Bud Smith's Blog: Bud Smith , page 36

Some Stuff

Yes. Stuff. The Stuff that stuff is made of. Been busy. What’s that mean? Have no idea. I think it’s just something that people say.

Got done outlining the November nanowrite novel.

Got my plane tickets to New Mexico for a big day of the dead celebration that I’m taking Spout to. Got a shit load of Halloween stuff. Set up my devil statue next to the Virgin Mary …

Wrote a bunch of poems; 90% done editing the final junk on my novel, Animal In Your Care dug, drank all the beer then we drank all the wine, drove out west into the farmlands for some dinner, went through some boxes of old photos and found this Coney Island snapshot strip of me and Spout

Also:

Yesterday I had a real thrill. I was featured in the magazine The Weekenders. I had three short stories, an interview and a write-up about me. So that was fun. Here’s the issue if you’re interested. It’s pin-up themed. It’s free and online. So, that rocks.  I was excited to get published again along side my Uno Kudo buddies, Chuck Howe and Tracey Lander-Garret … both of those crazy kids are fun/sick people and I recommend you come party with all of us on Halloween, or any Saturday night really.

Here’s a link to Uno Kudo which is an art/lit book that I edit and help to organize and birth like a kidney stone (only it’s a gemstone)

Anyway, thanks for reading. When are you gonna let me buy you a beer?

Index Cards: Outlining a Novel

I’ve written a few novels in the past. This November, I’m going to participate in Nanowrimo, you know–that goofy attempt to write a novel in one month. I’ve done it before and it’s a lot of fun.

My buddy Gus Sanchez of the funny and thought provoking blog Out Where the Busses Don’t Run has been talking to me recently about doing some outlining work, so I took his nudge and decided to do some of my own.

What the fak.

This time around, I thought that I would outline my project because that’s not something that I have done expansively. This time, I figured … EXPLANSIVE would be a good idea. Because of all the below reasons

This is a novelization of my life at 23 years old
It’s got characters that are based off real people, with names changed
It’s got events based off real things, just some info smudged
 the idea struck me just the other day and I don’t wanna lose track of the semblance of the strange plotting.
I don’t wanna mix up truth and exaggeration while I’m writing. I wanna keep things straight in my narrative for myself while writing and of course, the reader later.

So here is my process for the outline. In case you were wondering.

First, I wrote out a sentence about the entire plot of the novel. From start to finish. Each line of the paper was just an event. If the events got boring, then I knew there’d be a problem with the novel.

Boring outline=Boring novel.

When I had start to finish and that pesky ‘middle’ taken care of; I took a loose leaf sheet of 8X10 paper and I folded it in half vertically and then twice horizontally. This made 8 boxes on the front, 8 boxes on the back. I filled these boxes with interesting traits about the characters.

Note: Making the “sentence event sheet” led to more characters appearing than I originally panned.
Making the “character boxes sheet” made more plot appear than I had planned.

When all of that was done … I started making these … index cards, each index card is a 1200 word approx. scene.

I like to write novels that are broken up into scenes. I’ve decided to do a great heap of that in this new book partly because I have had so much success with my short stories lately. My book ‘Or Something Like That’ has been getting some great reviews. I’ve noticed something that the reviewers are picking up on in my short stories, and that’s that a lot of things are “tied” together, like Seinfeld, Like the Marvel Universe … so I’d like to keep that going with my next release.

I have 40 of these scene Index cards.

It has the scene number (chapter number) on it and some general notes on what happens in each scene. My goal with this novel is to make each of these 40 scenes stand on it’s own as a short story. I love to writes ‘shorts’ and in this project, I want to marry the idea of short stories with the novel.

This entire outlining process took me about 4 hours of work, but I think  it’ll be well worth it, because now I have a complete map of the story, it’s characters and the conflicts and sub-conflicts that arise.

Should be a good time.

Now, for the rest of October, I’ll be completing edits on a novel I wrote this April … almost done.

wash your sweat and gunk and worry in crystal clear rivers

America by mile-marker. Paint by #, connect the dots on a map—touch every state. Take highways, waysides, down and arounds, detours. The horizon goes on forever, each cloud looks somehow like the state you’re in. Silver rivers, blue mountains. Mud. Wet tree limbs sag heavy. Walls of green suddenly end, get replaced by concrete columns, sidewalks, bridge foundations, sheets of steel, glass, antennas aimed at the cosmos—then, that shrinks, the green springs back up out of the earth, it’s all a blur out the window of the sky blue Fairmont.

