I Can No Longer Contain Myself

Today is July 5th, which means I'm am full stuffed on meats, salads of various potatoes and pastas, and America. It is morning. I am in my underwear, the after images of fireworks still dancing in my corneas. And, They Could No Longer Contain Themselves sitting next to me at my desk, waiting to be talked about, to talk to us, to be binged and purged.

Just look at that pretty little book over there, the cover a windswept barren, the quiet hue of blue, the tree stump of possible forest fire or maybe tired and newly-homed beaver, or newly stuffed, as beavers actually eat wood. Did you know that? I never knew if they actually feasted on trees, or just made their homes from it, but Wiki confirms they fill their bellies with it. Just imagine if we humans made our homes of what we fill our bellies with.

This month, I make my home of these words, and I hope you will come party with me.

Here's a quick story about They Could No Longer Contain Themselves, what it is, how it came to be, straight from the fingers of its publishers:

"In 2009, celebrity judge Sherrie Flick chose Sean Lovelace’s How Some People Like Their Eggs as the winner of our Third Annual Short Short Chapbook Contest. Flick said of the book, “Lovelace’s little stories seek out these big-guy concepts and bring them down like in an old movie filled with gangsters, trench coats, cigarettes, and tough-talking women with nice legs—using smart dialogue and wit.” Lovelace’s chapbook spoke to more than just Flick: By spring 2010, the run of 300 specialty letterpressed copies of Eggs was on the verge of selling out.

Around this same time we heard from our Fourth Annual Contest judge Dinty W. Moore that he’d chosen Mary Hamilton’s We Know What We Are as the 2010 winner. We were thrilled, but found ourselves loath to give up the other four finalists—Elizabeth J. Colen’s Dear Mother Monster, Dear Daughter Mistake, John Jodzio’s Do Not Touch Me Not Now Not Ever, Tim Jones-Yelvington’s Evan’s House and the Other Boys Who Live There, and Mary Miller’s Paper and Tassels—to other publishers. All five of the finalists that year stunned us with their precision and heart, their longing and skill. It was the most stylistically diverse group of finalists we’d ever had, and yet all the manuscripts hummed with the same kind of energy and deep humanness. We had to publish them.

And so we decided to bring the four finalists from our Fourth Annual Short Short Contest and the celebrated and sold-out winner of our third together under one cover."

So there you have it. This little anthology of 5 chapbooks, brought to you simply because the ladies at Rose Metal Press simply could not stand to let someone else publish them; they wanted them for themselves, to bring them all to all of our selves.

And last night, while holding this book in my hand, turning it over and over, reading it page and page again, I realized one of the reasons I most like this book, beyond the incredible words inside: exposure.

I'm a victim of name recognition, I'll admit it. When I first came upon the small press community a couple years ago, I knew no one, and it was perhaps one of the most exciting times of my life. I devoured book after book of authors unnamed to me. These new words invaded me and shaped me in ways I've not been shaped in years. They fed me, fed my own words, I grew in them like bones awash in milk.

But now, I've grown to know who I can trust. I harbor to names like Aubrey Hirsch, Matt Bell, Adam Robinson, xTx, and a couple/few dozen others with whom I feel I can trust to bring a thrill to my skin and a warmth to the belly of me with their words. I gravitate to these authors when I see their names in new issues of journals and reviews. This book contains a couple of those names: Sean Lovelace and Mary Miller. Tim Jones-Yelvington as well, though until now I had known and trusted him more as a person than as his words.

So of course, I still gravitate to them, see their work packaged together, and immediately think, "Yes!" click "Add to Cart!" Get this book in my hand, the tactile weight, the smooth gloss of cover, and ruffle of page. I readreadread.

I read first those I know and trust. We stand in something like a circle, sipping and talking and sipping and laughing. Sean is leaning against the counter, beer in hand. Mary smiles warm, her laughter coming out her eyes. Tim owns the room, Tim alight with feather and glitter, everyone notices Tim, wants to touch him, wants to see him shimmer. We talk and we catch up, we tell stories of what we have known since we last met, last shared words.

