Sideshows

I've had some e-mail prickings (submission windows closing and direct invites, etc.) that have led me down a few side streets during this novel rewrite. Last week I rewrote the story that was a finalist for Glimmer Train and resubmitted it to three places. I'm finishing up an essay for this invitation.
I'll recommend this book to anyone!

My novel will make good progress before the end of the month. The ambitiousness of the project expands every time I write it. Imagine writing a book about your racial identity, now imagine including your eating disorder history, now imagine setting it in Africa, giving it two narrators and many people and places that would really like to keep their anonymity. Ironically, the trick to all this is to not think about it while writing it. There is no way you can produce anything that does more than touch an certain aspects of all these topics. The trick is to do justice to the aspects you "choose"