On Parole

So I’ve decided to revise an old novella, called "On Parole," that I haven’t looked at in years. The title page is dated 1999. I recently submitted it to the Bullfight Little Book prize and it got rejected, which is a good thing because almost every sentence needs to be rewritten. I shouldn’t have even submitted it. I had a good experience dusting off "My Cherry," which eventually got published. The novella’s got a beginning, middle, and ending, so why not try fixing it up. I’m thinking of submitting it to A Public Space. Beyond that, I don’t know of any lit magazines that will take something as long as a novella, around 65 pages. Does anyone know any? Most have a pretty low word count. If I don’t get it published, I’ll probably make a free downloadable e-book out of it, and I may do that anyway.

My plan was to concentrate on music, but, you know, my plans change daily. That last post was residual energy from having to write an essay for the Stanford writing program. To answer Empty Drum’s comment from the last post, North of Sunset may not be released until January. The cover’s still in turmoil and it doesn’t entirely make sense to release it at the very end of 2005. I’ve waited this long, what’s another month? The book cover designers are going to hate me, but right now it’s looking sloppy. "On Parole" will keep my anxiety occupied until NOS is released.

I’m really liking the new Malkmus record. His records always seem to get better on second listen. At first they sometimes sound sort of thrown together and arbitrary, when it’s really not the case at all. We’ve got the first solo record playing in the car and Olivia sings along with it. Very cute. In the first song on "Face the Truth" he screams "Shitpile, a human shitpile!" so I’ve got skip over that one. The life of a father/rock music listener.

Check out Mp3songs.org. I’m climbing the charts! #3. It’s cool because I haven’t even obsessively clicked the link myself. If you click the song, I may just make #1.

The Mets got Billy Wagner and Carlos Delgado. Weird. They may actually be good next year. Up things are looking.