Ethel Rohan

That’s the attitude I’m trying to fake these days. Fake until it’s real. ‘Armed & Loaded’ is an invisible tattoo dead center on my forehead. Really, my every atom is sighing FUNK.

I drink Yogi herbal tea and love/hate the tiny rectangles of wisdom at the end of the string on every teabag. This morning’s kernel: “Empty yourself and let the universe fill you.” My response today: Whatever.

I’m insanely busy on the writing front, but worry it’s the busy of jogging on the spot till I’m purple in the face and hyperventilating in the lungs and getting no where.

Just this past week, I had two readings, and in the past couple of weeks I’ve had four stories published. The reading this past Saturday took place across the Bay Bridge in Oakland. The wonderful ‘East Bay on the Brain Reading Series’ hosted by Lauren Becker. I broke my long-held rule and drank a cocktail before I read. Vodka and fresh grapefruit, ying and tang. The way to go, friends, WAY TO GO. I had fun, mingled, and especially enjoyed the wonderful line up of fellow readers: Hollie Hardy, Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Krysten Bean, Ken Weaver, and Evan Karp. Is it okay to say Hollie Hardy and Hugh Behm-Steinberg rocked? Hollie Hardy and Hugh Behm-Steinberg rocked.

My reading this past Monday was INSANE, but in a mostly beautiful way. The venue, 851 Haight Street, is a SQUAT with no power, bathroom, and in some rooms no walls! There are also many gaping holes in the floor. Everything stripped to bare timber. I fell in love with host Janey Smith from the first moment we met. He knew I was FREAKED by the venue and he did his utmost to help me feel welcome and relaxed. I also AGAIN broke my long-held ‘no drinking before I read’ rule and enjoyed a neat Irish whiskey. The way to go, friends, the way to go.

I was the oldest reader on the night and the only female reader, and the only traditional narrative storyteller–all things that would have rattled me to my core in the past. Also the lighting was so poor that for the first time EVER I had to read while wearing glasses! However, I embraced the event and decided to just be ME. I gave the reading my all and believe my work was very well received. It was freeing to stay true to myself and just be me, not trying to fit in or be cool, but simply sharing and celebrating my work with others and allowing the story to either fly or fall.

Okay, I admit I also felt bolstered by my shoes. My shoes were hot. HAWT.

I also admitted to the audience that, cough, cough, unlike some of my fellow readers, I’d never gotten high. I wanted to be high on Monday night. Just pot happy high. After I read, a certain fellow reader offered me the fattest joint I’ve ever seen. Boy was I tempted. Suffice to say, smoking a joint remains on my bucket list.

In the past few weeks, I’ve sent out several agent queries for my novel and my short story collection. I received some ‘nos’ on both, only one full request thus far on the ssc, and I’m awaiting responses from others. I’m aware I may never hear anything. After ten years of working on and off on my novel, I think I have to finally accept it’s unsaleable–not because of the quality of the writing but because of the subject matter. I believe in this book and believe it’s a gripping and worthwhile read, but I’m now facing the hard truth that I most likely won’t get a publisher to bite, at least certainly not the bigger houses. Here’s my novel’s summary:

“Kisses With Teeth is set in Dublin, Ireland, in 1980 and centers on Gavin Flynn, a middle-aged, working-class bus driver. At the novel’s opening, Gavin’s humdrum existence with his wife and three daughters is shattered when their middle child, fourteen-year-old Maeve, becomes pregnant. As the family struggle with the shame and scandal surrounding the teenage pregnancy in a still religiously and socially repressed Ireland, Gavin also wrangles with his growing infatuation with Maeve’s best friend, Claire. Claire is also fourteen. Throughout the course of the novel, as Gavin’s family and work life disintegrate, he is forced to take stock of himself, confronting his darkest fears and greatest hopes.”

So the subject matter is difficult and problematic and the plot summary scares. However, I feel sure that if I could just get agents/publishers to read the ms, they’d recognize its value. That said, I need to put Kisses With Teeth to bed and move on to a new novel. Otherwise, I’m going to stay stuck. I need to get out of stuck. I have strategies. I’ve entered several writing competitions and am hopeful. I’ve applied to writing conferences and for a MacDowell residency. I’ve applied to freelance at the much hailed Writers’ Grotto here in San Francisco and am going there for lunch tomorrow to meet and greet. Wish me luck!

