Slut book

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Finished a collection of short stories called Barbara the Slut by Lauren Holmes that was funny and engaging and not that deep. There were about 10 stories and maybe all of them were in first person and a few were told from the point of view of a teenager, but not in a cutified way. One story was told from the point of view of a dog. I skipped that one the first time around, but went back to it after I ran out of other stories. Nothing deep about them--I mean, for the title one, you didn't get all of this detail about why the teenager slept with all of these boys--except maybe because she had an autistic brother and over-educated and slightly clueless parents, but I liked that about it--that she was just a girl who didn't really know how to be around boys and thought she had to sleep with them.

It reminded me that I don't have to try so hard to give back story or meaning to my stories. That there doesn't have to be some big reveal, but I just have to render it in a funny or interesting or truthful way. It makes me want to go back to the Hammersly story and figure it out a bit more, because it's not all that different from what Holmes was writing, and in fact, is a little bit more interesting and dark. Maybe she got her collection published by Penguin because she went to the Iowa Writer's Workshop.

Maybe I should send my work to the same publisher: Riverhead Books. Yes, ten stories and all of them are first person. That's almost like cheating. I'm also still interested in the serial killer of men one. Maybe that should just be a short story told from the point of view of the detective in charge of the case.

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