Magen Cubed's Blog, page 38

Fortresses of solitude

I have a very social job.

I work in customer service and hospitality. That's the nice, polite way of putting it. It's one of the least demeaning and aggravating jobs I've had over the years, and the pay is actually pretty good, all things considered. Still I spend all hours of the day and night, dealing with the stupid, faceless, selfish masses of the greater Fort Worth area. Watching them drink overpriced, glitter-named alcoholic beverages and shovel food into their faces, with little understanding of how that food arrived to their tables in the first place. Every day I deal with a building filled with people with varying degrees of emotional damage and personal dysfunction, because the restaurant industry only runs on a very specific range of personality types. They're pleasant but largely (endearingly) strange, and sometimes a little creepy, and all of them drink and smoke too much. It just comes with the territory.

So does my uniform smile, my uniform 80% black attire, my uniform politeness and civility.

After work, I come home to full house of people working odd shifts. They come and go at random hours. There's little privacy, little solitude there, with somebody always arriving and leaving and entering without knocking. Having already spent all day staring at strange people at work, I listen to the shenanigans of the people I live with. Their fights, their jokes, their back-biting and their indiscretions. Emotional dysfunction on top of emotional dysfunction. So when somebody stops me on way leaving work or pokes their head in my room, to ask me to go out for a drink, I usually just shrug.

"Nah," I say, my pajamas on, a drink already in hand, "I'm fine."

People think it's my social anxiety, or that I'm just lonely. There must be some kind of little flaw, under all the other little flaws that keep me smiling and faking politeness to my strange coworkers and all our stupid, wall-eyed customers. The reality is I get tired of looking at other people. I get tired of putting on faces and acts and uniforms and being around everybody else. Sometimes I just need to be alone.

–

Other writers don't really talk to me. I'm surprisingly okay with that.

I've spent the last few years waging tiny, private wars against morons on the internet. You know who I'm talking about. The types of writers who masturbate over magnetic fridge poetry in 140 character drivel about "the writer's life." The types of writers who equate their work to a mystical adventure or a magical gift, to be shared with the hungry masses. The types of writers who talk incessantly about their words, but don't have a lot to show for themselves past that. They can fill up a Twitter or Facebook feed like nobody's business, though.

I don't like these people. I don't want to deal with these people. I didn't talk to them at school when they were sitting around class. Always smug up in the front row, patting themselves on their backs for the odd original thought they had, when they weren't following the instructor around begging for his or her approval. And yet these are the people that now send me endless follow and friend requests, and private messages about reviewing their books, and leave grandstanding notes on personal status updates to promote themselves on my social networking platforms of choice.

These special snowflakes offend me on a personal level.

So when people ask me why I don't participate in the writing community at large, I need only point them to any masturbatory update on my Twitter feed. I'm fine with staying in my corner, with the small group of smart, talented artists and authors I've cultivated there. The larger sea of writers doesn't interest me in the slightest.

If that makes me antisocial, so be it.

–

I was never good at parties. I can appreciate them, and occasionally have a good time, but I've never enjoyed them very much. I don't like bar-hopping and clubbing, either. It's all noisy and stupid and full of people acting like drunk children, who feel entitled to have fun at the cost of their friends' personal safety and enjoyment. (I've had a few raw experiences in the club scene, but I won't go into it now.) It's not that I don't like going out, because I do. I love going out for dinner and a few drinks with friends. I also love going to the movies, or to a concert, or to the museum. Or to the book store, or a music festival, or an art show, or the zoo.

Man, I love the zoo.

You know what? Fuck it all. Let's just go to the zoo.

–

When I tell people I spend a lot of time in, they look at me strangely.

"But you're so funny," they say in a state of disbelief. "You're so much fun to be around."

Because apparently if you enjoy spending your Tuesday nights in your pajamas, watching Sherlock on Netflix and talking about it with your girlfriend Melissa, there must be something wrong with you. Even if that same Tuesday night involves a stiff drink — or the occasional magic brownie, after all, you're not a savage — people can't even conceive of it.

