"The Kramers" Nominated for 2012 Pushcart Prize

Received word from Guy Kenyon at Encounters Magazine, letting me know that my story "The Kramers" is one of their nominees for the 2012 Pushcart Prize. This is a story that took a long time to find a home and I am so grateful Encounters took a chance on publishing it, so thanks again, Guy! Good luck to everyone nominated this year!

A Great Review of The Lifted Brow 7 & Breeders

There are places you want your work reviewed and one of those places is Literary Minded. Got an email today from The Lifted Brow editor Ronnie Scott with a link to, gasp!, an awesome review of TLB7 by Literary Minded. Sam Cooney writes the review and has a lot of wonderful things to say, such as:

"The Lifted Brow is literature that isn’t, it’s literature that won’t, it’s literature that refuses. But it’s also (paradoxes are so easy) literature that does, literature that must, literature that pushes."

Cooney mentions five stories in his review, and "Breeders" is one of them. He writes:

"Blake Kimzey’s ‘Breeders’ has this great narrator. He’s an idiot, but he’s a charming idiot. Not a harmless one though, as his ‘uncivilised’ fixations involve others. But he’s a follower, and when we meet him he is kowtowing to his friend Jimmy in a plan to breed a Great Dane with a Pit Bull to make a Great Pit. Mauling ahoy!"

I'm thrilled to be in TLB7 and feel a bit of pride at being mentioned in the Literary Minded review, which also raves about stories by Robert Shearman, Chris Somerville, Dolan Morgan, and Mike Meginnis. You can read the whole review here and I would encourage you to buy your copy of TLB7 because the previous six issues have sold out and the last copy of this issue will ship soon!

And thanks again to Ronnie Scott for publishing my work!

Order The Lifted Brow 7

It is time to order your copy of The Lifted Brow 7. My story "Breeders" will be featured in this issue along with a host of other great stories and artwork from around the globe. In the last couple of issues, The Lifted Brow has published Brian Evenson, David Foster Wallace, Neil Gaiman, Kevin Brockmeier, Tao Lin, Ricky Moody, Tom Bissell, Blake Butler, Robert Olen Butler, Sam Lipsyte, and many more.

So do yourself a favor and order TLB7! It'll be the most colorful book on your bookshelf, I promise.

Breeders: The Lifted Brow 7

My story "Breeders" will appear in the August 2010 issue of the Australian journal The Lifted Brow (TLB7), and I couldn't be happier. Part of the fun in placing a story is working with the editor to make sure your piece is as tight as possible. When "Little Man" was published last fall in Short FICTION, editor Anthony Caleshu offered gentle suggestions that gave the story a final polish that I was so proud to see in print. It was a dream to work with Anthony and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Ditto Brow editor Ronnie Scott. I've had the joy of working with him on "Breeders" and he sent me the most thoughtful comments that helped shape my story into the final piece you'll get to read in August. It was such an easy process and I can't wait to see how he drops "Breeders" into The Lifted Brow's forthcoming issue. TLB7 isn't even published yet and I'm already hopeful I'll get to work with Ronnie again.

Anytime I place a story I am as eager to see my fiction in print as I am to read the work of every other contributor in the issue. You can pre-order TLB7 by clicking here, and it will be well worth your money. In the last couple of issues, The Lifted Brow has published David Foster Wallace, Neil Gaiman, Kevin Brockmeier, Tao Lin, Ricky Moody, Tom Bissell, Blake Butler, Robert Olen Butler, Sam Lipsyte, and many more.

So do yourself a favor and pre-order TLB7! It'll be the most colorful book on your bookshelf, I promise.

Two Nice Reviews

I have only written one genre-based short story. Not that I consider myself a literary or popular writer or anything else. I just know I'm not a Thriller/SciFi/Romance/Fantasy writer. The short fiction I usually write draws a lot of influence from George Saunders and other writers like him.

In January 2008 I was a fiction resident at the Vermont Studio Center. I was there for a month with my wife, artist Danielle Huey Kimzey, and we would go on these long walks into the countryside to catch up and talk about what we were working on in our studios. Sometimes we'd walk around at night and when the moon was out (or not out) it felt like we were walking around in our own ghost story. An aging Masonic lodge anchored the town center, leaning badly to one side and in general disrepair. Add to that all the other old buildings that figured prominently in local lore and a graveyard pre-dating the Revolution and it was a town with much more history than the small town in Texas where I grew up. So you get the idea: Johnson, Vermont has this old northeastern feel to it and I decided to write something different, set right there in town. The result was "The Kramers" and it ended up in Encounters Magazine three months ago.

And believe it or not, the Science Fiction Review and Tangent (which has been reviewing Science Fiction since 1993) had nice things to say about my story.

An excerpt from the Science Fiction Review:

"In 'The Kramers', Blake Kimzey shows us you can find true horror without any supernatural element at all. Tom Kramer works for the local Fish and Wildlife department, as did his father who committed suicide when he was a kid. His mother has psychological problems and this all leads to an end that will make you squirm."

An end that will make you squirm! Doesn't that make you want to read the piece? You can order Encounters Magazine on Amazon if you'd like.

An excerpt from Tangent:

"This is a neat, vivid little tale of modern horror, twisting the screw of a modern tragedy until the main character can take no more. The images are vivid and evoke a cold and snowy winter in Vermont, where the seasonal lack of sun and the relentless cold have been known to drive men mad."

Not sure when I'll have another genre story in print. And if you have a hard time waiting on the Post Office I can always just e-mail you the story.

The Lifted Brow

The Lifted Brow, a "biannual attack journal" published in Australia, has just accepted my story "Breeders" for publication. I am excited about this for so many reasons. Their current issue (TLB6) features a David Foster Wallace story excerpted from The Pale King, his forthcoming (posthumous) novel that will be published by Little, Brown in 2011. Rick Moody is also in TLB6 along with a host of talented international writers. I'm not sure if "Breeders" will be published in TLB7 or TLB8, but I will keep you posted. Of course, you can order a copy of The Lifted Brow 6 (which also includes two CDs) by clicking here. I'll post again regarding "Breeders" when it is slated for publication, which should be some time this year.

Twenty Ten

Goals. When you put them on paper and stick to the plan good things happen. I exceeded my writing goals in 2009 and I hope to do so again this year. I have three finished short stories that I'll be submitting to journals over the course of the year. But the big fish in 2010 is writing and finishing a novel.

I've never had a goal to write and finish a novel. Thus far in my writing life I've focused on short stories. Not this year. I'm dedicating January and February to research. Reading novels and stories similar to what I want to write and researching late 1800's London and the wild American west. Oh, and outlining the story so I have a road map. In March I plan to start writing the novel and hopefully by August I'll have a working rough draft. I'll spend the rest of the year revising and hopefully by January 2011 I'll have a manuscript to send to agents