Actually, it’s too bad there isn’t a quick, snappy word akin to “killer” that conveys the concept of a fate worse that death.

I’ve just finished a new draft of “The Quiltmaker,” the sequel to “The Button Bin.” It was originally a lumbering 18,000 words. Now it’s a slightly more lumbering 19,000 words. Yes, I know, a novella, that special writer’s nightmare.

When I sent the mostly cleaned up first draft out to betas, I got three distinct camps of feedback, that could be succinctly characterized as: 1) cut it at least in half; 2) expand it into a novel; 3) a few tweaks and you’re done. For now, I’m going to gamble on a variation of 3) that at least somewhat addresses concerns raised by both 1) and 2). Should that fail to find traction, I will re-evaluate, I suppose…

Now, to … await more feedback!

Posted in Fiction, Writing

Mythic Delirium is now closed to submissions. We’ll reopen again Aug. 1.

Those of you who sent in poems before the deadline … you’ll hear from me before the month is out.

Posted in Mythic Delirium

When I saw that T.J. McIntyre decided to resurrect his zine Southern Fried Weirdness as a Kindle anthology with all proceeds to go to tornado relief, I realized I might have something that would fit in with that project right well. And as it turns out, T.J. agrees, so I’m pleased to announce that my short story “The Music of Bremen Farm,” first published in Cabinet des Fées in ’06, will be part of this endeavor.

When I was a kid “The Bremen Town Musicians” was my favorite Grimm fable, and I even back then tried to write my own version on my parents’ typewriter. In my version, which as I recall was never finished, the “musicians” really were supernatural monsters.

But as a grown-up, I finally did get to write my own (delightfully gory) take on the story. Finished it, even! I’m delighted to have another chance to share it, and I hope other writers and readers will check out this cool project.

Posted in Short stories, Signal boosts

The cruellest month is over!

So I wound up posting fourteen free poems total in honor of National Poetry Month — and mini-posts about the making of most of them — for no greater reason than the thought that it might be a fun thing to do. And, as it turned out, it was.

If you missed any part of it, and for some reason decide you want to unmiss it, here’s a recap with links to all the poems and notes.

Poem Zero: “Phase Shift”

Poems from The Journey to Kailash:

I. “Defacing the Moon” (note about)
II. “Requited” (note about)
III. “A Curtain of Stars” (note about)
IV. “Bacchanal” (note about)
V. “Midnight Rendezvous, Boston” (note about)
VI. “Manifest Density” (note about)
VII. “Petals” (note about)
VIII. “Giving Back to the Muse” (note about)
IX. “Disaster at the BrainBank™ ATM” (note about)
X. “No One” (note about)
XI. “Sisyphus Walks” (note about)
XII. “The Strip Search” (note about)
XIII. “The Thirteenth Hell” (note about)

And as a final bit of fun, inspired by Saladin Ahmed … since I’ve been exploring my last poetry collection in the course of doing all this, I thought it would be fun to plug the whole thing into Wordle and see what I come up with.

Let’s just say I’m a poet who is prone to simile:

Posted in Poetry, Strangeness, The Journey to Kailash

Just a reminder that today is the final day to submit poems to be considered for Issue 25.

Posted in Editing, Mythic Delirium

This poem, the thirteenth and final piece in my impromptu National Poetry Month series, is practically a fanfic — an unofficial coda of sorts to Laird Barron’s kickass horror novella “Procession of the Black Sloth,” directly inspired by that story’s final moments. It’s a fun poem to perform live.

I’m honored Ellen Datlow chose it for inclusion in her first Best Horror of the Year volume.

(Read and hear the poem here.)

Tags: The Journey to Kailash sampler
Posted in Poetry, The Journey to Kailash

Tags: The Journey to Kailash sampler
Posted in Poetry, The Journey to Kailash

“The Strip Search” was a piece specifically written for stage performance; the fact that it went on to appear in Strange Horizons and win a Rhysling Award was a nice unexpected bonus.

I’m going to cheat today. I’ve already described the origin of this poem in great detail in an interview I did for Virginia Libraries in 2006. So I’m just going to crib myself:

“The Strip Search” began as a kind of complaint. In my day job I work as a courts reporter; I cover trials, lawsuits, all kinds of court cases. One of the side effects of having this job is that every day at least twice, and probably more often on any given day, I have to walk through a metal detector — after 9/11 all sorts of government institutions stepped up their security, and this is as true for courthouses as anywhere else. Now I like to wear suspenders when I’m dressed up for court. Suspenders are built with metal in them, so I was setting off the metal detector every time I came in. Some of the guards got a little frustrated with me and they started asking me, “Why do you keep wearing those?” My reaction was, “Doesn’t it seem a bit unfair that this heightened and probably justified — at least to some degree — paranoia about fellow human beings trickles down to the point where I’m not free to choose how to dress the way I want to, because I’m upsetting these metal detectors?”

So it’s because of this relatively trivial problem and my thoughts about its larger implications that I was suddenly struck with the idea of the gate of Hell operating as a metal detector. What would the gate of Hell detect? Well, it says “Abandon All Hope,” so no doubt if you entered that gate and you had some hope they would search you to find out where you were keeping it. My mind jumped on that: I imagined what that sort of metaphorical soul-searching — so to speak — would be like, and thus came the poem. …

It actually sat in my notebook as an unfinished draft for a few weeks. Then I was getting ready to perform at No Shame Theatre, an improv theater in Roanoke, and I needed a piece but I didn’t have one ready. I flipped through my notebook — I always carry some sort of notebook with me, since I never know when I might have some spare time when I can write something down — and discovered the remnants of that poem. So I redrafted it and finished it specifically to perform live.

So there’s actually some quasi-choreographed poses and gestures that go along with the poem; thus you haven’t really experienced the piece in full unless you’ve seen me perform it. But I’m glad it’s worked so well for people when stripped down to mere printed words or pixels.

Tags: The Journey to Kailash sampler
Posted in Poetry, The Journey to Kailash

Tags: The Journey to Kailash sampler
Posted in Poetry, The Journey to Kailash

About six years ago my buddy Charlie Saplak and I collaborated on a short story that re-imagines the Greek myth of Sisyphus, condemned to push a boulder uphill in Hell until it grows too heavy and rolls over top of him — after which he has to start all over again. Squish; repeat. In our version he has to reassemble the bodies of titans who have been torn apart by some cataclysm, but his work is always undone before he can finish.

During the composing process, Charlie asked me to consider writing a poem that would flesh out some of the details of this new Sisyphus’ world, and “Sisyphus Walks” is the result. The short story, which has yet to find a home, ended up quite different from the all-out surreal approach I went for in the poem, which borrows much of its imagery from a strange dream I had of a desolate landscape with pipes protruding up from the red, barren ground, through which can be heard voices carried from unseen caverns fathoms below the surface.

This happened to be the poem I had handy when Jessica Wick of Goblin Fruit invited me to submit to their first issue. Her co-editor, Amal El-Mohtar, who I hadn’t yet gotten to know, improved the piece considerably with a handful of edits.

To think that half a decade has passed since then; Goblin Fruit just celebrated its 5th anniversary with a terrific new issue. How time flies …

(Read and hear the poem here.)

Tags: The Journey to Kailash sampler
Posted in Poetry, The Journey to Kailash