Clayton Lindemuth's Blog, page 5

Lots To Report

Okay, Merry Christmas Yall. Lots to report about NOTHING SAVE THE BONES INSIDE HER!

First, The Goodreads drawing has concluded. About 400 entered to win. I’m quite happy with that number because it was only up a week. Three winners were chosen by Goodreads and have been notified. I’ll send copies to the winners when business resumes in 2014.

Next, the Kindle version giveaway is underway. 416 copies were downloaded on Day 1. At this moment at 10 am the following morning, it’s at 475. That’s a nice pace. I don’t have all of my media in place yet, so I’m powerfully happy with the results. The book will remain free until the 29th of December.

A couple days ago my friend over at DO SOME DAMAGE, Steve Weddle, author of the savagely well written Country Hardball, put up a guest blogpost from me. It unpacks why writers need to pay attention to NOT presenting conclusions to readers.

My brother from another mother Brian Lindenmuth (somewhere within the last 250 years, we’re related) over at SPINETINGLER put up a 3700 word excerpt of NOTHING SAVE THE BONES INSIDE HER. The excerpt shows the conditioning and testing of a fighting dog named MAUL that plays heavily into the destiny of the badman, a country fount-of-evil named Angus Hardgrave. Thanks-many-thanks to Brian!

Today, Jedidiah Ayres over at Hardboiled Wonderland put up a guest post of mine: NOIR: HUMANITY’S GAG REFLEX, in which I take a look at why and how Noir Saves Lives. I should mention that in the article I wager Jed’s left nut. You’ll have to read the post to find out if you’d take the bet. I should also mention that Jed is the author of PECKERWOOD. If you haven’t read it yet, you should. He’s a magician with noir and establishes total control over your story mind within about two paragraphs. Highly recommend PECKERWOOD.

Last, THANK YOU to everyone who has helped: the result of your help, plus a couple other things like tweeting, facebooking, a couple of ads placed on free kindle sites, has produced this:

 

I have a couple more items in the push lined up. A key ad should go into place today, and an email blast on Saturday. I’m hoping to push that 764 down to under 100. I’d love to give away about five thousand copies (even more if possible), so if you have a contact that would like a book, or a channel through which you could share the message, I much appreciate your help. I’m humbled and grateful and indebted to so many people already. I’d love to be humbled and grateful and indebted to you!

Guest posting on Do Some Damage…

Guest Posting on DO SOME DAMAGE

Author Steve Weddle, of Country Hardball fame, graciously allowed me to guest blog on Do Some Damage… 

My guest post unpacks our tendency as authors to present conclusions to our readers, instead of presenting evidence, and why it’s necessary to do the latter. Hop on over to DoSomeDamage to check it out, and then follow the link to buy Country Hardball. It’s some of the finest crafted prose you’ll ever read. Weddle wields a pen like a knife, and he knows which parts hurt when he slices them.

Last, remember that on Christmas day you’ll be able to download Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her free on Kindle. (If you don’t have a Kindle device, you can get the free Kindle app for your phone, tablet, or computer. There’s no excuse not to download the book, unless you just don’t read rural noir!)

My goal is to give away ten million copies. I won’t get there unless each of you download a million copies–and I’m not trying to create a burden for you–but I could use your help.

Consider giving the title to others. All you need is their email addresses, and you can gift it. Just please only give it to people who read rural noir. It’s a brutal read.

Last, Last, you still have time to enter to win a free printed copy I’m giving away through Goodreads. Scroll down the page a little until you see the giveaway. 

Stunning Review of Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her

Stunning Review of Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her

I’ve never been reviewed like this, so capably, so intelligently, with such an insider’s grasp of the struggles of the main characters.  Sorry to bounce you to another blog, but check out Dr. Audra Spicer’s take on Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her. 

I love every paragraph, but here’s a favorite: 

Lindemuth’s world is no place for half-measures, not for dogs nor characters nor author. His subject and style are in the tradition of John Donne, mixed with a northern Appalachian Gothic tone reminiscent of William Faulkner, and a crystalline, straight line of descent from Flannery O’Connor.

