I wish I could do
All the things that I can do
Though I’m way overdue
I’d be starting anew.

“There is an old-timey and, to my mind, very sound belief that an artist is a instrument for the muses, a kind of windmill converting the ether of existence into electricity which can then be used by the whole town. A life artist, then, is a lightning rod, conducting the divine energy to make themselves stronger, clearer receivers and better transmitters to the town, self-reflexive and rejuvenating. Theirs is a process of creative contractions in a cycle of death and rebirth. And, like the Mayan calendar entering a new cycle last year, it is time for a reboot.”

—Chris Wallace, “Afterlife”

“He often said he’d died in the war, just for a moment; that his soul left his body like a silk handkerchief, slipping out and levitating over his chest. It had returned without being called back, and I often wondered if writing for him was a way of knowing his soul was there after all, back in its place.”

“My major feedback is that the story’s reference to Carver’s ‘Cathedral’ is both a strength and a weakness. It’s a strength in that, like Carver, your sentences pack a punch, your dialogue is crisp and filled with subtext and your characters are suitably difficult to define in terms of good and evil. It’s a weakness is that some of the lines ("bub”, “That’s really something”) are straight lifts, and so, as a reader of Carver, I’m placed in the unenviable position of comparing your work to his, when really, all I want to do is lose myself in your story. At present this feels like a homage, as in, this story signals the next Ray Carver, whereas I want to read a story that makes me think, ‘holy shit, this is the first Jonathan Durbin, and I love it.’“