Today we talk with Hunter Choate about how laughter can complicate, how lyricism is an act of creative rebellion, and the influence of James Salter.

Tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from? What fires you up? What embarrasses you?

I’m a thirty-something living in Orlando. Like most Floridians, I’m from somewhere else. I was born in Houston, Texas. I’ve lived all over the South and I spent a year in Italy. I’ve worked as a dishwasher, an aircraft mechanic in the Air Force, a financial analyst, and a marketing manager. I love to travel, to broaden my understanding of people and places. Writing fiction is relatively new to me. I find myself worrying I’ve come to it too late, so it’s a bit embarrassing to speak in earnest about my work.

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I am a piglet in my daughter’s eyes. No, wait: a cow now. Moo. Bippity boppity boo, she chants again, and I contort, and the metamorphosis continues. To a goat. A fish (Nemo. I have to be Nemo.). A frog from Muldonia. Muno and Foofa and Plex. At the same time? She drives a hard bargain, my daughter. But what can I say. Her magic persuades.

But here are five spells meant to transform you. Eat ‘em up. Me, I’m off to morph some more. Enjoy!

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Seattle folks, come out tonight for an exhibition of new work by MABUSE INDUSTRIES.

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The creep-out-of-the-morning-darkness is the time for a cup of coffee. It’s about easing into the day, a slow birth. It’s harder to slip the covers off in a gray dawn, but easier to turn on the hot shower with the icy drips off the windowsill. While the car warms up or the water temperature rises, enjoy the original self help books of the classics, How To Live For Dummies, by Leo Tolstoy. Paul Theroux has some advice on autobiographies. And Matt Briggs can help you go from the publishing house to your own house with his print on demand experience. What is it about New York that brings all of the writers there? Sports journalism is rarely the place for courageous steps, but Steve Buckley changes that. Finally, the head of University of Arizona’s creative writing program writes about Tucson in light of last weekend’s tragedy.

Dear Kevin Murphy,

I realize I told you I’d post tonight. But I can’t think a thing through to the end. I’m envious of those who can (I think Kyle Minor posts instead of sweating, which is fine because he’s brilliant) in blog form. Christ, I don’t want people to know what I’m thinking. Not about most things. Fiction’s best for me because I can muddle stuff behind texture. Behind plot. Most people who blog don’t like plot. They don’t like narrative. They’re of the opinion that narrative is fallacious, that traditional stories work to mislead the mind, forcing us to measure occurrences against preconceived notions in order to establish a moral that is, at best, entirely subjective, and, at worst, a tool of repression foisted upon lower classes by those who’ve established a cultural dominance.

I guess. It’s all just events that happen. Any resolution, and subsequent message that can be deduced from the culmination of the resolution measured against plot points in the story’s trajectory, is a forced thing. Nothing truly lines up unless the mind forces it so. All reasoning is truly training, and truth in language can only be found in the most elemental bits of our communications. Words. Comma placement. Even the sentence has become too big a container for us to dawdle upon. The thorn of a text is where the true genius must be measured.

I think people think that. They should paint there fingernails black and tell me food is for posers.

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