Very excited to announce that my column for Speakeasy, the Wall Street Journal’s arts and entertainment blog, has launched! “Ctrl-Alt” will broadly focus on alternative culture in all of its many incarnations. My first article is about a slew of new online dating apps that have recently launched which are taking rejection out of the equation. I’m not convinced this is necessarily a good thing. You can read the article here:

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/04/09/ctrl-alt-with-a-slew-of-new-apps-is-online-dating-too-easy/

I’ve written quite a few articles for the WSJ in the past few months and all of these have been gathered under the “Ctrl-Alt” tag here:

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/tag/ctrl-alt/

“Ctrl-Alt” also appears on Speakeasy’s main page in the Hot Topic menu bar. When you click on it, it will take you to the page dedicated to my column. All the articles I’ve written will be listed there.

So excited by this opportunity! I’m always looking for interesting, unusual, thought-provoking and/or wacky stories to write about, so please, if you have any ideas, send them my way! I really appreciate your support!

And so, the annual celebration/schmoozefest/reading-and-panel-palooza/drink-a-thon that is AWP has once again concluded, and I am left feeling both deeply satisfied and overwhelmed and tired and more than a little anxious, which I guess is exactly what most people feel after AWP.

While Chicago was all about the off-site readings and parties–at least for me–the weather in Boston made many decisions for us, and we writers, already pretty comfortable shutting ourselves indoors, had not only a snowstorm but a seemingly endless series of tunnels and arcades connecting the hotels, the convention center and the mall, which meant we never had to see actual weather. If I did venture outside, it was because my hotel was in the Boston Common area, as my three-month-in-advance booked Airbnb place fell through last minute because of flooding in the building, and we had to scramble to find a reasonable deal. Besides, so many of the parties–Grub Street, Vida, Agni, Pen American, among others–were less than a five minute walk offsite. (Dearest friends with far-flung readings: truly sorry to not make it, but the snow. And the panels. And the book fair. It runs a guy down.)

If it were only the readings that I missed! The thing about AWP is that, even when you know you can’t possibly do/see/attend/support every single person/panel/reading you want to, you still feel guilty. Why am I not tweeting more? Or posting pics of my friends on Facebook? (Or at least the meals we shared on Instagram–I didn’t take any pictures this year. Nada. I was that lazy.) And what about my friends in Boston? Do I contact them to let them know I’m in town? I only have three days…Is it terrible that I want to go shopping on Newbury Street? Or that I need to nap every afternoon?

One of the things about getting older (oh God, how much do I hate sentences that begin with “One of the things about getting older…”) is you learn to accept the inherent contradiction between your pre-conference optimism and your post-conference reality. I had a list of ten panels I wanted to attend. I ended up going to two. Normally at the book fair, I spend hours and hours–across several days–chatting people up at the lit mags and the presses, looking around for people I know and for organizations I want to support. This year, I spent less than two hours total at the fair. Am I just jaded? I don’t think so. I had some business to attend to this year, and I focused on that. I recently signed with Erin Harris at Folio Literary and I was so pleased to attend the Folio breakfast on Friday morning, where I got to celebrate with my friend Viet Dinh, who also recently signed on with Michelle Brower. Erin and Michelle are both such sweethearts, and after schmoozing with the other Folio authors and attending the panel on The Right First Book, I felt even more fortunate to have signed with them.

For me, AWP is pretty much Writers Camp Reunion. Conference and residency addicts such as myself have a lot of people to catch up with, and since we can’t plan trips to Utah and Missouri and Minnesota etc., every year, there’s just no better way to reconnect with old friends. And AWP is inspiring: in the face of the recent Nate Thayer/Atlantic controversy about writers no longer getting paid, and the endless moaning about the dismal state of publishing literary fiction (I won’t bother to get into the state of publishing poetry, which has long been dismal, and in some ways seems less dismal than lit fic lately), ignoring the  barrage of rejection letters and our general discomfort about large-scale socializing, forgetting our families and deadlines and our need for quiet, we gather, and we listen to our fellow authors tell their stories, read their work to us, share their experiences and wisdom and advice and yes, tales of horror and frustration. We travel hundreds if not thousands of miles and just by doing so, we quietly say fuck you to a world that seems to value Transformers movies and “reality” television and Lindsay Lohan kleptomania, and we remind ourselves, with every George Saunders and Jennifer Egan hitting the best seller list, with every poem we hear that shakes us to the very core and with every friend of ours getting over-the-moon happy about that piece being accepted at that undergraduate Tumblr e-zine, that just by doing what we do we make it matter, because it is we who get to decide that it matters.