Stop in truck stops, browsing cassette bins; Creedence Clearwater Revival, Simon and Garfunkel, golden oldies from back before you were born. T-shirts and coffee cups with logos of the nearest city hanging off metal hooks in white Formica pin board. The register girl  drums her nails on the counter. Bleached blonde hair, a streak of green, mouthing the words to Sister Christian, “...motoring … what’s you’re price for flight?” Sustain yourself on beef jerky and wild cherry Pepsi. Gift shops. Everywhere is a gift shop. They can’t help themselves. Gotta survive off the traveler. Plaster casts of everything possible; magnets, key-chains, snow globes with the close proximity National monument trapped inside, waiting for you to shake them. You never do.

Eat eggs sunny side up. Fried hard. Over easy, whatever you want. Hash-browns and corned beef hash, sausage links, glistening. Make eyes with the waitress, always try the waffles with a fruit cup. Refuse the whipped cream. Diners. Little luncheonettes. Restaurants advertised on billboards beginning 100 plus miles away. Counting down … counting down … 95 Miles til Peggy Lee’s Diner! 60 miles til Peggy Lee’s Diner! 35 miles til … oh … you just passed Peggy Lee’s Diner. Turn around. Open faced sandwiches. Whatever the special is: Meatloaf, Salisbury Steak, Chicken Fried Steaks. “I’ll have the lemon pepper chicken with wild rice” “Honey, it’s Tuesday. That’s Thursday’s Special.” No matter, it’s all good. Just don’t order the pizza. You’re too far from the ocean now. Tip well, take the leftovers with you in Styrofoam clam-shells, slide out of the booth, make your way back to the parking lot, a toothpick in your teeth.

See dusty flat top plains. Mauve sunsets. Stars coming into focus over ravines. The valleys where the prayers gather; underdeveloped, unable to float like balloons up into the sky. Power-lines sagging between generating stations. Windows lit up golden, smoke coming out of a chimney, a rail-thin dog running along a mile of net wire cattle fence, barking at the Fairmont, us yelling at it so that it keeps trying to jump the fence and get into our car. We don’t care. If it can get in, the pooch can ride. Cows, horses, semi-trucks, beat up tractors. A red barn busted, decayed, and probably housing zombies. Pee in the thorn bush, an eye on the barn door, if it moves an inch, sprint back to the car. They’ll eat you, guts an all, pull your gizzards out like taffy.

Seek entertainment: drive-in movies, semi-pro wrestling matches at the local high-school, roller-skate rinks, lemonade and some kind of poison in a Dixie cup. Fireworks popping over a football field but, “I don’t think this is football season? Is it?” “Got me.” Ferris wheels in the distance getting closer, small green lights and screams from roller-coasters, the smell of popcorn, hay, funnel cake, mules and horses behind wooden gates, corn dogs, peppers and onions, the cotton candy machine. Dawn comes like a surprise, still sitting on the hood of the car, talking about what’s right and wrong. Bullshitting. Lying. Chewing on a long piece of wheat. At least, you think it’s wheat. You’re not sure.







Gasoline. All the gasoline in the world. Burn it. Blue bug windshield fluid. Oil by the gallon. The engine shudders. When it rains the Fairmont gets washed. Sometimes a stray dog pisses on the tires, that helps too. Take turns driving. Take turns sleeping in the back seat, avoiding that sharp spring that pokes out. Seat belts. Her hair whipping in the wind. No air conditioning. No power steering. Iffy brakes. Watch out for potholes, these shocks are fucked. Add rations to the trunk. Cooler with ice. Beer. Lunch meat. When she pumps gas, she leans with one hand on her hip, the other holding the handle and she stares off into space, until the safety clicks off and stops. Once though, the safety must have been busted and fuel sprayed out all over the side of the car and all down her stocking. We laughed, she took them off, we burnt  them in the fire later. She rode barefoot, her feet on the dash, her thighs looking good as I shifted and listened to the radio go from clear transmission to total static and then back.

Stay in motels. Dumps. Sleep in parking lots. Find campgrounds, no quarters for the pay showers—wash your sweat and gunk and worry in crystal clear rivers. So cold you’d think you just died and from this point on you’re just a ghost. Random roadside neon signs advertising vacancies and free HBO, magic fingers beds, carpet that looked good in 1977, thin mattress, yellow smoke stains on the silver and orange wallpaper.

