Smokey Mountain Breakdown

The summer issue of Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine is out and it's a really good one. I think this is my favorite of the Appalachian themed mags and not just because they are so supportive of my work. This issue's theme is "Appalachian High" and they were kind enough to publish my coming of age story, "The Truholt Madstone".

Fred Sauceman writes eloquently about one of my favorite topics--barbecue--in his article, High on the Alabama Hog. A very interesting piece by Michael Joslin titled High Time for Change examines the changing attitudes toward birds of prey held many Appalachian folks--something I used in my story Hawk Kill. Many other great stories in this issue--so please order a subscription. ETSU produces a big, glossy beautiful magazine full of Appalachian goodness.

"Truholt" is set way back in a time before the chestnut trees died out and is about a folk cure for rabies called a madstone.


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I'm very busy with the garden these days. Am going to go out there in a minute and pick corn. I have all sorts of things coming in--cucumbers, squash, beans, new potatoes, okra and fresh purple hulls. Made a pot of my momma's South Georgia garden stew. I actually associate that soup with the winter, but it's meant to be made right from the garden. Hardly even needs salt for seasoning and is heavy with corn, okra and beans. We used to use stew beef for the meat--but I had a goat haunch I needed to use up and it turned out great. So, I can honestly say I made everything in the stew from stuff here on the farm.

Yesterday was one of those odd days where it rained like the dickens in the midday sun. So violent it spat a rainbow rare and turbulent up on the mountain sky. I didn't do much but did pick blackberries--I'm getting down to the last of them. It's the right time of year "The God of all Blackberries" to make an appearance.

I'd noticed there were some tunnels under the blackberry canes that I had not put there. They were low to the ground and all the easily got to berries were gone. The only other time I'd seen something like this was at my old blackberry field that I shared with a bear and her cub. I was a bit perturbed to think I had bears visiting so close--these canes are right next to the house. Mystery solved---I heard some gawdawful snuffling--numnumnum--and it was Max. Max the blackberry eating Cocker Spaniel.

...is up on Dew on the Kudzu. You may read it HERE.

I hope you enjoyed it. I need to write more short story length work. Flash is so addictive, satisfying like dark chocolate, that it's hard to give up.

I have a cold. A bad one. I'm pitiful. I've been awfully sick many times in my life. The thing about being seriously ill is that you don't care about things. You lose interest in everything that is important to you. And because of that--you feel very numb, even in the midst of unbelievable pain and physical trauma. What's what's so sadistic about the common rhinovirus, is it makes you feel like you imagine you would feel if you were dying. Sort of an imaginary sense of dying--but trust me--dying doesn't feel nearly this bad. It's scarier, but not nearly as miserable. This, they should put me in a coma for.

...on Dew on the Kudzu.

"The Ghosts are Dancing" is a story I wrote some time ago loosely based on the flood of 1972 that struck the Hartford/Grassy Fork area. It's a long one, so Idgie has been running it through the month of February. Would of let you know sooner, but I forgot it was out there and scheduled to run.

It runs each Monday. Here are the links to the past three installments:

The Ghosts are Dancing: Part One

The Ghosts are Dancing: Part Two

The Ghosts are Dancing: Part Three

There should be another one tomorrow.

This flood weighs heavily in the minds of everyone who lives here and lived through it. Everyone has vivid memories of it and I collected many of the stories from local residents to get a feeling for what it must have been like. The flood wiped out every single bridge in the area. Livestock washed away ten miles from where it lived. They say it was a freak rainstorm that hit "The Gulf" and washed everything away down Big Creek.

The title comes from the Cherokee myth of their great flood story. It's one of the more haunting stories from their mythology--with one of the most evocative images. I chose to begin the tale with it:

This was what the old women told me when I was a girl. The dog came to the man and said, “Build a boat for a great deluge is coming.” So the man built the boat for his family to ride out the great storm. The water rose until it covered the tops of the mountains. When the waters receded, the man and his family built a fire in celebration. They heard in the night, drums beating in the distance. They went to look, happy others survived the great flood. But all they found was a great pile of human bones and they realized--the ghosts were dancing.

I have a story just up on the new issue of Up the Staircase. "Tandava" was inspired by the deceptively sweet looking canine (I say sweet looking, but you can clearly see he has mischief on the brain) above. Well...him and a host of relationships I've had that eventually, literally, went to the dogs.