Friends: I am so happy to have seen you. There can be no better reminder than AWP that we are all in this together, that we must really love what we do to put up with what we put up with. And there is such joy in that, a joy that only we understand. See you in Seattle!

Jeffrey Condran, publisher of Braddock Avenue Books as well as author of the forthcoming story collection, A Fingerprint Repeated, asked me to participate in this chain blog series, The Next Big Thing, where writers discuss their recent or forthcoming works. You can read Jeff’s post here.

Shout-outs to two other writers who also asked me to participate, super talented multi-genre artist Aparna Das, who discusses her project Snake Ate the Moon at her blog, and the awesome Will Kenyon, who discusses his novel, The Survivor of San Guillermo.

Please check out the two other writers I tagged at the bottom of this post, who will also be participating in this series:

**What is your working title of your book?

Instead of discussing my short story collection, Margins of Tolerance, here, I thought I’d talk a little bit about my completed first novel. Right now it’s back to its original title, Valhalla. It was called Admissions for a while, which I think is a better title, but there’s a book out called Admission that might be a bit too similar in subject matter.

**Where did the idea come from for the book?

I’m an SAT tutor in NYC, so the initial idea came from personal experience. But really, very little of my actual experience with tutoring shows up in the book. Real life (at least not my real life) isn’t juicy enough for a book. The book has two main plotlines:

Gabrielle Levy is intent on seeing her Arianna enrolled at Princeton. She attempts to bribe the one classmate she perceives as competition: Mandela Robinson, one of the few African Americans at Arianna’s exclusive high school. But what starts off as a simple deal becomes far more complicated when Gabrielle’s connection with Mandela forces her to face her buried past and failed ambitions.

Legion Cartwright’s father gives his teenaged son $50K to play the stock market and “earn” his college tuition. When Legion loses most of it on bad investments, he struggles to find another way to prove himself to his dad, which means getting into the Ivy League all on his own. When Legion encounters Randall Miller, a frustrated would-be novelist and SAT tutor, at a book store, he sees his way in: he will seduce the older man and convince him to take the test for him.

**What genre does your book fall under?

Normally I’d say literary fiction, but I think it’s pretty commercial so…commercial literary fiction? General fiction is another category it could fall under, but to me general fiction sounds insipid.

**Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Back when I started writing the book, Annette Bening would have been a great choice for Gabrielle, the nouveau-rich UWS mom who desperately wants to send her daughter to Princeton. Now I guess it would be Tilda Swinton. Neither of them are remotely Jewish but both have a certain flair for expressing equal parts exuberant self-confidence and self-torturing doubt. Randall, the tutor, is 28 in the book but looks a lot younger, and he’s a bit nebbish and neurotic and somewhat ridiculous, so maybe Jesse Eisenberg or Paul Dano. Zosia Mamet (from “Girls” and “Mad Men”) would make a great Arianna, Gabrielle’s overachieving daughter.

Or we can just have Meryl Streep play all the characters.

 **What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Some NYC kids (and parents!) will do just about anything to get into the right college.

 **Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

While I cannot currently discuss the status of the book, I will say it won’t be self-published, and it’s not represented by an agency.

**How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I wrote the first chapter of the book back in 2000, and believe it or not, it has withstood the test of time and remains almost the same in the 2013 version of the book. The first draft took me about seven years and was 216,000 words (730 pages!!) I then cut it down to 187,000 words (613 pages) and now it stands at 141,000 words (450 pages) I’m mulling a 110,000 word version of the book, but would prefer not to cut that much out. We’ll see.

 **What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Darin Strauss read an early draft of the novel, and I still remember how floored I was when he compared it to “The Corrections,” a book I love. Thematically it’s not the same at all, but structurally there might be some similarities. Any book that has multiple rotating points-of-view might make for a good comparison: Jennifer Egan’s “Look at Me” or Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth.” (Clearly I’m delusional to compare my novel to any of those great works!) In terms of subject matter, there are a few college-admissions-related books out there, but the one I enjoyed was Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl.

