Bud Smith's Blog: Bud Smith , page 14

Temporarily Here

Bob turns the radio down; she turns the radio up.

“Don’t mess with the dial, I’m driving.”

A car cuts her off, she lays on the horn and speeds up, almost wrecks.

“Yo! What the fuck are you doing?”

“I’m driving, shut the fuck up.”

They’ve been fighting all morning. He turns the radio dial down, she slaps his hand. The light turns green, the car jets forward.

“Yeah, pull over, I’m out of here.”

The baby girl cries in the baby seat.

“Bitch pull over.”

“Get a life I’m not pulling over.”

They’re in the far right lane and she’s not slowing. 35 mph give or take, he opens the door and jumps out of the car onto the shoulder of the road.

He crashes down, but rolls to his feet.

Marie keeps driving, baby girl crying in baby girl car seat, radio up. There’s a parking lot as big as a small country, he walks through it.

The bar is slow, it’s early afternoon. Kyle sits alone, and the bartender is eating Chinese food on the wrong side of the bar.

Bob walks in, it’s strange that there’s another patron this time of day. He says, “I want your tallest and strongest drink.” But he’s bleeding severely from his head and doesn’t know it.

“Can’t serve you. Get going.” The bartender points to the door.

Kyle stands up, “Robbie?”

“Oh hey, man.” It’s a coincidence, they haven’t seen each other since high school.

“You’re bleeding on the floor. Get out or I call the cops.”

Kyle says, “No! He’s with me, bro. He’s cool.” Ultimately though, they’re both not getting served there. Bartender crosses his arms and everything. Kyle grabs his car keys and says to Bob, “Let’s get out of here, this place is lame.”

They’re in his Pontiac and pulling out of the parking lot, back onto the highway when Kyle finally says, “So how’d you get all mangled up.”

“Hit my head on the road. Jumped out of my wife’s car.”

“Whoa. That’s intense. Trouble in paradise?”

“She’s a psycho.”

“She’s so crazy you jumped from a moving–oh, hold on–” Kyle stops the car in traffic, rolls his window down, vomits.

Cars zip around the stopped Pontiac, horns sounding off.

“You better move!”

Kyle vomits again, but he rolls the window up as soon as he’s done and puts the car into gear.

There’s breath mints in the ash tray, which isn’t used as an ash tray, it’s used to hold wrapped mints.

“Sorry, got rained out at work today.”

Bob looks up at the infinite blue sky. “Guess I had a few too many.”

They park behind the Food Universe. Two reasons for that, Kyle has to piss and there’s a picnic table under a shady tree next to the card board dumpster. Kyle has a car bar. His trunk has fifths of bourbon, rum, vodka and even pilsners on ice in an igloo cooler.

They sit at the table and relax.

“Where are you supposed to be?”

“Mother in law’s house. This is better.”

“What’s happening there?”

“Birthday party for her dad.”

Kyle hands Bob a large leaf from an oak tree. Bob sticks the leaf on his head where the blood is trickling out. It works.

They’re both drinking now from the fifth of rum, passing it. And the air is cool behind the supermarket. And it feels like another world. The meadow is full of chirping birds and Bob says, “I can’t remember the last time I heard birds chirp.”

“Sometimes it’s the only joy I get.”

Bob remembers something, knows he shouldn’t mention it, but it’s already on the tip of his tongue so he just says it, “I watched Greg Pollock kick your ass in front of the school bus that day and I didn’t do anything about it.”

“Oh that’s a painful memory.”

“Sorry to bring it up. You were bleeding from your head. Worse than this.”

“Know why he did that?”

“I heard some things.”

“Cause I’m a fag.”

“Well fuck. That’s no reason to try to kill somebody.”

“That’s just what some kids do.”

“My dad would have shot me,” Bob said.

“That’s just a myth. Your dad wouldn’t have shot you. He’d have understood. Would just take sixty or seventy years to warm up to the idea.”

“My dad would have though, for real. He did shoot me once.” Bob pulls his shirt sleeve up and shows where the bullet went through his bicep. There was a scar on the tricep where it exited.

“For what? Why’d he shoot you?”

“I came home with the car empty. Didn’t put gas in it.”

“Wow that’s extreme.”

“He drove me way out into the woods, must have driven down trails for three hours. Finally he stopped. There was another pickup truck there waiting. A friend of his. Dad said goodbye, climbed in the truck and said, ‘If you can find your way home you’re a man.'”