I have subbed a lot of stories to lit mags I once believed I could never break into, lit mags that are taking a LONG time to respond. I also plan to attend more readings in the city. I plan to write more book reviews, essays, and creative non-fiction, and push myself beyond my fiction work. I’m reading books, books, and more books. I’m picking apart the bios and books of writers I especially love and admire and asking myself, “okay, how are they doing it?”

I’m trying insanely hard, to the point of banging my head against the wall in frustration.

My short-short “Haunt” went live at fwriciton : review today.

My short-short “Take That” went live at metazen today.

Booth Magazine published my short-short “Dark Stars” as part of their monologues project. My deep thanks to Bryan Furuness and Michael Martone for soliciting me for this excellent series.

My story “Saturday Girl” is in the current issue of Eclectica Magazine. I love Eclectica Magazine. The story is dedicated to my dear friend, P.D., who like me was also a Saturday Girl once upon a time.

The rejections and disappointments keep coming. Sledge hammers that laugh at my invisible ‘Armed & Loaded’ tattoo. I remain brazen, even if it’s only fake brazen.

Mel Ulm, curator of The Reading Life, invited me to write a guest post. I happily wrote about the current spring issue of The Stinging Fly, an outstanding literary magazine out of Ireland. In particular, I wrote about an excellent story in the issue, “All About Alice,” by Irish writer Danielle McLaughlin. I cannot recommend this stellar story and the entire issue highly enough. My post titled “All About Danielle McLaughlin” can be read here. I hope you enjoy.

is now live at HTMLGiant and titled “A Book About James Joyce’s Books About … How Many of Us Are Really Sure What?” I hope you enjoy.

The first-ever full print issue of BULL: Men’s Fiction includes Kevin Wilson’s wonderfully titled story “The Moon’s Face, Darkened.” The story’s premise centers on a total lunar eclipse and is a delightful mixture of outrageous, funny, and poignant gut-punch:

A taste of its Outrageous: “[Narrator’s wife] talked about things like tradition and catching up with old friends but I understood that the real reason was that she was going to sleep with some outdoorsy type who had complicated knots displayed on the walls of his study, that she had been sleeping with this guy since high school, and I was not to deprive her of this.”

A taste of its Funny: “I watched the World Submission Fighting Finals on ESPN, two Brazilians wrapping themselves around and around each other, trying very hard, I thought, not to accidentally fuck.”

Poignant Gut-Pinch: There are several disturbing/poignant moments throughout and the last, gorgeous paragraph in particular delivers an emotional punch that bears the full force of this short work’s cumulative power.

Another standout story in the issue is Sara Lippmann’s “Houseboy.” The pidgin English voice here is phenomenal and beautifully wrought:

“There is much items to fix. I take my hammer to pool deck. When I vision a lonely nail I hammer that nail because Mrs. Strickland worries the tetanus emergency. Then–how do you say?–I light up the pool deck. My fire glows green breakthrough to other side. My fire is a Pink Floyd song. I love Pink Floyd! I smoke Marlboro. I think. I try thinking English. I try to dream in English but in dream wild beasts rush the humble mountaintop like refuges to Yam Suf. A stampede of zebra and giraffa and peacock. The pool makes hypnotic on me. The wind blows, the water gleam the color the eyes of Tzipi when she wear blue contact lens. I swim Olympic. I swim and swim without thought or molesting.”

And I can’t resist also quoting this:

“Sometime there is deer eating the hydrangea bush and sometime I exclaimate, Die deer! But sometime I stand there and say, you are my friend, deer, you have eyes like hand grenade, when I vision your blood pulsating true animal vein make me want to be a better man.”

Like Kevin Wilson’s “The Moon’s Face, Darkened,” Sara Lippmann’s “Houseboy” is a story that builds and builds until it’s poignant and gripping close. Congratulations, Sara.

Curtis Dawkins has a great trio of gritty stories in the issue, “Urban Archery,” “In The Dayroom with Stinky,” and “A North.”

From “Urban Archery”:

“It was [Terrell’s] own fault his marriage was falling apart. Terrell felt back abut it and I think he really loved Marvel, but still, every other day when he got home from running his press at the paper factory, he’d hook up his bass boat to the back of his Dodge and meet his girlfriend at the little motel off the highway. Everyone knew about it; I didn’t even know why he bothered hooking up his glittery blue boat anymore. He never brought home any fish, and he never smelled like worms.”

The closing image in this story, of Terrell and the narrator with bow and arrows drawn, is memorable and beautifully written.