I become aware of these other couple of people invited to the party, Elizabeth Colen and John Jodzio, standing on the periphery, they sip their gin and tonics, their mint juleps. They wait politely for their turn to speak. And then, without warning they burst on to me, their words move and captivate, and I spend the evening with them, talking about daughters, monsters, mothers, warlocks, glaciers, and panty thieves. Spending the evening with them, reading them I found that same feeling of wonder and discovery I felt a couple years ago. The feeling of finding new voice, of making new friends at a party, that up all night talking and talking feeling.

I hope the same happens to you. Perhaps you snagged this book because like me you recognized Mary Miller, trusted her words to feel true and earnest on the page, and in doing so, at least 1 or 2 of these authors packaged alongside her work in this little number are authors completely new to you. I hope this book opens us all up to someone new, opens us all up to something new.

Let's make some discoveries together. Let's have a party. Let's invite all our friends, and our friends's friends, find people we don't know, fresh faces awash in glow and drink. Let's no longer contain ourselves. Let's talk and talk.

Godspeed, Cut Through the Bone

It's a small, strange feeling to be typing this last post for this month. I'm taking Friday and Monday off for the holidays, and I hope you all do as well, and enjoy the weekend, whether you're particularly patriotic or not.

I have to admit, I'm not sure I've ever gotten to spend so much time with a book since college, and am not sure I've felt as intimate with a bundle of pages in the 5 years now I've been out of school. Looking over the past month, I can't help but make that comparison.

I'm hardly a professor, but what I feel like has happened here in the past month is reminiscent of what used to happen back at Ball State, when we'd spend a few weeks as a class close-reading some book. One class in particular taught by Patrick Collier about Modernist literature of the early 20th century, was structured much the same way. We spent 2-3 weeks reading a novel, coming to class every MWF, and discussing it at great length, reflecting, responding.

But what else has happened here I never found in any class, and perhaps it's due in large part to the openness and vulnerability of Cut Through the Bone, of Ethel's writing, that allowed us to get away from such a clinical, critical approach to the reading. We bared our own bones here this last month, and I'm truly grateful you've all followed along and taken part in the discussions and shared all you've shared.

I have to admit, I had apprehensions leading into the launch of The Lit Pub. Molly and I put a lot of work and thought into this whole endeavor, Molly especially, and with any grand baby like this, there's always the fear of flop and failure. But I don't feel failure in the slightest. Looking back on this month, I see nothing but light.

So thanks to everyone for getting so involved in this, for sharing what you've shared. I've been amazed at the sheer vulnerability of everyone here, and the smart answers to hard questions, and the grace in hard subjects. Thanks so incredibly much to Ethel for being so active in the conversation, and all the ways she helped to push and promote not just her own featured book, but all the work by Molly and Mike this past month at TLP.

I'll be back next Wednesday with a new book (hint: it's from a Chicago press), and I hope we have just as excellent a time with that book as we did with Cut Through the Bone!

Happy holiday weekend everyone! Eat some beer brats (or veggie shish kababs if you're not of the carnivorous persuasion) and enjoy some summer sun!

Story Focus: "The Long Way"

This past weekend driving to a party in the countryside just outside of Indianapolis, I was in a mood to be moved by music. I sang loud, I drummed the steering wheel, I grew goosebumps along the skin of my arms. Feeling nostalgic, I put in the CD of my old band No Heroics, Please (yes, we used a Raymond Carver reference as a band name, yes, we were nerds).

NHP still stands to this day as the best music I've ever been a part of creating. Even 5 years later, I can still listen to these songs, still feel the quiet expectation building in my chest as each song swells and rolls into itself, still feel the pride of orchestration prickling along the pores of my forearms. I wish that band had had a chance.

Ten years of my life I spent playing in various bands to various levels of success. I know well "The Long Way," that constant hope and reach for elusive dreams. Putting in the hours at the fret board, sweating in tiny carpet-walled practice spaces, figuring out the Tetris game tactics of packing your band's gear into the back of a van or trailer.

NHP was born out of the dissolution of another band when our drummer and singer quit. The remaining members, Matt, Louis, and myself, all wanted to keep playing together. I forget how we hooked up with Trent on drums, but I'll never forget how he left us. We could each hold a decent tune vocally, but were honest enough with ourselves that we couldn't carry a mic, so we decided to keep it instrumental.

From the first song we wrote, we knew who we were, we knew where we could go. We believed in that first song enough to write a 2nd, and a 3rd, and so on.

