News from Freight Stories

Freight Stories Authors Take the World by Storm!

2009-06-08T17:24:00.000-07:00

The authors in our first five issues are kicking all kinds of major butt. Need proof?

Robert Boswell's new collection, The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards, is out from Graywolf.

Sherrie Flick's debut novel, Reconsidering Happiness, will be published in the fall. In the meantime, you can read her essay about the flash fiction form in The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, available now.

Christopher Newgent's "At the Fire Scene" and John McNally's "Ascension," both published in Freight Stories, have been selected for the Wigleaf Top 50, which honors the best flash fiction published online. Kyle Minor, whose story "The Navy Man" appeared in our second issue, has a different story in the Top 50. Darlin' Neal served as the selecting editor for the Wigleaf Top 50, and three of her short-shorts appeared in our second issue. Sherrie Flick's "Inside, No, Further In" from our first issue also made the longlist.

Victoria Patterson's book of linked stories, Drift, is out now from Houghton Mifflin.

Patricia Henley is publishing a serialized novel, Home Plate, on her new blog. Word on the street is that she's just completed a short story collection that includes "Red Lily" from Freight Stories No. 3.

Several FS authors had their work nominated for the Million Writers Award, including Cathy Day, Gina Ochsner, Susan Neville, Alexander Parsons, and Kyle Minor.

Nathan Graziano's new book of poetry, After the Honeymoon, will be published in September.

Rachel Furey won the Wabash Prize from the Sycamore Review; Tobias Wolff selected her story "Birth Act" and it will appear in print next year.

Margaret McMullan's Cashay is now available from Houghton Mifflin.

No. 5 is on the way.

2009-06-03T23:37:00.001-07:00

We think you're gonna like it.

Join FS contributor Patricia Henley and poet Dana Roeser for a great summer workshop

2009-03-03T19:50:00.000-08:00

Freight Stories readers who write: Here's a great chance to join award winning novelist and short story writer Patricia Henley and award winning poet Dana Roeser for a lovely weekend in Nashville, Indiana to recharge your writing life. The Right Track workshop for writers and poets will take place at the end of May at the beautiful Artists Colony Inn.

Learn more here, and join us for an energizing, fun weekend!

See you there,
Victoria

What's With the Crazy?

2009-02-18T07:19:00.000-08:00

So it's been a strange month. As you know, we were scrambling throughout January to get No. 4 published, after the fall semester at our regular jobs and the holidays beat us up a bit. Of course, we can take being beat up by our jobs--they pay us for that.

It's getting beat up here at Freight Stories that confuses me. We've had two recent e-mail situations that caused us to raise an eyebrow. First, when Andrew let a submitter know we don't consider poetry, said submitter responded with not one but eight profane and violent e-mail replies, delivered to both of our inboxes over the course of an entire night. I'm hoping there were intoxicants involved, because the messages were scary and we're not that hard to find.

More recently, someone sent us a needlessly nasty e-mail, calling us "amateurs," admonishing us for not using a spell check, and pointing out that our 1/27 open submissions announcement was full of spelling errors, as was our web site. We made no call for open submissions in January. We were working feverishly on the issue on January 27. But because I'm a bit paranoid, I spent part of my morning spell-checking the pages of the site. There are no spelling errors. It's entirely possible that we made an editing slip in one of the stories in No. 4. It wouldn't be the first time that happened. But I trust, since we have a great working relationship with the writers we publish, that if there's a typo in your story, you'll tell us. Then we'll fix it immediately. Because even though we don't get paid, and we fund the entire Freight Stories operation out of our pockets and the kindness of donors, we are professionals in this role. We take our authors' work more seriously than our own, most days.

All this animosity raises a number of questions:

1. Where are these people coming from? We're listed on Duotrope, New Pages, and a few other sites where people look up magazines. But if you're sending us poetry, you haven't read either our issues or our submission guidelines. Since our entire operation is completely free to the reader, this is totally unacceptable. Certainly, as a younger writer with no money to be had anywhere, I was guilty of submitting to a journal I'd never read from time to time, particularly if that journal cost ten bucks and I was waiting tables sixty hours a week to get by. But to not even look at the web site of an online journal? Lazy. And the typo guy either thinks we're someone else or doesn't read/speak Standard American English. It's possible that things are misspelled if you expect the site to be in British or Australian dialect. But if you think that, you, too, didn't read the site.

2. What's up with the meanness? I just spent a few days in a hotel with 8,000 writers; they're good people, writers. We all know that writing requires a certain level of ego just to be able to face the empty page. But don't people involved in any way with literature recognize that it's a communal endeavor, that sending nasty and inaccurate e-mails to an editor is not, not, not good karma? And that it's not good business? If I was the mean-spirited amateur these folks seem to expect here, I would tell you their names and give you their e-mail addresses, and I would contact the many, many editors I know to do the same. I won't, because that's not the kind of business literary editors take part in.

3. Did I mention that we don't get paid for this? A few weeks ago, when we were finishing the issue, I had a bit of a breakdown, and had to ask Andrew when we'd get to the good part, where there's some joy involved in this laborious volunteer gig. It had been a while since we put out #3, we had gotten eight crazy, violent e-mails, and I was exhausted with work. Putting out the issue was joyful. It was also taxing in a way that nothing else I do is taxing, and was done purely for the joy of the end product. There is no other reward for this work.

