Variousky

1) In case you were in suspense following yesterday's panic post, the reading last night went fine, the other readers were fab, as were the friends and food (all-day breakfast very soothing when in a state of freak-out, I discovered). My big fear in reading an unpublished and thus unfixed story is that I would try to fiddle with it, ie., edit, while onstage, and render myself incoherent. But I managed to contain myself, stick to the script and read a half of a brand-new story--yay!! And I think it went well, as confirmed by several persons who are, ok, my friends and brother, but are also honest enough to be trusted.

2) How can we be 20 days into the month and me just reporting to you on That Shakespearian Rag's 31 Days of Short Stories program. It's a good, occasionally critical, introduction to a wide range of stories, and also just great to see stories get this much attention.

3) More on stories: last fall, Nigel Beale did an audio interview with me about what makes a good short story. The interview touched on a lot of points from Flannery O'Connor's views on stories, good company to be in, and riff off. Nigel then did a couple more interviews in similar formats, with Nam Le and Anne Enright, also extremely good company, Highlights from all three are now available in text form in Cha, an Asian literary journal.

4) While I was writing this post, the sky turned black, the wind began to rip leaves from the tree outside my window, thunder rattled and the sky downpoured. An outstanding show--I hope you weren't outside.

There's man holding a megaphone / it must have been the voice of gad
RR