Drive. Drive. Drive. Lakes reservoirs, junkyards, sports bars. Small town cops, State troopers, cowboys in Levis, girls driving trucks, talking tough. Always scouting for bathrooms, find surprising and useless vending machines for flavored lube, mints, cologne. Convenience stores with Pac-man, Galaga, nudie magazines, fuzzy dice everywhere. Casino machines. Digital poker. Blinking lights. People leaning against brick walls outside, saying to her, “You ain’t from around here.” Even they laugh when they say it, because they know that they’re just playing along with some role in a movie they’ve seen. My Cousin Vinny probably.

Then, these strangers shake your hand, and say, “You’re on the road, really? Traveling America? Really? I always wanted to do that!”

“Then you outta come with us!”

“Oh … I wish I could.”

“So do we,” we say, climbing back in the car, waving as we pull back out onto the road.

Jack rabbits sprint across the black top. Play the game of spotting strange license plates, “Oh! That’s Oklahoma, I think!”“No … it’s Nebraska.” Speed up, cross another state line. America reveals itself to you. Everything leaning in close whispering in your ear like an electric secret that you can never properly share.

The Green Lights

The Sunfire’s fucked. Transmission gets jammed up going from 2nd to 3rd gear—RPMs screaming. S’only a matter of time before it explodes. I’ll be walking then.

Now, I got a ride though. A lot of good that does me, gets me all the way to the pawn shop. I smoke my last cigarette on the ripped couch, staring at the wood paneling at the spot where the TV used to be before I sold that. Then I go down the hallway, put on my Ramones shirt, tie my greasy hair off with a bread tie ’cause I can’t find any rubberbands anywhere in the trailer.

It’s misting as I make numerous trips down to the car, piling junk into the trunk; an old aquarium left over from my snake that died, a box of horror DVDs, metal and punk CDs … mostly worhless crap I could care less about. Many trips, my boots clunking up the rusty steps. Then I’m carrying my guitar amp out and really feeling like crap that I gotta sell that.

It get’s worse. I pluck my cherry Gibson SG off the hook in the living room. The inside of the case is bright neon pink plush, inviting and sad to me at the same time—nothing in my life is bright. I close the case. Lock it, take it out to the Sunfire, buckle it into the passenger seat, as if it were a child.

What choice do I have?

I’m outta loot, gonna get evicted. They sent my job at the factory over to Indonesia. I don’t even know where that is. Good, Indonesians, enjoy my job. I used to dream about drilling holes when I went to sleep, now I dream about normal things; playing drums for Megadeth, banging super-models, flying, time travel …

I drive out of the trailer park, pass my weirdo neighbor who’s sitting there on the front lawn smoking a strawberry scented cigar in the rain. My guess is he’s dusted. He’s usually dusted. I pull out onto route 37, stomp the gas, the car wheezes and whines and a plume of black smoke erupts out of the tailpipe.

Between my trailer park and the pawn shop there are eight lights. I call this strip of highway the gauntlet. Flanked on both sides by strip mall after strip mall with pathetic blinking neon signs, it really crushes my heart to have to drive up and down this road. The worst part is, you always get stuck at the lights, they are set up in such a way to try and slow you down, so you have to stop and look at the sickening blinking strip mall signs.

Everyday.

The Sunfire screams out, stuck in gear but I just manage to slip through the first light.

I curse under my breath and search the glove box for some left over smokes. Nothing. I scatter papers and receipts and old coffee cups, can’t find anything. Then there on the carpet, I spot a half smoked butt with Fawn’s red lipstick smeared at the filter. I reach down, taking my eyes off the road for a moment. I snag it up. Pop the cigarette lighter in … when I look back at the road, I’m surprised to see that I’m gonna make the second light.

“Heh .. look at that.” I say to myself, looking in the rearview mirror. I’m embarrassed, my face is all broke out in acne and I haven’t brushed my teeth in two days. What the fuck is my problem? Really what is it?

Up ahead, I can see the church.

I’m gonna have to go there this month for food pantry handouts to feed myself. Man, how disgusting is that? Drag myself over there and listen to those people dish out some free advice about light and happiness and all that swell stuff for some boxes of pasta and some store brand tomato sauce, Ramen noodle, peanut butter, raspberry jelly (it’s always raspberry jelly.) Will I have the balls to wear my pentagram necklace, or will I pussy out? All for some stale Wonder Bread.

I make the next light too.

I’m surprised. I glance at the church as I pass it. The sign says, “CH_ _CH WHAT’S MISSING. U R”

I start screwing around with the tape player, trying to get it to work. It’s been dead so long. It’s no use really. It ate my Slayer tape, the thing practically melting in there. Oh, I remember Fawn laughing about that. She was drunk, she was always drunk, she said, “I did that. I used my dark magic.” I told her to use her dark magic to “get us out of this town”

“Not a chance,” she said.

