The website for the recently published anthology You Must Be This Tall to Ride has also become a literary magazine publishing short stories online, of which my story "A Certain Number of Bedrooms, a Certain Number of Baths" is one of the first. You Must Be This Tall to Ride was edited by BJ Hollars, and contains twenty coming-of-age stories from some of my favorite writers. The full cast of contributors includes Steve Almond, Aimee Bender, Kate Bernheimer, Ryan Boudinot, Judy Budnitz, Dan Chaon, Brock Clarke, Michael Czyzniekewski, Stuart Dybek, Michael Martone, Antonya Nelson, Peter Orner, Jack Pendarvis, Benjamin Percy, Andrew Porter, Chad Simpson, George Singleton, Brady Udall, Laura van den Berg, and Ryan Van Meter, each of whom contributed a craft essay and writing exercise related to their story.

"A Certain Number of Bedrooms, a Certain Number of Baths" originally appeared in slightly different form in Caketrain 04. Here's the opening paragraph:

The boy carries the blueprint catalogs everywhere he goes. At school, he keeps them in his backpack, only occasionally looking inside to spy on their colorful covers, comforted simply by their presence, their proximity. It is different at home. After school, he locks himself in the empty house and sits at the kitchen table, where he fans the catalogs out in front of him as he eats his snack. He compares the artist’s renditions on the left page with the floor plans on the right, then moves to the living room floor, where he turns the thin catalog pages and ignores his cartoons, turning the volume all the way down so he can hear himself enunciating the names of the homes he hopes his father will build.

You can read the rest of the story here, and you can order the anthology at Amazon or any number of other places. I got my copy last week, and I hope you'll consider checking it out yourself-- It's a great-looking book, and the insides are excellent reading.

UPDATE: Blake Butler wrote some kind words about the story at the recently redesigned HTML Giant, saying that "Matt Bell demonstrates his amazing ability to meld the unknown and the curiously black with the most identifiable of human moments, without the baggage of sentimental cheese that often crops up in making something seem ‘human.’" Thanks, Blake!