"Sleepwalker" on IndyMogul

Last year, I adapted my short story "Sleepwalker" into a short screenplay called . . . well, "Sleepwalker". Michael Randolph directed the screenplay into a short film. It played at Hell's Half Mile Film Festival in Bay City.

Pretty much, after the film festival, Mike and I thought the film had lived its life.

Turns out, some folks at Indymogul.com found it and decided to include clips from it in their weekly show, "Best Short Films in the World".

Check it out: http://www.indymogul.com/

Kind Words from a Good Man

John Guzlowski, author of Lightning and Ashes (a powerful book of poems that recount his parents' lives as slave laborers in Nazi Germany)has posted some good words about my first novel, Into the Desperate Country.

Check it out: http://everythings-jake.blogspot.com/

Thanks, John.

A New Review from Top Amazon Reviewer, Grady Harp

Jeff Vande Zande writes novels that creep up on the reader like a hint of a gloaming breeze on a stagnant summer evening. He understands the arid plain on which we walk, looking for some meaning or reason to keep living while refusing to remove our blinders. And just when his carefully constructed characters begin to resemble so closely those people around us to the point of wondering where the story is going, he has the gift to turn each of his Midwest 'tropes' into people of pulsating flesh and blood who just happen to lead each other, at times without knowledge of purpose, into levels of growth that drive them indelibly into our psyches.

LANDSCAPE WITH FRAGMENTED FIGURES (the thoughtful title is not fully appreciated until the closing pages of this beautifully constructed, sensitive novel) deals with the terrain of Michigan and Ohio and those folks who live too far from the seas that connect this country to the world to see too far beyond their own disappointing lives. Ray Casper differed from his abusive father and was jolted by the death by cancer mother enough to move away from home and its factory existence atmosphere to pursue a career as an artist: and from this point the story could be interpreted as a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Failure. Ray has a brother Sammy whose life seemed predestined to copy his father's image of drunken ignorance of hope in the future. Ray has been following a line of failed relationships and even worse, failed inspirations as a painter and has just been deserted by Diane, the fellow artist lover who can no longer tolerate his inability to cope with his self absorption and loss of a sense of being alive, when Sammy calls and tearfully informs him of his estranged father's death. The two brothers, polar opposites in many ways, reunite and out of obligation, Ray invites Sammy to move into his Michigan home in hopes of repairing his alcoholic aimless brother. The differences between the minds of the two brothers drive both in directions of ever more sad situations, until through a series of events which include the return of pregnant Diane to the fold and a line of tragedies ultimately bring Ray back into the realm of seeing the world with the gifted eye of a painter.

That is the brief outline of where this complex novel travels. What makes Vande Zande's writing so rich is his ability to explore the psyches of his characters while simultaneously educating the reader about art and about filial and life partner love and forgiveness. Phrases that color the pages follow: 'The sky is a giant canvas, the fireworks just a kind of temporary paint. Fugitive colors'; 'I haven't had a vision in a long time. I had a gimmick for awhile, which pretended to be a vision....But I'm starting to feel that's not enough...My art is vapid.'; 'You can't adopt somebody else's subconscious or their way to the subconscious. When it works, it's big. But it seldom works.'; 'Art cannot come from that which is not in the world.'; 'Mix visual with emotion and end up with art.'; 'You capture the truth about individuals you're painting, but then in that truth there is also universal truth...'. But even these brief quotations from Vande Zande's writing focus on only one aspect of this multilayered novel.

In the end each reader will find personal paths to better understanding not only of the bland world to which they have sadly become accustomed, but will identify with a well crafted cast of characters whose time on this planet will give that reassurance that the future can be better. Jeff Vande Zande writes about common people with familiar problems, people who go unrecognized on the street perhaps, but who in his probing novels stand for more universal truths than any reader can expect. He has a clue as to why we are here in the first place and offers fascinating maps for where we can go. He has the gift and continues to share even more with each new novel. Grady Harp, February 09

One More Time

Sunday, Feb. 22, 2009 from 2-4 p.m.
The Scarab Club
217 E. Farnsworth at John R
(313) 831-1250

All readings are free and open to the public.
The February 22nd reading features:

Eddie Bell (Woodstock, NY Poet)Diamond Dancer & Friends (Detroit Performance Poet)Maria Costantini (MDW Master Level Workshop Poet & Author) Jeff Vande Zande (Michigan novelist, poet/author of new novel

Prom is Over

You were the prettiest.

