, if you haven't already.

"My Summer Vacation" was originally published in the July 2002 issue of Carve. Unfortunately, Carve doesn't maintain archives of more than it's last few issues, so the story is no longer available there, but here's a version if you want to read along while you listen to the audio.

The Story Behind the Story . . . is that this was originally supposed to be two different stories. One story idea was to render the programming life. I worked a lot of years in high-tech and saw many such programmers as Paul: straight from their dorm rooms to the corporate sweat shops. Some got unbelievably rich, yet had no lives to speak of. When this story was first published I received numerous emails from programmers saying that I had really nailed that culture. My hope was also to give a window into that world for those who had never strayed beyond the English department.

The second story involved the continuing education course catalog. My original idea was to write an experimental piece: essentially the riff on the wacky classes and that was it. Oh, and in the first draft, I had the whole class schedule listed out so you could see all the classes he was going to take.

But after writing the experimental piece I just didn't think that it worked as a story. Cool experiment, but I wanted something with more arc and more weight, and that was when I decided to merge it with my programmer story idea, which at that point was just a few pages of character notes and scene fragments. As the Paul character began developing on the page I went back and rewrote all the riffs about the classes so that they reflected aspects of Paul's character. Those riffs went from being just about the classes to being about him.

I won't belabor craft here because I actually wrote a blog post on this story back in 2003. So check that post out for some insight into how the story expanded and deepened through revision.

Next up in the Winter of Different Directions Podcast will be "Nothingness," which was originally published in Aethlon: The Journal of Sports Literature.

Thanks for listening and reading! Subscribe and spread the word.

Single Malts of the Olympic Peninsula

Hope you enjoyed Episode 6—Single Malts of the Olympic Peninsula—of the Winter of Different Directions podcast. Listen, if you haven't already. This is also a good story to read along with as you listen, so check out the published version over at Word Riot. With its focus on stream-of-consciousness it's more of a writer's story than a reader's story. By that I mean I was more focused on mastering the technical aspects of the narrative and its language than I was making it a good read (or listen), so those of you into craft and technique will have fun digging into this one. That said, the written and audio versions are symbiotic. As with all of my stories, after about the second draft, I read aloud, over and over, as I edited and revised. So the audio version brings to life the tonalities, the emotions, even the word play, which is particularly important given that this story is trapped inside the character's head. Likewise, seeing the language on the page, if you've only listened to the story, should deliver plenty of surprises.

When I had this story in workshop everyone assumed it was autobiographical, but actually it is one of the least autobiographical and the most manufactured of the stories I've written. So . . . The Story Behind the Story . . . The core story line—Gregory bailing on an AA meeting and drinking and driving his way through a storm to Forks so he can avenge his father's fist; along with the general characterizations, attitudes, and backstory—are a composite, albeit filtered through the demands of the story, and modified to meet the story's needs, of people I met and conversations (complaints) I overheard back when I had a landscape design business. Spent a lot of time with construction workers then and they were a hard drinking bunch; fucked up in more ways than one; and the sense of those guys has always stuck with me. With "Single Malts" I tried to get inside one of those composite heads.

The story was a long time building from conception to completion. First working title was "I Want a Name When I Lose," which drew from the Steely Dan song "Deacon Blues," and its lyrics: Drink scotch whiskey all night long and die behind the wheel/they've got a name for all the winners in the world/I want a name when I lose. And in the rough draft stage, Gregory driving drunk and listening to "Deacon Blues" was just one short scene. The story at that time was basically scene-driven, realistic, and with a lot of flashbacks. But, I don't know, with that structure the story just never seemed to gel; too deterministic, too driven by the original idea.

