clifford-g1My short story collection, In an Uncharted Country, will be published by Press 53 in early September. I’m truly excited by the thought of people holding my book in their hands and maybe even reading my stories, now that the book is finding its way into the world. Since I’m a man, I can’t and won’t use the birth metaphor, but it certainly is odd to think of this little part of me existing on its own, having a life that’s separate from mine. (Except, of course, for that mystery known as “marketing” which will keep me tied to the book for months to come, but that’s a whole other subject.)

How did I get to this point?

I wrote a novel. I thought it was great. It wasn’t. It needed and still needs a lot of work.

But in order to feel like a writer, I needed to publish something. I needed to finish things and send them to editors, and I needed to see them in print, and, most of all, I needed other people to see them in print.

So I started writing short stories. I liked the fact that I could be “done” with something. I could submit it—to several journals simultaneously, usually—and editors would read it and a magazine might actually publish it. That happened almost immediately, and continued happening as I kept writing more stories.  

I wasn’t thinking “collection” when I started, but I discovered that my process of writing stories is rather organic. That is, there is usually something in a story that serves as a seed for the next one—a minor character who needs to be explored further in his own story, for example, or a resolution to a story that suggests further conflict and another story or two. I wrote about a couple with marital problems living out in the country, and all I had to do to get the landscape right was look out my window. And all I had to do to get ideas for characters is walk down the street in the small town near where I live.

One thing led to another and I had a pile of stories that felt like a book. Because the stories were linked by overlapping characters, location, and even theme, they fit together nicely. But I thought something was missing, and I came up with the idea of a “cap-story”—a final story for the collection that tied together most of the other stories and suggested a thematic resolution, almost as if it were the end of a novel instead of a book of short stories.

So I had a finished manuscript, but story collections are notoriously hard to publish and, as a result, most agents won’t touch them unless they can be sold as part of a two-book package with a novel. The only novel I had was that manuscript that still needed a lot of work—work that I wasn’t mentally prepared to do yet—and so I didn’t have what agents wanted.

As a result, I turned my attention to small presses. For many emerging writers, small presses are the way to go, especially as the large trade publishers go after bigger and bigger blockbusters in order to maximize profits. The small presses follow a different model and many of them are willing to look at stand-alone story collections. I sent my manuscript out to a few, and Press 53 was interested. They’ve been terrific to work with, allowed me some say in the choice of cover and other design features for the book, and I’m grateful to the publisher, Kevin Watson.

Cliffs bookIronically, though, while I was searching for a publisher, I was working on a new book. I still couldn’t bring myself to work on the old novel, but I felt that I needed a novel to be taken seriously. But I love stories! And so I took a shot at a hybrid form—a novel in stories. Some readers may consider In an Uncharted Country to fall in this category, too, but with the new book that’s what I set out to do. The stories are even more closely linked, and there is a story arch that connects all the twelve pieces together. At this point four of those stories have been published and, somewhat to my surprise, an agent was interested in representing me for that book—I signed with her the same month I signed with Press 53 for the story collection.

I’m now working two projects. One is a novel. A real novel. And the other is a different animal altogether: a novel in flash. It’s a collection of flash fiction pieces that all deal with the same character. Although a number of those have been published, it’s too soon to tell where that one is going. But it’s been a blast to write.

 

My collection of linked short stories, IN AN UNCHARTED COUNTRY (Press 53, September 2009), is set in rural Virginia, where I now live. Before turning to writing fiction, I was an international lawyer and spent most of my career in Asia. I have an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. For more info: http://cliffordgarstang.com