"Well, I enjoy going out," I always say. "Just not with people like you."

That usually shuts them up.

–

Today I have to go to work. It's Sunday, which means everybody's going to be out with their families. Having a good time, enjoying themselves with their friends and loved ones. After work, I'm going to go get something to eat at my favorite restaurant just down the way, and finish a book I'm reading. I'll be alone. When I get home, I'm going to put my pajamas on, have a drink, and put on the television. I might call my girlfriend if she isn't busy. I might not.

Either way, I'm going to have a fantastic time.

Monday morning's coffee and reflection

Last night I was standing on a patio at around midnight, outside a bar in downtown Fort Worth. I was talking to some coworkers, watching the traffic lights change down the street outside the city library and cars drift by in the dark. They were doing shots of Jameson with sides of Guinness. I was drinking whiskey sours. I only ever drink whiskey these days, having burned myself out on tequila shots one too many times. We were all discussing literature and politics and quoting Chuck Palahniuk, specifically Fight Club. (Fight Club is my favorite movie slash book, and most people I encounter — especially women — can't appreciate why.) And so I was recounting my girlfriend's adventures at last year's Miami Book Festival to watch Palahniuk give a public reading of Guts, because it's just a good story.

Half the crowd walked out. At least one person fainted. It made her local paper as the highlight (maybe lowlight, whichever) of the whole episode. I was both pleased for her and insanely jealous of her continued existence.

Somewhere in the middle of a discussion about government conspiracies and LSD and Pope Benedict XVI, it sort of dawned on me how strange my life is from time to time.

–

I have fond memories of standing in my backyard in a ship captain's hat and rubber waders, shooting the petals off my grandmother's rose bushes for target practice. I have even fonder memories of sitting on the concrete embankment of a bridge at a park, admiring the graffiti and hobo signs at dusk. I remember walking to the church to vote on Election Day 2008 at eight o'clock in the morning, counting the used condoms and broken vinyl records in the gutters, and passing an irritated-looking leather-daddy carrying a case of Big Red over his shoulder. Just this last New Year's Eve I was sitting in a bar watching my brother and his latest hobo sign tattoo (for his collection on the topic of transient culture and Cold War Americana) bleed charismatically on a waitress named Liza in tall boots, like a Tom Waits song made flesh.

At age thirteen, I once wasted an entire week on a whiskey bender. I also once inadvertently crashed a civil rights march on my way to an arts festival, which made it difficult to walk back to my car.

When I tell people these stories, they just look at me strangely.

–

I wake up in every morning to feed the dogs and the cats, and to shake the turtle out of his box. The turtle is a four-year-old red-eared slider named Filburt. Filburt is a fresh-water turtle. Knowing this, he still refuses to live in the water, and spends all his time holed up in a cardboard box in my bathroom where he lives, next to a makeshift pond made from a Christmas wreath box and a generous amount of duct tape.

I spend most days dragging Filburt out of his box and putting him in the water, so he doesn't dry up. A dry fresh-water turtle is beef jerky in a shell, and I have no use for beef jerky. I spend nearly all my days making sure Filburt doesn't escape his pen in the bathroom and make a break for the house, where he chases my cats around and makes forts under my bed. As one would imagine, I spend a lot of time yelling at Filburt. Filburt doesn't care, and continues making  his daring escape for freedom, biting at cats and building houses out of old socks. Like a tiny Steve McQueen, if Steve McQueen was eight inches long and lived in a wreath box, and insisted on making my life miserable.

–

Did I mention there exists on the internet photos of my girlfriend, in a wedding veil with a bouquet standing, next to an entirely too content-looking Chuck Palahniuk? Fuck my life for being so lame.

–

Flash-forward to the middle of the night, on the side of 1-20 West. Sitting in a car of drunk people, watching one of them vomit his Guinness and Jameson up in the median. This, of course, is after having already hung his head out the window, to vomit all over the side of my car while we traveled at 65 miles-per-hour. After I finally stopped laughing, I decided this whole ordeal was going in a story.

Just as soon as I hosed off my car.

