I think this picture is a better summation of Ellen’s work than any blurb or synopsis usually reserved for that space.

Fast Machine is technically a collection of Ellen’s work over the last ten years, but it feels like a novel. The narrators endure abusive mothers, malnutrition and countless father-figures in childhood; premature marriages, alienating boyfriends and nomadic lifestyles in adulthood. Ellen’s characters live in Ohio and Florida. They smoke weed and watch mediocre movies. They masturbate a lot.

That description makes it sound like a livejournal book: angsty, melodramatic but ultimately inconsequential. And at first, I that’s what I thought too. Her story “Period Sex” (which appears early in the collection) seemed like a meandering account of a sexual encounter, told with the same passive detachment as an entertaining Thought Catalog article. Good but without substance. (I also admit to being slightly drunk when I read that one).

“Winter Haven, Florida, 1984″ is what sold me. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a story so honest to adolescence–the alienation, the self-consciousness, the hurt and the fun–as Ellen’s story of a boarding school. It gave me context for everything else to follow. What I thought was meandering prose became intense confessionals–the kind that connects readers with the mistakes they made in their own youth. It’s such an unflinching account of family history and tragedy that you can’t help but feel a kinship. I wouldn’t be surprised if Fast Machine earned Ellen some stalkers.

Despite how damaged her characters are–from the shit they’ve seen or how they’re treated–there’s a subtle rage inside that keeps you on their side, which I think separates Ellen’s work from a lot of innocuous indie lit. Backed into a corner, this book will snap back.

The fine folks over at [PANK] put up a story that I’d been chipping away at for a long time. It’s called “Post Apocalypse” and continues my obsession with post-apocalyptic themes that I’ve been writing about for the past year.

You can also listen to me read the story on [PANK]‘s site, which is a really cool feature. I spent about three days recording my voice (yeesh) and adding sound effects to make it a nice production. Realize it’s a little long (about 30 mins) but, I dunno… maybe you can stream it through your iphone on the commute or something.

(read/listen to the story here)

Anyway, hope you enjoy!

I was on 20/20, talking about the mail.

It was a pretty sudden/random thing to happen. The night before, I got an email from a producer at ABC and after we talked for a bit, he told me that he was going to send a cameraman over to my house the next morning at 6:30 am (the piece was airing that night).

The interview process was a little strange: the cameraman set up to make it look like I was talking to someone. Really, the ABC producer (based out of NY) was talking to me on a speaker phone, while I gave my answers to my light switch (my point of focus).

Despite my experience in front of a camera, I found the whole thing pretty nerve-wracking and I caught myself talking in cluster bursts of words–an annoying trait I take on whenever I get nervous. My vocabulary becomes similar to a pull-string engine that’s almost getting started. After the cameraman left, I was sure none of the footage I gave them would be usable.

Honestly, 20/20 is one of those cultural staples that I ultimately know nothing about–kind of like 60 Minutes or Dateline. As I sat down to watch the show, I had no idea how inflammatory/sensational it is (has it always been this way?). I had this short, intense fear that they were going to edit me to look like this Simpsons clip, or make me look like a crazy postal worker. I think I said so many contradictory things during that interview that they could’ve easily done that.

But they were kind with their editing… I mean, to the extent that any sort of self-conscious person can stand to watch or listen to themselves.

Take a look at it here!

But for as how post-apocalyptic Bell’s vision is, Cataclysm Baby is about the past. The 26 fathers are to blame, this bleak world they inhabit is the one they’ve built–they are cowards, they abandon. They murderer: in “Xarles, Xavier, Xenos,” the father gives his son a 50-yard start before “I will shoot just once”. There is not a sympathetic character in this lot.

Ever since Ray Bradbury’s The Small Assassin scared the hell out of me, I’ve been a sucker for evil children in movies and literature, which is why I was originally attracted to Cataclysm Baby. I think parental and pregnancy-anxiety horror (and Bell does quite a bit of the latter here) is so effective because combines all these repulsion (body horror, slasher) /attraction (parenting instincts) elements. These contradictions are deeply unsettling, hard to comprehend and, I think, keep the genre taboo while we become desensitized to other horror.

But what I think sets Cataclysm Baby apart from most others I’ve seen/read, is that it indicts masculinity. Most evil children in movies and literature are products of Satan (The Omen), science (It’s Alive), ghosts/sexualization (Turn of the Screw), or general neglect (Ian McEwan’s early stuff) to give some examples. Cronenberg (The Brood) is the first example that comes to mind when talking about an active maternal influence on evil children, but for the most part, transient forces are to blame.

Bell’s work seems to be a reaction to this notion, and in fact, all notions of the father-role in evil children art: Because of a father’s transience/inaction, the child is awful and deformed. The fathers in Cataclysm Baby can’t blame Satan or science for the end of the world; their past (in)actions have given rise to 26 little apocalypses.

Anyway, great book. Read it.

Thank you so much for your patience and for letting us read your proposal for Clydestown Society of Mystery and Intrigue. We were knocked senseless by the intricate design, and there was even closer attention paid to your wonderfully lyrical prose. The overall idea of your project is highly ambitious, and it’s seems like the type of staggering creativity that the humdrum literary world could seriously use. But as we saw it, your project doesn’t seem to be a perfect fit for what (           ) is currently looking for. We’ve just published a memoir, so we’re currently on the search for literary, language-focused fiction. But with your eyes for poignant language and awe-inspiring design skills, we’re confident this novel will find its audience with another publisher.