We believed so much in those songs, we went right to work booking a tour. We knocked out a couple decent live recordings of our first 2 songs, posted them on MySpace, and spent an entire summer doing what needed to be done: hours upon hours planning the route and booking the shows, designing t-shirts and stickers and other merch, writing enough songs to make an album and getting them recorded, designing a decent looking DIY packaging for the album. Hours. Hours.

We booked an entire tour on 2 shoddy live recordings...having never played a single show. How we believed.

And so did our girls. It's only in reading "The Long Way" (unfortunately not published online, but available in Cut Through the Bone) that I really understand the grace and understanding that each of our girlfriend's (wife in Matt's case) had to get through that summer with us. And ultimately, the grace they had when the tour exploded from the inside, when Trent announced just before the first show of the tour that his girlfriend was being kicked out of her house, pregnant with his child, that he was sorry, but would have to go back home after that first night.

There's more to the story, as there is with any story, but it's unimportant here.

What's important, is how after No Heroics Please, neither Matt nor myself went on to do any other music. Louis played a bit in other bands, and still might. I'm not sure. I've not talked to him in years. But, for myself, the implosion of NHP was a sucker punch from which I've never been able to fully regain my breath. I hardly play guitar anymore.

What's important, is there are a lot of Ways. It isn't just confined to the music industry. The Long Way exists for any endeavor a person believes in and is passionate about. The Long Way for you may be writing, painting, acting. It doesn't even have to be an artistic pursuit. You may be trying to make partner at your law firm. Maybe running for a government office. I've seen The Long Way in a couple friends trying and trying to conceive a baby. I've seen The Long Way in a friend trying and trying to keep his veins clean. My Way now is no longer music, but I have my Ways.

What's important, is you never stop walking The Long Way. If you do, that's when you might as well call it a life. You might switch Ways, but don't stop walking. And if you find someone to walk with you, recognize what you have in that, because looking back at it, I had no idea what I had then until Ethel showed me.

Robots, the Scientific Method, and Dying

Sorry for the radio silence, everybody. Today we have a special five-part guest post from Amber Nelson that takes a scientific approach to T&T, and manages along the way to connect the novel to Susan Sontag and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Definitely a must read!

T&T: Robots, the Scientific Method, & Dying

1. Ask a Question

In season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we are introduced to a new villain: Adam. Adam is a scientifically engineered monster—part man, and part bits of various monsters—a modern-day Frankenstein's monster. When he wakes, he kills his creator and goes out into the world. In the world he meets a boy. He asks the boy "What am I?" and the boy says, "A monster." And he asks "What are you?" and the boy says "I'm a boy."

In Today & Tomorrow, we are without a mystical guardian endowed with the strength and speed to slay all the monsters. Instead, we have an unnamed narrator on her birthday. A curious girl. Throughout the novel, we frequently flashback to certain memories.

"I'm a taxidermist." He turned away. "I know what taxidermy is."

"You should stuff people," I said.

"What?"

"You should kill people and stuff them and put them in life-like poses in their homes. Like a serial killer. You could murder and stuff whole families and arrange them carefully in their homes. You know, life-size dioramas--like playing Monopoly or eating a home-cooked meal—meat-loaf, or fish-sticks—or arguing about what TV shows to watch. You could be famous, the taxidermurder."

"Why would I want that?"

"Why does anyone want anything?" I picked up my audio-tour head-phones and placed them on the taxidermist's head. (70)

Our narrator asks a simple question. Why does anyone want anything. As human beings, we don't need much—water, shelter, food, etc. And yet we want so much. But to ask the question also admits to lack—she doesn't understand her humanbeingness. People do want things. Even our narrator mediates her experiences and observations around desire. Early on in the book, she admires Julia, the pretty WalMart cashier's, arms. "I want to remove Julia's arms and place them on my body and wear them like I'm Julia and like Julia's arms are my arms." (7)

And somehow, despite her living in the world going to McDonalds and AM/PM and drinking coffee, she is apart from the world.

[Merna, the sister, says] "Tell her about your work. Are you in school? We don't know anything about you. Be a person. Send an email. A card, with pictures. Anything."