–

As I type this, Filburt is in the next room, trying to commit suicide via 100 watt basking lamp because he's determined to fry like a chicken dinner. If it makes him happy, who I am to tell him no?

–

At around nine o'clock this morning, nursing a cup of coffee and contemplating the magic brownies in the kitchen that my mother nicked off some coworkers at the office party last night, I'm thinking it might be time to dust off that bizarro novel I've been working on for the last two years. It's about an office worker, a desk-jockey named Dan that doesn't get a say in his own life until a parasite eats and replaces his tongue, sending him on a hallucinatory roller-coaster of black market organ harvesting, mystical shamen, nautical sexual fetishists, and burning down his ex-girlfriend's house. My life isn't quite that strange, but it has its moments.

Maybe it's time to do something with them.

Vote for me

 

Here I am, sitting around on a Sunday morning drinking coffee and listening to Styx, when I get an interesting bit of news.

Two of the anthologies I appeared in last year, Dark Doorways from Post-Mortem Press, and Phobophobia from Dark Continents Publishing, are on the Predators and Editors 2011 Reader's Poll for best anthology. One features Ain't No Grave, my autopsy on the failed marriage of Frank and Alice during the zombie apocalypse, and the other features Ymophobia, the story of a physicist looking for God that accidentally finds Hell instead. As you can imagine, it's a nice feeling.

I don't know which one you should vote for. I think they're both good books, and I'm proud of both stories. But just know that any vote for either of these books will not be in vain. Because, as your nominee, I will do everything in my power to end the scourge of bad horror writing forever. Never again will I allow Courtney Cox to make another Scream movie, and any vampires caught sparkling will be shot on sight. So do your part  in the fight against crappy books, and vote for one of these fine publications. I promise you won't regret it.

Thank you for your support, and God bless America.

No smoking

I don't smoke. I never picked up the habit. No taste for it, no nicotine itch to keep me coming back for more.

I live with smokers. The lifelong commitment kind of smokers. The pack-and-a-half — maybe two — per person kind of smokers. Gray smoke drifts over the television and dinner table in steel wool clouds. Gray ash gets ground into wood grain and upholstery in black half-circles like punctures, gets into clothes and jackets and hair and everything else.

Everywhere I go, there's smoke. If I somehow manage to not die of lung cancer from second-hand smoke, I'll be terribly surprised.

–

Cigarette smoke fills the car on the highway when I'm passing faded billboards for diet pills and thrift malls on my way downtown. That's what happens when you travel with smokers. It likes to swirl over me in the comfortable pocket of head-room promised at the dealership when I got my generic Japanese compact car. Music on the radio fills the space between the smoke drifts, tinny chords from the Nixon presidency, like a 1970s counter-culture movie poster. It's a nice juxtaposition against my clean white economy car and the Starfleet Academy campus parking permit hanging from my rearview mirror. Some people have fuzzy dice or cardboard pine trees hanging from theirs. I like to keep it real.

At work everybody smokes, too. I always find them hiding outside between breaks on cold concrete under the fat Fort Worth skyline. Cell phones in hand, thumbs callused from too much texting. They play with novelty lighters and have long skinny paper filters between their teeth, wet from spit and licking lips, jittery from the nicotine withdrawal and the double-shifts at our generic customer service job. When you work with the dumb needy consumers of the greater Fort Worth area all day long, I can't blame you for needing a cigarette,

When I pass by, somebody blows a stream of steel wool and says between their teeth, "Hey. You want a cigarette?"

I just say, "No thanks, I don't smoke."

People always smile and nod and say, "Yeah, that's good. It's a disgusting habit." Then they suck the rest of their cigarette down, flick the butt away and walk inside.

I never know what to say to that.

–

Bars are filled with smoke, yellowed teeth and ashes under fingernails where people tapped their cherries in the ashtray and missed. I try to avoid them. I get enough of that at home.

