Bud Smith's Blog: Bud Smith , page 29

Smashing Everything

Chris jumped off the kitchen table, like it was the top rope, smashing into his stepmom’s china cabinet, a bunch of things shattering. The cabinet. The china. Chris.

Blood and glass was everywhere. The kitchen chair was splintered apart.

His plan had been to land on the big floral couch, but his foot had slipped on the placemat.

It was the first time I met him. We were eight years old, playing inside, watching Wrestlemania VHS tapes and mimicking parts of the matches.

When his dad came in, I remember thinking that Chris’s dad looked like Andre the Giant, as he looked over his son, picking him up by his arm, swinging him in the air.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?”

My dad and his dad worked together at an auto shop. Periodically, I’d get stuck hanging out with Chris. It was never a good time. The little fucker was psycho.

I remember the update, “Well, Chris is in trouble again.”

“For what?”

“He started a fire.”

I’d melted a bunch of GI Joe’s with him. No big deal. That’s what I was picturing.

“Oh …”

“An inferno really,” my dad said, “little fucker lit the entire woods on fire! Ten fire trucks needed to get called in.”

The next time I hung out with Chris, he came over our house. Local police in his town had banned him from the streets, woods, most everything else. On my block, me and the kids in my neighborhood played two hand touch football every night til the streetlights came on. Pretty quick into the game, Chris and this kid John Wully were really getting into it.

“Shit licker.”

“Cockface.”

They started shoving each other and we all stood there watching. Fights are great.

John Wully shoved Chris pretty hard and he stumbled away, off into the woods.

“Where you going pussy?”

When Chris came out of the woods, he was holding a board with a bunch of leaves stuck to it. He ran out into the street and started beating the shit out of John Wully with the board.

Whap. Whap. Whap.

That was the end of the football game.

Again, I didn’t hear anything else about Chris for a long time. We didn’t hang out at all after that. But he was in the newspaper later.

He’d taken this girl out in his car, right after he’d gotten his license. They were going at it in the car and she told him to stop, but he wouldn’t. He raped her. Beat her up. Dragged her outside and ran her over with his fucking car.

She barely survived.

I have no idea what happened to that fucker. Where he is, what he’s doing. If he’s even still alive.

Life get stranger when you look at it closely.

New episode of the Unknown Show

So here we go, I’m gonna make a greater effort here on this site to keep things updated with the Unknown Show, providing links to the show every Wednesday after the show airs.

A little bit about the show:

Every Tuesday night at 7pm EST, I talk to some interesting peeps (usually writers) who are promoting a recent book, an event or whatever else they have going on. Sometimes on the show, I’ll try to pry some writing advice out of the guests because it seems that everybody has something to say about that. Generally, I have the guests read some of their work.

Last nights guests:

Dustin Holland, poet/artist and co-founder of Kleft Jaw Press. He recently released his new poetry book, Captain Head and came on the show to talk about his book and an upcoming cross country trip.

Paul Corman Roberts is the founder of the Beast lit Festival, he edits at Full of Crow, I greatly enjoyed his book Neo-commuter.

so here’s last nights show

Thanks for listening, and thanks for reading.

New Novel, Tollbooth, Officially Released, yo

Ok, just skidded into my office and put on Led Zeppelin IV. I’m guzzling coffee and I’ve got the window wide open. New York City is going haywire. They’re filming a Jennifer Aniston movie on my block.

So, I wanna mention, Tollbooth is officially out today. By that, I mean, the novel is finally available on Amazon as a print, on Kindle as an ebook and I am mailing out signed copies of it to whoever is interested. I’ve got a few boxes of the books sitting around from the publisher, Piscataway House, because I am sending them out to reviewers and gotta have them available for readings, so if you would like one direct from me, don’t be shy, sir or madam, but you know the deal, I’ll gladly send you one (The Idiom has donated a ton of free zines and such that I will include in the package.)

Otherwise, you know, the internet will always have the damned thing in stock.

If you wanna see what’s going on with the novel, here is a sample (I will eventually serialize THE ENTIRE BOOK, on this website, Tuesday and Thursdays at noon, so subscribe to this site if that’s your bag, ya know, reading a  serialized novel on company time or whatever.)

 

“A gloriously deranged, endless orginal adventure through every day bat country.” – Gabriel Ricard, Drunk Monkeys

Jimmy Saare collects tolls on the New Jersey Parkway. He’s had a mental snap, as a result, is becoming uncontrollably fixated with the 19 year old Gena who works the copy machine at Officetown. Despite his wife Sarah’s impending pregnancy, Jimmy pursues his desire for Gena, unexpectedly becoming more entangled with the strange manipulations of an anarchistic teenager, Kid with Clownhead, who wants to start his own destructive cult when he grows up.

AVAILABLE NOW

I am also signing copies

and snail mailing direct to you for

$12.00

follow the paypal link below.

 

Here’s what peeps are saying:

“A tantalizing joyride of contemporary American dysfunction …”

- Zygote in My Coffee

———————–
“Bud Smith’s Tollbooth is like the car accident of a book that everyone slows down for, to watch along their way to wherever–the type of car accident that creates a 30 mile stretch of idling vehicles.” Aaron Dietz, author of Super

———————
“At the intersection of the mundane and the surreal you’ll find Bud Smith. Poetic, profane and bizarre, Smith’s characters and the world he creates simultaneously attracts and repulses; just when you think you’ve got the characters pegged they do something wonderful like shitting in a box or disgusting like falling in love. Outrageous and frighteningly real, Bud Smith’s writing is always beautifully written and  wildly entertaining.” – Martha Grover, Author of One More for the People.

———————-
“There are two types of people: tollbooth operators and people who think there are people who aren’t tollbooth operators. Bud Smith’s Tollbooth is about you, whether you like it or not. You most likely do not work in a tollbooth but chances are you do know what it’s like to work a mind-numbing job. Chances are you also know what it’s like to make life-changing mistakes. And I hope to goodness and back that you also know what it’s like to take a risk that will possibly change everything for the better. Tollbooth has all of these things, but you probably know that already because you’re in it.” Aaron Dietz, author of Super

———————-
“Tollbooth: better than Madame Bovary, not as good as masturbation.” – Martha Grover,  Author of One More for the People.

———————–

Thanks again for reading, I sure do appreciate it. Much love to the guys at Piscataway House and The Idiom for all their hard work on the book. It’s been a real great project. Check them out, by clicking on the doghouse down there.