Like I said, I’m stunned by Dr. Spicer’s treatment of my work. I try to make fictional worlds that are perfect unto themselves, and I assume I know my worlds better than anyone. But it turns out that when an author completes a story, he or she becomes a mere privileged reader, but no authority. I feel indebted to Dr. Spicer for illuminating aspects of my work that I was blind to.

 

The Two Most Consequential Helps I Got

The Two Most Consequential Helps I Got

I was thinking about roots and how the first five novels I wrote weren’t worth a damn. I remember my uncle Jack reading a part of one, and saying, yeah, um, sure, it’s good. Yeah, I um, yeah. SO. What’s going on with you?

That was in 2005.

In 2007 or 2008 I discovered two people who proved to be the best teachers I’ve ever had, in terms of writing. One is Katherine Howell. She’s an Australian thriller writer. She let me read her 100 page thesis on creating tension, and did me the greatest favor ever… she edited a few pages of a short story of mine called Simple, which just recently was published in Needle.

The edits she suggested showed me something I had never grasped on my own: half of my text had not a single thing to do with the story. After that, there was no looking back. I made a point of cutting at least a third of every manuscript, and in doing so found that VOICE is a product of editing, as much as anything. To Katherine Howell I’ll be eternally grateful and indebted. You should check out her books. She flat out kicks ass.

The next great stroke of luck in my development happened when I came across Ray Rhamey’s website, floggingthequill.com. Ray takes the first sixteen lines of a book–which is all you can be sure a reader will see–and simply asks “would I turn the page?”

I studied Ray’s blog and many of the articles he’d written about creating story questions, and set about writing another novel. You can take a lesson like Ray teaches and apply it to every single page. Let’s face it: no matter what page your reader is on, there’s always something else she could do with her time. If she’s not asking story questions… if your text doesn’t keep her engaged, she’s going to cut bait.

With all I’d learned from Ray and Katherine I set about writing another novel–this is the one after my Uncle Jack did his best to retain his integrity and leave my feelings unhurt. That novel is TREAD. With TREAD I secured enough interest from Cameron McClure at Donald Maass Agency to ask for the full MS, then a rewrite, then a rejection. But that exchange led to her interest in my third novel, which she signed me for, and then sold twice: Cold Quiet Country.

I’m circling back to TREAD now. My plan is to give it another edit and polish, then release it to find its audience. Anyhow, after  I wrote TREAD I went back and submitted it to Ray’s site, Flogging the Quill, and here’s what he had to say. Naturally, I was thrilled.

Every author needs people like Ray and Katherine. I’ve offered a few times to help unpublished authors with editing the way that Katherine helped me, but as yet have had no takers.

If you’re an author looking for the next level of insight, check out Floggingthequill.com and read Katherine Howell. Or ask an author you respect to take a quick look at your story. Two pages of edits from a pro might make the light bulb go off, and you never know until you ask.

Here are the first sixteen lines of TREAD, and the cover.

 

TREAD

Flagstaff nights are cold; I drink a quarter of my flask of Jack in two gulps. There’s a crew of secessionists in the cabin behind me, bitching about the same old.  It’s endless, and that’s why it’s got to end.

            I’m on the porch wondering when I should tell the boys to get lost. They got guns but won’t use them. They got the same reasons to be pissed as I do. A tax code seventeen thousand pages long, for shit’s sake. But they’d rather suck beer and fart than defend themselves against the almighty Machine. And what am I doing? Sitting here drinking whiskey and thinking about a dead woman’s feet.

            One more gulp of Jack and I’m going in. The only one that has any stones is George Murray—the bastard’s lugging around a set of cannonballs. The IRS closed his bait shop and he’s stockpiling black powder. He’s raising a fuss and I want to hear it.

            “We ought to firebomb ‘em,” Murray says. “Hit the IRS, courthouses, Fish and Game. Then they’ll know what we’re about.”

            I stand at the door beside a floodlight swarming with moths.  Murray and Charlie Yellow Horse, a white man with a sixteenth of Apache blood on his mother’s side, are nose to nose.

