I can only remember two–the first-first glimmerings of BIRD & FAST, then the full glossary for BIRD (okay: there were two novellas as well, but they’re gone, now, sorry). That FAST piece, I wrote it deep in the morning, after having just lied to an editor at a party that I’d finished the novel already. […]
Early, scary stuff here. All of it right about fifteen years old. Not sure how I ever learned to write, really. Just that I had to. Included: “The Parrot Man,” which has a scene in it I’ve still yet to stop trying to tell; “West Texas Dirt,” which got me my first-ever fiction award, and
So, yeah, I’m on a desert island, can only have ten books. A strange, impractical set-up—that the dungeon master here can assume I’d grab a round number of books instead of a two-way radio or a knife—but so be it. I’m there. I can only have ten books. Which is a lot like punishment, but,
Or, really, just all of R.M. Berry’s stuff. It starts with Plane Geometry and Other Affairs of the Heart, ramps up to Leonardo’s Horse, then hits with The Dictionary of Modern Anguish. Each brilliant. His short story “Metempsychosis” has been, along with VALIS and COL49 [The Crying of Lot 49], probably the most influential, for
first Texas Monthly interview second Texas Monthly interview Hub Stuff Interview Lubbock newspaper interview