Dawkins’s short story collection will be the first release forthcoming from BULL Books. I look forward to the read.

In addition to stories from Ryan Glenn Smith, Joshua Kleinberg, Nick Bertelson, and more, my story “Lodgers” is also included in this issue. At 4,000+ words “Lodgers” is the longest story I’ve published to date. My deep thanks to Jarrett Haley for his expert editing and his faith in this story set entirely on a farm in Ireland.

In our previous home, the one we moved out of last year, my carpenter/contractor husband had converted the dormer-style attic into a large, sun-filled office that we shared. Everyday I would sit in my ‘half’ of the attic at my glass writing desk amidst so much space and light and attempt to write out my insides.

In that office, on the window ledge next to my desk, I kept a little altar: incense; candles; crystals; Buddhas; saints’ cards, mandarin oranges, and vials of holy water from Knock and Lourdes. Yes, this Irish Catholic girl got a little Zen crazy.

I also kept a bookmark that my husband’s niece, Danielle, sent to me years ago, with a poem that begins “You Are A Writer …” A little girl I didn’t even know cared believed in me and her innocent faith is just one of the many things that has touched and fortified me over the years.

On that altar I’d also displayed a sheet of yellow notebook paper lined in light blue that listed thirty literary journals I really, really wanted my stories to be published in. At the time of our house move, as I was packing up, I held the yellow page, torn. The page was yellowed and drooping, sun-damaged, and the black-inked list barely legible. I almost tossed the sheet, but didn’t.

Today, that page remains on my altar in our current home. My office here is in the basement, rather than the attic, and is small and cold and dark. I think it really runs the risk of attracting pests with its dark and dank environment, perfect for bugs and rodents to thrive in. Hopefully, I won’t need to call the likes of pest control julington creek fl, but at least I know they’re there if I need them. I need the light on all the time and the space heater blows regularly. There’s also that chaotic sense of the ever-growing contents of the room about to spill out beyond the walls. My altar here is on the two top shelves of a bookcase, away from the windows, and the yellow sheet of notepaper is faring much better, away from sun bake.

Every time I place a story in a magazine from this yellowed ‘Dream List,’ I make a check on the page. There are now twenty-three checkmarks. The Dream List is from about four years ago, when I first started publishing online and learned of Duotrope and the many, many magazines available to us as readers and writers. My Dream List today of publications to contribute to, were I to take the time to write one, would look very different to that of just a few years ago. There was a recent discussion on Facebook, largely between xTx and Barry Graham, on the hierarchy of literary magazines and writers’ shifting ambitions. Graham maintained that if a magazine was good enough for your work once, it should remain good enough for your work. And I agree, for the most part, but the desire to move ourselves up the hierarchical tower of literary magazines shouldn’t discredit or damn anyone.

My ‘Dream List’ today has changed because I’m ambitious. I want to further my career, widen my readership, and garner greater respect. One key way to do that is to publish my work in magazines that are highly valued, both nationally and internationally. I also want to earn money for my writing and see it win awards and recognitions. My Dream List has also changed because I’m now a better and more confident writer. I aim now for publications I once believed out of my reach. Publications I didn’t believe I deserved to be published in. Publications I never believed my work was good enough for. Now I believe different.

Every acceptance I’ve received from a magazine editor has pleased me, and some acceptances have delighted me more than others, particularly where I especially admire the magazine’s editors and aesthetics, and where the magazine is more widely valued, has a bigger readership, and publishes ever-more brilliant and exciting writers.

When I look out the window of my basement office and into our back garden, I see an orange wall, black railing bars, our daughters’ bicycles, my husband’s rusted, blue wheelbarrow, and in a straight row the skinny calves of young green trees. The trees grow and grow, and reach every higher. Who’d put limits on a tree?

Yesterday, our nine-year-old daughter sang in her first recital. I admit when the program listed twenty-two performances I had an ungenerous moment and shifted in my seat with much the same sense of unpleasantness I experience at the dentist. Our daughter was second on the schedule and I thought once she’d performed it would be hard to stay engaged. I was wrong.

The singers ranged in ages from four to twenty, and their skill and experience levels also varied. Our daughter sang Bruno Mars’ “Talking to the Moon.” She poured her heart and soul into the song, thinking as she performed of her two young cousins in Ireland, Megan and Katie. My sister lived in San Francisco for twelve years and Megan and Katie were both born here. However, my sister returned to Ireland permanently three years ago, when Katie was four and Megan two. They were the only family I have in the United States (aside from three cousins), and similarly my husband has no family here. Our daughters keenly feel that sense of loss of family (Katie and Megan were more like sisters than cousins to them) and we often have to remind them how blessed we are to have so many friends here who we consider family (and in many ways are better than family because of those pretty white-picket boundaries).