"What do you mean? Be a person? What could you possibly mean? I'm not a person? What am I?" (155)

2. Observe

Mother was a behavioral-psychologist. She worked at a university research facility with other psychologists and a thousand white mice and mazes and little white sound-proof rooms. She often told me about the white soundproof-rooms. "We keep the mice in there," she'd say. "I wish I had a room like that. I'd take you with me to the soundproof-room… and stay there until all you can hear is your body-sounds, like your heart and lungs, your pumping blood, your lungs holding air like a machine, you know?" (76)

Several times throughout the novel there is reference to the human as robot, the body as machine, our narrator comparing various body parts to machines or robot parts. That, coupled with her violent fantasies and lies, her awkwardness in social situations, diverting attention away from feelings or talking about feelings, I can't help but be reminded of The Sarah-Connor Chronicles. In this (really atrocious) television show based on the Terminator, Summer Glau (of Firefly fame) plays Cameron, a newer version of the Terminator model sent back by old John Connor to protect young John Connor from the evil Skynet and their evil robots. But Cameron, while she looks human, is often awkwardly not. She has to fake it to get by in a human world and without attracting unwanted attention. Because she lacks  a true understanding of human emotions and human social interactions, she makes several amusing guffaws. And yet, it's in those amusing guffaws that the character does manage to express some kind of feeling, some kind of struggle. She tries to appear more human, and she tries to understand these human feelings. At one point, there is even a reference to her being "in love" with John Connor (and he with her).

Our narrator is not actually a robot (so far as we know). But she does seem, in her interactions with other people, conspicuously uncomfortable, awkward, wrong.  And in being this way, she makes other people uncomfortable.

So she's left with that question "Am I not a person?"

She has family: sister, stepmom/grandmother, grandfather, memories of an absent mother and father and sister. She also has two "lovers." One lover, Erik/Todd, calls her "so fucking hot" and mentions her tits. She has desires, like going to Lisbon, holding up an AM/PM, Julia's arms. She has memory. She lies.

3. Construct a Hypothesis

"It's good. You're a good person," Merna says. "You can be a person." (155)

Being a human can simply mean being a homo sapien—a sack of skin, bones, organs and viscera. Being a good person often has more to do with how you deal with conflict, struggle.

“Well.” Grandfather watches television for a little while. “I think it’s comforting to know that things have an end, small scale, lives etc…, and also large scale, world, universe. It’s good to know that things end completely.” (83)

Her grandfather is sick. He's dying. Imminently. And while this may be a comfort to him, how does somebody who questions whether they are a person try to understand what it means to die—something with which people who are comfortable in their personhood struggle to come to terms?

It's our narrator's birthday. "On birthdays I always feel closer to death," Merna says. (152)

4. Experiment

It's clear, throughout the novel, that our narrator is a liar. But that does not mean there is no truth in the narrative. As Susan Sontag says in Regarding the Pain of Others, "Memory has altered the image, according to memory’s needs." And memory is one of the most direct ways that our narrator's particular...eccentricities... are revealed in their true form: as complexities.

I was eight. A car had hit the raccoon, bisected it. The little raccoon-legs still shivered and pulled forwardly as though, through raccoon-persistence, it could drag its bleeding half-body to the field beyond the road. I thought I should hurry home, half-raccoon slung over my shoulder, place it in Mother's hands or Merna's--hand it to Grandfather maybe, beg him to repair the raccoon, to reassemble it with superglue, rivets, a rivet gun, to get the power-drill from the garage, to drill clean holes through which we could reconnect the raccoon with rope or string, steel wire, something, to sew the raccoon-pieces into one perfect whole, maybe, to resurrect it. I poked the half-raccoon with a stick, flipped it, inspected its fleshy holes and jagged misshapen bones, its little pink muscle-tears and everywhere the thick black blood. I understood that death was normal, boring, particularly for raccoons, and imagined my body bisected, just as the raccoon was, little arms twitching forwardly, a girl in a pink corduroy jumper slowly poking me with a stick, transfixed as a half-lung oozed from my open abdomen. I heard a little gasp. It was Anastasia and Anastasia was small with long brown pigtails, her white crepe dress crinkled near the sleeves and around the lacy hem. Anastasia's mouth was open, her eyes little black dots. "I found it," I said. "It's our new pet." I poked the half-raccoon again. "Come look. It's a mutant raccoon. Look at it's funny waving legs. Look here, what should we name her?" Anastasia stood next to me, hands clasped before her. "We should operate," I said. "We'll call it Flossy, make an experiment. Play with the raccoon-muscles and the lungs and heart and stuff. Remove the lungs, collect lungs, petrify them, put them in formaldehyde, keep lungs, and livers maybe, hearts, petrified in jars on your bookshelf. You'd like that, wouldn't you? the formaldehyde-smell. We could make our own shelves for them. We could eat them. Or take the lungs, sew them together. An experiment, so we can discover things about lungs."  (133)

