What role must a painful past play in an imaginary future? In Dan Tremaglio’s genre-melting debut—a novella that wanders through a collection of flash fictions & prose poems—a pot shop employee named Z is summoned to the studio of a world-famous sculptor whose funeral is later that day. Accepting the call if only to avoid his high-achieving twin sister, Z descends into a liminal wonderland of found objects, lyrics, artifacts, absurdities, dialogues, & dreams. When he reemerges thirty slip-streaming stories later, he must finally decide if he is ready to lay old ghosts to rest.
Available now for pre-order from Mint Hill Books/Main Street Rag for release in early 2022.
ADVANCE PRAISE:
“The complexities of death, family, work—even vacationing alone—are distilled to their wry and perfectly absurd essence under Dan Tremaglio’s pen. There’s a wisdom in each character navigating their worlds, and in them we see all of our broken and smoldering bits reflected back—the bits we like to keep hidden or at best laugh off. There is genius here worth returning to again and again.” —Ashley Morrow Hermsmeier, author of Something Like the End
“’Wack-bone’ (noun): Site in human psyche charmed and/or unsettled by oddball, off-kilter, one-of-a-kind visions of our world. Example: 'Half an Arc & Artifacts & Then the Other Half, new fiction by Dan Tremaglio, will give you a good jab in your wack-bone.' Fans of Donald Barthelme, Italo Calvino, Deb Olin Unferth, Laura van den Berg and other literary adventurers will find themselves right at home. Tremaglio is a writer to watch with giddy expectation.” —David Long, author of The Falling Boy and The Inhabited World
“Dan Tremaglio’s debut is a collection of dreams: blue meteorites, lettuce-eating dogs, meaningful eye contact while whale watching. Who knew we needed a book about bologna and xylophones and the fear of belly buttons. This unexpected, provocative work is a fresh take on the ordinary. A lyrical plunge into the beauty of being interminably human.” —Tom Griffen, author of With a Good Heart and Imagine the Sea