Tuesday (new books, readings, a publication)

I’ve been pretty busy lately. Three projects are coming to an imminent conclusion; the novel Tollbooth is set for release from Piscataway House within a week (last I heard, the proofs are all done and we’re just waiting for print copies to arrive for a release party. The Kindle files are being formatted also); The anthology First Time, about how 4 dozen writers lost their virginity is undergoing some final design work and Ebook formatting; my new short story collection Lightning Box (due by the end of the year) is just about to reach the hands of the editorial department at my publisher. So, yeah … A lot of stuff.

It’s been a great week though. My friends from Unlikely Stories/Unlikely Books and MadHat Press were in NYC, bouncing around to various bars, restaurants. I was happy to do two readings recently with them. One in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where I showed off some new poems that I’m starting to assemble into a proper poetry release and another reading last night on the lower east side of manhattan, where I read my short story “The Typewriter”.

Yesterday was also a good day, because the website Cease, Cows ran a short story of mine called “The Bag of Chips“.

Here’s a link.

One last thing: just wanted to mention again, that I’m going to release Tollbooth, chapter for chapter as an online serial because I like to give things away for free. So keep an eye on that. It’s going to be every Tuesday and Thursday for about 3 months.

Thanks for reading.

two poems for Monday

Laugh at UFOs

Love your diabolical laugh
way it send red birds
and other winged-things 
up into the green clouds
way it knocks down 
all the aluminum trash cans
and sets the car alarms off
in a weird harmony 
Love your doomsday stones
your whirlwind rings
your apocalyptic rose
I sometimes sit up on the tarred roof
watching the city blink out to black
until it’s all quiet,
and only the sewers
and fire escapes still hum
like the way the air will get
when a UFO hovers outside
your Trans Am
where you’ve sunken 
into the mud
laughing

The Leopard

Walked into the ocean today.
Saw strange lights over life. 
I’d like to catch a leopard
bring it to a butcher shop
see what happens.
I’d like to swim up random lightning,
kissing the super moon
in the dark fuzz of black unending space.
In 2013, nuclear apocalypses seem so quaint.
Be brave in the face of beauty.
Tonight, the lifeguards are off.

GAS CASTLE

“Just once I’d like to see that dragon explode,” Jad said, slapping down his klappvisier to shield his eyes from the glare. He glanced at Gadnor perched above the King’s Quick Keep with disdain.

“Yeah,” I said, “it’d explode, but it’d take us down along with the station.” I shifted my weight against fuel pump number two, relieving the armor from digging into my ribs.

The large prop dragon’s jaws were wide open, its head thrown back, the blue sky streaming forever above. A crow landed on the tip of its most jagged and skyward tooth. I looked at my ‘illegal’ wrist watch, it was only three o’ clock. The dragons tail was draped down the side of the building, resting beside the ice chest, always advertising some extraordinary deal, today: MUTTON POPS 5 for 99c.

Gadnor had been designed to shoot a vertical column of fire, thirty five feet in the air—the motorist’s on the interstate wouldn’t have been able to miss that one. Sadly, the fire marshal had ordered the piping, the ignition source and all of the electronics stripped before it was even fired once. Instead, Gadnor had become just another sad concrete statue painted red, that nobody but us Gas Castle employees noticed, let alone imagined was built of sturdy steel components capable of withstanding up to 600 degrees of heat.

Carl Kone, our overly-bizarre owner, was a new gas station entrepreneur with an exciting strategy. His chief promotional attraction: every evening on the half hour, MASSIVE FIERY DRAGON DEATH!

Imagine that.

“It woulda been fine,” Jad said, “nothing wudda happened. ”

I’d seen Jad sneaking puffs in his booth. He’d steal the cigarettes and smoke them and … we hadn’t blown up from that. So, maybe the fire marshall was overreacting. Jad was a stupid, but I liked him. Also: I knew of Jad’s side gig, skimming a dollar bill off of each car that came, palming a buck as he handed them back incorrect change. Watching him do that, had led me to my own scam.

We all had our little scams, I thought i defense. Most are just secret.

Zelda’s yellow jeep pulled in from the highway. She was a shitty assistant manager; tubby, close cropped ‘tough guy haircut’, lousy people skills. Rumor had it, that she and Carl Kone were lovers, but I could never be sure, because I never saw the man, he was more like a legend, a whisper, maybe he didn’t even exist.

I looked for Vicky’s Subaru, pulling the horse trailer with Noodle, I knew she wasn’t far behind Zelda, her shift started at 3:30. That excited me.

Worse than Zelda, was Noodle—a crappy horse, that bayed at everything, barely even tolerating Gwendylnevere/Vicky, its rider, our star attraction. My main complaint about Noodle, was that he shit everywhere without any concern for health code violations.

There were many things in place to draw the consumers to us, such as; us—the ‘good’ gas pump attendants, decked out in full suits of bright aluminum armor, with plastic chain-mail, rubber swords and klappvisiers lined with a sunglass lens to help fend off sun fatigue; billboards that began in a sixty mile radius, on three converging interstates: GET READY!! ONLY FIFTY THREE MILES UNTIL YOU REACH GAS CASTLE!!!; Gwendylnevere, our beautiful enchanted maiden who rode a white mare out of the Magic Forest as the fog machine dumped thousands of cubic feet of scene setting atmospherics—lute music emanated from speakers tucked indiscreetly behind the cardboard dumpster.

I didn’t mind my job there, I had my secret interests. Number one, my side loot. Number two, Gwendelynevere. Number three, the smacked assholes that I worked with, who never ceased to amaze me with their candor.

There was Ryan, often spun out on acid, who walked with a limp since his recent ‘accident’. He liked to sniff Noodle’s saddle after Gwendylnevere’s riding shift was over, claiming, “only thing that keeps me coming back.” Sure, she was a beauty but, we all agreed, Ryan was weird for that, and perhaps possessed.

Dave, a heavy set woman in the midst of gender reassignment surgery (how far, I don’t know) who wore monk-like black shrouds, and carried a rubber mace—chanting, as she assumed an ancient nomadic druid would, along with the easy listening radio pumped through the entire compound. She played the steel drums as a hobby and was super kind. Often she would give me her last Reese’s peanut butter cup if she got the King Size.

Seen less often. but always entertaining, was Pippy, an old wired crackhead, who looked like he had alcohol for blood and hadn’t more than one meal a day for fifty years, entertained me because his armor was nearly three times too big for his frame and it would shift around with every step he took, sliding as if there was an earthquake underfoot. If he was absent and needed (why?), he could usually be found in bathroom stall C, breathing heavily.

