Mixed Company is out today...finally!

I swear this time my book is really out. And we're going to talk about the importance of trying, and noticing.

One year ago I had no idea that I’d be publishing a book in 2021. I’d parted ways with my first literary agent, and was racking up rejections as I searched for a new one. We were in the depths of the pandemic (which we still kind of are, come to think of it) and my kids were in online school. Helping them for half of the day and trying to get my paid work done for the other half of the day left me no additional halves of the day for creative writing.

But I noticed there were little cracks in the day that I could use to at least submit my writing. I had a collection that I’d put together out of stories that I’d published in literary magazines over the years, and I had a novel that I’d been working on for at least six years. So I used the tiny moments of time in the day to send them out. In February, I learned that my short story manuscript had been awarded the George Garrett Fiction Prize, and that Texas Review Press would publish it. In the summer, I signed on with a new literary agent who will help me prepare my novel for publication. And here I sit, on November 16, after a mere month of supply-chain delay, with a new book in bookstores to bug people endlessly about!

In addition to increasing my potential to annoy everyone I know, having a new book published this year feels extremely gratifying. There were stretches of years where I had very little luck finishing my writing or publishing it. But I kept going, inch by inch, in part because I always tell my students and writing buddies to keep going, keep trying, keep submitting, and I couldn’t tell them to do things that I couldn’t manage to do myself. Sometimes I was getting so many rejections that I was only submitting to live up to the ideals I’d stated to my students. So if you’re a writer and you’re reading this, take this as your invitation…no, your command to set aside the time you need to finish that story or essay or piece of satire or book you’ve been working on and send it out. You never know what can happen when you submit your work.

The Assorted Whimsy Portion of The Tumbleweed

I am attempting to teach my 15-year-old daughter to drive, even though we’re both at least moderately terrified. We’ve been going on a lot of aimless little meandering drives through nearby neighborhoods to work on her skills and rack up those required hours behind the wheel.

Writers rely on observations to inspire us with material to write about, but I’m often so busy and focused on the next task I need to complete that I don’t take enough time to notice the world around me. These loafing drives give me plenty of time to notice. For example, one Sunday afternoon, we were driving a few miles from our house, and I saw this incredible dwelling on our right. “Pull over!” I commanded her.

I’d startled her by exclaiming, but will you look at this house? Could you see this and not exclaim? This is the house that exclamation points were invented for. I’ve lived in this neighborhood for about 12 years but I’ve never driven down this particular street. Whoever lives here is a woodworker (?) who has taken care to decorate every inch of their house. We’ve got wooden fences with little bows on them. We’ve got garage doors painted to look like barn doors. We’ve got trios of little wooden birds nesting above each door. We have a series of miniature wooden churches on elevated platforms. Whoever lives here is a creative person with a lot of arts & crafts in their soul to express.

This artist’s impulse to leave nothing unadorned reminds me of the way I used to write when I was starting out—with lots of adjectives and tangents. The fence isn’t finished until you put a bow on it. The bow isn’t finished until you put a purple heart behind it. The bench isn’t finished until a little bird house is perched upon it. House artist, you get me. But then I saw the pièce de résistance:

That’s right, the porch is labelled with the word PORCH. Critics, make your cracks about subtlety, minimalists, scoff if you will, but this is an artist after my own heart. The message of this house seems to be: the whole big world is out there for you to fill with your creativity, energy, and style. So get out there and express yourselves, people! What would your crazy house look like?

The Book Review Portion of The Tumbleweed

Thanksgiving is coming up, which is my favorite day of the year to consume pie, and this is important, because a Westword article this month outed me as an insane pumpkin-product enthusiast. I have a great book to recommend for you to read while eating lots of pie: Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage by William Loren Katz. I read this book with my son, who chose it from a list of books recommended by his seventh grade teacher, but it’s appropriate for adults too.

I learned so much from this book. Did you know that Frederick Douglas, Langston Hughes, LL Cool J, and Michelle Obama all have Native as well as Black ancestors? (I didn’t.) Katz writes about how as soon as Europeans began bringing enslaved Africans to North and South America, significant numbers of them escaped and were welcomed by Native people.

In fact, the first successful colony sustained in North America was not the one established by Sir Walter Raleigh on Roanoke Island in 1584—no, the European settlers there ruined their chances of survival by attacking a nearby Indian village that might have helped them endure. Captain John Smith’s Jamestown colony established in 1607 similarly failed, as the European aristocrats who inhabited it proved too lazy to farm. Katz writes, “No wonder some scholars decided that US history did not begin until the arrival of the hard-working Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower in 1620. Leaping over events can avoid some unpleasant conclusions about early European motives, character, and success.” But there was another relatively enduring settlement started by people from overseas before this, established in 1520 in South Carolina, among African people who fled the Spanish captors who’d enslaved them, and the local natives. In this and many other examples, Katz demonstrates how Black and Indian people collaborated to form societies that actually lived up to the ideals of freedom expressed in the U.S. Constitution well before the rest of us got around to trying to do that.

This is just one of the fascinating stories in this book. You’ll also find the story of some Western outlaws who inspired the new Netflix series The Harder They Fall. Also, on a related subject, be on the lookout for Caleb Gayle’s nonfiction book that will be out in July 2022: We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power.

The Q&A Portion of The Tumbleweed

A few weeks ago, I was invited to speak to a delightful group of mostly retired journalists at the Colorado Press Women’s annual luncheon. I read a story from my collection, and one of the ladies who had read several of the stories commented, “Your stories often include gritty details. Why do you put that grit in there?” This made me wonder if I should have read them one of the stories that didn’t have any cussing in it, but when I collected my thoughts, I said this:

I don’t know if I’m always aware of what details certain readers would describe as “gritty.” To me, the details I include are a way of portraying the truth. I think it’s important for writing to be truthful—we are bombarded with so much sanitized content, especially on social media, that seems designed to portray people’s lives as being perfect and enviable. But to me, that’s not very welcoming.

One of my favorite quotes by James Baldwin does a better job of explaining why I include grit:

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.

Art has to be a kind of confession. I don't mean a true confession in the sense of that dreary magazine. The effort it seems to me, is: if you can examine and face your life, you can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives, and they can discover them, too — the terms with which they are connected to other people.

This has happened to every one of us, I'm sure. You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. Reading is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important."

Do you have a question for me related to writing, publishing, living, or eating pumpkin products? I’d be delighted to answer it.

The Self-Promotional Portion of The Tumbleweed

Hooray! Some people have noticed that Mixed Company exists! You can find signed copies now at Book Bar and the Boulder Book Store and order it from any other bookstore you love. The paperback is out now, and the ebook will be appearing shortly.

I got to talk to Bree Davies of City Cast Denver about busing and stories and cross-town locker partners.

Erin O’Toole of KUNC talked to me about the book for Colorado Edition.

Fiction writer Mike Alberti gave Mixed Company this wonderful review in The Minneapolis Star Tribune.

My dear friend, the brilliant writer Paula Younger interviewed me for Fiction Writers Review.

I wrote about my mentor Lucia Berlin for Poets & Writers magazine.

Caitlin Rocket interviewed me for Boulder Weekly.

Izzy Fincher interviewed me for CU Independent.

I was featured as a pumpkin-seeking lunatic in this Westword piece, “The Great Pumpkin Shortage of 2021.”