I forget a lot of these…

(12:57 A.M.)

“Howie was not like other fish.

“He did not merely want to swim around or eat seaweed. He wanted to dance on dry land. The other fish said he was foolish, wanting to hop onto the earth and bust a move when his body was fit for swimming, but that’s what Howie wanted to do. It happens every day, people wanting to be great at something they’re not necessarily equipped to do. A few people in faraway lands are better at the sports that have not even been brought to their country. Some children surpass geniuses. And Howie the fish wanted to dance.

“He’d try to jump onto the land, but as he flailed, some nice person would throw him back into the sea. Howie would try again and be thrown back again, never perfecting his moves. Howie’s little fish brain could only retain thirty seconds worth of information, but for all he forget, he kept remembering that he wanted to dance, and so he kept jumping out onto the land, and he kept getting thrown back into the sea.

“One day, Howie found a good spot to leap onto. People rushed to him, wanting to throw the flailing fish back, but as they got closer, they realized that this fish wasn’t dying, he was dancing, creating new moves that only those with fins could do. And all these sweet moves, from a being that should not even be able to dance, made people so happy.

“And so Howie the fish danced.”

Tags: my.rad.family, oral tradition
Current Mood: tired

Placed new fiction, "Answering the Call," over at Colored Chalk before they undergo some changes (their head editor, Jason Heim, recently got hired by Google, so changes are in progress and a’comin’).

I took one look at the theme—the Ten Commandments—and figured, with all the twisted stuff coming in, I might as well write something theologically sound. It’s on the fourth commandment:

http://tinyurl.com/ygswset

Tags: published
Current Mood: working
Current Music: Oh, lovely little heater

Though I’ve still got a number of pieces stuck in the land of the upcoming (and/or contract issues), my big, fat short, “Queasy,” is in the debut issue of Sideshow Fables alongside work from Candyfreak author Steve Almond.

The link for purchase can be found here: http://www.freewebs.com/sideshowfables/store.htm
(Print edition [plus free e-book] is $10 / PDF is $3)

“Queasy” is about a psychotic strongman stalking a fellow performer, Leela, who fled the circus and crossed paths with a nebbish stockbroker, John. This excerpt is from the middle, where the strongman has caught up with the stockbroker:

Back in the apartment, the strongman comes closer. John instinctively pulls his feet—and more importantly his toes—up from the end of the bed where the strongman stands. The stockbroker gets his glasses on in time, just to see those big teeth smile and grind together.

Leela warned him about the teeth.

Even inside the circus, there are legends. How did that strongman get so strong? Some say he was once a weak and feeble boy, son of man who had an act where he’d come out covered in venomous spiders, crawling all over him—down his pants, in his mouth, over his eyes, the lot—and then one night, when the show was over and the spiders were supposed to be locked away, they escaped, crawling first through the room of the weakboy. He was a heavy sleeper; unaware of the army of eight-legged crawlers marching to the places they knew to go when the spotlight—in this case, the lamp on the bedside cabinet—was on. They crawled inside his open mouth, expecting a tongue to force them out to run up across his teeth and face, but nothing but the snoring came. By the time dozens fell to stomach acid doom, the gag reflex response was too late. The weakboy vomited limbs and venom, but bolting up like that—scratching, feverishly scratching—spooked the spiders and more venom came, swelling his skin till he dropped to the floor unconscious.

His father found him growing into who he would become and took him to the hospital to sleep the long sleep. (This was, of course, after he got the spiders put away.) When the doctors said the word, “Coma,” the spider man already saw himself in the next town. When the boy, no longer weak, snapped awake seven days later—heaving, back to feverishly scratching—the spider man was already six days gone. The swelling had not gone down. It had hardened into muscle.

The boy punched his way through orphanages and juvenile hall, stomping on every spider along the way. Once legal and emancipated, the strongboy, now strongman, vowed to never be taken anywhere he didn’t want to be again. Not to jail, not to a fake home. Nowhere.

The circus was a good fit. He got to leave every town every time.

When Leela told the story, John kept his arms crossed. “Really? Bitten by a spider? Isn’t that a little too close to the comic book?”

