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  • Pulp Rag: Following the details to inspiration

    Now, I don’t mind chopping wood. And I don’t care if the money’s no good. You take what you need, and you leave the rest.
    —Robbie Robertson, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”

    Let’s talk about inspiration.

    My husband and I are selling a house right now. (And on our knees mighty grateful for it, too, I might add.) This means we’re also emptying a garage.

    I’m guessing you all know that winter is not the best time of year to empty a garage, particularly a garage full of all the stuff you didn’t know what to do with in your old house, which you’ve now been living quite happily without for two years since you left it all behind. My first impulse was to foist it off on the new owners.

    My husband said, “Do they want that?” and I said, “No more than I do. But it’s the price of buying my house, dammit.”

    Boy, five years ago I could have gotten away with it, too.

    But instead we spent this weekend hauling all kinds of crap we don’t need from our old house—where we had a garage to store it in—to our new house—where we do not. It’s all in the kitchen right now. And I spent yesterday sorting other crap out of our storeroom to make room for it all.

    I found an extremely heavy cardboard box labeled “Sweaters” and, acting on my writer’s unerring instinct for detail, checked inside to find out why we used to wear sweaters made of lead.

    I found not sweaters but my old late-70s/early-80s issues of Rolling Stone magazine, the ones Alan Rinzler suggested I use to finance my son’s college education. The top one had a cover photo of Caroline of Monaco, looking remarkably like Carrie Fisher looking about twelve, in a tiara. The second one had a black-&-white cover photo of John Belushi, looking suitably somber.

    The Belushi issue. I stopped sorting and sat down. . .

    Read the full essay on Pulp Rag.

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Preditors & Editors

Clients’ Successes

Scott Warrender
Short story author Scott Warrender is a Mentoring Program client. I have done full Copy, Line, & Developmental Editing on a number of short stories for him, the first of which was his poignant fictional memoir of Africa, ''The Boy With the Newsprint Kite,'' now published in the Foundling Review.

Clients’ Books


Bhaichand Patel is the author of two nonfiction books: Chasing the Good Life (Penguin Books India, October, 2006), and Happy Hours (Penguin Books India, October, 2009). I edited Patel's debut novel, When the Streets Were Cold and Dark.

I've edited a number of nonfiction essays for my friend Lucia Orth. (Many years ago, my contribution to Baby Jesus Pawn Shop was simply a peer critique and participation in a standing ovation.)

The poet Chris Ryan is the author of The Bible of Animal Feet (Farfalla Press, 2007). He has recent stories in Pank, Anemone Sidecar, and A Cappella Zoo. I edited Ryan's novel The Ishmael Blade and worked with him on his debut novel Heliophobia and WIP Pogue.