Guest Post: Matt Geiger on Life & Writing

Author Matt Geiger guest posts today on life & writing–or life in the midst of writing. And publishing. And these “extraordinarily wonderful things” we call books. Along with his guest post, I’m offering a book giveaway for his upcoming collection, Astonishing Tales* (HenschelHAUS, 2018).


On Life & Writing

"once upon a time" written on page

When I was a kid, I dreamed of being an author. I knew it wouldn’t make me rich, but as long as I could scrounge together enough money to buy some cardigan sweaters and a pipe, I was sure I could be happy. I could cultivate an aloof, eccentric nature, cover my clothing with coffee stains, and tousle my erratic hair on my own, for free. I would probably need to get a cat, too.

But most of all I would be, I imagined, very, very happy.

On the day my forthcoming book, Astonishing Tales!* (HenschelHAUS, 2018) became available for pre-order on Amazon Prime last week, I spent my time collecting warm cat urine in a little plastic test tube (because my cat got run over by a car and has a pelvis that is essentially now shrapnel) and driving my four-year-old daughter to the doctor (because she had a fever of 104) and freaking out.

Then I worried about the fact that the book needs a million more edits and perhaps the entire thing is embarrassingly prosaic and bad. Then I took a little break, a little “me time,” to worry about my weight, the increasing frequency with which I get up to pee in the middle of the night, and the fact that the president, whom I do not like, announces all his policy decisions and grievances on Twitter, which I also do not like.

black and white photo of crowded streetWhat was surprising to me that day, was the fact that the world did not come to a screeching halt to celebrate what was, for me, something important. It just kept chugging along, not endorsing or condemning me and my little book. The same thing happened when my daughter was born. I stepped outside the hospital to find a bunch of bleary-eyed, uninterested people going to work. “This isn’t just a normal day,” I thought. Don’t they know?”

When you write a book, you tend to feel special, like you’ve just walked on the moon or climbed Mount Everest. But of course, those of us who have spent much of our lives in bookstores know this isn’t true. This, we are well aware, has been done before, and by authors far better than us. Writing is one of the civilization’s oldest professions – perhaps the oldest profession you can do while fully clothed.

I write narrative nonfiction (true-ish stories) and something that people insist on calling “essays.” (I protest, because the word “essays” puts me to sleep after making me think of grade school.) My first book, released in 2016, contained 44 of these stories and (sigh) essays. A handful of people read the collection. It received some nice reviews, a couple not-so-nice ones (thanks again, Florida). It even won a couple of awards, which I carry with me everywhere and show to strangers each time the chance arises.

“Crazy weather we’re having, right?” someone says to me at the airport bar.

“Sure is,” I reply. “Which is why I wear this big winter coat. And you know what’s inside it? A Midwest Book Award, several melted cough drops, and a key whose matching door is currently not known to me.”

“Look at all the rain coming down!” sometime will mention in a coffee shop.

“Yeah, do you have a plastic bag? I don’t want my Indie Book Award to get wet when I run to my car.”

Sometimes, when I get really lucky, people ask my favorite question: “Where can I buy your books?”

“Well, at some bookstores,” I usually say. “Or online. You know, wherever you usually buy books.”

“So,” one friend replied thoughtfully in the frozen food aisle at the local supermarket, “can I buy it at the gas station? The gas station is right by my house.”

“I don’t think they sell books,” I responded. “I mean, I know they sell road maps, which are kind of like very messy books, but I don’t think they sell the kind of books I write.”

“Hhhmm,” he hummed, pondering laboriously. “Do they sell it here?”

“Here?”

“Yeah, here,” he continued. “At the grocery store. I mean, not right here with the popsicles. That would be crazy. But maybe over with paper towels and things?”

That aisle does have a lot of paper in it. He had a point. And what’s the difference, really, between my book first book (The Geiger Counter: Raised by Wolves & Other Stories, HenschelHAUS, 2016) and the napkins, except that the thing I made has pithy observations about fatherhood printed on it while items on these shelves say “Bounty” over and over again. They both have the same chance of winning a Nobel Prize in literature.

“No, I’m sorry but I don’t think they sell it here,” I said.

At this point in such conversations, people usually look at me like I’m really going out of my way to inconvenience them. Like they asked where to find my book, and I told them they must first locate the Golden Fleece and the Ark of the Covenant, and only then can they obtain a book of stories about a plump man-child and a cute baby.

Or like I told them it’s primarily sold in violent brothels, in Romania.

“Where do you normally buy books?” I ask. “They probably have it, or they could at least get it for you. If you don’t want to go to a physical book store, you can always get it from Amazon. That’s like a bookstore that also sells dish towels, batteries and diapers, and you don’t have to stand up, walk or drive a car, or even put on pants to get there.”

People congregating at a bookstoreThis is a departure from the way I grew up. When I was a kid and tagged along with my dad, he would carefully and precisely locate each city’s bookstores like they were an oasis in a savage desert. As if they were fire escapes from the tragic, burning fires of everyday mundanity and bourgeois commerce. We didn’t always know where to get food, water, or gasoline, but there was never any doubt about where to locate an out-of-print book.