He once pulled me aside and said, “I’ve become immune to the poison in anti-freeze by taking little gulps everyday since I was 22. I can drink 3/4 of a gallon now without any ill effects.”

He also wouldn’t be caught dead swimming in the ocean because, “fish fuck in there.”

“What about the moat?”

“Sure, I’d swim in the moat for ten bucks.”

Yes: the evil knights of Diesel Rock in their dented, crimson armor, pumping petrol for tractor trailers, dump trucks, landscaping crews, delighted me. They were our fictional enemies—that we, the good knights of the regular gas pump islands (Feudal Premium Realm) were supposed to fight in mock battles in the fields surrounding the moat and on the drawbridge itself on Cheap Tuesdays when customers saved ten cents off Feudal Premium.

There’d was lawsuit after Tim Bologne got his head spilt open by, Spike Lablatt, the lead knight from Diesel Rock with fittingly, a big hunk of rock, the size of a soccerball; so the fucking battles had been put on hiatus until the Gas Castle lawyers could straighten out the legal mumbo jumbo. I’m not sure what Tim Bologne’s real name was. He didn’t go to my school. I believe he went to St. Agnes catholilc. The head splitting had been a very big deal at  the time, but, like most things, it had drifted into the background almost a day after the incident. Spike vanished forever.

I’m a soft sissy. I took off three days work, hiding in my room. I’m not good with confrontation, or adventure, or anything. I think I have social problems. Dave recommended me her psychoanalyst, but I never went. Can you blame me, we make ten bucks an hour.

A blue Honda pulled up to my pump.

I stood with great struggle, clanking and rattling.

The lady in the car said what half of them say, “Oh my God! Look at you!” A little red-haired girl in the back seat was staring at me transfixed, “Look Molly, look at the man! Do you know what he is?”

Molly shook her head. I smiled, “I’m Sir Billy.”

“He’s a knight!”

I nodded, “I’m a knight. I defend Gas Castle with exceptional value and upmost service. First off, me-ladies, can I check your motor oil?”

“Thank you, please. And I’ll take a full tank of Feudal Premium.”

“5 cents off if you pay cash.”

“Cash it is, Sir Billy!”

I clanked over to her hood, checking the dipstick, “Opp, look at this, you’re a quart low. Fill it up?”

She nodded. I walked to my booth, retrieved a white plastic bottle of Gas Castle 5w 30 synthetic.

It was empty.

I took the cap off, flipped the empty bottle of oil into her nozzle, I left it  there as if it was draining while I filled the car with gas.

“Do you know why knights are so special, Molly?” the mom asked.

“No,” she said meekly.

“They protect innocent princesses from bad guys and they have an unflappable moral compass. They’re pure of heart.”

I said, “We also butcher dragons.”

The mom answered a ringing cellphone and I leaned in Molly’s window.

The little girl’s eyes got wide. “Dragons, real dragons?” I pulled my rubber sword out of my sheath and motioned to Gadnor above the lottery ticket sign: Powerball was up to 89 million.

“See that fucker, I cornered him in the lava fields of Mount Nasty Volcano where he lived … I stabbed him in his gut til he was dead, then dragged his dead ass down I-80, all the way here. Cool huh?”

“Yes!”

“He had kids,” I said darkly, “If they fucking come after me for revenge, I’ll gut them too.”

“Can I help?”

Begin your training now … it might be a little while. They’re still just babies, but they won’t ever forget.”

“Neither will I,” she whispered.

The pump clicked off. The mother said into the phone, “Babe, I’m sick of meatloaf.” I put the handle back, removed the bottle of oil, snapped the hood closed. Then, I put the cap back n the oil and set it on the floor in my booth.

Mom handed me fifty dollars ($48.56, but please keep the change) for the fuel and the bottle of air.

I waved goodbye. She honked happily, returning back to reality, sliding snuggly between two vehicles zooming by in the rush hour. Birds must think we’re nuts.

I put forty-four bucks in my cash drawer, no one the wiser. Jad, on his side was dealing with a guy in a red Ford pickup. As he handed the guy his change, I watched Jad count the correct amount out for the gentleman and then palm a dollar, that disappeared in between his imitation chain-mail cuff and gauntlet glove.

When the truck pulled pulled off, Jad said rather proudly, “Ha! Got that dumbass, too.”

I felt bad for Jad, he was just poor white trash and dumb as they come. Working at Gas Castle was probably as far as he’d get. He was in remedial classes, I was in college prep. He lived in a crowded trailer in Pine Manor with his two twin cousins—Dee and Max, and his Uncle Henry. All of them were a mess.

And look how excited goddamned Jad gets over a boosted one dollar bill!

What were Jad’s hopes and dreams?

He’d mentioned a few times that college seemed like a waste of time.

“Why?”

“Cause you already got a job,” Jad said, “and far as I can see, getting free mutton pops is quite a perk.”

I shrugged.

“There’s a lotta room at the top in Gas Castle.”

Doing what? Managing the fuel sales? With that came the responsibility of all other outside services, and arranging the gunk to get sucked out of the moat/drainage pond loop, having the animatronic moat hand serviced all the time; arranging for consistent landscaping care—well groomed lawns/battlefields 1-3 (we had a major problem with dandelions 4.5 months out of the year) the pruning and clipping/weeding of our neat edged flower beds; securing delivery of oat sacks for Noodle to munch on; making sure that the less respectable freaks in Diesel Rock with the face tattoos and juvenile detention records weren’t getting methed out in the bathroom or the Magic Forest, cleaning the birds nests out of Gadnor’s throat chute.

No thanks.

I’d never want the responsibility of that managerial  job, but I’d do: A) whatever I needed to do in order to stay employed at my brainless pump station to pay for my night classes at Arcane County college. B) things I thought would get me in good graces with Vicky, as far as considering signing up for riding lessons in the farmlands to the west and wearing—gag—any amount of cologne that would be appreciated (scout reports waiting arrival on that), but to be honest with you, she majorly intimidated me sitting up on that horse, my palms would even more sweaty in my gauntlet gloves, I’d start to stammer in my brain without even saying a word, oh sweet Jesus, imagine actually talking to that fine specimen. C) avoiding eye contact with Ray, but looking at him whenever I could because he was always doing crazy film-worthy shit.

Speaking of glancing, I glanced across the moat at Ray over in Diesel Rock. His crimson armor heavily dented. He’d gotten into a fight with a customer just the week before, an older lady in a rack body truck who refused to pay, she’d smashed him with her truck, as he tried to jump on the hood, then she just drove away.

