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…

I wrote the first drafts of “Blanket” in late 2001, no more than a year after I decided I wanted to be a writer. It was the first story I wrote in what was then intended to be a novel-in-stories, although I only finished four of the ten or twelve I planned on. One of…

This story was included as part of my Honors Portfolio at Susquehanna University; it was likely written in 2002. The preface to my portfolio contained this cringe-inducing phrase: “I dislike of any form of political-correctness in fiction or poetry.” I was going through a few phases: emulation of William Gass’s eschewing of quotation marks in…

I meant to write a very long and thoughtful final post for my month as Writer-in-Residence here, but I’m sick today, so I will just take a moment to thank everyone who so generously contributed and made for such a great, wild month. My contributors amazed and surprised me with their various interpretations of “wild”…

For the past week and a half Damien has been trying to impress me. He brings treats, usually stale cookies, into the intern office that we share, beige walls and one tiny window and, in the winter, space heaters that sputter ice. When we’re there early in the morning, before the printing press has started…

You are completely naked and hiding-slash-reading a magazine behind a leather couch, deep in a sub-basement of David Hasselhoff’s mansion. You can hear him moving through the rooms, somewhere up above you—frustration bleeding through the syllables as he calls out your name in a sing-song voice. You wonder how much longer it’ll be before he…

Frank hadn’t seen Carolyn in five years. He should have looked first at her face, but he didn’t because of the way she leaned on a black wooden cane. Its mother of pearl inlay depicted a tangle of vines and blossoms. If left alone, he’d like to pick the stick up and touch it. She invited…