New short fiction up at Pangyrus
January 18, 2023 § Leave a comment
‘Today a flock of crows has gathered. Half a dozen of the birds with their glossy blue-black feathers, come to peck at beetles he supposes, or some other small insect involved in the decomposition of dead matter. He strides up to the crows, brandishing his cane.
“Bugger off, now! This is a burial site, not a feeding place for scavengers!”
The crows tilt their heads to stare up at him. Their obsidian eyes are insolent, almost bored-looking, by the sight of the heavy filigreed cane-head whistling through the air above them.
“Very well, then. But don’t say I didn’t give you fair warning.”
He takes careful aim and swings. The crows flap off, but one wheels, cawing and swooping belligerently back down at him. He aims the cane and swings again, and this time he feels the jolt of an actual connection. The crow lets out a low grunt as it flips to the ground, one black wing jutting out from its broken body as it struggles to get up from the hemlock needles.
He brings the cane-head down on the crow’s skull; it collapses with an audible crunch, like a boiled egg. He draws the blade and skewers the creature’s broken body, walking it up into the forest where he digs a little trench in the sodden ground, kicks some leaves over it, and wipes the blade clean.
That’s more like it now, he says to himself, sheathing the blade as he walks down toward the house. You just have to confront them one by one.“
Read the whole story here. Listen to a brief audio piece about the historical figure who inspired the story here.
New stories short-listed for the Tobias Wolff Award in Fiction
May 25, 2022 § 2 Comments
Received a nice bit of good news today: no fewer than three of the stories in my collection-in-progress (working title: Tickets to the Reckoning) were chosen as finalists in the Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction (judged blind, sponsored by Bellingham Review). This is the first time multiple stories of mine have had that distinction in any contest, and this is a prestigious one. I’ll take it as a good omen!
New longlists/shortlists
September 9, 2021 § Leave a comment
A cynic might say something like “always the bridesmaid, never the bride,” but I’ve never been a cynic and I’m pleased to report these recent honors:
Semi-Finalist, 2021 Leapfrog Press Global Fiction Prize, for a novel, THE HAVANA STANDARD
Finalist, 2021 Southern Humanities Review Editors Chapbook Prize, for a novelette, AMONG THE MONOLITHS
Honorable Mention, 2021 Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition (Mainstream/Literary), for a short story, VIRGIN OF THE APOCALYPSE
Honorable Mention, 2021 Cisco Writing Club, Annual Summer Writing Contest (Short Stories), for a short story, SKIN MONKEYS
None of these works has been published yet. Stay tuned!
Two new reviews for A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing
January 17, 2019 § Leave a comment
So pleased to see that positive reviews for the collection continue to trickle in. The two most recent are from the Midwest Book Review and Trout Fisherman, a magazine based in Great Britain. Both reviews are excerpted below. You can read more excerpts and follow links to ALL known reviews here.
“This collection of stories by Tim Weed is grounded in the specificity of its settings, all of which contain hazards of one kind or another: a mountain lake, a jungle peak, an Amazonian river, a prairie giving way to construction, a seashore suddenly overcome by the tide, a city stuck in the past, a snowy slope (or two). But it is also full of mystery, and much of the mystery is cosmic . . . It is written so deftly, with such a light touch, that suspense builds in each story like a gathering storm.” — Patrick Joyce, Midwest Book Review
“Like other talented writers in this genre, Weed is not hampered by the brevity of the medium . . . His denouements are unpredictable and sometimes even merely hinted at, leaving the reader to fall back on his or her own imagination as to how the tale ends, which sounds frustrating but is actually quite a tantalizing device.” — Trout Fisherman (UK)
Order the paperback, ebook, or audiobook at your favorite independent bookstore or IndieBound, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Audible. Limited first-edition hardcovers can still be ordered from these fine independent booksellers!
Literary Roadhouse Podcast: Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever.”
December 20, 2018 § Leave a comment
A heartfelt thanks to Anais Concepción, the smart & effervescent host of Literary Roadhouse, a weekly podcast on a public-domain short story. It’s a fun and lively podcast with the noble mission of celebrating the short story form, and I had a very good time hosting a recent episode on Edith Wharton’s masterpiece, “Roman Fever.” You can listen to the podcast here—and to a wide-ranging follow-up conversation on video between Anais and me about nature, Will Poole’s Island, a career combining writing and travel, National Geographic, Cuba, my goals of as a teacher of writing, the need to break writing “rules,” new writing projects, history as a foreign country, escapism, and more. Watch the video interview here.
“Diamondback Mountain” out at Craft Literary
December 14, 2018 § Leave a comment
Happy to report the release of “Diamondback Mountain,” the final previously unpublished story in the fiction collection A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing. The folks at Craft have done a beautiful job and I’m happy that they’re hosting this story, which holds a great deal of personal significance for me, as explained in the author’s note. In the story, a young ski instructor at a remote hotel in 1930s Colorado falls in love with a rising Italian movie star, but fate conspires to keep the couple apart. Read the full story here.
New short fiction out
November 25, 2018 § Leave a comment
A freshly-minted short story (one of the first to appear post-A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing) is out in Western Press Books’ wonderful new anthology, Manifest West: Transitions & Transformations. The story is titled “Gunnison Gorge.” It concerns a lonely traveler who gives a ride to a mysterious couple on his way to a remote fly fishing river in a wilderness area of central Colorado. He worries that the woman may be in some kind of trouble, and believes himself well-positioned to do something about it.
To read “Gunnison Gorge,” at least for now, you have to order the anthology. But that’s a great thing to do anyway, especially if you want to support literature and/or are interested in writing about the contemporary American west!
