litquake!

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who can save us now?

Who Can Save Us Now? Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories is out now! Featuring a new story by me! About Sea-Monkeys!

Some kind words about this fantastic anthology, edited by Owen King and John McNally:

This high-quality collection contains 22 original stories presenting brand-new superheroes for our postmodern age. Edited by King (We're All in This Together ) and McNally (America's Report Card ), each of whom also contributes a story, the volume features crime fighters struggling with labels like freaky and creepy and facing post-9/11 problems like registering with the Department of Homeland Security. Working out of places like Cleveland and Shreveport, they boast a mind-boggling array of mutant abilities. The stories' authors have their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks as their superheroes declare "great legs!" to the girl in distress they've just saved, or boast that "I diverted a nuclear missile. I sidetracked a civil war. I removed a cat from a tree." The eye-catching cover graphic is supplemented by interior black-and-white line drawings by the talented Chris Burnham. Fresh and fun, this collection is sure to please everyone from the classic comics lover to the newbie Heroes fan.—Library Journal

And from NPR's Glen Weldon:

Superhero tropes turn up in every short story of this new anthology, but its 22 authors eschew the tidy duality of hero/villain to stake out moral territory where the lines between good guys and bad fade to obscurity. As a result, Who Can Save Us Now? is a surprisingly varied read, by turns funny, creepy, melancholic and joyous.

Editors Owen King and John McNally organize the collection around timeworn conventions—the origin story, the secret identity, etc. The strongest tales focus on supporting characters long denied an inner voice: the plucky girl reporter, the faithful butler, the sidekick—even the townsfolk who spend their days ducking the flying rubble of superbrawls. A standout, Will Clarke's "The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children," about a town under siege by the teenage offspring of an alien superhero, feels at once uncanny and utterly, hauntingly real.

Buy it here, here, or at your local bookstore. 

1:52 PM - 1 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

monkeybicycle

Monkeybicycle 5--the issue that was almost unfit to print--is finally out, making the world a dirtier, funnier place.

Filthy-minded contributors include: Sarah Silverman, Patton Oswalt, David Cross, Davy Rothbart, and me.

Get yours while you can. I have a feeling this one's going to sell out fast, or else spark a rash of book-burnings.

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six random things

I've been "tagged" by Ronlyn Domingue, which leads me to my first random thing:

1. Growing up, I was terrible at tag and any sports that involved running, jumping, or hitting a ball. I could swim, though. Like a fish. I was pulled out of class to take a special class called Sensory Motor with all the other kids who couldn't run, jump, or hit a ball. We stumbled through obstacle courses made of tires, practiced jumping rope, and tossed a ball around the circle. In regular P.E. I was always the last one picked, except on those rare occasions when my teacher took pity on my plight and made me team captain. Did I nobly pick the other kids who were picked last? No. I picked the biggest and best, the ones who won awards from the President for their physical fitness.

During the fifth grade camping trip we played wiffleball in a clearing in the woods. I hid behind some trees in the outfield. It was the bottom of the last inning and there were two outs. My team was ahead by three runs. But the other team's power hitter, Adam Ramsey, was up to bat, and the bases were loaded. He hit the ball hard with a hollow plasticky pock! and the ball went up, up, and out, heading straight towards me. I crouched down and ducked, covering my head with one arm, holding the other arm out in front of me. Something smacked against my palm. I'd caught the ball. I caught Adam Ramsey's fly ball and won the game for my team. I think they carried me around triumphantly, but that might've just been something I saw in a movie.

2. Last night I had risotto at a friend's house, but it turned out not to be risotto. Whatever grain it was, it wasn't rice.

I'm a little paranoid about the rice shortage. Apparently, there's a banana shortage, too. I'm hoarding a few bananas.

3. Speaking of grains, I really, really love popcorn. Even plain. But not movie theater popcorn. When I was eighteen I spent a summer working in a movie theater and ever since then I can't touch the stuff.

