The Crack in the Sidewalk
My First Published Piece of Fiction, Now Available Nationwide!
Holy moly, today is the day my debut piece of fiction hits the shelves of Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million nationwide. I’m told most stores should have the issues today but that it is possible it takes a few days to get to all of them, so if you seek it out and don’t see it yet it may just be a day or two behind. You can also order a copy online here!
My piece is a short story I wrote last year and is appearing on page 76 and 77 of the Spring issue of Door is a Jar Magazine.
The story came to me on a late night walk last summer taking my pup June around the block. I spent a lot of last year reading Stephen King novels and horror short stories, particularly Joe Hill’s stuff (King’s son). In case it isn’t immediately obvious, these stories are creepy. I mean that in the best possible way. King and Hill share the gene for writing intensely relatable emotional stories, that just so happen to be very scary. I am particularly fond of It and Hill’s stories Voluntary Committal and Best New Horror. This horror kick (largely thanks to Joe Hill interviews pointing me the right direction) led to a binge of some classics like Kelly Link’s The Specialist’s Hat and Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. I was drawn to this territory they roam so well in the same way I am drawn to Science-Fiction from writers like Clarke and Bradbury. I like my “genre fiction” to be good stories in their own right and try not to worry about which genre my own writing falls into, but instead just follow the ideas a little naively and sincerely.
So anyway, all this scary stuff was swirling around my head that night walking June in the dark. I was also “on a roll” in terms of my own writing practice. From about April of last year to November I wrote about 1,000 - 3,000 words a week on various stuff, which was far more fiction than I’d previously made a routine of writing. Prior to last year, my fiction writing came in stochastic bursts of inspiration and were never the product of a disciplined writing routine. Last year (partly due to reading King’s On Writing) I began to apply routine to my fiction writing like I do for my non-fiction writing and that process was producing some good stuff around the time the idea for The Crack in the Sidewalk found me. I write all that as preface because this story was one of those magical lightning in a bottle ideas that just dropped into my head. One minute I was lost in thought looking at the hairline cracks in our neighborhood’s sidewalk and the next I had the idea. Those moments are special and rare, which is why before last year it was rare that I ever produced any decent fiction. But I subscribe to the school of thought that that magic only really happens when you are in form, and I had been, so I count that as a win. In any case, it found me at the right time.
I ran back inside and jotted the idea down on a notecard in my “writing ideas” notecard stack. Three sentences, each corresponding to the beats of the story that I’d thought of (which came out as three full sentences which ended up as the first few sentences of the final version). I excitedly ran into the bedroom to find Tessa and asked her if she’d rather hear the idea or read the story once it was finished, clearly wanting badly to tell her all about it immediately. She obliged my eagerness and hyped me up to write it.
I think it was that same night when I wrote the whole first draft, which was pretty close to the version that appears in the magazine. About a third of the way through the draft, the ending clicked and I was very happy with it. Over the next few weeks I continued refining it and bouncing the drafts off of Tessa who graciously helped me get rid of the parts that weren’t working. I explored making it longer but ultimately decided staying laser focused on the key idea was the best fit for it. A week or two after finishing the final version, I sent it out to a handful of publications.
The morning I found out Door is a Jar wanted to publish it it had been raining on and off again. Tessa and I were at one of my favorite coffee shops when the email came in. I was ecstatic to hear the news because the week before I’d received a few rejections for another story I’d recently finished. But when I read the specifics about the magazine being distributed nationwide in Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million stores I was flooded with joy. Not only was my first piece of fiction accepted for publication, and not only was it being published in an actual print magazine, but the magazines would be available across the country. That morning is sincerely one of the coolest memories I have now, everything went right. I am extremely proud and grateful for the story, Door is a Jar wanting to include it, Tessa, and the friends and family I got to share the news with that morning. Really I am just grateful I get to write and that people will get to read what I write across the U.S.
I hope you’'ll grab a copy at a bookstore near you and let me know what you think about The Crack in the Sidewalk. Hoping it is the first of many more.
I will leave you with the first few sentences to hopefully hook ya!
From ‘The Crack in the Sidewalk’ in Door is a Jar Magazine
“Step on a crack, break your momma’s back”. It was sorta like that for me, except I broke my own back when I stepped on the crack, and I was immediately and violently sucked down into it. I was lying down in agony. It was crammed like a coffin. The ground and walls were damp and hard. It was earthy, dark, and filled with a subway stench of human waste.
To read the rest, go grab a copy of the Spring issue of Door is a Jar Magazine at Barnes and Noble or Books-A-Million or order it online!