Since 2006, I've spent a week almost every summer at a workshop for novel writers—either Blue Heaven or a spinoff based on its organizing principles. And since fall of last year, I have co-produced and co-hosted a monthly reading series called Tuesday Funk at a Belgian beer bar on the north side of Chicago.

I'm pleased to announce that these two worlds will soon collide! I'm spending the next week at the Wellspring Workshop in Lake Geneva, WI, organized by Brad Beaulieu, but for one night only the group of us will be roadtripping back to Chicago to invade Tuesday Funk for a "Science Fiction Sextuple Feature."

This special edition of Tuesday Funk convenes Tuesday, June 21, 2011, 7:30 pm, in the upstairs lounge at Hopleaf, 5148 N. Clark St., Chicago. Arrive early, stake out a table in the upper room, and grab a beer from John at the cash-only bar. We start seating at 7:00 pm and no earlier. Admission is free, but you must be 21 or older.

Our readers will include Brenda Cooper, Sarah K. Castle, Holly McDowell, Gregory A. Wilson, Vincent Jorgensen, and Kelly Swails, not to mention, as usual, a Poem By Bill. We hope to see you there!

I don't say enough here about Tuesday Funk, the reading series at Hopleaf that I co-produce and co-host with Sara Ross. We have a great show coming tonight, with a lineup that includes Joe Weintraub, Keith Ecker, Maggie Kast, Steven H Silver, and Jenny Seay. I'll even read one of my poems (which is what I normally do, at least when I'm not reading someone else's).

We bill Tuesday Funk as Chicago's Eclectic Monthly Reading Series. We feature essays, poetry, short stories, and less categorizable performances in all genres of writing, but since being asked to help out with the series I've tried to shine a light where I can on science fiction. This month I'm very pleased to have shsilver on the bill, and in future months we'll have brad_beaulieu, finitemonkey, and even a night featuring participants from this summer's Wellspring Workshop.

All of which is by way of saying, please come out and hang with us tonight! Hopleaf is at 5148 N. Clark St. in Chicago. The reading takes place in the upstairs lounge. Seating begins at 7:00 pm, the reading at 7:30 pm. Arrive early or stand! Click the image below for more info:

First off, I must say that I made it home and back safely.

There was some debate about whether or not this month's Tuesday Funk reading would even happen, what with the blizzard and all going on here in Chicago. Hopleaf's opinion was that snow doesn't tend to keep audiences away as much as rain does, so we should go ahead and do it.

And I have to say, they were right. At least in a sense.

With so much snow predicted to fall, I didn't want to take the car over to Clark Street, so I tied our bass amp up tight inside two blue garbage bags, picked up the mike stand, and staggered the (according to Google Maps) 0.8 miles from my house to Hopleaf, with the frigid wind blowing in my face most of the way. I stopped to rest once in the lee of an alley just about sixty feet from Ashland Avenue when I felt like I couldn't continue. After a couple of minutes, the final stretch no longer seemed so daunting, and soon enough I was warm inside Hopleaf, setting up the speaker and mike and enjoying a Chimay our bartender provided free of charge.

By this time, three of our five scheduled readers had written to bow out, owing to the storm. But I had already lined up myself and Jackie Adamski as standby readers, so, with Eden Robins and Brooke Wonders present, we ended up with four readers in all. Ten audience members, including our bartender John.

All I can say about the reading itself is, it was one of those amazing evenings that when you try later to describe it to people who weren't there, you inevitably fall back on the lame descriptor, "You had to be there." There's just something about being part of a group of people who actually showed up at an event that no one in their right mind would have attended. Being there was a badge of honor in and of itself. Reading there was like being part of a secret cabal solving world hunger and global warming.

The only truly hairy bit, for me, anyway, came on the cab ride home. Sondra Morin and I shared a cab, and once it became obvious that the driver wasn't all that familiar with driving in snow, and given the fact that the outside world was only barely visible through the icy windshield (and that much of that consisted of glowing traffic lights alternating with the revolving lights of ambulances and fire engines), we abandoned the idea that the driver would take us each home to our doorsteps. Instead, we settled on a major intersection midway between our homes, flung twenty bucks at the driver, and each made our separate way home through the foot-or-more-high drifts. Yes, at least a foot of snow had fallen between the time I set out and the time I returned home.