Kyle killed the last of the rum and said, “Well I’m sorry you got shot.”

“And I’m sorry you got your head split open.”

He smiled at bleeding Bob with his pal leaf stuck there like a baby octopus. “Now, I gotta go inside and stock motherfucking catfood. This was fun, but I have to roll. Let’s do this again sometime, yeah?”

“Sure.”

Kyle gave Bob some iced down beers from the trunk, slipped on his Food Universe smock and walked over to the loading dock doors without a wave.

Now Bob walked down the shoulder of the highway again. He was bleeding from his head more than ever. The blood had thinned. The leaf had disintegrated. He wiped the blood with his shirt sleeve and now he looked like a murderer covered in blood walking down the side of the road. That’s life.

A police car stopped. Two female cops stepped out.

“Excuse me, where are you coming from?”

“Haha, still coming out of the woods.”

One of the officers, Pam, she recognized Bob from high school and she said hi.

“Oh hi, Pam. This is all my own blood.”

“It’s cool,” she said. “You want to get in the car?” She opened the back of the squad car. Bob climbed in without resisting.

“What happened?” The lead officer said.

“Jumped out of a moving car.”

“Want to go to the hospital?”

Pam opened the medical kit in the glove box, she passed back some gauze through the partition.

“I’d like to just go home if that’s okay.”

“Pass your ID up. Gotta run it first to see if you’re a wanted man. Then, sure. No problem.”

His ID checked out and they were moving south down the highway and Bob was looking out the window.

“Saw Kyle Yearling today,” he said. “Remember him?”

“Oh” Pam said. “Of course, King of our prom.”

“He’s doing pretty good.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Pam said to the officer who was driving that it looked like a nice sunset.

Bob’s cell phone rang. It was his daughter.

“Daddy where are you?”

“In a car.”

“Another car? I’m confused. Why’d you jump out of our car?”

“Sometimes people just make mistakes.”

“Yeah.”

“Remember yesterday when you threw your PBJ on the floor.”

“Yeah.”

“What’d I do?”

“You picked it up.”

“Yes I did. I picked it up and I made

you a new sandwich and then I ate the one you threw on the floor.”

“Yeah.”

“You know why I did that?”

“Because you love me.”

“I do.”

“You and mommy going to get a divorce?”

“No. No we aren’t. I promise.”

“Good. Daddy, I have to go, the cake just came out. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Bob leaned against the glass. “Can I ask a favor?”

“What is it?” Pam said.

“Can we turn around and go the other way? I don’t want to go home. I’d like to go to this birthday party instead.”

Wild Cat

There were some slight disturbances in town. Faint light glowing on horizon. Ash falling, even all the way out here, into our pond. Crazy winds. The Too Tall Tree blocking the view of city fires, of noxious smoke drifting past the moon, the police station exploding. A normal Wednesday night, except squad cars were melting, bullets popped like popcorn in town square. A thousand people stormed the square and smashed out every plate glass window. The mayor was drowned in the fountain outside the courthouse. The wrongful wronged made barbed wire scarecrows out of anyone with a badge.

“All because someone said ‘not guilty.’”

“I don’t know anything about justice. I’m stupid.”

“Anybody that upset,” Detroit says, “is probably right. Why else would they be so upset?”

Outside, the trapped wild cat lets out a vicious shriek. The terror of that is intimate. It’s in my own back yard.

The next morning, things hadn’t settled down much. We leave the TV off. Occasional explosions ring out. I collect eggs, Detroit butchers our last hog.

In the distance, the rioters are disassembling the power station. The rioters are breaking bottles of liquor at the sad zoo. The rioters are armed with guns they’ve taken from the vintage armory. The rioters are fed well now, everyone gets a shrimp burrito. Everyone gets hot cocoa. That’s what the radio says. They’ve dug in and can’t be uprooted. Not for weeks. Detroit flicks the radio off. Her eyes look tired.

“It’ll resolve itself,” I say.

“Yes, everything resolves itself.”

She’s the wisest person I’ve ever known.

We’re not city people, and we’ve got problems of our own here.

The pond  is frozen enough to skate, only until the first snow.
The Too Tall Tree has finally grown high enough to block the moon
Some wild cat is caught in our trap but it’s too deadly to let out
Yeah, the riot, it’s loud, it’s hard to sleep. We feel guilty.

