With a Little Help from My Friends

Spring is here. Bursts of activity and creation, from outdoor events to the bright shiny new work of authors, publishers, and all those types that bloom in the sunshine, full of new work and bright words.

Writers and their affiliates (from presses to magazines to podcasts) get hell on the Internet for self-promotion – and a lot of the time, GAWD, rightly so – but sometimes friends are friends, and the PSA/The More You Know message of this post is that when no one is looking, and for no other reason than being good people, this group of miscreants and snake oil salesmen will unblinkingly throw sponsorship money to a 9 yr old in Southern Ohio for an event at his elementary school. And one will blink, and think how lucky, to have “networks” that are more than that word, associates and peers that are friends.

Selflessness is supposed to be its own reward, but here’s my kid kicking some ass at the Ninja Dash obstacle course/fun run. He was sponsored by Booked. Podcast (Livius Nedin and Robb Olson, Thunderdome Press (Mike Gonzalez), GAMUT Magazine (Richard Thomas), his friend Elijah Kasper (from PLT days), Kay & Allen Hayes, and Heather & Jeremy Barker. They expected nothing from him, but he wore a sponsor shirt with all their names.

Thanks to your generosity, my son gets to smash a pie in the face of his favorite teacher on the next-to-last day of school

And yes, since you asked, that green glitter shirt-lettering was all destroyed when I washed it, and the inside of my washing machine looks like a disco.

Happy summer!! And thank you for being a part of my life!!

Strawberry Moon

Happy first day of summer! Happy full moon!

All of the things. ‘Gutted: Beautiful Horror‘ hit #1 in Hot New Releases and #2 in Horror Anthologies on its first day of pre-sale.  Tomorrow night I guest on a Noir on the Air episode of ‘Dames in the Dark‘ at 9pm. We’ve got the stories selected for the Summer edition of  Menacing Hedge, and go boldly into reading for Fall.  Pantheon Magazine’s ‘Hestia’ issue My son has one more week of baseball. My nephew is nearly here. There’s only one more episode of ‘Game of Thrones.’

‘Daddy’s Dyin’ Who’s Got the Will?’ at the Portsmouth Little Theatre wrapped up in a sea of love, tears and Fireball. My husband got a motorcycle. We just got back from vacation, where I met Chewbacca – who is just as sweet in person as he is in the movies! Also, not to jinx her because the day is not done (and on this, the longest day of the year, I may be tempting fate), my favorite little red hen Lauren (Bacall) has successfully navigated back and forth to the neighbors’ hen house without an automobile collision.

Howl at the moon, my lovelies. Throw away your shoes. Jump in deep, dark water. Summer is upon us!

 

I Assure You I’m Still Here

Things got busy.

Things ARE busy.

Life is good.

More articulate post later, it’s early in the day and plates are spinning (as Jaime -er, Craig Wallwork- would say). Here is a pictorial illustration of some of What I’ve Been Up To.

 

LIFE!!

Menacing Hedge (Fiction Editor Furiosa)

Noir at the Bar, St. Louis in April with Jon Ashley , Scott Phillips, Jed Ayres, Greg Barth, Tim L. Williams & Joe Schwartz (look at me, bein’ the Only Girl – REPRESENT!)

“Gutted: Beautiful Horror” from Crytal Lake Publishing drops June 24th!!

‘Daddy’s Dyin, Who’s Got the Will?’ opens at The Portsmouth Little Theatre on Friday May 20th. Go to www.pltlive.com for tickets!

The Woman in Black

BUG – Backstage and Beyond (no more egg sacs)

BUG Sneak Peeks… (October 21,22, 28 & 29, www.pltlive.com)

busy, busy… and inspirational!!

WOOOO!!! Interviewed by a zombie for Craig Wallwork’s blog, which should with any luck go up about the same time this weekend as the Booked podcast i guest-hosted (i have tourette’s, they’re saints to let me anywhere near that podcast) with Chris Deal for Craig’s story ‘Revenge of the Zombie Pussy Eaters’ and general horror topics. chris is so damned smart about that stuff – screw you, chris, you hear me?? i rambled about frickin’ ted nugent and false penises on female hyenas, and pretty much everything you said was insightful and funny. yeah, i’m calling you out right here on this blog no one reads, chris deal!!

so anyway. this weekend both of those things should be up. links forthcoing, also to be found in their respective homes in the blogroll list to the right ->

only two soccer games left. i love the kids. they’re so awesome. i’m actually considering doing this again in the spring. i’m vicariously living their happiness just running and jumping and kicking and getting SNACKS!

rehearsal every night the rest of this week and all next week (except soccer night). i’m trying. my big fear is to be the ‘okay’ one – like, not the one that ruins it, but the one that ‘didn’t ruin it’ – but just barely. like keanu in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. please god don’t let me be keanu….