For another story, and at Darrell Spencer's urging—and if you like short stories and haven't read his work . . . he's the only writer to have won both the Flannery O'Connor and the Drue Heinz awards for his short story collections—I had been trying to ditch interior monologue and learn free indirect discourse. So Spencer turned me on to Dorrit Cohn's Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. And I spent some time studying that book and its sources while also experimenting in my writing with the various modes. Eventually I sat down to tackle the rewrite of "Name When I Lose" with the intention or recasting it in free indirect discourse. Some influences should be mentioned, which might help you understand the literary conversation this story is trying to take part in: James Joyce's Ulysses, particularly chapter eight, "Lestrygonians;" Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse; Stanley Elkin's "Her Sense of Timing" from Van Gogh's Room at Arles; and Colum McCann's "Step We Gaily, On We Go" from Fishing the Sloe-Black River. All of those were points of reference for the kind of texture and use of language that I wanted my revised story, now called "Single Malts of the Olympic Peninsula," to express.

One point on craft: With this type of narrative, it is easy for the language to lose itself in the stream, so one of the techniques I used to both ground the language and express character, was to adopt some tropes. In this case, it is the varieties of single malts, the tasting notes; carpentry tools and associated lingo; and the botanical names of plants. Scotch, woodworking, and plant names are core to Gregory's path through life, so the language of those three permeates his consciousness and acts as a filter through which he perceives and expresses. As you listen to (or read) the story, notice how often he describes things using the language of single malts, woodworking tools, and plant names/characteristics.

As you might imagine, given the technical challenges of free indirect discourse, this was not an easy story to write, nor was it much fun. Just too grueling. I finally had to go to the Olympic Peninsula to get it done. I rented a room for three days at Lake Quinault Lodge and then, after hiking through the rainforest and writing down pages of descriptive detail, I locked myself in the room for three days and didn't come out until I had a complete draft of the story in free indirect discourse. That was not the last draft, of course, just the one that made the story.

So that's The Story Behind the Story for "Single Malts of the Olympic Peninsula." Next up in the Winter of Different Directions Podcast will be "My Summer Vacation."

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Crane Man

Hope you enjoyed Episode 5—Crane Man—of the Winter of Different Directions podcast. Listen, if you haven't already. And if you've yet to give the podcast a try, this is the perfect episode to get started because "Crane Man" is a bit of a departure for me: something fun. So give it a listen . . .subscribe . . . and spread the word . . .because it's the Winter of Different Directions.

The Story Behind the Story is that for a spell prior to moving to San Diego my wife and I lived in an apartment along the waterfront in downtown Seattle. We'd just sold our three-bedroom house and were feeling claustrophobic now that we were living in a tiny one-bedroom apartment. Shortly after we moved in, a construction crane went up, and, in addition to partially blocking our view of the mountains, it was helping to construct a hotel. One day, just joking around, I said, You know, there are only three locations here where Crane Man can't see us. I thought about it for a moment, and then said, That's a great first line for a short story . . .

I wrote a bunch of notes and sketched out bits and pieces, but didn't write the first draft until after we'd move south, and then, of all places, I finished that draft sitting in a public library in Beaumont, CA with a bunch of grade-schoolers enjoying story time with their teachers not ten-feet away, but that is another story.

The first draft was quite tongue-in-cheek, the sections even had titles: Hello, Crane Man; Cat and Mouse; The Tail; Surveillance; Photo Shoot; Blow-up; Goodbye, Crane Man— part of me wishes I'd stuck with those, but the story comes off smoother without them. That first draft was about twice as long as the published story, which appeared in Scarecrow, and as I took the story through several drafts I focused on making it tighter and removing all the extraneous descriptions and philosophizing. For the final couple of drafts I just kept reading the story out loud over and over and tweaking words as I went; just really trying to nail the narrative voice of Crane Man's foil.

I had a lot of fun writing this story and learned a few things about applying the old reductio ad absurdum to fiction that will be showing up in some of my new stories, the post-Winter of Different Directions stories.

So give "Crane Man" a listen and let me know what you think . . . that's what I want to know. Next up in the Winter of Different Directions Podcast will be "Single Malts of the Olympic Peninsula."

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Blue Jeans and Black Leather

Hope you enjoyed Episode 4—Blue Jeans and Black Leather—of the Winter of Different Directions podcast. Listen (12:49 mins 8.9 mb), if you haven't already .