**Who or what inspired you to write this book?

It’s easy to say that I just followed the age-old maxim of “Write what you know.” But that would be pretty misleading, since I don’t really know any of my characters and they weren’t inspired by real life people. Back when I was getting my MFA I thought I didn’t have the attention span to tackle a novel. I thought I would solve this problem by writing a novel with multiple POVs, this way if I got tired of one character/POV, I could just move on to another. When I began writing, the issue of affirmative action in the college-admissions process was a hot-button issue, and it still is now. As for the tutor-student relationship, I knew that would prove a bit scandalous and also fun to write. It was.

**What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

While tightly structured, the book is playful and funny. Arianna’s chapters all appear as journal entries, some of the other chapters are epistolary, and a few of the minor characters get their own POV chapters later on in the book. There’s also a meta-fictional aspect to the novel that I won’t elaborate on because I don’t want to ruin the surprise. In general, the book tackles controversial subject matter in what I hope is a gripping, candid, darkly humorous way.

This week and next, please check out some other fantastic writers who will share their projects with you:

Sian Griffiths writes about her forthcoming novel, Borrowed Horses, coming out from New Rivers Press in October 2013. Borrowed Horses is a retelling of JANE EYRE set in contemporary Idaho. I can’t wait to pick it up!

Merridawn Duckler will be writing about one of several of her upcoming projects (Will it be the mash-up with Found Poetry Magazine? The visual art show here in Portland based on all-text based memoir essays? The chapbook of Modern D’var Torah? Tune in to see!)

The Enclave Reading Series

This past Saturday I was lucky to be a part of the latest installment of the Enclave Reading Series over at Cake Shop on Ludlow Street in the Lower East Side. I’m used to doing readings in the evening, so I wasn’t sure how a Saturday afternoon reading would go. What a pleasant surprise! Not only was the space super cool–dark and fabulous and kitschy all at once–but the crowd was geared up and the other readers were all excellent.

The Enclave Reading Series is in its sixth year, curated and hosted by Jason Napoli Brooks and Jim Freed. Both of them couldn’t be any friendlier.

Jason was our MC and he looked all dapper in his button down white shirt and tie. J.E. Reich kicked things off with a story about a British spy which was published in Armchair/Shotgun. The piece was gripping and tense, and while I would have loved to hear her read it in a British accent, I understand from personal experiences with my own stories why she didn’t choose to. It’s hard to sustain an accent for 10-15 minutes!

M. Craig read an excerpt from her “lesbian steampunk thriller” novel, The Narrows. Maggie (sorry, I just outed your first name, M!) is the founder of Papercut Press and has an awesome stage presence, kind of like the I don’t give a fuck rock star chick we all secretly dream we were. From what I heard, the novel sounds awesome.

After the break, “Special Guest Star” Laurie Weeks wowed us with her wacky recipe for nachos. I don’t think I’ll look at a postcard the same way again. Laurie is the author of the LAMBDA-award winning novel, Zippermouth, which so happens to be one of my favorite books of last year, so it was a true pleasure to share the stage with her.

Elizabeth Reddin was up next, and she brought props. A boom box circa 1980 and a bunch of mix tapes which held the background music to accompany the readings of her poems from her collection, The Hot Garment of Love is Insecure. I totally loved the music, and how original her performance was.

I rounded out the evening by reading an excerpt from “Body and Mind” as well as “The Coming Revolution.” I’d never read those pieces together and it’s sort of a weird transition from a really tense piece to a straight-up funny one. It takes a bit of adjustment on the audience’s part, I think.

The Enclave Series runs once a month at Cake Shop, so you should check it out. Thanks to everyone who came out, the other readers, and Jason for inviting me!

Sunday Salon is one of the great reading series in NYC, and has been going strong for ten years now. Nita Noveno and Sara Lippman consistently attract great readers/performers and a standing-room-only crowd, so I was really excited to be part of the line-up this past Sunday. It was not only a great night of performances and readings, but also an opportunity to raise some funds post-Sandy for Habitat for Humanity.

Honor Molloy read an excerpt from her autobiographical novel Smarty Girl. I loved how when she went up to the mic you could barely detect an accent, but when she started her reading this amazing Irish brogue spilled out of her mouth. Honor has studied acting, and boy did it show. Her reading was truly an epic performance, and a very hard act to follow.

