I wrote “Roses” in 1995–6, soon after I started taking writing workshops at Penn State University. My primary interests then were poetry and flash fiction, mainly because I’d yet to write anything longer than 500 words. I didn’t know much about making stories, so everything I wrote that year is an overly precious, roundabout attempt…

I think that I may have written other stories before I wrote “George’s Devil” back in 1995; but it in this story that I see my beginnings as a writer. I was living in Indonesia at the time, in a small village in the Tanimbar islands. I had come to Tanimbar to immerse myself in…

Attached is “Blue Ash,” one of the first short stories I wrote during my first week in the MFA program at the University of Washington.  I was just 24 years old and still imbued with the sense that the protagonist had to be dark and moody in order to be interesting. While I have long…

In 2002 I was 26 and living in Tokyo and wanted to write HARD.  What I thought that meant was, chain-smoking and drinking bourbon at a 4 AM keyboard.  Which made for the most pure writing fun I’ve ever had, and a manuscript complete in a little under six weeks. The writing life ain’t so…

“And So She Made Some Changes” was my first official publication. It appeared in a campus literary magazine called the MT Cup Review (a campus literary journal at Ball State University) in 1999 after I had taken two or three fiction workshops. At that point, I still considered myself a visual artist and had no…

I wrote this story in 1996 and wouldn’t dream of submitting it anymore, except when invited to include a disclaimer like this. Of course, there’s something in it I like, or I wouldn’t dare to submit it at all. I still like its characters, its dialogue, and its economy. And, sadly, I’m still somewhat enamored…

When Necessary Fiction editor Steve Himmer graciously invited me to participate in this project, I figured it’d be a great opportunity to embarrass myself publicly. But what era of early writing to choose from? Should I go with the sad pastiches of Ray Carver stories I churned out during college where the only noticeable change…

This piece was abandoned in Sept. 2009 as then a part of a proposed book called Pieces of Apocalypse that began and ended with this one text. I was reading Blake Butler at the time (still am), so you can see shades of him in it. I was also high on Shane Jones (still am),…

Here is a short story called “Gail.” It was one of the first short stories I ever wrote. Coming up, I was lucky enough to have been around wonderful writers — T.C. Boyle in high school, Bill Gass at Washington University — but it took me a long time to give myself permission to write…

I wrote this back in 2001, when I was deeply in love with Martin Amis. What a knock-off! Aside from trying to write like a British male novelist, I think the biggest change in my writing style since then is that my “writerly” presence has retreated from my storytelling — these days I take on…

A Summer Theft is from a short story workshop I took in fall of 2004. This is from the “Saul Bellow” meets “post-modernism” period that dominated my work throughout graduate school. I never really liked the story, but I just thought it was lacking because I lacked talent, not because I lacked confidence and polish.…

I wrote “Wanna Be a Cowgirl” in Spring of 2008. I had just started writing, really, after quitting a horrible job. I’ve had very little instruction in writing — I have psychology and law degrees — and you can see that quite clearly in this story. I had always written a little and, in the post-traumatic…