Because when you think of me, you think rock ' roll rebel

It's been a while since I've posted about my own writing. After the book came out last year, I hit a dry spell of getting things published. But this Thursday, Jenny Magazine, the literary journal associated with Youngstown State University, is publishing one of my stories.

Jenny isn't the New Yorker, but I'm really happy about this publication. Youngstown's not far from where I grew up. The college and the magazine both have a focus on working class issues. I read a few of their past editions, and they put out some good stuff. I'm proud to be part of it.

I'm also pleased this particular story found a home. It's about a teacher and her husband who take one of the teacher's students into their home when her foster care situation goes sour. The father has a hard time figuring out how to connect with the girl and be the father he needs to become. Some of that is from my real life, the part of my real life I unironically love and treasure. This is one of those stories I felt I had to find a way to tell somehow, and now others will read it. That's pretty much the best you can hope for when writing fiction.

Most of the plot is pure fiction, even if the overall concept was real to me. The father and daughter form a musical act together, which is something I've never done. It's this musical act that made the story qualify for Jenny's 15th edition, which was a themed edition: "Rock 'n Roll and Rebellion." I hardly qualify as a rebel. When I watch Les Miserables, I identify a lot more with Jean Valjean than the young revolutionaries. Since most revolutions fail, I think the best course of action for most people if they want to make the world a better place is to try to prosper in the system that's there, then show kindness to those who need it. Valjean didn't overthrow the French government, but he did make life better for Cozette and Marius, and maybe, at least until Javert messed everything up, for the people who worked in his factory.

I'm probably going to go read at the launch for this edition, where, presumably, I'll be surrounded by young people who still dream of revolution. The musical gives the revolutionaries the last word, with the final song of the score being the dream of a world when we walk in the Garden of the Lord, when "the chain will be broken and all men will have their reward."

I wish the next batch of revolutionaries well. I hope they're the ones who give us the world as it should be. For me, I've had enough trouble just figuring my way out in the world that is. This story that will come out is really only important to me because it reminds me of the person who inspired it, who is the best work I've had a hand in making and one of the few things in the world that makes sense to me.

Thoughts on a late-arriving review of my book

When my book came out last year, I tried to focus my marketing efforts on getting it reviewed. My graduate school adviser helped me navigate the process of finding someone to review it at American Book Review. ABR focuses on small-market books. In exchange, my adviser asked me to review a book for someone else. It took me a lot of effort to stop everything last year, read that book, and come up with something intelligent to say about it. I actually don't know if they're going to publish my review.

Apparently, there is a fairly lengthy lag between when ABR gets the reviews and when they publish them. Diane Goodman's review of my book just appeared in the January-April edition of ABR. (They usually put these out more often than quarterly. I have to imagine they're having issues at the journal.)

It's a really nice review, just like the other ones I've gotten. I think that ABR is mostly in libraries, so the majority of its readers are probably people who read the print version. If that's true, the people who might have read this review already saw it a while ago. ABR puts its digital versions out months behind the print versions, which is why I just now saw it.

Here's what I've learned about reviews from smaller venues: they're really nice, and they make you feel good, but they don't sell books. This review from ABR has been out for a while, and in that time, my book has sold two copies on Amazon. Marketing books is a social media game. I was talking to someone this week who was describing how Twitch, the video-streaming site that focuses on video game play, works for people trying to gain sponsorship. It sounded a lot like how we are encouraged at writers' conferences to market our books: Twitter stalk anyone who matters, make friends, hope they cross-reference you. My reviews would only really have helped me if I had posted a link to it on Twitter and had an army of people to re-tweet it. That sounds awful. I like to write words in silence, not chat up my friends while drunk-playing Overwatch. Do I really have to market myself the same way?