Which unfortunately was left to me. I decided to read a newer story of mine, “Please”, something I wrote explicitly for my friend Christina Phelp’s pub crawl last year for her literary magazine, Trans. I had only read it aloud once so far, so I was glad to see people were laughing at the right places.

Next up was The Unnameable, a NYC-based band composed of writer/musicians Robert Lopez and David Hollander. Robert has an amazing, raspy voice that reminds me of the lead singer from TV on the Radio. And David wrote L.I.E., which although I didn’t read I did see the movie, which was pretty fantastic. I’m sure the book is even better.

After the break, Gene Albamonte read some hilarious pieces from his new book, Huckster, as well as some brand new material. Gene is hilarious. I was lucky enough to meet him a few months ago from a mutual friend of ours, Patrick Bradley. Patrick told me how funny Gene is and Gene didn’t disappoint. He’s also a super nice guy.

Tara Betts was up last. Tara read some poems from her collection Arc and Hue, including a really funny questionnaire-like poem for upcoming poets, before slaying us with a harrowing section of her forthcoming memoir. Very powerful stuff.

The Unnanmeable returned for a few songs to close out the night. These guys are really great. Not going to lie–I’m more than a bit jealous of these writer/musician types. I should have listened to my mom and taken those piano lessons when I was six

Thanks to everyone who turned out and for donating to a really good cause. And special thanks to Nita and Sara for running such a great series, which you should definitely check out soon!

What a great weekend in Boston, and what a pleasure to read at the Dire Literary Series in Cambridge last Friday night. It was a bit surreal to leave NY after Sandy, but in some ways it was also a relief. My friend Francesco decided to come along for the weekend and we were very fortunate that the LIRR was running smoothly so we could catch the Bolt bus to Boston.

Timothy Gager runs the Dire Series and he’s been doing a bang-up job for years now. I believe he said our reading was his 140th(!) so congrats on that, Tim! I really enjoyed the space–a cozy art gallery called Out of the Blue–as well as the diversity and creativity of the other readers, both the Open Mic as well as the featured readers. My friend Aparna surprised me at the reading and on the fly decided to sing a song at the Open Mic that her friend had written that addresses the treatment of women in India in the caste system. The other Open Mic readers were probing and gripping as well. MC Tim kept things casual and funny, and even read a few short works of his own.

It was a pleasure to share the bill with the two other featured readers, Thomas M. Cirignano and Carolyn Zaikowski. Carolyn read an excerpt from her forthcoming novel that was mesmerizing. She’s a terrific reader. Thomas was once a mechanic to a mob, and he wrote first a memoir and then a fictional account about his experiences dealing with gangsters in South Boston. Fascinating stuff! I chose to read what’s becoming my go-to story, “Dear Guy in 24 B.” I’ve been experimenting with new work lately, but when I travel I sometimes like to go with the time-tested stuff.

I am SO grateful to all my Boston area friends who showed up! You guys really packed the house, and I am humbled by your support. Seriously, Boston peeps–you rock! Afterwards we went to Koreana for some bim bi bop and bulgogi. The rest of the weekend was also wonderful–I’d forgotten how charming Boston was, and the people were much nicer than I remember. (Don’t hate, I had a few bad experiences in Beantown before. But it’s all good now!)

Normally I write a short post after every reading I do. Alas, I have been derelict this time. Not because the KGB reading wasn’t awesome. It’s just that I’ve been distracted by other things like home repair and the election and just life in general.

First things first: I want to mention two pieces I wrote that have recently gone up. One was my article, “How Social Media has Changed Love On the Road” for the Wall Street Journal online blog, Speakeasy. You can read it here. Major thanks to Barbara Chai for this great opportunity. Barbara is one of the people who run Speakeasy and we had discussed a bunch of ideas for an article, mostly about my story collection and what it’s like to win a contest. But that seemed a bit narrow for the WSJ audience, so Barbara suggested I write something about Grindr et. al, a topic I have to admit to being pretty familiar with ;P

Another piece I wrote just went up at my friend Sabra Wineteer’s new blog for novelists, Novel Conception. Sabra has gathered a whole bunch of her novelist friends to write occasional posts about what it’s like to tackle a novel, from conception to revision to marketing to sales and beyond. It’s definitely worth checking out–just click on the name above, or you can access my specific post here.

