The Summer She Was Under Water Acquired by Black Lawrence Press!

Proud to announce that my second novel, The Summer She Was Under Water (2016, Queens Ferry Press) has been acquired by Black Lawrence Press and will be available in paperback in December 2017. You can preorder now, and I would be so grateful if you did. It's an amazing feeling to have both of my novels (The Tide King, 2013) in the same great family.

Upcoming Events and News: June

I just bought a new bottle of suntan lotion because I'll be the Writer in Residence at Barrelhouse's Writers Camp. From June 21-25, I'm looking forward to working with other fiction writers on their pieces, getting a little R&R somewhere in northern PA, and hanging out with the Barrelhouse crew! You can apply to be part of one of the 2018 camps here.

On June 27th, I will be reading with poet Laura Swearingen-Steadwell at the Rose O'Neill Literary House as part of Washington College's Summer Literary Salon.

For the month of June, I will be offering manuscript consultations through Black Lawrence Press. If you have a novel you want some feedback on, check it out here.

5/30/13: Some Good Reads

The Tide King is coming off the press soon—I'm so excited! If you haven't preordered, there's still time! You can visit the Black Lawrence Press website here. Also, please enter to win 1 of 10 free copies Black Lawrence Press is giving away on Goodreads. It's free, as long as you're signed up to Goodreads, and the contest ends on June 13th, so there's still plenty of time. You're feeling lucky—I know you are! The entry form is here.

Now that the second draft of my next novel is with my beloved (and extremely talented) editor (who I can't recommend enough), I am writing short stories again. It feels weird. I never thought I'd be happy going back to the short form, when the novel is so sprawling, encompassing, a great calculus equation. But there is nice algebra in short stories. It feels good to be working with different characters, in new situations. It feels good to use different words. And it's a relief to know that my story well isn't dried up.

I just finished Tim Wendel's novella Habana Libre, the story of a baseball player who must decide whether to defect to America or leave his the complicated but tantalizing Cuba. But, of course, it is more about Cuba, its inhabitants, about the invisible braids of family and duty and fear that bind us rather than physical barriers.

Like the pitchers he so often profiles (particularly in High Heat), Wendel has good mechanics. He's like Jamie Moyer; nothing flashy, but all the pitches. And if you sleep on him, he'll pop the glove behind you and put you back on the bench. Anyway, check it out on Amazon: it's published by the wonderful CityLit Press (who I worked with on City Sages: Baltimore).

Appearance on WYPR's "The Signal"

You can hear an excerpt of my forthcoming, novel, The Tide King, on WYPR's "The Signal" with Aaron Henkin. You can check out the podcast here. Also, please consider entering to win a copy from Goodreads; my publisher, Black Lawrence Press, is generously offering 10 copies to lucky readers! You can enter to win here. I hope everyone had a great mother's day!

Excerpt of Tide King

You can get a sneak peek at my forthcoming novel, The Tide King, at Roland Goity's awesome journal, Works (of Fiction) in Progress. We also talked a bit about the inspiration for the novel:

It was almost time to go. His mother would see him out the door but not to the train station. She would not watch him leave on the train, his face framed in the window, his garrison cap covering his newly shorn head. She would see him to the door, where he could go to work, to school, to the store, and in the corresponding memory of her mind, he would return. She opened the lock of the jewelry box on the kitchen table with a butter knife, the key orphaned in Reszel, Poland. He wondered whether she would produce a pocket watch, a folding knife, his father’s or his uncle’s, that he could fondle while trying to sleep on the hard earth, dirt full of blood and insides, exposed black tree roots cradling his head like witch fingers. He opened his hand, waiting. She pulled out an envelope, old and brown, and the dark, furry object he regarded. A rat carcass. A hard moldy bread. “Saxifrage.” She put the crumbly mound in his palm. “Most powerful herb. I save it until now.” He glanced at the leaves and roots spread over his palm, dried like a fossilized bird. His lips tightened. His whole life to that point a stew of herbs–chalky and bitter and syrupy in his teas, his soups, rubbed onto his knees and elbows after school. He put it back in the envelope, more fragile than the herb. “You take this.” She grabbed his palm, her knuckles blue and bulbous. “Eternal life. You take it if you are about to die. You will live. This is the only one. You understand?

To read more, go here: http://www.wipsjournal.com/?p=666

Moose Calls

It was pretty cool to change my bio this week to reflect the news from Black Lawrence Press. A few people have asked me what moose sound like, and I have to admit I have no idea. But it was definitely a surprise to get the call this week from Diane Goettel congratulating me for winning the 2012 Big Moose Prize and that my novel, The Tide King, will be published by BLP in 2013. More thoughts later this week about the journey there. Thanks to my gf for taking this new author photo. As you can see, the sausage curls are long gone.