Once again I post to acknowledge my lack of posting.

I’ve been busy with many things, including family, but also writing, and I’d much rather write stories than post about them.

Lots of stories published lately, but I’ll leave a link to just one of them at the Harvard Advocate. It’s a story about the confusion of grief, Alaskan ice caves, and Jiffy Lube waiting rooms. It can be found here.

http://theharvardadvocate.com/content/that-ancient-lake

In 2022 new stories appearing in The Kenyon Review, Boulevard, and elsewhere. A new collection of novellas, Trouble Will Save You, will also be crawling its way into publication.

All good things during this holiday season.

I don’t have much wisdom and or insight to impart about where we are as a society in the winter of 2020 except for the usual observations: that we have to become better as a culture, that things have been hard and will probably get harder before it gets easier, and that art making in such a climate is challenging, depressing, and (very occasionally) surprisingly transcend.

A small thought: that some of my favorite stories capture not necessarily revelation but confusion. Increasingly this feels like what fiction should be doing: holding up a mirror to our own human confusion, our fumbling and searching. I don’t find comfort very comforting lately, as much of it feels insincere, backward, complacent. At least as how its expressed in narrative form, whether that be in a book or a speech as seen on TV.

But I’m finding comfort in dream logic, in confusion, in challenges to simple meaning making. It’s been rough going, and I talk to so many writers who just feel stalled. They feel small in relation to what is happening. Unimportant.

Which is, of course, not the truth.

Not sure what the truth is, but it’s not THAT, not now and not ever.

More soon. I promise.

I know I have not been updating the site much these days. More important things going on in the world and my energy is going elsewhere.

In the meantime here are some great things to read.

https://nymag.com/strategist/article/anti-racist-reading-list.html

I’m very happy  to announce that my story “I’m Here” has been awarded the Lawrence Prize by Prairie Schooner. “I’m Here” is the (kind of sort of) title story for my recent collection of short fiction about interior Alaska.

For more information about the prize or about Prairie Schooner visit Prairie Schooner Lawrence Prize . I’ll be posting a little more information about the story and about the book in the coming weeks.

I’m happy to report that my story “Angel of the Resurrection” will be appearing in a future issue of The Gettsyburg Review.

http://www.gettysburgreview.com/selections/fiction/

An excerpt (the opening) appears below for your enjoyment. It’s a story about dating, death, and the angel Michael.

This first time, the man she was meeting arrived forty-five minutes late, hands shaking, and ordered a beer before climbing into the booth. He had neglected to wear his Detroit Tigers cap, the one she had seen him wearing in most of the photographs and the one he said he would wear that night, so for a moment she thought another man had pushed himself into the privacy of her small space: her glass of ice water, the article open on her cell phone, and her quiet little fears grown thorny and twisted during almost an hour of waiting.

While she waited, she had shredded her napkin into rice-sized pieces, which she carefully gathered up and gave to the waiter, who took them in two hands as if cradling water. He would not stop looking at her: that same look of pity and judgment she had seen before on the faces of men who liked to think of themselves as kind. Her last eight dates had been with men like that, watery-eyed men, victims of infidelity and divorce and, in one case, an elderly woman going the wrong way on the highway colliding with his wife’s station wagon. Each one was punctual. They’d been waiting for her when she entered.

So this one was different right from the start. Just a few weeks earlier, her pocketbook had been snatched out of her arms by a blurred shape in a black hoodie, and she had been knocked to the concrete, her bloody palms gritty with dirt. She thought of that pain again, the violation, and she raised her hand to defend herself. It took him saying, “Hi, I’m Daniel,” for the configuration of features to organize itself in her memory. Yes, it was him, but thinner and older than in the photos, his hair flecked with gray but his pale handsomeness still present in his hard jawline. He looked like an actor, one of the ones you saw in bad movies, untalented but with good looks, a square jaw and a casual grin. Something of the politician in that smile. In fact, he seemed ready to shake her hand vigorously across the table.

Most of them were actors and politicians anyway, the men who smiled, the ones who didn’t.

I’m very happy to report that my story Stupid Kid has just been published in Newfound Magazine. The story will appear in paper form later on, but it is currently available online at https://newfound.org/current-issue/fiction-david-crouse/

Newfound is a wonderful young magazine with great editors and interesting new ideas. I’m very happy to work with them and bring this very long piece into publication.

Stupid Kid is one of my recent Alaska stories. Hope you enjoy.

I’m very happy to announce that my new graphic novel, Boom!Squad, will be published in the May 2017. The book will be available through Amazon and bricks-and-mortar bookstores.

I’ve been a lover of comic books since my childhood and Boom!Squad is an attempt to resurrect some of those simple joys of reading 25 cent comics while also adding something new to the genre. It’s full of super types, sexist robots, slacker kids with ambitions of super stardom, and nefarious coffee chains bent on world domination.

 

A new story “Equipment” has been published in the Exhibits Anthology issued by Old 67 Press. For more about the anthology visit http://www.old67.com/.

Equipment is about BDSM, aging, and illness. It began as an exercise: take a sex scene and try to turn that one scene into a fully realized story. Then, as with most of my stories, it became something else entirely–it surprised me.

I’m hoping that Equipment finds its way into my new collection of short stories, but I’m not exactly sure if it fits the themes of the book.