Michael Conniff's Community Substack Newsletter #1
Michael Conniff's Community Substack Newsletter #1
A doggie diary, a novel excerpt, a short story, and a writing rule made to be broken
Hello again everybody and welcome to my world with the first MC2 Substack newsletter.
Our batting order:
THE DOGGIE DIARIES is a stealth work embedded in EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY—50,000 words so far—a memoir of my quest to learn how to make money at an extremely advanced age. Since dogs are an important part of the story, I’m using the DIARIES to sucker the reader into my business tale to keep your tail wagging.
GARDENWILD is the closest I will ever get to writing a first novel but is only now seeing the light of day with this short story excerpt DREAMS OF THE DEMON. This tale originates with me and my son in the slurbs of New England, and asks the question: what if you hated someone who was so mean to your son you might actually want to kill him?
I really love OUT OF SPACE and the six-pack of short stories making up THE DYSTOPIAN SEXTET, a place where my writing and career in technology overlap. The story wonders what would happen to the body politic if we ran out of storage and hence lost our collective memories—and minds.
WRITE GOOD! was published in fall 2023 and grew from my frustration as a writing teacher watching students make the same mistakes over and over. Learn these rules, I figured, and then you can learn how to Break The Rules—that’s Rule #1 of course.
An excerpt from THE DOGGIE DIARIES (nonfiction)
Copyright © 2023
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These two sweepeas are the stars of THE DOGGIE DIARIES, the story of two dogs as their dog parents try to be a dog’s best friend.
In the foreground is our wonderful cavapoo Mr. D—and no, the "D" in his name does not stand for a blessed thing. He is a beautiful seven-year-old boy known around our town as "The Mayor," because he wants every vote. On his travels Mr. D goes up to everyone he sees and plops himself down waiting for the inevitable adoration. Sometimes he lies between people on their beach towels and they find him hilarious: he brings more pure joy to the world than any dog I've ever known.
Mr. D can be a bit grumpy and growly when you try to move him, but he has been a wonderful friend and protector to Ms. Dolly Llama, the little white Maltese-Yorkie rescue dog nestled behind him on the bed in this picture. We often find Dolly behind Mr. D in this way, looking to him for protection on the couch, in the kitchen, and even in our bedroom when they sleep together.
No one but my wife can pick up Ms. Dolly because no one touched her for two years in the puppy mill prison in South Carolina where she grew up. No wonder she is so terrified of the world…. Keep Reading….
A Short Story from the Novel Gardenwild
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I am the devil though it was not always thus.
As a professor of comparative religion at the state university, I counted myself on the side of the righteous in comparison to my peers. My colleagues might well have agreed, before the fall, if only because I had published books politely reviewed and rarely bought. I had never been a threat to anyone, and I harbored no ambition to become head of department when old Priestley dodders off. As a teacher, I have always been considered somewhat better than the average don: the government grants me modest sums to decode the meaning of Satanism in the 21st Century. I approach the subject with tact, and self-deprecation, and many subordinate clauses.
Why Satan? you say.
Why not?
Batman needs his Joker, Superman his Luthor, Luther his nail in the church door. I once wrote: If there had been no Satan, God would have had to invent one. And so God did, just to make Him look good. I allow myself such flippancy no more than twice or thrice a book, but the tenure committee still fell in love with my ability to reduce theology to barbs even an undergraduate might understand.
I do confess a need to bear witness to the personification of all that is wrong with the world. I need to know Satan better than he knows himself, not so much horns and tail, but the darkness that perforce falls over humankind in its dreams of the demon. At present, I am finishing a self-inflicted tome about The Evil One in the lives of the saints. My publisher is excited at the prospect of a modest sale: a spike, he calls it…. Keep Reading….
A Short Story from THE DYSTOPIAN SEXTET
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Remembering everything was everything to Larry Gapinski.
Larry had no room for predictions or prognostications because his head was filled up with remembering everything else. He was hands-down the best memory guy in the Southwest at the moment live entertainment came back to life after the pandemic. He was back doing shows in Boulder, Taos, Reno, Winslow—you name it. Larry had a circuit in place going back to the 1990s, but lean times for a memory master generated a need for people like him to remember all kinds of things in no particular order…. Keep Reading….
A rule made to be broken from WRITE GOOD 1.0
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All Rights Reserved
Rule #1
Break The Rules
Know the rule you are breaking.
Rule #1 is a shot across the bow of those who would say you can’t do that: of course you can as long as you are willfully breaking a rule for a good reason in a just cause. In the case of writing well versus writing good, the good is much better than going to the well because a writer should always find a natural way of saying the heretofore unsaid.
We start with cautionary tales because the greatest writers in the world know when you break a rule in the opening line of a novel, you just might be shouting to the heavens. So we blast off with writers breaking the rules, starting with one of the great first lines of all time…. Keep Reading (and breaking the rules)….