A new story in The Sunday Morning Transport!

My story "Lesser Demons of the North Shore" is up over at The Sunday Morning Transport! I love this publication: you get one story every Sunday if you subscribe—-so four stories total—-or one free story a month if you go with the unpaid option. You have to pay for “Lesser Demons”! Or you can use this link for a free 60-day subscription!

You should 100% subscribe to The Sunday Morning Transport though—-it’s got a heck of an astounding archive already, a new story every Sunday (though only one* so far involving hamsters and demons and Chicago’s north shore).

*this one. My story.

First paragraph:

Here’s the story that should have served as a warning: Four years before we moved to the suburbs, my wife, Clemencia, worked at an after-school nonprofit in Bucktown, and one of the volunteers she supervised, Staci, drove from Winnetka to help out. Our commute was much easier than Staci’s, just a hop on the El from our Pilsen apartment. Clemencia said she didn’t really know Winnetka, didn’t really know about the North Shore. Staci said she hadn’t really known about it either. She’d married into the suburbs. Staci had been an actor. She worked at the Goodman and Steppenwolf and kept at it after she’d met her lawyer boyfriend and moved. Don’t move, Staci told her. You’ll think, Oh, it’s Chicago with a yard, but it is not Chicago with a yard. The North Shore isn’t Chicago. She said, in our neighborhood there’s this woman, she’s in her sixties, she has the blowout, the fur coat—the whole North Shore thing.

The rest is over here.

New story in The Chicago Quarterly Review!!!

I’ve been a fan of The Chicago Quarterly Review for ages, and it is a super special thrill to have a story in their magazine. Also? It’s a super Chicago story, about Chicago’s never-ending March gloom, and it’s the first ever thing I’ve ever both written and illustrated. You can buy the issue here. You can take a look at the first page & also find proof of Chicago’s March weirdness below. Big thanks to editors S. Afzal Haider & Elizabeth McKenzie.

Everything I'm Doing at AWP & All the Things I'm Not Doing But Looking Forward to Attending

Hi! Here is everything I’m doing at AWP in a single index card, but below that are additional details + also some shameless pleas to come see me + (below that) two additional readings that I’ll definitely be going to, that I’d love to see you at too:

On Thursday Feb. 8 from 10am-11am I’ll be at the University of Arizona Press booth (821) signing copies of Extended Stay. That’s booth 821! If this is at all an incentive, just know that (1) I’ll be so happy and surprised that you made it over there for a novel that has been out already for a little over a year but also (2) I’ll be 100% happy to sign the book and doodle anything you like on the book proper (if you like) and also do a custom Post-it drawing right on the spot for you. You can also literally just stop by and say hi and not buy a book!

On Friday Feb. 9 from 5pm-6:30pm, I’ll be part of this offsite reading featuring University of Illinois and Northwestern alumni and faculty! It’ll happen at the Strange Days Brewing Co. (318 Oak St). I’m reading a very short excerpt from a new thing, and I get to read alongside Mary Biddinger, Simone Muench, Jackie K. White, Christine Sneed, Beth McDermott, Jeremy T. Wilson, Faisal Mohyuddin, and Rebecca Morgan Frank.

Finally, on Saturday Feb. 10 from 10:35am-11:50am, I’ll be doing a panel on everything we had to unlearn when working on second books, alongside Julie Iromuanya, Jimin Han, and Ted Wheeler! Here’s the link to the official page! And here’s the description: We want to believe that writing is cumulative—that we benefit from habit and repetition—and it’s true, the more we write, the more we know about writing. But what works on one project might not translate to the next. Much of the work we need to do is unlearning, a willingness to go back to not knowing, so we can explore the possibilities of not being fully sure of ourselves. In this panel, four novelists discuss their unlearning and what they left behind as they embarked on new projects.

Room 2502A, Kansas City Convention Center, Level 2
Saturday, February 10, 2024
10:35 am to 11:50 am

THE TWO OFF-SITE EVENTS I’M SUPER EXCITED ABOUT!

