New Story: 'Anthrophages Anonymous (AA)' in Bourbon Penn 25
Some stories are written relatively quickly, whereby little changes from the first draft to the final product. Others take an aeon of reflection and fine tuning. "Anthropophages Anonymous" is of the latter kind. It is an ambitious story, which took over four years of rewrites and edits. I recall sending Carol Ryles an earlier version, and this final product bears little to no resemblance at all to that draft.
There's an old writing exercise where there is a bear at the front door, and you come up with five plot outlines for the story. The lesson is that the most outrageous will be fun but most likely unworkable, and the most tame too mundane and dull. Well, this story is more the outrageous kind –– I'm always up for a masochistic-challenge with my writing.
For those who have read "Anthropophages Anonymous (AA)' - every syllable is accounted for.
I was flattered when Stephanie Gunn told me she'd thanked me in her Aurealis Award for Best Novella acceptance speech for the feedback I'd given her. With some stories, due to tight time parameters, you work in isolation, but with others you may have the fortune of discussing them before submitting. So in turn, I'd like to thank my writing group at the time of this story's production, my mates: Marty Young, Pete Kempshall, and Daniel Simpson. Dan, who has has been of great support for many years, told me to persist with it, while Pete and Marty helped me work in a sense of verisimilitude into an outlandish story which has a thread exploring verisimilitude, which isn't easy when you are writing about cultish bear folk going through the 'AA' stages; all set in a bear-folk compound run by a human 'deity'...
I have to thank Erik Secker too. This is the first time I've collaborated on a plot change with an editor (a rewrite of a scene). It was a third of a page, but a major change. Erik was never forceful, but thought it would improve the story. And it truly did. I had something similar in one of the earlier twenty or so drafts, so I was eager to see how it eventuated in this later version.
Although humorous and a little dark, the story is hopefully also poignant and meaningful. Adrian Van Young, who has helped me with story ordering for a potential collection (a WIP), told me that I was free to paste some of his feedback regarding the story here. Van Young has works published in Granta, The New Yorker, Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review and other places, said the following about the story. Always nice for positive FB on a new story.
to the somehow altogether plausible plights of the cultish, flesh-addicted Bear people in “Anthropophages Anonymous (AA),” these stories again and again managed to walk that razor’s edge between humorous and horrifying, daring us to laugh at the most uncomfortable moments (often we have no choice!), and forcing us in the process to examine why we’re reacting the way we do; what we’re able to face head-on and what we just can’t. You set up their work as a hinge that swings between humor and horror, discomfort and amusement....
I love supporting and reading Australian short work, but I find that there's an obsession within the Aussie literary scene for primarily short, tight work. These stories naturally have, and deserve, their place, however, it is also a limiting view of the genre. It's most likely the outcome of having such short word counts in Australian literary journals (most Australian journals max out at 3K), along with the fiction-submission readers adhering too stringently to creative writing 'rules' taught at a tertiary level. The best readers, writers, and editors have an understanding of the 'rules' but they also know why they can be broken for the betterment of a story.
American journals often only buy the meatier type of short story. For instance, One Story's minimum cut-off is 3000 words, Bourbon Penn is at 2000 words, Colorado Review 3750, Crazyhorse 2500, Virginia Quarterly Review (VQR) 3500; and even UK's Granta is at 3000. So, I do think we've fallen down the wrong rabbit hole Down Under as it means falsely pigeonholing the short story genre into very short stories and flash fiction, rather than a more representative embracement of the genre's lengthier narrative.
Current Reads
I've also just finished Bourbon Penn 24 and found all the stories brave and innovative. Although Sam Rebelein, Michael Gardner, Charles Wilkinson, and Chelsea Sutton's works are strong, the story that has especially stayed with me is the haunting-yet-fun tale ‘The Hunt at Rotherdam’ by A.C Wise.
And my book club has just read John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent. While it's not East of Eden (which for me is the magnum opus of magnum opuses), it is still wonderful. Like the contemporary writer Ian McEwan appears to do with his works, the overarching theme in Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent revolves around a moral dilemma; in this novel, Steinbeck explores the trappings of capitalistic temptation and class status.
Reprint News: 'Reading Coffee'
'Reading Coffee', an Aurealis Award finalist story originally published in Overland Literary Journal 204 (fiction Ed. was Jane Gleeson-White at the time) and republished in The Year's Best Australian Fantasy & Horror, 2011 Ed. Liz Grzyb & Talie Helene, has found another home a decade on. Spawn of War and Deathiness Ed. Tom Easton is an American anthology of reprint stories.
I always try to keep tabs on anthology buddies, and this time around it's the second home I've shared with American poet Gerard Sarnat (Changing Tides pub. 2020 was the previous home); and I had to laugh when I realised it is the second home shared this month alone with Louis Evans as we also both contributed to Bourbon Penn 25.
More news to come.