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"Blue Jeans and Black Leather," which was originally published in Red Wheelbarrow, is another story that saw far less revision than is typical for my stories. The Story Behind the Story is that I did in fact work the graveyard shift at a convenience store (although, unlike the clerk in the story, I read a whole semester's worth of Victorian literature while on the job) and experienced numerous events that I thought would make good fodder for stories: A truck that caught fire while parked at the front door; a car that drove off with the nozzle for the gas pump still in the tank; the chick that wanted to do it doggy-style on the bags of Puppy Chow; the robber that took the whole cash register; the knife fight behind the counter; the gang of high-school kids— 30 of them—that stormed the store and stole 40 half-racks of beer. I wrote all of those—and more—down, but couldn't seem to turn any of them into decent short stories. Then one day, deep in pain with a rotator-cuff injury, and with 45 minutes to kill before leaving for a torture—excuse me, physical therapy—appointment, I decided to write a story of an aborted robbery. The goal was to get it down fast without thinking too much, just get the first draft on paper before having to leave for my appointment. Also in mind was to put more tension into the event than all those real-life moments actually had.

So, yeah, a story that received a pushcart nomination and was adapted into a short film, was essentially fully baked in 45 minutes. Not quite that simple, of course, but I do think the arbritrary deadline and the non-thinking approach to that first draft freed me from numerous impediments.

The revision process focused mostly on sensory details. First draft was all action; what happens and the dialogue. All the appeals to the senses: sounds, smells, etc. came on the subsequent revisions. The other thing I focused on with the revisions was tightening the dialogue: I wanted to achieve as much tension as possible from the least amount of words. That goal also caused me to zero in on the character's actions in and around the dialogue, so I tried to make body language count as much as the words.

So, regardless whatever personal experience might have been kernel for the first draft, with each subsequent draft I was ruthless in trying to make it more dramatic and to make it carry more meaning, which was how the ending came about, why the story couldn't just end when they shoved out through the door.

One thing I learned as the story was being adapted for film is that, as a writer, if you don't provide backstory for the characters it will be provided for you. This story was all about the incident, so I left out the backstory, but if you watch Richard Skrip's movie version you'll see that he focused more on what led up to the incident and thus its significance for BJ and BL.

Next week on the Winter of Different Directions Podcast and in this litblog will be "Crane Man."

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Tools

Hope you enjoyed Episode 3—Tools—of the Winter of Different Directions podcast. Listen, if you haven't already.

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The feedback on "Tools" (which was published in The Angler) has been pretty much unanimous, both men and women can't stand Corey, and more than a few people have suggested that I should write a sequel and kill the bastard off. Yeah, he's a despicable character, which was tough to write, but the feedback lets me know I did my job because that's why I wrote the story . . . So, The Story Behind the Story . . .

A friend was dating a guy who left his tools at her house even when he went to work and she suspected he had another girlfriend up north. Yeah, I said, and another set of tools! She dumped him pretty quickly, so I never got to meet him or find out what his story was. Good thing, because that left me free to make it up. Probably a year went by before I wrote the first draft. I just kept thinking about what that guy had been up to, knowing that I would eventually write a story about him and his tools, but hadn't even written any notes to that point; it was just a story-kernel slow roasting in my head. And then one day I had this vivid image of the guy sitting in the kitchen having breakfast with kids, and I sat down and started writing. I pretty much wrote the first draft of the story in one sitting, taking only a short break for lunch. Probably seven hours total, writing it out in long hand. As soon as I finished the draft I knew I had something and fired up the computer and immediately started typing up the draft, doing some minor editing as I went. Stayed up until 4:30 in the morning getting that second draft done.

"Tools" didn't go through as many drafts as most of my stories. The only major revision was that I started layering in backstory after the third draft. Mostly it was word tweaking and getting into his head, getting his rationale on the page so you could see he was bad through and through. Oh, and in the very last draft, I had Corey steal Rachel's stereo. Just one of those stray thoughts I had, one of those what ifs that seemed to make him an even bigger bastard.

From a craft perspective what is a different about this story—and some will surely claim it is a defect— is that Corey doesn't change. And that also is the point. Yes, stories are supposed to have character arcs, but when I was working on this story I just didn't think that kind of arc was realistic. For the most part, people don't change. So one of the things I set out to do in the story was show a character confronting his behavior and deciding not to change. His epiphany comes at the beginning of the story, in that kitchen with the little bastards, and what he decides to do is stick with his same MO. What follows is a different kind of arc: a series of scenes where he pulls up stakes, moves on, not because he is changing, but because he isn't.

