Top Ten Viewed Posts of 2013 from this blog.

Other strange Top Ten Lists to prove that anyone can have a list..



Year end Top Ten lists are kind of silly, so without further adieu, here are the most viewed posts from  2013, in reverse order with a quick comment about why it made the list. This year's list is dominated by book releases, controversy and tragedy, and there was only one announcement of any singular story or poem being published cracked the Top Ten. Interesting, indeed.

10. my dear god, we are all so small

Reason: There's something about death which brings us back to the little things not being important. 

9. What Do Women Want? What Do Men Want?.

Reason: People like controversy. They like Kim Addonizio. They like me defending that a poem in first person narration does not make me a creep. 

8. The release of chapbook, Anti-Social Network!

Reason: It was my first book in three years rand it was put out by the imprint of Rusty Barnes, Redneck Press. Plus, despite the review by Denis Daley, people found the cover funny. 

7. "After Receiving a Picture of Dick Butkus vis Text Message" published in Metazen today, co-written with Teisha Twomey

Reason: People search for Dick Butkus and Teisha Twomey a lot! (plus there are nifty videos of each of them posted in the blog). 

6. Readings for "The Shutting Door"

Reason: The Shutting Door had a lot of buzz about it. It's either that or that people are stalkers.

5. In the future everyone will read poems for 8 1/2 minutes... 

Reason: There are a ton of poets listed within this post and people google themselves a lot. There is also a link to the number nine most popular blog posting of 2013...ah, yes, people like drama. 

4. I'm on the Wigleaf Long list--the short and long of it; my circus story honored.

Reason: People love the Wigleaf list of Top 50 Short Fictions. It's much more anticipated than my Top Ten Viewed Blog Posts of 2013/ 

3. Ordering The Shutting Door, $11 plus a free shipping option.

Reason: I'd like to think that a lot of people were interested in ordering but truth be known, people like free shit.  

2. My wonderful acquaintance, Ned Vizzini, April 4, 1981 – December 19, 2013

Reason: People felt he was a great guy, a great writer and a good friend. This blog was written with great sadness.

And the number One most viewed blog post of 2013

1. A new kind of announcement: Old work unpublished by Squawk Back!

Reason: Writers other than myself were outraged by the possibility of being "unpublished". Did I wish this controversy to die? Sure and it did, well...until now. Sorry. 

A Modern Form of Disorderly Conduct, in Right Hand Pointing #71

Hipsters, Hockey and Homelessness come together in my flash piece published today in Right Hand Pointing #71. Somehow "new" music gets infused with my daughter's ice-hockey and the people that scrape the ice. Amusing how resources can be drained by hipsters that live at home!

This is NOT arena music...



Also great work by the following:

In This Issue

• Home
• The Note
• Robert Scotellaro
• Robert Scotellaro (ii)
• Philippe Shils
• Meg Tuite
• Robin Wyatt Dunn
• Tanja Bartel
• Kanchan Chatterjee
• Annmarie O'Connell
• Annmarie O'Connell (ii)
• Anna Peerbolt
• Frederick Pollack
• Ariana D. Den Bleyker
• Travis Vick
• Paul Dickey
• Timothy Gager
• Tim McLafferty
• Wendy Taylor Carlisle
• Wendy Taylor Carlisle (ii)
• Alicia Hoffman
• Alicia Hoffman (ii)
• Amy Carroll
• Contributors

Editors

Dale Wisely, Poetry

F. John Sharp, Fiction

Year in Review: My year in publishing, 2013

Thanks to all the readers and editors. It's been a blessed year.

