daniel prazer

I’m working on copy editing and laying out the Story Week Reader 2010 (the past five editions are available online at the Publishing Lab’s Web site) this week, something I’ve been doing for two years now with my wife, Ann, who designs the cover. This year’s, I think, is particularly strong. It’s got the tiny keyboard and the large keyboard, the process from writing small—the magazine’s maximum word count is 750—to writing long.

Those aren’t my hands. Nor my wife’s. The faculty advisor told me my hands looked too old and wizened. “We need something younger,” he said. “Maybe tattoos. Definitely female.”

And I take that as a complement. I’ve got scars on my hands from years of cats and hot oils popping from skillets and general clumsiness. I’ve got a wedding ring. Could I use some lotion? Probably, but man’s men don’t moisturize. That my hands wouldn’t work for this design is a sign of growing up, not old. Do my knees ache after I go to the gym? Sure. Can I pull all-nighters and still be alert the next day? Certainly not as well as I could when I was an undergrad, or hell, even a grad student.

It was a gentle validation that I’m an adult. And I like that. It means I’ve got perspective. It means I’ve survived things that made me stronger (especially this past summer). It means I can make wise choices, and if my choices turn out to be not-so-wise, that I’m adaptable enough to duck and weave and come out on the other side with my own momentum.

And I like that.

It’s been ages since I’ve posted on here, and there really isn’t an excuse. This winter, I’ve been doing a bit of driving back and forth from Chicago to Ohio, once for Thanksgiving, and twice for my first season out trying my hand at deer hunting.

My mom will never understand this newfound fascination of mine, and my wife’s sick of hearing about it. But for me and thousands of other people, hunting isn’t about killing defenseless animals. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division pegs the whitetail population in the state at just over 650,000, far beyond the natural carrying capacity of the state’s ecosystems. Which explains why there were three huge whitetails in my mom’s suburban front yard last week.

I didn’t managed to harvest a deer my first year out—yet. But I’ve had an amazing time out at my friend’s 93-acre farm in Bellefountaine, Ohio. I’ve seen plenty of deer; after all, it’s a long-neglected apple orchard ringed by cornfields. And even though my first trip was cut short thanks to the flu, being outside and off Chicago’s pavement for a few days is indescribably refreshing.

It’s more than a few days of solitude and a chance for my mind to quiet down, though. It’s ethical. If I’m going to eat meat, I better be able to man up and harvest it myself. Besides, I’d rather have an animal on my plate that’s lived its entire life in the wild than one that spent its life on a factory farm. And it’s worth noting that no group—none—contributes more financially to conservation than hunters and fisherman (there’s an 11 percent federal excise tax on all firearms and ammunition that goes directly to the Department of the Interior). The press release that’s linked to above points out that deer season brings almost $900 million to Ohio’s economy. And I can get behind that, especially if I can clear the city air out of my lungs while I’m doing it.

Morning in the ground blind. Click to enlarge.

Branhaven was a Jackson Township, Ohio, staple while I was growing up. A HUGE pool (500,000 gallons, if memory serves, which is larger than Olympic-sized), six lifeguard towers, more than a dozen tennis courts and a backboard, sand volleyball court, and acres of grass for kids to play on.

I grew up two blocks away, and Branhaven was the farthest I was allowed to walk or ride my bike—no doubt because my grandpa worked there. Always unable to sit still, he kept that pool crystal clear and handled general maintenance after he retired from Ohio Bell. As a kid, I remember him driving his powder blue Plymouth Duster over to our house every day we weren’t at the pool, just to have lunch with his daughter and grandkids. Those lunches and Grandpa taking me down to show how the filtration system worked are some of my most cherished childhood memories.

A few years ago, the owner of Branhaven passed away, and the new owners decided to do something new—make it into a water park. “Jackson Township doesn’t have a community pool. I think there’s a need here for this type of aquatics facility,” the new owner told the Massillon Independent. So before the bottom dropped out of the economy, that’s what they were doing.

Today, it looks like this. Click the image to see more of this on my Flickr page.

The Christian Science Monitor’s Marjorie Kehe has put together a list of the top 10 pirated eBooks (e-books? Ebooks?) of 2009.

It seems like most people are downloading what they’re too embarrassed to buy.

Don’t look at this list if you want to believe that the Internet is feeding a hunger for a deeper kind of learning. The 10 books most downloaded on BitTorrent (a free file-sharing application) this year do not include titles by Victor Hugo or Emily Brontë (or even Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling).

Instead, with the exception of Leonardo da Vinci and Stephenie Meyer, they mostly focus on either self-help or sex (or in the case of a couple of titles, both).

See the list at the Christian Science Monitor.

We just got a new digital SLR, a Canon 450/Rebel XSi. I kind of hate calling it a “Rebel,” as it brings to mind a mulletted Andre Agassi showing everybody how great the Canon Rebel was—so much so, that it was my first 35mm SLR.

Anyway, the way I see it, getting back into shooting is a nice way to transition back into writing on a regular basis. That’s how I got into journalism in the first place, by shooting for my high school newspaper, then the Miami Student, which led to more writing assignments. But the truth is that it forces me to see the world through new eyes, and I’m hoping that’ll be the hair of the dog that’ll jumpstart me out of this post-MFA writing hangover.

Besides, Annie has a BFA in photography (She’s a darkroom wizard; her silver gelatin prints are gorgeous), and we’ve been looking to get better photos of the jewelry she makes to try to market that out. So, you know, two birds.

Anyway, there’s a ton of new photos on my Flickr page if you’re interested.