“It’s spiders. And anyway, art imitates life.”

“You’re saying Stan Lee ripped off a circus story?”

“Who’s Stan Lee?”

“Stan Lee… wrote The Amazing Spiderman…”

Leela shrugged.

“Nevermind.”
( Read more... )

Tags: published
Current Mood: tasty

I’ve been gone.

Gone down to see my mother-in-law in that hillbilly dirt town she left for a decade ago. My daughter was there for a month, enjoying the farm life free from her parents, often straddled on a horse—Pretty Boy (not so pretty by horse standards, but a lovely beast nonetheless). My wife was on an emotional rollercoaster for that month; missing her daughter at first, then feeling guilty when she didn’t, that awkward place where good things end up on opposite sides and start clashing.
( My wife asked me to put up a cut here as there are graphic descriptions following--stuff about animals and special needs people. )

Current Mood: blessed
Current Music: Laundry

I'm this month's interview at the Cat O'Nine Tails where we discuss writing, faith and inspirations, but manage to avoid revealing my secret identity:

http://tinyurl.com/mqttdq

Just keep on believing Bruce Wayne is Batman.

Tags: published
Current Mood: working
Current Music: Chewin' crackers

My friend, John, says he’s going to kill himself.

I know John from Thursdays at the halfway house. I pick him up at the nearby bus station and I drop him back in Denver at the end of the night. That way he can clear up his stuff before the trash men come in the morning.

His wife, Toni, died a decade ago. Cancer didn’t care that they’d been together for 21 years and he still wears a black ring to this day. He got destructive afterwards; burned his house to the ground and binged on anything he could get his hands on. Hated the devil, hated God. Didn’t see any difference between them. Hated people, too. Says he still does, but he called me anyway.

John was in Vietnam. In the same way that he thinks he should have died instead of his wife, he thinks he should have died in the war. It’s strange who didn’t die though. One of his friends got kicked out of the Navy for drinking torpedo fluid. They caught him filtering it through bread or his underpants; whatever was available.
( Read more... )

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Fan

We keep the baby bird in a shoebox on the counter.

My daughter found it by the car, next to where the last one was kicked out of the nest (now in the freezer, awaiting burial). Part of me thinks that speaks volumes about what’s wrong with the world: Birds are supposed to fly, but some don’t, and the ones that fall hit way too hard.

I decided a long time ago that the world is not a pretty place. That doesn’t make me bitter or miserable; it just means that regardless of my day-to-day mood, my stance is set that things are broken here. Maybe that’s a middle class cliché, maybe that’s just believing what the Bible says, but I don’t see it budging any time soon.

The bird is wrapped in a towel, on top of a hot water bottle filled with—not hot, but—warm water, no feathers save for on the wings. We feed it with a dropper, but it thrashes with a body language we can’t interpret. Doesn’t have enough energy to peck or scratch at us though. At most, there’s a small chirp, but its eyes remain shut.

We call the animal hospital and they tell us that we should just leave it alone, but we can’t do that now. My father used to find all kinds of crippled animals when he was a boy: Half-eaten mice, mangled cats, dropkicked birds. He’d take them home, care for them, but the result was always the same: Dead by morning. He says it’s the shock of you caring for them that kills them.

My wife insists we drive to the animal hospital. Otherwise, she’ll be up all night. She wants to know how badly injured the baby bird is. If it’ll live, we’ll take care of it. If not, she doesn’t want it to suffer. The man at the counter takes the bird to the back and five minutes later he returns empty handed.

We do not see the baby bird again.

In the parking lot, my wife says, “We’re going home with an empty box. I hate empty boxes. An empty box feels like an empty heart.”

I suppose that doesn’t make sense to most people. Not when there’s so much wrong in the world (and enough of it is at their door). I understand that only the strong survive in nature and that weakness has no exit ramp from its unfortunate destination, I understand the reason behind one small bird in our freezer and the other one with a needle in its side, but I also understand why my wife puts down a couple of towels in the parking lot even though the next bird will still hit way too hard and why she’ll have to take it in, much like my father in his youth, and that this bird will probably still die from the shock.