Podcast: The Rocky Mountain Writer
October 16, 2018 § Leave a comment
What a pleasure it was to spend part of a recent afternoon having this wide-ranging conversation with Colorado novelist Mark Stevens on The Rocky Mountain Writer podcast.
We discussed many topics of interest to writers and readers, including A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing, travel and fiction, Ecuadorian volcanoes, Venezuela’s Orinoco basin, Eastern Cuba, fiction vs autobiography, the importance of place in fiction, dropping acid and pushing the bounds of objective reality, interiority and loneliness, The Grateful Dead and the Eleusinian Mysteries, fly fishing as metaphor, Ursula K. LeGuin, William Golding’s The Inheritors, Newport MFA & the Cuba Writers Program, and a recap of a talk I gave on “The Essentials of Voice” at RMFW’s Colorado Gold conference in September, 2018.
Listen to the entire podcast here. Mark also did a wonderful followup print interview here, in which we talked about life experience as a point of departure for fiction, the deep sources of story ideas, more on why I think dreams and hallucinations shouldn’t be off-limits for fiction writers, place-based writing as a response to environmental crisis, the challenge of endings, some of my favorite writers, and more. Enjoy!
Audiobook release, new Cuba dates & other news
October 2, 2018 § 2 Comments
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
A quick update on books and travel, and wishing you all a happy fall!
For anyone who likes to listen as you drive, work, or relax, I’m pleased to inform you that A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing is now available as an audiobook on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes.
Everything you might want to know about the collection can be found here; I include a quick summary and some review highlights pasted at the bottom of this post. (It’s been wonderful to see how well the book has been received out in the world, by the way. It seems to have found some “legs” of its own, and I’m most grateful to all of you who’ve purchased, read, reviewed, and/or recommended it.)
New Cuba dates! I’m thrilled to announce an exciting new cultural trip, offered in cooperation with the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, timed to coincide with the renowned Havana Art Biennial, April 15 – 23, 2019. This will be a well planned but flexible and culturally rich program, so if you’ve been looking for an excuse to go (or return) to Cuba, here it is!
For the writers and aspiring writers out there, consider coming on the fourth annual Cuba Writers Program, May 2- 10, 2019. We have a great time on this program; it’s a wonderful way to experience the vibrant culture of Cuba while honing or kick-starting your writing.
If you have 3-10 friends or family members looking to go to Cuba on your own, I can help you plan a custom, small-group trip that’s fully compliant with U.S. Treasury Department legal requirements. My Havana ground operation and I have organized quite a few of these in the last several years, and we’ve got it down to a fine art. Happy to plan creative custom programs in other parts of the world as well.
Finally, here’s my frequently updated list of upcoming talks, programs, and classes, including events offered in various locations through Grub Street, the Newport MFA in Creative Writing, National Geographic Expeditions, Vermont Humanities Council, various writing conferences, and elsewhere. I hope our paths may cross!
Wishing you all the best,
Tim
A high altitude lake is the point of departure for these stories of dark adventure, in which fishing guides, amateur sportsmen, teenage misfits, scientists, mountaineers, and expatriates embark on disquieting journeys of self-discovery in far-flung places. A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing made the 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Awards Grand Prize Short List and was a finalist in the short story category for both the 2018 American Fiction Awards and the 2017 International Book Awards.
“From the mountain lakes of the Colorado Rockies to cobbled streets of Spain, this fascinating collection of short stories never disappoints. A Field Guide to Murder and Fly Fishing is a collection you’ll be happy to get lost in.” — Ploughshares.
“Provocative and memorable, this collection strikes all the right chords.” — Main Street Rag
“I found myself consuming [these] thirteen tightly wound tales with addictive delight.” — Fiction Writers Review
“Weed’s short stories draw us away from the blue light of device screens. Under the blue skies and dark waters of A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing, readers can feel pain, empathy, and purpose bubbling out from the sharp-detailed mental images.” — Pleiades
“Tim Weed proves himself a skilled creator of a sense of place . . . each story deposits one definitively into a geography, of mind and map.” — The Boston Globe
“Weed’s stories . . . are colored by his long experience as a travel and adventure writer . . . His characters are fishermen, mountaineers, and teenagers all on a quest for self-discovery. From the title page to the last page, this is a book of gems.” — Big Sky Journal
“These stories bristle with energy and immediacy. The writing is spare and meticulous and packs a hefty emotional punch. I am not exaggerating when I say this collection kept me up at nights. I just couldn’t stop reading.” — Addison Independent
Order the paperback, ebook, or (new!) audiobook at your favorite independent bookstore or IndieBound, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, or Audible. (A limited number of first-edition hardcovers still available here.)
Main Street Rag Reviews A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing
May 13, 2018 § Leave a comment
Very much enjoyed the new review of the collection by Evan Williams in the Spring 2018 edition of the venerable literary magazine Main Street Rag. It’s not available on-line, but here’s an excerpt:
“Each story is an exercise in high adventure. Cessna prop planes, dugout canoes, rattletrap sports cars, and hipped-out VW vans transport characters across America to Grateful Dead concerts, and up the Amazon River in search of a new species of frog. The author’s attraction for the outdoors in inescapable, with each installment a trip to another country, or occasionally, a mind trip on LSD . . . Weed writes as a realist, never coddling his stars. Teeth are kicked out, and hearts are broken. Perhaps gritty is the optimum word to describe his treatment of behavior and consequence, where even the innocent are not insulated from the impact of their decisions, nor the decisions of unkind others. In A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing, no one is granted immunity from life . . . Provocative and memorable, this collection strikes all the right chords.”
You can see how this is a review to make an author happy. The collection just came out in paperback: click here for instructions on how to order!
Tim Weed 