The Write Stuff - June
Life and Writing Updates
In lieu of the typical absurdity slash erotica slash government-watchlist-worthy manifestos I post on here, I wanted to give an update of what I’m currently working on:
*NOTE: If you want to read any of these stories, please reach out—I am more than happy to send you a copy. Everything is literary fiction.*
MY NOVEL
I have finished three drafts of my novel, "Cutthroat." The most recent was a hair over 90,000 words. I'm currently halfway through what should be the final version (I prefer to rewrite each draft from scratch.) Without going into too much detail, the novel is a retelling of the old testament through the lens of a traveling circus. It explores themes of childhood trauma, self-reinvention, and one’s constant search for control. I plan on pitching it as Geek Love meets Whiplash meets Daisy Jones and the Six. Another contemporary comp, at least with regards to style, would be Rita Bullwinkel's Headshot.
With the first half finished, I can confidently say I have a very good piece of contemporary fiction on my hands. I could not be more excited to begin querying the final version of it and one day get it published.
STORIES
I currently have five short stories I am submitting to literary journals.
Here is a brief summary of each as well as its opening line (in order of my own personal excitement about them):
BIRDIE: A professional sword swallower is trapped working in a drug-addled traveling circus, begging the question: When does a performance begin? And more importantly, does it ever truly end? This is a truncated version of my novel. When I finished writing it, I had an impossible craving to learn more about the world I had created and the characters who inhabited it. I think this is my most unique and fastest-moving story, and certainly my most personal one.
Opening line: “The woman snorts her fourth line of coke with the mimes; they are getting talkative.”
MARIE DEVONSHIRE: A Manhattan socialite locks herself out of her apartment and seeks shelter for the night. While she bounces around the city, she reconnects with people from her past, and, more importantly, decides who may inhabit her future. I wrote this after a strange, strange night I had in November, when I and a mysterious girl I met at a poetry reading (who used a fake name and spoke with a made-up accent) crashed a party in Tribeca. This story wrestles with themes of self-mythologizing, the power and allure of deceit, and the past’s incessant iron grip.
Opening line: “I think you know everything about a person the moment you meet them, and then slowly get to know them less as they go on telling you about themselves.”
MOMMY ISSUES: An interwoven narrative about a mother who has just murdered her child, and two strangers who meet in a park and go on a date. This story explores themes of parental trauma, attachment styles, and examines how nurture creates nature. Each character in this story is both seeking happiness, and—or, by—running away from their past.
Opening line: “I saw a baby stabbed today. Right in the heart.”
AN AREA A BEACH HAS DIED: I think this is my best story right now, as well as the one that is least in my typical writing voice. It is very short, just 2000 words, but I truly think that, should the right magazine accept it, it will go down as one of the best contemporary stories of the decade.
Opening line: “Lying on a hammock on the other end of the beach, Iyad watches Sami run shoeless through the sand; squinting past the sun's blinding glare, a book left open on his chest, he monitors his brother closely, worried the young boy might step on glass.”
PROJECTION OF AN ARTIST: During a period of writing heady, pseudoacademic dogshit, I was challenged by my friend Charlotte Carolina to stop flaunting my intelligence and finally write something that someone might give a shit about. “You should be writing what scares you,” she said. What I came up with was a fictional (haha) story about a cynical writer in the moments before a date. This story confronts themes of male loneliness, legacy-craving, and the masculine defensiveness that breeds one’s God complex.
First line: “In a moment, he will have an epiphany; but for now, standing in front of his bathroom mirror, its edges speckled white with dried toothpaste, as if waist deep in a static blizzard, the man is fixed on his hairline, something his friends have dubbed, ‘The Great Recession.’”
I have had stories published before, but these are the first I am sending strictly to top-tier literary journals. I think all five could be competitive in any publication. Even the rejection letters I have received thus far have been promising. Both Birdie and Marie Devonshire received separate personalized, complement-filled rejections from (for vagueness) one of the following: The New Yorker, Harper's, or Granta.
STANDUP
I don't have too many updates to share. I'm doing 4-7 shows per week, which is the perfect amount to fit my current writing schedule. Once I finish the novel, I’ll focus on getting up more.
Last week I was recommended by two professional comics to a top club in the city, so I'm waiting to hear back about an audition there.
I recently performed a set at KGB Bar on a show @tuesdaysattheredroom that was one of the more fun shows I've had this year. I did a new joke about Jane Austen and it killed. Full set here:
LIFE
...is going well! I’ve read 53 books this year (currently reading and LOVING Sons and Daughters by Chaim Grade.) I think my favorite new read has been How Should a Person Be by Sheila Heti, and my least favorite has been Pure Colour by Sheila Heti.
In other news:
I went on a good date last week and another one last night.
Hairline has receded 7% YTD.
A married woman after a show asked me to have sex with her because her husband was in Peru doing ayahuasca; when I told her no, she said, through tears, I was “part of the problem.”
I went on a date with a rabbi, and, in the middle of a story I was telling, she informed me I had a boring, monotone voice. This activated my neurosis, and I spent the rest of the date injecting the dramatic inflection-shifts of a prepubescent boy speaking Cantonese. Who knew rabbis could be assholes?
Charlotte Carolina just got back from Europe, and I’m off to get breakfast with her any minute now.
Like I said, if anyone wants to read any of my stories or chapters of my novel, please reach out either via substack or email samfrankjunior@gmail.com. I'd love to discuss them with any of you.
Don’t worry, I’ll be back with more Fisch Tails next Sunday. But I thought I owed you guys a little update. I might start doing one of these writing/life updates a month, especially as I progress on the novel and/or stories, so be on the lookout.
Love,
Sam Frank Jr.
•••
Sam Frank Jr. is a writer and standup comedian based in New York City. He has been published in The Bangalore Review, The Gramercy Review, and his standup comedy has been mentioned in the New York Times. He was named “Best Screenwriter” at the 2021 Austin Lift-Off Film Festival.
Sam is working on his debut novel about a traveling circus.
Sam can be reached at samfrankjunior@gmail.com
Really respect the hustle. Love your stuff and especially the opening line to Marie Devonshire.
Really respect the hustle!