Summer 2008. The new cover is complete for Pieces For The Left Hand, which Graywolf is putting out in paperback in April, alongside the hardcover of Castle. Once again, I'm really happy with it--it's kinda hard to see, but the background image comes from--I kid you not--the Smithsonian's paint-by-numbers collection. (In fact, there it is on the main page of that link.) Looking at the books quick-links over there, I can't believe that it will have been four years since Pieces first came out in the UK, and even longer than that--nearly ten years--since I started writing the stories during my older son's afternoon naps. It will be great to finally have it readily available to American readers. - June 21, 2008 Late Spring 2008. I've been pretty intensely into taking photographs lately, ostensibly as research for a novel I hope to start writing later this year, but mostly because I like it. I've added a photo page to the site for anyone who's interested in seeing the pictures. New link added above, as well. In addition, my short story "The Wraith" will finally be coming out in Playboy in October. - June 10, 2008 Reading video. Just posted on Cornell's web site, here's a video of me reading my parodic short story "The Year's Best Fiction 2008: The Authors Speak" as part of the Richard Cleveland Memorial Reading back in March. You'll need RealPlayer. The really, really nice introduction is from George McCormick. (The bar he's referring to is Al's & Vic's, in Missoula, FYI.) - June 9, 2008 I just got the final cover design for Castle from the publicity department at Graywolf. The book won't be out until next April, but I think the cover is fairly enigmatic and intriguing, which is exactly what I was hoping the graphic designer would go for. Watch this space for more information in the coming months. Meanwhile, I'll be doing two events in New York in June. First, on Friday, June 13, I'll give a brief (15 minutes?) reading at the Brooklyn Arts Exchange, 421 5th Avenue in Brooklyn. The reading is at 8pm, and will serve as the opening act for the amazing Andrew Dinwiddie's dance performance of his work-in-progress, "The Accursed Items." If that sounds familiar, it's because the piece is set to a reading of my story of the same title. This is a benefit show for BAX, and the cover is $15 general admission, $8 low-income. If you're really loaded, come at 7 for a benefit reception, and pony up the $50 suggested donation. I'll be back in the city on Tuesday, June 17 for a Paris Review event; it will be at 6pm at NYU, and I'll be reading with Gish Jen and Ryan McIlvain. Click this link for the details. Finally, I just got a copy of The Empty Page, the anthology of Sonic-Youth-inspired fiction; it's just come out (UK only so far), and my story, "Death To Our Friends," is, conveniently enough, the first thing in it. Click the link to check it out. - May 27, 2008 March 2008. Good news for those who were hoping there might someday be a US edition of Pieces For The Left Hand: the book has been picked up by Graywolf Press, and will come out in paperback sometime next year. Graywolf will also be publishing a new novel, Castle, in hardcover, probably in March or April of 2009. I'll post links and other info when we get closer to the pub dates. Sooner than that--May, in fact--a new story will be appearing in the catalog of a gallery show by photographer Lisa Roy Sachs. The exhibition can be seen at the Luxe Gallery in NYC in late spring...I'll update this site with the details when I have them. Another new story will be appearing this summer in Who Can Save Us Now?, an anthology of fiction about new superheroes. (Mine is a tortured soul called The Rememberer.) The book will be a paperback original from the Free Press. Finally, I'll be joining Ernesto Quiñonez and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon in delivering the Richard Cleaveland Memorial Reading at Cornell University on March 27. The details: 4:30 p.m., Hollis Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. If you're in town, please come give a listen! Fall 2007. Pardon me for the long delay in posts here. Two things are afoot: new stories are coming out in The Paris Review and Playboy. The Playboy piece is called "The Wraith" and its publication date has yet to be determined. But keep on looking at those naked ladies until you find it. The Paris Review piece is actually several pieces, part of a collaborative project I've been working on with visual artist Lou Beach, and should be available late next month. You might know Lou from his illustrations in the New York Times, or if you're my age, and a dork, you will remember his stunning gatefold cover for Weird Al Yankovic's "Dare To Be Stupid." In additon, I have begun another blog, and will add a permanent link to it over on the right as soon as I come up with a graphic. It's called The Litlab, and is dedicated to publishing