McGlue in the Los Angeles Times

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I know, me loving a book about a drunken sailor is like Popeye confessing that he has strong feelings about spinach. But I bet you’ll like it, too.

When I was in the Navy, I knew a lot of drunken sailors: men who drank for the joy of being drunk, men who drank with the desperation of characters out of a Faulkner novel, and men who drank for a reprieve from the inflexible discipline that dogs those foolish enough to seek their fortune on the high seas.

But I never knew anyone who drank like McGlue, the eponymous hero of Ottessa Moshfegh’s debut, “McGlue,” a strange and beautiful novella released by Fence Books

McGlue is a 19th century sailor, a deck seaman of dubious skill, who wants one thing and one thing only: a bottle. “I wake up mornings with my head in a vice. The only solution is to drink again. That makes me almost jolly. It does wonders in the morning to take my mind of the pain and pressure. I can use my eyes after that first drink, I remember how to line up my feet and walk, loosen my jaw, tell someone to get out of my way.”

Check out the rest of my review of McGlue in the Los Angeles Times.

Litro NY

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Last month I accepted the position of online fiction editor at LitroNY, the U.S. online offshoot of Litro, a literary, arts and culture magazine based in the UK. I’ve been reading Litro for a few years now and published a short story called “The Fall of Berlin (Oil on Canvas)” in a special themed issue on Germany. So far I’ve published stories by Lou Gallo and James Reich and have accepted a few more. Right now I’m scheduling new stories every week but would like to increase that. What am I looking for? Here’s my introduction but for an online reading experience I generally like dense fictions if they’re short (less than 1,000) and a more sparse style if the story is long (over 2,500). So check it out and send me something slick, brutal and weird…