Here's the complete list followed by the links

1    Full length poetry book
1    Poetry chapbook
18  Works of fiction and flash fiction
1    Co-written work of flash fiction
13   Poems
1     Non-fiction piece
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(For the complete list since the beginning of time go HERE from this link)
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BOOKS OF POETRY

The Shutting Door, September 2013, Ibbetson Street Press

Anti-Social Network, May 2013, Red Neck Press


FICTION AND FLASH FICTION

"A Modern Form of Disorderly Conduct"
December 28, 2013 Right Hand Pointing

"How It Worked for Them"
December 1, 2013 In Between Altered States

"Tours of Duty"
October 15, 2013 Midway Journal

"How Penguins Break" 
October 13, 2013 Uno Kudo 

"NFL Preview, New England Patriots"
September 6, 2013 American Short Fiction

"Where (in the) House", July 22, 2013 Santa Fe Literary Review, Print

"Sissy Spacek", July 12, 2013 Bartleby and Snopes, Issue 10, Print

"Joe the Salamander"
June 24, 2013 Go Read Your Lunch

"Sissy Spacek"
April 9, 2013 Bartleby Snopes

"After Receiving a Picture of Dick Butkus via Text Message"
(written with Teisha Twomey), March 14, 2013 Metazen

"Twin Gets Just Desserts", March 4, 2013 In Between Altered States #33

"Leftovers at the Lays Factory", March 3, 2013 Wigleaf
"Dear Wigleaf"

"Where Do You Bury The Survivors", February 28, 2013 The Legendary
"Full Moon"
"About Shooting"

"Their Own Planet", January 30, 2013 Men in the Company of Women Anthology, Print
"The Transference of Todd and Lucy"

"Happy Holidays", January 11, 2013 Exquisite Quartet, 2012 Print Anthology
(written with Meg Tuite, Dena Rash Guzman and Robin Stratton)

POETRY

"Manomet Point"
November 22, 2013,Oddball Magazine

"The Shutting Door"
September 18, 2013,The Somerville Times

"While I'm Driving Home"
August 19, 2013,Ampersand Review

"What The Boy Prays For"
August 12, 2013,Ampersand Review

"The Photo Album"
June 1, 2013, Ibbetson 33

"Definition of You"
May, 2013, The Brownstone Poets 2013 Anthology

"The Last Time in the Woods"
May 1, 2013,Poetica

"Meeting With Father Vincent"
April 9, 2013,Extract(s)

"Fresh Water"
April 1, 2013, Stone Soup Presents, Fresh Broth

"Scientific Purposes"
March 16, 2013,Boston Literary Magazine

"Hope"
"Losing My Best Friend to Heroin"
"I Have Mostly Nightmares"
January 30, 2013 Men in the Company of Women Anthology, Print


NON-FICTION

September 18, 2013, The Somerville Times: Lyrical Somerville
"A Seven Year Old Takes a Drink"

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RIP my friend Ned Vizzini, April 4, 1981 – December 19, 2013

On October 28, 2010 I had a reading with Ned Vizzini at The Wellesley Booksmith. The bookstore’s website listed it as “Join Ned Vizzini, best-selling author of It's Kind of a Funny Story, and his friend, author/poet Timothy Gager for a dynamic, dual presentation! ” and the event announcement on Ned’s blog notes his reading with "friend, Timothy Gager." Ned Vizzini wasn’t a day-to-day friend but as someone who would pop in on me occaisionally he made more of a mark on me than most people I've met. The reason for this is that Ned openly battled depression and did so in a way that helped others. He wrote about, lectured on it and deeply supported young people who were having difficulties with this disease.

Let me flash back to February 2005 when I first met Ned. He was asked to feature at my Dire Literary Series and I was excited to hear him read from his book, “Be More Chill” Instead, he said he was reading new unpublished material. He flipped the pages onto the floor after he completed dark page after dark page. It was Chapter One of what would become “It’s Kind of a Funny Story”.  

After the reading he stayed at my house, commented on my “old school” REM album "Monster" and told me he had been hospitalized three months earlier. The “kind of funny part” was that his breakdown was related to the pressure of trying and not finishing what he called a “bad” novel and then banging out “It’s kind of a Funny Story” in about a  month after his release from Brooklyn’s Methodist Hospital. He also said, “Don’t worry, I’m doing better…it’s all behind me.” He was a gracious, intelligent and funny guest and we talked until 3 in the morning, mostly about music and of course writing of which he was very supportive.