–

Twice now I've spent the weekend in San Diego, in the non-smoker's oasis of palm trees and city ordinances banning smokers from bars and restaurants. I've seen the people there spit and snarl whenever they saw smokers. Standing outside cafes or bus stations or convention centers, in the faraway corner roped off and twice marked Smoker's Lounge, indulging in their pack-a-day habit where nobody had to see them. Still people turned on them, canines bared, spit stringing their lips together as they cursed people's names. You would've thought it was an allergic reaction, smoker-induced anaphylaxis, like a demon seeing the cross.

Never mind the homeless people all over San Diego. The ones sleeping on street corners and begging for money outside my hotel room at all hours of the day and night. The ones people keep walking by like they don't exist. Let's not worry about finding places for them to stay or get help or even just a warm meal. Those smokers, man. It's always those goddamn smokers. Scourge of the earth and all. Let's pass twenty-seven city ordinances so we can spit on smokers, beat their children and run over their puppies.

Yeah.

Let's do that.

–

When I tell people that I come from a family of one-to-two-pack-a-day smokers — lifelong commitment smokers, whether rain or snow or dead of night — they always ask me why I don't smoke. I have a list of reasons, really. It's too expensive. I don't like it. It's too politically charged an issue. Blah blah blah. It's not really any of their business, anyway.

Sometimes I turn around and ask, "Well, do you make a habit of doing everything your parents ever did?"

They look at me a little funny. "Well, no," they say, "of course not."

"There you go."

Not smoking is my private rebellion. Take that, Mom and Dad. Now excuse me while I go waste my life on writing and drinking cheap whiskey.

Happy New Year, or some other such nonsense

I'm not going to tell you how much I loved or hated this year, or how much I learned, or how much I accomplished. I'm going to go get hamburgers later and probably drink a little too much tonight, and likely not get anything significant done at all. But it's my one day off this week, and I'm allowed.

New Year's doesn't mean that much to me. 2011 was just a year. 2012 will be the same. In the spirit of optimism (as my girlfriend claims I have none, and she's right), I will say I hope yours doesn't suck.

Who loves books? You love books

You know what else you love? Books with my face in them. Oh, yes, and there are plenty of those out now. And on a wet and cold afternoon a box appeared on my doorstep from Dark Continents Publishing, full of brand-new copies of Phobophobia. As you can imagine, I was pretty excited.

There is nothing to fear but fear itself… Twenty six original tales of horror by established masters of terror and talented new voices lie within this Lexicon of Fear. Beware the dark power of words in BIBLIOPHOBIA…a carnival double act made in Hell can be found in the clown cemetery in COULROPHOBIA…an artist loses his power to create ice sculptures because of his fear of cold in FRIGOPHOBIA, but that is the least of his problems as his therapist suffers the same phobia… The fear of open spaces manifests itself in KENOPHOBIA, a tale of the ultimate emptiness – the Great Void that awaits us all…the fear of beautiful women is fully justified in VENUSTROPHOBIA, a tale of futile defence against the Succubus… …but beware: the cure may be worse… Denying yourself a place in Heaven is one way to avoid JESUSPHOBIA, but the only alternative means Hell to pay…a playwright fights his fear of the colour yellow by creating an unusual addition to his Dramatis Personae in XANTHOPHOBIA…a Witchfinder's fear of open water will only be relieved by imbibing one of two deathly fluids in AQUAPHOBIA…and a widower follows the age-old advice of turning to face your fear in QIQIRN, only to uncover the true nature of an Inuit dog spirit that carries the essence of cold terror from its ancient homeland into the realm of human grief… Open the pages. It is time to learn your A to Dread…

Maybe you've heard of it. Maybe you've even heard of the buzz surrounding it, such as the London launch party earlier this month. It was a star-studded affair, from what I've heard. Even Doug Bradley was there! (I couldn't attend, much to my soul-crushing dismay, but I digress.) The thing is, this book is out now, and it's a fine book. In fact, it's a great book. Chock-full of talented writers, from the names that you know to the names that you don't, this book is bursting at the seams with great scares and good, old-fashioned, just-plain-fun-horror. Also, I'm in it. But you already knew that.