I don't think I'm cut out for the modern world of self-promotion. I tried looking around for a new job the other day, just to see if anything might be out there. Job hunting sites all push LinkedIn now, and there is some algorithm-driven science to not only how you write a resume, but how you create your LinkedIn profile. I gave up. In any event, an awful lot of the jobs for people like me, whose main skill is writing, seem to be in creating social media content for companies. I don't like tweeting to pimp my own work, so I doubt I'd enjoy tweeting or doing whatever a post on Pinterest is called for someone else.

For now, that was a nice surprise to find that review had finally come out. In all likelihood, it's the last one I'll get for this book, and the last time anyone will ever talk about the stories in it. It's nice, at a time when I have a ton of other work I've done--work I think it better than Don't Wait to Be Called but that I can't seem to get published--to look back on the book and realize that I managed to have a little bit of success there when I didn't even know what I was doing. Maybe I'll get lucky again.

Washington Independent Review of Books reviews my collection of short stories

Let my friend Chris know that I actually did manage to do one thing right as a self-promoter of my book: I got a review from Washington Independent Review of Books.

I didn't know for sure that they were going to review it. (In fact, it's been up for three days and I just now saw it.) I sent them two books, because the folks at my publisher, Washington Writers' Publishing House, suggested it. A woman on the WWPH staff knew someone at WIRB, but when I sent them the books to review, I forgot to include my email address, because I am a moron. So I never heard from them. I also saw on Amazon that there was a used copy of my book for sale at the Goodwill right by the WIRB, so I wondered if they just dumped it. But it looks like they did a real service to a local writer and used one copy to get it reviewed.

They don't normally review a whole lot of books from small presses like mine. I believe this was a solid they did me because I'm local. That's darn nice of them.

It's especially gratifying to see this now, because I'm in the middle of doing my own literary good citizenship right now. I'm doing a review of a book someone asked me to do. Turns out, it's a much harder assignment than I thought it would be. The American Review of Books actually wants a short academic paper. I haven't written anything like that in years. I'm not sure I'm up for it, but it's my job to do this, and I know if I were the author, I'd want me to put some effort into it. So I'm struggling through it. Nice to see karma paying me back for it ahead of time.

Finally, some actual literature from me

A few months ago, I wrote about getting a story accepted where the editor actually asked for a few changes. The biggest change, which I now think of as a really good one, was the name. This Christmasy story was originally called "City of Dawit." It's now called "Silver Spring," after the city in Maryland where a lot of Ethiopian/Eritrean folks live.

There's not much to say about it, other than it's not short (about 7,000 words), so if you plan to read, get comfortable.

I wrote this back when I still thought Trump becoming President was the most laughable idea in politics. I didn't know then how important immigrant stories would become.

Here's the story, courtesy of The Green Hills Literary Lantern.

This story will be one of the twelve in my upcoming book, due out in about two months, so you can consider this a sneak-peak. 

Blurb blahs

I'm supposed to get people to write blurbs for the back of my book. You know the kind of thing: "Weber's trenchant insight into the human condition left me for days in a state of emotional priapism so intense, I had to call my doctor." I can't believe anyone buys a book based on the blurbs, unless maybe an author you really admire signs off on the work of another writer.

I don't know anybody in writing. I've asked one person I remember from graduate school if he'd do it, and he agreed, but then in the same breath said he'd be unavailable until after the deadline. I asked some of the other editors at my literary journal, and none responded. It's probably a lot to ask of people who already volunteer to read a lot of literature for free. If I were a better self-marketer, I'd ask one of my advisors from grad school, who are reasonably big names, but I feel like it would be annoying to them to do, and they'd either say no or say yes unwillingly.

I can't bring myself to do the legwork to get someone to do these, not when I think it's such a borderline dishonest bit of advertising anyway. Has anyone ever put something like "Weber's bloated prose is equaled only by his pretentious syntax" on a book cover? Of course not. They're always positive, and so they're meaningless. Blurbs are always more inflated than a community college's grading system.

In the end, I'll probably keep bugging people from the magazine until somebody caves. I'll get this done, but it's another indicator to me that if being a writer involves a lot of energetic self-promotion, I'm not cut out for it.