The following short story originally appeared on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. A version of it is also included in my collection, The Salvation of Billy Wayne Carter and Other Stories.

The Office Party

(1) IVAN WURKINONDA REILRODE

Ivan is alone, the first to arrive. He turns on the lights and walks over to the punch bowl. Empty. Green and yellow streamers hang like cobwebs from the ceiling. The garbage cans are overstuffed with paper plates and broken styrofoam cups. He bends down to feel the dark stains on the carpet–still wet. Moving closer to the floor, sniffing like a hound, he stretches his tongue out for a sample of the offending liquid. “Piss,” he says to himself. He springs to his feet yelling, “Piss! Piss!” He loosens his tie and takes off his shirt. “Piss!” The tiny gray hairs on his chest stand on end from the sudden chill. He growls. He takes off his shoes and throws them the left one at the punch bowl and the right one at the fax machine. The machine falls with a clank to the floor, and a note flies from it like the last feather of a gunned-down bird.

He puts his shirt back on and walks into the kitchen. Someone is there, waiting in the dark.

(2) ALDA LIVELONG DAY

“No one is bringing any sweets,” Alda laments as she scans the volunteer list. “Everybody is bringing salties. What’s a Christmas party without sweets?” She gazes around in wonderment, ignored. She turns to Kent at the next desk. “Excuse me, Kent.”

He turns around.

“I hate to bother you, but do you think you could bring something sweet to the party instead of this?” She points on the list to an item, Dill Weed Oyster Crackers, next to Kent’s name. “I know your wife makes wonderful chocolate cake and rum balls–you brought them last year. I wondered if you could bring something like that instead, ’cause everybody’s bringing salty things, and nobody’s bringing sweets.”

Kent shrugs. “Well, I’d have to call her and ask, but I hate to do that since she’s moved out of the house and all.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’ll ask somebody else–don’t you worry about it.”

“Oh, no. Wait. I’ll ask her. Really.”

“I couldn’t ask you to do that, Kent. Just don’t worry about it. I need to ask other people anyway. Dinah, are you off the phone? Good. Now tell me, just what the heck are Creamy Weenies?”

(3) IVAN WURKINONDA REILRODE

Everything he hates. Why he condemned himself to this purgatory, he can’t remember. First time he’s been around average joes since he was in high school–never had to deal with people like this in college. Forgotten how warped their values were–how susceptible to television culture they were. Disgusted, he quietly leaves the party. He can’t even bear to look at them.

As he turns the corner, he passes a newsstand where three men in suits are talking on cellular phones. “Stand firm,” one of the men says into his receiver. “Don’t let them talk you into doing anything you don’t want to do.” Ivan enters a coffee shop on the left side of the road. His head begins to itch.

Something he was supposed to do. People on park benches. A slip of paper in his pocket, which he now decides to read. “Shit,” he says, and he turns back toward the office. For a few seconds he runs, then he walks.

(4) JUSDA PASDA TIMAWAY

“Every Friday we have mahi-mahi. Grilled mahi-mahi, baked mahi-mahi, barbequed mahi-mahi, blackened mahi-mahi, broiled mahi-mahi with lemon pepper sauce. Mmmmm.”

(5) KENT YAHIR DEWISSELBLOEN

“Rhiza, this is my roommate, Ben DaCapenschouten.” Rhiza is so butch. She’s his idol. Lord, it’s warm in here, he thinks. “Good to meet you, Ben. My, you both have such unusual last names. How funny that you would end up as roommates. What do you do?”

“I’m in the food distribution business, in management,” Ben tells her, smiling. He points to his necktie, motifed with the Taco Heaven emblem.

“That must be interesting,” Rhiza says wryly.

(6) RHIZA NUPP

“I can’t stay too much longer. One of the girls on my soccer team is having a period party tonight.”

Alda says, “Is that similar to a costume party?”

“No.”

(7) EARL E. N. DE MOURNE

Earl finds a slip of paper that has drifted onto his desk. He looks around to see who had left him the leaflet, but he can not determine the distributor. Shyly, he reads it.

Earl folds the memo and places it in the breast pocket of his corduroy jacket.

(8) KENT YAHIR DACAPENSCHOUTEN

“Earl, do you have a minute?”