It's a long excerpt, I know, but important. While her tone is almost cavalier, apathetic, it is not. As Sontag says, "The states described as apathy, moral or emotional anesthesia, are full of feelings; the feelings are rage and frustration." Our narrator isn't the kid shooting squirrels and torturing cats. Here, we glimpse our narrator as a little girl facing death for the first time, grappling with what it means to die. She wants to study death to understand.

Let's go back to Adam, from Buffy. After the little boy calls him a monster, Adam ends up slaughtering the little boy. He cuts him open and hangs him from a tree, investigating the boy's insides, trying to understand what makes something human.

Our narrator doesn't actually cut anybody up. But we do see this attempt to understand through her rich fantasy life.

...instead I imagine slaughtering a small white kitten, a dozen white kittens, carefully cutting small kitten-pieces and placing the kitten-pieces in a large silver bowl, a billion kitten-pieces from a million kittens. Worldwide suffering must be like that, incremental and ongoing.  (88)

It's not a simple desire for violence. It's the less simple desire for understanding. It's observing something, gathering data and constructing a hypothesis.

"Merna's hand touches my shoulder and we're touching slowly and tenderly. Strange and human, I think. Strangely, I think. "Human," I say." (181)

5. Analyze Data

In the end, Today & Tomorrow is a book about understanding, a book that asks questions in an attempt to understand what it means to be human, and so also what it means to live and to die.

"Artistic expression and stuff. I wanted to show the 'innate ephemerality’ of the human-body as object.'" (142)

She is a person. She feels. She has fantasies. She eats. She sleeps. She can be injured.

But in the end, she is changed. She maybe learned something.

The body doesn't move and the room temperature doesn't change. There's no sound and I don't think or want anything. I watch the digital-clock. I slowly lie next to Grandfather. I look at the body. I close my eyes. (252)

Cut Through the Bone: An Interview with Ethel Rohan

I feel like at this point, Ethel Rohan needs no introduction here at The Lit Pub, so I'll just make with the love here and give you the interview, raw and uncut.

You write as someone who seems pretty intimate with loss. What’s your relationship with loss? Are there specific moments in your life you use to fuel the imagery and pathos in these stories in Cut Through the Bone?

I don’t consciously write about loss or any other subject matter. When I write, I don’t structure or plot and never know where I’m going. I follow the words and am always grateful whenever those words lead to a story I feel good about.I’m constantly surprised by the stories that come out of me and in awe of the writing process and creativity in general. At some point in the revision of every story, I ask of the work, “why would I write you?” It isn’t until I realize why each story matters to me personally that I can even hope to ‘finish’ the work and make the stories matter to others. I do feel intimately familiar with loss and have come to realize I’m everywhere in Cut Through the Bone in that I “know” what it is to have lost loved ones and lost parts of myself.

Obviously there’s lots of talk about the themes of loss and absence in this collection, but as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve taken from it more a theme of what is gained in the space left by that absence, space as a metaphor for possibility. Do you feel there’s too much focus on the loss and not what there is to gain?

The insistence on the loss and darkness in this collection was at first intriguing and instructive to me. Now I feel somewhat frustrated by the narrow focus on loss and darkness in the collection. I think the best writing goes into a dark place and brings out some key knowledge and meaning into the light. Readers’ resistance to suffering in fiction fascinates me. It can’t be that we’re so fragile or unconscious? So why does it seem that many can’t handle the truths—however hard-hitting—that fiction can deliver?