That night, it finally happens. We look out the window, laying sideways in our bed and realize we cannot see the cherry moon any longer. Life seems altered. Life seems too harsh.

So we rise from bed in our underwear. I began to sharpen my axe; Detroit sharpens her axe too.

We walked into the dark woods.

“I’ve always hated this tree,” Detroit says.

“Why?”

“Grew out of my father’s grave.”

“Good reason.”

“He must have done something funny, swallowed a bunch of mean seeds right before he died.”

“I don’t know if people see this far ahead to cause others misfortune.”

“How you figure?”

“Babe, I used to drive over an hour to the mill when I worked there.”

“Okay, point being?”

She chopped the tree first, vicious: teeth clenched and hateful scream.

I chopped half-hearted and said, “Point being there were times when I’d get to work and I’d blink and I’d be like ‘how did I get here?’ I couldn’t remember anything after leaving the driveway. That’s how horrible things happen, I think.”

Her axe dug in again. The tree groaned.

“Most of the evil in the world probably happens on autopilot. Nobody conscious at the switchboard.”

“People are bad.” She chopped, spittle flew. “My dad was a bad man!” She yelled it like a terrible war-cry. The war cry made me want to break up with her, but we’d been married for nineteen years and you don’t want to break up with someone after nineteen years if they can split your head open with an axe.

“Everybody thinks they’re good though—or at the very least, right.”

“YAAAAAAA!” Wood chips exploded off.

And I said, “Take that, Too Tall Tree!”

Detroit’s axe gets caught and she can’t pull it out. Sap goops out all over her hands.

Up in the branches, a child weeps.

We look up.

“Who’s crying?”

“Don’t kill me!” the child yells.

“We’re not gonna.”

“You are!”

“Just cutting this too-tall-moon-blocking-tree down.”

“And me!”

The kid wept worse.

“Climb down,” Detroit says. “Last warning.”

Nothing happens for over a minute. Finally in the distance we hear a mortar shell explode in the faraway town. Detroit takes that noise as the fighting bell, she begins a renewed chop of anger and purpose. I didn’t stop her. The kid was going to fall down with the tree, and that’s exactly what happened: the Too Tall Tree fell, and so did the kid.

The thin skin of ice breaks as the tree splashes down in the pond.

Me and my wife look up with wide grins, “Look at that moon!”

The pond is frozen enough to skate, only until the first snow.
The Too Tall Tree has finally grown high enough to block the moon
Some wild cat is caught in our trap but it’s too deadly to let out
Yeah, the riot, it’s loud, it’s hard to sleep. We feel guilty.
Kid is in a coma in the bed where I read my mystery paperbacks

Detroit gets pissed when I pull the child out of the freezing pond, but I say, “Come on, we can feed him to the wild cat.”

The plan is to make the cat docile enough to let it out of the cage. Nothing we try works. Not cat nip. Not a child. Not a tranquilizer dart. Detroit, a lover of cats, refuses to drown it, burn it, poison it or axe it. She would make a lousy rioter.

The kid finally wakes up. The cuts on his face are almost healed. Today on the news, things looked even worse for the wronged, food is low. Here we are with an acre of sweet potatoes, and who doesn’t love sweet potatoes.  They’ll come here next. I’m sweating. Detroit grinds her teeth when she naps. The kid says, “I’m still alive?”

Candle next to bed flickers.

“We tried to feed you to the wild cat, it didn’t work. You were in  coma.”

“Dream I was being licked.”

“That was happening. Wild cat liked you. Sand paper tongue. You laid in her cage for a long time. Finally we gave up and pulled you out. Wild cat tried to bite Detroit’s hand off.”

“Sorry if I caused you problems.”

“Why were you in our tree?”

“Trying to get away.”

“From the rioters.”

“No, the police. I got shot out of a cannon to escape. I think they killed my entire family.”

“Well, come on, get up, now I feel bad. Let’s get you some strawberry ice cream, you little shit.”

The pond is frozen enough to skate, only until the first snow.
The Too Tall Tree has finally grown high enough to block the moon
Some wild cat is caught in our trap but it’s too deadly to let out
Yeah, the riot, it’s loud, it’s hard to sleep. We feel guilty.
Kid is in a coma in the bed where I read my mystery paperbacks

Dec. 1: We see the black ice form over the pond that evening. I become psychotically giddy, so does Detroit. We have to force the child to put on skates. While we skate out, sliding and off balanced, I could see rainbow carp sliding beneath us during the first rays of the sun. Dawn.

