CutBank is thrilled to launch a new online feature, The Woodshop, with this submission from Stephen Graham Jones. Review our submission guidelines here, then submit your own Woodshop to cutbankonline@gmail.com.
Where do you do your work?
In my office and my study, and in airports and hallways, and in the back of lecture halls and meetings, and in my head standing in line at the bank, and while I sleep, and when I wake.
What do you keep on your desk?
An articulated wooden snake, for thinking. Hot Wheels, for thinking. Headphones, for not thinking.
What’s your view like?
Just my computer monitor, and whatever's behind it. In my office, that's books. In my study, it's different books, plus some rubber bands.
What do you eat/drink while you work?
Tea, both sweet and not. Ice water. Sometimes Pepsi, but not much anymore. What I eat is usually Sixlets or Almond Snickers or, when I can find them, Mars Bars. Sometimes tortillas, from the bag. Never Cheetos. Cheetos wreck a keyboard. Cheetos are for after.
Do you have any superstitions about your work?
If I don't write it, nobody will.
Share a recent line/sentence written in this space.
"James Dean was just leaned over the wheel with a cigarette, nodding to himself about this whole scene. He pulled the smoke in deep and blew it back onto the dashboard, then looked up to my father."
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Stephen Graham Jones is the author of sixteen books. Most recent are Flushboy (Dzanc) and Zombie Sharks with Metal Teeth (Lazy Fascist). Up soon are The Least of my Scars (Broken River Books), The Gospel of Z (Samhain), and Not For Nothing (Dzanc). Stephen's been a Bram Stoker Award finalist, a Shirley Jackson Award finalist, a Colorado Book Award finalist, and has won the Texas Institute of Letters Jesse Jones Award for Fiction, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, and an NEA Fellowship in Fiction. Stephen has some hundred and seventy stories published, from CutBank to Prairie Schooner, from Asimov's to Weird Tales. He teaches in the MFA programs at CU Boulder and UCR-Palm Desert.