            “Fucking moron,” Yellow Horse says.

            “Talk!  Talk!  Let’s blow some shit up!”

 

Another tentative book release… Does this cover grab you?

Another tentative book release… Does this cover grab you?

I’ve had a handful of novels written that never seemed to be the right time to release. I’ve secured enough feedback to be 99% likely to release Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her next month. (Thanks to the many folks who volunteered to read it and respond with insights. And for the generosity of praise. There are still a couple of folks reading it who I regard with great respect, and a sour view from either of them would likely make me hesitate. Otherwise, I’ll be releasing Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her next month.)

Next: my brother’s Destroyer. This is my fifth novel. The above was my second, and Cold Quiet Country my third. The sixth, by the way, is a prequel to Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her. The seventh… well, that’s a secret. The first and third are undergoing revision.

Anyway, this cover is for: my brother’s Destroyer. There is a possibility that I will choose the traditional publishing route for this one… but in the meantime I’m preparing as if I’ll release it at the same time as Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her. Like last time, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on the cover… does it grab you? Does it make you likely to read the back? And does the back make you likely to read the first page?

I’ll put the first couple pages below, just in case the front and back make you want to see what the voice is like. Please email me at claylindemuth at gmail dot com, tweet to me at @claylindemuth, or just leave a comment below. Many thanks.

 

ONE

I see the bastards ahead, fractured by dark and trees. Twenty—more. They voices led me this far. I touch the Smith and Wesson on my hip. They’s a nip in the air, harvest near over. Longer I’m still, colder I get.

One of these shitheads stole Fred.

Problems for him.

I’m crouched behind an elm, pressed agin smooth bark.

It’s dark enough I could stand up and wiggle my pecker at them and they wouldn’t see. They’s occupied around a pit. Place swims in orange kerosene light with so many moths the glow flickers. Hoots and hollers, catcalls like they’s looking at naked women. Can’t see in the circle from here, but two sorry brutes inside are gutting and gouging each other. Two dogs bred for it, or stole from some kid maybe, or some shit like me.

All my life I got out the way so the liars and cheaters could go on lying and cheating one another. I can spot a liar like nobody. But these men is well past deceit.

One of these devils got hell to pay.

Fifty yards, me to them. I stand, touch Smith one more time. Step from the tree. A twig snaps. I freeze. Crunch on dry leaves to the next tree, and the next. Ten yards. If someone takes a gander he’ll see me—but these boys got they minds on blood sport.

Sport.

I test old muscles and old bones on a maple. Standing in a hip-high crotch, I reach the lowest limb and shinny. Want some elevation. See men’s faces, other side of the ring—and if I don’t see dogs killing each other, that’ll be fine.

I know some of these men—George from the lumber yard, and the Mexican runs his forklift. They’s Big Ted; his restaurant connects him to other big men from Chicago and New York. Ted’s always ready to do a favor, and tell you he done it, and send a monthly statement so you know your debt. Kind of on the outskirts, Mick Fleming. And beside him is Jenkins. Didn’t expect to see the pastor here.

“Lookit that bastard! Kill ’im, Achilles! Kill ’im!”

Why looky looky.

That’s Cory Smylie, the police chief’s son, shouting loudest. Cory—piece a shit stuffed in a rusted can, buried in a septic field under a black cherry tree, where birds perch and shit berry juice all day.

I make the profile of Lucky Jim Graves, a card player with nothing but red in his ledger.

The branch is bouncy now, saggy. Stiff breeze and I’ll be picking myself off the ground.

I think that’s Lou Buzzard. The branch rides up my ass like a two-inch saddle and each time I move, leaves rustle. But I want to know if that’s Lou ’cause he’s a ten-year customer. Be real helpful if these devils was already drinking my likker. Little farther out and I’ll see.

Snapped limb pops like a rifle. I’m on the ground and the noise of the fight wanes, save the dogs. Hands move at holsters and silver tubes sparkle like moonlight on a brook. These men come prepared to defend the sport, and got more dexterity than I could muster on two sobers.

