Minna Proctor and the review process at The Literary Review

The other day a friend sent me a link to a blog entry entitled: “Have we been reading your submission for, like, a year?” Minna Proctor, editor-in-chief, The Literary Review, wrote the blog entry.

The Literary Review bills itself as “An International Journal of Contemporary Writing.” Frankly, I hadn’t heard of it before, but I just signed-up for a subscription. A few years back, when I started writing short stories, I decided I should read the journals and get a sense for what is being published. You can’t succeed at writing if don’t read (and read!).

Anyway, Minna’s post detailed the process that she and her staff go through when selecting stories to include in their journal. I found it really interesting and informative. On the plus side, every story is read and treated seriously. On the negative side, it can take over a year for a story to work its way through the review process.

Like most aspiring writers, I’ve sent stories to a lot of journals. And, of course, I’ve received a lot of rejections. I’ve also had stories accepted (I think seven or eight). I’m always rather amazed when a story is accepted, because I’ve been dubious that they are even read! But that’s the cynic in me. It’s nice to know that there are people out there like Minna.

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Looking Back on 2011

We’re now a few days into the New Year, and it seems like a good time to look back. From a writing perspective, 2011 was fairly fruitful for me. Four of my stories were published. I also feel like I made some progress toward getting better at writing fiction. I still don’t consider myself really good, but I’m learning how to balance narrative, exposition, action, and dialogue.  Or at least I am consciously aware of these things while I’m writing (and editing), and actively ask myself what is missing, what do I need to add? Plot is still a big challenge.

For 2012, I’ve given myself the goal of writing three short stories. If I can do more – great! But I definitely want to get three done. I’d like to push myself and see if I can get published in a more prominent journal (nothing against those that have published my stories so far). I suspect I need to get better before that happens.

I haven’t really written any fiction since last September when I finished a story called “Poisoned Pawn.” I’ve just been too busy with moving (twice) and work and family commitments. But I wrote a little yesterday, and it felt good.

I’ve shopped “Poisoned Pawn” out to a number of journals, and I’m curious to see if I’ll get a bite. The story is a little unusual, and I’m not sure if others will like it.

According to Malcolm Gladwell, you need to dedicate 10,000 hours toward something before you become an expert. I’m curious if all the writing I’ve done in my career counts toward that 10,000 hours. I’ve been writing for years. It must have some impact, yes?

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Moving and Stories

It has been a hectic few weeks in the Richardson family household. We sold our condo, packed up our stuff, and moved to an apartment in a new town. Moving is such a hassle. And we’re going to have to do it again, because now we’re looking for a house. We actually already made an offer on a home we really like. The offer was accepted, everything was clicking along toward closing, and then the appraisal came in dramatically lower than the sales price. Gulp. We’re the in the process of trying to determine what to do next.

While this happened, three of my short stories were published. “Black String Bikini” (in Segue) and “Courting Param” (in Prime Number) are available online. “Iron Dick” can be purchased as part of the anthology D*CKED: Crime Fiction Inspired by Dick Cheney.

The three stories are all very different. Each was a lot of fun to write. That’s the main reason I write stories: it’s fun for me. I would, of course, like others to read them and enjoy them. It’s weird when a story is published because I never know if anyone outside of the editor who accepted the submission reads the story. Hopefully someone will read these and like them.

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The Boulevardiers

My blog is now syndicated. I’ve been added as a contributor to the just recently launched blog, “The Boulevardiers.” My good friend Kim Steele is the managing editor of the site. He plans to have an assortment of contributors covering a variety of different topics; I’m told no politics, however. I’m responsible for the “Literature” section. The site is really cool, and I hope you check it out.

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Crime Factory #7

My story, “My First Time, or, That Crazy Jamaican Whore,” is now available in Crime Factory #7 (p. 263). It looks like a big issue, and I’m looking forward to diving in!

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Another Story Accepted

I just learned that Prime Number Magazine accepted my short story,“Courting Param.” This means that over the next few months four of my stories will be appearing in different journals. These stories are: “Courting Param,” “Iron Dick,” “Black String Bikini,” and “My First Time, or, That Crazy Jamaican Whore.”

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A Story Accepted

Last week I was told that the Segue literary online journal is going to publish my short story, “Black String Bikini.” It will appear in the August issue.

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Olivia Louise Richardson

It has been busy at the Richardson household the past three weeks. On Sunday, April 17 my wife gave birth to a little girl, Olivia Louise Richardson. Both mom and baby are doing great! But the new baby means less sleep for all of us. It also means less time to read and write, and no time for blogging. But things are starting to get a little easier, and there are a lot of books I want to read, so I hope to get back at it soon.

Below is a picture of the proud papa with Olivia and my son, Benjamin.

