At the Colorado Rockies game and they’ve scored 7+ runs, which means free tacos at Taco Bell in Denver tomorrow and I’m a Taco Bell Quarterly contributor so I’m writing these tickets and hot dogs and beers off on my taxes as a “literary experience.”

Called 5 people to accept their HAD submissions. Left 3 voicemails and chatted with the other 2.

family vacation photo album

Room with a view

This sign belongs in the section on revision in HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL, vol. 2.

No.

Like 70 voicemails in and got to the first one just saying hi. A pretty fun little check-in!

Happy 30th birthday to the Blue Album!

Roadtrip Day 2:

Relistened to a bunch of maybes and think there’s probably 12 acceptances there in the first ~60 HAD voicemail submissions.

Then read my buddy the first chapter of my novel-in progress, THE LAST LOCK-IN. He loved it.

Either listening to ~60 of y’all’s voicemail submissions really aged me or there’s just something about this hotel bathroom mirror that really brings out the grey in my beard.

Was gonna make a dumb literary nerd joke about this hotel’s Carver Room being named after Ray… but then remembered we’re in Iowa City, so it probably actually is.

Ended up listening to about 30 more. I think my non-literary bestie road trip partner loved listening to them all even more than me. Submittable says there's 197 submissions as of right now. And it's still open for another 45 minutes. Good night.

kinda feel like this is a HAD submission

Have listened to maybe 30 voicemails. Probably 3 yeses. 2 strong maybes. Another 4-6 maybe-maybes.

You: why all the chaotic submission calls?

Me, an insane person who loves reading submissions:

I’ve been up for like 15 minutes and trying to just mindlessly scroll with my coffee but I keep getting all these annoying voicemail alerts!

May 8 story: “Skeletons” by Ann Beattie

On the one hand, not my fave of the handful of Beattie’s I’ve read so far. On the other hand… hot damn, Beattie crushes. Rushing through the ranks of faves.

Buffalo books + Autofocus + Vintage Contemporaries = Maybe my fave bookshelf

I think about Steve Albini's letter to Nirvana about producing In Utero all the time. What a real one.

news.lettersofnote.com/p/nirvana

WWSAD (What Would Steve Albini Do) is generally a good rule of thumb when making and thinking about art.