Buddy, let me tell you — I made it through the next two lights. Just zooming along. I wasn’t happy at all about where I was going. I was just sick to my stomach about the idea of selling my shit. My guitar especially. I mean, I worked real hard when I was a kid to get that fucking thing. I mowed all the lawns in the trailer park for a whole summer. Yeah … that was some crazy shit. Then I shoveled driveways, and it snowed a lot that year. A lot. It doesn’t snow like that in Jersey anymore. Global warming. The government has these machines generating heat … I don’t wanna get into it, LOL.

Up ahead is the county mall. They have a big sign out front. A Hot Tub Sale.

That’s exactly where I should be going. To buy a Hot Tub.

Isn’t that the American dream?

Does the American dream have anything to do with barely being able to scrape by and having to hock your shit just so you don’t have to go live under the overpass or shack up in tent city with the rest of the bummed out freaks. Or worse than all that, start selling meth. I mean, that’s an option too, isn’t it. But so’s fucking prison.

Whoooosh … I slide through that traffic light right as it turns yellow.

I grin from ear to ear.

This hasn’t ever happened to me before. It hasn’t ever happened to anybody ever before. I’m just cruising along. Sure, the Sunfire is shaking and the RPMs are pinned at 6000 solidly in the red cause my trans is all jacked up and frying and my gas gauge is dipping down below a 1/16th of a tank … but here I am … winning at something.

The game of the traffic lights.

Something nobody ever wins.

Well, look at me.

Ahead are the strip malls. A massive block of them. One after another, an interconnected maze of consumer filth. I’ve applied in most of the businesses, none of them are hiring apparently. Not Food Universe; Fried Paradise, Mattress Mayhem. Electronics Explosion, Gastown, Sub-Heaven, Tire City, Hank’s Hardware, Sudsy Laundry, Home Depot, Pool Palace … none of them.

But I make the light!

I’m bouncing up and down in my seat now. I’m looking all around, there’s not a single car on the road now, no one in front and no one behind. I’m shouting. “GO! GO! GO!”

Six lights!

Six green lights!

I pass Burgerland; Big Lots, Taco Bell, the Costume store, the Toyota Dealership, the Ford Dealership, Hang Ten Surfshop, Kite Kingdom …

I cross the seventh light.

My tape player starts to make a creepy noise. Inexplicably it starts to grind back to life. Slayer starts to pump through the speakers. Crystal clear. I’m freaked out.

My gas gauge starts to jump around.

It goes from sixteenth of a tank up, just bouncing up … eighth  a quarter of a tank,fucking half a tank …

A line of blinking neon signs looms ahead. The rain pelting down now, severe. K-Mart. Another Food Universe, Dean’s Drugs, Supersonic Stereo, Pet Asylum, Moogie’s Pizza, Barchord, Cash For Gold …

I see the last traffic light ahead. It hangs there like the gatekeeper guarding the exit to hell.

Beyond that light is the bridge. The bridge goes out of the town and towards the ocean. I close my eyes and imagine the ocean. The rain sweeps across the hood of the Sunfire. I open my eyes. The light is still green. I’m gonna make the last light.

There’s Pete’s Pawn Alley … I glance at my guitar in the passenger seat. Fuck it. I’m not hocking that fucking thing. Not now.

There’s the light.

It turns yellow.

I stomp on the gas. There’s an explosion underneath the hood of the Sunfire. The transmission. The car rocks forward, a new life. Winged like motherfucking Pegasus.

… the Sunfire catches gear somehow, slipping out of 3rd and into fourth and then into fifth.

I just make it through the green light and my heart is so full of blood and hope and joy. I glance at my face in the rearview. The acne is gone.  Wtf, I just keep driving.

I never come back. To any of it.

Interview

I did an interview recently, with a website called Drunk Monkeys out of LA. Very interesting site, they recently ran a book review of Or Something Like That, and a short story called The Sword (from a new collection  of short stories available 2013)

I thought I’d share the link with you, because I found the interview to be a lot of fun for myself and because I got some notes from some peeps who read it and thought it was interesting and weird (both good things in my eyes).

Bud Smith Interview

Thanks for reading and for chiming in.

The Dog

 

 

Henry found a dog. It wandered in from the dusty streets, sniffed around the trashcans. From his screen-door Henry whistled. The dog came right away, sat on its haunches, head crooked, awaiting a command.

It wasn’t Henry’s first dog, but it was his best. Australian Cattle Dog, spotted randomly, patches of strange color, odd and unique. Bright green eyes. He named it Luther because the eyes reminded him of Kryptonite.