As for KGB, what a treat it was to read there. It’s sort of every writer’s dream to read at KGB since it’s one of the most prestigious and well-known reading series in the city. Plus the bar itself is such a trip and it’s one of the few places that serve Baltika beer, a nice dose of nostalgia from my SLS St. Petersburg days. I wish I had better pictures, but the bar is (appropriately) dark. It was great reading with Marie-Helene Bertino again. Her collection, Safe as Houses, is out now and it’s such a funny, brilliant book. Check out her site here. The other reader was Gregory Spatz, who came all the way from Washington state. Greg read a terrific piece from his new novel, Inukshuk. Check out his website here

Many thanks to the fabulous Suzanne Dottino who runs KGB‘s Sunday night reading series for her enthusiasm and support, as well as to all my friends who made it out. I was a little nervous to read such a fresh piece and I was pleased with the reaction. All in all, a great evening and a nice bookend to the Brooklyn Book Fest!

Before I talk about Hambidge, I just want to give a shout out to all the wonderful peeps I met at Sewanee this year. I had a BLAST, and it was mostly because of all the talented and amazing drinkers (ahem) writers I met there. Of course Sewanee deserves its own blog post, but it’s been over a month now, and while I know I had quite a bit of time up in Hambidge, I decided to devote myself to my stories and novel. Go figure.

That said, Sewanee was super fun. I used to say it’s like summer camp for writers. But now I’m thinking, it’s more like a cruise for writers, in that we all never stop eating and drinking and very rarely “get off the ship,” so to speak. Plus we line-danced, so the cruise ship analogy is apropos.

So, Hambidge! I recently completed my four weeks there, and what a great residency it was. A real retreat from the everyday mania of NYC living, Hambidge is in the middle of the woods, about 4 miles from Dillard, GA, which sits on the North Carolina border and smack in the middle of the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains. When I say retreat, I mean it. There was no cell phone service; the nearest place we could get decent enough reception was about 3 miles up Betty’s Creek Road. We did have phones in our cabins–we each got our own cabin, and mine was the super spacious and pretty awesome Foxfire–but they only received incoming calls. Internet access was limited to the Rock House down where we ate dinner together every night. (Two weeks into the residency I realized the wireless signal was strong enough for me to get a weak signal in my cabin, enough for emails and Facebook.)

Foxfire was completely surrounded by trees. Which means, you guessed it: animals. Insects. Snakes. I was warned by Deb in my orientation speech. There will be lots of bugs, she told me. (She wasn’t kidding. I became so obsessed with bugs I wrote a short story about them.) There might be mice. Then there were the snakes. Black snakes shouldn’t frighten me, she said, only copperheads and other rattlers. And of course, your usual possums and skunks and raccoons etc. Also, bears. She advised me to wear the provided bell if I chose to take a hike among the 400 acres of trails on Hambidge property. But I didn’t see any bears, or snakes for that matter. I did see hawks and other cool birds. I did see the wildest mushrooms I’ve ever seen in my life. Andlots of very, very large bugs. Cicada Killers. Spiders the size of my palm. Wasps and hornets and mantises. Mostly they stayed outside, but when I wrote at night by my table lamp, they would gather. I made peace with them pretty quickly, though–once I wrote the story they decided to leave me alone. Here’s a cicada killer stuck in the web of a spider:

Dillard is apparently a popular destination for Georgian summer homes. It’s really pretty up here, but there’s not much in the way of services. When there’s a Piggly Wiggly, who needs services? Clayton, about seven miles south, had a lot more options, including Ingles, possibly the biggest supermarket I’ve ever seen, and even a 24 hour gym which I ended up joining for my last two weeks.

