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J.A. Tyler’s writing can be found almost everywhere. He’s gotten three acceptance letters since you started reading this post. His work leans toward the surreal. His stories tend to be short in length but are organized in a way that urges the reader to unfold the textures and myriad meanings within. Aside from being a prolific writer Tyler serves on the editorial board of many publications. He has seven forthcoming books, and he’s just started another. And with all that going on he still found time to chat with us. Read our interview after the jump. — Brian Allen Carr

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Our List of Lists

Holy listmania! It’s the end of the year and every time we turn around folks are putting things in order from least to best, or best to least, or lining things up and saying, “I like ’em all equally.” We thought we’d call some of the better ones to your attention. You don’t have to read them all, but you have to know they exist. So here they are (in no particular order, of course). –- Brian Allen Carr

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UPSIDE DOWN my dad says and I know he means Australia because that is where I know these kangaroos come from. We read the sign last time and I remember, the map of Australia and the cartoon kangaroos drawn all over it.

IS THAT THE ONLY PLACE THEY LIVE my mom asks and my dad he nods his head up and down to say yes but says it out loud anyway.

YEP.

And she smiles and shakes her head and says THAT’S FUN.

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A Rat Race We Can Deal With

An unlikely fog enveloped Charleston, SC this morning. A solitary cherry picker led the pack of cars down the blinded road. After passing him and cresting the arc of a bridge, there was nothing in front of us, nothing to see. The experience reminded us of our sailing days, days spent anxiously rocking in the stillness of an offshore fog. This fog, though, was different; it infused our morning with a touch of serenity. And for that we are grateful. But we don’t want you to go into your morning blind. So how about a little reading? The Boston Globe loves Paul Auster’s Invisible. Academia is wary of the Abbeville Institute, as it should be. Howard Zinn’s The People’s History of the United States is revisited by a group of celebrities. Archeologists and geophysicists revisit Troy’s existence, and The Australian delves into one of the foundations of literature — The Iliad. Finally, Jake Adelstein makes his living fighting Japan’s foremost gangsters, which makes a battle with American media sound downright cruel. Into the foggy abyss we go. – Andrew Geer

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Great new(ish) stories from around the Web. Forget work for a minute and read a story. It’s good for you.

– He orders his eggs like his battles, pitched. Eats them fast off the plate—fork, mouth, fork, mouth—with no condiments. Finishes them off with a room-temperature beer (learned that in Luxembourg). Picks up his hat. Stands tall and shouts, “Thank you, egg, this morning! You genius bastard do-your-damndest chicken coffin son-of-a-bitch!” Looks around and nods. Places his hat. Winks at a girl on a wall calendar. Marches outside. Salutes the sun, and if there is no sun, salutes a cloud in the shape of malaria. — Sean Lovelace in Hayden’s Ferry Review

– Give us two tickets as far south as we can go, we’d said at the train station. We expected to find beaches, like in the brochures, but there are only rocks and cement. We expected to bed the girls who walk down the boulevard outside the pension every morning, their legs tanned by the Adriatic sun, but they don’t understand a word we say. We expected to bar-hop for a week straight but all the taverns are packed with young men standing around tall tables, elbow-to-elbow, with Tito looking down from every wall. — Mike Herndon in the Literary Bohemian

– Things started to fall apart the year the girl was murdered up on Pig Road, little more than a rutted trail, and along it the charred remains of a pig farm that had burned down so many years before that no one remembered. My sisters and I played there, among those ruins, inside the blackened cement foundation, digging around for treasures: canning jars, leather shoes, pieces of cloth we folded and stuck in our pockets. — Cinthia Ritchie in Memoir (and)

– Brooding silence accompanied the Johnson family sitting at the kitchen table. Pete Jr. noisily slurped down diluted potato soup and chomped on crusty bread, but his gurgling stomach remained unappeased. Annabelle, his ten-year-old sister, crinkled her nose, morosely swished her spoon through the broth, and ate only a bit. Pa Johnson did not eat at all. His elbows rested on the table as he braided his fingers. The wrinkles on his brow deepened as he somberly looked at his son and said, “You’re nineteen and ready to be a man. It’s time you be gettin’ out to California and diggin’ for the gold they’re findin’ out there.” — Ilan Herman in Miranda Magazine

– Lydia had accepted immediately when Valerie called with the invitation, looking forward to the days in the woods and the chance to see Valerie again after so long. The last time they had gone to dinner with her and Les. “You don’t see her any more now that she’s taken a new job,” she had told Carter. He had shaken his head, unable to think of a way to get out of it, not sure he wanted to. — Walter Cummins in PIF Magazine