So, should I write a sequel and treat Corey to some raw justice? Maybe Rachel tracking him down to get her stereo back? Let me know what you think!

Coming up Sunday in the Winter of Different Directions Podcast and in this litblog will be "Blue Jeans and Black Leather," which was originally published in Red Wheelbarrow, the literary journal of DeAnza College in Cupertino, California.

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Swept Aside

Hope you enjoyed Episode 2—Swept Aside—of the Winter of Different Directions podcast. Listen, if you haven't already.

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With "Swept Aside" I learned some excellent lessons about revision, particularly in my interchanges with the editors at The Angler, so I'll use this occasion to pass on some of those lessons, but first . . . The Story Behind the Story . . .

"Swept Aside" came about when I'd accompanied my wife on one of her business trips. She had a three-day consulting gig in Camas, WA and we stayed on the other side of the Columbia river in Gresham, OR. She had the car and I was on foot, except when I took the light rail into Portland to go shopping at Powell's, where I spent more on books than we paid for the hotel room. For several hours each day I walked around Gresham jotting down scenery notes. I began the story sitting in an IHOP, sated on strawberry waffles, writing a skeleton of the story's second section. No idea where I was going at that point, just knew I wanted to set a scene there in Gresham. It wasn't the 4th of July, and I hadn't invented Skeeter yet. All that came later. My starting point was just a guy going to visit a buddy in Gresham and trying to find the house.

So I had a scene in search of a story. Plus one of those stupid pacts we writers make with ourselves: I was going to leave Gresham with the first draft of a new story.

Couple of influences as I started scribbling in search of a story. The first was the Frederick Barthelme influenced "The 39 Steps: A Primer on Story Writing" from The Center for Writers at The University of Southern Mississippi. But step 1 was really all I needed to create a first draft: " . . . do some drive-bys." Yeah! The second influence was Francis Bacon's triptych paintings. I love the visceral quality of Bacon's paintings and thought the triptych structure was fascinating, and so decided to write the story using a similar three panel structure. Here are links to several of Bacon's triptych's in case you are not familiar with them:

Crucifixion 1944
Triptych 1972
Triptych 1973
Triptych 1983

One of the themes in Bacon's paintings is tortured relationships, so I started playing around with that theme. A fracturing relationship and it's aftermath. I sketched out the last scene first. No street sweeper at this point. That was one of those Flannery O'Connor style gifts (e.g. the wooden leg) that came a few drafts down the road. Just a guy sitting out front of a house working up his nerve. Then I tried about a dozen or so scenarios for the first scene before settling on one (but not the one in the story now) that sets things in motion. So I left Gresham with three rough scenes: a triptych.

It would be a couple of years and a dozen rewrites—though none of them were re-visions—before the story was (though, not really) ready to be sent out. It quickly collected a few rejections, and taking another look at it I realized I'd botched the beginning with a bunch of pace killing backstory. I cut 99% of it and then submitted to The Angler, thinking the triptych experiment might be appreciated.

And thus began the lesson in revision. Editor Donavan Hall's and Associate Editor Peter Anderson's initial responses were lukewarm. Basically, the three-panel triptych structure wasn't working very well in the linear constraints of having to read the sections sequentially. Pete thought the device that began the story was "tired" and that the 2nd section— the centerpiece of the triptych— was disconnected from the rest of the story. I could go on, but you get the idea. In addition to some good line edits, Donavan suggested that my beginning panel could start much later; it really didn't matter what caused the relationship to come undone because the story was about what came next.

Back to my writer's desk I went with my tail between my legs because I knew they were right, but didn't know quite what to do next because for the past six rewrites all my word-smithing had been focused on improving the very things that now needed to be undone.

What the story needed was not rewriting but re-visioning.

I was convinced that the real problem was in the first panel of the triptych, that if I ditched that and came up with a new one, the right one for the story, the center panel, contra Yeats, would hold.