“You there!”

Voice belongs to a fella I know by reputation, Joe Stipe. We’ve howdied but we ain’t shook. A man with a finger on every sort of business you can imagine, including mine. Got a truck company, the dog fights, making book, and a few year ago sent thugs to muscle me out of my stilling operation. We ain’t exactly friendly.

Men gather at Stipe’s flanks as he tromps my way. “Grab a lantern there, George. We got company.”

I sit like a crab. The light gets in my face.

“Why, that’s Baer Creighton,” a man says.

“Baer Creighton, huh? Lemme see.” Stipe thrusts the lantern closer.

“That’s right.”

“Don’t tell Larry,” another says.

“He ain’t here tonight,” Stipe says. “What the hell you doing, Baer? Mighta got your dumb ass shot.”

“I was hanging in the tree because you’s a bunch a no-count assholes and I’d rather talk to a bag of shit.”

They’s quiet, waiting for something let ’em understand which way things’ll break.

Not tonight, boys. But I’ll goddamn let you know.

The hair on my arms floats up and static buzzes through me. I look for the man with a red hue to his eyes. Ain’t hard to see at night—it’s always easier at night—and it’s the one said, “Don’t tell Larry.”

I don’t try to see the red, or feel the electric. Gift or curse, I subdue it with the likker. Got it damn near stamped out.

“It’s just Baer,” Stipe says.

The men disperse back the fight circle, where a pair of dogs still tries to kill each other. Stipe lingers, and when it’s just him and me, he braces hands on knees so his face is two feet from mine. I smell the likker on him.

My likker.

“Come watch the fight with us assholes.” Stipe looks straight in my eyes. “And later…you breathe a word of this place, I’ll burn you down.”

“Didn’t come so I could write a story in the paper.” I crawl back a couple steps and work to my feet. My back and hips feel like a grease monkey worked ’em with a tire tool, but I won’t show it. We’s face to face and Stipe’s a big somebody; got me by a rain barrel. The fella give me the electric stares from the fight circle, that circle of piss and blood and shit and clay.

Expected to see Larry here. After thirty years of meditation, I don’t know whether to blame myself for stealing Ruth or him for stealing her back.

“I believe what you said about the newspaper, Baer,” Stipe says. “So what brought you to my woods?”

I meet his eye for a second or two, and take note of his bony brow. “Nothing to say on that.” I turn and after a step he drops his hand on my shoulder. Spins me. I get the juice like I stuck my tongue on a nine-volt. His eyes pertineer shoot fireworks. He’s so fulla deceit and trickery, he’s liable to shoot me straight.

I lurch free.

“You remember what I said. I’m going to burn you down. I’ll find every sore spot you got and smack it with a twenty-pound sledge. You’ll pull your head from a hole in the ground, Baer, just to see that awful sledge coming down one last time. You best get savvy real quick. Don’t mess with a man’s livelihood.”

Heard rumors on Stipe going way back—how his truck company made lots of money after his competition died under a broke hydraulic lift with a sheared pin. Curious, is all. Got them lugnuts by his side when you see him in town, like he’s some president got a private secret service. Always some jailhound on the work release with a mug like a fight dog after a three-hour bruiser.

“They’s no such thing as impunity, Stipe.”

His look says he don’t ken my meaning and that’s fine as water. You’ll smack me down and every time I look up, I’ll see Fred. I’ll shove that impunity down your throat and you won’t know you’re filling up on poison. That’s what I’m thinking, but words ain’t worth a bucket a piss. I back away. His eyes is plain-spoke menace.

I’m so torqued I got to look for my voice. “Ain’t quite time to call it war. But I’ll let you know.”

I tramp into the woods and every square inch of my back crawls. I get far enough the static don’t bother me; bullets do, and if I was twenty years younger I’d run in spite of low-hanging limbs. But I’m fifty and my hipbone feels like it was dipped in dirt, so I stomp along and eventually I’m deep enough into the woods I turn.

Stipe still looks my way, but him and his boys is all shadows, demons.