I understand it, but I still hope for something different.

Tags: my.rad.family, out.of.my.head
Current Mood: sad

For the benefit of brand spankin’ new Facebookers:

I made a decision recently to no longer cuss in my fiction (more on that here), so I'll give fair warning if a piece has naughty words in there:

Nonfiction: "30 Seconds Where I Think About Being Alone" in Poor Mojo's Almanac(k), rant #436, 05/29/09: http://www.poormojo.org/cgi-bin/gennie.pl?Rant+436+bi

Micro fiction: EXPLICIT: "Plant v. Page" in Red Fez, issue 22, May 2009: http://www.redfez.net/redfez/SubPage1.php?page=SubStory&ID=88

Nonfiction: Editor's intro to Colored Chalk, issue 7: "MacGuffins For Hire," 03/31/09: As guest editor, this edition of Colored Chalk deals with valuable objects and features work from poets Michael S. Harper (published ten collections of poetry, Rhode Island’s first poet laureate [from 1988-1993], University Professor at Brown University [where he has taught since 1970], has earned a slew of fellowships and awards, the most notable of which is the 2008 Robert Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America for a lifetime achievement in poetry) and Meg Kearney (published two collections of poetry [with her latest, Home By Now to be released fall 2009 and a picture book pending], taught poetry at the New School University, Director of the Solstice Creative Writing Programs of Pine Manor College in Massachusetts. was Associate Director of the National Book Foundation [sponsor of the National Book Awards] for more than 10 years, poetry featured on Poetry Daily and Garrison Keillor’s “A Writer’s Almanac,” and published in numerous publications; notably in Poetry, Agni, and Ploughshares): http://coloredchalk.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=147

Micro nonfiction: "Stopping Fireworks" in Flashshot (archived via Live Journal), Spring 2009: http://sardonic-artery.livejournal.com/2009/02/27/

Fiction: EXPLICIT: "Two Hands, Three Options" in Colored Chalk, issue 5: "Sins of the Father," 11/30/2008: http://coloredchalk.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=106

Fiction: "The Operators" in Colored Chalk, issue 4: "Big Brother in My Pocket," 09/30/2008: http://coloredchalk.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=96

Prior to this, I took a five-year hiatus from publishing shorts to write my first novel, my first nonfiction collection and to do that whole life thingamabob.

Fiction (but listed as nonfiction): "Chest and Stars" in The Wazee Journal, issue 3, summer 2003: http://www.wazeejournal.org/Issue3/nonfiction/chest1.htm

Fiction: EXPLICIT: "Of Making Rituals and the Occasional Strive to Break Them" in The Metrosphere online, summer 2003: http://www.mscd.edu/~msphere/metrosphere0203/ofMakingRituals.html

Fiction: "Dinners with Lily" in The Metrosphere, summer 2003: http://www.mscd.edu/~msphere/metrosphere0203/dinners.html

Finally, my long short, "Queasy," will be in the debut print issue of Sideshow Fables (due for publication summer 2009).

Tags: published
Current Mood: Promoted
Current Music: Dog gettin' shaved

Wife harassed me about making a Facebook for months, so if you received a friend request (before I got told I was a spam machine) from Colin McKay Miller in Centennial, CO, you know why. Otherwise, add me if you so desire.

Tags: completely.pop.culture
Current Mood: Peer pressured
Current Music: Birdies chirpin'

I had my one-year anniversary over the weekend, so I figure now is a good time to reflect on what it takes to keep the rings on the fingers and the joy and love in the relationship. I’m sure this is more for my own benefit than yours, but here are the top-five things I learned in my first year of marriage (in no particular order). Since it’s longer than I expected, here’s the brief version (with clarification on each point behind the cut):

1. Love your family based on who God is.
2. Love your family based on who you are.
3. Be careful how nice you are to members of the opposite sex.
4. Sometimes you have to choose your family first, even when it costs others.
5. Persevere.
( Read more... )

Tags: jesus-fu!, love.and/or.my.no-no.spot
Current Mood: thriving