experimental fiction. If you have something, send it to me--there is no such thing as too goofy. I have seeded the site with a short story I wrote, "The Cat Text," that employs ONLY words found in The Cat In The Hat. Enjoy! - September 14, 2007 May 2007. Voila! The website has a new look! However, my career remains exactly the same. Please check back for new stuff in the coming weeks. - May 1, 2007 . . . I am part of a new anthology of "flash" fiction, called The Flash, which unfortunately is, once again, only available in the UK. My contribution is "Mikeworld," from Pieces For The Left Hand, which, appropriately, is also only available in the UK. The Writers At Cornell blog has finished its first season, and I'm pretty happy with it--I interviewed nine writers, including George Saunders, Heather McHugh, and Junot Diaz. The site features some of the fastest-downloading mp3's I have ever had the pleasure of posting anywhere--Cornell's servers are outrageous. Check it out, and look forward to some more great stuff this fall--the fall series is looking very promising. Not much else going on--I'm in the final stretch of a new novel. Stay tuned! - April 28, 2007 . . . A Short story, "Zombie Dan," is now running in the March issue of Playboy. The illustration is...oh my God...you will love it. Also, the new Inverse Room album is now up for download on iTunes, here. I can never get those direct iTunes links to work right, myself, unless iTunes is already open, but if worse comes to worst you can just search for Inverse Room in the iTunes store. If you prefer a different download service, the album will be there soon, if it isn't there already. - February 27, 2007 . . . Susan Tomaselli of Dogmatika, guest blogging at 3am Magazine, has interviewed my wife and me about our work and our blog. The interview's in two parts, here and here. - February 4, 2007 . . . I've removed a couple of things from the menu: the blog and the Inverse Room page. The reason for the de-blogging is that Ward Six is working out very nicely, and more than satisfies my blogging urge, thank you. The reason the Inverse Room page is gone, however, is that there's a new one, which you can access by clicking this here picture of the new Inverse Room album, American Recluse. The title refers to the President, and it also refers to me, and it also refers to a poisonous spider. The connections among the three remain vague, in the classic obscure-indie-rock style. The new inverseroom.com includes a PayPal link for buying the album, and the obligatory audio samples, videos, links, and studio pics. Stop by, it's super sexy. Or dorky. Or something. Finally, thanks to everyone who stopped by Five Chapters last week to check out "The Creek." Dave Daley's serial fiction project continues this week and I hope many to come...visit there often! - February 1, 2007 . . . A new story of mine, "The Creek," will be running next week, starting Monday, at Five Chapters, the short fiction serial website. Please give it a look! For those of you interested in the musical stuff, I sent the new Inverse Room album off to the pressing plant this week. It should be up here for purchase in a couple of weeks, and available as a download sometime next month. More soon, including audio samples... - January 19, 2007 . . . My wife and I have started a literary blog. It's called Ward Six, after the Chekhov story of the same name, and will consist of literary analysis and opinion. Stop by, leave comments. We'll be posting daily, so please visit often! - January 3, 2007 . . . One New Year's resolution for this site, aside from actually posting things on it, will be for me to abandon the semi-comedic pretense that it's being maintained by a crack team of sycophants, when obviously it's just me. So, Happy New Year to you, and thanks from me (JRL) for visiting. I'll be doing it blog-style from now on, letting posts scroll down toward the bottom of the page for awhile before erasing them, so that those golden shards of wisdom will be preserved for months at a time. A new short story, "Zombie Dan," will be published in the March issue of Playboy, which to its great credit has been running a lot of fiction lately. The story is about a spoiled rich boy who is transformed into a clairvoyant, chainsmoking zombie. The Bookery II, an independently-owned bookstore here in Ithaca, New York, has actually managed to get copies of Pieces for the Left Hand from the UK. The book, sadly, is still not out here in the US. Anyway, if you'd like a copy, give them a call at (607) 273-5055, and they would be delighted to sell you one. The Inverse Room arm of the JRL organization has a new album coming out in a couple of months--it's actually finished, so I can say that with confidence. I'll be working on mastering and cover art this month and will ship it off to the pressing plant in February or so. Stay tuned! It will be called "American