Farther out, when the fight circle’s a slight glow through distant trees, I rest a minute on a log. They know I live and work at home. Wasn’t thinking I’d tip my hand just yet, but part of the curse of seeing lies is not being worth a shit at telling them. And knowing the bastard who stole Fred was in that crowd works agin my better judgment. It’s hard to hold your tongue while the plan sorts out—you want to let the bastard know something god-awful brutal is coming his way.

I stand, work my joints loose. I come to Mill Crick and follow south a mile, and pause at my homestead, a tarp strung tree to ground, a row of fifty-five gallon drums, a boiler and copper tube.

Fred growls.

“It’s me, you fucking brute.”

Fred’s in shadows under the tarp. His tail taps the diesel turbine shipping crate he sleeps in. I hammered over the nails and reinforced the corners with small blocks, and it’s been home to four generations. If I was to pick the hairs between the boards, they’d be white like Fred, red like George, brown like Loretta, and brindle like Phil. All relations of his, though I couldn’t name the begats.

His voice turns quiet.

He’s got words and I got words and we know each other well enough to talk without losing hardly anything to translation. He knew it was me tramping into camp when I was a half mile out, most likely. He only growled to show disapproval, and now it’s done, he can go back to sleep.

Poor son of a bitch needs it.

Fred’s one of them pit bulls they like to fight so much. 

Is this an interesting cover….

Is This An Interesting Cover?

 

As I continue to gear up for a possible release of a new novel in January…. pending the insights of the many kind folks who are reading the novel… let me know what you think of this potential cover…

Also, below the cover is a bonus… the beginning of chapter two, which introduces Angus Hardgrave, a character that noir readers usually find irresistible.

 

CHAPTER  TWO

The walnut tree told me when Emeline Margulies turned eighteen. Law-wise in Pennsylvania, a girl burns her ships at eighteen. Her daddy was dead and she was alone, so I bound her with spells, talk of blue spruce situated off the front porch, small-mouth bass jumping bugs at the lake, and how sunshine bounces from the water to the orchard and turns pear blossoms gold. She bought every word and wiggled close. I took her wrist and got my hand on her neck and I couldn’t think of nothing save the bones inside her.

I stand with her in a stone church a block from Madison. Pastor Denny thumbs to a folded page and Emeline presses a fistful of daisies to her heart. I look at the white petals and she looks at me. My eye patch still throws her. She pretends, but she sees it first and switches to my left eye. She blinks three times. Rubs her hand down her side.

Pastor Denny says, “From Ephesians we are told, ‘Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.’” Denny faces Emeline and says, “That means you got to do as he says. Angus—you got a ring?”

I drop my hand to my pocket. Emeline’s face is pale.

Denny says, “…to be your lawful, wedded wife, until by death do you part?”

“Yes sir,” I say. “’Til one of us is dead.”

Denny repeats the oath to Emeline. She peers hard into my eye. Movement flickers at my extreme peripheral, but I don’t turn my head.

Emeline gulps air. “I do.”

I ease the band onto her finger. She lowers her arm and curls her hand. I’ll see a jeweler at some point, get the ring resized.

“You can kiss her now.”

I take her elbows, press my face to hers. She ain’t been kissed much, I suspect. Every time I get a grip on her skinny arms my mind goes elsewhere and I see things I want to take right now. I don’t close my eye, and she don’t close hers, and maybe she understands and maybe she don’t. I glance back and a fella I don’t know leans against the wall by the entrance with his leg hiked up like James Dean. He slips out and next I look at Emeline her eyes are closed.

Pastor Denny nods; I take Emeline by the hand and face the witnesses. Her older sister Martha, in town to collect inheritance. George, summoned from the barbershop with shaving cream on his ear. The pastor’s wife Nancy, dense as a sack of soggy cowshit but topheavy enough it don’t matter what she says.

I step from the platform, Emeline in tow. As we pass Martha shakes her head and Nancy Denny says, “It ain’t right, Emeline. Think what you’re doing.”

My fingers tremble and I clamp my hand to the door jamb.