Hey folks, in case you’re interested, I’ve added a chapter of my novel to the Stories page. Well, not so much a chapter, but one that got axed when I rewrote the book in third person, but I published anyway. So, you know, if you feel like killing some time…

Sorry for my recent vanishing act. Besides finally getting that MFA diploma, I’ve been doing a lot of freelancing and sending out resumes lately.

Good news and bad. We’ll start with the good.

I was able to meet up with the amazing writer John McNally while he was in town researching his next book. He, Geoff Hyatt, and I met up at the Saluki Bar in Old Town. John’s a Southern Illinois University grad, and the entrance to the bar is lined with old SIU student IDs. Over beers, Geoff asked him why SIU’s mascot is the Saluki, and he said something resembling the following: “Well, that whole triangle in southern Illinois is known as Little Egypt.”

“Like Cairo?” I said.

“Yeah, but it’s pronounced kay-ro,” John continued. He looked around the bar for a minute, then said. “And salukis are an Egyptian breed of dog.” He paused for a drink. “Other than that, I have no idea.”

So we got to shoot the shit, catch up a bit, talk about our ongoing projects—his book, Geoff’s books (one of which just got picked up for publication), and some of the irons I’ve got on the fire, including a book proposal about the way poverty on the edge of Appalachia affects—and destroys—everything. From lack of nutritional awareness, lack of fresh vegetables, and sedentary lifestyles leading to endemic levels of diabetes; to murders that happen because somebody’s electricity got shut off and the victim had to stay with a neighbor on a cold, cold (election) night; to a six-month-old baby losing two toes to rodent bites. There’s plenty more chapters. I just need to write the synopses and send them off to an interested agent in New York.

Good to see John, though.

Bad news. Part of the reason I’ve been so withdrawn from the writing community this summer has to do with my dad, who completed a suicide attempt on June 2. He was 56. He’d been depressed as hell and an alcoholic for more than anybody realized, out of work for years after his last DUI; it’s all woven together so tightly, I doubt he could see through it.

We’d been vaguely estranged for some time. I’d seen him twice in three years—once at my wedding, and once in December, when I tried to give him a kick in the ass to get moving with his life. You know how when you have an old pet, you hope to just find that it had gone to sleep one night and never woke up? It’s comforting to know there was no pain involved that way. I think that’s what my dad hoped for himself—he was probably misinterpreting panic attacks as heart attacks. When he got news his life insurance premiums were doubling, he saw no option but to euthanize himself. I thank God that he didn’t pull the trigger on himself in my grandma’s house, where he’d been living for three years, but went down the block to a fire station, where he knew he’d be found quickly and seen by none of his family. We scattered his ashes later that week.

This is all a very reporter-like recap, and that’s no accident on my part. I’m working through this, trying to assimilate the information I knew about Dad with the information that’s come to light since his death. While trained professionals cleaned up the scene of his suicide, I’ve taken it on myself to confront his myriad creditors who keep calling my 85-year-old grandmother looking for money that’s not there. I know the creditors are just doing their jobs, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them traumatize her by making her relive it. She’s a tough old Polish broad who could probably still whip my ass if she wanted to, and I guess the silver lining to all of this is that she and I—as well as my mom, brother, and myself—have all become much closer as a result of this. Everybody, and I mean everybody, in my father’s life did everything they could to help him. He just didn’t want it, and now he isn’t in pain any longer.

So I’ll close with that, and a promise to update this more regularly with those literary irons I’ve got on the fire.

Cheers, everyone.

Dad and me in 1981

As if the $2.65 million the Obama family made last year, mostly in royalties on Barack’s book sales, wasn’t enough, Canada’s Sky News reports that Bo, the first dog, already has a book deal lined up. The title? Commander in Leash.

by Daniel Prazer
Assistant Artistic Director
Originally published on the Story Week Blog.

You know how some mornings, you wake up with a song’s melody lodged so deeply inside your skull, you know it’s going to echo in there all day? Just rattle around like the last coffee beans in the bag?

That didn’t happen to me this morning.

I woke up at 5 a.m. from a Story Week dream. In it, I was stuffing envelopes full of bubbled-wrapped books to give to each of our amazingly talented guests as they arrive at the airport. Swag bags, you know? Except these were packed in once-sent padded envelopes that we’d staple shut. Hardly a swanky first impression. Then I opened my eyes, and instead of a song stuck up in my head, I had a to-do list.

Most of the organizers have Story Week dreams eventually, and most of mine come during the week itself. We spend months making sure nobody notices us. Really. A perfect example: last night at the Harold Washington Library, I used nylon zip ties and gaffer’s tape to hang a cloth Columbia College banner between two stanchions, the heavy-bottomed posts they use at the movie theater to keep the ticket line orderly. I did my best to center it in front of the stage, but you can’t tell how close you are when you’re standing a few feet away.
So I went to the back row of the Cindy Pritzker Auditorium. Chris DeGuire, an MFA grad and adjunct instructor at Columbia, helped me eyeball it. “It’s as close as you’re going to get it,” he told me. ”It’s centered enough that nobody’s going to notice it.”

Which is why Sheryl Johnston, Sam Weller, Randy Albers, Nicolette Kittinger, and everybody else in the Fiction Writing Department bust our asses as hard as we do. If we do our behind-the-scenes jobs well, you won’t notice all that goes into this year’s Story Week. You’ll just sit back, listen, learn, and, maybe most of all, have a hell of a good time.

My essay “No Experience Required,” published in the Fiction Writing Department anthology Hair Trigger 30, received an Gold Circle honorable mention at the Columbia Scholastic Press Association. And the magazine as a whole, for which I was a student editor, won, by my count, a total of sixteen CSPA awards, including the Gold Crown Award for general excellence.