Couple of weeks and a dozen attempted scenes later—all losers—I was stymied and getting ready to send Donavan an email to say the revision just wasn't happening.

At the time I had one foot on the island where I now reside and was spending 3-4 hours a day commuting. Those long drives were writing time, mostly in my head, but I kept a notebook on the seat to scribble down stuff I didn't want to forget. During one of those drives I had this thought: He pulls out a Swiss Army knife and carves Fuck You in the door. And I knew instantly that I had the new first panel of my triptych. Below are the four pages of notes I scribbled— in between shifting and steering—the whole scene in my head in a flash.






I know a lot of writers and teachers think craft is a dirty word; they come from the inspiration school of writing, think fiction should be organic, unconscious, a gift from the muse, not something that you should consciously try to make happen. Ok, so there it is, the gift I received from the muse. But to see how it was transformed by the conscious use of craft, check out the finished product in The Angler 4.

An entirely new first section was not the only change I made for the final revision, equally as big, though much smaller in words, was conceding that the isolation of the triptych panels didn't work. So I pulled the thread through, stitched the panels together. In the last third of the first section I added:

That left Skeeter, my old army buddy. I’d have to give him a call, see if he’d let me hang out until it was time to return to Singapore.

Now connected to the beginning of the second section:

. . . which made it difficult for me to concentrate as I tried to find Skeeter’s house. It had been five years since I’d seen Skeeter . . .

Previously Skeeter hadn't been mentioned in the first section at all. And then, at the beginning of the final section I added this key connective tissue:

At Skeeter’s urging, I was there to work things out . . .

The final touch in this line of revision comes just before the arrival of the street sweeper, when Skeeter delivers a tweaked version of some lines from the Cream rendition of Robert Johnson's "Crossroad's Blues":

But even drunk and wielding a shotgun, Skeeter gave me no odds on getting even and getting away. His last words of encouragement? You’re down on your knees at the crossroads, buddy, is what Skeeter said. Ask the Lord to save you if he pleases, Skeeter said. But I do believe you be sinking down.

Triptych in miniature. Abandoning some of the "39 Steps," the ones about trying not to mean too much, allowed me to convert the isolated scenes into story.

One other change involved shifting some of the backstory that was in the third section into the first section. The technique I used was to have Kym Lee's lines of dialogue be exposition as ammunition causing the narrator to reflect on his situation. To show what I mean, here's the second line:

   —I already told Jackie and Steve, she said. They said it’s about fucking time.
   She slammed the door shut again. That wasn’t an option anyway; they were her friends. The only other friends I had were our friends, which aren’t any kind of friends at all. Not the kind that would help me move, or call me to ask how I was getting on. Not the kind that would give me a place to stay for a few days.

In the previous version these thoughts came in the third section as he sat in the car. Now they come as a result of what Kym Lee says. That's where the conscious use of craft comes in. Take the gift from the muse, then work with it to improve the whole story, not just the new scene.

So that's The Story Behind the Story . . .Big thanks to editors Donavan Hall and Peter Anderson for pushing me take this one further. Their feedback was instrumental in helping this story across the threshold.

In a further nod to Donavan who also writes about beer for The Spirit World, as well as discusses brews, among other topics on his podcast "The Daily Catch" and in his blog "Catch & Release," mass quantities of Pyramid Snow Cap Ale were killed during the production of the two Angler episodes of my podcast. And, of course, the beer that Rick and Skeeter are drinking is Rogue's Dead Guy Ale.




Cheers, guys! Next week in the Winter of Different Directions Podcast and in this litblog is "Tools" published in the premier issue of The Angler.

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It's Now Winter at the iTunes Store

You can now subscribe to the podcast of my short story collection Winter of Different Directions directly from the iTunes store. The readings are free and there's fifteen more stories coming your way. Each Sunday I'll be releasing a new mp3. So subscribe now and you won't miss an episode.

Tough Act

Hope you enjoyed Episode 1—Tough Act—of the Winter of Different Directions podcast. Listen, if you haven't already.

