THE WEEKLY READ:

“Several perfectly pitched Southern narratives weave together to form a strong song of love, loss, and human resilience. A gripping, intense read.”  - Jodi Picoult, author of SING YOU HOME and HOUSE RULES

Geye has perfected the push and pull of tension that keeps readers glued to the page, and at times, genuinely surprises with a feint and a turn in another direction.

— Rain Taxi on Peter Geye’s THE LIGHTHOUSE ROAD

Be a stubborn writer.

In the spirit of NaNoWriMo, we asked our Unbridled authors: “What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever given or received?”  We think what they had to say was positively inspiring—and we’ll be sharing their thoughts with you all month long.

Kickstands up!

“The best writing advice I ever received wasn’t really advice.  Advice should be something loosely prescriptive—and I mean that in the medical sense, like “find a writing habit that works for you and stick to it.” Anything proscriptive is a rule, and, frankly, can be broken as long as you know why it’s being broken (is that advice?).

What I got was an observation.

When Steve Heller (The Automotive History of Lucky Kellerman), who now teaches at Antioch University in L.A. and is President of the AWP Board of Directors, was at Kansas State, I habitually took his short fiction workshops. I was a terrible, undisciplined writer then, but Steve observed that I had a certain quality he’d seen before: I was stubborn. He pointed out that whenever an element I thought was important to a story failed, instead of revising it down to what the class suggested, I tended to attack it, make it bigger, louder, as if to say, defiantly, “do you get what I’m trying to do now?” I think that was why in our one-on-one meetings he never advised me that I needed to write every day. Being a stubborn person, I would have to learn my writing habit for myself; however, being told I was stubborn taught me to first trust my instincts as a writer, and second, to attribute my failures to things I can control and, therefore, correct, rather than attribute them to a lack of talent or intelligence.”

Jason Quinn Malott, is the author of The Evolution of Shadows, an Indie Next Pick and a 2010 Kansas Notable Book selection. He has a BA in Creative Writing from Kansas State University and an MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University {The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics}.

First look at the final cover for The Mistress Contract.
So touchable. Can’t you almost feel the flocking… ?

Five Rules of Temping

Armed with a college degree from a good school in Southern California, I go—day by day—to different major corporations, time card in hand, job assignment in tote. This Renaissance woman punches a clock, earning big bucks for a temp agency and getting request upon request for Monday-morning returns. The good news is that I get to wear the same outfit over and over again.

There are rules for a temp:

•       Always—I mean, always—bring something to do in your spare time, but make sure it’s not a book. You can use Microsoft Word to write that letter to your health insurance company you’ve been wanting to write, or you can figure out your monthly budget; but you can never, ever—not in a million fiscal years—open up a book and turn its delicate pages. That’s a temping no-no. But know this, and know it well: it’s better to keep busy than to sit around and twiddle your thumbs. Look industrious, not like a lazy ass.

•       Don’t go out of your way to look for projects. You may think it’s your job to efficiently and quickly complete tasks and then chase after your transitory supervisors with a self-deprecatory willingness to complete a dozen more meaningless jobs, but it isn’t. The truth of the matter is that your ephemeral superiors only want to keep you out of their hair. So do what they tell you and do it well, but that’s it. One additional Is there something else you’d like me to do? is fine, but don’t go overboard. Say no to displays of false humility.

•       Don’t be sexy. Dress professionally, not glamorously. Wear your glasses instead of your contacts. Part your hair in the middle. Go for the same rounded-toe, scuffed flats every single day. You don’t want to make anyone turn his or her head, and you don’t want anyone to be jealous either.

•       If you’re educated, let it slip unpretentiously. Read Charles Dickens in the break room. Accidentally leave your Picasso date book by the water fountain. Carry around copies of the Economist. Say intelligent things about the House of Representatives.

•       Be sure to mention you temp for a particular reason. You temp, but you really write. You temp, but you’re also a cellist. You temp to save money for a trip to Florence to study art in monasteries. That sort of thing. Temping must never be an end in itself.

Why should you hint at your secret intelligence, your devotion to the classics, your plans to join the Peace Corps? People like smart temps, temps with goals. They don’t like glamorous or buxom temps.

At least, these things work for me… .

Respectfully submitted,

Sybil Weatherfield

{Excerpted from LOVE SLAVE by Jennifer Spiegel, published by Unbridled Books. Click to read more.}

let's burn literary witch Colin Dickey for his brilliant essay on witch trials & sympathetic magic in Lapham's Quarterly! →

gururugu:

emilystjohnmandel:

The American paperback.

Guest Post by Unbridled author William J. Cobb

The Birds of Custer County

When he was editing my last novel Goodnight, Texas, the savvy Unbridled Books editor Greg Michalson asked me, “What are all these birds doing in the story?” So for my forthcoming third novel, I placed that obsession front-and-center in the title—The Bird Saviors. Ever since high school years I’ve been an amateur birder: I grew up in a small town on the Texas coast, Rockport, which is famous for being near the wintering grounds of the Whooping Cranes, and a flyover spot that boasts an annual population of over four hundred different species of birds. Our house was smack dab on the shoreline of Copano Bay, near a rookery where we could see Great Blue Herons, Snowy Egrets, and Storks nesting in a thicket of palmetto and live oaks. But The Bird Saviors was composed at my home in Colorado, which has an altogether different cast and crew of bird life, most of them migrants or homebodies in the submontane habitat of my home at 9,000 feet in elevation. Here’s a list of what I often see in Custer County:

