My story, Jimi Don’t Play Here No More, which appears in Brevity 29, will also be featured in a new anthology titled, Rough Beast: Stories of Exile and Unrequited Love, from Bannock Street Books. 

Helmed by Sarah Black, Bannock Street Books is a new micro-press that specializes in handmade chapbooks that feature flash fiction and memoir (although flash memoir isn’t mentioned on the site just yet).

I’m delighted.

In other ”Jimi Don’t Play Here” news, William Bradley linked to my story  from his blog. Bradley is none other than the Ethical Exhibitionist, which is something I bet we all wish we could say, but we can’t because Bradley thought of it first. 

I found his post this afternoon as I was browsing his site and was pleasantly surprised.

This week the Brevity Blog is featuring Brevity 29 authors discussing the stories they wrote for the latest issue. The idea here is to discuss the “origins or inspirations” for the stories, and the Brevity Editors even discourage blatant car salesmanship from recently published authors (only stealth car salesmanship will do!), so you know this isn’t just another marketing gimmick. It’s the real deal, folks.

My post went live earlier tonight.

Here is a short excerpt:

This story, Jesus.

The end of [Jimi Don't Play Here No More] takes place in 1988 when my oldest son was three-years-old. I’ve been telling this story for ages now, but only to other addicts and alcoholics, usually at some type of 12-step meeting. I only recently started telling it to civilians, which is difficult because people never know what to say when I get to the end.

Check out the rest of the post.

And keep watching the Brevity blog for more Brevity 29 authors. This is an awesome issue. I am looking forward to reading Beth Westmark discussion of Tenderness, myself.

Brevity 29, the January 2009 edition, has hit the Web. I’ve got a story in this one, so I’m excited.

I’ve also still got a job, despite the carnage to the Seattle tech industry this morning. Good luck to anyone who may have lost theirs today. And if that’s not enough to make me feel grateful, this afternoon the police responded to reports of an armed gunman in the woods behind my kids’ elementary school. No one was hurt, but the school was locked down when Holly went to pick them up tonight.

Jesus. You gotta hope the dead don’t rise with the moon tonight.

The Brevity blog is now using the Journalist theme, which includes a little word balloon for the tag line. I love how it makes the old dude in the Brevity icon look like he is offering concise writing advice. 

I have a piece forthcoming at Brevity, the magazine. It’s an essay called Jimi Don’t Play Here No More. Most of the authors who published stories in the recent issue of Brevity have also written blog posts on the Brevity blog. These posts offer the writer’s opinion on their piece or some insight into how it was written. Even though I hadn’t been asked, I already wrote a blog post about my story, Jimi Don’t Player Here No More. Can you tell I’m excited?

This is my first published story about using dope or my ordeal in New York City.