My story is called Ymophobia, about Dr. Elias Paulson and his fear of what he finds in the mirror. Do you want to read it? Well, you should. Here's a bit of it for your viewing pleasure.

We made the most of the rest of the day. The curtains stayed shut and Dr. Hastings said to sit with her, keep her company, and take my mind off the delusions. She told me stories about other patients, her "success stories," people who'd overcome problems worse than mine. I listened, and nodded, and smiled when supposed to, and waited for the noises to stop. They never did. As it got dark an animal howled outside, and another called back. She didn't hear it, only popped her neck with a sigh, and got up to fetch a book from one of my shelves. I held my breath and crossed my arms tight.

"Are you alright?" she asked, looking up from her book, smile still pasted on her face.

I did my best to lie. "Of course."

Looking up, I saw the animal in the corner of the room. It was hunched over four clawed feet and its muscled pillars of legs, skull black but for the gleam of teeth and eyes. The whole of it was broad like a horse, made of a leathery skin under the bony points of an exoskeleton, defining it in thick ribs, a knotted spine and sharp cheeks. It sucked the breath out of me when the animal moved, coming around to walk behind Dr. Hastings in the arm chair.

"Elias?" Her smile faltered and she set the book aside.

"Dr. Hastings," I said quietly, trying to control myself, "stand up very slowly, alright?"

The animal reared its huge head up to smell the back of her chair, nose snorting and snuffling. A long black tongue lolled out to lap at her neck in a hot wet stripe, catching spit in her hair, breathing down her collar. She couldn't feel it, couldn't see it, and made a sorry sound instead.

"What do you see?"

I got to my feet, reached out for her hand. "There's something behind you."

You can buy Phobophobia now at Amazon and other fine retailers today. And you should. You know. Because I said so. Look how cute I am in that picture — so don't argue with me.

On holidays, life, and other things

December, like it often does, came and punched me in the face this year. Good and hard, too.

December was a strange month. It came by on sneaky little feet, rushing past me when I wasn't looking. I was in the middle of lots of things between November and December: Changing jobs, crafting drafts for comic scripts and novels. Stressing over bills and money, and invariably a lot of car-pooling. Lots of long talks with my girlfriend Melissa, trying to make plans to get our collective shit together in the upcoming year, in spite of family obligations and financial woes, and all the other things that seem bent on ultimately complicating (if not flat-out destroying) all of our good intentions. Nothing new or exciting, just the minutia of the every day.

I don't like holidays very much, if I'm completely honest. My family is mostly atheist and agnostic, so the religious aspect of the holiday season is right out for me. I'm okay with that. There's just something about the end of the year, the way it rushes by so fast, the way everybody else stresses so much over gifts and trees and dinners and parties and trying to show everybody just how happy they are, even when they're not, that leaves me a bit down. That and I find Christmas music depressing, but that might just be me. So I decided to spend the holidays doing what I could to enjoy it. I decided to coast for a bit: Spend less time worrying about writing Proper Publishable Stories and just write what I enjoy at the moment. Stay up late talking to Melissa on the phone or watching Star Trek. Play some video games. Let my turtle Filburt loose in the house to torture my cats. Drink a lot of egg nog.

And I mean, a lot of egg nog.

2011, more so than 2010, was an emotional sink-hole of a year for me. It was fraught with unemployment, money problems, family problems, and a tiring, empty sense of dread over what could go wrong next. Car dies? Sure, no problem. Have my hours cut at work? Let's do it. Nearly default on my credit cards? Bring it on, son. So I'm more than glad to see it go away, slowly but surely, fading in lights and tinsel and the glint coming off of shop windows. And Christmas, for what it was worth, went well. Just a warm little aside to an otherwise dreary Texas day in December, eating Chinese takeout with my family and watching bad television. I'm glad for that.

