June 1, 2024

Overstatement and Melodrama

A note from Steve Gergley

The Great Atlantic Highway & Other Stories by Steve Gergley is out now.

Twelve years ago this month, back when I still used Facebook, I wrote a post that contained some variation of the phrase, “I think I’m going to try my hand at writing.” Ever since then, I’ve spent thousands of hours writing, reading, editing, and proofreading fiction. Over the next six years, I wrote eight novels and hundreds of short stories, all of which I was very proud of. I knew they weren’t perfect, but I thought they were damn good. Then, in December of 2017, I sent my very best story to the literary magazine Driftwood Press for a professional critique. When I got the results more than a month later, I was devastated. Instead of the praise and the instant acceptance into the magazine I had expected, the editor tore apart my work with the cold, clinical, and emotionless precision of a surgeon. (The phrases “This makes no sense” and “overstatement and melodrama” appeared multiple times in his feedback.)

"Steve Gergley's stories are funny, sinister, and disorientingly off-kilter. Taken as a whole, this book creates an immersive and haunting world of its own, a shadow that will follow you for long after you've finished the book."

—Dan Chaon,  author of Among the Missing and Stay Awake.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the biggest favor anyone has ever done for me in the realm of creative writing. Because that critique taught me that brutal honesty is vastly more valuable than meaningless platitudes. And it also taught me that none of this is that serious, because you can always open up a new word document and start fresh.

With these lessons in mind, I did just that, and less than three months later, I published my very first piece of fiction online. Since then, I’ve published two books and more than one-hundred and fifty pieces of short fiction and poetry. And all that has led to my newest short story collection, The Great Atlantic Highway & Other Stories, which comes out today, courtesy of Malarkey Books.

Order The Great Atlantic Highway

Without the brutal honesty of that first editor from Driftwood Press, or the generous feedback of hundreds of other editors and readers who supported my work in the years leading up to the release of this book, none of these stories would be here, and this book wouldn’t exist. So I just want to say thank you to everyone who has supported me in any way over the years. Whether you’ve read my writing, bought one of my books, critiqued my work, or donated your time in any way to making this book become a reality, I’m incredibly grateful.

Thank you for everything. This means more than I can express. And I hope you enjoy the book.

—Steve Gergley

“Steve Gergley’s stories are meticulously weird, tender, and hilarious. Be careful with The Great Atlantic Highway & Other Stories—it will induce you down a stretch of interstate with exits that only lead to something strange and beautiful and exciting!”

—Shane Kowalski, author of Small Moods.

“From Gergley's vast breadth of imagination comes a new collection of nearly 50 short stories. Some are a dozen pages long, while others are under 500 words. Through this hyperactive, humorous, and horrifying display, we see human statues, ruthless gods, impossible bridges, and Schwarzenegger chat rooms. We see a soldier falling from the sky and a window inside of a tooth. Vengeful murder, bears, actors, and apples. Hardcore vs. death metal. A blurring between video game and dream. A modernist approach with a biblical gaze. It all takes place inside a brutalist society atop a brutalist planet so the magic that (frequently) happens is splattered in grit. Opening this book feels like visiting a drug dealer in an abandoned mall. Pocket a lighter. Bring a knife.”

—Ben Niespodziany, author of No Farther than the End of the Street and Cardboard Clouds.

“These stories are a little like if Tim Robinson went to get an MFA but was mostly too weird for the program and then wrote a book where he really got to let his voice shine instead of spending a couple years on SNL before I Think You Should Leave. Which is unfair and not-quite-right in a myriad of ways (to MFAs and SNL and Tim Robinson and Gergley himself and maybe even you?), but there's something about these stories that is both recognizable and not, both in the lineage of other favorites and also uniquely their own. These characters want to be human, but struggle at just how to do so, and their actions and decisions and the very mechanics of the story that are the most surreal are often the most honest and true, and also vice versa.”

—Aaron Burch, Author of Year of the Buffalo; Editor of HAD

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