“Sure, Kent. What’s up?”

“Well, I need to have my name changed in the computer system. Since Ben and I got, you know, married, I had my last name legally changed to his.”

“Sure, Kent. Just fill out this form, and I’ll take care of it.”

(9) DINAH BLOYER-HORNE

“What are these called again?”

“Creamy Weenies,” Dinah says with a sigh.

“Gee, they’re good,” says Alda. “Before you leave, I’ll have to get the recipe from you.”

“Sure, Alda. No problem. They’re really easy.” Dinah walks toward the kitchen and waits.

I was asked recently if I had any writing rituals.

I would not say that I have a particularly consistent “writing ritual,” but I have certain habits that contribute to my writing. Most days, the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is check my email and respond to anything that calls for a response, no matter whether it is personal, work, or writing-related. Next, I will usually make some coffee and try to wake up my brain with either a crossword puzzle or an online game of Scrabble.

Next, I’ll spend a few minutes attending to some Steel Toe Review or Birmingham Free Press business. That might involve posting a story to one of the STR or BFP websites, doing a little research about something, or sending out a fundraising message. Once all that is out of the way, unless I have urgent day-job work to do, I can start working on some of my own writing.

“Working on writing” might mean setting up an interview for a Birmingham Free Press article, adding to a fictional piece that I’ve already started, creating an outline, composing something for my personal blog, or any number of other things. I try to do as many of these activities as time permits every day.

Whenever I have the time, and the weather is tolerable enough, I like to take long walks with a notebook in hand. I think over whatever project I’m working on as I walk, and I occasionally stop to jot down notes. I’ve been known to spend entire days doing this. Lately, this activity has been a rare luxury. I have a treadmill at home, and I’ve tried to use this to emulate the ritual, but it isn’t the same. I get too distracted by the timer and calorie counter, and I start doing calculations in my head instead of thinking about writing.

When I’m writing at home, I like to have a dedicated beverage next to me. In the morning, it’s coffee. At night, it’s usually a glass of good bourbon or scotch. Afternoons I’m not too busy with day-job work and don’t have other plans, I will go to a coffee shop to write. Some evenings, I’ll go to a bar with my writing journal, the seedier the better, and take notes about people who are around, overheard conversations, etc.

What I usually can’t do while I’m writing is listen to music, though it doesn’t disturb me too much when I’m working from a coffee shop or bar. If I do listen to music, it’s usually some sort of noisy avant-garde or free jazz selection.

I can barely believe we’ve made it to our tenth issue of Steel Toe Review–not without our ups and downs, but here we are not much worse for wear than we were a year ago. What’s exciting is that it seems to keep getting better with every issue. Even more exciting is the fact that we are on the verge of publishing a print anthology featuring the best pieces we published during our first year. And this is super important–we need your help with that project.

Go to to our Kickstarter page to help support us. A pledge of even $1 is helpful. If you donate a little more, there are a number of rewards available, including free books and internet serenades.

The impetus behind STR generally is to connect Birmingham writers and artists with a community of like-minded people elsewhere. The print anthology will further that goal by, literally, putting our work in peoples’ hands.

In addition, we have a fancy new mailing list. You can now sign up voluntarily to have the new issue of STR delivered to your email whenever it comes out, free of charge. And when you are tired of us, you can simply unsubscribe.

And finally–look! Issue #10 is here, and it looks very promising indeed.

We just broke the 100 mark on my new FB fan page:

https://www.facebook.com/mdavidhornbuckleofficial

You guys rock. Keep it coming. The old fan page has 279. We should be able to break that number before too long.

Some 35 or so of you so far have noticed that I have a new page up on Facebook. At times, it probably seems like I’m a tireless narcissist (or at least it seems that way to me). I don’t particularly enjoy all this shameless self-promotion. In many ways I loathe doing it. It’s just part of the job of being an “artist” sometimes.

But anyway… yes, it’s true I already had a “fan” page on Facebook with a couple of hundred followers, and yes, now I have another one. Let me explain.

First of all, I prefer to use my personal page on Facebook for personal things, and I do need a place to promote my writings and music that is separate from that. So several years ago, I started a Group called “M. David Hornbuckle Knows Wordz Good,” and that worked out okay for a little while, until Facebook drastically changed the way groups worked.