I have no real plans for 2012, or any expectations either. I only have one real project lined out for the year, my comic script Black Out, while I continue releasing Flesh Trap in bits and pieces until it's finally complete. Then I'll sit down and work on the second book, and after that the third. I think I still feel like coasting for a bit. Wait and see what's coming of the stuff I've already had published this year, and shop around the flash fiction I've had tucked away all season waiting for a good home. Not that I plan on slacking off next year, just that I want to spend it working on things that I really care about, rather than killing myself trying to get things published just to get them published. It seems like a fair trade to me.

Goodbye 2011, hello 2012. Try not to suck too much, okay?

Happy Holidays, and other such nonsense

 

Happy holidays to those of you who celebrate. To those of you who don't, happy Sunday and enjoy your hangovers.

I'll have useful things to post again in the future, I promise.

Sons of Anarchy: An open letter to Kurt Sutter

Dear Kurt Sutter,

I know we don't talk much. Some of that's my fault, I admit that. I wasn't exactly 100% on some of the things going on this season. In fact, I was pretty much in vocal opposition to the direction that you were taking Juice (but that's another topic entirely). However, I feel like we really need to sit down and talk about what happened last night.

I watch a lot of TV. I mean, a lot of TV. I think my current list of Must Watch consists of around ten shows, plus another five or six old/cancelled shows I cycle through regularly on DVD, plus another five or six shows I watch casually to follow the work of actors I fangirl for. (At least, I think so. It all blends together after a while. I'm sorry, okay?) For all this TV I watch, very little of it — if any — leaves me on the edge of my seat, hands clasped over my mouth, muttering "Oh please, oh please, oh please" at my television set. So little of it is so compelling, and enveloping, and heartbreaking, as to have me jumping up and down, whether in anger or excitement, anticipation or fear. Almost none of it leaves me goosebumps that I can still feel long after the credits roll.

That's what happened for me during last night's season four finale of Sons of Anarchy.

I knew by the end Clay would be ousted, his house of cards finally coming down around his head. I knew Jax would take his rightful place at the head of the table, despite his efforts to pack up his family and get out of Charming before he allowed the club he loved so much to destroy him as it had his father. I knew Tara would usurp Gemma's role as Queen, both of the MC as its devoted matriarch and as the de facto HBIC of the entire town. I knew Tig's devotion to Clay would bring poison to their doorstep, his ill-advised retaliation against Laroy and the Niners ending in the death of Oaktown's heiress and opening the door to further violence in the future. I knew Opie — the faithful, loyal, heartbroken Opie — would be forced out as the club's Judas, refusing to go along with Jax's decision to claim the club for him and Opie in exchange for Clay's ruin. I knew something was rotten in Denmark with Romeo and the cartel. I knew Juice had to be redeemed, and short of that, at least forgiven. There were all things that I knew had to be done, because without them there would be no room for the next season.

But the way you did it, so quietly unfolding each event, without violence or bloodshed, kind of amazed me. This was the quietest season finale I've seen from this show so far, which has always capitalized on stunning violence to achieve memorable show-closers. I think it was the uncharacteristic lack of violence that made it better, honestly. This may be a show about bikers, but at its heart, this is a show about people. Flawed, fascinating people. All of this had been coming for years — decisions made, plans put in place, secrets kept hidden, truths swept under rugs. And you made that palpably, beautifully, clear last night, in every gut-wrenching twist and turn.

Last night wasn't about bikers. It was about making beds, and sleeping in them.

Every act played out so perfectly, every character coming to the same conclusion in his or her time that they were all victims of circumstances much larger than themselves, and accepting it. Clay died without dying, his old ways fading away as surely as he did, left behind by Jax as he stripped Clay of his role as President of the MC. It happened so gently, so plainly, as Jax took his seat in the chapel, followed by each of his members, one by one, taking their places in the new club. In this new Life After Clay. Chibs is the new sergeant-at-arms (and rightfully so), Tig accepts his time as sergeant has passed with Clay, Happy arrives and Juice, my sweet wonderful Juicey-Boy, he breathes a deep sigh of relief and takes his place at the table, relieved of the weight that has crushed him all season.

Somebody said it was like The Last Supper, with Jesus and his Apostles. I can't say I explicitly disagree with that connection of the imagery. It certainly felt pretty Biblical to me at the time, half-hanging off my couch, flapping my arms like a crazy person.

