The Graduate

my five year old graduated from preschool tonight. a few minutes ago i crept into his room to stare at him, all tall and beautiful and full of questions, dreaming. i take comfort in the fact that he still sleeps like he did at a week old: flat on his back, arms over his head, like Superman flying upside down….

 

World Book Day 2013 – New & Old Love

 

World Book Day??!!  hell yeah. awesome excuse to make book lists.

 

Top 5 Go-Tos for Random Infusions of Beauty 

Sometimes I need icebears and sometimes I need Mario to tell me about the fans’ sounds at night… these are my shelf-grabs for snippet reading or total re-ingestion

1. Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller

2. The Strangeness of Beauty – Lydia Minatoya

3. Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace

4. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

5. East of Eden – John Steinbeck

 

Top 5 Quickest Reads in the Past Year

There’s no way to list the best things I’ve read, there are WAY too many. But for what it’s worth, I devoured these in just a couple days apiece, and I think that says plenty about them. In order beginning with the speediest:

1. Growing Up Dead In Texas – Stephen Graham Jones

2. Full Dark, No Stars – Stephen King

3. Nod – Adrian Barnes

4. Murder and Other Distractions – Michael Estrin

5. The Sound of Loneliness – Craig Wallwork

 

5 Self-Pimps Because Why Not? I’m Proud to Be In This Stuff

1. Warmed and Bound – “The World Was Clocks” available now

2. In Search of a City: Los Angeles in 1000 Words – “Gilded Bones” available now

3. cutaway – “The Cabbage Muse” available now

4. Cipher Sisters – “Asymmetry” (and co-editor) coming very soon

5. The Booked. Anthology – “Short Tendon” coming very soon

P.S. to this list, still a year in the future so can’t really gloat about it just yet - Burnt Tongues – “The Line Forms on the Right” coming summer 2014

Happy World Book Day!!! READ READ READ!!!

Death Takes a Holiday

Menacing Hedge Spring 2013 Issue LIVE!!

Woo hoo!! The Spring Issue just went up.

Six short stories hand-picked by yours truly, plus awesome poems selected by Kelly Boyker. AND artwork by my awesome friend Ryan Case, that MH was nice enough to allow me to interview.

Click over for brand new fiction by:

Kate Velguth

Court Merrigan

Liz Young

Mia Avramut

Matthew Burnside

Gisella Faggi

Menacing Hedge Spring 2013

Bird of Pray by Ryan Case

Chuck Palahniuk Anthology ‘Burnt Tongues’ Will Include…ME!!

a few years ago i joined a workshop. i was getting long in the tooth and decided it was about time people KNEW i wrote stories all the time, as opposed to just scribbling them down then hiding them in notebooks, folders, envelopes, folding them up and shoving them in books as markers, and what have you. maybe at some point i wanted actual humans to see them. so, other people working to become better writers seemed a good place to start.

fast forward a few years, and it’s very difficult for me to keep ANY of my fiction to myself. and one of those stories – “The Line Forms on the Right” – that i oh-so-fearfully handed over to be judged, praised and shredded in the writing workshop ends up here:

Chuck Palahniuk news release:

http://chuckpalahniuk.net/news/the-cult-anthology-burnt-tongues-has-a-publisher?fb_action_ids=137646729749885&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%7B%22137646729749885%22%3A503271313067906%7D&action_type_map=%7B%22137646729749885%22%3A%22og.likes%22%7D&action_ref_map=%5B%5D

Medallion Press news release:

http://www.prnewschannel.com/2013/04/03/fight-club-author-chuck-palahniuk-to-release-new-book/

Burnt Tongues! Coming Summer 2014!!

 

Cigarettes…

The first cigarette in a pack and the last cigarette in the pack are the only ones that matter – the rest are incidental.

It’s the voice in my head, speaking over the exhale of smoke, the only thing interrupting the quiet of the collective zen – every animal in sight is asleep, stretched in the sun unconscious absorbing the warmth and the good and the light and the cool of the half-dead grass on their underbellies. The trees are sleeping in the fake winter, and the dogs and llamas, and the rabbits in the neighbors’ pen – the horses with droopy silver eyelashes with the perpetual hand of the sun resting on their backs. The only thought and it’s meaningless and meaningful and my mind is the only one not tuned to the day but perfectly tuned to the universe inside each closed set of eyelids, each drowsy mourning dove that waddles in the yard pecking songbird mix from the mud and leaving x-s in their wake.

Every…

I dreamed I was stretched in a field with horses around me, snuffling the grass, and Bingo, the horse that loved me, was sniffling my face, horse kisses, my eyes closed and every horse in the field gave me a pass, their legs a soft corral with light spilling between, the smell of sun and horse and the feel of a smile.

Woke to freezing rain and a dead rat belly up in the yard, batted around all night by irritable dogs, horses that didn’t love me tossing indifferent glances my way to see if i’d be the bearer of sticky sweet corn, not a cigarette to be found.

But this afternoon, the cellophane crackled and the foil caught the light, and the beasts slept and my mind woke, and I thought The first cigarette and the last cigarette are the only ones that matter, the rest are incidental. And I added my exhaled smoke to the lazy clouds above.

 

 

Shutter Speed

Regarding the Locals…

 

 

There’s a big honkin’ portrait of Jesus in the middle school. Someone asking to take it down isn’t a reason to sound a battle cry…. I throw in my two cents in a short opinion essay over at Manarchy:

http://manarchymag.com/2013/01/the-jackson-jesus/author-amandagowin

Hi, Menacing Hedge

so, Kelly Boyker and Craig Wallwork are having me over to play…. hi, anyone from MH who clicked over to see what qualifications i might possibly have to sift through your work for the Spring Issue.

proper capitalization is obviously not one of them. BUT! i’m confident i can persuade you to send me your loveliest, most beautiful things to read, and i will handle and read them delicately, like scrolls of parchment. i shall light candles about the room in the dead of night and shuffle to my old table with arms full. i’ll unroll them carefully one by one, and believe you me i shall mouth the words while following every single line with the tip of my index finger.

