Robert James Russell

I’m thrilled to finally be able to announce (after months of working on it) the newest release from MG Press, the micro-press arm of Midwestern Gothic, the novel Above All Men by Eric Shonkwiler.

The book, scheduled to release March 2014, is described as thus:

Years from now, America is slowly collapsing. Crops are drying up and oil is running out. People flee cities for the countryside, worsening the drought and opening the land to crime. Amid this decay and strife, war veteran David Parrish fights to keep his family and farm together. However, the murder of a local child opens old wounds, forcing him to confront his own nature on a hunt through dust storms and crumbling towns for the killer.

And it’s already racked up some amazing advance praise:

“Shonkwiler takes the world on his own terms, and wrestles it to the ground.” –Tom Lutz, The Los Angeles Review of Books

“Shonkwiler has taken an iconic landscape and filtered it through near-collapse and fear, then through loyalty and love.”
–Susan Straight, National Book Award finalist

“Sparse and poetic, the words within these pages are as sharp as a corn knife.”
—Frank Bill, author of Donnybrook and Crimes in Southern Indiana

“A rare, stark and beautiful achievement.”
—Paula Bomer, author of Nine Months

Seriously, these are some masterful folks saying some kind things about the book—so happy they enjoyed it and were willing to share their thoughts with us.

Eric is a true master of the craft, and here he’s created a sublime tale about murder and revenge and family, highlighting values unique to the Midwest while also speaking to a larger audience…exactly the sort of story we were hoping to put out when we launched the press. So happy we can finally start sharing this book with the world.

You can pre-order a copy of the book for only $1 (any format) and save 20% off the cover price when it goes live.

Check out the book here.

Maybe due to the five month cycle of gloom we have to endure every November to March, but we Michiganders like to keep ourselves busy. And more often than not this involves taking something everyday and making it, well…better. Sure, we’re covered tip to tail in luscious farms producing some stellar crops, but something about the Great Lakes State breeds ingenuity and love and respect that you can taste in our craft beers and cheeses and jams and canned goods and…everything, really.

Been a while, but I’m happy to report that we’re again accepting fiction and poetry submissions for Midwestern Gothic Issue 12 (Winter 2014).

Also, we put up some really great new headers, which you can check out below.

I was invited to take part in That Part Where, a new site devoted to showing “the book beyond the cover.” Basically, authors present a scene (of their choice) with a bit of explanation…and that’s it. The effect, I think, is rather satisfying—we get a glimpse inside the work rather than just the first chapter, the author letting us, the reader, know more about them, more about the story, in a fare more intimate way. (Which is why I was happy to participate.)

Read an excerpt from my novel Sea of Trees.

And if that piqued your interest, you can pick up a paperback/eBook copy of Sea of Trees at Winter Goose Publishing.

I’m going to sound like a broken record, but I mean it: Midwestern Gothic Issue 11 (Fall 2013)—devoted entirely to Creative Nonfiction—is my favorite issue yet.

See, we’ve wanted to do something with CNF since our inception, but have struggled to figure out a way to include it (organically, anyway), so when we decided that this year’s theme issue (well, in this case, genre issue) should be CNF, it just seemed like a no-brainer. And while I’m a fiction man at heart, I love the personal experiences in the essays we’ve included that, truthfully, can’t often be captured in fiction and poetry. Ultimately, since the goal of Midwestern Gothic is to paint a portrait of the region and of the people who are inspired by it, it makes sense that we’d want to further elaborate on this canvas in a way we haven’t done before and I am absolutely floored by the final product.

Pick up a copy: $12 (Print), $2.99 (eBook)

My short story “Special Needs” was accepted for publication in Pithead Chapel, Volume 2, Issue 10, which you can now read online:

The steers had been corralled at dusk into the pen adjacent the barn by the farmer’s sons—adolescents ordered to aid the vet who shared no grand ambition to take over, talking instead about movies or about traveling to exotic places like California and Florida as they worked. A fierce rain had fallen soon after and had halted the work but now the boys were feeding them one by one into the squeeze chute, pinning them in place while Lucas’s cramped hands plunged the syringe into the beasts’ veined necks.

Thanks to Pithead Chapel for publishing the story—I’m honored to be part of such a great journal.

A time would come, within a few years, when Ruben Vega would go to the church in Benson, kneel in the confessional, and say to the priest, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been thirty-seven years since my last confession. . . . Since then I have fornicated with many women, maybe eight hundred. No, not that many, considering my work. Maybe six hundred only.” And the priest would say, “Do you mean bad women or good women?” And Ruben Vega would say, “They are all good, Father.” 