We the viewers are anxiously awaiting to see if Opie finally steps through the doors, to take his place at Jax's side as the Vice-President, but he doesn't. He can't. I don't think he'll ever be able to, and that's heartbreaking. (What comes of Opie next year I can't say for sure, but I know it will break what's left of my heart.) Instead Tara takes her place beside Jax as his Queen, swearing she'll never leave him, because he is hers. After watching her fight all season to keep him — from the club, from Clay, from Gemma, from the life he swore he would protect their children from — it just felt right. Gemma is the last to enter, if only to see if her plans have come to full-fruition (not without covering her tracks first, of course), and I think to come to terms with it in her own way. She sees that her son has risen to take up his father's mantel, and Tara as its new matriarch. The shot of Jax and Tara, Tara behind him, holding him close, is perfect. Fading from color to sepia tones as Tara and Gemma lock eyes over Jax, changing into the old photo of John Teller and Gemma at the club's inception some thirty years earlier.

The King is dead. Long live the King.

I still get goosebumps just thinking about it.

So, yeah, Kurt Sutter. You did good. You did real good. I can't wait to see what you come up with for next year, even if I'm pretty sure my heart can't take it.

(As an aside, Gemma is still my Queen. Just saying. I want to be her when I grow up, Machiavellian scheming and all.)

Bikers, werewolves, gypsies — oh, my

I'm sure some of you are aware of my mutterings and chin-scratchings about my current project. I'm finally at a place to begin talking about this script, Black Out. It's about bikers. And werewolves. And gypsies. But it's not what you think.

Andy
Early 30s, vice-president of Black Dog motorcycle club

The heir of the criminal enterprises set up by his uncle Freddie and father Frankie respectively, the founding members of the Black Dog MC, South Texas Charter. After losing his father at a young age to a 25 year prison sentence in service of the club, Andy found himself folded into The Life by his uncle, much to his mother's heated resentment, and groomed to be Freddie's successor. Shortly before Andy was to take the gavel as the MC's president, he is abruptly forced out by Freddie over the discovery of Andy's relationship with someone known only as D.W. This results in a violent encounter that lands Andy in jail and isolated from the club he swore his life to.

When the story opens up, Andy is on his own without his family. Resigned to getting out of town and back to the mysterious D.W., Andy grudgingly takes a job from Jules Royal, owner and operator of the Lonesome Cowgirl Strip Club. Jules is also the heir of Wilf Royal, a local businessman who uses the family-owned bars and strip joints as the legitimate face of their illegal gambling and prostitution operation, and is in direct competition with the Black Dogs' gun-running activities in the Southwest. Andy takes on one last job in exchange for a big pay-off: A quick errand to New Mexico to make a deal with one of the Black Dogs' major gun buyers, to stretch the Royal family's reach across state lines. Afterwards, Jules promises to let Andy go.

On the way to New Mexico, Andy runs into a girl named Stitch. That's where things get complicated.

Stitch
Mid-20s, member of a traveling gypsy clan

The youngest member of a hodge-podge family of travelers, known only to Andy as Stitch. A crack-shot and an expert pick-pocket dressed in wolf pelts, Stitch carries her secrets close to the vest, such as the reason for the crisscross of scars that earned her the nickname and why Andy finds her wandering Texas back-roads looking for escape. She is smart, cunning and brutal, and when Andy shows up with his guns and his motorcycle and his tattoos, she doesn't give him the chance to screw her over. Instead she takes his wallet then holds him at gunpoint to get her out of New Mexico. For the time being, at least, Andy goes along with it just to get back to Texas.

They both have secrets, and for that at least Andy can respect Stitch, seeing that's she cornered and trying to get away from the shadows that are chasing her down. Stitch can see that Andy isn't worth killing. He may not be too bad, but she still doesn't like him. She doesn't like anybody and she certainly doesn't need them, and as soon as Andy stops being useful she's going to kill him. Well, at least that's what she keeps saying, anyway. The fact that she keeps saving him from the men tracking her doesn't mean anything. Honestly.