I’d go so far as to say the reluctance to acknowledge darkness and suffering in life and in literature angers me. What’s to be gained by denying truth and turning a blind eye to what’s difficult and painful in the world? Why, I wonder, is darkness and suffering so much easier to accept, even revered, in film and on TV versus in writing? I’m confounded by that. It’s one thing if someone feels traumatized by what they read, or there’s some fault with the work, then by all means stop. But to turn away and give up on stories only because they look hard at pain, suffering and life’s difficulties, I don’t understand that. Too many look away from sadness and suffering in literature and in life, and it’s wrong. Yes, absolutely, reading for escapism and entertainment has its value and its place, but our art cannot be limited to such narrow, irresponsible lenses. Art should mirror life and we shouldn’t look away from its harsher images and truths. There can be no change without disturbance and no gain without struggle.

We live in dark, difficult times and I don’t want my work to add to the suffering, I want my stories to acknowledge, confront and examine suffering in the hopes that we can alleviate it.

I love the idea, thank you, of “what is gained in the space left by that absence, space as a metaphor for possibility.” If we’d only look into the dark more often so we can set it afire and try to recover the missing more often, the world would be a better place.

I tried to start a community collaborated interview with you earlier this month, but it didn’t really take off. Molly posed a great question though that I wanted to be sure was asked here: “Ethel blogs a lot about her mother. If she’s willing, I would like to know more about what’s happening in her life. She is so willing to share a touch of the detail, the suffering her mother is going through, but I really want to know what Ethel’s going through . . . maybe for no other reason than to send her virtual hugs.”

At some point, I accepted that everything I write leads back to my mother. I resisted that truth for a long time and it’s something I tried to rid my work of. However, my mother and our complicated relationship both feed and haunt my imagination. When I was a child, my mother and I warred much of the time and we both hated and desperately loved each other. She was mentally ill and I was angry and scared and wanted nothing more than for her to be well, but she never recovered. My mother’s still alive (in her twelfth year of Alzheimer’s and recently diagnosed with uterine cancer) but she’s been long gone. Her absence and great suffering are among my demons and it’s because of her I write. Writing gives me somewhere to put the pain and fear and yearning. Writing offers me opportunities to heal.

It’s been interesting to have read first these stories in Cut Through the Bone, which no doubt had plenty of editorial review during the publishing process at Dark Sky Books, and going back to find earlier versions of these stories published online so I can link to them from my Story Focus posts here, allowing people who haven’t gotten the book yet to read the story. Particularly, I noted a lot of changes in “More Than Gone,” where you were a bit more liberal in your word count and description, whereas in the collection, your language is a lot more sparse. What has your growth been like as a writer, developing this bare-bones language that’s prevalent in your work now? Has the editing process at Dark Sky contributed to that voice?

I think my publisher, Kevin Murphy, would agree that there was little editorial input from Dark Sky on this manuscript. When I first submitted the collection, Kevin rejected the manuscript, essentially saying, “it’s not there yet.” Kevin encouraged me to work more on the stories and to resubmit. Thus motivated, I tried to be merciless with the work and studied every story and word for its worth. Over the course of months, I re-worked the collection and then sent the manuscript to Kevin O’Cuinn, my compatriot, fellow writer, and fiction editor at Word Riot, for his input and feedback. In response, Kevin provided excellent comments and edits that helped me get these stories where they needed to be.

During my MFA at Mills, Victor LaValle always said we should, “know our weaknesses as writers and police against them.” Some of my writing weaknesses are repetition, over-writing, flowery language and sentimentality. These bad habits appear in my first drafts and in revision need to be eradicated. Sometimes, butchering my stories and getting them to that better place can be especially hard because I love description and emotion. I’m still struggling with knowing what are bad habits and what are my style and voice. I want to rid my work of the former, but not the latter. Just as recently as this week, Matt Salesses of The Good Men Project hacked away at a story I submitted and made it so much better. This was an important lesson and reminder that those weaknesses are still clear and present dangers in my work and I need to be ruthless against them. As writers, we are forever students.

You had some really fantastic things to contribute to the discussion regarding men’s vs. women’s literature. Where do you see the future of literature in this regard? What would your ideal publishing/literary atmosphere be in regards to gender?

I’m very optimistic about the future of gender and race equality in literature. Thanks to the excellent marriage of the internet and the printed word, we live in exciting literary times and things are only going to get better. As women writers, readers, and buyers we’re raising our voices and harnessing out collective power. Some of the direct results of that activism and clout are increased visibility for, and accessibility to, the widest and most equitable range ever of writers, voices and works. We also have independent publishers to thank for the exciting state of literature today. Indie publishers are proving to be innovative, risk-takers with their fingers very much on the pulse of writing and works that matter. Indies are committed to excellence and inclusivity in writing and are fast becoming industry leaders and groundbreakers.

