Meet Darren Cormier
... an SNHU MFA brother and graduate.
Darren is presently working in publishing. An avid runner, he is training
for his first marathon: Hartford in October. He’s also a die-hard New York Mets
fan (God bless him), having gotten hooked in 1984, Dwight Gooden's rookie
season, Darryl Strawberry's second.
Here's his bio from his website (and that's Darren below): My earliest memories are of reading the
"funny pages" of the newspaper in nursery school. As a hyperactive
child, my family would always say that when I wasn't moving, my brain was, and
that the only thing that could get me to stop talking or moving would be to put
a book in my hands. Given this love of books and reading, it only seemed
natural that I would try my own hand at writing.
From the age of four, it seems I was destined to become a
writer. I have written and worked for
newspapers, publishing companies, the biotech industry, medical publications,
and short fiction. I have also worked as a bartender, cook, retail cashier,
envelope stuffer, data entry clerk, and a very brief stint hawking Snapple on
the streets of Boston. I received my
Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University
in July 2010 and my Bachelor's of Arts in Journalism from the University of
Hartford. I presently reside in the
Boston area with a growing collection of books.
This is from the illustrious Merle Drown: Darren
writes inventive, original fiction. His
stories cover an amazing range in character and subject, from an estranged
middle-aged Japanese couple to a young man grieving the death of his best
friend to a former child musician trying, at last, to play the piece that
flummoxed him. Darren will give you
belly pains of laughter, then on the next page break your heart. Darren experiments in form and structure, but
his stories aren’t experiments. They
accomplish what writers most want—they pull the reader into the vibrant world
of his pages. An impressive artist, Darren is always daring something new and
making it his own.
And here's the bio that appears on the cover of my
book (and that's me at work above): Darren Cormier was born in
Massachusetts. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Southern New
Hampshire University, where his short story “Opus No. 1” won the MFA award for
fiction and was subsequently published in Amoskeag.
Darren’s first book, A
Little Soul: 140 Twitterstories, is a collection of micro fiction, each
story or section of a story 140 characters or less. Some of the pieces
previously appeared in Raft Magazine,
one forty fiction, and Thrice Fiction. The book is available
for all eReaders and will be available in print in August 2012.
Some samples from Darren’s book:
Honesty is the Best
Policy: "I used to want to know
where you went at night. Now I just want to know you won't ask me the same
question."
On Reading Short
Stories Finishing a short story
gives me a sense of accomplishment, small and clean. Novels are so big and
messy.
'X' Marks The Spot We had dug twelve holes before we realized
the map was wrong. How to dispose of the shovels before mom used them on us was
now the question.
The Lord of the Rings
Reinterpreted There was good. And
evil. And there was a ring... …and a whole lot of weird names and dense prose
while things named hobbits try to destroy it.
Darren is currently working on short stories and revising
his novella "I'm Hoping This Will
Work", which is about a young man in his mid-20s trying to overcome
the death of his best friend which he feels responsible for. The novella was
the centerpiece of his MFA thesis, a collection of short stories titled I Am My Own Nemesis.
Two paragraphs from the first page below:
"I am hoping this will work, that when everything is
finished, the screaming phone calls, the booze, nameless women, nightmares, my
inability to read more than five pages at a time, and the blood, all that
fucking blood—when my front door is closed and locked for the final time, I’ll
be throwing my clothes in the back seat, driving those two blocks, one coffee
in hand, another in the cup holder, driving to pick up Andy, and we’ll drive
like we always talked about, to Montreal, Madagascar, cross-country, straight
across that Atlantic Ocean, anywhere, really it doesn’t matter; we’re just driving, him and me, anywhere...
... That’s what will happen, and I won’t
be kneeling in my room amid a stack of books and scotch at noon, socks that
haven’t been changed in three days clinging to my feet. I’ll be at work,
sending him stupid forwards, making plans for later, for this weekend, or
making plans with a girl that I will have met at a party. He’ll answer the phone when I call. I won’t
jump at the sound of tires screeching, I won’t be afraid to leave my house and
walk to the center; the walk to Davis won’t remind me of everything from that
night. It won’t remind me of anything,
because nothing will have happened."
Transsiberian … The Principessa Ann Marie and I enjoyed this
one quite a bit. It had us guessing what
was going on and what would happen next.
I loved the scenery (the cold) of Siberia/Russia, while the Principessa
shivered on the couch. A great cast and
a hell of a storyline will keep your eyes riveted to the screen. I was searching for Emily Mortimer movies on
NetFlix when I can across this one, but I wouldn’t know who she (or Tilda
Swinton) was/were if not for a wonderfully dark movie called Young Adam I
watched a few years back. Transsiberian
is a keeper …
HBO’s The Newsroom …
Speaking of Emily Mortimer, here she is again … and although I haven’t seen all
the episodes, what I have seen has been fun … I especially enjoy seeing the
Koch brothers exposed for the 1% policy setting motherfuckers they are … and
last night I watched as one of the characters did what I suspect many of us
would like to do—punch that shit stirring imbecile and right wing radio God,
Fat Limbaugh, in his fat face (minus the computer screen) …
—Knucks
Some more Stevie Ray for all a’yous ...