“That kid’s crazy,” Jad said, noting my fascination.

“Yes he is,” I confirmed. “I wouldn’t fuck with him either.”

“Ah, he’s just a scrawny fuck.” Jad acted like he was a bad ass because of his wannabe gang-banger cousins  who were also beefy powerlifters. They lumped him up so much, he thought he knew how to fight, even going as far as to tell me, ‘I’m a black belt, son. Don’t believe me, go get one of that horse’s hay bales and I’ll do a back flip, split it in half, yo—over my head.”’

“I heard he has a samurai sword now, since that chick ran him over” Jad said, “Dave was mentioning …”

I said, mocking bravery, “Well, I got a sword too, so I ain’t scared.”

“Your’s is about as real as that dragon up there.”

We watched Ray wobble down Indian style in the middle of his island. He was drinking a Sunkist soda, rocking back and forth slowly, tripping hard, as always Mumbling about Carpathian demons.

Suddenly, I had a string of cars come in, two of them who I sold empty bottles of oil, at four bucks a pop—but at the exact moment when the rush ended, I watched bitch Zelda come walking out of the convenience store. Her hair was pinned back tight to her head, she could use a facelift but couldn’t afford one. “She looks pissed,” Jad said.

I watched with intrigue as Zelda crossed the moat bridge in her heavy pink shoes, precisely as the animatronic hand of the lady in the lake who had an ax instead, rose out of the water under the bride; we couldn’t have a sword in her hand because we didn’t want to get sued by Excaliburrito, who had almost the same thing (that rose out of the ball pit).

I’ve always found theirs cheesier, our as a contrast, quite noble. For instance, our hand had French tipped nail polish. There’s only has four fingers. Very tacky.

Zelda walked up to me angrily, “We need to talk.”

“About what?” I said.

“About your little scam, Jad.”

“I’m not Jad,” I said.

“Then who is?”

We turned to look at Jad hiding behind his gas pump.

“My office now,” she said angrily to the gas pump.

“You have an office?” Jad said.

“Stock room! Now! Let’s go!”

Jad walked with her over the bridge. I covered double duty while he was gone, then, mercifully, Brenda came out from bathroom or coffee detail and snatched Ray from Diesel Rock and sent him over to our side.

I tensed up as soon as we were left alone because he asked me, “Are you a fucking demon?”

“Not that I know.”

“Don’t say that, I’ll have to cut you open to check.”

“Then I’m not a demon.”

“Good!”

Ray laughed hysterically, stumbling over to the windshield washer fluid pit, flipping up his visor, puking precisely.

A came. I covered for him, not even selling fake oil while the kid laughed hysterically next to the customer’s rear passenger tire.

I said to the driver, “I think Sir Raymond the High is just checking your tire pressure.”

“Very good,” the customer said, turning up Billy Joel on the stereo. I believe it was ‘Scenes From An Italian Restaurant’

I went into auto-pilot.

#####

Earlier, Jad was on the couch playing Street Fighter 2, when his jacked-up cousin walked in with a black hand gun aimed at his head.

Jad didn’t notice what was happening until the laser dot crossed his eye and all he saw was red. He ducked out of the way, cursing, “Crap!”

Cousin Dee howled with laughter. “Tricked ya.”

“Why are you pointing a gun at me?!”

“It worked, I scared ya, and it’s not just any gun. It’s a desert eagle, semi automatic …”

“Nice trick.”

“Haha. The trick is that it’s a replica. Looks real as hell. Got you to wet your fake chain mail.”

Jad was half dressed in his work outfit. His routine on Saturdays was to smoke a couple bowls, playing video games,  slowly putting on his suit of armor before coming to Gas Castle.

Max was laughing in the hallway. The two of them were in on the joke, the big thick dumbasses.

“Where’d you get that thing?” Jad said.

“Flea market,” Dee said.

“That’s gonna get you shot by a cop.”

Dee sat down to the right of Jad. Max sat down on the other side of him. The two twins towered over Jad, as if he was sitting between two grizzly bears.

“How much cash you got on you at your job?”

“Wuh?”

“Yeah, we might rob you. Sound good?”

“Sound good? Fuck no that doesn’t sound good.”

Max said, “I need money, bro.”

“Didn’t get this gun for nothing, J.”

Max pulled a ski mask over his head, “like this thing? I got it at the flea market too …”

“I gotta go to work,” Jad said. He stood up without finishing his videogame fight. Out in the garage, he pulled on the rest of his aluminum armor.

Dee stuck his block head out through the screen door, waving as Jad pulled away in his Honda, “see you later, buddy.”

The laser appeared through the windshield, Max was pointing the gun through the window above the kitchen sink, cracking himself up.

Jad flipped them both off as he sped away.

#####

Vicky zoomed in off the highway with  her Gwendylnevere outfit already on, her golden hair streaming out  the window. Butterflies flapped around stupidly in my empty stomach. She had the horse trailer hooked to the back of her Subaru, I heard Noodle whiney and thought about what a high maintenance horse he was, the old bastard.

“That bitch is magic sexy,” Ray said, practically drooling.  I ignored him, thinking about how he had that ‘thousand mile stare’ like Private Pile from Full Metal Jacket or same thing, Jack Nicholson from the Shining. It really annoyed me that Jad had just been dragged inside by Zelda and was probably getting super interrogated (under hot heat lamps moved from the sandwich station), I was worried that Jad was getting fired and I was gonna be stuck with Ray permanently.

The other thing that worried me, was that Jad might blab about my scam too. I was raking in an extra $200 bucks a week. Whatever. I justified that I was safe from accusations because Jad was too stupid to even realize what I’d been doing with the empty quart of oil that I’d reused 500 times.

I started to stare at the kid’s dented armor. It was comical how creased it was.

“Why’d that lady hit you with her truck?”

Ray wasn’t talking. He just stared at the ground, giggling at his boots.

A car pulled in, I went to his window. “What the hell is going on here?” the customer asked.

A lot of them were like that, at least a quarter of them. Despite all of the advertisements on the highway every mile leading up to Gas Castle, some motorists passed them all without noticing, managing to pull into our station completely bewildered.

“Seriously,” the guy said, “what’s with the armor?”

“Ah crap,” I said, “What’ll it be?”

He looked at the pump, struggled to comprehend what all of the weird fuels were, “which one’s regular gas?”

“Black Death.”

“$20 of that.”