“Don’t worry about them.” Emeline shades her eyes, faces north and south, then lingers a moment on a new 1957 red and white Fairlane gleaming at the curb. “What’d you expect from a pair of hens but a bunch of clucking?”

I spit on the church steps. “Not much.”

She looks at the spit puddle, blank. Then, “How old are you, Angus?”

“Forty-six, I think.” I check my pocket watch and lead her across the macadam road to the First National Bank of Walnut, Pennsylvania. We step onto the speckled stone floor. The door swings closed and I release her wrist. She trails me to the lone teller and our footsteps echo from the marble walls. I push my passbook below the brass grill.

“Move her money to my account,” I say. “We’re married.”

“All right,” says the teller.

Emeline pulls my sleeve like a small bird might, if it wanted my attention. “Angus, I don’t have my pass book.”

“They don’t need it. You come in here just yesterday.”

She leans to me. “We didn’t talk about this.”

“Everything?” the teller says.

“Close the account.”

He notes a ledger. “I’ll just need Missus Hardgrave’s signature.” He passes a slip through the slot and I scribble, “Emeline Hardgrave.”

“But—” She clenches fists at her sides and her brow is jetted up like a mad blue jay’s.

“We got to put her name on this account,” I say. “Make it joint.”

“I’ll draw up the papers. Money’s moved, account’s closed. And congratulations on the wedding.”

“Gimme a ten spot.”

“Ten?”

I wink—looks like a regular blink, I suppose. “We got to celebrate.”

Emeline watches me fold the ten. I take her hand and lead her to my truck, open the door for her. She stands outside and I walk to the other side, swing under the steering wheel. She climbs in, slams the door, plants her hands on her lap.

“I don’t brook sass in public,” I say.

She waits.

“I apologize,” she says. “I haven’t had a man in my corner since Papa… I apologize.”

I start the F-100. “Not in public, not nowhere.” My temple aches and I press it. She rolls down the window. Her head tilts toward her knees and her lips move. In the weeks I’ve known her she’s prayed five hundred times and that’s good. More she talks to him, less she talks to me.

Asking for your literary help….

Asking for Your Literary Help…
(Seeking Readers for Market Survey)

In 2008 I worked with an agent who secured strong interest in a novel from one of the Big Six. The publisher eventually passed, having reservations about signing a rookie, the market for rural noir, and the entire world in general. In 2008, the world was coming to an end, especially for publishers.

After that I signed with the agent of my dreams, who sold the next novel I wrote, Cold Quiet Country, to MP Publishing. Since then I’ve done a structural edit and a polish edit to the novel that almost made the Big Six. I think it’s quite good, but I don’t know if it would be viewed as the equal of Cold Quiet Country. I think it’s profoundly good but I’ve been married to the story for six years… and I respect my readers enough to desperately want to avoid letting them down.

Thus, while my agent negotiates my next book deal as we speak, and I’ve completed another, I’m again looking backward to the story I can’t get out of my head. I want to put into peoples’ hands and let them tell me whether to publish it or not.

So, I’d like to ask for your help.

Would you like to have a voice in whether a novel makes it to market? Email me at claylindemuth@gmail.com for a Word copy of the novel…

What I’m asking for:

I’m looking for readers who will be able to read the novel within about two weeks, and answer a short list of simple-answer questions, such as whether the story is compellingly good, meaning, whether you would blab about it to your friends, what price point would you choose on a Kindle version, in terms of value, things like that.

I’m looking for thoughtful readers, but not necessarily beta readers, or line editors, etc. You don’t have to put a lot of work into it, is what I’m getting at.

If I receive an overwhelming majority of positive responses, I will know. And likewise, if the majority is lukewarm, that will also tell me something.

If you’d like to read the novel, can do so in the next two weeks, and promise on your soul that you will not share the text, please email me at claylindemuth@gmail.com 

I truly, deeply appreciate your help.

So, what’s the story about?

A young woman who flees one violent relationship by marrying a man who is even worse than the one she flees.