Dec. 3rd: More skating, colder temps. Detroit lands a triple axle. Even the child claps.

Dec. 5th: After a rainy evening, we’re pleased to see the temp dip even lower. All three of us race around the pond in our skates, ducking under the bridge that the fallen Too Tall Tree makes.

Dec. 7th: It snows.

The pond is frozen enough to skate, only until the first snow.
The Too Tall Tree has finally grown high enough to block the moon
Some wild cat is caught in our trap but it’s too deadly to let out
Yeah, the riot, it’s loud, it’s hard to sleep. We feel guilty.
Kid is in a coma in the bed where I read my mystery paperbacks

The child says his name is Trevor. He says that he wants to go back to the city. Revenge.

“Do whatever you’d like,” I say.

Detroit is indifferent too.

He asks if he can open the cage and let the wild cat out.

“Why would you do that?”

He doesn’t answer. Me and Detroit go into our house and we watch Trevor open the cage. We watch the boy climb on the cat’s back. The wild cat is benign. They leave together, trotting down the gravel driveway towards the road towards town.

“Where are you going?”

“To stop the riot.”

The pond is frozen enough to skate, only until the first snow.
The Too Tall Tree has finally grown high enough to block the moon
Some wild cat is caught in our trap but it’s too deadly to let out
Yeah, the riot, it’s loud, it’s hard to sleep. We feel guilty.
Kid is in a coma in the bed where I read my mystery paperbacks

Pink Bicycles

the accident sends me through the windshield

certain things are shattered, but I barely notice

an x-ray technician studies the film and says, “yup, just as I thought you have no feelings.”

I leave the office with an official doctor’s note:

I can do no wrong

my empathy has eroded

sympathy slipped into stomach acid

guilt ground down

I’m free to limp back into the world

the junkyard crew will crush my car

after a lunch we share

their stale crackers are the worst

coffee is from yesterday

but I’m there to rescue some things from my trunk

before they burst

“how’d you wreck?”

“I was driving to work, and there was a sharp bend in the road, two little girls on pink bicycles were coming. I wonder where I’d be now, if I ran one or both of them over, instead I swerved. I hit a tree; I landed on a mattress some kids had lit partially on fire”

I share my rum with the junk yard crew

turns out I have a little love left

and one by one, they sign my cast

with fake names

Abe Lincoln, Mike Hunt, Ivanna Longcock.

When They Fail You

Go away at speeds approaching disintegration

Go away with no trophy

Go away without your name carved into a bedpost, an oak tree, any lonely mountain

Be happy you had rain to drink

Be happy the nights left you alive for the big birthday party each burned down dawn

Be right like a broken clock, on the money, twice a day

Be a quitter, a 9 of clubs, but never an ace, be a fork dropped and picked up with a socked foot

Some people, some people, some people: I can answer for none of them

Go weigh the dice; go open the screen door for the mice; go weigh the reflection of the moon on each ripple as you swim away for good,

for better islands; go off and crush some flowers, wherever you stomp, stomp hard.

Kill’d a Bird at TheNewerYork

Happy Black Friday. Good day today. Ate some left over thanksgiving food, didn’t leave the house, am drinking a beer right now. Pizza is rumored to be on the way. Friends and family are gathered around this house and there’s even a fire going in the fire place. Oh boy.

Also today, TheNewerYork posted a flash piece of mine called “Kill’d a Bird” that is about birds, songs, babies and me. There’s also a trip to the doctor. You can read the story here

The art work above is my Lori Nelson, it was attached to the story at TheNewerYork and I included it here so you’d be intrigued to go and look at what they did with the story and the art paired up. Love that artwork.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for all the nice messages and stuff lately. Means a lot to me. Happy holiday. Are your tetanus shots current? Lemme know.