“Cash or credit, cash is five cents cheaper … Check the oil?”

“Credit. Yeah, sure. Do the oil.”

He handed me the credit card. “Never mind, we don’t do the oil anymore,” I said, “I forgot.”

The driver shrugged.

I looked over at the Magic Forest, Gwendylnevere had started the fog machine. The smoke was beginning to waft out of the trees, the lute music drifted from the direction of the cardboard dumpster. She was petting Noodle’s muzzle and saying something to calm him down, he was a very high strung horse.

I asked Ray to cover for my pump, while I snuck away, pretending to go use the bathroom, but I really wanted, was to say hello to Vicky before she jumped onto the horse and became Gwen. Once she was up there, it was all over for me.

I lost my nerve though, and walked into the store, as she looked at me approaching. Inside, at the end of the hallway, I put my ear to the wall and listened to Zelda berating Jad.

The way she was screaming at him, it made me think that Zelda owned Gas Castle, that we weren’t living in Karl Cone’s fantasy world, but hers.

I got caught by Dave as she came around the corner to use the lady’s room. She laughed at me, “Did I catch you spying, Sir Billy? That’s not very fitting behavior for a knight.”

“Sssssh.”

She went inside and I felt silly standing there after that. I walked back into the store, then back out to the pumps, after debating about an ice cream sandwich that I spent so much time contemplating, I decided I didn’t need it. Besides if I wanted to get ripped for Gwendylnevere, I needed to lose the last 25% of my remaining gut. Sure, my breast plate was chiseled and made me look like I had screaming pecs and abs, but the I couldn’t wear my armor everywhere, could I?

As I was walked back to the pumps, a purple Trans Am squealed up beside Ray. He looked lazily over at the car. A black handgun stuck out of the driver’s side window.

“GIVE US ALL YOUR CASH, FUCKNUT!”

I froze. Ray didn’t even flinch, he squared up, pulled his sword out, which wasn’t plastic like mine, but rather, a razor sharp samurai sword.

“Jesus,” I said.

A laser dot appeared on his armor, in automatic response, the sword slashed through the air, the hand holding the gun lobbed off.

The gun clanked on the ground. The hand flopped beside the Trans Am’s tire as the driver screamed in delayed terror.

On the ground, the hand oozed. In the car, blood sprayed everywhere, every heart beat a rush of plasma.

The car lurched forward narrowly missing me, driving headlong into the moat, resting at the approximate location of the animatronic Lady in the Lake.

With the car crash, Noodle was spooked and sprinted away from Gwendylnevere, across the wooden bridge, hard fear in its eyes. The horse galloped full bore past the pumps and into the frantic highway, where I fully expected it to be hit by an approaching flat bed truck, but instead of getting smashed by the truck, Noodle timed his steps and leapt in the air, easily landing on the back of the flatbed, which just cruising away unaware of the new passenger.

The truck and the horse were heading toward the link up for I-80, which went to the east, ending at Hackensack, NJ, or to the west, ending in Los Angeles.

Gwendylnevere ran out to the edge of the highway and crooked her neck, “NOODLE!”

I grabbed her long white dress because I thought she was gonna run out, but she wasn’t and she yelled, “Get off me!”

Looking back at the pumps, saw Ray sitting Indian style on the ground, rocking again. In the moat, the door to the passenger side of the Trans Am was open, a guy in a ski mask was trying to pull the driver out.

The water was turning pink from all the blood.

I glanced down at the severed hand on the ground and the gun beside the hand.

“It’s fake,” I said.

Ray wiped the samurai sword down with napkins from the trash can.

#####

My roommates weren’t happy with me; I hadn’t paid my share of the rent in over two months. Tim knocked on my door, as I laid/hid in my bed, refusing to answer the door. I was sneaking in through my own window at that point. I took my meals at Excalliburitto, Burgerland or the salad bar at Food Universe. I showered when Tim was at Matress Mayhem, or making deliveries in a long blue van, air brushed with cartoon mattresses and people sleeping on them who were going, “zzzzz … zzz … zz … zzzzzz … z” as if were some kind of secret code.

To make matters worse concerning our communal  living conditions/money issues with the house, Jane had moved back with her mom and dad, and Carl’s girlfriend was in the  process of moving out because they’d broken up. The landlord would boot us all soon, if I didn’t get over my fear.

“Bill,” please open the door. “We gotta talk, man. We really do.”

I’d been dodging him for too long. I couldn’t do it any longer.

I answered the door.

“You’ve got your armor on …”

“Yeah,” I said, “I go back to work today.”

“Thank God.”

“It’s a good thing, I guess.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“I’ll have some cash for you in a week,” I offered, “if it all works out.” What were my other opinions? I couldn’t move back in with my parents, they’d moved down to a retirement community in Florida, 55+, I had thirty-five years to go before that’d be kosher.

“Thanks, Billy,” Tim said, “really.”

#####

Gas Castle was eerily the same. I parked in the lot, peering at Dave as she waved to me in her heavy Druid’s cloak. It was a hot day, I didn’t know how she did it. I guess she thought the same thing about me in my shiny aluminum armor.

I shuddered, remembering the two ambulances that’d come that day, one to take Dee to the emergency room, another to take Ray to the psych-ward by way of the local police. When the police had showed up, they had no trouble taking the sword from him, he’d left it next to the twitching hand.

“It’s fake,” I kept saying, “It’s fake.”

I went in and saw Zelda, her hair was shorter, spikier, the kind of red dye that’s so intense it becomes looks purple under fluorescent lights. Old ladies love that.

“How are you?”

“I’m OK,” I said.

“It’s good to have you back.”

I nodded, made myself a new time card, punched in. Leaving the store, walking back into the sunlight, I noticed a strange sound coming from the Magic Forest. The gallant lute music, had been replaced by ominous moaning and wailing, one of those Halloween mixtapes. Ghosts  ‘n Goblins. Ghouls. Walking in that direction, I found the old sign gone, replaced with one that said, “Haunted Woods”

I walked in, the fog surrounded me in the heavy shade of the trees.

“Hello!” my voice seemed to echo through the damned place.

A soft light appeared before me, “Go away.”

“Gwendylnevere? Is that you?”

She approached me in the fog, glowing otherworldly with LCD lights now sewn into her long white gown. I didn’t move a muscle. I just stood bravely in my armor. The rattling of chains was all I heard.

“It’s me,” she said, standing five feet in front of me, the mist swirling all around. Her face was caked with white theatrical powder—her lips were blue.

“You’re a ghost now?”

“It’s all I can do now, just hang here in these freaking woods … for no reason either.”

“Your horse is still gone?”

“Yeah, no word,” she said. “I think this is gonna be my last day here. No one comes back here. They have no reason to. I might as well not be here.”

“Don’t say that,” I said.

“Why? It doesn’t matter.” She pulled down her hood, Her golden hair that used to stretch all down her back was gone. In it’s place, curly raven black shoulder length locks.

“You cut your hair.”

“It was a wig,” she said.

“Oh.”

“This is me.”

“Think I like it better,” I said.

I think she blushed, but I couldn’t be sure because of all the powder and fog and distracting moaning.

“I always wanted to say hi.” Vicky said, “but …”

“What?”

“I’m just so shy.”

“Tell me about it.”

Jad was out at the pumps, whistling a song as if nothing catastrophic had happened just weeks prior, “Bill!”

“Look at you, all chipper.”

“Well … What’s the alternative? To be a glum fuck? Where you been?”

“Home, hiding.”

“Wow, is that anything a badass knight would do?”

“I’m not a badass knight,” I said.

I gassed up a few cars, including a hatch-back with a hot young punk-looking chick who told me my armor looked ‘sexy as hell.’ I smiled and resisted the urge to ask her for her number, I was entertaining the thought of Gwendyn—, err, Vicky.

I’d talked to her. I should have done it months before. I felt like sure a fool: I’d waited for no reason.

“Went and visited my cousin yesterday …”

“And, so?”

“He’s suing this place.”

“For what?”

“Got his hand cut off,” he laughed wildly, “duh, remember? I’ve seen his stump. Nasty. Real nasty.”

“That was one of your relatives?”

He shrugged, “Yeah, you can call him one of my relatives.”

A mini-van arrived, I watched Jad do the bottle of air for the bottle of oil trick and take a four dollar commission for that.

He said to me, as we were alone, “Got a new secret cash cow, boy. I’ll show you sometime.”

He was always lagging behind.

I washed the windshield of my next customer, scrubbing bugs off extra hard and helping with with a question, they were lost, needed some reliable directions.

I said, “I’m lost too, but I think you’ve got to go that way,” I pointed down the highway, the direction they’d come, “make a right at the Fried Paradise and follow that road until you hit the junction.”

They tried to pass me a dollar, I declined, saying, “we aren’t allowed to take tips anymore.”

I’d enacted a new policy for myself.

When Jad went to the bathroom, I dug my old reliable empty bottle of oil out of its hiding spot and chucked it into the trash, were it belonged.

#####

I found Noodle in a strange residential area, 300 miles away. It was a combination of blind luck and a lot of posts on Craigslist, Facebook, Google+, ect. that led me to him.

The horse had jumped off the wayward flatbed, landing in a guy named Louis’ yard, who took the ‘god sent me a horse this is awesome. I’ll give it to my wife’ route of dealing with the sudden appearance of Vicky’s broken down mare.

I showed up at the house in Tim’s blue work van from Mattress Mayhem, that he kindly let me borrow one Sunday afternoon, in exchange for my car. Tim had no idea what I was using it for. How did he know I wasn’t a mad bomber?

When I got to the pink house, there was a miserable looking woman, sitting on a picnic table, combing out Noodle’s rat nest mane. A transistor radio played Patsy Cline. The yard was littered with dog toys, a rut was worn around the oak tree. Noodle was wearing two dog collars looped together.

“Hey,” I said, “Cindy? I think I talked to you on the phone about that there horse …”

“Yeah, you did.” She smiled at me, but it certainly was a wounded smile. “Louis found him, eating the last flower in my garden.”

Our conversation was stunted. I felt horrible, the lady had grown quite attached to Noodle. Even saying, “I went over to Tractor Town the other day. Saddles are oo expensive anyways.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, thinking about Noodle’s old saddle that’d slipped off, landing in the bloody moat.

I sat with her for half an hour at the picnic table while she said goodbye to the horse. “I always wanted one.”

I nodded.

“Lemonade?”

Even though I was thirsty, I declined, walking the horse into the back of the van. I tightly shut the door, waved while I drove away down the road, I thought, “Wow, that was too easy. She hadn’t asked to see ID or anything.

“Maybe I’ll start stealing horses professionally,” I told Noodle, as he laid down on his side like he was dead, which is something I didn’t know horses ever did. I guess they don’t like vans.

In the backyard, I watched lonely Cindy picking up dog toys in the backyard.

#####

I made fast tracks, stopping only once for gas and to stretch my legs at a truck stop near Greenville. I got quite a few strange looks as I walked Noodle in the tall grass, cars and trucks whizzing by that didn’t startle Noodle as much as I figured they would.

I tugged the rope tied around his neck, begging, whistling, trying everything, “Come on boy! Please go! Please!”

The thought of Noodle flooding the Mattress Mayhem delivery van with piss and shit worried me more than the what my life was worth.

Luckily, somebody with horse experience who was living out of their station wagon offered, “Take that stead around the back of the building, out of the light, away from all this noise …”

It worked. Noodle relieved himself.

As a reward, I fed him a jumbo size container of Burgerland Fries and let him slop up some of my root-beer of the pavement. It seemed to have quite the tough tongue. Horses are interesting.

Later that night, I showed up at Vicky’s place, a farm down a long dirt road that wrapped around Sullivan pond. I saw a light in one of the windows but wasn’t sure if it was hers. “Can I help you?” A man said from the shadows of the porch.

“I got Vicky’s horse.”

“Why do you have Vicky’s horse?”

“It ran far away. I tracked him down.”

“VICKY! COME DOWN HERE!” he yelled, happiness in his call. “She’ll be happy,” the shadow man said, coming into the moonlight to shake my hand, “and nothing makes me happier than seeing that.”

#####

She was in a nice blue dress, I had on khaki pants and a white button down dress shirt, we walked hand in hand out of the lawyer’s parking lot, past my car and through the trees to Excalliburrito.

We were hungry after a four hour holdup with the lawyer. I’d given a testimony about the ‘epic battle’ that’d given Tim Bologne brain damage on that tragic day. He wasn’t there in the court, but the prosecutor said that he’d lost 55% of his sense of taste, now had blurred vision, he could no longer sleep on his right side and, the biggest driving force of the lawsuit, Tim Bologne could no longer get an erection, at only 21 years old.

During litigation, it came out, the reason Spike Lablatt had pummeled Tim in the skull with a large chunk of asphalt (I’d remembered it as a smooth white stone as big as a soccer ball) was because Tim Bologne had been sticking his bologna in Denise Delcorro, Spike’s finance.