A young woman whose central struggle is following God in all things, while every decision takes her closer to her destruction.

A brooding, violent, rural noir monster that fights dogs, distills a particularly evil whiskey, and murders wives. And neighbors. And just people.

A walnut tree, on a tiny isthmus called Devil’s Elbow, that has been the locus of evil in the lives of two warring families for a century.

The story is violent, but my aim with violence is always to place it within a worldview that insists on absolute right. That said, if you cannot stomach reading about evil, this book is not for you. Email me at claylindemuth@gmail.com if you’d like to participate. All the cool kids are doing it. It’ll make you feel real good. It’s groovy.

Help Spread the Word!

If you have a social network, please consider posting a link to this post! Also, if you know folks individually who like to read rural noir, please send them a note. I greatly appreciate your help.

Uhm…. Ain't I the Ass?

Uhm… Ain’t I the Ass?

 

So I get an email from a good friend, the kind of guy I can talk business, philosophy, religion, or humor with. He’s a very clever guy, capable of extreme wit. The email subject line says:

GUESS WHAT???

Backstory: A week ago, someone close to me called me on the phone. Coy, she said, “Guess What???” You know the answer, right? She’s pregnant. 

Present Story: I open the email attachment. It is the photo you see…

So I write to my good, good friend:

“Many congratulations! That’s awesome news. Except that they’re both leaving you. That’s sad. But the rest is great!”

I pressed send, and thought, hmmm. That’s pretty rotten of me, on the day one of my best friends tells me he and his wife are pregnant, for me to tell him–even in good humor–that she’s leaving him. And I have to admit, within about a half second of sending the prior message, I wondered, what if she’s not pregnant? What if I’m missing something really big? You know how it is: you walk out the door thinking something is wrong, and you can’t place it, and you’re wearing no pants, or a suit with slippers on your feet, or whatever. So I explained and I hedged a little, and fired off another:

“The hen and chick are walking away in the photo…

If you’re saying what I think, this is a profound, beautiful thing. Ten million congratulations to you. The world needs more people like the both of you, and the world is about to get its medicine.”

Then I looked at the photo again and typed,

“Unless the other answer is Chicken Butt.”

In comes the response:

Um…. Yeah. Its chicken butt. But btw, wtf?

I’ll keep you posted….

 

 

 

Reading from The Cucumber Scene

Reading from The Cucumber Scene

Here’s a short video of me reading from Cold Quiet Country, page 84.

In the scene, Gale is working in the garden and when Gwen comes out, he discovers she’s forgotten her underwear.

 

 

 

BookedPodcast and Indy Noir at the Bar…

BookedPodcast and Indy Noir at the Bar…

 

Above is Livius Nedin and Robb Olson, of BOOKEDPODCAST.com. I’ll explain their photo being in this blog entry in a second…

I was honored to be included in the inaugural Indianapolis Noir at the Bar, or N@B, on Saturday the 16th. CJ Edwards organized the event and did a fantastic job.

I read first, (I read the section of Cold Quiet Country that contains the words you see at the top of this page on the slider, concluding with, Liz, are you going to kill him, or what?) then James Ward Kirk, CJ Edwards, Jed Ayres, David James Keaton, Les Edgerton, and Scott Phillips. I might have the order jumbled. The event was held at the Fountain Square Brewing Company, and if you listen to the audio, you’ll hear the machinery of brewing in the background. If you live near Indianapolis and haven’t yet consumed their beer, shame on you. If you like IPA they have one that’s so good you won’t remember its name, “Soul” something or other…

Aside from the thrill of meeting great authors, reading my words, and drinking beer in a fine brewery, I also met the gentlemen photographed to the right, and linked below, Livius Nedin and Robb Olson, of BOOKEDPODCAST.com.

If you’re unfamiliar with Booked, I’m sure you’ll be excited by the concept. They podcast book reviews, author interviews, bullshit sessions, and now–N@B. Review their list of episodes and you’ll find a dozen you want to listen to right away.

N@B Indy will be broken into four podcasts, as the event clocked three hours… Here’s the first.