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DUDE, WORST TITLE EVER | Nonfiction by Jim Roberts
“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” That quote is attributed to W. Somerset Maugham, although no one seems to know for sure if he wrote it. Deciding which advice to accept and which to reject is, for me, the most difficult part of writing fiction. There’s…
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Not Only Seen, but Also Desired
A Review of Jim Roberts’ Of Fathers & Gods By Nick Rees Gardner In an era that often favors micro- and very short fiction, the nine stories in Jim Roberts’ debut collection, Of Fathers & Gods, are more traditional in length, “long” short stories that range from about 8 to 30 pages. Rather than the…
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Fiction is Trouble
By Jim Roberts The late Chuck Kinder1—creative writing teacher to Michael Chabon and close friend to Raymond Carver—once told me that “fiction is trouble.” This was sometime around 1990 when I was just starting to write seriously, having fantasized about it for over twenty years, imagining myself vaulting the wall of my gray corporate cubicle…