That’s me. I’m 13 or 14, and on vacation at Myrtle Beach. In this picture I have my arm around a girl whose name I can’t remember, but who I’m sure at the time I was madly in love with. What teenage boy wouldn’t be?

My romantic life was entirely made up of vacation-length love affairs during most of my teen years. I’d go to the beach and fall desperately for  a girl my age from another state who was as eager to turn her vacation into a love song as I was.

But after five short days of puppy love make out session we were stolen away from one another and taken back to our real lives. There was no internet back then so the only way we had to keep our profound desire for one another alive was through mixtapes and hand-written letters. For months after my vacations I wrote pages swearing my devotion to my newest soul mate, and walked to the mailbox each day anxiously waiting for her reply.

It was good practice for a writer, putting my innermost thoughts down on paper for a stranger who might not care and enduring the all that time with no words or answers. More than that, it allowed me to save a part of myself that would’ve been erased by time otherwise.

I don’t have the letters I sent out. They might be long since thrown away by this point, or like mine, buried in a shoebox in a basement. But I do have all the ones I received. Hundreds of them from girls who lived in different states, girls I loved with the pure blind want of youth who I’d never see again. There’s something incredibly powerful about young naive love that makes a teenage heart feel as if the world will break if one more day passes without hearing from the person you want most in the world; a person who is already more sense memory and idea than breathing and true. That’s what I want to share with you.

In the spirit of romance, of dumb devotion, of trying to figure out the world and place yourself in it in a way that matters, a copy of one of the love letters I received from my vacation love affairs will be sent to anyone who pre-orders my new collection Romance for Delinquenst from Foxhead Books. You can order it HERE.

This is a way to not only share my creative life with you, but also part of my teenage romantic past. It’s also a fun way to see how the two texts work together to form a conversation. And let’s be honest, who doesn’t like going through another person’s backpages to see what secrets or gems are lurking there.

This is my shoebox of burning love. If you pre-order Romance for Delinquents you will get a copy of one of these letters chosen at random. I’m not going to edit them in any way, other than removing the name, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the letter you get is embarrassing or funny. Those are always the best.

I hope this is will be fun for you all, that you enjoy my new collection, and dig the chance to spy into my teenage love stories.

Pre-sales for my forthcoming collection Romance for Delinquents are now open. You can pre-order your copy here! All pre-sales are included in the love letter promotion.

It’s official! I’m now represented by Roz Foster of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. Not only do I vibe with Roz, but the agency represents Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston among others. I couldn’t be more stoked!

I spent most of October locked away from the rest of the world. On most days I started before midnight and went to sleep around 5 A.M. I didn’t watch TV or movies, and sadly didn’t interact with my family as much as I should have. I  usually only ate once a day, breakfast, and lived off coffee more than actual food. I was obsessed. By the end of the month I’d lost around fifteen pounds, but I’d completed five drafts (including the final) of my new novel. I took the hit, I spent the time, I lost sleep and bled on the page, and now it’s over. I’m a person again.

My punk rock YA novel The Dream Academy is now in the hands of two agents (lit and TV/film), and I hope to hear something back from them soon. When I do I’ll know if all that time was worth it.

The only other literary-related thing I did last month besides staying buried in the k-hole of novel writing was read at The Writer’s Block Festival in Louisville. It was an honor to be a featured reader for their literary dance party remix. I read my story “Sock Monkey” from my upcoming collection Romance for Delinquents while the DJ spun Motley Crue and Van Halen. It was the most fun I’d had reading in a long time.

Looking ahead I’m in the process of hustling blurbs for my new collection which comes out January 1st from Foxhead Books. It’s always awkward to reach out to others for endorsements, but part of the writing business. I hope it all works out in the end.

I also should hear back soon from the agents regarding the novel that took up 73 days of my life, and am hopeful that it will be worth all my effort in the end.

Pre-sales for my forthcoming collection will be announced soon along with a cool promotion. Stay tuned. For now I’ve done my best, and need to detox from the mania. I need to eat, sleep, exercise, be nice to children, listen to music, read a newspaper, and learn what the kids are into these days. It’s been a long time, but it’s over for now.

