So somehow I turned into a short story writer. I write them all the time, on the train, at work in the body of e-mails so I look busy, yet when I first put this website up I wrote that my short stories were mostly for exercise, that I consider myself primarily a novelist and that I rarely even read short stories. But over the past few years I’ve been drawn to both the form and concept -and I’ve been lucky enough to get a few published.

One of the sickest things I’ve written, Suitcase Sam, appeared in the first issue of Red Scream Magazine. They accidentally fucked up the ending by leaving out a paragraph or two. I've been reading one William S. Burroughs book a year for the last few years and after finishing his novel Junkie I was really energized to write a story with heroin in it- I didn't want it to be the subject of the story, but something incidental, a black key to something even darker. Well this jelled with another idea I had about sexual mutilation, just a horrible image I couldn't shake for awhile now…anyway, I was aiming for a story that would make Clive Barker's Books of Blood look like it was for kindergarteners. Velvet Mafia reprinted the story:
Suitcase Sam

My first published story was in 2004 with Velvet Mafia. I was thrilled that the editor, Sean, liked my story. He’s since published some of my other stuff and we’ve read together at the annual Velvet Mafia reading that I help put together. He’s been great in making recommendations and introductions. I had read Dennis Cooper's My Loose Thread and had been reading a lot of Yukio Mishima when I got the ludicrous idea of a murderous High School cult being inspired by his books, so that's the story here.
Mishima Death Cult 

I shopped an early story of mine around for a long time. I felt it was good but it just never found a home. I wrote this one to counter all of these full-penetration -first-time-I-had-sex stories I was reading at the time; nascent sexuality seems to be more about groping then fucking, I thought that initial touch was getting overlooked in gay lit…anyway, shopping this story around for years was a good lesson in persistence as I finally placed it.
Dorm

Outsider Ink published an aquatic-science fiction story I wrote, Bottom Feeder. This was an idea percolating in my brain for awhile. I held back though, because I really felt it was way too close to something I'd read in a John Varley novel (I loved his stuff when I was a teenager) -finally I wrote it any way, thinking it was just more exercise. But I liked the story, about this really fucked up transmutation, so I re-read the Varley book. My idea was nothing like his, but had fermented on its own over the years into something entirely different, so talk about transmutation…I got a lot of positive feedback on this one, and the editor (Sean from Velvet Mafia pulls double-duty and edits both webzines) ended up nominating it for a Pushcart Prize, which I feel was just an awesome thing to do.
Bottom Feeder

I had an idea for a fantasy story that I simply thought about for years –literally decades. I came up with it in High School and never wrote one word until it hit me that I just needed to put it on paper. It just flowed out of me in one night. I sent it to Lodestar Quarterly and then noticed that Suspect Thoughts Journal had an up-coming theme issue that was a perfect match, so I e-mailed Lodestar and asked if I could withdraw it. Of course I felt like a flake and they were totally nice about it and even offered to still consider another story I sent them. Suspect Thoughts accepted it the very next day.  
Lightning Capital

2007 saw my first appearance in anthologies. Richard Labonte had seen something of mine and invited me to submit to Country Boys. Now I had nothing already written but looked at this as a good challenge. He accepted my story, River Boy, which closes the anthology. He also accepted Funeral Clothes for Best Gay Erotica 2008. An excerpt of my novel, The Werewolves Of Central Park, opens So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction. Obviously this felt great, but also served as a lesson in perseverance as I has three other stories accepted into anthologies, only to be bumped from one at the last minute and the press that was to publish the other two books went under! And that just means one thing: keep sending out stories. Rejection is a hurdle, not a wall.  

2008: so far I’m in some pretty cool books. I’ve a short, dreamy piece in Madder Love: Queer Men and Precincts of Surrealism, out now. Upcoming: Backdraft; Fireman Erotica, edited by Shane Allison (we were in Country Boys together) and, fingers-crossed, I’ve tentatively placed a story in Best Gay Romance 2009. I’m waiting to hear back on some other submissions.   

I guess I should say that my short story output explains the title of my website. Most every story is about transformation, but I’m particularly fascinated with anthropomorphism, that not only do we project ourselves onto things, but we then become afraid of them, without realizing it’s the human quality that’s so frightening. Like when we make jack o’ lanterns by giving pumpkins teeth. So Pumpkin Teeth is my ideal title for a short story collection. 

And lastly here is one of my first and favorite attempts at short fiction.
Lotus Bread