You just recently had a new book released by the illustrious PANK, Hard to Say. Can you tell us a bit about this book?

Hard to Say is a tiny collection of fifteen linked stories set largely in Ireland. I’m heartened by the excellent response thus far to this little book because these stories are personal and painful, and I agonized over whether or not I should publish the book. Unlike Cut Through the Bone, where I feel very much hidden inside the stories, in Hard to Say, I feel very much exposed and it was difficult to find the courage and get the necessary distance to tell these stories right and well. Only time and readers will tell if I succeeded in the latter.

Hard to Say is an apt title and I’m still coming to terms with the little book being out in the world. It’s deeply encouraging and rewarding that readers are moved by these stories and I feel buoyed by how many readers and fellow writers have found the work meaningful and worthwhile. To expand on the idea above regarding the opportunities in spaces, I’m excited about the new spaces that have opened up inside me now that I’ve gotten the stories in Hard to Say out of my insides and onto the page, and I look forward to finding out what can be gained in their absence.

Lastly, what’s next for you/what are you working on now that we can look forward to? Have you had any recent publications you’d like to share that our readers can check out?

I have a third story collection I’d love to see published, one that both my agent and I agree is best suited to an indie publisher. I’ve also finished a novel manuscript that I’m about to send off to my agent. It’s a novel I’ve worked long and hard on now over the course of nine years and I’m crossing every body part I can, hoping it’ll at last get to be in the world.

*   *   *

You can find more of Ethel's recently published work in the Highlighted Stories section at her website's Published Works page.

Story Focus: "Gone"

Yesterday, I did Father's Day. Babies are everywhere in my family right now. My sister-in-law is in town this month with her 1 year old. My other sister-in-law is 6 months pregnant with their first. My cousins just welcomed their 3rd into the world last month. Babies. Everywhere.

I will never understand a woman's body. You ladies. You can build another person inside of you. You realize that, right?

I mean, I get it. Sperm. Egg. 46 chromosomes. Embryogenesis. Trimesters. All that.

But, I mean, that's a tiny human splitting and piecing and splitting and piecing itself together inside your bellies. And your bones turn soft. The baby moves around inside of you, through your skin, you can make out feet, elbows, heads. You talk about your bodies unabashedly; you discuss what they crave, where they hurt, what is swelling and stretching.

I think about all this, and my mind reels. I am at once amazed and terrified. I think about all this, and I think about what I wrote earlier in the month about the artist in the story "Gone" in Cut Through the Bone:

“Gone” reads like a retelling of Robert Hass’s classic “A Story About the Body,” in which a woman reflects on the loss of her breasts to cancer, and bares herself to an artist attracted to a body she knows he does not understand.

Have you ever read "A Story About the Body?" If not, you should. It's a quick read, only a few hundred words. Go ahead and read it. We can wait.

Read it? Okay. I just wanted to make sure. There's no quiz, nor am I really going to make any comparisons beyond what I already have. I just wanted to make sure you'd read it.

Onward.

In "Gone," which I unfortunately couldn't find published online for those who don't yet have the book, a lady stares at herself in a mirror, traces scars along "the memory of [her] breasts" and another scar vertical down her belly, which I'm guessing is from a hysterectomy. She gets a phone call from an artist, Jason, who frequents the diner where she works, telling her that he has drawn her portrait, that he wants to show her. Her insides churn, feeling invaded, "he'd no right to draw me without my permission, to take from me like that." This lady, who has already had so much taken from her.

He insists on coming over, and she flees to her neighbor's, where their colicky baby is hurling fits. She encourages the bedraggled mother to take a break, have a shower while the narrator does what she can to soothe the baby. She coos and hums into its soft smell, its harsh shrills, and this line--holy damn this line breaks me--"His large, bald head pushed and rooted at my prosthetic bra and his greedy grunts turned frantic. I had only my baby finger to offer. The force of his suck hurt and frightened me, could rip my finger right off."

