Writing
FICTION
COMING SOON
“The Last Ladder” in Plots With Guns (2012)
“The Scabrous Exploits Of Cyrus & Galina Van, Hellbent West During The Third Year Of The Harrows, 1876″ in Needle (2012)
“The Order Of Things” in 3:AM Magazine (2012-ish)
“Glinty-Eyed Robert” in Pulp Ink 2 (May 2012)
“White Tiger” in an upcoming Beat To A Pulp anthology (2012)
“Suri & Sirin” in Weird Tales (2012-ish)
“St. Teresa of Avila’s Day” in Border Noir (May 2012)
“Slog On” in Noir Nation (2012)
“Paula” in Big Pulp (Spring 2013)
“Gun In Your Mouth And All” in Yellow Mama (mid-2012)
*NOTE: The Failure is here.
RECENTLY
“Josie” in Open Window Review (4/12)
“City Of Screams” in Grift (3/12)
“A Straight Face” in Spinetingler (Winter ’12)
“Two Brothers” in All Due Respect (2/12)
“Saving The Pangolins” in Toad Suck (2012)
“The Oath” in Flywheel (1/12)
Concrete Steel Forest in Necessary Fictions Origin Stories (1/12)
“GULPWINE 68″ in Jackson Hole Review 12/11
“A Straight Face” in Spinetingler (12/11)
“Back In Black” in Off The Record (11/11)
“The Smooth Shoulder” in Grift (11/11)
“Vacuum Man” in A Twist Of Noir (11/11)
“Some Place” in Necessary Fiction (11/11)
Reviewed by Jennifer M. Kaufman
“Lek” in Specter (10/11)
Reviewed by R. Thomas Brown at Spinetingler
“The Fireline” in Flash Fiction Offensive (9/11)
Reviewed by R. Thomas Brown
“The Cloud Factory” in PANK (9/11)
Reviewed by Chris Rhatigan
Ask The Author at PANK
“Stumpy Got Away The First Day” in Staccato MicroFiction (Fall 2011)
“Dogs At The Door” in Powder Burn Flash (9/11)
Chris Rhatigan’s Top 5 of 2011
“Long Christmas” in 50 to 1 (8/11)
“First Water” in Fried Chicken & Coffee (8/11)
“St. Teresa of Avila’s Day” in Shotgun Honey (8/11)
Reviewed by R. Thomas Brown
“Thirty Miles North of Cheyenne” in Thrillers, Killers, ‘N’ Chillers (7/11)
Reviewed by R. Thomas Brown
Reviewed by Sean Patrick Reardon
“Rooster Stew” in Midwestern Gothic (print only) (Summer 2011)
“The Patch” in M-Brane #27 (4/11)
“Twenty-Five Grand” in Pulp Metal (4/11)
“Drinking With Her” in Night Train (Spring 2011)
“The Haymaker’s” in decomP (12/10)
OLDER ONLINE
“A Hard Drinker” in Insolent Rudder (2005)
“About Ai” in Summerset Review (2004)
“Blood Test” in Identity Theory (April 2006)
“From Where I’m Standing” in JapanVisitor (2004)
“In Hiding” in Pindeldyboz (2004)
“Moondog Over the Mekong” in Evergreen Review (2004)
“Reg’s First Time” in Fried Chicken and Coffee (12/08)
“The 30-Kilometer Walk” in Blackbird (Spring 2007)
“We Would Start Here” in Dublin Quarterly (2006)
IN PRINT ONLY
“A Whole Lot Bigger” (in Weber) (Spring 2006)
“A Good Girl” (in Porcupine) (2006)
“Ten Baht” (in Kyoto Journal ) (2006)
NONFICTION
ESSAYS
When The Door Closes, at Specter (11/11)
The Nebraska Panhandle, 1988 at Numero Cinq (5/11)
What it’s like living here: Torrington, Wyoming at Numero Cinq (11/10)
The Graveyard: Are The Great The Lucky?, at Numero Cinq (2/11)
Dust or Displaced Electrons at Numero Cinq (6/11)
What is good writing? What is successful writing? at TeleRead
REVIEWS
Controlled Burn, by Scott Wolven, at Dead End Follies
“The Road Lester Took”, by Stephen Graham Jones, at Spinetingler
Jailbait Justice, by Danny Hogan, here and at TeleRead
Tokyo Zero, by Marc Horne, at TeleRead
Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens, at TeleRead
“Three-Legged Dog,” at TeleRead
American Fever, by Peter Christian Hall, at TeleRead
Password Incorrect, by Nick Name, at TeleRead
Junk Sick, by Norman Savage, at TeleRead
ELSEWISE
Selected TeleRead Posts:
Text is forever. Paper books are not.