My collection Romance for Delinquents is set for release January 1st, 2014, and even though it’s months away I’m in the process of setting up dates for the tour to promote it. If you would like me to do a reading and signing at your bookstore or college please contact me (mikehampton77@gmail.com), or if anyone has any suggestions please let me know. Hope to do a blog tour as well.

More information to come. Until then, I’m back to punk rock and writing.

Rise above,

Michael Wayne

This past month I’ve been working under the influence of not only prescription drugs and my own drive during all those long nights spent beating away on a laptop, but also under that of two men: John Hughes and GG Allin. On the surface the two have almost nothing in common, but I leaned on them both during September while I banged out the first draft of my new novel.

John Huges is one of my writing heroes. He was prolific, worked fast, and did most of his writing from 10 at night until 5 in the morning. We share the same hours, and a love of troubled kids trapped in high school. On nights when I wanted to quit, when it was already past four in the morning, I’d look at the picture I have of him in my office and go on.

GG Allin, along with other 70s and early 80s punk bands, set the tone for my novel. The characters are bad kids, and no one tried harder to do wrong, suffer more and beg for hurt than he did. He could take the pain. In front of the keyboard, tired and stressed, I wanted to as well.

It took 37 nights (8/23-9/28) of long runs to complete the first draft of my new novel Bad Kids from Dream Schools. At the end I had 281 pages, and 93. 606 wds. It’s the longest book I’ve ever written, and nearly enough to complete the National Novel Writing Month challenge twice.

Now the cutting begins. Then sentence level, then word level, edits. I hope to have the entire thing down to around 80,000 words by November 1st. I have an agent eager to see it, and anyone who knows about publishing understands that there’s a dead zone between mid-Nov to mid-Jan due to the holidays. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t gone this far in the first place.

The novel took up the majority of my writing time, but I did do take time to do four edits and complete my review of Rob Roberge’s The Cost of Living which came out in Atticus Review last month. My review of Alissa Nutting’s novel Tampa was also published in Necessary Fiction this September.

Aside from my writing the novel, last month I completed the final edits on my short story collection Romance for Delinquents which is set to be released 1/1/14 from Foxhead Books. I also had to make a suggested blurb contact list, which is as awkward as it sounds, but now I only have to send in an author photo and I’m more or less done until the book is released.

Oh, and for those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter (@motelheartache) this is the awesome cover Ryan Bradley did for my book. I couldn’t be happier with it.

Speaking of Ryan, Artistically Declined Press was honored this week by Flavorwire as one of the “25 Independent Presses That Prove this is the Golden Age of Indie Publishing.” You can read the complete list here. I’m thrilled that ADP got repped, and stoked they will be releasing my novella Roller Girls Love Bobby Knight in or around May of next year.

Artistically Declined Press was also mentioned, due to my own bad behavior, on the Other People Podcast when my letter was read at the start of episode 209 last month.

September is gone, and the leaves are starting to change at last. October will be filled with editing for me, but after that I’m taking a break for awhile. I need one. I have three books set for review, and more than a dozen I want to read.  November 1st isn’t that far off. I can take the pain til then.

More projects in the works after I take the first few weeks of November off . There’s always more to do.

The good folks at Flavorwire put out a list today of “25 Independent Press That Prove This is the Golden Age of Indie Publishing,” and were kind enough to include Aristically Declined Press among their top 25! I couldn’t be happier. They press is great to work with, and they’ll be releasing my novella Roller Girls Love Bobby Knight in May of next year.

You can read the entire Flavorwire list here.

You can check out Artistically Declined Press here. While you’re there be sure to pick up their releases from Ben Tanzer, Roxane Gay, and Shya Scanlon among others.

My review of Tampa by Alissa Nutting is now up at Necessary Fiction. It’s a raw, challenging work and definitely worth the read.

My review of Rob Roberge’s new novel The Cost of Living is now up at Atticus Review. You can check it out here.