The baby quiets, the mother returns refreshed, and she reluctantly goes back to her home, where Jason is waiting on the doorstep. She invites him inside where he shows her his drawing, and she says, "It's not me." In the final lines, which I don't want to reveal verbatim here and lessen the sparse, cool wonder of them for those who've yet to read them, she bares herself to him, and he marvels and marvels with his pencil.

It's this same marveling I feel when I consider the female body. And it's not in a sexual way that I marvel, but simply wondering at the whole human mystery of us. Sometimes when I'm around babies, I make the joke, "Babies are weird, man. They're like little humans." It gets a laugh. But really, there's a lot of truth under the humor. Babies amaze me. Humans amaze me. Bodies amazes me, the way they bend and fold and wrinkle, the way they tear and mend and heal.

It's this amazement I see throughout "Gone," how the narrator marvels at herself in the mirror, at the force of the baby's hunger, the mother marveling at the narrator's ability to quiet the baby, at Jason's initial artistic rendering of the narrator, and the final wonder in the pencil, dancing and dancing.

The Metaphor Is Closer Than You Think

I have a painting in my apartment. It looks like this:

I like this painting for several reasons: its simple lines and muted colors. How the only, even vaguely, bright shade in the entire work is the red of the woman’s small, down-turned mouth. It is a sardonic, sad red—not bold, not celebratory.

Mostly, though, it’s the woman’s eyes that get me—eyes not unlike those in other Modigliani paintings, but wider—as deep and dark as two caves, so black they look dead. Or they make the woman look like she herself is dead. This is what haunts me about this painting. I can’t decide if she is metaphorically dead (emotionally dead, dying, stricken, etc.) or actually dead. A ghost.

I feel this is the painting Ethel Rohan would paint if she could. This dark image of this woman. It’s not just that, like the lines in the painting, Rohan’s writing is clean—though it is most certainly that. There is nothing unneeded in her prose, no word that is not doing something, if not two or three somethings. Tight. But it is more that the metaphor in this painting—showing a woman as actually dead to indicate an emotional/metaphorical death—is one that Rohan herself would use.

In the short story “Makeover,” the protagonist, a wife and mother, has a wild woman inside of her chest who wants her to wear tight, racy clothing and sing and dance. The woman gets excited when the protagonist satisfies her “wild” desires: “While she sang, the woman in her chest danced, spun and spun.” The metaphor is clearly wrought: Sometimes women (and men) feel as though they have a different version of themselves inside themselves that is trying to get out. It is a version that one’s family and friends might not, and probably do not, appreciate, as this is not the mother, wife, friend, etc., with whom they’re familiar. In “Makeover,” the woman’s family protests until she acquiesces, returning to her normal behavior, leaving the woman inside of her chest clawing and shrieking, unhappy.

Another character, the protagonist of “Shatter,” lives a broken life. She has a shitty job, a mediocre marriage, probably a drinking problem, and a sister with whom she doesn’t have a close relationship. Throughout this two-page story, nearly everything around this woman literally breaks—glass jars and the grocery bags she packs full at work. These objects break and others constantly threaten to break. What in a longer, more diffuse story might serve as a motif becomes the story’s central action and metaphor. In this way, Rohan makes the elements of her fiction work harder, accomplish more, than they might in another author’s hands. Her images nearly always work double—serving literal and symbolic purposes, pointing towards the tangible and intangible.

In the titular and final story of the collection, a masseuse gives a massage to a man whose leg was amputated after a motorcycle accident. This physical loss can be seen as visually representing the absence of the masseuse’s son. The last time she touched her son, “held him for any length,” was in some distant past. Throughout Cut Through the Bone, Rohan identifies the many ways in which her characters’ loss and struggle might manifest physically in their worlds. In fact, this last story feels like a metaphor of the collection itself. Like the woman who massages the air where the man’s lower leg used to be, throughout the book Rohan works in spaces defined by their emptiness, what was once there but is no longer. All those people and things that leave indelible, palpable marks in their absence.

Like that painting on the wall? In a month, a man will come and take it, because it is his. He’ll take some other things that belong to him too: a sleeping bag and tent, a 1977 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, and a small wooden rack that holds magazines. I want to keep the painting, all this stuff, but none of it is mine. I feel that if this were a Rohan story, these objects would take on a life of their own—the woman in the painting would sprout legs, the books would flap their pages like wings. If this were a Rohan story, these objects would slowly disappear, piece by piece, long before anyone comes to take them.