And that has become one of my favorite aspects of being an author – the chance to meet other people who love books as much as I do. It’s like being a parent and meeting other parents.

“Oh, you have a baby?! So do we!” you’ll say. “You love your baby? You think your baby is cute and smart and special? What a coincidence; so do we! You are very tired and have no money? We have so much in common!”

It’s the same with books, which are extraordinarily wonderful things, even when they are not quite extraordinary.


About the Book

cover image for Astonishing TalesIn his new collection of stories, acclaimed author and humorist Matt Geiger seeks to “de-familiarize” us from the world, from the smallest detail to the most cosmic mythology, in order to see it all as if for the first time. Turning his “philosopher’s vision” to his own abundant Neanderthal DNA, parenting, competitive axe throwing, old age, and much more, he sets out in search of comic profundity. With a nod to the limits of human knowledge and understanding, particularly his own, he draws from the wisdom of an 83-year-old pin-up legend, Anton Chekhov, Santa Claus, modern boxers, Medieval monks, and of course, small children. Blending whimsy and gravitas, he unveils beauty, joy, and symmetry in a seemingly broken world.

Astonishing Tales!* (Your Astonishment May Vary) will hit bookshelves, the internet – and perhaps even some gas stations and grocery stores – in December of 2018. You can pre-order a copy HERE.

You can also enter the giveaway for a chance to win a copy (US residents only). Deadline to drop your name into the mix is Tuesday, August 21st.

About the Author

Matt GeigerMatt Geiger’s debut book, The Geiger Counter: Raised by Wolves & Other Stories was published in 2016. It won First Prize in the Midwest Book Awards and was named as a Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards and the American Book Fest. He is also the winner of numerous journalism awards. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife, his daughter, ten animals, and several metaphysical questions. Learn more about the author at geigerbooks.com.

*Photo credits: Headshot of Matt Geiger by Matthew Jefko; “once upon a time” from Visual Hunt; people congregating in bookstore by PHOTOPHANATIC1 on VisualHunt / CC BY-NC-SA.

May is Short Story Month!
3 ways to discover your next big read (including a #giveaway)

ICYMI, May is Short Story Month. And it’s a clickty-click day, with links below to three ways you can discover your next big read.


1. Scroll through Book Riot’s list of 100 Must-Read Contemporary Short Story Collections, for blurbs about books by established and new authors.

2. Browse Elizabeth Day’s list on The Guardian of 10 best short story collections by well-known authors you’d hate to miss.

3. Stop in at Fiction Writers Review for a month-full of short story highlights, including my review of Yang Huang’s new collection, My Old Faithful:

The idea of harmony is funny. Right off, I think of a sense of peace, a perfect blend. But there is complexity in the layers. I grew up the youngest in a family of five, and I have spent plenty of time reflecting on and searching for the harmony I always thought was lacking. . . . The truth is, though, that discord and differences mold us into a well-formed shape, individually and as a whole, and that shape, with its scratch of bitter and brush of sweet, is the essence of harmony. Yang Huang brings vision to this idea in her new collection of short stories, My Old Faithful, winner of the University of Massachusetts Press’s Juniper Prize.

As a BONUS, Click HERE for a chance to win a copy of My Old Faithful (courtesy of Fiction Writers Review and the University of Massachusetts Press). Deadline to enter is noon on Tuesday, May 29th.

Q&A with Lisa Romeo, author of Starting with Goodbye

“When the time comes to eulogize my father, I have only my list and I edit as I go, turning each listed item into an anecdote, realizing this is what my father did when he tried to teach me anything in life: storify it.”

~ from Starting with Goodbye


When I sat down to write this introduction, I wanted to open with those moments after my mother died. Lisa Romeo’s new memoir, Starting with Goodbye, is after all about the death of a parent. But my words came out trite, almost prepared: the air shifted, my world collapsed, I walked around in a fog for months on end. Those things are true, but they do not begin to tap into the complexities of grief. What about the dreams? The tiny altars I created? And the way her furniture filled the new house we had just closed on?

There is so much that must be felt and figured out and reconciled when we lose a mother or a father; it is anything but predictable.

Starting with Goodbye dives into those complexities, as Lisa Romeo takes the reader on a meandering journey exploring a father-daughter relationship from the end back to the beginning. This is not a simple trajectory in reverse, though; the story moves seamlessly through past and present, infused with conversations between her and her father after he has died, interactions that serve as invitations–for Lisa but for the reader as well. You cannot walk away from these pages unchanged; a story about one woman’s grief becomes an invitation to explore your own. Even more, it serves as impetus to reconcile relationships still within physical grasp.

I’m honored to host Lisa and thrilled to offer a book giveaway. CLICK HERE for a chance to win a copy of Starting with Goodbye (deadline to enter is Tuesday, May 22nd, at noon).

Now, welcome Lisa!

Christi Craig (CC): In the Acknowledgments you say, “This entire book is a thank you note to my father.” When you first began writing about your father, did you envision a full memoir? What was the journey like, from creating a list for his eulogy to a 200+ page reflection on your relationship?

