Michael Scott Monje Jr.'s Blog, page 11

Counting Bodies: Anything Else Is Impermissible

Editor's Note: No, you do not get a chapter of Imaginary Friends today. Read this instead. Then go read everything I link to in this. Then go think. (Updating to add articles as I find them.)

It's been almost a year since I stopped all of my other writing projects and blogged about murder. That last time, I was lucky enough to be able to say that it was merely an attempted murder.
In the time between the Alex Spourdalakis post and this one, we lost...

Pig Pen is Happier Than Linus Part 2 (Imaginary Friends)

Imaginary Friends is a serial novel. New chapters go up every Friday. If you're new to it, you can catch up by starting from the Introduction.

If you're impatient to read more about Clay Dillon, click on "Books" above for ordering information for Nothing is Right, the prequel to this story.

As he paced the yard keeping one eye on his brother and occasionally shouting encouragement when one of A.J.'s sand castles exploded particularly well, Clay kept thinking about voices and thoughts...

Chapter Eight: Pig Pen Is Happier Than Linus Part 1 (Imaginary Friends)

Imaginary Friends is a serial novel. New chapters go up every Friday. If you're new to it, you can catch up by starting from the Introduction.

If you're impatient to read more about Clay Dillon, click on "Books" above for ordering information for Nothing is Right, the prequel to this story.

The sun was bright enough to hurt Clay's eyes, but the day itself was not too hot, so he did not mind being outside. He did wish, though, that his back yard had a tree he could sit under. It receiv...

Chapter Seven: Decades of Patience (Imaginary Friends)

Imaginary Friends is a serial novel. New chapters go up every Friday. If you're new to it, you can catch up by starting from the Introduction.

If you're impatient to read more about Clay Dillon, click on "Books" above for ordering information for Nothing is Right, the prequel to this story.

Clay was liking Ender's Game so far. Not only did it move quickly and assume children to be capable intellectual beings, but it also played with a lot of ethical questions. Ender seemed to constant...

Imaginary Friendship (For Nasir Jones)

Editorial Note: Imaginary Friends will not appear this week. Before going further with that project or Neurotropes, I need to clarify a little bit of the position I'm in as I write these things. Here's a missing section, a dedication poem and the seventh part of my Thoughts on Writing. I hope you like it.

Books built my vocabulary,
but gaps the between
your syllables
honed my flow.
Fuck Iggy Azalea.
This is what
her fans should know.

I wasn't ready when
I first heard you
pull a Descartes;
I'd missed Il...

American Pickers (A Poem)

Editor's Note: This might be satire. 
Any resemblance to any people, 
living or dead,
should probably be taken 
as a sign 
of intentional disrespect.

I.

“American Picker”
you call me
when you dial
in to
digest
the remnants
of your own sense
of your last
half century,
trusting
your nostalgia
to a network
that calls work-based
reality T.V.
History.

II.

Still, you have to know those bastards
are nothing but actors.
Their sales might be real
but the patter is a matter
of performance
and hours of pra...

Chapter Six: Grandpa Harry Goes to the Twilight Zone (Imaginary Friends)

Imaginary Friends is a serial novel. New chapters go up every Friday. If you're new to it, you can catch up by starting from the Introduction.

If you're impatient to read more about Clay Dillon, click on "Books" above for ordering information for Nothing is Right, the prequel to this story.

Normally, Clay liked to spend time at Grandpa Harry's house more than he liked being at home. Not only did Grandpa Harry refuse to yell at him, he actually congratulated Clay whenever Clay disappea...

Advertising on Shaping Clay

Hi everyone,

I hope you've been enjoying the first section of Imaginary Friends. I'm running a bit ahead of you right now--I'm staying steadily 4-5 posts from my next deadline, and I've been having one hell of a good time writing it.

You might notice that some of the page elements here on Shaping Clay have been moving around. While I work on my stories and on launching the new Neurotropes Blog, I've been playing with some options for Shaping Clay's future. To be honest, as much as I love Blogge...

Chapter Five: Sass and Sensibility

Imaginary Friends is a serial novel. New chapters go up every Friday. If you're new to it, you can catch up by starting from the Introduction.

If you're impatient to read more about Clay Dillon, click on "Books" above for ordering information for Nothing is Right, the prequel to this story. You an also check out Defiant, last year's serial, by searching the blog for the "Defiant" tag (until June 30--then it will be unavailable until the paperback is published).

Clay was reading more P...

Coming up from Under Water (A Poem)

Five days in the hospital means a month of blunted memories to me,
and I'm not even the one who was treated,except that I was treated like an interloper for insisting on better treatmentfor someone I loved who wasn't speaking but whose eyes constantly screamed.
Still, while I was in the sideline, lying in a recliner,being moved like furniture by personnel.The hospital smell was all my memory needed to bring up old fears,seeds of something I witnessed that was like something that happened.
In an...