Western Tanagers, Horned Larks
Black-Headed Grosbeaks, Lark Buntings
Black-Billed Magpies, Lark Sparrows
Western Meadowlarks, White-Crowned Sparrows
Ravens,  House Sparrows
Mountain Chickadees, Brown Thrashers
House Wrens, Sage Thrashers
Robins, Sharp-Shinned Hawks
Vultures, Western Screech Owls
Pink-Sided Juncos, Grackles
Snipes, Rufous Hummingbird
Redwing Blackbirds, Blue Grouse
Bronze-Headed Cowbirds, Clark’s Jays
Western Kingbirds, Sandpipers
Red-Naped Sapsuckers, Least or Hammond’s Flycatcher
Williamson’s Sapsuckers, Wilson’s Phalarope
Northern Flickers, Kildeer
Kestrels, Mountain Bluebirds
Red-Tailed Hawks, Stellar’s Jays
Swainson’s Hawks, Burrowing Owls
Rough-Legged Hawks, Brown Creepers
Harriers, Evening Grosbeaks
Prairie Falcons, White-Breasted Nuthatch
Great-Horned Owls, Black-Capped Chickadee
Yellow Warblers, Starlings
Broad-Tailed Hummingbirds, Shoveler
Black-Chinned Hummingbirds, Pinyon Jay
Tree Swallows, Cliff Swallows
Audubon’s Warblers, Barn Swallows
Wood Storks, Ash-Throated Flycatchers
Canada Geese, Pine Siskin
Mallards, White Pelican
Nighthawks, Say’s Phoebe
Green-Tailed Towhees, Western Flycatcher
Bushtits, Dusky Flycatcher
Snipe, Vesper Sparrows
Warbling Vireos, Wild Turkeys
Canyon Towhee, Golden Eagle
Peregrine Falcon, Song Sparrow
Gray Jay, Clark’s Nutcracker
Crows, Merlins
Red-breasted Nuthatches, Pygmy Nuthatches
Barn owl, Goshawk
Bobolink, Common Yellowthroat
White-faced Ibis, Clark’s Grebe
Brown-capped Rosy Finch, Rose-breasted Grosbeak
Chipping Sparrow, Great Blue Heron
Pine Grosbeak, Rock Wren
Orange-crowned Warbler, Macgillvray’s Warbler
Hermit Thrush, Hooded Oriole

But what stands out in my mind is less the list and more so the particular remarkable bird encounters we’ve had over the years, like … . 
The Goshawk and the Great Horned Owl: Once we awoke the day after Christmas to see a Goshawk (a kind of woodland hawk, known for sweeping through the trees silently and swiftly, with a noticeable white eyebrow splash) perched on a stump where I split wood, grasping a dead Snowshoe Hare in its talons. Moments later we noticed a Great Horned Owl was perched on a nearby pine branch, and the two were fighting over the body of the hare—one of the biggest rabbits I’d ever seen, with elongated hind feet. We watched them for over an hour, and eventually the Goshawk flew away with part of the hare, and the owl swooped in to snatch what was left. Owls actually love our hillside, and one of my favorites is the Flammulated Owl, a small owl with solid black eyes that visits almost every May, and has a lovely, low call, going boop-boop-boop for hours every night, its plaintive love-call to find a mate. We’ve also seen or heard Barn, Western Screech, Saw-Whet, Pygmy, and Boreal owls on our hillside, and Burrowing owls in the prairie of the Wet Mountain Valley below.
A Rose-Breasted Grosbeak among a flock of Evenings:  I noticed that the American Birding Association recently named the Evening Grosbeak its Bird of the Year, and it is one of my favorites—the males have a beautiful black-and-yellow plumage, with great yellow eyebrows and strong beaks, which in the females is a lovely pale-green color. Every late spring they mob our feeders and swoop and swirl all through our yard, but in the last two years we’ve seen a single Rose-Breasted Grosbeak in the flock, a bird that is not supposed to occur that far west. It stands out quite clearly, with its lovely splash of bright red on its breast. 
Scott’s Oriole: One thing about birding is that you come to realize your world at a more specific, exact level. You come to see it’s not just a “bird,” but something much more specific—the way the great novelist Vladimir Nabokov noted that the word tree is rather neutral, whereas pine, spruce, or aspen conveys something more specific to the reader in the know. Last year I noticed an unusual black-and-yellow bird in the marsh area of my yard, and after rushing to get my binoculars, I spied a gorgeous Scott’s Oriole, not known to be in our area, for a day or two before it flew away. I love Orioles, and the Scott’s is remarkable for its hanging nest, often woven from yucca leaves/fibers. This one is almost like a comic-book bird—sleek, black-and-yellow plumage, bigger than a Robin, favoring arid scrubland habitat, although I saw it not far from our creek. Maybe it was thirsty.
Western Tanagers: These are perhaps the showiest birds of our hillside, with magnificent black, yellow, and red plumage, plus a lovely call, but they aren’t that easy to spot. They often flit around, and although we regularly have a nesting pair in our yard, it’s still a treat to get a good look at one. They look like mountain parakeets, smallish and brightly colored, singing often from treetops or high branches, a splash of red and yellow against the green backdrop of pine needles.
American Kestrels: Lastly, I can’t forget to mention Kestrels, that lovely small hawk often seen perched on the power lines along our county roads—with its bluish wing plumage and cinnamon back feathers, dark face stripes. It’s like a little falcon, swooping over the ditches and kiting over the fields. It’s the last bird mentioned in The Bird Saviors, and one of my all-time favorites.—William J. Cobb

Click Here to read William’s Blog

See William J. Cobb’s book The Bird Saviors

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