Excerpts selected from previous issue
From an interview with Donald Ray Pollock
5. How does a writer know when to just give up on a story he/she is writing?
I think after a while you just know. It doesn't come alive for you on the page, doesn't hold your interest after you walk away from the desk. You start wishing you were working on something else, or maybe washing windows. Sometimes it's just a matter of putting it away for a couple of months, then going back to it, but other times it's just a lousy story, and that's okay. Just as long as you keep writing, that's the main thing.
from Kyle Minor’s “Nice Boys”
One of Kenny’s earliest memories was of his own parents arguing in the kitchen. It was hard to see in just the moonlight and the one cobalt streetlight three doors down, but through the front window, Kenny, age four, could see the two teenagers in the driveway, up on the hood of his mother’s station wagon. Norma Jean from next door and some big, big boy with a red bushy beard. Their pants were off, and the boy was on top of Norma Jean, moving up and down, and her head was thrown back, and her mouth was open.
“If they’re gonna get up on the car like that and do it like dogs, I’m gonna treat them like dogs,” his father was saying.
“Don’t start something,” his mother said, but Daddy was already out the front door. He went straight for the spigot and the garden hose. He turned it on, but no water came out of the hose because he had a spray nozzle on the end that was blocking the stream. He walked right up close and opened the nozzle and started spraying them.
Right away they pulled off each other. Norma Jean went running off next door to her momma’s house. It took the boy a minute to get himself together, but when he did, he came charging at Daddy. That didn’t faze Daddy. He aimed the spray nozzle right at the boy’s face and caught him at a dead run between the eyes.
from Kevin Griffith’s “You Look Good for a Dead Man”
He looks like shit because, in the beginning, he was very reckless. Not a mellow dude. One time when we held up a small branch bank, we walked in and instead of saying “everyone hit the floor” or something like that, Tommy just saunters up to the security guard, grabs the guard’s hand, which is now holding a gun, and fires three shots through his own chest. He just stood there and smiled while the guard pissed himself, dropped to the floor and passed out. We had no trouble getting everyone’s cooperation, let me tell you. And then there was that time during a jewelry heist when Tommy just set himself on fire and started smashing the glass display cases, taking diamond rings, Rolexes, everything we came for. The Human Torch, baby. Everyone in the store was so stunned that no one even remembered to hit the alarm.
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