                                                                                    —Elmore Leonard, “The Tonto Woman”

I was—am—a huge Elmore Leonard fan. His ability to create simple tales featuring idiosyncratically complex characters and snappy dialog, in addition to his mantra to “leave out the part that readers tend to skip,” culminated in a true master craftsman, unapologetic for the types of stories he wrote. My personal opinion: His western stories from his early writing days are some of the best things he’s ever done. Period. (Look no further than the excerpt I pasted at the beginning of this post—sublime, isn’t it?)

Specifically, his story “The Tonto Woman,” a stark tale of alienation, loneliness in the burgeoning West—highlighting the differences in each of us that make us unique (whether we want that uniqueness or not)—is one I find myself coming back to year after year.

And recently, I was reminded of what I think most people have forgotten or just never knew in the first place: In 2008, “The Tonto Woman” was adapted into an absolutely fantastic short film that was nominated for an Academy Award. The Tonto Woman starred the late (and great) Francesco Quinn and was directed by Daniel Barber (who went on to helm the criminally underrated Harry Brown), and is, by my accounts, Leonard’s finest adaptation to date, proving that, when done well, adaptations from page to screen can be marvels. (This is not to discount another favorite Leonard adaptation—the incredible TV series Justified—but it has quickly morphed into its own thing, distanced somewhat from the page, whereas The Tonto Woman is as faithful an adaptation as they come.)

You can watch the entire movie over at Vimeo (also embedded below), and running just shy of forty minutes, I highly recommend you do. It’s a aesthetically beautiful film, written and shot as well as any full-length contemporary Western, and it will stick with you for days.

The Tonto Woman from Ralph Makes Moves on Vimeo.

(I use Grammarly’s plagiarism checker because teaching freshman English has made me question all that I know in this world.)

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Ann Arbor, my home, is many things—chief among them, a hub of arts and art-related activities. It’s a wonderful place to be as an artist, to see concerts, to engage other like-minded individuals. Which is why I’m so excited to help promote the Yellow Barn.

The Yellow Barn is just that—a big, yellow barn—but one that aims to be the center of the arts community in Ann Arbor. They promote themselves as “Community Supported Culture (CSC)”, and much like a CSA farm-share, you can purchase a “Yellow Card” that gives you access to any and all concerts, readings or any other things they have going on. This collective space is something I feel very strongly about, having a home for artists to be able to work together, and it goes one step further by also offering (very affordable) classes on a wide variety of subjects. Again, the idea here is to present art in a way that is accessible and affordable to all—inclusiveness being the name of the game. And as a writer, as someone who absolutely loves mingling with other artists, this is just an incredible thing they’re doing.

So, if you’re interested in supporting the Yellow Barn, check out their website where they also have information about their mission, the yellow card, upcoming events, etc. And you can absolutely attend events without a yellow card, so if you’re on the fence, they urge you to stop by, check it out—get a feel of the place. And really: it’s a great space with a great mission, so if you live nearby, stop in, see what you think.

My flash piece “The Past is a Foreign Country” is now available to read at the wonderful online journal WhiskeyPaper:

We had been searching for the source of the buzzing for nearly an hour, hot and sweaty and stripped down to the bare essentials: me, a pair of red plaid boxers, and her, a blue and white striped two-piece.

WhiskeyPaper is a great journal, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.

My short story “The House on North Cass” was recently published in Issue 14 of the fantastic crime/noir journal Crime Factory:

Jimmy takes out the gun and steps toward the couch, slow. The only good grace of old age, he thinks. The impetuousness is gone even if he wants it back. He hovers over the man he recognizes through thick beard and spotted, booze-soaked skin as Benji Queen, just a kid when Jimmy left so long ago. A damn kid.

Doesn’t matter—he’s part of this now, they all are. Jimmy wipes his eyes clean, clear, thinks about how it’s going to go down. Use the gun, everyone’s awake. And there’s no telling how many are holed up in this shithole. So, what instead? Jimmy waits, thinks, watches Benji shift in place, snore loudly, shift again, finally get comfortable, then doze back off. Oblivious.

Crime Factory is an award-winning Australian journal that brings together fiction from around the world. They’ve previously published the likes of Frank Bill (Donnybrook), Jake Adelstein (Tokyo Vice) and Scott Phillips (The Ice Harvest)—to name a few—so needless to say, I’m ecstatic to have been included.

Print, Kindle and (free) PDFs available.