The final performer yesterday, aged twenty, sang “I’m Here” from The Color Purple. From the first note, she grabbed the audience and her great voice and heartfelt performance held us hard. As she reached the end of the song, her breathing turned ragged, her entire body shook with emotion, and she struggled to make those final notes. But she did. The audience clapped and cheered, and several cried. I blubbered. This brave terrified young woman was showing us her insides. Messy, ugly, powerful, beautiful, amazing insides.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iddyQh3z9k

David Cotrone, Editor, Used Furniture Review runs an excellent and intelligent interview series that, to name a few, includes Rick Moody; Tom Grimes; Ryan Scott Oliver; Amelia Gray; Dani Shapiro; Kristen Hersh; Kyle Minor; Michael Kimball; Lidia Yuknavitch; and most recently Ben Marcus.

I’m honored to have my interview go live today at Used Furniture Review. David asked interesting, thoughtful questions and I tried to respond in kind. I like this interview. A lot. I’m only sorry I didn’t include cool photos like Ben Marcus.

This morning, I read and enjoyed a great number of the interviews in the series. Here’s an easy link to the entertainment and the wisdom. No doubt my interview would be vastly better if I’d read these interviews before I submitted my own. But maybe that’s what I most like about my interview here: I discovered I have more and more to say about writing and the writing life. My voice is getting louder, stronger, and more confident. I’m aiming, though, for fierce.

There’s a humility and honesty to Tom Grimes’ interview that I found especially moving. There are also his excellent insights and advice. Tom, I hope your literary heart is beating again, wildly.

Here’s a brief excerpt from his interview’s close:

“Write. Don’t worry about ‘making it.’ The literary life is irrational. I know a writer whose book was turned down by more than a dozen publishers. Then a small press published it, sold the book rights to nine countries, and a large New York house that had originally turned down the book published it in paperback. In 2010, novels by tiny independent presses won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.”

Another favorite in the series is from Amelia Gray. Last year, I met Amelia Gray here in San Francisco and heard her read. She glows on and off the stage and her work is brilliant. Yes, I like all things Amelia Gray. She quotes John Berryman: “We must travel in the direction of our fear.” She’s also hysterical. Read her interview. Read everything of hers you can.

The series also introduced me to musician and writer Kristen Hersh and I read fascinated about her music career, her memoir Rat Girl, and her struggles with bipolar disorder. She reads as funny, quirky, compassionate and straight-in-your eyes honest. Mostly, though, she reads as fierce. (She has an intriguing take on reading fiction!) Here are a couple of her responses:

“I didn’t consider writing the book to be “art” until it took on a life of its own. When I realized I was doing what IT wanted me to do rather than what I thought was “best” (least embarrassing). Of course, any work is better when you let it boss you around. Art, like a lot of things, is smarter than people.”

AND

“Don’t lie. Don’t show off. Don’t express your “self.” Just be quiet and listen. Become unselfconscious by imagining you work in a vacuum, that no one will ever hear your song or read your book; it will keep artifice out of your work.”

Again, a wonderful interview series that’s well worth your time and interest. Thanks again, David Cotrone, for your commitment to writers and excellence.

Here’s an excerpt from our conversation, if anyone is still reading:

UFR: There’s clearly a long, amazing history of Irish literature, and Irish-American literature too. Do you consider yourself to be part of that tradition? If so, why? If not, why not?

Rohan: Honestly, as an emigrant, I often feel caught between cultures. The Irish no longer consider me truly theirs and Americans don’t consider me red white and blue. It’s who I consider myself to be that matters, though, and I believe myself to be this very fortunate hybrid of both cultures. When I write, I tap into something very deep inside myself and at that core I’m Irish. Maybe it’s that I write from my beginnings, my anam. I’m fierce in my celebration of Irish and Irish-American literature, both its legacy and its contemporary largesse, but I can’t think about that staggering treasure trove when I write—it would be paralyzing.

My brief interview is included in the February issue of Word Riot. Deep thanks to Jackie Corley, Kevin O’Cuinn and David Hoenigman. I tried to make my responses interesting and pretty. They are certainly short. And I plead a little. Maybe a lot.