My Own Horn and How I Blow It

I've never been big on self-promotion. I've always resented professors who make the textbook they wrote a required purchase for their classes and never appreciated people who push their personal product on friends and family. (I mean, what do you say to these people? "I know you've poured your heart and soul into this new book/CD/painting/project/etc. but I resent having to buy one just because I'm your relative/friend/roommate/etc." There is no way out of that situation.) I've never felt comfortable making a big deal out of things when something good happens to me. If people ask, I'll tell them, but I never been the type to say, "Hey, guess how good my life is going!"

Nevertheless, having said all that, now is the time when good ol' Uncle Mark hawks his wares. I'll give you the lowdown and then I'll tell you why I'm making an exception for this case.

So five or six years ago, Suzanne, the girls, and I were driving to Malad, Idaho to visit my grandmother. We passed through Marsh Valley which is this vast, wide spot between the mountains that ring Pocatello and the hills that fill Oneida county. Out in the middle of the valley, surrounded by miles of absolutely nothing is Marsh Valley High School. It serves all the farm kids from Inkom, Lava, Downey, and other small areas. They drive in or get bussed in from all over. Anyway, as we were heading south past the school, I noticed a little cow creek with an outcropping of basalt nearby and I wondered if kids ever snuck out there to smoke. In my high school, there was an old box car set in the far corner of the parking lot and kids could easily wander out there, duck behind, and light up on lunch time. Out in the middle of nowhere, there weren't many places to hide so I envisioned two friends standing with their backs to the rock outcropping, watching the water flow by while they hid and smoked cigarettes.


(A view of MV in the winter.)

So that image was where it started - but somewhere along the line, I wondered what would happen if, as those two friends were standing there, snakes started to erupt out of the ground at their feet. Weird, right? I have no idea where that particular image came from but it stuck with me for a long time. Good, Mormon boys sneaking away to smoke and coming face to face with erupting snakes. Eventually, when we were living in Twin Falls, I sat down and started writing the story. I wrote the first section of it in a couple of days and then it sat for the better part of a year until I decided it needed to be finished. Over the course of a couple of weeks, I picked away at it until I had a full draft. I sent it off to a couple of wise friends who gave me good feedback - some of which I took, some of which I ignored (out of laziness, not out of disrespect for their wisdom). I ended up with a flawed but interesting little story. Officially, it was called "Cause" but my friend Stephen Carter gave it its more interesting and fun title, "Mormon Snake Volcano!" It sat on my hard drive for a couple of years until the fiction contest for the journal Irreantum came around. I figured it couldn't hurt to submit what I now call "MSV."

It didn't win anything. I heard from my friend, Darlene Young, that it was a finalist but ultimately it lost out to other, more polished stories. Eh. You win some, you lose some, right? Fortunately, Angela Hallstrom, editor of Irreantum and author of the excellent Bound on Earth, read the story during the selection process and thought it was worth salvaging. She wrote and asked if I'd still like it to be published. I said, "Nah, I don't care." Just kidding. I wet myself and then fell over my tongue and then said, "Yes, yes, sweet, fancy Moses, yes!"

So I spent a couple of months having the story beaten to a bloody pulp by the fiction editor who, I'm pretty sure, is a direct descendant of Marquis de Sade or might have escaped Germany to South America right around 1945. No, no, she's a lovely woman. Just kinda. . . uh. . . severe sometimes.

Anyway, all this is to tell you that the story is coming out in the November issue of Irreantum and it's going to be available for purchase soon. The journal website is http://irreantum.mormonletters.org but the info about buying the new issue isn't posted just yet.

Now, the reason I'm telling you to buy this issue (it will cost 12 bucks which seems like a lot for a journal but it's 300 pages long and so you will more than get your money's worth) is not just because my story is in it. That's the main reason, of course, but not the only one.

The other reason is that Irreantum represents the very best in Mormon writing and it needs support. It is not wildly liberal or obnoxiously in-your-face and confrontational like, say, Sunstone has been in the past. Nor is it sommnambulantly safe and predictable like the stories published by Desseret Book (not that there's anything wrong with either of those if that's your cup of fictional tea -- Postum, hot chocolate, whatever.) The main focus of the journal is to publish interesting, entertaining, well-written stories, essays, and poetry that somehow address the world and/or experience of Mormonism. The problem is, because it's less controversial, people hear about it less and it doesn't get the attention or the subscriptions of the other, larger entities out there.

So I'm telling you to shell out 12 bucks via PayPal because #1 - I'm publishing my first piece of fiction at age 34 and, by golly, that's worth 12 bones, #2 - it's a worthwhile cause, at least half as worthwhile as paying 12 bucks for candy bars from your kids' school, and #3 - there's a good chance you will read something in it that you will really, really like. It may not be my story (probably won't be) but there will be something, I can almost guarantee. (And actually, if you wanted to pay just a few dollars more, you'd get a whole year -- 3 issues -- of literary goodness delivered right to your door. Be the first kid on your block!)

* Correction: According to Angela Hallstrom, the issue will be 260 pages and will only cost 10 bucks. That's still a lot of fictional goodness for less than the cost of two value meals at Wendy's.