Dogs in stories are like dogs in movies or dogs on stage or dogs just about anywhere. They steal focus. Everyone loves a dog story. You just can't help it---dogs make stories that make you smile, cry, laugh or react in a purely visceral manner. Cats are more thoughtful, subtle story devices. You know they are up to something, you just never figure out exactly what. Dogs, though--dogs are obvious, wysiwyg animals. Their pratfalls are almost always slapstick and foreshadowed.

But the coolest thing about dogs is that when one is your friend, you always have a willing conspirator. A being who will goad you on to do your worst--and unerringly say you are the very best, most brilliant, most sublime person on the face of the earth, whatever foolishness you have just committed. Whatever egg is drying on your face. Whatever lover has just walked out of your life. The dog will still be there. Wondering if you taste like chicken.

I've got a new story out on DecomP's new and improved site. It looks great and while I was expecting this story out in January, it's well worth the wait to be on such a handsomely designed page. I'm in good company with fellow Zoetropers Ethel Rohan, Bonnie ZoBell...and many others.

It's is one of my "ships in the night" stories. I keep revisiting that theme for some reason. There's probably some submerged psychological reason for that. I wrote the story for a dear, dear friend, who gets dearer by the day. I hope you enjoy Cold Dark Matter.

We’re proud to present the first Writers’ Bloc free PDF anthology. This one’s got 17 of the best pieces from our first three incarnations. Featuring Laura Garrison, Katherine Jamison, Matthew Dexter, Rosanne Griffeth, Susan Krysiak Avedissian, Marina Richards, Dan Morgan, Scott Shanley, Srinath Reddy, Brian Agurkis, Marina Blokker, Joseph Meredith, Christina Weil, Dennis Mahagin, Courtney Schroeder, Stacey Balkun, and Tom Fillion.

You’ll tell people about this if you know what’s good for you.

Rutger's Writer's Bloc has been kind enough to include "The Storm in the Park" as part of their first Pdf. anthology. I'm, of course, thrilled. Can't say enough good things about Writer's Bloc--one of the most promising new journals I've run across. The graphics are consistently skillful and witty--as is the content. Keven Dickinson, the editor and site designer, has done a beautiful job with Writer's Bloc--I expect to see many great things to come.

Please download their first Supplement of the Website Here to enjoy with your tea and crumpets, with or without cute little finger sandwiches and clotted cream cakes.

So, the past few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind with a busier than usual doctor-appointment-a-rama. Anyway--hope everyone had a joyous Turkey Day and a prosperous Black Friday.

So, I have a story out on Fried Chicken and Coffee. It's The Dark Hole. This is one of my rare short story length ones--4000 words--so bookmark it and sit down with a cup of joe when you have the time to sit and read. The Dark Hole was originally developed here on the blog back when I first started writing seriously. I think it was the first story that really made me feel I was ready to be a "real" writer (whatever that is). It's gone through a hundred or so rewrites, but it's still one of my early efforts that still moves me.

It's a dark tale, though--triggering for some people--dealing with what I call "the dark side of the mountain."

For those of you who were wondering when I was going to write another fishing story--or another Lowcountry story--I offer "Shiners" up on issue #28 of Right Hand Pointing.

Right Hand Pointing is "an online literary journal of very brief pieces for smart people with short attention spans." While you are there, check out Len Joy's .pdf form piece, "Harlow Comes Home." Those things make my eyes hurt, but this one is worth the eyestrain. Check them all out--there's some wonderful work in this issue.

"Shiners" is set on a dock at night--perhaps somewhere in Beaufort County, S.C., perhaps even on the May River--and is about the thrill of vulnerability, stolen almost kisses, bluefish and bad boys. It's about that thing that joins moths, shiners and teenage girls--all flirting with a beautiful destruction.

Rusty Barnes' Fried Chicken and Coffee has one of my Appalachian stories up right now you may want to check out.

"Errid* and Delilah" came out of the history of a building over on the Old Asheville Highway. The stretch of highway outside of Newport has a history of truckstop prostitution. It's close enough to the NC/TN state line to have attracted the attention of the Feds. This is the old style truckstop prostitution--not the current "lot lizard" type. They shut down two houses of ill-repute in 2005 as part of Operation Rose Thorn. I'd driven by both of the buildings many times and had just thought them to be bars--the sort of bar I grew up calling a "juke joint."

A bit of time passed and one of the cathouses got a new coat of paint and reopened as a church. If I'm not mistaken, Pastor Jimmy's brother serves as preacher.

