American Salvage Cover

Wayne State University Press just sent me the cover art for my book, and I am thrilled with how it came out. It's sexy and smart and mysterious. I have a good number of writer friends who have been unhappy with the covers of their book, and so I do feel fortunate. This is a book I can enjoy looking at and enjoy selling. The photograph is by Mary Whalen, and the gal in the photo is Frances, her daughter. The guy is Mary's nephew, and the car is a Charger, like the one in Dukes of Hazard TV show. The book feels much more real now that we have a cover, and I look forward to seeing it next year. I'll let you all know about the book release parties---one in Detroit and one in Kalamazoo. Meanwhile I'll keep you posted about the ins and outs of the rest of the publication/promotion process on this blog. Cheers! BJC

All Stories Published

I can now say that all the stories in my forthcoming collection American Salvage are published or scheduled for publication in literary magazines. Here's the list as it appears on the back page of my book

Gratefully acknowledged are the magazines in which these stories originally appeared: “The Trespasser” appeared in Witness; “The Yard Man,” “The Inventor, 1972,” and “Fuel for the Millennium” appeared in The Southern Review; “World of Gas” appeared in The Heartlands Today; “The Solutions to Ben’s Problem” appeared in Diagram; “Family Reunion” appeared in Mid-American Review; and was originally read aloud and broadcast on a WBEZ Program, Stories on Stage; “Winter Life” and “Falling” appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review; "Bringing Belle Home" appeared in ACM; "King Cole's American Salvage" appeared in Pleiades; "The Burn" appeared in Controlled Burn; “Storm Warning” appeared in Orchid: A Literary Review; “Boar Taint” appeared in The Kenyon Review.

In my last collection, one of the very best stories "The Perfect Lawn" was rejected by pretty much every magazine on the planet, and so this time it's nice to have all of my darlings placed somewhere.

There was a little awkward moment a week ago, when I had two unpublished stories left, and I was sending them to several places. When Carol Finke at Controlled Burn accepted "King Cole's American Salvage," I sent a note to Pleiades withdrawing it, but then two days later (before my letter arrived) I got a call from Phong Nguyen at Pleiades accepting it. Yow! So I sent "The Burn" to Controlled Burn and asked if I could switch with them, give them "The Burn," and the editor sent me a note back saying, yeah, we like "The Burn" better anyway. So, all the stories are nestled snugly into pages. Good night.

p.s. Chris took this photo of a bee's face with his new macro lens on his digital camera.

Mission Accomplished: Copyediting

Heidi sent the manuscript to Wayne State University Press (WSUP) in much better condition than she received it a month and a half ago. I feel as thought I got something that few writers ever get anymore, excellent editing. This book will be much better as a result of her mucking around in the manuscript. Perhaps the book will even win prizes as a result. The book is dedicated to Christopher, though he doesn't know it yet (unless he reads this blog). We just celebrated our twenty-first wedding anniversary on Thursday, and I realize that he makes me the best writer I can be, simply by tolerating my eccentricities, and by giving me health insurance so I don't have to get a full-time job. Oh, and his good humor and clever conversation and the way he can't keep his hands off me. He'd probably like it if I worked full-time and put us in a higher standard of living, but he doesn't tell me so, and he doesn't ever make me feel bad about my chosen way of life. Christopher was photographing people's eyes the other day, and this is a photo he took of his own.

Pineapple Head

Okay, I'm in the editing phase, so I'm going over the manuscript with a fine-toothed comb (note I did use the hyphen in the two-word adjective... I'm on a grammatical roll, here), but I couldn't resist sending the press one more photo... The gal in the grass skirt is Holly Schwartz at an island party at my house a few years ago. I sent it because the Wayne State folks asked me for my own opinion about the photos I'd already sent them... they asked which ones I liked best. I felt overwhelmed with gratitude, and so immediately mucked up the phone lines with more, irrelevant photos.

Back to the editing, let me warn you that things can go wrong with the electronic editing. For example, Heidi sent me the manuscript at night, and the next day I spent most of the day working on it, saving it every half hour or so. Before going to bed I opened up a bunch of other files, pushing that file down the list of files on my quickie file opening menu. The following day I got up, ready to get to work, and the file was nowhere to be found. I looked for an hour, then dared not spend any more time searching. I started over.