Four nights a week we’d gather for dinner at the Rock House, where chef Ray would prepare our meals for us. Ray was sweet and no nonsense. She made delicious southern vegetarian meals and fish on Fridays. Her desserts were world class. After Sewanee, I thought I’d might be taking a bit of a turn back to healthy food when I found out Hambidge was mostly vegetarian. Turns out, in the south, vegetarian food ain’t health food. I can now say I know the difference between turnip greens and collard greens. I had all sorts of biscuits, with dill being my favorite. I had succotash and fried green tomatoes and grits and okra and something called “dressing”, which up north we call stuffing. Tasty as hell, but not exactly the most lean, protein-rich diet I’ve ever had. The Rock House:

Each week some residents would leave and new ones would join us. The first week I met Dan Albergotti and Katy Didden, two very talented and super sweet poets, as well as Marina Kassiandou, a visual artist from Cyprus. These three welcomed us newcomers, Julia Fenton, a visual artist from Atlanta (and one of my new favorite people in the world), Pat Riviere-Seel, a darling and funny poet from Asheville, Seyed Safavynia, a composer/neuroscientist/all around nice guy genius from Atlanta , and Tim Houghton, a poet from Maryland. We learned about the Hambidge ritual of holding hands for a moment of silence before dinner, how to load up the dishwasher and put the leftovers in the tupperware. The next week all three newcomers were from Atlanta: Mariana McDonald, a vibrant, passionate poet/writer, Allen Peterson a visual artist/accordion player/bee collaborator, and Anne Webster, a poet with the greatest Southern accent I’ve probably ever heard.

On Thursday or Friday nights we’d share our work with each other. Julia is an installation artist and her work is deeply rooted in feminism and feminist theory. A lot of her stuff is provocative, and she uses a lot of bodily fluids as well as kitschy things like plastic toy soldiers she paints pink and fish hooks. While in residence she was working on something called “The Bride of Christ” which was going to be her take on the whole madonna-whore attitude the church often displays towards women. Julia is also hands down the best storyteller I’ve ever met. 75  years young, she has more energy and verve than many women half her age. She’s led a terrifically full life, and she has the stories to prove it. From the meth addicts living below her in Oregon to the terrifying and hilarious stories of getting sick in India–not to mention that she has her own uterus(!) stored in a jar in her pantry, we certainly didn’t need television or internet with Julia around. Julia, if you need a ghostwriter for your memoir, I am there with bells on.

Allen probably does the most unusual work of all of us. He cast two children’s heads (based on his daughter’s heads) out of beeswax which he then placed into two separate hives, one at his home in Atlanta and one near Hambidge. For a while the bees didn’t participate, but once he made some adjustments, the bees began to create the most fascinating and somewhat disturbing honeycombs. The bees in Atlanta made a flowing beard-like river from the head, while the Hambidge bees covered the face with the honeycomb. I wish I had pictures, but Allen hasn’t shown his work yet, so he can’t release it out into the world until he does. But you must check it out when he does!

Merill Comeau was the last resident to arrive during my stay, and I’m happy she was. Merill is such a hoot, and for several days we were the only ones at Hambidge, so I’m happy I was with someone as funny and wise and interesting as her. I never would have found out about Mary Hambidge’s more scandalous affairs if it wasn’t for her. Merill does collage work out of all kinds of salvaged fabric. Some of her pieces can be very large, and really striking.

Oh, and I did get a lot of writing done, which is the point. I went in with a novel outline to work on, but when I wasn’t really feeling that project I allowed the environment to inspire me to write two completely new stories. I revised about three more and I even started a new novel, one which happens to take place in part at a residency in Georgia…

All in all, a great way to spend the month of August!

The crazy thing about attending as many writers conferences as I have is that there are cities where I know quite a few people that I’ve never actually visited. I only knew Atlanta’s airport (fly Delta much?) up until August 24th, but I’m so glad I got to know the city and see my friends who live there, who I have to say are as gracious and generous a bunch as a guy could ask for. It was thanks to my friends who know Elizabeth Anderson over at Charis Books that I managed not only to get a reading there but also to be on a panel as part of the AQLF (Atlanta Queer Lit Fest) track at the Decatur Book Festival.

My first weekend in Atlanta I stayed in Midtown and read Friday night at the awesome Charis Books in Little Five Points. It’s an adorable bookstore, the oldest feminist bookstore in the country (38 years and counting), and Elizabeth and Sara and the rest of the staff were very welcoming. Only a few people showed up for the reading, but as Elizabeth said, I was competing with Loretta Lynn and Mary Chapin Carpenter in concert that night, which meant a lot of the Atlanta gay folk were busy elsewhere. We still managed to enjoy ourselves, and I read a newer story not in the collection, “Imaginary Bobby.” Afterwards my friends took me to the Porter bar across the street, which just so happened to have my favorite beer on tap: Rodenbach Grand Cru (a feat repeated at the Brick House in Decatur: Atlanta knows it beers!)