"Errid and Delilah" is a "what if" scenario prompted by this history. I owe a great debt to the culture of my adopted home for much of my writing. It's part of what I love about it--this long tradition of lawlessness. Quite often there is a letter to the editor in the Newport "Pie Hole" decrying news about the corruption and crime here. But it's part of the culture--it's what makes us different and special. It's what attracted the attention of The L.A. Times and Esquire Magazine. Surely there is a way to celebrate this history while continuing to move forward?

*Errid is most commonly a woman's name of Australian origin. When I first heard it, it struck me very much as some of the old variations of Appalachian names of Scots/Irish origin. When I found it meant "chariot warrior"--it seemed a natural choice for my lovelorn truck driver, regardless of gender.
Charles-Edwards, T. M.(2000). Early Christian Ireland. Cambridge University Press. p. 70

The God of All Blackberries appears today on Dew on the Kudzu: A Southern Journal.

Idgie was the first editor to notice my work and publish it, so I really owe her a debt. I'm not sure I would have started subbing my work had it not been for her. I've got another one coming up there soon, an all new one. And something on the next issue of Right Hand Pointing.

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Lookit! I got's wild turkeys in my pasture this morning! All hens, but close enough to shoot from the front porch. Not that I'd do that. Okay, maybe if there was a tom, but only because I love the feathers.

Of course, once Max noticed them, they ran for the hills.

I have a story up on Writer's Bloc, Rutger's University's online literary journal. It's a newish journal, only in its third issue, but I like the clean look of the thing and I appear in some good company--Roxane Gay, Michele Reale and Dennis Mahagin to name a few.

The story, "The Storm in the Park: A Flash in Five Acts," is a series of five vignettes, each telling the story of five interconnected individuals who, for various reasons, are in Forsythe Park at the same time before a storm breaks. The characters are completely fictional (though I did actually know a guy whose pets intentionally matched his carpet) with the exception of the dog...who is modeled on a much beloved dog that belonged to some close friends of mine.

blossombones is a literary e-zine that prides itself in featuring work that in some way deals with the female experience.

And, if you've been following my writing--I tend to show up more often than not in publications like this. It's not that I ever try or consider myself to be a "women's writer." But I've noticed my stories are sometimes polarizing--often by gender. The theme for Blossombones' Summer '09 is "Marked."

The narrator of Batik is a woman with hands so beautiful she must hide them in gloves. This is one way in which she is marked. I don't think I mention that she is a woman--it's one of my lesbian stories. And it's not really important that she's a woman--or a man--I'm just attracted to characters who have one uncommon and exceptional feature that stands out. And lesbians have this thing about hands. The story is about an encounter she has on the ferry crossing the Channel. She's the sort of woman I would fall hard for. Courtly and aloof.

The title of the story always draws attention. When I wrote it, the title just jumped into my head. It refers to the technique of dying cloth using wax to protect areas between dyes. The wax protects the fabric from dye, much like the woman's gloves protect her. And there is other marking going on here involving a batik design rendered in an unusual fashion.

I am so behind in my promos it's not even funny. So, the lovely folks at The Fabulist had this to say about my story, "The Skin Shop"....

You'd think Ms. Griffeth's home "on the verge of the Great Smoky

Mountains National Park" would give her work a pastoral bent. Yet

this wicked bit of flash fiction is sharp-edged, gristly and

grinning, packing some casual consumer biotech and a wryly

fashion-conscious narrator.

I loves me some blurbs.

The thing I love about The Fabulist is the edgy nature of the material they publish. It's not your momma's spec fic--it really goes more into the high literary, magically realistic, surrealist fiction. And when I jump into spec--that's usually where I'm going. When I found them, I was 99 percent sure I'd found the perfect landing place for "The Skin Shop."

This is another story I've got up right now. I already put a link up on FB so this note is for the blog readers--but some of you might have missed it first time around.

"Claude's Puppet Show" is live on LitnImage.

This is a fun, kinky little story I wrote prompting off an experience I had in Savannah once at the old Lamp Post. The Lamp Post was a legendary dive on Bay Street back in the day. You couldn't think of a better place to get knifed. Really. I've written at length on said experience and won't go further (you can read it yourself here if you like--it's long). My father was so incredibly furious when he found out I'd wandered in there. Furious like turned purple and had veins throbbing.

