Wright Writes: Published Works Update

It?s been quite a while since I posted links to any of my published stories so, for anyone who might be interested, here is a recap along with some brief notes.

The first few stories in this list (from ?My Father?s Hands? through ?My Father?s Ghost?) are all semi-sequels to my first ?southern? short story, ?The White Bear?.? ?The White Bear? remains unpublished but my plan is to eventually release it as the first piece in a collection along with these ?flash fiction? pieces.? Together, they would make up one longer short story (I know how weird that sounds) covering the arc of the main characters life.? There are a few other pieces in this story-made-up-of-short-stories that have not yet been published.? I think there might also be some pieces that have not yet been written.? In the ?in-universe chronology?, the story would begin with ?The White Bear? and continue as listed below.

?My Father?s Hands? is one of two published versions of a short story that I?ve probably written eight or ten times.? I never could get the story to work out the way I wanted but I found that, in these two versions, they worked pretty well to bookend the story of the main character in a series of connected short stories.? Unfortunately, you can't read it now because it probably won't be published for a few more months.? When it is published, you'll find it in The Rusty Nail. ?On The Line? is really a much shorter reworking of an older story called ?Scraps? that was published in a litmag called Metal Scratches.? ?Scraps? was longer, more heavy-handed, more terribly written, and should never be read by anyone.? When you go to this site, don?t read the story, listen to it.? Above the story text, there is a link to an audio version read by Casey Jackson. ????????? Published online in Word Riot September 15, 2012

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?Tuesday Evening in a Small Southern Town? is another one that started as a poem and was then rewritten.? Like ?The Old Man We Saw on Bourbon Street?, this one spent a very long time (at least ten years) in unpublished poem state. ?My Father?s Ghost? is the finale of the often-written-and-rewritten story of Bud, his dad, and Lester Kegg.? This is a companion piece to ?My Father?s Hands?.

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The stories blow are little more than proof that I can?t decide on a consistent genre, style, or tone.

?This Is Bad.? Really Bad.? started as a kind of joke.? I used to post random, argumentative posts to the comments section of one of the local television stations? website.? I posted as a variety of different ?characters? just to stir things up and get the rednecks all flustered.? This one was a stream-of-consciousness bit of total nonsense that was only vaguely related to the original post.? About ten years later, I rediscovered it, liked the prose and rewrote it to give it an actual story and a point.? (Yes, there is one; it?s just not obvious!)? In doing so, I found a good bit of personal meaning in it and now I really like it.

????????? On a side note, not only did the Matter Press folks pay me for this story, but they were amazing to work with and sent me some really cool bits of art along with my check.? I love these guys and I love their journal.

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?The Old Quilt? was my entry for a flash fiction contest.? Anjali Enjeti suggested I give it a try.? All submitted stories were published but, out of more than 240 entries, mine was one of the top ten.? This is another very different kind of story for me but I like it.? Writing prompts often lead me out of my comfort zone and into plots and characters that surprise me. ?Time and Distance? is a really old story, left over from a time when I wanted to be a very different kind of writer.? This is probably from the early stages of my Raymond Carver phase in the mid 1990s.

????????? Published in Apocrypha and Abstractions December 31, 2012

?The Ballad of Judas Kane? is a western.? I?m not really a fan of westerns, but one of my favorite authors?Robert B. Parker?wrote a few so I decided to try one.? This is my first attempt at a western. And, yeah, there?s a little bit of bad writing at the end that needs to be fixed. ????????? Published online in Rope and Wire, January 3, 2013 ?TheLegend of Justice White? is another western.? I wrote this one after ?The Ballad of Judas Kane? was rejected by a very small website.? The editor told me what he preferred in an western so I wrote a new one.? I didn?t like the new one as well but he published it so... I don?t know.

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Most of my early stories were very much influenced by the work of Ray Bradbury, Alfred Hitchcock, and early Stephen King.? No matter how much I try to be a ?serious artist?, I can?t seem to stop writing dark stories with twist endings.
?Cycles? was the first story of mine to be published.? Way back in the summer of 1995, it appeared in a tiny litrag called Xtreme: The Magazine of Extremely Short Fiction, which only published stories of exactly 250 words.? Seventeen years later, I found a new home for it on a really fun site for very short horror. ????????? Published online in MicroHorror May 31, 2012

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Because I believe in recycling, ?Adrift? is basically just a much shorter (and probably better_ version of ?Day Five?.

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?The Black Box? is one of my oldest stories; however, I only recently found a place to publish it.? The story was written when I was in college but it represents the kind of thing I?d been writing since junior high.? This one should be published very soon in Hogglepot. ?The Call? was written specifically for MicroHorror but (because it?s a really light and kind of stupid story in a gimmicky format) it was rejected by MH and at least one more place before it found a home online.? This one is forthcoming online in Danse Macabre.

I also have a bit of older stuff out there which is now available thanks to Amazon self-publishing.

?The Fear Inside? is a short story that was probably written sometime in the late ?90s.? It was rewritten half a million times and was finally published online in the (now defunct) Absent Willow Review in August, 2009.? After the ?zine went away, I published the story as a Kindle Single. HaintBlue was my first attempt at writing a play.? I entered it in the Chattanooga Theatre Centre?s 2008 Festival of New Plays and won first place.? As a result, the show got a full production and ran for several performances.? No one wanted to actually publish the play though so I decided to do it myself.? It was self-published via Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions last year. Fortunesof Warren was my second play.? I entered it in the Chattanooga Theatre Centre?s 2010 Festival of New Plays and was one of three runners up.? This one got a couple of staged readings and, as with Haint Blue, no one wanted to publish or produce it so I again turned to self-publishing.? Like Haint Blue, this was on was self-published via Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions in 2011

There are also three other short stories of mine (?The End of the Road?, ?The Remarkable Business of War?, and ?The Garden?) that have been published.? For now, these are out of print and not available online or in any format.? I?m not sure I will ever even try to get them published elsewhere.? While I like ?The Garden?, ?The End of the Road? is not very good, and ?The Remarkable Business of War? is pretty goddamned terrible.

?The End of the Road? and ?The Remarkable Business of War? were printed in Chug: Unbound, the first and only literary edition of Chug, a short-lived local arts and entertainment paper published in Chattanooga.? ?End of the Road? was the winner of their fiction contest and might be the only story of mine that my father ever read.?? ?The Garden? was the winner of the Spring 1999 24 Hour Short Story Contest and was published online but is no longer available anywhere.? This one might show up somewhere else at some point.

That's all for now.? Go read.? And be sure to recommend my work to all your literary agent and/or publisher friends.? Thanks.

Source: http://wrightrants.blogspot.com/2013/01/published-works-update.html

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