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Alone

My childhood home had a backyard that my brother and I converted into a Wiffle ball field. There was only room for three bases, including home plate, and a long row of bushes blocked what should have been right field. This was an irritant for me, because as a lefty I wasn’t able to pull the ball. But I coped. My brother is also left-handed, but for some reason he had decided to bat from the right side. Maybe that field had something to do with it? Left field ended at our garage, and the walls of the garage were covered with ivy, just like our beloved Wrigley Field. We had a group of neighborhood friends – Mike Lair, Chris Austin, others – with whom we spent many blissful summer days in that backyard swinging a yellow plastic bat. This mostly happened in the 1970’s.

The other day Lauren Rein sent me a note via Facebook and told me that when she graduated from high school she wrote a poem about our Wiffle ball field. Back in the ‘70’s she lived in our neighborhood, a few doors down. She still lives in the Chicago area, as does my brother. I’ve now been in California for almost twenty-five years and Chicago seems like another world. Anyway, Lauren’s poem is centered on my brother, who was two grades behind me, waiting for me to return from college and play again. It reminds me of how great it is to have a younger brother.

Oh, and Lauren is embarrassed that she has been misspelling Wiffle ball all these years.

ALONE

There he is,

Alone

With his whiffle bat and ball

Nobody to throw to

Except the garage

Or the tree

Nobody will throw it back

He is alone

***

Effects

Dents in the garage door

Obvious reminders of play

Happiness in determining a strike zone

Times were good then

Nobody is alone

Each day one bro waits for the other

To come home and throw the ball

Enjoyment at its finest

All because of plastic

***

Green grass, a brown garage

Lawnmowers a glow

A basketball rolling on the ground

A box that is blasting

People exchanging a ball that goes zzzzz

Nobody is alone

***

Ryne hit a double

The neighbor is pleased

He grabs his bat and hits the trees

Can I be like that?

He wonders

Get a bat that is made of those trees

And then we will talk

***

The end is here

Nobody is alone

Except the bat and balls

For the players are off to college

Learning of new inventions

The Whiffleball Game of their kids generation

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Endgame: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall – from America’s Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness

Bobby Fischer was six and living in Brooklyn with his mother and sister when he learned how to play chess. Soon he was living and breathing the game. He obsessively studied chess theory, the games of past champions, and played constantly. “All I want to do, ever, is play chess,” was his mantra. It paid off. By the time he was 13 he played what is commonly called, “The Game of the Century.” Later that year he became the youngest U.S. Open Champion in history. By the time he was 15 he was an International Grandmaster and a serious challenger for the World Championship. At 20, he won the U.S. Open championship with a perfect 11 – 0 score. In 1971, as a challenger for the World Championship, he won 20 straight games, an almost impossible feat in a sport that is dominated by grandmaster draws. In 1972 he beat the Soviet Union’s Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland to become World Champion. The match captured worldwide headlines; Bobby was a Cold War warrior and a U.S. hero. Then he disappeared…

Bobby moved to Pasadena, California where he lived in a basement apartment. Instead of defending his title in 1975 and earning $10 million in prize money and sponsorships, he became a recluse. In the 1980′s, he spent time living in seedy apartments in Los Angeles’ skid row, and was only able to pay the rent because his mother would send him her Social Security checks. Bobby finally reemerged in 1992, twenty years after his last public game, to play a big-money rematch against Boris Spassky. Bobby won again. They played in war torn Serbia, which at the time was under U.S. sanctions, and Bobby was now a fugitive, never able to return to the States. He spent the next decade living in Hungary, Japan, the Philippines, Germany, and elsewhere. He kept his winnings from the second match vs. Spassky in a bank in Switzerland. Then right after September 11, 2001, he was on a radio show in the Philippines and said that the attack against America and the World Trade Center was, “wonderful news.” The U.S. government, which hadn’t really tried to prosecute him for the Serbia match, didn’t take kindly to his comments, and soon he was arrested in Japan. He spent 18 months in a Japanese prison, until the Icelandic government granted him citizenship. He moved to Iceland where he lived for two years until he died in 2008. Frank Brady, in his book, Endgame: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall – from America’s Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness, writes: “Like the number of squares on a chessboard – an irony that nevertheless cannot be pressed too far – he was sixty-four.”

Brady’s biography of Fischer is fascinating and impossible to put down. Brady tells the story of a genius, and a weird and unpleasant man. How many people would throw away millions of dollars and instead choose to live on Skid Row? Fischer lived a unique life. What was most distasteful about Bobby was that he was a ragging anti-Semite – something that is frankly impossible to overlook and forgive. Brady ends the “Author’s Note” section of the book by writing:

We may not – and perhaps should not – forgive Bobby Fischer’s twisted political and antireligious assaults, but we should never forget his sheer brilance on the chessboard. After reading this biography, I would suggest that the reader look to, study, his games – the true statement to who he was, and his ultimate legacy.

So here is a game that Bobby played against Bent Larsen when Bobby was only 15:

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