Summer reading: Pink and Hot Pink Habitat by Natalie Lyalin

Writing like this. Like this in this book. Writing like this makes me wonder what I'm doing wrong. How can I get like you, book?

I flip to a random page and I find strange beauty:

"There is something chrome in these flowers./ Their penny-blood smell, euphoria, some rage of animals."

Summer Reading: A Kingdom Strange by James Horn

I cannot recommend this book about the "tragedy" at Roanoke Island. It's not a bad book, I suppose, if you're hunting for quick reads about tragical events. But I've been living with the strange mystery of Roanoke for ... 26 years, I suppose, since I heard about it as a boy. I misremembered much. My misrememberings were horrific and bizarre.

The true end was rather believable and prosaic. They fled, were killed, married off, lived out their lives, had gray eyed babies with the natives. Better to live with the misremembered mystery, I say.

Summer reading: Fences by Ben Brooks

"Let the cigarette slip from your dead hand; light the sheets; burn the building."

This book is a beautiful cataclysm.

Matt Bell Week

As every week at Everyday Genius is, Matt Bell week at Everyday Genius was awesome. This week's talent-meld-free-for-all resulted in a pretty wild story and, the process of it, the fascinating slap of seal meat on walrus meat, made the week more special than usual, I thought.

Of course, a great story is almost assured when Matt Bell can join forces with Michael Kimball and Lily Hoang (honestly, it was this part of the process, seeing what such talented people would do with Mr Bell's already remarkable three hour draft and trying to understand why they did what they did and how they saw what they saw).

I think some of us mortals could play this game, too.

I'm a spoken proponent of remixes and revisions of 'stories not your own.' Indeed, there are times when, as I finish a story, I think to myself, "Man I wonder what ____________" would do with this? And there are times when I read a story by __________ that I think, "I wish I had this in word doc right now so I could cut it all to hell."

I think, what would ____________ do to my little story? Would _________ tear it up like a badger consuming a steak? Or would ____________ allow my story little to grow some delicate wings?

Writing is an isolationist sport, yes, but I think we have much to gain by opening ourselves directly to the knives and tape of our colleagues.

Summer reading: Log of the SS The Mrs Unguentine

Best book about marriage I've read.

'I have noticed lagely, my dear, these past three to four years you have not opened your mouth to speak literally one word, preferring rather to nod, wave your arms about, and the like, to the point I hardly know who you are any more, not that I ever did. Nor that I complain. Our bliss, I know, has been fantastic."

hooray for ja tyler's 'inconceivable wilson' & robert lopez's kamby bolongo mean river

summer reading has started.

will try for a book a day.

kamby bolongo mean river. yes. read this very quickly. most fun i had reading a book in a long while. strange in the best ways and funny and sad. very smart.

could not sleep so i read inconceivable wilson. precise is the word. written w/ a diamond. i will spend some time studying these sentences. yes, the craftsmanship shamed me.

steal some power from those writers if i can.

summer writing too.

finished a longish (for me) story that i'm quite proud of: in the shadow of the darkness of strange animals. to my eyes its one of my best.

writing too about the mayans.

The Mayans believed the world was born from the corpse of a murdered crocodile and the water is an entity

Next time yer in Salem, MA check out the Mayan exhibit at the PEM. Much horror bloodshed and madness in the old days. Good stuff.

actually submitted this for the mlp bookmark contest

I look at you and think ‘what an assemblage he’s become.’ A copulation of teeth and worms. Of dreams eyes and shoe leather. I worry we never explained how to comport yourself when an old man drags you into an alley. We were all objects once, he may say, before we decayed. I worry he may move you to his basement. I look at you and I wonder if you’ll know the dirt walls are for mold and all investigations into an old man’s soil should tend toward the search for water. If an old man gives you a spade and says dig, I wonder if you’ll know to dig slowly. I wonder if you’ll know all men were born pink and whole, once, before they began to deteriorate. I wonder if you’ll know what a rough assemblage of panic and eye sockets you’ve become.

Life During Wartime or,

Emprise Review 14--
thanks:
am(((bbberr)) Sparks--

much good--Calamity Ja//Himmer//-0-00

Finally: Life During Wartime//thehorroror