If this is the future of the novel, the novel is finished
How to turn your MP3 player into an e-reader
19 Comments
Leave a CommentTrackbacks
- Pindeldyboz folds « Endless Emendation
- “What it’s like living here,” from Court Merrigan in Torrington, Wyoming « Numéro Cinq
- Twenty-Five Grand by Court Merrigan « Pulp Metal Magazine
- Redneck Press with Fried Chicken and Coffee - First Water, fiction by Court Merrigan
- Stumpy Got Away the First Day « Staccato Fiction
- Grift Flash: The Smooth Shoulder by Court Merrigan | Grift Magazine
- Court Merrigan | Open Window Review…
Court Merrigan
Thanks for the weekend reading list.
My pleasure, Donigan. Any comments you have are appreciated, and you can put them right here if you’d like.
in hiding is a killer>>>>What’s the novel about?
Hello Burt. Thanks.
That’s a good question – I’m going to have to think of how to sum it up, preferably in one sentence. When I do, I’ll post it thusly. Thanks for the impetus.
Shame about Octopus Beak, huh?
I am not finished reading all the stories posted here, but have learned a few things along the way, so far: you are a good writer, you write long short stories, and I just cannot get my brain to read comprehendingly from a computer screen.
The second story, in Angle, would not open.
I read “A Hard Drinker,” “Blood Test,” “From Where I’m Standing” (which I liked least), “In Hiding,” and started but have not finished “Moondog Over the Mekong.”
Oddly, based on the beginning of Moondog, it portended to be the one I’d like best. But by the time I got to it, I was already acquiring a headache from trying to read so much dense (single-spaced, narrow columns, small font) writing from what still looks to me like a TV screen.
It is probably only habit and conditioning; I can sit with a 500 page book, read 40 or 50 pages at a setting, but cannot read what is probably the equivalent of 5 or 10 pages on a monitor. (I would never be able to read all the way through the short story I placed on my webblog — it is way over the limit of my reading comprehension ability on a monitor.)
But enough of my complaining about reading from a TV screen. Although that problem represents the crux of why I cannot say anything useful about your writing.
What I can say, though, is that any literate reader knows immediately when in the presence of someone who can write well and who understands how to tell a story, and that is obvious in your work. Anything else is copy editing, and they pay people in publishing houses to do that chore for you.
I want to finish Moondog, and my solution is to print it out.
I printed out Moondog — 16 single spaced pages. It’s going with me to the cafe this morning. More later. Don
Thanks, Donigan. I appreciate the compliments. Work goes on. Looking forward to that time when someone paid for their efforts looks at my work.
The link to “About Ai” is fixed, btw.
Moondog comes in at 11,020 words. I had forgotten it was so long. Not ideal for reading off a computer, that’s for sure. Maybe someday I’ll be able to convince someone to put it on dead trees.
“From Where I’m Standing” – I agree, an amateurish effort. I liked it at the time, though; 2003, if memory serves.
11,000 seems about right, it would be 30 pages double-spaced and page formatted.
Over time I plan to read all the ones you’ve posted here, but anything over about a thousand words I will probably print out. I took Moondog to the cafe and got just 2 pages into it, to the first next break on the computer, before being interrupted by a new friend here, and we got into a 3-hour debate about faith versus reason.
What I have read so far I am thoroughly enjoying, although I must admit that it took a few paragraphs before I realized what you were doing with the contrasting scenes (she and he) within the same long sentence. I am not sure I wouldn’t find some more defining method of clarifying this contrasting style.
Well, I’ll wait until I finish — 10,500 words to go.
With no interruptions at the cafe this morning, I had time to read all of Moondog. I will begin with the obvious — this is an excellent, a particularly fine, piece of writing. I admit that it took about two pages before I first understood and then could follow the stylistic approach of illustrating the inexorable coming-together of the two main characters by showing that movement in the same place at the same time, often in the same sentence with just a comma separation. After that, I fell completely into the rhythm of the story and this style of telling it. Although the ending was subtly projected, it managed to surprise me anyway. It could have gone in half-a-dozen ways.
I am partial to the setting (have been to Laos and Vietnam, although only a pass-thru Thailand), so I was easily drawn into the atmosphere.
Someplace here I recall that you are working on a novel. Is this the core of it? It could be. There is a novel in it.
Anyway. Court, I thoroughly enjoyed this story and it alone establishes you in my mind as a fine writer.
Don
Thanks very much, Donigan, for your kind words. Moondog is a personal favorite of mine, for reasons that, someday when we meet up in a cafe, I’ll tell you all about.
This story has nothing to do with the manuscript I’m working on now. At one point I thought of expanding it to a longer piece – the original draft was almost three times as long – but in the end decided to cut it down and make a long short story out of it.
Hi Court – I’ve been enjoying your comments over at Donigan’s blog, so I thought I’d check out your some of your fiction. I agree with Donigan about “Moondog.” I liked that a lot. I also liked “A Hard Drinker.” Very snappy!
All the best with work on the novel.
Thanks, Rose. I appreciate the reads and the kind words.