Once upon a time we had easy access to our imagination and we knew how to tell a story without having to work at it so much.
Here is a "breathtaking story by Capucine. Starring baby monkeys lost in frightening trees, a witch, crocodiles, a tiger, a 'popotamus' and a lion, and even a 'tremendously very bad mammoth.'"
susan taylor chehak
PublicationsAs Kathryn Dow
“Dow’s ambitiously imaginative debut novel questions the very nature of reality… [a] diverting exploration of metaphysical concepts. Winsome and smartly playful.” —Kirkus Reviews
When her father bumps his head and collapses, in Linwood, Iowa; June, 2006, Alma doesn't know what to do. And then she does.
Fiction
Mouse Wendler's account of her father's disappearance in Linwood, Iowa, June 2006.
"Chehak's prose provides a seamless, calm flow to a novel whose elements of love and murder ripple enticingly, fully surfacing only gently, only eventually, in the most satisfying kind of storytelling." -Booklist
"Haunting . . . Clodine Wheeler is the bemused narrator who strings together brilliant beads of descriptive phrases as she sorts through her memories . . . Chehak skillfully depicts small-town meanness and ironic generosity . . . . Her mesmerizing tale has classic resonances." – Publishers Weekly
"A dark tale of obsession among the posh ranks of a midwestern town... Chehak's poetic style exposes the passionate longings beneath the mannered sterling-and-crystal patina of Cedar Hill life; she renders both violence and love with an unflinching eye and casts a mournful spell." -Vogue
"Chehak is a very accomplished storyteller, always in control of her narrative, which moves ahead with grace and speed. But it's not only the plot that matters to this writer. It's the telling little details, particularly of teenage angst and of domestic life that makes the novel rich... SMITHEREENS is a novel fully worthy of the title thriller. It's hard to put down. It has a kind of dark allure." - The Los Angeles Times
“In Susan Taylor Chehak’s skilled hands, Iowa becomes the seething, steamy setting for a tale of pure evil… This is a marvelous, creepy story.” -The Kansas City Star
Short Stories
Now available at Amarillo Bay
Now available at Juked
available online at Folly
available online at
Word Riot
Now available at Guernica Magazine
read it on your Kindle, or your Kindle App
Online Projects
Nonfiction
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What's NewOf tails and talesSeptember 12, 2009
Atlantic Monthly: Essays Fiction 2009
Telling Tails, an essay by Tim O'Brien "The problem with unsuccessful stories is usually simple: they are boring, a consequence of the failure of imagination. To vividly imagine and to vividly render extraordinary human events, or sequences of events, is the hard-lifting, heavy-duty, day-by-day, unending labor of a fiction writer." www.theatlantic.com/doc/200908/tim-obrien-essay "A mysterious feeling of charged emptiness"September 12, 2009
This is from Janet Maslin's review of Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist, which appeared in the NY Times on Sept 9.
"But here’s the thing about that dog story: it’s awfully good. Not fancy, but it really makes a point about socks, dogs and art. The dog ate the sock. The sock had to be removed surgically. And somehow that makes Paul think of one of the nifty poetry-writing tricks that he knows: you write a poem about something that’s real. (Call that a sock.) You let that reality 'slide right into your poem and twirl around in it.' Then you cut out the sock as if this were veterinary surgery, but that just makes the poem better. The poem winds up with 'a mysterious feeling of charged emptiness, like the dog after the operation.'" I like to think of what this might mean for fiction, too? Zozobra!September 12, 2009
We spent a couple of days in Santa Fe with Brohak. The highlight was the burning of Zozobra on Thursday night. I fell for it completely. My list of worries and gloom filled both sides of an index card, very very small printing. Later, I remembered a couple that I'd forgotten, but... We watched that mthrfckr BURN!
QUE VIVA! I'm opting inSeptember 4, 2009
Re: the Google Books Settlement
This from Authors Guild: "The settlement would make millions of out-of-print books available to readers again, and Google would get no exclusive rights under the agreement. The agreement opens new markets, and that's a good thing for readers and authors. It offers to make millions upon millions of out-of-print books available for free online viewing at 16,500 public library buildings and more than 4,000 colleges and universities, and that's a great thing for readers, students and scholars. The public has an overwhelming interest in having this settlement approved." Read more here: http://authorsguild.org/advocacy/articles/amazon-accuses-someone-else-of-monopolizing.html |
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