And do you know what? I wouldn't trade the evening for anything, including having sat at home warm and cozy in front of the fire with a good book. Tuesday Funk rocked the free world tonight. Ten people know it, and the rest of you will just have to take our word for it.

I knew when I wrote an entry for my formatting blog about sentence spacing that I would probably make some people upset. I just didn't expect to hear about it so soon.

Three or four hours after posting it, I was at Hopleaf to see an excellent reading series called This Much Is True. (This is part of my campaign to visit all the reading series I can, so I can meet new writers, promote Tuesday Funk, and get ideas for promoting it.) In the line at the bar I ran into one of the producers of yet another local reading series, a fine one that will remain nameless, who said to me right off the bat, "I saw your post about two spaces at the end of a sentence today. I HATE TWO SPACES AT THE END OF A SENTENCE. I edit lawyers all day and they all do it, and I have to fix it, and it drives me crazy."

Which only underscores my contention that sentence spacing is the most contentious aspect of the bizarrely contentious issue of manuscript formatting. Or should that be italicizes?

One of the most exciting and unpredictable reading series in Chicago is Tuesday Funk, which takes place the first Tuesday of every month upstairs at Hopleaf Bar in Andersonville. Tuesday Funk has hosted wild-eyed poets, doe-eyed troubadours, and more excellent fiction, verse, and essays read live than you could shake a blue pencil at. I've been fortunate enough to have been asked to read there four times in the past couple of years myself, and I'm proud to have been considered an adjunct member of the Tuesday Funk family.

Reinhardt Suarez and Hallie Palladino of the Gothic Funk Nation have run the eclectic series with scary efficiency for nearly three years, but they're both moving on to greener pastures. I'm very pleased and more than a little humbled to announce that I will now be co-producing Tuesday Funk together with Sara Ross. We hope to keep the same great mix of genres and disciplines that has made the series so much fun in the past, while throwing in some curve balls to keep things fresh and interesting. We have some big shoes to fill.

While I never want the series to get away from its roots as a showcase for Chicago writers, I'd love to bring more out-of-towners into the mix too. So if you're a writer (or something similar) and plan to be in Chicago the first week of any given month, please drop me a line and I'll see if we have room for you. We'd love to have you.

Oh, another thing. Chicagoans, please mark your calendars for our next reading on Tuesday, October 5, 7:30 pm, at Hopleaf. I'll be reading again that night, together with a full slate of compadres, but most importantly we need to keep our attendance high so we can continue using Hopleaf's upstairs bar month after month. More reminders will follow, but I hope to see you there.

And finally, thanks to Hallie and Reinhardt for all their hard work, for their continued input and advice, and for entrusting us with their baby. We don't plan to let you down.

Hey, Chicagoans! I have a reading coming up tomorrow, Tuesday, March 2, 2010, as part of Chicago's Tuesday Funk Reading Series at Hopleaf.

It's my fourth appearance at Tuesday Funk, where I'll be appearing alongside Lisa Chalem, Reinhardt Suarez and (my Writers Workspace colleague) "Etiquette Bitch" Marianna Swallow. I'll be reading a segment from my collaboration with Derryl Murphy, Cast a Cold Eye.

The event takes place in the upstairs bar at Hopleaf, which opens at 7:00 pm. The reading itself begins at 7:30 pm. The address is:

Hopleaf Bar
5148 N. Clark St.
Chicago, IL 60660

Hopleaf is one of my very favorite bars, specializing in Belgian ales but with a menu of over 600 craft beers from around the world. (It's cash only at the upstairs bar, which features a smaller but still extensive beer list.) All that and excellent Belgian food too. The readings are always excellent and varied, and I hope to see you there!

Hey, Chicagoans! I have a reading coming up just a week from today, Tuesday, November 3, 2009, as part of Chicago's Tuesday Funk Reading Series.

I'll be appearing alongside Robert Duffer, Lynn Suh and Chris Sweet. It's my third time at Tuesday Funk, where I'll be reading another sequential installment from my memoir The Accidental Terrorist. The reading begins at 7:00 pm sharp upstairs at:

Hopleaf Bar 5148 N. Clark St. Chicago, IL 60660

Hopleaf is one of my very favorite bars in the world, specializing in Belgian ales but with a menu of over 600 craft beers from around the world. All that and excellent Belgian food too!

This is only Tuesday Funk's second time at Hopleaf, so by coming out and supporting the reading you'll help ensure that the series can return to this beautiful bar month after month after month.

I hope to see you there!