If you’re in the Bay area and also keen to literary persuasion, be sure to check out Ethel Rohan’s reading at Green Apple Books tomorrow night. The shenanigans start at 7 pm. For more information, visit the Green Apple Books Web site. Good luck, Ethel!

Hey People. Ethel Rohan’s CUT THROUGH THE BONE is available for pre-order starting tomorrow, 10/15.

To whet your appetite, here’s a new trailer:

And this comes from Outside Writers Collective, a review written by Mel Bosworth:

The stories in this collection — many only a few pages long — are extremely potent. Pungent. Deceptively rich. Like stepping into a puddle and being swallowed whole. Whoops. There goes your umbrella.

Rohan writes about loss, about being trapped, about desperation, delusion. And she does so with a hand so steady you might think she’s a doctor slicing open a patient with a scalpel. And you’d be right, at least in part, because that’s precisely what she’s doing. Only you’re not simply observing. You’re the patient.

This is the sound of one hand clapping…

Maybe you know her from one of the many stories she’s published online and in print journals. Maybe you follow her lively blog, where she chronicles the ups and downs of the writing life. Or maybe you’ve seen her wave her magic wand here on DSM, where she heads our weekly Spotlight Series. In the end, it doesn’t really matter where or how you get your Ethel Rohan. What does matter is that her contribution to the literary community has always been sincere and compelling.

In short, she’s a damn fine read.

That’s why, when Ethel sent us CUT THROUGH THE BONE, a manuscript of 30 short stories, we were both honored and terribly excited.

After reading her stories, we still feel honored and excited. But now there’s something else coursing through our veins — pride, baby.

Yes, we’re proud. So proud we’ll shout it from the rooftops. So proud we’re ready to talk shit. So proud we’ll take three paragraphs to build it up:

Ethel Rohan’s CUT THROUGH THE BONE has been accepted by Dark Sky Books and will be published in December, 2010!

Here’s one of the stories, Reduced, which Dark Sky Magazine published back in April.

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Today, Elizabeth Ellen is on Dark Sky’s stage, afire. She’s bad. Kickass. Warrior.

I want to be just like her when I grow up [oops, too late]. When I’m reincarnated, then.

– Ethel Rohan

Writing wise, where are you now? Where are you going?

Oh my god, good question. Where am I? Fuck, I don’t know. I think I got lost, actually. I’m working on a story collection. I’m working on a new novel. I’m always working on flashes, and telling myself they’re not a waste of time.

What informs your creative process? How do you keep inspired?

I would say movies inspire me as much as anything. And then a small handful of stories and books. I was recently blown away by a Jonathan Safran Foer story in The New Yorker. Every line of it had me saying, “fuck yes!” Pretty much anything that doesn’t bore the shit out of me, inspires me. My biggest personal fear is boring other people (with my writing, I mean, though also in general).

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Today, Ethel Rohan brings Matthew Salesses to the Dark Sky stage.

Thank you, Matt, for your generous and insightful responses. I especially appreciated your frank thoughts on the internet and on online and print publication. I look forward to reading The Self-Beating Drum and watching Lost in Translation.

I note you were born in Korea. In O’Kim’s bar, Seoul, there’s video of me doing an Irish jig on the stage, in their surveillance camera archives. But that’s another story for another time. For now, the spotlight’s on Matthew Salesses. Enjoy.

– Ethel Rohan

Writing wise, where are you now? Where are you going?

I have two small books in development. The first is about an island on which people get epidemics like laziness, memory loss, magic, charisma. The wonderful people at PANK are doing that one, along with little books by Nicolle Elizabeth and yourself (hooray!). The second is about a POW after the Korean War. At the end of the war, a few Americans stayed in North Korea. This guy was one of them. Later he went back to America, got a few months furlough, married and had a honeymoon, and finally was arrested as a traitor. The novella is coming out from Flatmancrooked, who are doing some really exciting things.

I’m also working on a story about an adopted boy who goes to Korea and meets his birth mother without knowing who she is, and on a co-writing experiment with Nicolle Elizabeth.

Then there’s a novel that I’m hoping to finish final-ish revisions of soon. That’s the big project.

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