It surprised him to see how readily Luther followed commands.

“Sit,” Henry said. The dog sat.

“Roll over,” he commanded. Luther rolled over.

“Play dead…”

The man did that all day. Every command was met without hesitation.

Henry showed the dog off with pride to his friend Carl.

“Fetch a stick!”

The dog did it.

“Get my slippers, pal,” Henry was just screwing around, he didn’t own any slippers. But to both their surprise, Luther bolted through his doggy-door—sprinted like mad down the street.

“Guess your great command following dog just ran the hell away,” Carl said gruffly.

Henry shrugged, what was he supposed to say?

Half an hour later, Luther appeared with a pair of brand new pair of luxury silk slippers clutched lovingly in his fangs. Tags still on them.

———————————————————————————————

The man told the dog to feed itself. To give itself a bath. To take its heartworm pills. No issue. Command received. Action taken.

He was very pleased. He gave the animal more and more sophisticated commands, all met unflinchingly.

“Pick your dog crap up off the lawn.”

Done.

“Take the trash out.”

Done.

“Do the dishes.”

Done.

“Mow the lawn?”

The man couldn’t believe it. Luther got the lawnmower out of the shed, checked the gas and oil. Pulled the chord, began to mow.

He described to his friend Carl, how expertly Luther had done all of the yard work. How the dog had even edged the front walk. “Then, the dog bagged the grass clippings.”

“Get outta here …” Carl said, impressed.

They sat in the air conditioning while  Luther weed-whacked the yard in the squelching heat.

“He’s gonna wash my car next,” Henry said with pride.

Carl finished his beer, burped, crushed the aluminum can on the floor with his foot. “Oop, now we’re outta beer.”

“Alright, let’s send the dog.”

They did. They sent the dog. The first time Luther trotted down the sidewalk. The next time, Henry let the dog borrow his bicycle.

————————————————————————————————

The man put the dog to very heavy use, but he also rewarded the dog well. He fed the dog thick steaks every night, took the time to pat its head often. Luther slept at the foot of the bed. Often on a sandy beach, a tennis ball was heaved into the surf. Luther chased, his pink tongue flopping in the wind as he sprinted forward in glee.

The two were very happy to have met each other.

Carl dropped by again. He was drunk and had been thinking about things. He was out of work and about to miss his mortgage payment again.

Luther was working. Up top laying shingles. Henry would’ve helped, but he was afraid of heights. Luther didn’t seem to mind working alone anyway. He was quite comfortable on the extension ladder and a real pro with the nail gun.

“Tell your doggie to go get us some money.”

“I don’t think so. I don’t need any more than I have.”

“Don’t be like that … pal, don’t be like that.”

Henry refused. Carl was being unreasonable. He kept insisted in his gruff way about sending the dog to knock over a jewelry store. Surely, Luther was capable, he could do anything. The pup would come back loaded with diamonds.

A heated argument broke out. It got bad fast. Soon fists were flying. Kicks. Screams, red faces. Carl’s hands were around Henry’s throat.

The dog didn’t even know what was happening. It was operating some air powered tools on the roof. The compressor too loud.

Henry somehow slipped out of the choke hold and slammed Carl’s head into the ground.

Carl lay there lifeless.

Dead. Just like on TV.

The man called his dog inside. He packed his things. The two of them got into the car and drove feverishly. The man was terrified of jail and he had just killed his friend. The farther he drove the more upset he got. By the time he crossed state lines, the police were aware.

The man pulled over. They switched. Now the dog drove.

The first of the police cruisers appeared in their rear-view. Luther stomped the gas but couldn’t shake them. His nose got wet. His ears flopped down in fear.

A helicopter rose over the highway infront of them

“We’re in it now,” Henry said.

The police bullhorn said: “Pull over. There’s nowhere to go. We have you.”

Luther just howled sorrowfully.

The man nodded. The dog pulled the car onto the shoulder, dust plumed up. The police swarmed. It was all over.

But a solution to the problems occurred to the man as the police approached the door. He knew how to solve it.

He said to his dog that would follow any command, “Bring my friend back to life. Raise Carl from the dead.”

Luther closed his bright green eyes, lowered its head—began to quiver and shake.

In the the morgue, Carl sat up, coughing and wheezing.

The blood suddenly flowing through his heart.

Everything was OK.

The police vanished. The helicopter vanished. So did; the worries, the threat, the fear, the unquenchable terror of a fate worse than death.

Henry and Luther exchanged a long glance. Then the man opened the passenger side door, stepped out of the car. “Goodluck,” he said to Luther. His dog barked hard at him three times, then drove away down the highway.

Henry watched the car disappear on the horizon and felt relief.

———————————————————————————————

Henry and Carl sat in the air conditioning, watching the ball-game.

Carl was feeling better, he wasn’t dead anymore.

It was just like old times. Carl, crushed the last beer can. “Oh, we’re outta beer … need to go to the store.”

Henry got his car keys. He’d have to go and get the beer himself.

Carl pointed to the man’s new cat, a calico named Wiley.

“This new cat of yours doesn’t do anything. You couldn’t even make him if you tried.”

“It’s for the best,” Henry said.

 

Some Car Crashes I’ve Caused

I used to get in a lot of car crashes. One year in particular, I seemed to be involved in one after another. All: my fault.

Three accidents; close succession.

At the time I was twenty-three and driving a 1990 Ford F-250 pickup truck–jacked up, with over-sized tires. People referred to it as The War Machine.  I used it primarily to haul stone back and forth from the quarry to job-sites. I was working for myself as a stone mason, building waterfalls into swimming pools.

All three incidents involved me, behind the wheel, slamming into people. Rear-end. The bed of the truck full of stone. New Jersey. February-August 2004.

1.) The first time it happened, I was concerned about the driver. I smacked into a white mini van at a traffic light on a two lane road in a small town.

Instantly I hopped out of the truck. There wasn’t much damage to the minivan but I’d given it quite a volt.

I slipped on the black ice. At the drivers window, I said, “Are you alright?”

The woman rolled down her window and threw an extra large stylryofoam cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee at me. It hit me square in the chest and exploded. She rolled up her window, took her cellphone out, called the police.

The cops came and talked to me at my window. They were nice enough. The cop asked me why I was all wet. I said, “Coffee.” It surprised them when an ambulance pulled up. The woman got inside the ambulance without talking to the cops. The cops thought this was vey rude of her.

Whiplash: her insurance company told me.

2.) The second collision occurred on a street leading up to a drawbridge. Boom! The back of a Lincoln Continental caving in. Rocks from the back of my truck sprayed down. A cloud of dirt thick in the air.

Remembering the coffee cup incident I stayed in my truck.

An old man got out, scratched his baked potato shaped head. Blue polyester pants. Velcro shoes. He was hunched over, studying the back of his car. It looked bad. Crinkled. Creased. Folded oddly.

I waved sickly. He waved back, said: “Forget about it. S’nothing.”

Then he got back in his Lincoln and we sat there for ten more minutes waiting for the drawbridge. People in line with us got out and stretched– came over and looked at the damage for themselves. The bumper of the Lincoln hung on by a thread, swaying in the breeze.

“S’nothing”

3.) Now I was a car crash pro. A real seasoned vet. I was driving in heavy rain, downhill–not a care in the world. I applied the brake, slid down towards a maroon Pontiac LeSabre.

Waaaah-BOOM!

The impact pushed the Pontiac into the interaction. Shovels and wheelbarrows flew out of the bed of my Ford.

We pulled off into a nearby parking lot.

She was an older lady. Irish. Mid fifties, salt and pepper curls. She wanted to handle things ourselves. No insurance. She took down my license plate and passed me a slip of paper with her home address. I was supposed to swing by and drop off a check, “Wednesday night. 7pm–sharp.”

I arrived at her house. Surprised to see the driveway loaded up with vehicles. She opened the door, revealing large family dinner. Neices. Nephews. Uncle Paul. Cousin Dottie. Crowded house. Corned beef. Cabbage. Potatoes. Very many faces all staring at me expectantly.

“Have a seat! Join us for dinner!”

I gave her the check and I left.

I got rid of that truck following the third collision. It’d begun to shake violently. The shaking happened every time I hit a slight bump. The front end would jump around horribly.

The last time this horrible vibrating shaking doom happened, I was getting road-head from my girl at the time. I hit a pothole … she started screaming, I was yelling … I was slightly injured, and so was she. The truck was a killer.

After that. I never wanted to see that truck ever again. I sold it cheap. I haven’t crashed into anybody since.

Leading up to a Book Review

So, writing a book is challenging. The creative process can occasionally be like wandering around a junkyard, looking for parts to a car that is too rare and too strange for the highway. You look anyway.

I wrote the stories in ‘Or Something Like That’ over the course of about a year while working on a novel and a collection of poetry. (Go ahead, lob rotten fruit at me)

After the writing is somehow done, the editing begins. When you think it’s complete (you’ll tell yourself “I’m Done!”) you’re about 1/4 of the way done. You’ll have to edit it about 2 more times, extensively.

