Tag: fiction

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My Friends’ Books

The best gift you can give is a book. There’s just no denying it. 

Books are: 

  • Practical; easy to carry, kill time, transport you to magical dimensions. 
  • Intimate; they reveal themselves to you and in turn reveal you to yourself. 
  • Sensual; smell good, feel good, look good.
  • Ecclectic; sci-fi and lo-fi, comic and horny, autofiction and automobile repair, oratory and auditory, self-help and self-destruction and self-indulgent, Marxist and Maoist, revolutionary and revelation, etc, etc. 

What’s a cooler gift than a book though? A book by someone you know. I’m not just saying that because I’m someone you know who’s written books. It’s just a fact. It’s punk rock to slide a book into someone’s hands that they’ve never heard of before. It becomes a secret just for the two of you. And when the book blows up, you can brag about being a trendsetter.

don’t be boring

With that in mind, here’s a few books by my friends.


Beside Myself, Ashley Farmer—flash fiction beauties. I have an original, a most prized possession!

Boxcutters, John Chrostek—John is the master of the final line. These stories are fan-freaking-tastic!

Mari Murdock—Mari is one of my favorite creative minds. She has too many cool projects to list, just check out her goodreads page.

M O 月 N, Chengru He—playful, energetic, amazing poetry. Whenever I feel down about my own place in the world as a writer, I remind myself I was in a graduate program with Chengru. She’s an unparalleled genius!

The Reincarnations, Nathan Elias—Montag Press homie. These stories are a blast. Meditations, examinations, and ruminations on the stormy brilliance of living.

Gridlock, Brett Biebel—these sentences will melt your face. Glorious, snappy stories.

The Lengest Neoi, Stephanie Choi—seeing Stephanie’s work in an experimental forms class was when I first realized the folks in my MFA were serious fucking business.

In Transit, Nicholas Pierce—whenever I try to write sonnets I turn to Nick’s book. His control and comfort in the sonnet is otherworldly to me.

Avail, Erin O’Luanaigh—Erin wrote a sestina that fundamentally changed the way I understand poetry. Check her out!

Don’t be boring. Buy these books. Then buy them again and gift them to all your friends.

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weirdos doing weird things

Years and years (and years) ago, downtown Salt Lake City, I was trying my best to sell my first book. I’ve always had a great support system of friends and family, so the first sales come easy. Getting strangers to read my books though, that’s the nightmare. You mean, I did all this work, wrote this darn thing, thought through every comma, em dash, period, and parenthetical, and now I have to talk to people? My actual hell. 

Trevor Hale—the one and only—had a booth at Craft Lake City and was selling the first printing of tulip. All of my communities showed up; hardcore kids, karate dudes, work pals, youth militias, and friends I’ve known since kindergarten. As always, Trevor had tons of cool stuff to sell. Honestly, it was just a joy to sit and talk shit with him—many iced coffee were had. I was having a great freaking time. And then, out of the mist, rolls in a stranger. This was long before techbros were a common nuisance, but this gentleman certainly had proto-chud vibes. 

a performance. For who?

He picked up tulip and demanded an elevator pitch. I tried my best. I’m still no good at it. I don’t know what my books are about—weirdos doing weird things! He pointed out that the plot sounded a lot like a Will Ferrell movie. I spiralled. Shit, did I rip off some crud movie and not realize it? I did not. He then opened the book to a random page and read out loud. He was clearly doing a performance. For who? Definitely not me. In the end, he didn’t purchase a copy. I’m not sure if this guy sucked. Who’s to say? I wish him tons of luck with his speculative investment portfolio. 

Point being, people make me nervous. It might be a cliché that writers are nervous people, but I’m at least a bit of anecdotal proof. My general inclination is to not trust writers that are sure of themselves, unless they’re poets—poets can do whatever they want. A pretty silly tension arises: wanting to write a breakout novel vs. never wanting to be talked to or looked at. I have a new project I’m working on that I’m very excited about, so over the next few months you might see me working through that tension here. I doubt I’ll ever be able to deliver a great elevator pitch, but hopefully I can connect with some folks interested in my weirdos.