Octoberguest! Michelle Brooks

I met the delightfully vibrant Michelle this past summer when she was teaching the poetry section at the Tinker Mountain Writer's Workshop. Her work is raw, honest and provocative and it was a privilege to hear her reading it (poetry is best enjoyed live, don't you think? maybe with cocktails afterwards?). She's also at work on a memoir, Second Day Reported, which she's been teasing folks with on her wildly popular Michelle's Spell blog (she always has cocktail suggestions!). The Iowa Review will publish her essay The Ceiling Or The Floor, which she calls "the springboard" for Second Day Reported. Though it's amazing that the poor thing can work at all--She tells me she's still reeling from the end of the Sopranos!

Michelle's Spell is also her love letter to the city of Detroit. She's brought us a poem today, and some photos from Detroit.

Be sure to check out her books on her website.

Welcome, sweet Michelle!


[First published in Permafrost]

Make Yourself Small

God will come in later, of this I feel certain.
Let’s consider the nurse Richard Speck
didn’t kill, the one that he bound who still
managed to hide under a bed, only to find
all the others stabbed in the eyes and breasts.
You wanted details, right? Hide under
whatever you can find, make yourself small.
Everyone finds something horrible in time.
Best to close your eyes. Keep them closed.



This picture is at the Heidelburg Project, an outsider art project done by Tyree Guyton to educate people about the decay and inspire hope in inner-city Detroit.


Love Detroit -- taken in the Old Miami, a fixture of the Cass Corridor -- Vietnam Vet hangout, the name stands for Missing In Action In Michigan


Me at my former place of employ, Macomb Community College


my old bedroom -- not exactly a Detroit historic site, but :)


Thanks for visiting, Michelle!

Tomorrow: Erotic suspense writer Jennifer Talty!

[Remember--Everyone who comments is entered to win $100 Godiva Chocolatier and Harry & David giftbaskets, plus books from several Octoberguest! authors! Drawing held November 2nd.]

As Fast As I Can

(Amazing image by Amaroo.)

I'm a little jealous of my poet friends--not just because they work magic with so few words, but because their work is so, well, portable. More than portable. It's pithy as well.

Prose writers have a tougher time expressing complete themes and ideas on a single manuscript page. If we're doing our job properly, we can manage a few sharp images, but we really require much more paper.

I wish I could share more of my work in progress. I did, a bit, with First and Last Lines, which featured the first and last lines of each day's work from the final chapters of CALLING MR. LONELY HEARTS. And I will probably do it again with this next novel. (Soon! Those pesky copyedits are almost done....)

But in the meantime, here's the opening paragraph of a short story I'm finishing up (Again with the copyedits!) It's loosely based on the folktale The Gingerbread Man.

Sudie found the left hand first, curled against a log so rotted that it was melted, gritty brown, into the loamy soil beneath it. The fingers were bent at the first knuckle and she could see the broad nails, filmy at their centers and parchment white at their tips and nail beds. The thumb was tucked beneath the fingers so that at first she thought it might be missing. But there it was, its meaty tip peeking from between the fourth finger and the pinky, itself nearly as thick as a roll of dimes. Kneeling, she unsheathed her mushrooming knife and gently scraped the backside of its crescent blade against the forefinger, teasing one of the fine curls of coarse black hair away from the knuckle. She fell back with a breathless little “Oh,” certain that the forefinger had moved reflexively, shifting the dirt.

Hi, Michelle!

Meet Michelle Brooks. Poet. Very Cool Writer-Chick. Her poetry is a treat (sometimes a dark and scary treat, but we like that around here!), and her blog is deliciously idiosyncratic. One never knows what to expect--except a brand new pic of Michelle every day!