a letter from Lee Martin on The Letter Project

My friend Lee Martin, finalist for the Pulitzer in fiction three years ago, was approached by the The Letter Project blog, an online journal which collects and presents letters from authors and other artists. They require the letters to have actually been mailed to the named recipient, and Lee sent his letter to me, written in response to a Facebook message I'd sent a few days earlier.

Here's the link to Lee's letter as it appears on The Letter Project website.

Eric Nguyen (1978-2007)

My friend Eric died two years ago today. He was an artist of the highest caliber, a landscape photographer of storms and tornadoes whose work endures in galleries, books, magazines, and most of all in the imaginations of those whose conception of the natural world was changed by his imagery. For those of us lucky enough to know him well, he was a terrific friend.

One of the last times we hung out, at my old house on Jasmine Street in Denton, we'd been drinking wine and talking about a December trip to Rome and Florence when Eric grew restless and wanted to walk around the block. I didn't know at the time that a new medicine he was taking gave him bursts of energy, and I was tired from a big Italian meal earlier that night with our friend and fellow chaser Robert Hall. The wine made me drowsy and unenthusiastic about the August heat. But Eric insisted and so we set out to parallel the railroad tracks along Jasmine, turned up Highland Avenue and back down Wisteria, pausing at the corner under a street lamp to examine some bugs and give the yapping dog across the street a long look at us.

This was the first week of August 2007. I was about to quit my job in a few days, resign my teaching post to spend the upcoming academic year finishing a novel and writing some nonfiction. I worried about the decision. I also thought, in those days, that I was supposed to move to New York City in order to sell a book. Networking, I thought. All this was on my mind as Eric and I continued down the street, a slight breeze from an open field offering the only relief from the humidity, and he asked about my plans, what I envisioned for the distant future rather than the more immediate changes I'd discussed with him for weeks. When was I was going to make time for a family? I didn't have good answers for him.

It wasn't small talk; Eric wasn't very good at that kind of chatter. But nor was it his habit to engage in deeply personal conversations and stay with them. There was something else going on. I can't say what my friend imagined for himself that night, about two weeks before his hospitalization and almost a month to the day before we lost him, but looking back on it now his words rang of some solemn foreknowledge, an attempt to put things in order. And if he had some notion of his own troubles which lie ahead, then the way he steered our conversation, about my plans, and how he asked if we could make a second lap after we'd finished the first, or follow the railroad tracks into the night so we could keep talking, is why I tell people he was one of the most generous spirits I've ever known.

novel-writing kit

Two blog posts I wish I'd seen a long time ago, about how to format and approach the novel synopsis (as much fun as having wisdom teeth removed sans anesthesia) and the other, a light-hearted but substantial post called "Everything You Need to Know About Writing a Novel in 1000 Words."

Thanks to blogs by Nathan Bransford and the "Guide to Literary Agents."

why I like Bing

No, not Bing Crosby, though he was cool enough to do a song with David Bowie when Bowie was, shall we say, incongruous with Crosby's family-friendly image, but I digress. I'm talking about the new Microsoft search engine, which the New York Times claims is superior to Google in many ways I don't care about. What I care about is what happened when I "binged" myself (what else would you do the first time on a new engine?) and instead of some stormchasing link topping the hit list, this blog--my dear old writers blog--poorly maintained and often neglected, emerged the winner. Which likely means my chasing board has shed nearly all its viewers over time, from a similar lack of new content, but still, it's a milestone.

So for all three of you who visit this space regularly, thanks!

dispatch from Kenyon Review Writers Workshop in Gambier, Ohio

I'm having a blast at the Kenyon Writers Workshop this week in Gambier, Ohio. This is a charming campus with a great, hard working staff who make the conference a memorable and, more importantly, productive experience for everybody. My role here is as a Peter Taylor Fellow in Fiction, assisting with Lee Martin's workshop while also producing the same amount of writing as regular students. We hold 4 hour workshops each morning and the students have individual conferences with Lee and I both. Everybody performs at least one reading from brand new work. The emphasis here is just that: generating new material to carry you through the summer. Tomorrow I'll post about what I'm working on. Meanwhile, goodnight from Gambier!

Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians

"I am not surprised by what they are doing. I know very well the weight that insinuations and nuances can be made to bear or how a question can be asked in such a way as to dictate its answer. They will use the law against me as far as it serves them, then they will turn to other methods. That is the Bureau's way. To people who do not operate under statute, legal process is simply one instrument among many."


"No matter if I told my interrogators the truth, recounted every word I uttered on my visit to the barbarians, no matter even if they were tempted to believe me, they would press on with their grim business, for it is an article of faith with them that the last truth is told only in the last extremity."

-From Waiting for the Barbarians, J.M. Coetzee, 1980

sending pages

Off goes a full manuscript of REMEDY WHEEL to an agent who liked the partial. Fingers crossed. And the request comes only hours before I'd planned to pack up the computer and printer for Wednesday's move.

"Put on the Petty" wins a Pushcart

I learned tonight that my essay, "Put on the Petty," published in the Spring 2008 issue of The Missouri Review, has been awarded a 2009 Pushcart Prize. It's a huge honor and particularly gratifying given the circumstances of that piece. I have to thank Speer Morgan, whose amazing edits created resonance and meaning I didn't know was possible, and my friends Jeff Doty, Kristen Keckler, Lee Martin, and others who helped me shape the story. And to Scott Blair, also a close friend of Eric's, who encouraged me to keep writing and to submit it, even before he'd read it, because he said he knew it was the right thing to do. Thanks, everybody.

"they're already here"

So a few minutes ago I saw the preview for the new Terminator film. Isn't it ironic that the country which produces so many scary depictions of robot/human conflict, like Battlestar Galactica, the Terminator franchise, and others, is the only one currently using robots to kill other humans in combat? We even have a scary name for them: Predator Drones.

the right place to read The House of Mirth