I\u2019ve spent an enormous chunk of my life trying to escape society but somehow remain within society.<\/p>\n
Family, friends, old jobs, and the medical field have all said to me at one time or another that I have mental issues because I feel that way. I don\u2019t like attention, awards, or applause, that kind of attention has never been for me. I digress. When I was a drinking heavily, I enjoyed any kind of attention, but that was Henry and not Frank. Ever since I went on blood thinners in 2021, I had to painstakingly manage the world as Frank, rather than Henry. Henry raised beer mugs; got in fights; he was the comedian; he had a bunch of friends; flirted with women; at times he could be a complete asshole. Frank drinks a couple of beers, listens to his doctors, shows up for work, has less friends, and takes life a bit more seriously, but the one trait they both share is a mutual disliking of self-promotion. Especially when it comes to writing.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not a fan of most kinds of literary attention, which is a double-edged sword because I like to publish, and I like it when people read my stories, poems, columns, and when I interview people. It humbles me. And not that people are banging down my door, but I have turned down a handful of podcasts and interviews in the past. I\u2019m a nightmare for agents and publishers in the sense that I do not like self-promotion. I\u2019ve tried to get better with it by sharing my work in Instagram stories, pinning stories on social media pages so people can read what I publish both in print and online because it sadly is a part of it. Shit, I even gave my first reading in years a few months back to the enormous and thunderous crowd of ten people. I\u2019m quite certain a few of them had no idea who I was. I loved them more than the people who knew me, but, in a way, all of it makes me cringe. I think, in a way, I\u2019m a naturalist. I prefer the work to speak for itself regardless of how many readers I may or may not have. Or due to being Gen X, I still believe in word of mouth. My brain is forever a telephone pole full of stapled fliers for rock bands, punk concerts, art classes, dog walkers, boxing classes, dominatrix sessions, and piano movers.<\/p>\n
We live in an age where social media followers, likes, hearts, seem to be equally as important as the work itself, which bothers me. Imagine Jim Harrison, Carver, Bukowski, Highsmith, going on Facebook and posting their latest story. Imagine Jim Thompson taking to TikTok to promote \u2018The Grifters.\u2019 The work spoke for itself even when people didn\u2019t really know them. Bukowski wrote, \u201cShe said I fucked better as a puncher of timeclocks, than I did as a writer.\u201d I have that quote hanging in my writing area along with several others. I love that Buk quote because I know exactly what he meant by it.<\/p>\n
Another thing that ruins me is that I don\u2019t fit into a category, like the various kinds of books on my shelves, I enjoy writing different things. One day I\u2019m working on a crime story, later a comical piece, or grit-lit, dirty realism, a literary story. I\u2019ll wake up and write poetry, work on a column, or an interview. Years back, poets S.A. Griffin and Scott Wannberg told me, \u201cThe poem is always happening. It\u2019s ongoing.\u201d I apply that to my own writing. It never ends until the day I end. Everything is always ongoing. I like knowing I don\u2019t know what\u2019ll happen the next time I write. I like not knowing even though I do know. Woah, slow down there, Spicoli.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been nominated for Pushcarts, Best of The Net, the Harry Crews, and of course I never won. In fact, I often forget about the nominations two days later because I knew I wasn\u2019t going to win, nor did I feel like I deserved to win. I don\u2019t have a website for my writing, books, magazine publications, even if people have told me I need to get one immediately. I was the Larry Brown Writer in Residence for a week a few years back, which was a high point in my literary career if you can call it that. And not because of the invite, but because I was standing on the same holy ground that one of my heroes stood on. Still, I don\u2019t like bragging about it, even if it feels to me like I\u2019m bragging to you right now. When I talk about my time in Tula and Oxford I share photos, talk about meeting cool authors, hanging out with the lovely Brown family. I have no illusions about who I am. I\u2019m not going to be a well-known reclusive author like Salinger or Cormac. My hope is when I publish people will read it and take something from it. My hope is to hang out with favorite authors because they liked stories or poems I published. My hope is to line my pockets with a few bucks. My hope is to wake up every day and write something, whether good or bad, just to simply string words together. Simple everyday ten-dollar words so I can communicate with everyday people like a nurse, butcher, electrician, a janitor, guitar player. I\u2019m not of the intellectual crowd, nor do I come from it, nor do I intend to be a part of it.<\/p>\n
