The Library vs The Book Shop vs The Box vs The Shelf

We recently bought a place, and so in moving we went through the emotional toil of determining what to pack and what to purge. The new space afforded me an opportunity to have displayed and on hand more of my library than was possible previously as we were going to do without our half of a storage unit, but with this loss of available storage there came also the necessity of culling part of my thirty-eight box collection of books.

As I surrounded myself with towers of boxes and precarious columns of books I found my organization take four forms: 1. the volumes I decided I could, actually, live without reading - mostly library-sale editions of authors unheard of with reason, or poor copies of previously read works with the idea that eventually I would procure a proper collectible copy - that would return to "The Library" for someone else to purchase; 2. the volumes I could live without reading for the above stated reasons in a state adequately presentable that I would try to trade them in at "The Book Shop" (which is the Hayward store's actual name in a celebration of brevity); 3. the volumes I still want to keep that I have either already read but can refrain from displaying until I get a larger library space (read: my Genre author All-Star team, including John Grisham, Anne Rice, Dean Koontz, etc), and those I have not read and will but cannot part with until they are read (read Genre All-Star hopefuls), who will remain in the titular "Box"; 4. Those volumes, read and unread, by my favorite literary writers and suspected future favorite literary writers, in presentable condition that I can stare at and imagine the explosions into experience they promise when I finally get the chance to open and consume them - alphabetically organized landmines of thought and pleasure - that await me on "The Shelf".

That, and - more importantly - make me look smart and well-read and shtuff to visitors.

Introductions and explanations

If you are meandering here because you have read and enjoyed my stories in print and wanted to learn a little more about me, then God bless you for reading independent literary journals and for finding this blog, because it seems you can only access it by search through Blogger.com (at least with my limited expertise).

About me then:

• I have been writing all my life, but seriously hunkered down with the intention of publication, fame and riches in early 2003.
• The bibliography so far: "Two Pink Lines" a microfiction story, in Illya's Honey, Fall 2004; "My Governors' House," in The First Line (http://www.thefirstline.com/), Summer 2005, Nominated for a Pushcart Prize; "Afternoon Cowboy," in Thema (http://members.cox.net/thema/) Fall 2005, whose publication was actually blown back to early 2006 by Hurricane Katrina paying an unwelcome visit to their offices; and "From Mamma to Mother and Back," also in The First Line, Spring 2006. Everybody be sure and do a little rain dance to sprout the two dozen other short stories I have tucked into the slush piles around the nation.
• My high score after putting approximately 4,897 quarters in Galaga is 168,540.
• This Spring I completed my first novel, "Alexander Murphy's Home for Wayward Celebrities," a literary novel of the pratfalls of celebrity in America, the challenge of defining yourself through popular culture, and the good ol' fashioned ache for companionship; for which I am seeking a midwife (agent) and doctor (publisher) to deliver it into your hands.
• I have read 442 books and seen 2923 movies (lists available upon request)
• I live in a satellite of the binary system of San Francisco and Oakland, with my lovely wife, a passionate high school History teacher, my high school and college sweetheart who I married immediately after, and look forward to dedicating the book to; a five-year old son and three-year old daughter who are the right kind of crazy; a porcine cat, and the odd couple of a gregarious red beta, and a hermitic plecostomus.
• My favorite Japanese filmmakers in no particular order are: Akira Kurosawa, Hayao Miyazaki, Juzo Itami, Isao Takahata, Hirokazu Koreeda, Katsuhiro Otomo, and Takeshi Kitano.
• My greatest literary ambitions in life are to have a shelf's worth of novels with my name upon them in print, and to have read every book I own, provided I own or can borrow (though you should never lend me a book if you don't want it returned looking well loved) every book by Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Thornton Wilder, Michael Chabon, M. Allen Cunningham, Nick Hornby, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Annie Proulx, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Milan Kundera, Douglas Adams, Nicholson Baker, Don DeLillo, Charles Dickens, Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishigoro, Vladimir Nabokov, Ethan Hawke, George Orwell, Ken Kesey, Evelyn Waugh, David Mitchell, John Steinbeck...
• And why Oral Randomly for my blog title? Well, a couple years back I got the idea into my head to publish my own zine, where all of the stories and poems would be released in audio form, to reemphasize the oral tradition of storytelling, hence Oral (I considered Aural, but it just sounded too pretentious); and I figured that instead of a set publication schedule I would just release the issues when I felt they were ready, hence Randomly. I still thought that title had a good flow to it, so I resurrected it here, as the nature of blogs is more conversational that writerly, more in the moment then on a schedule.

and above all you should know that Josh loves to receive mail, so please feel free to comment or converse with me on any of the topics I present in this blog, or upon my stories, or fraternal tales on the difficulties in getting your first story or novel published, or on writing or reading or film or art or music or anything.

Unless you want to brag about a better Galaga score, in which case you are dead to me.