I feel tremendously lucky to be an editor for Jackleg Press, and they’ll have a reading with Another Chicago Magazine on Thursday Feb. 8 from 12pm-2pm. The info is here! And here it is as a screencap:

And I’ve been lucky to teach for the SPS Northwestern creative writing program, and some of my favorite students and faculty are going to be reading! And I’m so excited to see them. I’ve pasted the info below:

NU Graduate and Faculty Reading at AWP: Kansas City Edition

presented by the MFA in Prose and Poetry and MA in Writing Programs at SPS

Date: Thursday, February 8

Doors: 5:30pm

Program: 6pm

Location: HiTides Coffee (519 E. 18th – Kansas City, MO)

Northwestern University's MA in Writing & MFA in Prose and Poetry Programs will host a special Graduate and Faculty Reading in connection with this year’s Association for Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference in Kansas City, MO. The reading will feature current faculty Paula Carter and Faisal Mohyuddin, and alumni Audrey Fierberg, Holly Stovall, and Ankur Thakkar. Faculty Director Christine Sneed will host and emcee. Snacks and mingling begin at 5:30pm. Program begins at 6pm. Admission is free and open to the public, and no registration is required.


CLOTHESHORSE: Percival Everett's Dr. No

Clotheshorse is a super occasional* series highlighting menswear in fiction. Here’s a passage from Percival Everett’s smart, goofy, goofy-smart Dr. No:

He was well-dressed. In my memory of him in the coffe shop he was not quite disheveled, but he was not a natty dresser. Now here he was, tailored iron-gray suit, thin maroon tie, a maroon handkerchief peeking out from his breast pocket. His oxblood wing tips gleamed. He looked like a supervillain or, worse, an upper-crust English spy, an openly promiscuous and functionally alcoholic heterosexual with an on-and-off-again messiah complex. It was the shoes, the way they were tied. (p. 37)

* Last time I posted on it was like, 2015. It’s been a while. You can check out the other entries here.

Here’s Everett’s author photo on the back of the Dr. No paperback, it’s easily my favorite author photo in recent years:

More Extended Stay Bits

Extended Stay keeps chugging along! Here are some cool bits below this really cool spread of red-and-black covers.

  • Audio rights for the novel were acquired a few months ago, and the audiobook will be released in November. I’m a new but ardent convert to audiobooks, and cannot recommend Libby enough if you have a library card and want to experience an awesome novel while washing dishes or folding laundry. (I’m currently blown away by Zadie Smith’s commitment to doing all the voices and singing in The Fraud.)

  • I’m doing a few more events! Check out the Events page for more detailed info but I’m excited for this Friday 13th Horror Authors Night with some of my favorite Chicago folk who write dark stuff.

  • I’m super grateful to bookstagrammers like Ashley (aka spookishmommy) and Nina (aka the_wandering_reader/) for their continued support of the novel. I’ve embedded my two faves below but you should just follow them for all their awesome recommendations. Like, if you have not read Monstrilio? Do! So good! So sad! And I’ve got Ashley to thank for that one. OK: two awesome reels from Ashley and Nina, then more stuff:

  • I’m teaching a year-long class in 2024 for StoryStudio: Speculative Novel in a Year. Applications open October 17. Apply!

  • I am on Instagram, still! Mostly doodling on lunch bags. I am also on Threads. I am no longer on the other social media places. If you’re on either, follow! Or not!

Stewie & Brian Show Up in Anthony Trollope

Sort of! What I mean is that Anthony Trollope does the Family Guy How’s-that-novel-coming? bit in 1867’s The Last Chronicle of Barset (the relevant Stewie & Brian clip follows the excerpt below, but here’s the link just in case that’s easier.):

"You are just like some of those men who for years past have been going to write a book on some new subject. The intention has been sincere at first, and it never altogether dies away. But the would-be author, though he still talks of his work, knows that it will never be executed, and is very patient under the disappointment. All enthusiasm about the thing is gone, but he is still known as the man who is going to do it some day. You are the man who means to marry Miss Dale in five, ten, or twenty years' time."


Some Updates!

Nabokovilia: Less is Lost

Andrew Sean Greer’s delightful Lost had plenty of Nabokovilia, and no surprise to find that the sequel also does. I’ll be updating as I find them, but here’s one for sure:

“…their wrinkles and paunches, when of course they were younger then than he is now, and the time will come, inshallah, when Less will be older still than they are here (you can always count on time for a fancy prose style).”

Some EXTENDED STAY News & Events

Here are three really cool recent Extended Stay bits:

I’ll be doing some events! They’re all soon to be posted over here, but here’s a quick rundown:

Win a free copy of EXTENDED STAY!

You can win a copy of the book + a monster drawn on the back of a postcard! You can enter over at Goodreads! Details below!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Extended Stay by Juan Martinez

Extended Stay

by Juan Martinez

Giveaway ends November 15, 2022.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway