The Seasoning of Life

The new Grand Fiend trifle is up, The Seasoning of Life. http://www.linguisticerosion.com/2012/11/conversations-with-grand-fiend.html\

For most of them, I got my inspiration from my collection of monster drawings (yeah I know, kind of goofy just even writing that) but this came from a small book by the food writer MFK Fisher, A Cordial Water. This is a neat little book about all the foods and herbs meant to cure people. She is a fine writer and its more engaging than it might sound at first, with that said, I haven't finished the book, I just gotta sit down and go through it.

The first chapter talks about a gray little girl she went to school with who stank "She wore around her neck a bag of assafeddity. It had a bitterness to it, rather rancid, and when I discussed this casually with my mother, she laughed in a vague remembering way and said to see if my new friend did not wear a little cloth bag hanging under her dress around her neck. And she did. During recess went down to the dim toilets together, and quietly she showed it to me, gray, gray, even her skin in that light was he color of her wool dress, her underwear, the soft little bag like a dead field mouse on a string. It would keep fevers away, she whispered gently to me."

Two paragraphs later the little girl dies and the family moves away. Strong stuff this thing called belief. And of course it inspired nonsense from me.

Lzy Wriders Untie

I have a new Grand Fiend story going up on Linguistic Erosion a couple of days from now. I am happy that I can still be in the right mood to create the tone. I wrote five of them from April to August and I put them in a little chapbook, which I made 13 and sold 0. My salesmanship is still a stellar thing to behold.

I looked in my notebook a week ago and saw the first paragraph of a Grand Fiend story and figured I could toss this out in a half hour and submit it a half hour after that. That is what I did. I have been very fast with these and I had the thought that I could just type and they would be decent.

You know where this is going. Yeah, the editor for Linguistic Erosion, that accepted all five previous ones, sent me an email saying that it is ragged and can I edit this puppy. I was chagrined. I have always been the type to not care about editing or proofreading, I get too into the rush of first draft creation that  I forget that the rush does not translate always into a complete story.

I brushed it through again, and even came up with a better joke at the end, or at least I thought it funnier. Luckily, it was accepted. Its nice to be published, and its a good thing to be humbled back into reality from time to time.

This piece is so personal that its hard to read. The power and the anger is palpable. Nice work

http://yuumei.deviantart.com/art/Don-t-Be-Selfish-337588873

Things from Three Graces

This is a mess of links of things Heather and I have from Three Graces, they brighten up our lives, because that's what art should do.

I love this AManda Atkins piece. It is a funny take on Nancy Drew and that ilk
http://amandaatkins.blogspot.com/2010/09/and-roses-ran-rampant.html

This was purchased the first time we went into the store. This is on a wall with a bunch of other monster drawings and paintings
http://nicolemaloof.com/artwork/786361.html

These next two are by a soft scuplture artist Abby Glassenberg whose owls make Heather swoon. We don't have owls, but we have these two birds and two others
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25512190@N00/4857064345/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25512190@N00/2805949332/in/set-72157619007769910

This is the latest thing we got from Kim at Three Graces. Heather adores it. It is on he wall right under a really awesome Syd Hoff drawing we have. The two work great together
http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1024&bih=491&tbm=isch&tbnid=pfD3JtZr941yMM:&imgrefurl=http://www.threegracesgallery.com/shop_deniseduong.html&docid=Ig-5oEddcPCtAM&imgurl=http://www.threegracesgallery.com/Denise_Duong/ITsAlwaysfunwhen.jpg&w=650&h=650&ei=-jqTUPGkIYns0QH684Bo&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=96&vpy=137&dur=7004&hovh=225&hovw=225&tx=127&ty=187&sig=107206406750834753625&page=1&tbnh=140&tbnw=137&start=0&ndsp=10&ved=1t:429,i:72

On our walls at home is a lot of art, but five of them all come from one gallery. It is a gallery in portsmouth NH that is going to be closing of nine years.http://www.threegracesgallery.com/ I love their art and Heather and I have gone crazy for much of their work. Kim, the owner, wrote that she is ready to focus on her own art and who can blame her. Still. One less place where beauty might be allowed to happen.

another story

Might as well link another story I got published online this month. I don't have much to say about this. I think I was trying to come up with a story for an anthology looking for b-movie like tales. I came up witha mole rat story, sort of, and then I was almost instantly bored with the idea and instead I remembered a story this guy told me - that he lived in the desert in 60s and how he and his buddies were indian extras for a few awful Westerns. I put the two ideas together and this came out. This is very much in my wheel house, how someone older finds hope in a past that might not be real. I might have to stop writing that story, but hell, it works for me for now.

http://www.fiction365.com/2012/10/i-was-a-teenage-mole-rat/

Story of Love

So here is a story I wrote a month back and was published by Daily Love. I took the title and the landmarks from my morning commute through Worcester. I saw the homeless person holding the sign mentioned in the story and I went from there. Because I was driving through Kelly Square at the time I gave my self permission to use the real place and the real traffic, it makes it easier when you write to not always create things from whole cloth. Lazy lazy lazy writer, no comma soup for you!!!!

http://www.dailylove.net/search?q=kelly+square