I have little to no interest in panels or giving discussions, and I\u2019ll never be a part of a workshop. However, I will sit and listen to a panel given by an author I dig. I\u2019ve traveled, better yet, drifted across America from coast to coast in three different decades in the most broke ass way possible, and read more books than the average person, for me that\u2019s workshop enough. I know, I\u2019m odd right? But I end up sharing my stories in magazines not only do I want people to read them, but I believe in the magazine, the editors, and I want people to read the magazine as much as I want people to read my stories, and in a way it sucks for me. The moment I share a new publication, I look in the mirror and say, \u201cThere you go talking about yourself again.\u201d I will admit, I do enjoy when people share my work online because it means they enjoyed it, and that means the world to me, but I have my dignity, and I will forever cuss myself out after I go online and compulsively post my publications. I\u2019d rather talk about music, movies, boxing, sex, trees, hockey, a kitchen light switch in Wichita.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m also not much of a community person. I don\u2019t do the whole \u201cwriting community\u201d online. You\u2019ll never see me using the hashtag \u2018amwriting.\u2019 I always thought posting that was funny, if one is hash tagging “amwriting” are they truly writing? This doesn\u2019t mean I don\u2019t believe in community, I do, but I prefer my place as the outsider looking in, like sitting on a park bench and people watching. I\u2019ll certainly share books, stories, and poems from other writers I like. I\u2019m even doing an interview series with Bull Fiction all of 2025 because it\u2019s my way of giving back and turning people on to books from both big and Indie presses. However, I try to keep low key. The idea of telling people I work with, for example, that I\u2019m a writer, gives me a serious case of the douche-chills. How pretentious of me, not to mention keeping myself on the down low allows me to listen in, get ideas. The only way for coworkers to find out that I write would be to find my social networks, Google my name, but I\u2019ll never walk into a room and say, \u201chey man, I\u2019m a fucking writer.\u201d So fucking what? They can reply, \u201cHey man, I\u2019m a street sweeper,\u201d and they\u2019ll win every single time. What can I say in return? \u201cWell, I know what a noun is.\u201d They\u2019d laugh at me with an aching back and a fat paycheck from the city. I\u2019ll go home kicking a can with a damn James Wright poem in my head and twelve cents in my bank account.<\/p>\n
One author called me a fan, as to say I am not a writer but just a fan, like it was supposed to be this under-the-surface insult, like I\u2019m not welcomed in the secret club. But It\u2019s true, I am a fan of books. I adore novels, poetry, essays, from all kinds of backgrounds. I don\u2019t stick to one area or type. I don\u2019t only read Southern writers, Appalachian writers, Northwest authors, New York authors, and so on. If it\u2019s a good story I don\u2019t care where the fuck it takes place. I\u2019m invested in the characters and what they do, much more than where they are from. Characters, emotions, feel, humor, and dialogue are my favorite things about books. It\u2019s why I sit back for hours and read them. I really don\u2019t care if you are from Hawaii, Maine, or Arizona, although interesting and one can learn a little about the place I still don\u2019t care. I\u2019m from Massachusetts, do you care? No, you do not.<\/p>\n
Then there was the guy who said, \u201cWhat do you know, you never published a book.\u201d Well, in fact, I have published five books with cool publishers. According to that guy I suppose collections of poetry are no longer books. I didn\u2019t turn to fiction until seven years ago, give or take, and I started writing all kinds of different stories. I still write all kinds of different stories. It\u2019s why I have yet to publish a collection of stories because I am all over the place with the types of fiction I like to write. But have no fear, my adoring twenty fans, and would-be publishers, I have been putting together a collection of short stories I\u2019ll have finished in 2025. I even read two of them at the reading I gave months back. One of them I read was released a week or so ago, \u2018The Bullshit You Can Taste.\u201d<\/p>\n
Look at me go with that hard cock self-promotion.<\/p>\n
I ask myself often, \u201cIs it about the work?\u201d Or \u201cIs it about the applause?\u201d When I choose the work, I tend to write the best stories I\u2019ve ever written up to that point. If I pick applause, the story fizzles out and joins the ever-growing electric graveyard in my Gmail account. Awful stories banished to an electric corpse pile, begging for me to use them for spare parts in new stories. Never, ever, pick accolades over the work. Remain humble, fuck up those keys and bleed a while.<\/p>\n
When I forget about publishing, social media publishing B.S., other authors, sharing, community, then I feel like I\u2019m doing what I was meant to do which is sitting alone, music in my ears, coffee in hand, and typing words that become characters, maybe poems. That\u2019s when I genuinely love the art, the process. When I\u2019m alone I\u2019m trying my hardest to communicate, writing the shit out of my system. Not in a cathartic self-help sense but more so trying to relate and give voice to the shit that\u2019s in my head: words, voices, sounds, nightmares, anxiety, the goofy, loneliness, the sexual, depravity, obsessions, madness, hysteria, love. I write so I can find silence, even if for only a second. I do it because I\u2019m trying to keep away from society, while still living within society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My hope is to wake up every day and write something, whether good or bad, just to simply string words together. Simple everyday ten-dollar words so I can communicate with everyday people like a nurse, butcher, electrician, a janitor, guitar player. I\u2019m not of the intellectual crowd, nor do I come from it, nor do I intend to be a part of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":21863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4069],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-moans-from-the-condiment-fridge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21862"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21864,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21862\/revisions\/21864"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}