High July

bulldozers roll up the block

we’re in a pine tree, watching them rip apart our house

I kiss you and palm an egg from a robin’s nest

everything feels as big as a full stick of dynamite

everything tastes intense and fake cherry: your lips, my doubt, the smoke billowing out our crumbling chimney

It’s high July I wonder which version of me I’ve let you know

it’s high July I wonder if the crew below enjoys busting apart our front steps

your bird bath, our rose arbor, our seashell mailbox

the bulldozer disappears into the house, just like we did

it might be inside, putting on the coffee pot, playing with the stereo, petting the cat; or, crushing the couch flat, eating the TV, busting apart the wall to our bedroom, destroying the painting I did of you sitting naked on the sunset cliff

but now look at us out in the open air, happier

looking down at the neighborhood changing

the garage collapsing

the back deck collapsing

I place the robin’s egg in your mouth

you bite, slip me back half

we swallow like it’s aquamarine gum

that we’re not supposed to swallow, either

it’s high July, we’ll have to de-evolve back into the net of nature

It’s high July there’s some changes we’re going through

it’s high July we’re out on a limb in our underwear

but about to spring from branch to branch

all the way to the beach of our youth

your rhodendrums are on fire

my trophy case just shattered

the roof just met the basement

I’d like to die

surrounded by those I love

owning nothing

you have only grown more precious to me, something I might have never noticed like this

sitting in front of the computer.

Sweetheart with the .45

come find me in high July

come find me and brag about frost

come be my friend at the end of the map

come burn this church

come melt this silver cross

come cat fish a condom out my dresser drawer

come alone, cum under a gold dust moon

come throw another shadow on my collapsing room

be my friend who never saw a compass

never cared, never doubted

never painted on stretched canvas

come find me before depressed August

or sober September

be my psychotic confidant

talking loud loud loud at the movies

no faith in anything

but plenty of time for my bullshit.

When He Left it all to Me

budsmith:

Robert Vaughan with a poem

Originally posted on The Miscreant:

He had to leave he said

though we’d met only days prior

and like with any men

breaking boundaries we’d lain

together despite barbed wire

fences, pools with fathomless bottoms.

The morning he split, he thrust

his blue down coat into

my arms, said I won’t need

this, but it was a bitter

cold day that December I

found the tape in its pocket.

Eva Cassidy sang Fields of

Gold and I can’t forgive

her for dying so young. Where

did you go? Still can’t listen

to more than the first half;

no, less than a quarter of that song.

_______________________________________________________________

Robert Vaughan’s writing has appeared in hundreds of print and online journals. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee. His story, “Ten Notes to the Guy Studying Jujitsu” was a finalist for the Gertrude Stein Award 2013. His story “The Rooms We Rented” was a finalist for the Gertrude Stein…

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New Column at Entropy: Same Clothes As Yesterday

Hey there. I have a personal essay on Entropy and it’s the first in a series of monthly writings. A column called Same Clothes As Yesterday. Usually I don’t write too much about my own life. This is an excuse to say “fuck all that”.

The first essay is here and it’s called Somewhere Crazy: Shooting Semi-Automatic Weapons in New Jersey.

I hope it’s as much fun to read as it was for me to write and live through.

Thank for reading. You are appreciated.

Interview With Nate Tower

Nate Tower has a new novella out, USE, REMOVE, REPEAT. If you don’t know, Nate Tower writes funny shit. Nate Tower writes bizarre stuff. Kind of like, if you were to stuck Kurt Vonnegut in a blender with David Sedaris. You’re laughing and you’re worried about dinner with your weird family and then you’re flying through outer space in a really cool neon sneaker rocket and your phone keeps ringing but you’re letting grandma go to voicemail because she’ll be dead soon and who cares. I talked to Nate the other day on Facebook messenger for this interview because I am a real lazy motherfucker and didn’t want to send twenty emails. Here’s a picture of Nate. See that, he’s sitting on a chair on what appears to be Earth. Or maybe Earth 2, I don’t know. Keep reading, there’s a whole interview down there.

About Use Remove Repeat : When Marvin Bindle discovers a revolutionary new procedure that could eliminate STDs and unwanted pregnancies while maximizing the intensity of an orgasm, he knows he would be a fool to pass it up. The procedure is a success, and Marvin quickly finds himself engaging in the best sex of his life. Unfortunately, Marvin soon realizes that his dream isn’t quite as desirable as it sounds. When a sex romp goes awry, Marvin finds himself in danger of losing his livelihood forever. Will Marvin be able to overcome the flaws of science, or has greed and lust cost him everything?

Use, Remove, Repeat falls somewhere between medical satire and sexy science fiction. No matter how you classify it, this is a revolutionary story about the future of sex.

eeeets available on Kindle by clicking HERE.