I’d summed up my memories of the day as: “I remember it was really hot, I felt like I was cooking in my armor. I playfully crossed the field and pretended to do battle with Dave, who was lightly smacking me with her plastic mace, while I blocked it light-heartdly with my shield. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jad Thomas and Tim Bologne (during that part of my testimony the defense attorney corrected me, saying what Tim’s real last name was, I can’t for the life of me remember what the hell it is) having a real lame and deliberate sword fight. People at the pumps were honking their horns and splitting their energy between either demanding we fight a little more pointedly or stop fighting all together and come pump their freaking gas. We were supposed to have a battle every hour on the hour on Tuesdays. I remember laughing with Dave cause our fake battle was so lame and looking up just in time to see Spike Leblatt running over from the parking lot by the Enchanted Forest with a huge hunk of white stone the size of a soccer ball (at that time, the attorney pointed to the bloody hunk of asphalt on the table in the plastic evidence bag labeled ‘exhibit C’. I have no idea where ‘exhibit A or B were either).

“Were you ever instructed by management to put each other in comas?”

“No.”

“It was never insinuated that if you caused great personal injury to each other, that you’d climb the ranks?”

“No.”

That was pretty much as far as the questioning went. I walked out of the room and Vicky walked back in, to give her limited testimony, she hadn’t seen much, on the account of all the fog surrounding her.

“Glad that’s all over,” I said, as we crossed into the Excalliburitto parking lot.

She laughed, “Maybe we’d get a discount at this place if we had our costumes on.”

“Ha, I don’t think of it as a costume, more as a uniform.”

“Same thing,” Vicky said, smacking my shoulder playfully.

At the counter, I got us both the Knight’s Templar Quesadilla Value Meal that we’d grown to love and live off since Vicky and I had officially started dating each other and dining together. She was even taking a class with me at Arcane College: into to Bird Studies. I was a happy man, her things were in the trunk of my car, it’s be nice to have her in the house. It was just me and Tim.

The garage was becoming a stable for Noodle.

I set our tray down at the round table (all the tables were round, the way King Arthur would have liked it.)

“Look at that,” I said, motioning to the pit full of brightly colored plastic balls. It was red taped off, DANGER DO NOT ENTER.

“What do you think happened?”

“I have no idea,” I said.

An acned kid cleaning up a table not too far away said, “oh, geez, it was crazy … This little kid got electrocuted by the Lady in the Lake. Really zapped.”

“That’s sad,” Vicky said.

“Kid’s mostly OK,” the guy said, “shit happens, that’s life.”

We finished our quesadillas quick and got the hell out of there, finishing our soda together in the car, sharing the straw. When I kissed her, she tasted like blueberries and fizz.

#####

A month later, we were all standing around the pump stations, looking up at the convenience store above Gas Castle, which was closed temporarily, while two guys on the roof were unbolting Gadnor and working with a crane operator below to pull it off with metal slings. The workers lowered the prop dragon down onto a flat bed, while we all absently serviced cars, trucks, everything. The whole thing took about an hour and a half, then the caution tape came down and store opened again.

Jad said, “I can beat my cousin pretty easy now at Street Fighter.”

“Oh? Why?” I wasn’t paying attention.

“Cause he’s only got one hand.”

“Nice.”

Gwendylnevere waved to us all through the fog, as the workers split their time ogling her and actually working. Noodle seemed unperturbed even, when a large metal sling fell off the roof and crashed into the ice chest. We all jumped, Noodle didn’t even flinch. His adventures down the highway had made him a tougher horse.

The flat bed pulled onto the highway, Gadnor was strapped down tightly. As it disappeared off into the distance, going off to a pancake house forty miles away that liked the promotional opportunities of a fire breathing dragon mounted on it’s roof. Who wouldn’t?

I made a promise to go visit that pancake house when my tax return showed up. I wanted to take the whole crew out for eggs, bacon, pancakes, coffee, one time before work.

Dave walked over in her heavy robes and said, “You want an Almond Joy?”

“Would love one,” I said, smiling.

In the moat, our own animatronic ‘lady of the moat’ breeched the surface, lifted its ax up brightly from the water.

I couldn’t wait to pass the word on to Carl Kone via Zelda, that we could have the sword back for the animatronic hand, on account of the tragic electrocution that had befallen Excalliburrito. But that’s life.

As the sun came out from behind a cloud, the ax reflected the rays in our eyes, and we all lowered our klappvisiers together.

All The Complex Ways I Don’t Care About Your End of Times Cult

Dissolve through the floor;

slide in between sedimentary rock;

swim through the welcoming lava: ect.

Let’s lock lips and melt minds

intercepting bullets, decrypting puzzles

solving crimes; breathe, pause:

calmly diffuse bombs.

Occasionally you’ll die

and come back

as a really beautiful orb of light

that I’ll wave to.

War feels better for love.

Listening to windshield wipers.

Watching birds chase other birds.

Power lines humming not just cause they’re supposed to.

New car scent. Cherry Coke. Naked girl air freshener.

Each decision you make in life

directly reflects your outcome in Altered Beast.

Most likely

everything will work out fine

Supermoon Dreams

After the beach, and after the pool; I laid down upstairs while the reciprocating fan and the neighbor’s industrial lawn mower and the sprinklers made me think we were back at the ocean.

In the dream, we were laying in the same bed we were really in: the same gold room, the reciprocating fan, the mirror reflecting the pineapple lamp in the mirror reflecting the photograph of us at a collapsed farmhouse.

In bed, she was next to me. We were listening to David Bowie’s Low album on her seafoam record player that was long gone. He kept singing “Sometimes you get so lonely … Sometimes you don’t know why. Be my wife. Be my wife …” and from the bed, she would lean over and put the needle back on Sound and Vision and it’d all start over again. We’d drift out of sleep inside the dream and she’d sometimes even float over to the record player and flip the entire record and it’d be Brian Eno playing a suitcase AKS synth. Warsawza.

When we woke up for real, she said, “It’s 7pm.” We’d had plans to go and walk the boardwalk near an old golden carrousel and drink beers as the super moon rose above the ocean.

I told her about my David Bowie record player dream. She said, “I dreamt that I had tickets to see Prince and the Revolution and I was calling up all my friends; Julie, Marcie, Angie, Jess, Allaina, Allie, Erin …”

I said, “And downstairs from the pool, your dad kept calling up and asking us to turn the record player louder, he couldn’t hear it well enough from his float.”