So, dear readers, if you've got something to say about Freight Stories, we'd love to hear it. But if you're mean, violent, dismissive, or insulting, don't bother. We don't have time for that.

back from AWP

2009-02-17T10:13:00.000-08:00

Which isn't as exciting as it sounds. For those who don't know anything about AWP, it's an annual conference for writers and writing programs. Basically, it's an excuse for writers to get together, talk a bunch of smack about other writers, editors, magazines, publishers, agents, and so on while drinking quite a bit and eating around the clock.

This year's conference was in Chicago, three hours north of us. An easy drive. Parking, however? Not so easy. Or cheap, rather.

We didn't spring for a table in the bookfair for a few reasons. First, it's kind of expensive. But also, we don't have physical books to put on said table. And neither of us wants to sit at said table all day for for three days. We did make bookmarks and pass them out to random strangers, and also left them on the "free for all" tables throughout the hotel.

Still, we did meet several readers and submitters, which was nice. And a few of the people we met have already submitted stories, or promised to submit stories, which is also good.

The highlight of our trip. Probably Giordano's. Worth the wait.

Freight Stories No. 4 now online

2009-02-07T12:30:00.000-08:00

The fourth issue is now online, with new work by Lee Martin, Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, Daniel Wallace, Patrick Nevins, Shasta Grant, Donna D. Vitucci, Andrew Roe, and Jim Tomlinson.

No. 4 teaser

2009-01-01T11:42:00.000-08:00

So one of our readers asked if we could preview some of the work in the next issue. We're not ready to do that yet, but I'll say that there are some big fish in this issue. And that, if we keep publishing writers like these, our future will be bright forever.

Coming Soon (But Not Soon Enough)

2008-12-29T13:41:00.001-08:00

No. 4 is on its way. Really. It is. But between No. 3 and now, our regular, paying jobs and the holidays and the general malaise of living in Indiana in the winter ate your humble editors' lives. (But mostly the jobs. The holidays and the malaise are just the sugar on top.)

In any event, No. 4 will be on your virtual book shelves within a few weeks, and by the end of January, tops. And boy do we have some treats for you.

If you're on our e-mail list, you'll be the first to know when it's ready (probably in the middle of the night at launch time). If not, why aren't you? Drop us a line at editors (at) freightstories.com to join up.

And don't forget about Nos. 1-3 while you wait. The stories (and poem!) there make great second, third, tenth reads.

We'll see you soon back at Freight Stories! Thanks for your patience. It'll be worth your wait--we promise.

Oh, Irv

2008-10-21T10:13:00.000-07:00

So the statue featured on the cover of FS No. 3 (nice work, Victoria) is a bust of Washington Irving. Our neighborhood in Indianapolis -- Irvington -- is so named because the area brought to mind the setting of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Irving's most famous story, which has seeped into popular culture in a way that "Rip Van Winkle" never will.

Here's why I celebrate Washington Irving today, in the month that we traditionally consider his most famous story:

"As America's first genuine internationally best-selling author, Irving advocated for writing as a legitimate profession, and argued for stronger laws to protect American writers from copyright infringement."

That's right. Irving was the first American writer to really make a name for himself in Europe and elsewhere, and he is the first American writer to make a living from his writing. And a good living, at that. Yes, he wrote biographies, as well, and later served as the U.S. minister to Spain. But it's his fiction that got the ball rolling.

So when I walk or drive past that statue of Irv, I give him props. I'm sure to say hello. And, if I'm walking by, I'll quickly rub his rough forehead for good luck.

new books by McNally and Minor

2008-10-18T17:21:00.000-07:00

John McNally visited Indianapolis last week and offered a great reading -- three shorter pieces from his new book, Ghosts of Chicago, including "Ascension," which first appeared in the debut issue of Freight Stories earlier this year. John tells us he also designed the cover, which is a beauty.

This marks the first time an FS story has appeared in book form, followed closely by Kyle Minor's "The Navy Man," which is now available in Kyle's debut collection from Dzanc Books, In the Devil's Territory.

Both books are highly recommended.

No. 3 Loves You!

2008-10-01T11:28:00.000-07:00

Every time we put out an issue, I think it's my favorite one yet. I think: how will we ever top this? I wallow in its excellence for about a minute before I get anxious about doing it all over again.

Predictably, the next couple of months pass. We read submissions, make selections, and take or find photos. We also do the other jobs, the ones we get paid to do. We work on our own writing. Once in a while we sleep.

Then, suddenly, the quarter has passed and the next issue is upon us, and I freak out. Will we get it done on time? Will our authors be pleased? How can it possibly be as good as the last one, and the one before it? WHAT DID WE GET OURSELVES INTO?

And each time, as in most of life, everything works out. Some weird, unprecedented tech glitch pops up, and I think it's going to take forever to fix, and it doesn't, and the nerdy production stuff is actually easier than it was the time before, and we find an image that's just perfect for each story, and then that e-mail shows up in your inbox letting you know that we've gone and done it again. We start to get congratulatory e-mails from readers, messages that delight us no end, praising all the stories, and generally making us feel great about the work we're doing. And if we're really lucky, we even hear from the writers we've published.

So pretty soon, the anxiety is going to set in. But for now, everybody roll around in No. 3 with me like little kids in a leaf pile.

Hello There!

2008-09-24T19:32:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Freight Stories editors' blog, where we'll keep you updated on news about Freight Stories authors and the magazine, plus other great literary stuff we think you want to know.

Like the John McNally Reading in Indianapolis, presented by Freight Stories, for example.

And issue No. 3, which will be ready for your bedtime story enjoyment today.

If you've got information to share, please write us at editors at freightstories.com.

See you back here soon!