Subscribe and the spread the word...this isn't the winter of bird flu...it's the Winter of Different Directions.

And now . . . The Story Behind the Story . . .

"Tough Act," was previously published in SmokeLong Quarterly—my thanks to the editorial staff for publishing the story and for providing such a great venue for shorter fiction. SmokeLong is one of the premier sites on the web for flash fiction so get over there and be amazed.

"Tough Act" has a convoluted history, in fact its origins go back further than just about any story I've written. It owes its existence to the very first story I had published—"Caught"—which appeared longer ago than I care to think about in an also long ago defunct journal which shall remain nameless because there is another publication out now with a similar name. "Caught" was (is?) about 1200 words, also in first-person, and dramatizes a group of kids throwing snowballs at cars, getting chased, caught, and then being let go after giving fake names. What lesson did they learn? That getting chased is a blast. So at story's end they rush off to throw snowballs at more cars.

Uh, yeah, big chunk of autobiography in that one.

Sometime later, and for an undergraduate writing class, I wrote a much longer story called "Just Throwing Snowballs" that wrapped a frame around "Caught" (which was a one-scene story). The narrator is older, married, living in the same neighborhood as when he threw snowballs as a kid, and when the current neighborhood kids throw snowballs at him as he's on his way home for lunch—well, I'll spare you the full plot, which included sex; suffice to say he succumbs to nostalgia and decides to give chase, not out of anger, but to give the kids a thrill (starting to sound familiar?).

That story went through many permutations—most of them painful to look at now—until I had, after about 15 revisions, a 6000+ word story that began with a car crash and worked backwards to show how just throwing snowballs brought about that end.

Can you sense what was wrong with that never published version?

After the story gathered dust for a few years, I took another run at it and cut away all the extraneous stuff until I had a version—still called "Just Throwing Snowballs"—but that now ended with the car crash. See what nostalgia gets you? Busted up in a ditch.

Yep. That 2500 word masterpiece of nihilism was also never published.

Another couple of years go by and I decide to bring the story back to life. This time the brainstorm is to flip the sequence around and start later. Begin the story with the car crash. But instead of initiating the flashback, the story starts there, in the ditch, as he gets up and gives chase to the assholes that did that to him. So it's a revenge story, now called, for the first time, "Tough Act." Alas, I couldn't resist reintroducing all that nostalgia stuff, blah, blah, blah. And it collected a bunch of rejections before I stopped sending it out.

Another year goes by. I decide to make one last revision attempt and strip it down to the two core scenes you see today, although that version was nearly twice as long as the version published in SmokeLong. I sent the story to VerbSap. And then a remarkable thing happened. Editor Laurie Seidler rejected the story. But she also suggested I make the story more minimal and even sent me some edits just to illustrate the style she was looking for in VerbSap. Essentially a not that, but this rewrite of a few paragraphs. She didn't ask for a rewrite or suggest that one was welcome. Just offered kindly editorial feedback. (Thank you!)

To be honest, I had never considered doing a short-short version let alone a minimal one. I'd always thought of it as long story (all that nostalgia stuff, you know). Skeptical, but willing, and more as an exercise than anything, I gave the minimal approach a shot.

Couple of revisions later I had the story down under 1400 words and even though she didn't ask for it I sent the revision to Laurie at VerbSap.

She liked what I'd done with the story, but thought it too dark for VerbSap. Fair enough. So now what?

I decided, just for fun, mind you, to see if I could get the story down to 1000 words. I cut and cut and cut and could only get down to 1200. I was still hung up on that nostalgia stuff. Well, it was, after all, the very reason that I wrote the story in the first place.

And then I finally decided to cut the following passage—one of "my darlings"—

The clouds are a gray shroud sifting snow upon the neighborhood. A streetlight flickers, sparks on; the falling flakes become lit like moths, dance excitedly to earth. I turn my headlights on even though it is still early afternoon, and the beams shoot out across the snowy streets, leading me on as if they are reins. The blizzard has created a white tapestry of snowy roofs, feathered trees, shrubs, and fence posts adorned with puffy topnotches. The soft snow drapes the neighborhood with beauty, purity, innocence, shades of meaning not otherwise there. I am lulled by the steady drop of the snowflakes, the swish and squeak of the wipers, the nostalgic memories of my youth.