Between then and October 2010 he called about every six months, mostly to just keep in touch. Throughout many of these conversations Ned was fighting a war with his career. Ned drove himself on the pressure to succeed more than anyone I’d ever met and ironically in the cold world of publishing he was very successful, yet it never seemed to be enough. After the Wellesley reading he was to give a lecture the next day at Lexington High School and needed some supplies; glue sticks and foam core for his presentation. He asked where the nearest Staples was but since it was after 9 it was closed. There was a CVS a mile away which I said we could go, but he lashed out and shouted, “It has to be a Staples.” Immediately in the next breath he apologized for his need to have things comfortable and we headed to the CVS and found everything he needed. Later at The Brickhouse Restaurant in Dedham, he told me he was married and was looking forward to having a family but a bit scared of the thought. It surprised me because it was the first he mentioned he had a wife. He said it happened quickly but he was never happier--and also, he said,  "check out her writing, it's wonderful." Throughout the meal he was very busy setting up by text, meetings to pitch the television screenplays he had been working on.

The last time we talked, it was all about Teen Wolf. He was energized that he was branching out into this world, succeeding but the pressure to do so was very hard. We never spoke again.

 I was saddened and shocked when I heard that he lost his battle with depression. He seemed so equipped to deal with it but I’ve learned for myself that there often is no defense.

I found an article from Neal Zupancic, wh0 put it best:

If there's one thing we can learn from Ned's life and work, it's that depression isn't a matter of being sad, and suicide isn't a matter of selfishly shirking your duties one last time.  Depression is a disease - a physiological problem, a chronic condition that you often cannot control.  Depression is more like asthma, but of the brain, and sometimes medications help, and sometimes you can get to a hospital in time, and sometimes they don't and you can't and sometimes people die of it.

I’d post a picture of Ned and I with our bro arms around each other our two readings but there are no pictures, only echoes, but there is this. Ned, like myself liked to record fake commercials. This one was filmed before his reading at The Dire Literary Series, February 2005 at the Out of the Blue Art Gallery, Cambridge, Ma.


 
This one of me from the Spring Street Cafe for "Timmy Tippy Cup" which, of course, was a fail and tipped over.



I am profoundly saddened by this loss. Marty Beckerman posted on Facebook, “All the hope he gave readers with "It's Kind Of A Funny Story", all the lives he saved, nothing changes that. The page still says, "Live. Live. Live. Live. Live."”

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UPDATE: One year later, Marty Beckerman writes about his wonderful best friend,.

Like me and win a free book.

I'm at 938 on my Facebook public page and would love 1,000 likes before 2014. 





Be one of the next 62 people to "like" this page and I'll put you in a random drawing for a free copy of "The Shutting Door"







So, have at it!

"How It Worked for Them" is published in the final In Between Altered States.

I hate to see them go. They've published eight of my flash stories since 2010. Here's the roll call.

1. You Have to Splice It Together
2 Closure
3 The Things We Have
4 I Don't Know Who You Are
5 Chiller
6 No Sex Since Last Spring
7 Twin Gets Just Desserts
8 How It Worked for Them

I love you, Aleathia Drehmer

 I must admit that they take some of my most twisted work. Let's see: Ruptured testicles, sliced off celebrity breasts, deadly car accidents, a sealed up vagina, The Who in Cincinnati, a pencil in the eyeball....check, check, check, check, check and check.

They also published one of my favorites, "No Sex Since Last Spring" in 2012 which wasn't as twisted. Today in their farewell issue my story, "How It Worked For Them" about two former addicts that work in at a home testing company appears.

It also asks the poignant question if there is there a difference between this

and this?

Makes you want to quit the corporate world, doesn't it?

Also appearing in their final issue are Robert Vaughan, Ed Go, Carly Berg, Josh Olsen, John Vicary, Jesse Myner, and Len Kuntz.