Lisa Romeo (LR): A full memoir was definitely not my initial plan! The eulogy led to a few essays. Then I just kept writing (and publishing) essays that were all somehow thematically connected—about grief, my father—for about six years. Each essay seemed to include the seed for the next, and the next. I love writing essays, and I wrote at different lengths, in varying forms and styles, so it always kept feeling fresh.

Then I thought it would be a linked essay collection. Feedback though (from publishers, one book coach, and some very smart author friends) told me it would work better as a memoir. But I was stubborn for a few more years before starting on the memoir manuscript.

Looking back, I can see that I continued to develop as a writer alongside the trajectory of this project. The accumulation of the essays, especially the longer more complex ones, was a key for me to develop the confidence and experience to tackle the more traditional manuscript that became Starting with Goodbye. While I’m not so glad it took as long as it did, I’m grateful for all the steps along the way.

CC: When we lose someone we love, we are usually told to anticipate the 5 traditional stages of grief. But you push through the boundaries of those expectations, writing about a different way in which we may experience such loss. At one point in your memoir you ask yourself, “what…would people say if I told them that my way of grief…is to talk to my dead father, to watch him move through my house, to think that we’re getting better acquainted?” Was there a moment during those visits from your father when you or someone close to you questioned that experience? What do you hope readers will carry with them after finishing your book?

LR: First, I’m a rather serious, pragmatic person, not prone to the mystical or seemingly unexplainable ideas. I would not even say I’m that spiritual and I am not religious. So, this came out of nowhere. So initially I didn’t tell anyone, for a long time. Also, it felt very private and I wanted to hold on to that. For so much of my life I did not feel close to my father, and now here I had a chance.

My husband first found out I was talking to my dead father when he read it in one of my published essays. He was skeptical but stayed silent. When he lost his own father—who he worked beside every day for 40 years—then we were able to talk about it a bit more.

When friends read some of those essays, they began to confide that they too had similar experiences. Finally, I began talking about it and found that many people were relieved to tell me how they too talk to their dead departed loved ones. Other people seem grateful just to talk about their gone loved ones because that’s something we don’t do enough of in this country. We take the idea of “don’t speak ill of the dead” too far – and in many families the dead are just never spoken about, period I hope readers will come away perhaps a bit more willing to talk about those who are gone, and maybe talk to them as well. To know that the point of grief is not to get over someone, but to remember them, to be curious about them. A life ends, but not the relationship does not.

CC: Outside of your work as an author, you teach writing classes, workshops, retreats. In fact, you have one upcoming in New Jersey (through The Cedar Ridge Writers Series), “Creating Memoir from Memory”), teaching alongside Allison K. Williams. If only I lived closer! What do you love most about working with students who are in the thick of the writing and publication process?

LR: Well, first of all, I learn something about myself every single time I teach— either from the general discussion that develops and/or from particular students, so there is a direct, somewhat selfish benefit in that!  When writers are still in the developing stages of projects— whether that’s a full manuscript or a single essay — there are so many options and possibilities, some of which they themselves don’t even see because they are too close to the story. I love being able to help them draw out all the undeveloped parts of a bigger whole, find the nuance and subtext, dig down to the underlying story-beneath-the-story, and see all the different ways a story might go; or maybe it’s two or three stories and not just one. When that lightbulb goes off for the (student) writer, it feeds both of us.

CC: What are you reading these days?

LR: I just started The Art of the Wasted Day by Patricia Hampl, one of my favorite authors. I’d pre-ordered it and found it so ironic that the book arrived at one of the busiest times of my life, and its message is: slow down! I could feel my body loosen during the first chapter when she describes lolling under a shade tree as a young girl—but because it’s Patricia Hampl, it’s not just about lying under that tree!

When I get this busy, my reading slacks off and so I tend to reach for short stuff—I’ll pull a poetry collection from the shelf, or a short story anthology and dip in and out. True Story, from Creative Nonfiction Magazine, is perfect for that—a purse-sized mini-chapbook each month featuring one long essay or narrative nonfiction piece.

CC: What do you claim as your favorite writing space or where is a treasured place for retreat?

LR: The place I spend so much time each day working and writing IS my favorite spot. That was my goal five years ago when I replaced all the second-hand beige office furniture in my home office—yes, an entire room of my own!—with the furnishings and décor I wanted. The walls are bright red with white trim. There are two full walls and one-half wall covered in black wood bookcases. I have a huge black writing table (it’s really a dining room table; I hate desks) floating in the middle of the room. There’s a comfy wing chair in the corner, and I have all the space, light, and comfort I need. I work facing the front window so I see the snow piling up when I’m warm and cozy inside, and in summer I can enjoy the neighbors’ flowers.

~

Lisa Romeo is the author of Starting with Goodbye: A Daughter’s Memoir of Love after Loss, (University of Nevada Press). Her nonfiction is listed in Best American Essays 2016, and published widely, including the New York Times, O The Oprah Magazine, Longreads, Brain Child, Brevity, Hippocampus. Lisa teaches with Bay Path University’s MFA program, and works as a freelance editor and writing coach. She lives in northern New Jersey with her husband and sons.


DON’T FORGET! Click HERE to enter the giveaway
for a chance to win a copy of Starting with Goodbye.