Joy and Gratitude

I flew to Indianapolis over the weekend — my first visit to a beautiful, vibrant city made more beautiful but no less vibrant by a blanket of snow.

I was there for a party thrown by my publisher, Luminis Books, celebrating the release of its first three titles and previewing a fourth.

The party took place within the charming confines of Big Hat Books, where I got to see Precarious displayed in a store window instead of a web browser for the first time.

Excited? Me? You better believe it.

A steady stream of people came to wish us all well, and near the end of our time there, the upstairs was packed with people sipping wine, munching crackers and cheese and olives and tiny desserts.

Everyone was talking about books. Our books.

That's when I got the question: "How many of your stories are based on your own life?"

"Three," I said.

Which three, I wasn't saying.

I had never talked so much with so many people about myself and my writing. It was fun, because the good people of Indianapolis seemed genuinely interested.

Twelve people bought my book and asked me to sign it — and I did, with joy and gratitude.

What Copy Editors Know

Highlights from an article I put together years ago, when I was part of the crack copy-editing team at San Francisco Focus ...

> "Whenever writers say, 'Not to quibble,' they're about to quibble."

> "There's no comma in 'Louie Louie,' no period in Dr Pepper, and no apostrophe in Grants Pass. There should be but there isn't."

>"'Not to mention' is a mention."

>"It's okay to end a sentence with a preposition. Always has been. I don't care what English teacher told you. That's the sort of bogus rule up with which I will not put."

> "The word very is supposed to be an intensifier, but it's used so much that most statements are stronger without it."

> "Isn't it weird how many exceptions there are to the rule: i before e except after c?"

> "Never begin a story with 'Yes, Virginia,' 'According to Webster's,' or 'What do ____, _____, and _____ have in common?'"

> "Most stories can be improved if you shorten them by about a third."

> "I believe it was Rene J. Cappon, the veteran Associated Press editor, who said: 'Call a spade a spade and you evoke a picture. Call it an agricultural implement and you might be talking about a plow, a rake, or an air-conditioned tractor."

> "Quotes are doctored all the time in the name of clarity and grammar. Q&A interviews look like transcripts, but they're not. You wouldn't want to read them if they were."

> "Never use an exclamation point!"

Sex and the Short Story

The latest issue of 34th Parallel — Issue 9 — is now available, and it contains a real first for me.

Over the years I've interviewed a lot of people for newspapers, magazines, and websites, but this marks the first time someone has interviewed me.

Just check out the cover headline:

Gretchen Clark Interviews Al Riske
SEX AND THE SHORT STORY

Gretchen is a widely published essayist — I'm particularly fond of "This Is a Woman" — who teaches creative nonfiction at Writers.com. She also happens to be my sister-in-law and the first person I turn to for feedback on my own writing.

It was a fun interview and really made me think. I hope you'll check it out.

In My Hands

I'm holding it right now.

An advance copy of my book, Precarious.

It looks great and feels, well, substantial.

I like feeling the weight of it, the glossy cover. I like flipping through the pages, all 242 of them. I even like the slightly musty smell.

And I love the design. Thank you, Joanne.

Electronic books are cool, but give me ink on paper. Nothing could make a writer's first book more ... real.

Out Loud

The first time I read one of my stories in public, I was in the basement of a bar in San Francisco and there was a live band playing upstairs.

I didn't have a microphone and had to shout to be heard.

That was back in March when Switchback was celebrating the launch of Issue 9, which included a story of mine called "Skittish," about a woman who is attracted to a man with muscles because it makes her feel safe … until it doesn’t.

Not the kind of story I wanted to shout. Especially since I was writing from the woman's point of view and saying things like:

I catch Paul watching me, but just as quickly I pretend not to notice. I don't know what it is about my neck. Guys are always kissing it or wanting to kiss it.

Shouting that felt surreal. Try it, if you don't believe me.

I got another chance to read Friday night, and I again found myself shouting. But this time it was because the story, "Disengaged," called for shouting.

They were quickly out of town on the two-lane to the coast. Noise from the engine and the rush of hot August air made it necessary to shout.
"The wedding if off!"
"I just got the invitation today."
"It's off."

This was at the Gallery House in Palo Alto, and I was one of several writers taking part in the Peninsula Literary Series.

Naturally I flubbed a few lines — saying "big sure" when I meant "Big Sur," for example — but the reading went better than I had imagined. Better than I had rehearsed it.

I even remembered to look up at the audience from time to time.

Of course it really helped to have friendly go-to faces out there, so many thanks to the friends who came out to hear me. You made it fun.

Rediscovering Carver

I've been rediscovering Raymond Carver. Turns out he wasn't a minimalist after all. Even though that's what he's famous for.

His editor, Gordon Lish, was the minimalist, slashing many of Carver's stories by half. Others by even more. This was especially true in the case of the groundbreaking collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

Now, in a new volume called Raymond Carver: Collected Stories, we get to see the writer's original drafts along with the cut-down versions of those stories.

The originals are better.

I say that even though I've always been a big fan of minimalism.

(For a good visual of Lish's edits, check out "Beginners," Edited in The New Yorker.)

It's hard to say how successful Carver would have been without Lish. It was Lish who gave him his first national exposure in Esquire and championed him with agents and editors.

And Carver was forever grateful to him for changing his life.

Because of Lish, who moved from Esquire to Knopf, Carver became known as "the foremost practitioner of minimalist fiction," as the new dust jacket indicates. But the original stories were not only much longer, they were far richer and, for me, more deeply felt.

Lish was clearly a talented editor, and I admire many of his changes (as did Carver). Still, I seriously doubt that we would know the name Gordon Lish if it weren't for Carver.

So both men benefited, I suppose, but it's heart-breaking to read the long letter Carver wrote to Lish — included in the notes to the new volume — begging him not to move ahead with his radically altered version of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

It's hard not to think of Lish as an ass.

The contract for that book gave Lish the final say, but that changed for the next collection, Cathedral, and Carver accepted only minor changes.

So, clearly Carver had a boatload of talent all on his own, but he still might have labored in obscurity without the big break Lish gave him.

And now we get to see the original versions and Carver is back in the news and selling more books and it all turns out for the best.

I love a happy ending.

"Charming" - Publishers Weekly

I won't lie to you. The first review of Precarious was ... not great.

The first line was OK: "The lovelorn characters in Riske's debut collection are riven by confusion, to sometimes charming, sometimes infuriating effect."

But then the reviewer chose to focus on the (apparently) infuriating parts. The charming parts? Not so much.

Still, I suppose, it was somewhat of a coup to be reviewed in Publishers Weekly at all. (I'm including a link, but I'd really rather you didn't go there. See this instead.)

But there was good news, too.

Based on PW's not-so-great review, someone named Erica contacted my publisher to see if movie and TV rights are still available.

Which is interesting because, coincidentally, the first story in the collection. "Sleeping with Smiley," started out as a screenplay.

If anything comes of the inquiry, I'll let you know.