Misplaced Alice free today (1/19) on the Kindle Store

My collection of stories, Misplaced Alice, published by StringTown Press in 2002 is among the books I’m re-issuing as ebooks. Misplaced Alice is free on the Kindle store today if you would like a get a copy. Jim Heynen, author of You Know What is Right and The One-Room Schoolhouse, wrote of the book:

Matt Briggs reminds us of the ordinary strangeness of strange and ordinary lives. Like the best in contemporary literature, his stories make the familiar unfamiliar and thus remind us to take a second look at who we are. Briggs understands the two-sidedness of life, how many ordinary situations can be comforting and disturbing at the same time. Sometimes he puts me in mind of Raymond Carver’s stories. Other times he reminds me of the off-kilter world of Russell Edson.

Pick up a free copy here.

 

Guest Post at Necessary Fiction on The Remains of River Names

 

Steve Himmer asked me to talk about giving away my novel, The Remains of River Names, “for free” (and now a dollar at the Kindle store) at Necessary Fiction.

 

The Remains of River Names available for the Kindle, free today

My first book, The Remains of Names, a novel in stories, has been reissued for the Kindle/Kindle App. The book was originally published in 1999 by Black Heron Press in hardcover. The book is free today. If you feel so inclined, take a second to check it out. Thanks! http://amzn.to/zOxgPU

 

New short short fiction posted at Stirrring

Stirring : A Literary Collection - November 2011 (art by Claire Schwartz)

A frog made frog sounds in the bushes. It kept me awake with its frog sound. The rain on the roof was louder than those frog sounds. The rain tapped a noise I could tune out. Each croak came at random intervals. Random: I could not tune out.

– From my story “Indian Summer” in the November 2011 issue of Stirring.

 

Controversy on the Class Room Floor

Hollow or Not? Teach both sides.

About four years ago in Federal Way, screenings of an Inconvenient Truth, were restricted when a science teacher in middle school showed the film to a class. An evangelical named Frosty Hardison had a daughter in the class, and he complained. Because of Policy 2331/2331p, which states that both sides of controversial issues need to be presented to classes, and this hadn’t been done, then a moratorium was placed on the film.

As an evangelical Frosty lives in a mythical world filled with a number of beliefs dictated to him by his faith. He doesn’t believe that global warming is caused by human activity but if it is true at all it is the result of divine intervention. He believes the end of the world is coming and heat will contribute to the end of time. He believes that an omnipotent deity who is human shaped and has a beard watches over all human activity. He believes that this deity created the Earth 6,000 years ago. In fact many of Frosty’s articles of faith or myths or whatever you want to call his deeply held convictions are “in conflict” with the teaching of science, biology, and history. To juxtapose his beliefs and the canonical text he holds to be absolutely true — The Holy Bible — with a science textbook is to find a great deal of controversy.

Which is true?

 

JA Tyler asks questions, I answer.

JA Tyler asked me some questions at MonkeyBicycle on September 2nd about my story in that magazine.

I remain very unsure about the role of sentences and the degree to which syntax should be a primary interest for a prose writer. While I admire Gertrude Stein and Gary Lutz and feel a degree of debt to their exploration of syntax, I find myself equally drawn to writers who are not really concerned with syntactical novelty.

For the full interview.

 

Podcast: Hunger from MonkeyBicycyle 8

The latest podcast comes from Matt Briggs, whose story, “Hunger,” tells the story of a man whose dishwashing routine becomes more and more difficult as his fingers start to disappear, thanks to his girlfriend. It’s a surreal and beautiful story that we hope you check out.

Listen to the podcast here

 

Text Engines and the Future of Writing

I posted my design and speculation about how a “future” word processor will change composition at the PLUMB Blog.

The simple word processor remains a relic in our operating systems. Microsoft Word has bolted some concessions to the wired world into it — you can right-click and look up a word in Wikipedia — but the essential metaphor, a sheet of paper, harkens back to typewriters, correction tape, and postage stamps.

The old word processor should be thrown out. Do not even consider it. We don’t read on paper and haven’t been using it write for nearly a generation. What would the new word processor be like? And how might this new word processor change our conception of composition?

Click here for the entire thing.

 

What software do you use to write?

I realized the other day in talking to some friends that I use a few more pieces of software than other writers. I use, or instance, FreeMind (a great opensource Java mindmaping tool). I’m kind of curious, what do you use?

I posted my full list on PLUMB Blog here.

 

Rumpelstistkin, Pen Names, and SDO at PLUMB Blog

I posted some thoughts on the uniqueness of author names given Google and the importance of having a name that can be found on the internet if you think potential readers may enter your name into Google to find your books.

Writers have often deliberated over their names. They might take up pen names to protect their identity or names to conceal their gender. Lewis Carroll is really Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. George Eliot is really Mary Ann Evans. It is less common I think these days to do this. I imagine that sometime soon writers will consider the unique string (the sequence of characters) to create a unique online handle. A Google alert for the writer Fred Smith would be useless among the hundreds of Smith’s busy posting blog entries and photos to Flickr. A writer named, Dog11&Tree, would at least have the knowledge that she is the only one with that name on the Web.

Click here for the full post. Thanks.