John Counts On The Internet

“The Women of Brotherhood” keep flinging themselves from an old train bridge over the Bear River valley. The story appeared in the Sunday, Dec. 13 edition of the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row Journal. First paragraphs: Debbie Somsel stood behind the counter at the Brotherhood EZ Mart flipping through a celebrity magazine. The pages fluttered from…

Big Frank = Sambuca. Deer hunting cabins. Beefcake mags. Frozen meats. Just another day in Bear County. Big Frank was runner-up in Ann Arbor’s Current magazine’s fiction contest: First paragraphs: They left the windows unlocked in his wing of the Bear County Rehabilitation Facility. The authorities figured that if you ended up there, you had…

The Nudists in Joyland. Indeed. First paragraphs: Shelly Bowman had to save her mother from the nudists. One summer day Shelly’s father informed her that Margery Bowman, who previously had been best known for her rock collection and pot roasts, had run off to “some sex camp” on the shores of Lake Michigan in Bear County,…

The results of the aforementioned Associated Press journalism awards: 1st Place: Best Investigative Reporting 2nd Place: Best Writer 2nd Place Best Feature Story http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2015/05/mlive_media_group_sweeps_gener.html  

I’m a finalist for the Michigan AP Awards in the following categories: Best Writer, Best Feature Story and Best Investigative Reporting. These nominations are based on several stories I wrote for The Ann Arbor News in 2014, including a day spent out in Howell, Michigan after some high school students sent some racist tweets and…

Here’s a short story from Anthology of Chicago, which features fiction and poetry set in various Chicago neighborhoods.  I met this girl at The Mutiny and we got shitfaced. I mean beyond balls-out fucking blitzed, downing shots of Jameson and sucking down those big-ass mugs of Old Style as tall as your face from chin…

The good folks over at MG recently posted a contributor’s spotlight interview I did with them. Here’s the first question: How long have you been writing? I started writing in earnest around 14, mostly poetry and song lyrics because I was starting a band around this time. I launched into a first novel when I…

Another installment of life in Bear County, Michigan —  “Lucy and the Bear” in Chicago’s super-hype HYPERtext mag: First paragraphs: The little girl wanted to be a bear. Whenever she walked, she imagined the muscles in her arms and legs expanding, ripping off her shirt and pants and sprouting coarse, black hair. The little girl…

Some thoughts on Dan Gilbert’s berserk real estate binge in downtown Detroit for Belt magazine out of Cleveland. First paragraphs: To average people with average amounts of money, the very wealthy can come off like the hereditary elite did to struggling and hungry pre-democracy populations. The super-rich are the object of both envy and derision.…