Once the group no longer suited my purposes, I abandoned it and started the original “fan” page, which I planned to use for pushing my books, any new short stories I published, and any music gigs I had. A problem came up almost immediately because I called the page “M. David Hornbuckle,” and there was nothing there that distinguished it from my personal page. So people who were both “friends” and “fans” could never tell whether something was posted by MDH the person or MDH the persona. That was annoying. And Facebook would not let me change the name of the page or some of the other key things about how I initially set it up.

In addition, I had no marketing strategy for this page. It was just a mishmash of whatever I happened to be working on at the time. Posts were irregular and inconsistent. I decided what I really need is a sort of archive where I can post old videos, songs, and stories in a consistent way so that people just getting to know my work can explore some of the older things that might interest them. To do this, I’ll be utilizing this blog and and the new Facebook page in tandem to promote new work and keep the old work “out there” for people to discover.

So, fresh start. Maybe I think this is necessary because I turned 40 this year, or maybe it’s that coming apocalypse (which I’ll never stop mentioning until it passes out of the zeitgeist like a silent fart). But 2012 seems like an appropriate time for me to look backwards at times, as long as I don’t stop look forward as well.

Here’s that link again. The Official M. David Hornbuckle (Writer/Musician) Facebook Page.

I think perhaps the hardest thing about writing is to get into and stay in the right frame of mind for writing for an extended period. I can’t be too relaxed or too amped. If I’m tired, like when I first wake up, I can’t think at all. Have to have some coffee. But too much coffee, and my mind is all over the place. Some exercise sometimes helps clear the head sometimes, but I can also use it as a distraction so the only thoughts entering my head are about how many calories I’m burning and not about the story I’m working on. Anything can be a distraction. Staring at a computer screen rarely helps, and often is also a distraction. Sometimes, I have to print out what I’m working on and take to it with a pen. Or I just grab a notebook and get some thoughts down that way.

For a lot of writers, the ritual is very important–sitting down at a certain time every day with things arranged just so, distractions put to the side. My schedule seems to be too unpredictable to ever settle down into such a routine. Between paid work, grad school, the Birmingham Free Press, Steel Toe Review, Ghost Herd, and a relationship, my to-do list is a constantly shifting jigsaw puzzle. One might suggest dropping one or two of these activities to create more time, but they are all intertwined like a pit of anacondas in heat. Each project supports the others in some way or another, either financially or by facilitating connections with other creative people that can help me or inspire me. Also, if I can’t seem to finish that short story, maybe I can write an exposé about the Shepherd Bend coal mine, and at least then I’ve written something that day.

I’ve been known to go on long walks, sometimes for an entire day, with just a notebook and a pen, circling through sentences in my head, occasionally sitting down somewhere to scribble out my notes. Then I’ll come home and type everything up later, editing as I go. This is, in fact, my preferred way to work, but often, the weather, or my non-literary responsibilities, prevent me from going on these expeditions. It’s rare that I have a day, or even a couple of hours, that I can spend that way.

I’m trying to flesh out a short story right now, but I’m writing this blog post instead. Sometimes, I have to work on two things at once. Write a couple of sentences on one topic and then go  back to the other project, because I can’t stop my  brain from jumping around from one to the other anyway.

So I don’t know what to do exactly to improve this situation. It will definitely be one of my goals in 2012 to be more organized about this process. It’s also one of my goals to do more walking.

We believe we can say that our first issue was a success both from the standpoint of the quality of material we ended up with and with the readership we acquired. However, we are making a couple of changes based on lessons learned over the past two months.

December was slow, traffic-wise, what with all the holidays and such and all the content we were not posting. To rectify this, moving forward, we are going to start taking more advantage of the blog format facilitated by the WordPress platform we are using. Instead of doing a typical “issue” every month or two as initially planned, we will begin posting content as we approve it.

For the January 2011 issue, we have already made our selections, but we will post one or two pieces every couple of days throughout the month. We will keep doing an editor’s note periodically along with a table of contents that will be updated as new work is posted, thus creating the illusion of preserving the old-fashioned print media paradigm of “issues.”

To kick off the new issue, please enjoy Brent Stauffer’s short story, “A Good Snow.”