Other highlights in Atlanta were a fabulous sushi dinner and a visit to the World of Coke, which, cheesy as it sounds, was totally worth it as I got to pretend I was 9 years old again and sample something like 60 soft drinks from around the world. (I probably only managed 20 before a serious sugar headache kicked in)

I went back to Hambidge for the week and returned to the Atlanta area on Saturday for the Decatur Book Festival. DBF is the largest independent book festival in the country and was just a joy from beginning to end. Talk about making a guy feel important: the book festival put us Authors up at the hosting Marriott hotel for two nights, but also gave us free merchandise, $50 to spend at local eateries/shops, threw us a VIP party and even gave us access to a hospitality suite where we could eat and drink as much as we want all day on both days of the festival. It was a lot of fun to walk around and visit the booths, and just to be surrounded by so many authors and lovers of independent books. My panel was called “Identity and Self in a Shifting Landscape.” Carter Sickels, author of The Evening Hour, and I both read from our books and then Elizabeth, the moderator, asked us a few questions about how place can inform identity, particularly in gay culture. The room was packed, which was such a relief, and the audience asked us a lot of questions—really great questions, actually, quite a few of which I could only come up with good answers to after the panel was over. Oh well. Then Carter and I signed books.

I was excited to hang out with my author-friends Kristen-Paige Madonia (whose novel, “Fingerprints of You” is just out this month) and Michael Montlack (editor of “Divining Divas”) as well as see the Atlanta crew again. Thanks so much to Will Kenyon, Linda Tzoref, Ray Squires (aka Rachel Bailey), Linda Sands, Kat Johnsen, and the marvelous Julia Fenton, for coming to see me and showing me a good time.

Last but not least: Will Kenyon was kind enough to be my guide at Dragon Con this year, which was SUCH a trip. I’m not a fan boy but I totally understand why people go gaga for Dragon Con. Look at some of the photos below to see what I mean. It lasts four days, and events run well into the wee hours of the night. I was lucky enough to catch a screening of my friend Barrington Seetachitt’s husband’s movie, Rock Jocks, which actually had its world premiere at Dragon Con. Thanks, B, for inviting me–it was such a funny movie.

Thursday night’s reading  at Malaprop’s was everything a guy could ask for. But let me backtrack:

On Monday I arrived in Asheville after the Sewanee Writers conference to spend a night with my friend Lori Horvitz before starting my residency in Hambidge on Tuesday. It was my first time in Asheville, and I had been told by numerous people that I was going to love it. They were right. What’s not to love? An adorable mountain town filled with super chill free- spirited people, great food, great beer, one of the best chocolate lounges in the world  (French Broad), and the awesome Malaprop’s bookstore.

On Tuesday morning before I took off I decided to pay an incognito visit to Malaprop’s to check the place out. The store had a whole display case near the front window for upcoming readers, myself included. To top that off, up at the front counter, was my book along with a card announcing the reading on Thursday. Just a few books down on the same counter was Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild.” She was reading that same night. I was sad to miss her, but my residency started that afternoon. In any event, it was nice to share a display with her! I hear the crowds were so big they had to turn people away.

And while no one had to be turned away Thursday night, Anna North and I did get a very respectable crowd for our reading. I drove back from Hambidge (only 90 miles  away) yesterday afternoon. When we walked in, a super nice young woman (I believe her name was Lauren) from Malaprop’s asked me what kind of coffee I’d like, and I was treated to a delicious hazelnut cappuccino. Anna read from her novel and I read “Dear Guy in 24B.” and afterwards we fielded some terrific questions from the audience. The crowd was really thoughtful and engaging and genuinely interested in our process and just as people in general. We each sold some copies and signed extras for the store and then we each got a little gift bag with some local coffee and some other knick knacks. Inside was the August Events Calendar with pictures of both Anna and me front and center–it sounds a bit cheesy to get excited about this, but as a writer of a short story collection from a small independent press, being treated with such kindness and consideration feels REALLY good. A few bookstores have turned down my requests to read, so when a store as well-established as Malaprop’s does such an amazing job of making me feel welcome, I feel very appreciative. If you are ever in Asheville–and you really should visit if you haven’t–you must stop at Malaprop’s. Buy a book, or three. At least buy a coffee! It’s awesome.