I'm sort of surprised that place has faded away without mention--it was infamous. There used to be so many odd little dives in Savannah. Anyone remember Jim Collin's? I know my sister does since she turned me onto it. Place didn't even have a sign. Was in the basement of this old dude's house downtown and had five tables. Pictures of Bob Dylan next to pictures of Jesus. Hank Williams on the jukebox. I went there years after my sister had visited and he still had the tape of her singing. It was just that sort of place. You'd end up there on the shank of the night and end up drunk and singing along. Had a really good hamburger, too.

Hope you enjoy this one. I was definitely going for that freaky Savannah vibe.

I have some writing to share with you. I've become a bit slack about my promos. Have been keeping up on FB, but I feel another hiatus coming on from FB.

"Kurosawa's Rain" is up on The Potomac. I really love The Potomac's combination of literature and politics and really hope they keep publishing. Please support them--this is a smart publication--not just arty.

This is an intensely personal story about love, madness and failure. How you can’t always protect the ones you love from themselves and how maybe you shouldn’t and how you’re going to feel like shit about that anyway. The Kurosawa references are specific and if you come away saying “WTF?!!!” to yourself, it’s okay. One reader in workshop told me the story would be okay if I took out all the Japanese crap. But I didn’t. Because it was important to me. Anyway. I don’t usually explain what I meant when I wrote something, but I dug around in my marrow with this one.

It’s got two commas that don’t belong. See, back in the olden days we used to write our stories in notebooks and on typewriters (if we could type—not everyone could back in those days). I now have multiple drafts of the same story where I used to just have one dog-eared manuscript with many scribbles that would then be typed fresh. Anyway. Sent the wrong draft. Two commas. Crap.

My friend, Brad Green, asked me to submit something to The Legendary, a journal he's joined as editor. Brad has one of those strong, flavorful and most definitely virile Southern voices--the sort you expect from Texas. If you haven't checked out his blog, Elevate the Ordinary, I encourage you to do so. Read A Visit to a Tittie Bar. I like that one. A lot.

Anyways. I sent him a selection of what I had coming off the burner at the time and they chose The Adamantine Heart and Love Cats.

The Adamantine Heart (excerpt)

It's easier than you might think to turn your heart into Adamantine. It sneaks up on you while you are trying to get love right. It blindsides you when your teenage boyfriend drowns in a freak accident. It slides into you when your steady fellow in college smacks you around. It happens when your mother dies, then your father dies. It happens when you walk in on your best friend, hanging nude from your gravity boots while your husband, in a hood, whips her with your riding crop--the one you actually use on your horse.

Love Cats (excerpt)

Out on the pier they'd stand, looking out to the ocean with opal eyes, boding bad luck. They'd throw things into the sea from time to time. Someone said it was the ashes of their vanquished conquests. Someone else said it was the tiny bones of their hearts. And still another said it was a stack of handwritten valentines delivered into their hands by scores of damaged lovers. No doubt they were a couple, slinking through the night, all black eyeliner and sadness.

Many other excellent stories from writer friends-- Tim Yelvington-Jone's "Grace," Dawn Allison's "No Fear for Flowers," Frank O'Connor's "Raindrops," and many more. Go read!

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In other news...if you are whining because I'm not on Facebook more often--well, it ain't gonna happen until I get high speed something or other. Takes me six hours every two weeks to do what it takes most of you 20 minutes to accomplish on FB. Facebook's interface is about as elegant as a pile of dog poop--so, I've got better things to do than watch the swirling beachball of death and rebuilding my permissions every 20 minutes. But I love you guys and have no problem answering emails.

The dogwood trees are amazing this spring. The blooms are the size of saucers, the canopies dense as clouds--I don't think I've seen them quite like this before.

I've got a story that went live today on The Litterbox Magazine. It's called "The Ugly Tango Dancer." I hope you like it.

It was inspired was a stage I went through where I only dated people with disfigurements. Really. I think I had some metaphysical reason for doing so. I think I bought into the Hallmark idea that one's soul could somehow balance the accident of being born ugly. But I needed research to back up my belief. Thus, the ugly lover stage. What I found was that the two states, the physical and the spiritual, do not seem to be even distantly related. The ugly can indeed be ugly down to a cellular level. Their wounds do not ennoble them. The converse can be true of pretty people, but they are just as likely to be suppurating beneath their lovely skins. But the sad thing I found was that souls are much more likely to be ugly. They don't just pop out pretty--they are ugly like human babies are. Oh come-on--you know human babies aren't pretty! They come out looking for the world like blood drenched Shar-Peis.

