Good Taste Makes It to 2024 Alien Buddha Best

Yesterday’s email’s subject stood out: The Alien Buddha’s Best of 2024 Preview.  Hmmmm.

So, biting, I opened it.  The message: Here is a first preview of our Best of 2024 anthology.

I understand that there being no TOC yet might make it hard to find your respective chapter. Everything is in order on how your names are listed on the back cover. But if you cannot find your section using that, I will be posting an updated draft with a table of contents sometime soon.

If you have any pictures that you want added similar to what is in there already, send it over. In the best ofs I like to avoid just doing the plain image of the cover like i do in the zines. But if you have a selfie with it, or something from an event, or signing, or even a pic of your book on the bookshelf or near a pet or something that is all good.

So I found my “chapter” easily enough. This appears to be a volume of stories, poems, etc. excerpted from various Alien Buddha Press publications (cf., e.g., October 21), indicating the highlights of the previous year with a note on which publications they’re from — a sort of “sampler” anthology, if one will — and I’d made the cut! The honoree: “Good Taste,” one of two original stories in my January 2024 collection, AVOID SEEING A MOUSE. Or to give its full title, AVOID SEEING A MOUSE AND OTHER TALES OF THE REAL AND SURREAL.

The story: the tale of a ghoul — an eater of corpses — who, struck by lightning, has had his brain scrambled. While previously content to dig up graves, or better yet find graves already washed out by flooding in a future natural disaster-filled world, he would lunch willy-nilly, not caring much which corpse he might be biting into. Food is food, yes? But now he finds he has become a gourmet, able to detect the nuances of flavor between, say, a deceased Italian, or Spaniard, or Frenchman (this last with overtones, maybe, of Bordeaux from multiple dinners enjoyed in life; the first perhaps more with tomato sauce mixed with Chianti), as well as the textures of freshness, vs. ageing, etc., the other subtleties noted by one who now has, yes, good taste.

But is this, then, surreal?

Well, perhaps or perhaps not, it’s really up to the taste (ah, now) of the reader, but I might note that AVOID SEEING A MOUSE is available on Amazon. While as for THE ALIEN BUDDHA’S BEST OF 2024, more may be here as it becomes known.