However, what goes right with the electronic editing is more profound. I feel comfortable making the changes that need to be made, that should be made. And even at this late date, I have found two incorrect elements in the book. In one scene I have a piece of 3/4 inch plywood and in the next I refer to it as 1/4 inch plywood. Hard to believe, unless you know that originally the passage referred to cutting a hole in the floor but I changed it to cutting a hole in the wall. Still. Unforgivable.

Okay, back to work.

Manuscript Back for Final Visit

Tonight my copy editor Heidi Bell returned my manuscript to me for final perusal. In anticipation of the arrival of my darling manuscript, I cleaned my office, even got down on my hands and knees and sucked up the spiders under my table. I have to say I’ve had some worrisome nights while Heidi had my manuscript. I even dreamed about the wood floor in my dojo.

More than a year ago, I organized the building of a wood floor for my dojo. With help from dojo friends, I ordered the wood and other materials, then supervised the construction of the floor, which went beautifully, and then I screwed up the finishing of the floor so it’s gouged and unattractive. It’s fine and perfectly functional for a dojo floor, but it’s not a perfect floor. I’ve felt bad about that floor, and so I’ve been scared about the final editing of my book, thinking I could screw it up the way I did the floor. After all, I don’t want a functional book--I want a beautiful book, a flawless book.

So it meant a lot to me that Heidi wrote, “Don't be scared, Bon. It's in really, really good shape.” I had made the most changes to the newest story, so I was glad to read Heidi's note that said, “I especially love what you did with ‘King Cole's American Salvage.’ It is beautifully streamlined and yet nothing is missing.” Heidi’s had a rough week while working on my manuscript; she spent three days at the Mayo Clinic where her husband had surgery on his throat, and then she got home to find her hours were cut at her job. As soon as my darling Christopher gets home I will open a bottle of wine and we will drink to Heidi. Tomorrow I will wake up early and open the manuscript file.

The photograph above is a tiny copy of one that the folks at Wayne State U. Press are giving the designers to consider, along with Mary Whalen’s photo of the guy and gal and car, and the photo one called Burl’s Beans. Erin Dorbin took this photo in the laundromat in Galesburg, Michigan.

Copy-edited Manuscript Back to Copy Editor

Today I sent my manuscript back to my copyeditor Heidi for “editorial clean-up.” It should feel good to get rid of it, but so far I just feel nervous. I hope I did a good job going through it. I hope I made good decisions. Heidi will take a look at it and then I will get one more opportunity to have a go at it, to make sure we’ve got it just right. In my other books, I've only had the opportunity to have one back-and-forth with the copyeditor, so I'm grateful to Wayne State for indulging me. I think the finished product will be stronger. This photo is my cousin Mimi holding a blueberry pie she made. I sent it to the Wayne State folks as a cover idea, but probably it's not a crisp enough photo. Still, I enjoy any excuse to share it.

Calling a Spade a Spade

My copyeditor, Heidi, made a suggestion that has got me thinking. I have a character digging with something I refer to as a "round end shovel," the garden variety shovel that I used to call a spade until about ten years ago. My brother Mike also calls it a "round end shovel." Heidi suggested the more proper variant "round ended shovel," but that doesn't sound natural. So I've been going around asking everyone I run into what they call the shovel in question, and most of them call it a "spade." According to all dictionary and encyclopedic definitions, that is wrong. A spade is a flat-ended implement across the board, and then there is something called a "garden spade." The farm and garden stores here in Kalamazoo and on-line call the rounded shovel a "round point shovel." Here's the passage in question.

"He was standing in mud, resting, with both hands on his round-end shovel, when he saw the big orange snake, its body as thick as his step-son’s arms, folded on the rocks."

I have until Monday at noon to make this decision and all the rest, at which time I will send the manuscript back to my copyeditor, Heidi. My Darling Christopher says I'm overthinking it... but that is just the sort of gal I am. And now that I've pasted that sentence in, I'm wondering if there are altogether too many commas going on.