Reculse" and consists of 14 (regular length) songs. And don't forget the Inverse Room MySpace page, which contains music downloads, videos, and convenient links to middle-aged Russian alcoholic spam kings masqueradeing as fifteen-year-old nymphomaniacs from southern California. Also, Inverse Room has been making some very dorky demonstration videos about synthesizers and posting them on Synthwire. If you're into that kind of thing, please check it out. Finally, I can heartily recommend the nyrb line of reissued "forgotten classics," particularly John Williams' wonderfully sad and understated novel Stoner and the Australian children's book The Magic Pudding. The new Ake Edwardson crime novel (from Viking) is also pretty good. - December 22, 2006 . . . JRL is part of a new anthology, So, What Kept You?, in which writers offer stories based upon lines from the notebooks of Raymond Carver and Anton Chekhov. It's only available in the UK; the link will take you to its page at Amazon.co.uk. A new novel, Happyland, continues to run in serial in Harper's Magazine. The book, which is enshrouded in quite a titillating fog of controversy, is the story of a small upstate town that is slowly, insidiously being taken over by a fabulously wealthy toy mogul. Any similarities to the current national political situation are purely intentional. Inverse Room, meanwhile, has gotten himself a Myspace page, which is now federal law for anyone who owns a guitar. There is some fun new stuff on it, including a song from his forthcoming album, and a couple of new videos from the last CD, including this one: - September 2006 . . . If, after reading Happyland, you get thinking you'd like to try this novel-writing thing, watch the video offered below, in which JRL reveals how to do exactly that. Courtesy of Google Video. - July 2006 . . . There is a very long interview with JRL at the really quite excellent webzine Being There. Editor Russell Bartholomee grills JRL on such topics as rock and roll, crime fiction, politics, and movies. A brief essay about winter was featured on American Public Radio's Weekend America...listen to it here. There's another interview, this one brief, on the literary blog Dogmatika, along with a lot of other interesting things. Give it a look! Got PayPal? If so, click the button below to buy Inverse Room's CD, Pieces for the Left Hand: 100 Songs NOW ONLY $5.00 POSTPAID, anywhere in the world! If you don't use PayPal, visit the Inverse Room page to buy one from CDBaby.com. Sound samples are also available there!

Buy books. Castle. Novel, coming 2009. A man buys a large plot of wooded land in upstate New York, only to find that someone has built a castle in the middle of it--and the castle is inhabited. Further investigation leads to a journey into the past, and into the darkness of 21st century America. . . . Pieces for the Left Hand. Story collection, 2005. 100 very short stories; or, alternately, a novel about a guy who writes 100 stories, with the text consisting only of the stories. . . . Mailman. Novel, 2003. A frenetic bildungsroman about a doomed upstate New York mail carrier, taking place over ten days in the summer of 2000. . . . On the Night Plain. Novel, 2001. After the Second World War, a man leaves his home on a Great Plains sheep ranch. He returns to chaos and despair, and decides to devote himself to setting things right. . . . The Funnies. Novel, 1999. A failed installation artist inherits his father's syndicated comic strip, and is forced to come to terms with his dysfunctional family. . . . The Light of Falling Stars. Novel, 1997. The lives of five people--a college student, an elderly woman, a married couple, and an Italian tourist--are changed by a plane crash in a small Montana town. . . . The Flash. Anthology, 2007. A collection of really short stories, including one of JRL's--"Mikeworld," from the Pieces for the Left Hand collection. Also featuring Rick Moody, Steve Almond, Steve Aylett. . . . So, What Kept You? Anthology, 2006. Stories inspired by the journals of Chekhov and Carver. JRL went with Chekhov. Also featuring David Means, Andrew Crumley, Ali Smith. . . . big bad wolves . . . Links of interest. Ward Six Blog. A daily discussion of books, writers, and writing by JRL and his wife, novelist Rhian Ellis. . . . Writers At Cornell Blog. A series of audio podcast interviews, produced by JRL, with writers who visit Cornell University. Between 15 and 20 shows per year are planned; so far you can download discussions with George Saunders, Heather McHugh, and Junot Diaz, among others. . . . Creot Records. An international collective of independent recording artists, including Inverse Room. With audio samples, artist information, and links to homepages and music for sale. . . . Creot Radio. A free podcast of all-original music by Creot Records artists and their friends. Rock and roll that only a mother could love.