“Did we?”

“Of course we did. And you–you’re already as tan as Americans dream.”

The super moon was coming around. The barbecue grill was cooling off after a long day. Birds I couldn’t identify were calling wildly from the berry bush.

The Frog

Adam hated Abbington, and most of all their new trailer park, Pine Acres. He begged his mom to take them back to Slip River. She said it was impossible. So, he went off alone to kill frogs.

They were in weeds beside the drainage ditch. Slowly he collecting them in a large white pail that he’d stolen from behind Fried Paradise that still reeked like chicken.

Adam wore a too-tight striped green and orange shirt, his pale belly hung out the bottom. His jeans were muddy and torn, his canvas sneakers had holes near the toes.

The boy leaned over the pail, breathing heavily from his mouth. He wasn’t winded: thats just how he was breathed. The frogs bounced around randomly in the chicken bucket. Snot came out his nose. He let it fall.

He wanted one more frog to make an even ten, so he climbed back down into the drainage ditch, pretending the cattails were Vietnam vegetation and he was Rambo.

The next frog was mutated. Adam said, “whoa mamma!” It seemed to shine like a diamond: glowing even, an iridescent sheen on its skin. The light caught its strange body and glimmered in the sun. Adam chucked it into the pail, there was a heavy clunk, as if it was made of cast iron. This wasn’t a normal frog. Adam walked up through the reeds. Stumbling with each step.

He walked to the back of the strip mall as if he had both sneakers on the wrong foot.

The water tower appeared looming over the trees like a large sea-green jellyfish just floating there, “Abbington.”

“I hate Abbington,” he said.

Adam had no friends.

He hadn’t had many friends in Slip River but at least they talked like him.

The kids in this new town were stuck up preppies who stuck to themselves, staying indoors playing Videogames. He was not invited.

He was from the Pine Acres trailer-park. He was a mouth breather. They lived in nice houses. They had straight white teeth. It was only a matter of time before Adam was not a stranger to them, the beatings would continue then, same as the last town.

Abbington Elementary, his new school was out of session for the summer, but he went there because it has a nice brick wall. The boy set the pail down and peered in.

“Ok … Which one of you wants to go first?”

The frogs flopped around randomly in the plastic pail, occasionally croaking.

Adam stuck his hand in and pulled out a fat one. Green and slick, catching its foot.

Adam went into pitching position as if he was standing on the mound in Yankee stadium. He wound up, kicked his chubby leg into the air, windmilled his arm around, smashed the frog against the wall.

A wet thud.

Adam glanced uncaring at the dead frog, twitching in the dust. He looked all around, hoping some other kids would show up.

The boy reached for another frog. This time, he caught the translucent mutant. What a strange animal, he thought as he wound up like he was about to deliver a 100 mph fast ball. Again he kicked his leg up, drew his arm back …

The frog left his hand and smacked into the wall.

There was an explosion. Shards of brick shot back at Adam, dust and specs of debris raked his eyes.

He was blown back 10 feet.

When he sat up, coughing, the wall had a massive pit in it–caved in. The bricks cracked, shattered, smashed to pieces.

The translucent frog was there on the ground, unharmed, one piece. It hopped away through the dust, towards the treeline.

Adam watched it in fear … Then he chased it down, scooped it back up; back into the pail it went.

He looked at it in his cupped hands. Each time it took a breath, a little spark of lightning seemed to pulse inside its body. He watched this ‘lightshow’ with unwavering fascination.

His slingshot had been taken away by his father. “You’re too angry for this kinda toy.” Now as Adam stood in the parking lot for the bus depot, he didn’t care so much. He had something better than the slingshot. He had the pail with him, the only frog he’d kept was the translucent lightshow mutant.

He was staring at a large white van with MATTRESS MAYHEM airbrushed on the side above a detailed painting of a stack of mattresses. One of his favorite things to do back in Slip River, was to shoot rocks at parked cars. Now, he wondered what would happen with his new toy.

He took the frog out and he threw it as hard as he could against the side of the van. The frog tore through the sheet metal. The windshields exploded. The tires popped. Adam got back up to his feet. Went around the other side. There was a hole in that side of the van too. The frog had ripped a hole through the steel on the driver’s side of the van. The maroon car beside the van had also been damaged. The windows busted out. Tires flattened.

Adam found the frog hopping towards him from him under other cars. He put it back in the bucket–rode his BMX away from the commuter lot, laughing and in total fear simultaneously.

It was his secret. He didn’t tell anyone. Not that there was anyone to tell. His mother and father both worked two shifts. He took the frog around and he destroyed things.

He believed that the frog had been sent to him to help him get back at this shit town. Abington deserved to be leveled.

Adam found a sling shot buried in his toy chest. He went up on the roof of the general store. The water tower loomed above the small town. His trailer was just below the tower. Pine Acres: all of it.

Adam took the translucent frog out of the container, he loaded it into the slingshot, drew the rubber band back very far back and held it there, under tension … He wanted to go home.

He fired the frog, the water tower exploded in a wall of water flooding the trailer park below. As he watched the streets flood, and his own silver trailer rush away in the rapids, he wondered if the frog would be swept away forever, or would it find him again.

Copy edits done for my novel Tollbooth

I just finished the copy edits that my publisher sent me for the novel Tollbooth. It was a great experience and I think it really helped me learn a lot about writing/editing. I heard a quote the other day that was like this: “Art is never finished, it’s abandoned.” I agree with that one. So, my first novel that has made it past all of my own drafts and through the hands of proof readers, editors and copy editors is finally abandoned–ya know, finished.

I’m pleased with how it came out. It went from 110,000 words down to 79,000. It went through multiple rewrites. It went through multiple rounds of proof reading and correcting … now, I’ll work with my house to finish the book design, add in the blurbs that my author friends have been so kind to give me from the drafts that  they’ve read …

In a few weeks, I’ll be doing readings, reeling in book reviews and (something I’m pretty excited about … posting Tollbooth chapter by chapter every Tuesday and Thursday). So, stay tuned and keep in mind, that I’m also going to be doing/dishing out signed copies of the book (in a small number myself, signed and mailed out with two copies of the Idiom zine). If you are interested in that, lemme know. I got a sense from my collection of short stories Or Something Like That, just how many people want to buy direct from me, and … yeah, I need a beer, enough yammering.

BTW, my record player is screaming out right now. “Be My Wife” by David Bowie. I’m obsessed with Low this afternoon.