Welcome to another installment of If My Book, the Monkeybicycle feature in which authors compare their recently released books to weird things. This week Kim Magowan and Michelle Ross write about Don’t Take This the Wrong Way, their new story collection out from EastOver Press.
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were an unfortunate hairstyle, it would be a haircut given to you by someone you love and thought you could trust; afterwards, they will apologize profusely, but they will not be able to suppress their smile.
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were a Latin root, it would be cesare (the root of homicide, suicide, incision: “to cut, to kill”).
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were an alibi for a crime, it would be an embarrassing alibi, one so embarrassing that you’d rather take responsibility for a crime you didn’t commit than admit what it was you were doing (even here).
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were a kind of meat, it would be tongue.
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were a grudge, it would be over something inane and ridiculous, yet, well, needling, like, say, you catch your partner drying his hands on your bath towel versus the smaller towel hanging right there next to the sink basin just for that purpose; and you wonder, how many times has he desecrated my bath towel in this way? Why doesn’t he respect the sanctity of my towel?
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were a prank, it would be short-sheeting a bed: that experience of feeling trapped at the very moment one hopes to relax, and the bed transforming into a hot cage instead of a place of comfort and rest. “Harmless” prank, ha.
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were a toxic friend, it would be the friend (“freind” is a more appropriate spelling here because there’s something twisted in this relationship) who is always saying passive-aggressive things about you, your partner, your children; the friend whose modus operandi is manipulation; the friend who is so firmly wedged into your life that it will take years of patient effort to sever the tie.
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were a scourge, it would be blood blisters, the size of thumbtacks.
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were a date gone wrong, it would be the two of you going to do something kitschy like bowling but ending up at the ER because you break a finger when it doesn’t gracefully slip from the ball along with the others.
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were a drawer, it would have nothing in it but a plastic hourglass (in fact, a two-minute glass, for a boardgame) filled with a character’s dead grandmother’s ashes, because your collaborator created that object for a story SHE wrote, and you love it so, and wish she’d saved it for one of your collaborations. So ha, you’re putting it in the book-drawer.
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were a dumb trend, it would be an obnoxious food trend. Think mason jar salads or butter boards or fifty shades of avocado toast. And, of course, condiment cake.
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were one of your coworkers, she would be Alana Kilpatrick, always virtue-signalling and constantly in crisis, mostly about bullshit stuff. But even when it’s something serious, like her daughter’s eating disorder, there’s something about the way that Alana says her daughter is only 94 pounds that makes it sound like she’s bragging rather than lamenting, and this makes it hard for you to express concern for her concern, if she is indeed genuinely concerned, which objectively she should be.
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were a “creative” flavor of artisanal ice cream, it would feature a common weed dressed up to sound fancy–dandelion ambrosia, purslane passion. Maybe throw in a tacky topping, say pop rocks.
If Don’t Take this the Wrong Way were a pair of novelty socks, it would be colorful and patterned with hearts and flowers and smiley face emojis, but the text would read, “I hate people.”
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were an invertebrate, she would be a Flower Hat Jellyfish.
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were a weapon, it would be something unexpected and arguably innocuous, yet also menacing, an everyday object turned cruel, say a moldy vegetable placed on your desk while you’re in the bathroom. No amount of sanitation will make your desk feel clean and safe again because you will always wonder what else gross has touched your desk or your keyboard or your chair that you cannot see? Because if you didn’t know it before, you know it now: there’s someone in this office who’s out to get you.
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were a poison, it would be holly berries. There’s something incredibly seductive about the way their bright red coloring pops against those glossy, pointy leaves.
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were a bad boyfriend, he would be the one with the beautiful brown eyes who would disappear on you, not answer the phone, not answer the doorbell (this is all prior to the days of texts and Snapchat, the olden days when people could really disappear), and when you were in despair, turn up and say he was just on a camping trip, why are you freaking out? Before you ever heard the phrase “gaslighting,” before “ghosting” was a thing, he was the original phantom.
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were a high-scoring Scrabble word, it would be QUIXOTIC (Q on the double letter, O on the triple word, Bingoing all 7 letters, total points of 178). Your opponent blanches; this is the single greatest moment of your life.
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were something you saw on that long walk you took because you were angry at your partner and seriously contemplating leaving them, it would be a family of skunks. And, sure, there are a lot of different ways of interpreting this image, including that it means nothing at all; but those skunks, adorable as well as distressing, would be what turns you back around.
If Don’t Take This the Wrong Way were a game of truth or dare, first you would say “Truth,” and our book would ask you “What is the thing you are most ashamed of having done?” Then you would say “No, never mind, I choose Dare,” and our book would smile menacingly and say, “Too late.”
Michelle Ross is the author of three story collections: There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You, winner of the 2016 Moon City Short Fiction Award; Shapeshifting, winner of the 2020 Stillhouse Press Short Fiction Award (2021); and They Kept Running, winner of the 2021 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction (2022). Don’t Take This the Wrong Way, a story collection she cowrote with Kim Magowan, is forthcoming from EastOver Press. Her work is included in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, the Wigleaf Top 50, and the Norton anthology, Flash Fiction America. It’s received special mention in the Pushcart Prize anthology. She is an editor at 100 Word Story. You can find her at www.michellenross.com.
Kim Magowan lives in San Francisco and teaches in the English Department of Mills College at Northeastern University. She is the author of the short story collection How Far I’ve Come (2022), published by Gold Wake Press; the novel The Light Source (2019), published by 7.13 Books; and the short story collection Undoing (2018), which won the 2017 Moon City Press Fiction Award. Don’t Take This the Wrong Way, the short story collection she co-authored with Michelle Ross, is forthcoming from EastOver Press. Her stories have been selected for Best Small Fictions and Wigleaf’s Top 50. She is the Editor-in-Chief and Fiction Editor of Pithead Chapel. You can find her at www.kimmagowan.com.
Pre-order Don’t Take This the Wrong Way here.