No, you were the prettiest.

Better News

After Gulf Stream made me denounce literary magazine, Word Riot restored my faith.

Last Friday, I sent Word Riot a flash fiction piece entitled "A Raven, Then a Cross". They accepted it today! Three days. I'm not saying I expect a three-day turnaround from all lit mags, but three days beats the hell out of 371 days. And, for the record, an acceptance beats the hell out of a rejection.

So, go check out Word Riot: http://www.wordriot.org/

An Exercise in Sarcasm

I sent a short story to Gulf Stream magazine. They held onto it for 373 days. What follows is their rejection letter. I think the letter does a nice job of recognizing how long they held the story. There's a warmth to the letter that suggests that they understand the frustration that goes with having a story out at a magazine for so long. Plus, they gave me a clear sense as to the merits of the story and why they had to hold it for so long . . . and why, after all that time, it was a near-miss. I was touched to receive such a personal letter but, then too, I realized that I deserved such treatment after the exorbitant amount of time they held the story. Thanks, Gulf Stream!

Okay, get your asses ready for some warmth!


Dear Jeff,

Thank you for submitting your story to Gulf Stream. We appreciate the opportunity to read your work. Unfortunately, we are unable to accept your submission for publication at this time. We wish you the best of luck placing your work elsewhere.

Sincerely,

Fiction Editors
Gulf Stream Magazine


Damn, I feel like although I didn't have a story published, I met some really congenial people.

Gotta go . . . tears are welling.

THINGS, Things, things

I haven't posted in some time, so I thought I would. Things are good. I'm still plodding my way through Richard Ford's The Sportswriter. I'm not as taken with this book as I once was. Frank, the main character, is a little too whiny for me, a little too melodramatic. In any case, I will finish the book and then move on to Blake Butler's novella, EVER.



I just got my copy of EVER in the mail today. I read the first two pages, but they only served to make me feel old and unhip. Still, I'll read it. When I'm done, I'll be hip, and maybe even younger.

Amazon is offering a nice price on my novel, Landscape with Fragmented Figures. Check it out.



Still, it's better for me and Bottom Dog Press if you order directly from the press.

http://smithdocs.net/WorkingLiveshomepage2.html

I've been so caught up with the new novel that I forget about the first one, Into the Desperate Country. I've sold over 475 copies of it . . . and I'm closing in on 500. What a long road that has been.

Also, I've had two people mention to me this week how much they liked Into the Desperate Country.

One friend even wrote a few things in an email.

"Jeff, your novel is great. I'm not kidding. It was easily the best book I've read in the last year. It reminded me of Updike at his best--the same sharp, beautiful language, the same effortless narrative flow, the same intensity and complexity of character. I said that it was a page turner and it was. Everything you did kept me reading--not a weak spot anywhere.

And that's not to say that it was an easy novel to write. I know that trying to take 2-3 days and string them into a novel that's plausible is hard work. Everything has to work or nothing works. There's no place for down time when you are writing with this kind of focus.

You keep writing--this was terrific, and I'm going to tell my friends that."

Clearly, that was a nice email to receive about Into the Desperate Country.

Upcoming Reading in Detroit . . . me and others

February 22, Sunday 2-4 pm

Eddie Bell (Woodstock, NY Poet)Diamond Dancer & Friends (Detroit Performance Poet)Maria Costantini (MDW Master Level Workshop Poet & Author) Jeff Vande Zande (Michigan novelist, poet and author of a new novel from Bottom Dog Press)Robert Downes (Publisher of Northern Express weekly, author of new bookPlanet Backpacker)

The Scarab Club located at 217 E. Farnsworth at John R in the heart of the Cultural Center / Wayne State University Campus. The Scarab Club is directly behind the Detroit Institute for the Arts.