We hope you continue to work on this project, as it has both energy and drive. Thanks again for submitting and bringing our attention to your intriguing work. It was truly a pleasure to visit such an innovative, starkly different universe.

Best wishes,

Honestly, this is really classy. I wish more publishing houses and agents had the decency to write thoughtful rejections. And it was a hard sell, especially when your story is a cross-platform, year-long narrative delivered on library cards, cassette tapes and through email and DVDS (among other mediums).

That said, does anyone want to publish an experimental narrative?

Two things: Besides the whimsical indulgence of romanticizing coincidence, I’m not sure if I believe in luck. I don’t think there are exterior forces that congregate around some people and leave others alone.

Also, I’m not a fast reader. So there I had a lot more opportunities to have “lucky” experiences than someone who can read faster. I don’t know if this in itself is luck.

Finally, anyone remember the X-Men characters Longshot and Domino? Both of them had “Luck” listed under their mutant powers. But doesn’t that negate the definition of luck? (The chance happening of fortunate or adverse events; fortune 2. Good fortune or prosperity; success: 3. One’s personal fate or lot). It seems that people who ‘make their own luck’ are really just cheaters.

Lucky thing 1: I consider my acquisition of Hobart 13 as somewhat lucky:

If it hadn’t been for Amelia Gray’s emoticon’d link share, or the fact that I had been on Facebook right then, I would not have known about the insane Hobart giveaway.

Jac Jamc begins Hobart 13 with a series of earnest essays about how she defines luck. They’re all very good, but there’s a bit that really stuck with me. Pretty much defined what I thought of luck:

As soon as I started thinking about luck, I started noticing stories about luck and theories about luck and thoughts on luck everywhere I looked.

I don’t think that’s luck. I think it’s preoccupation and awareness

She has a book that is out today. You should probably go read it.

Lucky thing 2: had two pretty decent job interviews. None of them were for jobs I was particularly excited about, but I consider myself a pretty terrible interviewee. Any opportunity to leave an interview without picking apart each line you said with disdain is a victory. Even if you didn’t get the job.

I’d consider two interviews in a week “lucky”, especially for writing positions.

Rolf Potts has a long essay in which he uses David Shield’s Reality Hunger, a text of remixed texts, as a springboard to remix his own account of being drugged and mugged in Turkey. I didn’t like it at first because I thought it was somewhat condescending to utilize someone’s method of delivery to show its flaws. Like oh… how meta of you. But when it became clear that he was using it to deconstruct his own narrative and highlight our basic love of story (I think), then I really liked it. Plus, there’s really good page formatting here.

Lucky thing 3: My mailman memoirs were printed on the cover of the SD Reader. Not really lucky because I had received payment and knew they were going to print it, but the day that it came out, I was at a birthday dinner for a local journalist and met a lot of other freelance contacts who were impressed with my work.

Lucky thing 4: won Sleigh Bell tickets from a music blog.

My absolute favorite piece was Tod Goldberg’s When They Let Them Bleed” which was about his love lightweight boxing champion, Duk Koo Kim, and the death that befell Kim in the ring. He relates that to his own adolescent body issues and the self-mutilation he endured. Really powerful stuff without falling into melodrama.

Read Hobart 13.

Happy Easter!

We did it! I would like to take this opportunity to thank the USPS, for making this opportunity possible.

Also, a very nice blurb about the story in this morning’s edition of Voice of San Diego:

Walking the Mail Beat

San Diego Reader cover stories can be a major drag to read, but this week’s is an unusual treat: it’s a snappily written and engaging first-person tale by a young man who got a job as a temporary mail carrier.

The writer talks about, among other things, an hour-long video about dog “language” (I’d like to get the Berlitz version), the perennial threat posed by snarly Post Office supervisors (wait, all bosses aren’t delightful dreamboats?), and the rash of carriers who call in sick on rainy days (and the bounty they miss around Christmas).

Read the story here!

There it is, folks.

It was barely over a year ago that Justin and I were drinking whiskey on my front porch, and he was telling me about his idea for a book. It was an idea that we’ve all thought about – what would you do with 24 hours to live?

We wanted to go further than an creating an anthology–we wanted to create a crowd-sourced book that followed a singular, narrative arc. We had pretty specific rules:

• Try to write a scene that takes place during one particular time of the day. This will be much easier for us to edit into the final product than if you write a story that spans the entire day. If you do need to use different moments in time during the last day, try to break them up into smaller separate scenes. We’ll be arranging the final stories in a chronological order that takes the reader through the entire last day on earth, and are able to revisit your story at multiple points throughout the book.
• The recurring idea that has arisen from discussing the concept over the last two years is that for most of us, we only appreciate parts of our lives when they’re over. By knowing we are going to end, we’d actually notice and value how we live, once the expectation of “a future” is removed. You do not have to agree or follow that idea, but I thought it worth sharing.

A recap of the general rules of the world and our time-line:

• No mass hysteria.
• No available air travel.
• The end will come suddenly but painlessly, shortly after midnight / during early morning in the dark hours.
• The roads, depending on where you are, may be clogged with traffic but are open.
• It is never specified how the end of the world is coming.
• Phones connect sporadically.

I’m thrilled with the amount of talent in this book. We are on our third round of editing, and we have a pretty good idea of how the book is turning out. I’m just going to say that you should be pretty excited.