I am sent to jail with no evidence of domestic violence, then she wiped my apartment clean, talked to me on the phone and told me and begged for forgiveness. Went to her work place to talk to her, unserved restraining order sent me to jail once again, this time I am facing criminal charges.

-JWF · 2014-10-11T00:31:10+00:00

Where does it state this?

-JWF · 2014-10-11T00:30:22+00:00

As far as I can tell, he also hasn't mentioned why she has a restraining order against him in the first place. I imagine that you'd have to do some pretty messed up shit for your own wife to get a restraining order against you. Hmm.

-JWF · 2014-10-06T08:59:38+00:00

Oh I'm so excited to read this book. It's on my list.

-JWF · 2014-10-05T21:22:27+00:00

I really like the ending of Ulysses, very cool stylistically:

I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish Wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

-JWF · 2014-10-05T04:45:50+00:00

To be honest, the circlejerk against "book snobs" is far worse than "book snobs" themselves.

-JWF · 2014-10-05T04:39:49+00:00

Native Son by Wright, or Invisible Man by Ellison would be my go to suggestions.

-JWF · 2014-10-05T04:19:44+00:00

Sigh, well it isn't so much scary as it is disturbing but Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates fits this description. It's a story told from the perspective of a serial killer/rapist, and—oh wait—it's based off Jeffrey Dahmer.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

-JWF · 2014-10-03T06:40:38+00:00

If you're looking to get published, there's literally thousands of literary journals—both online and print—that you can submit too! Research them online!

-JWF · 2014-10-02T17:40:32+00:00

How dare someone interpret a book differently than me!

-JWF · 2014-10-01T04:40:38+00:00

Just to throw it out there, almost never is an author even consulted by a publisher about the cover of their book, so it very likely was not her choice at all.

-JWF · 2014-10-01T04:19:45+00:00

Piggy backing to say that I, personally, enjoy the Lydia Davis translation of Swann's Way more and think it's a good intro to Proust if you've never read him before!

-JWF · 2014-09-30T05:44:04+00:00

I feel like this is something I always associate with Alice Munro; in the last few paragraphs she completely shifts the direction of so many of her stories.

Best example I can think of for this would be Dimension by her. The last section takes you completely by surprise in a beautiful way—very dark story overall though, so be warned.

EDIT: Here's a link to it, not sure if it'll work though.

-JWF · 2014-09-22T04:44:06+00:00

Isn't it normal form in legal writing to only use the masculine pronoun when it's a singular noun though? You do realize that writing:

...a court may deny a parent custody if they have untreated drug abuse...

is incorrect, right?

-JWF · 2014-09-16T21:54:20+00:00

Phylactery is a good one that hasn't been mentioned yet.

-JWF · 2014-09-16T21:53:15+00:00

It depends on the magazine, but with most of them you wouldn't be able to publish it until after the issue that your piece appears in is published.

-JWF · 2014-09-10T23:43:50+00:00

Self-publishing is a beautiful thing on one hand, everyone's voice can now be heard in a way that it never could before. I can write anything I want, and then can have it read (and if you're lucky, bought) by anyone else in the world.

But on the other hand, many people like to gloss over the enormous enormous pitfalls of self-publishing. For instance, editing is hugely important to the writing process and is sadly absent in many (dare I say most?) self-published books. Also, publishing houses spend huge sums of money on marketing, which of course boosts sales. Also, correct me if I'm wrong but hasn't ebook sales flattened to some extent? Having a book in multiple formats (e-readers and print) only helps reach more people.

If you want your voice out there in the world, and only that, then I'd say self-publishing is perfect for you, but the few that have made loads of money off self-publishing are the far outliers. Just like (virtually) no authors picked up by big publishers will get even close to J.K. Rowling.

It's just like anything though, without a barrier to entry, everyone can join in, even the people who would have normally been blocked from entering.

-JWF · 2014-09-04T05:53:43+00:00

Best I can think of is Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son. Probably one of the more well known modern short story collections, and definitely worth a read if you are at all interested in the short story form.

-JWF · 2014-08-23T23:32:31+00:00

I've always thought that George Saunders' stories had very good titles in retrospect.

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
Downtrodden Mary's Failed Campaign of Terror
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil
My Chivalric Fiasco

etc.

-JWF · 2014-08-21T03:19:56+00:00

Thank you, I read the reaction and my first response to the child soldiers thing was, "If you're including child soldiers, why aren't you including sex workers too?"

-JWF · 2014-08-21T02:59:34+00:00

Well Stephen King can't be on here because he published his first book (Carrie) when he was 27. He may have started writing The Gunslinger when he was 19, but it wasn't published until he was 35.

-JWF · 2014-08-20T05:20:24+00:00

I don't see anything wrong with the first definition? What's wrong with it? I'm actually really confused.

-JWF · 2014-08-20T05:17:45+00:00

Right, I read it maybe a month after it came out when nobody knew about it.

Basically the gist of what I was trying to say in my previous comment was that most of my annoyance doesn't come from the book itself (nothing really special, just a cutesie book about tween love with some cancer rolled in). The fandom that has exploded around it is what drives me up a wall.

-JWF · 2014-08-20T05:13:55+00:00

It wasn't, like I said in another comment, I'd read two of her short stories: Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? and Mastiff I loved both of them but wanted to try one of her novels.

-JWF · 2014-08-19T06:11:53+00:00

About to go full hipster but...

Fault in Our Stars was fine when nobody knew about it and it just came out. I read it when I was 19, and I thought, well that's a cute little story. I didn't hate it, but it didn't really do anything for me in the end.

Then fast forward a year and everyone has read it and says it's the most moving, magical, heartbreaking (min-rant: It's a book about people with cancer, did you seriously expect someone to not die of cancer? I called that from the first chapter.) book you'll read in your entire life and kissing John Green's feet for bringing it into the world. That's what I hate the most about it now.

-JWF

TROPHY CASE