And cutting that—the paragraph I was in love with—freed me to make more cuts and very quickly I was pretty damn lean and sitting at 997 words, but not done yet.

I dug into my archives and found "Caught" (a typewritten—and I mean as done on a typewriter—version). As I read I saw what had been so good in that long ago story about throwing snowballs and waded into "Tough Act" again, lopping out words that six months previously I would have bet I never would have cut.

So here we are, at least 40 revisions and half-a-dozen completely different stories later, with the published version of "Tough Act" clocking in at 898 words.

You writers know this is true: As much as I love this version of the story, there is a part of me that still pines for all that nostalgia stuff I cut out. I know there is a story there, a huge story, lurking behind a grown man and punk kid fighting in the snow. Maybe "Just throwing Snowballs" wasn't it, but I still think I'll discover that story someday.

~~~~~~~~

One note on craft. A big focus in this story was the verbs. Even way back in the longer versions I had used a highlighter and marked every single verb in the manuscript and just kept revising until I had the most precise verbs. I did the same with nouns, but verbs were the real focus. Just look at the verbs in the story's first sentence: flinch, swerve, flattens, and sticks. Sometimes you'll need less precision to convey a different meaning, sound, or pace, but most of the time you want that kind of precision with your verbs.

Take the highlighter test. Pick the most recent story you have "finished." Now, using three different colored highlighters, mark the "to be" verb forms in one color, the adverbs in another color, and all the remaining verbs with the third color. You know what the task is. Excise as many of the "to be" verbs and adverbs as you can. Make the remaining verbs as precise as you can. Let the story sit for a week. Repeat the process. If you like the results (and trust me, you will), go after the nouns and adjectives next. Try to replace all indefinite pronouns (e.g. "it") with a noun. Results are guarnteed. Maybe writing can't be taught, but revision techniques such as that sure can.

~~~~~~~~

Ok. That's the story behind "Tough Act." Next week on the Winter of Different Directions podcast and here in the litblog it will be "Swept Aside," which was published in The Angler.

If you haven't done so yet, subscribe to the Winter of Different Directions Podcast.

Podcast 'Eve

Yes, it's Podcast 'Eve and I'm bouncing off the walls in the panic room because the Winter of Different Directions podcast is on the air!

To listen to the intro or subscribe to the podcast feed, just click on those links or head over to stevenmcdermott.com.

Each week I will be reading a story from my short story collection Winter of Different Directions and bringing it to you free as an mp3 you can listen to from your browser or download into your iPod or other mp3 player.

In addition to the podcast on stevenmcdermott.com, each week I will also be posting commentary on the story here in the Storyglossia litblog. In a feature I'm calling "The Story Behind the Story" I'll give you some history on where the story came from, why I wrote it, how it changed in its various revisions, as well as discuss—in true Storyglossia fashion—some of the craft issues I was working on in the story. So look for that commentary each week right here in the litblog.

Why podcast? Why do readings? Although our literary stylings have taken us a long way from telling stories around the fire—isn't that what it all goes back to? Sitting in the semi-dark with sparks and smoke, glowing embers and flames, listening to a tribe, clan, or family member try to make sense of some experience that changed them, may in fact change us as we listen.

So there's that.

I also think the publishing industry might just have things backwards. After a torturous process, a book is published. And the writer—assuming the publisher has budget and thinks the book has half a chance of selling—goes off on a reading tour.

I say flip it around, do the readings first. Besides, most of the stories in my collection have been previously published in literary journals, anyway, so it's not like this is the first time they've been out in the world.

I'm doing the virtual reading tour first. Later in the year, after I've completed the podcast, the collection will be published in traditional print fashion—and I hope you'll buy a copy then. And if you buy the copies direct from me, I'll even autograph and inscribe them for you just as if you came into a bookstore to hear me read.

In the meantime, enjoy the free podcast of my short story collection Winter of Different Directions.

I look forward to your feedback about the podcast, which you can send to: winter AT stevenmcdermott DOT com