Friday is our five year wedding anniversary. FIVE FRICKIN’ YEARS! i forgot that we made this joke agreement to go on five year contracts and re-evaluate if we’d go another five at each interval. i sure hope we sign on for another five, because i can’t hold a job. only thing i’m good at is teaching my kid stuff and rambling and… well, to be honest i could always be a hooker.

in conclusion, i would like to say, don’t let anyone tell you that rambling like an idiot about zombies won’t get you anywhere. because it can. believe in yourself, damnit.

this is my inspirational post. i feel pretty good about it.

Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down (featuring pumpkins, coffee and Gaga)

this is the most freakishly busy and not-falling-apart i may have ever been. i mean, i’ve been lots busier than this in my life – more lists on my palms and crammed in my pockets, more things scribbled in pen and pencil in smaller then even smaller lettering turning little calendar squares into something resembling boxes overfull of springs, less sleep, more night-thinking, etc and on and on – but the difference is i’m ENJOYING this frantic autumn.

my body is always tired and i can’t turn my brain off at night – so i drag myself out of bed on ‘brain break’ nights to scribble lists, revise, send emails, read – and i keep forgetting what day it is and there are bags under my eyes. once again, the weird difference: this is pretty fun.

the fact that all the things i’m doing are completely voluntary (except laundry and matching my son’s constant amazement that the mere switch of a word –  i.e. 2 PLUS 3 is 5, but 2 BESIDE 3 is 23 – can change the meanings of things in spectacular ways) plays a part, i know, but i think something has shifted. i don’t feel frantic – yes, i know i’m manic. but the coil is not so tight and i’m perfectly capable of sitting still.

tomorrow and tuesday are adam’s first soccer games, wednesday and friday are Bug rehearsal – i’ve never coached soccer and haven’t been on a stage in over a decade, but it’s cool. i’ll wear tube socks the first half of the week and cut fake lines of coke the second half and be happy about it. friday morning while adam’s in dance class i’ll try and read but instead send myself reminder emails from my phone and check messages.

there are profound things here, profound clockwork adjustments that have been made – but it’s past noon now and the time i thought i would have to ruminate on it a little has been cut short…

i can dig it. it makes me cranky but i can dig it – in five minutes i’ll be ejecting kiddo’s gaga dvd for the day and rustling up clean clothes for the birthday party in a couple hours and i won’t remember to be cranky because i have lines to go over with eric and a story to revise and sci-fi scenes to finish (at 9pm each night i grease my phalanges and crack my wrists, take a deep breath and hope for the best) these nights after dark, and halloween costume possibilities saved in another tab and ghost lights and fake blood to put on the windows, and jerseys to wash and….

happy autumn. happy survived the apple festival. happy tired brain body – i would not stay this pace this course forever, but the lack of quaking on my insides foretells a longer life than i expected, i think.

 

 

 

hello, september, i love you

summer is dead, thank god for that. i hate those last few weeks, the grass shriveling and insects coughing up their own dusty innards. now we have CHILL. now we have striped knee sock mornings and piles of wrinkled sweaters and sweatshirts in my back seat – shoes that stay attached firmly to your foot the entire time you walk – none of that gum-smacking flip-flop shit. proper shoes lashed in place.

karma or fate or maybe just plain old time has taken something from me that i will not say aloud, only maybe that i have shown hubris in my declaration of raccoon magpie squirrel lock-picking wallet-stealing persuasive manner of life, and my hand – very literally my hand – was smacked, and i lost a tiny and meaningful piece of something that was in fact my most prized Acquired Object. i have had it for 16 years exactly, one year longer than my 2nd most prized Acquired Object (a half inch orange plastic horse from a quarter machine in Wyoming). extra xanax and two hours of flashlight house-combing could not bring this speck of preciousness back to me. not that i thought it could, but try try we had to try. i’m not saying i’ll tuck my sticky fingers back in my pockets (i am a magnet for treasures and it is my nature to keep people with me by keeping people on me), i just think all the bravado and downright puffed chest about the whole thing was/is unnecessary. stomach-turning, this was. i lost my most precious confiscated Precious….

speaking of hats, i have collected many new ones. i am now Coach Gowin (laugh, it’s funny) and R.C. (if you live within 90 miles and don’t come to portsmouth to see BUG and watch me do fake lines of coke and kiss a girl on the mouth then i renounce my love for you) and screenwriter (again! same project – should be doing that now, in fact, but my batteries are loooow). so if I were Batman, as the question was once posed, i think Soccer Mom would be drunk-partying persona Bruce Wayne, R.C. and prose/screenwriter would be ass-kicking slightly-detached-from-sanity Batman, and me sitting here in the recliner with a crayon (for underlining of course) tucked in my book and script within reach and cat at my feet would be lucid-between-role-playing Bruce Wayne. id, ego, superego? right?

OH! OH!!!! but on a happy note – i found the fucking Batman ring. that’s gotta be the note on which i end this post:

(the batman ring post)