Interview with author Patti Abbott . . .

By Lonnie Cruse

Today's post is an interview with short story and blogger author Patti Abbott. I like her blog and invited her to chat with me here. I love reading and writing short stories too, but it's sometimes a tough job.

LC: Please tell us a bit about your short stories. Where can we read them? Is there a general genre or theme, or are you writing all over the map?

PA: I’ve had about 45 short stories published in print and on zines, and maybe another dozen or so flash fiction stories. The first half were exclusively in literary print journals. But I became interested in trying to write stories like the ones I preferred to read: crime stories. And more and more, the literary journals rejected those stories. I found a home at just the right moment with the crime zines.

Almost all of my stories are about flawed individuals who find themselves in a situation where their flaw handicaps them or trips them up. That sounds more highfalutin’ than it is. Even the more literary stories fall into this category: a dying man can’t care for his mentally-challenged son; an estranged brother and sister finally tell each other the truth about their childhood; a man discovers someone else has used his name with more success than he has. You can see these all veer close to crime stories—kill the son; the brother and sister had a background of abuse neither has admitted; a name is stolen.

You can find my short stories in places such as Thuglit, Demolition, Hardluck Stories, The Thrilling Detective, Spinetingler, Pulp Pusher, Plots with Guns, Shred of Evidence, MystericalE, Mouth Full of Bullets, Murdaland, Word Riot, Apollo’s Lyre and several of the zine flash fiction sites. I have a forthcoming story in Crimespree Magazine and stories in Ed Gorman’s Prisoner of Memory and Thuglit’s Sex, Thugs and Rock and Roll.

LC: Wow, some very impressive zines have published you! Congrats! Why short stories instead of novels?

PA: I came to short stories from writing poetry and I didn’t even begin doing that until my mid-forties. More and more poetry journals were writing back to me that my stories were overly narrative. I decided to use one of the poems as an outline for a story and found out they were right. It just fell into place. In writing short stories, I was able to preserve the thing I loved most about writing: agonizing over every word. Novels don’t allow that luxury unless you want to spend ten years writing each one. I also like spending a few weeks with a character(s) and then moving on to a new person with a new problem. Last year I tried to find an agent for a novel in short stories. He said come back when you have a real novel. I have one now but am still at the beginning of the process of finding an agent. And I must say, I return to the short stories with great relief.

LC: Good luck with the agent search. How long does it take you to write a story?

PA: I would say the average story takes me about 3 weeks to write if I am able to spend 3-4 hours a day on it. I don’t know if that’s fast or slow. Probably slow. Every day I begin with the first sentence and rewrite to the last before I move forward so I’m sure the beginnings of my stories are overworked and the ends are a bit rough. But by the time I get to the end I am usually thinking of a new person and his/her problem. No attention span!

LC: How do you market your stories? I understand the market is tight these days.

PA: When I wrote literary stories, I was able to multiple submit, but even with that, it took months to get a response. With the online markets, the response is much faster and I almost never multiple submit. It’s a small world and that’s not playing fair. I’ve had pretty good luck with online zine acceptances. And several times an editor (Tony Black, Kevin Burton Smith, Neil Smith, the guys at Murdaland ) have told me exactly where I lost them and I was able to rewrite to their tastes or needs. I think with zines it is so much about writing the story that particular zine likes to publish. I have great respect for these editors who often spend their own money keeping the sites going. My only wish here would be for a zine that catered to less hard-boiled stories. I love writing both but have a lot more trouble getting the softer stories published. I’d love to start my own zine but I lack the technical skills, I fear. Plus I would find it nearly impossible to reject stories from anyone I knew.

LC: I'd have the same problem with rejecting friend's stories! I've read your blog and it's great. What's your secret to attracting so many readers/commenters.

PA: Thanks so much. Oh, my secret is pretty simple. I read a lot of blogs and comment on their entries. It’s pretty much about mutuality. If I go to someone’s blog and comment now and then and they never respond and never visit my blog, after a while I stop going there unless it’s an informational blog where comments are not expected. Along with that when someone comes onto my blog and comments, I almost always respond to their comment. It’s like leaving a message on an answering machine to me. It’s just impolite not to respond. I know some blogs are too popular to do this and some just don’t operate like this, but at this point, it’s not hard for me.

I also try to vary what I blog about: Detroit, writerly concerns, reading, movies, politics. I think different people respond to different subjects. I try not to talk about myself too much. I rarely stick with reading blogs that read like a diary or a bitchfest. I don’t really think about it too much. Just talk about what’s on my mind.

LC: I think most readers prefer not to read daily posts about the author's private life. You do a terrific job with yours. What does blogging do for you and your writing? Helps? Takes too much time? Keeps you sane? Drives you nuts?

PA: I know blogging takes too much time away from other things but I spend more time reading other blogs than writing mine. That’s even more inexcusable. It does keep me sane though and suits my personality. I have a lot of stress in my life right now and this is better than a shrink for me.

My kids always told me I could ask more questions in ten minutes than anyone in the world and that’s what I do on my blog. I ask questions and I usually get wonderful answers. This week I asked what made people put a book down without finishing it and I got some answers that made me see some flaws in my own writing immediately. It also told me I wasn’t the only one not finishing a lot of books lately.

LC: Ahh, a secret all authors want to know: Why do readers sometimes stop reading. What is your writing schedule like, assuming you have one?

PA: In the summer, I write every day for about 3-4 hours. I have the same schedule the four days a week I don’t work the other nine months. On the days when I go to the office, I work on my current story on my lunch hour and usually for an hour at night. I love those hours most of the time. I know some people say they like “having written” more than the writing itself. But I love those hours writing, especially the ones rewriting.

LC: Who are your writing inspirations? Who do you like to read and why?

PA: Ten years ago my writing inspirations were very different and I would have named Alice Munro, Bobbie Anne Mason, Raymond Carver, Anne Tyler, Richard Bausch, Russell Banks, Anne Beattie, Charlie Baxter, Antonya Nelson. I was still in the throes of my writing classes then. I still love those writers but now I would name Patricia Highsmith, Margaret Millar, Charles Willeford, Ken Bruen, Daniel Woodrell, Ross McDonald, Stewart O’Nan, Lawrence Block, William Kennedy, Pete Dexter, Elizabeth Strout, Ann Patchett, and my daughter, Megan. I can’t say enough about Woodrell’s Winter Bone. I sample a lot of the current writing but hate to name names for fear of leaving someone out. I read a lot of crime and a lot of contemporary literary fiction. I recently enjoyed Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris, which tells the story of the five pictures nominated for best picture in 1967, Also just read Olive Kitteredge by Strout. Amazing.

LC: Very impressive list! Anything else you'd like our readers to know about you?

PA: Yes. I am running a blog project called Friday’s Forgotten Books right now (which Lonnie is kindly participating in) where writers and readers pick a book they believe is neglected or forgotten and tell a little about it on their blog. Every Friday I post the links on my blog. I am always looking for people to do this. So please contact me if you’d like to join in.

I go into used bookstores and see shelf after shelf of books that were well-reviewed and read in the middle of the last century and are all but forgotten now. I am hoping to put these books in the public eye a minute longer before they are all landfill. It breaks my heart to see the writers no one under fifty now remembers. Of course, it was always so, but now everything seems even more transitory.

My blog is http://pattinase.blogspot.com/

Patti's latest blog post is a review of a book by me. Thanks so much for joining us today, Patti and for letting me post on your blog. I hope you get a great response to the forgotten books project.