(Seriously, though. This isn't going to be a romantic relationship. This is a totally No-Romance zone.)

Oh, and it turns out Stitch is a werewolf from a long line of gypsy werewolves, who turn at will to hunt big game and humans. And her brother Lucas is going to burn down everything from Albuquerque to El Paso to get her back. Andy just doesn't know that yet.

Kitty
Early 20s, stripper at the Lonesome Cowgirl

If there's anybody in town who knows everybody's business, it's Kitty. It's not her fault that all the men in town come to the Lonesome Cowgirl, and that they can be a little careless with their information after a few cheap beers, and that Kitty can usually be persuaded to give out that information by $100 bills. Smart, funny and totally self-reliant, Kitty is Andy's best friend, despite all outward appearances. They met when Kitty was eight and Andy was eighteen, and would walk her and her older sisters home from school to fend off local bullies. (Kitty's family is Filipino/Dutch/Korean, and was the target of the hold-out racists in town until Andy stepped in to handle the kids' problems.) Since then, Kitty has been like a sister to Andy in every sense of the word, up to and including annoying the crap out of him and telling him what to do.

Kitty isn't happy to see Andy out of the MC and working for Jules, who she knows is a snake. (She only works for the Royals to continue to serve as an intelligence asset for the MC, and because the money's awesome.) The town was in good hands with Andy at the table and preparing to take over the Black Dogs, because she knew Andy would work to push the Royals out. She knows why Andy was forced out but she won't say, wanting to protect him and D.W., and see him out of town safely. Where he goes, she goes, and Andy promises to come back for her once all of this is done.

As an aside, Kitty is a whiz with a Winchester rifle. This is part of why Andy lets her tell him what to do.

Lucas
Early 30s, de facto head of the gypsy werewolves

Vicious, quick-tempered and calculating, Lucas is Stitch's biker older brother and the self-appointed leader of their clan. As the youngest male werewolf, he's faster, stronger and more brutal than the older men, who are willing to hand control over to him in exchange for safety. After their parents died, Lucas raised Stitch on his own, leaving him fiercely and violently protective of his sister. He keeps her close to him at all times, refusing to allow her to learn the trades that pay for their lifestyle, as well as the domestic skills that would make her suitable for marriage, forcing her to be dependent on him. As Stitch reached adulthood, it became apparent to the rest of the clan that Lucas' affection for her had taken an incestuous turn, but they all turned their back to it so long as Lucas kept them fell-fed. This is a decision each clan member will live to regret.

Lucas is at first willing to barter with Andy for his sister back, but when Andy refuses (citing Stitch's desire to flee him and the fact that, you know, she deserves to make her own decisions) Lucas wages all-out war on Andy to get Stitch back. He chases them all the way back to Texas, burning down motels and destroying bars and maiming people all along the interstate in the process, until Lucas descends on Andy's home-town and everyone in it until he gets his way. One by one, as the clan begins to turn on Lucas, they're each met with his brutality until there's nothing standing between him and Stitch.

At the end, Stitch has to make a decision: Take off on Andy after getting him into this situation, or help him defend his friends and home-town against her family. Stand up to the brother she's been running from, or let him destroy everything else good in her life. It all rests on Stitch and Lucas.

D.W.
Mysterious catalyst of this entire mess

Nobody in town knows who D.W. is, why he/she is important, or why Andy is trying so hard to get to him/her. This is the only person Andy would leave the MC for, turning his back on his own family and home-town to be with, consequences be damned. The only people who know are Andy's uncle Freddie, who forced Andy out of the MC over it, and Kitty, and this is the one secret that she'll never sell. D.W. appears in the story on through the letters that Andy carries with him during this road-trip of mayhem and violence, and the phone calls Andy periodically sneaks off to make when Stitch isn't looking.

Does Andy make it to D.W.? Does the mystery justify the hell Andy has to go through? In the end, does it really matter?

So, there you have it. Coming soon to a computer screen near you.