Rail at me if you wish. Scream at me the things your mother told you. Or your minister. But it's true. We are ugly to the bone. If you aren't working on making your soul beautiful (and those who know me know I'm not talking about religion, Christianity or otherwise--you are as likely to adorn your soul in a church as you are to find a sensible, reasonably priced pair of Christian Louboutins) then you have the typical Quasimodo-ish human soul. And, as Stuart Smiley says, that's okay.

Anyway. I have to work at it lest I sink into a vat of bubbly nihilism. I'm way too fond of shadenfreude. I'm reading Andrew Davidson's beautiful debut novel, The Gargoyle, in an effort to sound less bitter and jaded. So far I found myself thinking, "Damn--he seems really vanilla for a porn star." 'Cause I'm ugly.

And it was great! Listened to to last night and enjoyed it very much.

"They Made Us Walk to Eat" is read on the Diet Soap Podcast, aka Charles Lain's Podcast. So, if you always wanted to experience one of my stories but were too lazy to read them--you can download the Diet Soap Podcast from Podmatic or from iTunes. I'm linking to Podmatic because I'm on 26K dialup and just loading my iTunes takes forever and I can't have too many things going at once with it or it shuts my computer down.

Doug reads from his intro to the Sabotage issue of Diet Soap, turning the concept of sabotage (which we usually think of as a tool for the underdog), on its head, pointing out how the practice of sabotage has moved from micro to macro. Everything from our government to our economy engaging in self-sabotage or sabotage by the biggest entities on larger constructs.

"They Made Us Walk to Eat" is my fat camp story and it's very appropriate for this theme.

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I'm watching The Tudors and am completely hooked! I wish I was well-off enough to afford premium satellite so I didn't have to wait for shows like that to go to DVD--but I'm almost done with season one. It's a complete rape of history, but I knew that when I saw the costumes which are gorgeous interpretations of the period. Love them, but not truly authentic. Sumptuous, nonetheless. As long as you aren't looking for historical accuracy and can just sink into the story, it's very enjoyable. I love all the little jabs at history and art. Definitely more enjoyable if you know your art and history as these writers obviously did, but are willing to have fun with it.

Woke up this morning to stark white snow coating tiny green leaves. House wrens puffed up in outrage on the porch, ruffled featherage. It started to snow yesterday while it was still warm. I had gone out to check the mail and caught a few chunks on my shirtfront. The problem with being bosomy is that everything lands on your shirtfront. It's like you carry around your own crumb receiver. And if you are in the slightest bit messy (and like most creative types, I take messy very seriously, indeed), then there isn't enough coinage in the world to cover your drycleaning. So I wear lots of black, washable garments. But this was just snow, so no harm, no foul. Luckily, it wasn't precipitating gravy.

It's still snowing.

I have two stories out in the current issue of The Birmingham Arts Journal. It's always very gratifying for me when a Southern publication accepts my work. It is my thang, after all. The two stories are: "A Pretty Little House" and "The Best Edible Wax Horse Teeth Ever."

"A Pretty Little House" is an all dialogue, experimental piece that takes place in a laundromat.

"The Best Edible Wax Horse Teeth Ever" is a period piece set in the late 1960's in Bluffton, S.C. Most people will recognize The Mercantile.

You can download a full copy of The Birmingham Arts Journal in .pdf HERE. Or, even better--get a subscription!

Everyone was so sweet to me while I was being fragile. I guess I still am, but the ice pick headaches I've been having have made me cranky---and that's always a good antidote for fragility. It's hard to be fragile when you want to kill something so very badly. I've been plagued by real-time stupid people recently and that does tend to make one cranky.

I see stupid people. Way more than I would like to.

Also, there appears to be a mildew ghost in my home. My wonderful neighbor who built my house is going to see if he can find it to exorcise it. It's very odd--there's a column of air in the middle of my kitchen--not attached to anything in particular--that smells of mildew. I've been sniffing everything trying to find the source. It reminds me of the cold spots ghosts hunters claim they can feel. But mine is smelly, too.

Hughes net sent me a free installation card. Price has come down on those so I'm seriously considering it. But a 2 year commitment is sort of silly. They are going to have to do away with that before most people will consider it.

But I've got several stories out right now. Dogmatika took "Applewhite." It went live on April 1st. I just found it yesterday--I have to keep an eye on these things and sometimes I forget what I have coming out.

In other news, they are going to read "They Made Us Walk to Eat" from Diet Soap #3 on a podcast. I'll let you know where when I find out. I got the copy of the magazine and it's really a beautiful thing. They even found a Shoney's Big Boy graphic for my story.