 

Qualifications:

1. In the 2nd grade i did very well in 5th grade reading comprehension, so i have a lot of experience grasping a story. this wasn’t through any sort of school program, there was just a really big 5th grade girl that rode my bus and ‘persuaded’ my friend and i to do her reading homework every day on the way home from school.

2. i read ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and ‘Gone With the Wind’ when i was ten years old. this just illustrates that i read feverishly and compulsively. i wasn’t supposed to read those books, so i hid them and devoured them in delicious secret moments.

3. my first novel was completed at age fifteen – it was shit and i’ll never show it to anyone even though i worked on it for a year. i know how much time it takes to do this! i know you work really hard on whatever you send, and you worked really hard for years before that to get to a place that you wrote things you felt were worthwhile to show the world.

4. i was almost thirty before i ever showed even one written word of my own to anyone in the outside world. it takes serious balls to cut out a little piece of yourself and send it to strangers, only to have them tell you objectively what a part of your insides is worth. this act of courage will never be taken for granted.

5.  i don’t give a shit about your bio. seriously don’t. won’t read it until after the story. if you have seven published novels, an MFA and teach a creative writing class, i won’t know you weren’t a seventeen year old who scribbled her story out in biology class instead of taking notes. because everyone makes magic sometimes, and i don’t need to know where you’ve been to feel it.

6. Craig and Kelly trust me. and i don’t take it lightly. i’ll do my very best, and i’m very excited.

SO SEND ME SOMETHING!

 

here is a photo of me just after my head transplant, so you can be assured i’m using the very best brains available:

http://menacinghedge.com/

Another List

okay, fine, i want to do a Most Influential in 2012 List, too. i’m making it up right now but i’m sure it will still be fairly accurate.

TOP TEN, in no particular order:

1. Tom Hardy

2. Tom Waits

3. Justin Townes Earle

4. Kevin Corrigan

5. Sheri Moon Zombie

6. Eric Gowin

7. Craig Wallwork

8. Vincent Louis Carrella

9. Lady Gaga

10. my awesome zen demon cat Billie Idol.

music, pictures, ideas, conversation, companionship. YES!

 

 

 

To New Beginnings

places to go and people to see, strangers to meet and friends to excavate. words to find and words to make.

Happy 2013

To Return When the Leaves Unfold...

Reblogged from Curiouser and Curiouser:

• 

Alice's winter hibernation has begun. Picture her, if you will, on a chaise lounge next to a long window, her skull and crossbones Snuggie divided into four smaller rectangles by cold late afternoon sun. On the table beside her is a mug of coffee, a tall green bottle with a fairy on the label and a stack of books. A blue caterpillar climbs a lettuce leaf in an empty mayonaisse jar on the shelf above, his boredom evident behind the half-peeled Hellman's label.

Read more… 150 more words

The Woman in Black

At Curiouser and Curiouser, the Time Flies….

impossible to believe all the lovely people who’ve allowed me to interrogate them. also impossible to believe how long i go between organizing the links in handy dandy posts….

here’s where we are since the last update:

end of July:

July 30th – Gordon Highland

http://curiousinterviews.wordpress.com/2012/07/30/gordon-highland/

August

August 7th- Monica Drake

http://curiousinterviews.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/monica-drake/

August 14th – Adam Skorupskas

http://curiousinterviews.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/adam-skorupskas/

August 21st - Sean Ferguson

http://curiousinterviews.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/sean-ferguson/

August 28th – J. David Osborne

http://curiousinterviews.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/j-david-osborne/

September

September 4th – Trent Zelazny

http://curiousinterviews.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/trent-zelazny/

September 18th – Michael J. Seidlinger

http://curiousinterviews.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/michael-j-seidlinger/

September 25th – Nik Korpon

http://curiousinterviews.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/nik-korpon/

Octoberso far…

October 2nd – Kealan Patrick Burke

http://curiousinterviews.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/kealan-patrick-burke/

October 9th – Richard Thomas

http://curiousinterviews.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/richard-thomas/

AND don’t forget – October still has THREE interviews on their way: Bob Pastorella, John Everson and David JamesKeaton!

link to all interviews before the ones mentioned in this post:

http://lookatmissohio.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/and-daddy-tomato-stomps-him-and-says-ketch-up/

Six Years

Six years ago tonight, it was the night before my wedding and I was very close to passing out. A few days earlier I’d broken out in hives and taken allergy medicine for it, which had exacerbated the hives and resulted in three solid days AWAKE. So the night before my wedding I got a shot in my ass to counteract the allergy medicine, and unlike every other bride in the history of the world I slept a solid twelve hours the night before my wedding day….

Less than two years later a beautiful monster appeared in our lives and made everything even better…

We’re all monsters. We’re wild things. We’re pirates.

Six years after my Night of Big Sleep, on the eve of my Wedding Anniversary, I’m sitting on the couch in my little house in the country with my husband and son, two horses and a baby mule outside, two big dogs, an evil cat, while the newest addition (a guinea pig named Pete) cautiously watches the goings on in this monkeyhouse. My son is gluing chopped up pieces of construction paper together to make an Autumn tree.

 

Life is good. Insanity is good. Happy is good.

Love is good.

 

 

Happy Anniversary, Eric.