Extensively means: sober.

If you don’t pay to have it done professionally or if you yourself aren’t a seasoned editor, you’ll have some typos and strange formatting glitches.

Ok … but then … done!

Right?

Nope. Now, design your book cover, lay out the interior. Wait for proofs. Find out the proofs look like crap. Glitches, blurry. Redesign everything.

Then, give out some test copies to your friends. A few will read (a few will not even pretend to read it). The few that do read it will say, “YOUR FINISHED PROOF IS FULL OF TYPOS!”

1. You’ll vomit.

2.  They’ll point out some more typos.

3.   Now … edit everything one more time. Re-design the cover. Reformat the text. Lay out the table of contents again. Fix the formatting.

Ok! Now, order a big bulk shipment of the book … become annoying. Start talking about your book (you’ll have to). Sell your book. You will. Make a little money. Spend it at the bar and the rest of it invest back into your next book.

Also, you’ve got to figure out where to submit your book for review. Write them emails. Keep track of what went where when.

All this stuff. All of it and more. Then, finally– a review.

Real happy to say, I got a book review for my collection of short stories ‘Or Something Like That’ and they didn’t kick me in the throat and take my lunch money or anything. A pretty thorough analysis of the book and some points and thoughts concerning the writing, the characters and all the stories (of which I’m not sure are about 10 too heavy … what a problem to have, too many stories).

REVIEW FOR ‘OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT‘

The book is currently $2.99 at Kindle

available in print from lulu



Or available from me on the cheap and I sign the thing, send some handmade zines with it. Contact me however you’d like. Carrier Doves get preference.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for being cool as ice. Thanks for the peach cobbler pie, whoever sent that.

Love,

Bud

A Book Review

So, writing a book is challenging. The creative process can occasionally be like wandering around a junkyard, looking for parts to a car that is too rare and too strange for the highway. You look anyway.

I wrote the stories in ‘Or Something Like That’ over the course of about a year while working on a novel and a collection of poetry. (Go ahead, lob rotten fruit at me)

After the writing is somehow done, the editing begins. When you think it’s complete (you’ll tell yourself “I’m Done!”) you’re about 1/4 of the way done. You’ll have to edit it about 2 more times, extensively.

Extensively means: sober.

If you don’t pay to have it done professionally or if you yourself aren’t a seasoned editor, you’ll have some typos and strange formatting glitches.

Ok … but then … done!

Right?

Nope. Now, design your book cover, lay out the interior. Wait for proofs. Find out the proofs look like crap. Glitches, blurry. Redesign everything.

Then, give out some test copies to your friends. A few will read (a few will not even pretend to read it). The few that do read it will say, “YOUR FINISHED PROOF IS FULL OF TYPOS!”

1. You’ll vomit.

2.  They’ll point out some more typos.

3.   Now … edit everything one more time. Re-design the cover. Reformat the text. Lay out the table of contents again. Fix the formatting.

Ok! Now, order a big bulk shipment of the book … become annoying. Start talking about your book (you’ll have to). Sell your book. You will. Make a little money. Spend it at the bar and the rest of it invest back into your next book.

Also, you’ve got to figure out where to submit your book for review. Write them emails. Keep track of what went where when.

All this stuff. All of it and more. Then, finally– a review.

Real happy to say, I got a book review for my collection of short stories ‘Or Something Like That’ and they didn’t kick me in the throat and take my lunch money or anything. A pretty thorough analysis of the book and some points and thoughts concerning the writing. the characters and all the stories (of which I’m not sure are about 10 too heavy … what a problem to have, too many stories).

REVIEW FOR ‘OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT‘

The book is currently $2.99 at Kindle

available in print from lulu



Or available from me on the cheap and I sign the thing, send some handmade zines with it.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for being cool as ice.

Love,

Bud

The Tire Pile

The junkyard was my home for about a year. It wasn’t the kind of job that suited me. I did it because I was able to stay there for free.

 I lived inside the tire pile. It was more beautiful than it sounds. I can imagine what you must conjure when I say that. What I did, was find a little cave of sorts that I  could enter from a  crevice around the back. From the outside, it appeared as any other typical junkyard tire pile, but once you crawled inside, you saw that I had the place furnished rather nicely.

 In my defense, it was nicer than many of the real “homes” that people I’ve known have lived in.  It could have been worse.