** The Interview Starts Right Now **

Bud Smith: Yo Nate!   I’d like to do a facebook message chain and have it be real quick quick answers like a conversation. That doable?

  Nate Tower: thanks, bro. i’d love that

 when do you want to do it?

We’re doing that right now. It. That. Etc.

 okay, cool

 let’s go

 What’s the book?

 Hold on. Just got to work…

 okay, here we go…

 Use, Remove, Repeat is a novella. Used to be called The Stas Penis, but people don’t like reading books about penises. It’s not strictly about penises, of course. A satire about sex, medicine, all that stuff.

 





You’d be surprised how many penis books are best sellers. It’s probably like 1 in 10 penis books sells a million copies.

 I like those odds. If I write 9 more penis books, then I’m almost guaranteed to be a millionaire. But like I said, It’s more than a penis book.

Yes, keep on going!

Who’s the narrator of the book?

 Marvin Bindle tells the story. He finds out about The Stas Penis and has to have one immediately. He’s not even deterred when he finds out he has to have his own penis cut off first. The benefits far outweigh this little loss.

guy doesn’t even bat an eye over it.

 He cringes a little at the thought of having his dick chopped off. But it’s all in the name of science. And better orgasms. And the obliteration of STDs.

Well then, there’s something! Has medical science in your book helped women on their journey?



Do women have body mod sex upgrades too, to make their future brighter? To compensate for shitty male partners …

 Yes and no. There are no actual modifications to women’s bodies, but the Stas Penis is supposed to help them as well. It makes a profound connection with their sexual organs to guarantee female orgasm. It also is 100% effective as birth control.

 As you can see, only the men need the enhancement because the men are the flawed part of the equation.

Well, men are pretty damned flawed that’s for sure.

 Yes, that’s for damn sure.

 With all this talk of penises, it would be easy to see this as a man’s book. Really, it’s quite the opposite.

Oh no, I see the satire angle



 You’re probably getting into all kinds of juicy stuff about relationships and how this changes things, probably not for the better

 Oh, it’s juicy alright.

You’re doing a send up of our current medical care state, you probably were able to tell it straight and it was ridiculously funny



Have you had to deal a lot with hospitals in your life?

 There are plenty of jabs at the current state of medical care.

 I wouldn’t say I’ve dealt with hospitals any more than the average person, but my dealings have mostly been unpleasant.

Like what?

 Oh, the typical stuff. Long waits. Doctors making a diagnosis without performing any sort of exam. Doctors ordering tests you don’t need that you have to pay for. Medical staff that doesn’t give a fuck when your dying grandpa has been sitting in his own shit for hours. That kind of stuff.

 But it hasn’t all been bad.

You’ve never gone head first through a windshield?!

I was at the hospital today. There was a water fountain and I wanted a drink so I leaned down and hit the button as much as you’d normally hit a water fountain button, the water sprayed up in a high/wide arc and soaked an elderly woman reading a Kindle who didn’t notice because she is old and at the doctor for old people stuff. Hospitals are crazy.

BTW, I liked your last collection of stories Nagging Wives, Foolish Husbands … Is this novella written in a similar outlandish style or is it even more so?









A woman gives birth to a boot, there. You topping that?

 I certainly didn’t set out to top anything from Nagging Wives. This is its own entity.

 I’m sure the students who study this novella alongside my stories will find connections.

 I think it’s more sophisticated.

It’s the most sophisticated dick story out there. Guaranteed.

That’s a great tag line. Well congrats on the book.

 Thanks, Bud. Hope it lives up to those erectpectations…

** The Interview is Now Over, Go Back to Whatever You Were Doing **

Here’s a bio: Nathaniel (Nate) Tower lives in the Twin Cities area with his wife and daughter. After teaching high school English in Missouri for nine years, he decided to pursue writing and marketing. His short fiction has appeared in over two hundred online and print journals. Twenty-four of his surreal tales about the married life are compiled in the short story collection Nagging Wives, Foolish Husbands (Martian Lit, 2014). In 2011, MuseItUp Publishing released his first novel, A Reason to Kill, followed a year later by his first novella, Hallways and Handguns.

Nathaniel is the founding and managing editor of Bartleby Snopes Literary Magazine and Press. When he’s not doing writerly things, he likes to joggle (juggle and run simultaneously). He is the former world record holder for running a mile backwards while juggling. He is working on getting his record back. Find out more about Nathaniel at nathanieltower.com.