 One time when I was listening to the radio, I heard about someone who lived in the rafters of a bridge. It was comfortable. He liked it there. Until one day, the bridge started to lift up. Before he knew what was going on, he was vertical. His bed pointed at the sky. His books and shoes falling down into the river. He’d been living there a few days, never considered it could be drawbridge. That’s how those things go. Every house has it’s downside.

 My tire pile was tolerable. It never moved up into the sky, dangling above the river while I gripped on a rafter to save my own life.

 I had a living room with a small TV. A fridge, a fake potted plant, a couch. There was no running water, but I did have a cord running underground which gave me electricity. I even had a bookcase with some discarded library books and magazines from the dentist across the highway. The receptionist in there liked me. She gave me all the magazines when they were going to throw them away.

 It was good for me. It didn’t bother me to not have a lawn or a telephone or a mailbox. I didn’t mind not having to shovel the driveway when it snowed or paint the shed when it needed painting. Actually, the roof I ‘d constructed for myself within my mole hole was known to leak when the tires above shifted.  So I got my handyman fix just fine by managing that battle with caulk and spray foam insulation and tarps I’d weave artfully in and out.

 The only real downside to living there, was that it was hard to bring girls home.

 They never seemed too impressed with me when they found out that I lived inside a pile of old discarded tires. They’d complain about the overbearing odor of the rubber. About the occasional insect. About the sounds of the trucks dumping the tires up above us.

 “Just pretend like this is the bottom of the ocean and that is the sound of the waves…”

 “I’m pretty sure that the roof is gonna collapse on us!”

 “Nobody ever got buried alive in a tire pile, take it easy.”

 Sure enough, the girls one by one would get up off of my couch and climb out what you’d call my door except it wasn’t much of one. It was a sliding  glass door that I’d installed vertically because the track always seemed to get chunks of tire tread wedged in it the other way. I kept vowing I was gonna put in a real door, but never got around to it.

 The worst part was that I had a real thing for the receptionist in the dentist’s office. She was really beautiful and would bat her eyes at me as if putting out a fire with her lashes . She had great teeth too (of course). I couldn’t bring myself to invite her over to my place, even though she seemed very receptive to the idea. I couldn’t tell if it was just because she was a receptionist or not.

 The best part about her was that she drove a shitty car.

 That’s my thing. I like a girl with a receptionist job who drives a total piece of shit car. Some people like legs, or tits, or ass- don’t get me wrong, I like all of those things, all of those qualities are welcome bonuses. Mostly, I want a girl who I can talk to, who can type 1000 words a minute and drives a car that may or may not catch on fire.

 A friend of mine got me the junkyard job because I was known as an ace forklift driver. The junkyard needed somebody to load cars into the car crushing robot. They had the equipment. I had the talent.

 Truth be told, driving a forklift used to be one of my major talents. I’ve given it up now. It’s no longer a passion of  mine.

 A lot of us Americans used to be quite good at forklifting. Now we don’t really have much to load or unload. It’s just how things go. Waxing and waning, except it might be that we used all of our wax up with Manifest Destiny. After that it was all just wane.

 Regardless, back then, I took a lot of pride in my forklift driving abilities. I used to be known as “the man who could move any pallet”. That was a big deal where I was from. A small factory town, our main export- elastic rubber bands for undergarments. All good things come to pass. The rubber factory closed, became just another empty haunted shell. Apparently, Pakistan has cornered the new undergarment elastic band territory.

 So be it.

 Those factory men and women didn’t seem to enjoy their perspective places on the assembly line anyway. They all seemed to have dreams they wished to pursue but couldn’t because they were chained to the job.

 One guy wanted to be a professional swordfisherman in Costa Rica. Another  wanted to open his own hot dog cart. He talked about it all the time, “I’ll make my own sauerkraut…that’s where the money is, people don’t realize that.”

 I remember a guy wanted to sail around the world in a stainless steel submarine that he planned to build himself (he’d been picking up scrap for a decade off the side of the road and kept asking me, “Are you sure you don’t know how to weld? I could really use some help with my pet project…I had the prints professionally engineered”).

 When the factory shut down, we all became faces in the crowd hanging at the unemployment office. Where Roy the janitor says to me for the thousandth time, “You think I wanted to mop up elastic band residue for the rest of my goddamn life?”

 “What do you want to do then?”

 “Lotta things…”

 “Like?”

 “I want my cable TV back. I had a wire running from my neighbor’s house to mine. He lost his job too. They shut his cable off, now I don’t have it either.”

 Perhaps that’s why I liked the tire pile. It reminded me of my time at the factory. Both of those places smelled the same. Rubber. Funny how you can grow to miss anything.

 Even rubber.