The oil that gives movie theater popcorn its yellow "butter" color makes pretty rainbows on the water when you feed it to the ducks.

4. In college I worked several odd jobs after my summer working at the movie theater: I sold socks, I was a quality controller at a New Age pants company (if you paid extra, you could have a crystal sewn into the waistband of your pants, where it would rest on your sacrum and amplify your chi or something), and I worked in a head shop.

On an unusually cold day a shirtless man came into Pipe Line. He was dripping scented oils--Patchouli, Rain, China Lily, Egyptian Musk--from the tray of testers onto his chest. We kicked him out. The next day he came in and emptied the whole tray of scented oils over his head. We kicked him out again. The day after that he came in and vomited all over himself. He stood there for a moment, sort of stunned, and then went running outside. The next time he came in he was wearing an Irish sweater and carrying a pan of chocolate chip cookies, which he threw at us. Get it? He tossed his cookies.                

5. Last night I dreamt there were ants in my bed.

6. I just found out why the latest issue of Monkeybicycle, which I happen to be in, hasn't come out yet. Several printers decided the material was unfit to print. Obscene. What was so objectionable? Menstrual blood.

A less squeamish printer has been found, and the issue should available in the next two or three weeks.

***

So now I'm It. I tag the following people:

Eric Spitznagel

Elizabeth Crane

Sara Gran

Jennifer McMahon

Michael FitzGerald

Mary Otis

***

Dear Tagees,

These are the rules:

a. Link to the person who tagged you.

b. Post the rules on your blog.

c. Write six random things about yourself.

d. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.

e. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment at their blog.

f. Let your tagger know when your entry is up.     

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superhero story contest

I've got a new story coming out in the anthology Who Can Save Us Now?: Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories, due out this summer.

In the meantime, Simon & Schuster is having a contest: write an amazing story about your own brand-new superhero. The prize: a Wii. Plus, your story might be chosen to appear in the ebook version of the anthology.

You can read more about the contest here: www.whocansaveusnow.com

The current issue of VQR features three of the stories from Who Can Save Us Now? For a sneak peek, go here: www.vqronline.org

10:14 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

santi: lives of modern saints

I have a new story, "The Veil of Saint Veronica," in the anthology Santi: Lives of Modern Saints. Order it from Black Arrow Studio & Press, or from your local bookstore, or, if you must, from Amazon (they take a big cut of the profit).  

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Patry Francis, author of The Liar’s Diary

Today many writers are supporting one of our own in her time of need.

Go to Litpark to read all about how this amazing day came to be.   

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baby, i’m a star (with pink eye and a brown caftan)

Read it here.

1:21 PM - 0 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

artists in their natural habitat

After-dinner conversation at Headlands Center for the Arts. Listen.

(it starts around the five-minute mark)

8:41 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

inside san quentin (part two)

Read it here.

8:07 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

inside san quentin: the big house by the bay (part one)

Read it here.

3:36 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

mrs. dalloway eats at the miss florence diner

Read it here.

2:43 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

a really bad review

From The Indicator: Amherst College's Journal of Social & Political Thought:

"...out of the nine stories in the book I found three salvageable. The others, mostly written in a third person omniscient narrator style, are alarming studies of deformed humans...the presentment of the characters becomes depthless, their development stunted, and their humanity thin and tubercular. 'He was just dripping with blood and pink milkshake.' The incongruous image of pairing blood and a malt drink is supposed to be arresting, but in the story titled 'Succor' there is something protuberant about its placement, perverse in its sense, and it reads like the author has a fetish for deformity. 'The new neighbor is a dwarf…This dwarf…this tiny angry daddy flogs the rump of a plump pink man.' This sentence comes as no surprise in the vignette 'The End of Everything' as the pages of it are saturated with a crudity that is so explicit it borders on the pornographic and loses the subtlety, the nuanced perspicacity, of narrative art."

1:28 PM - 8 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

the greatest show on earth

Read it here.

5:49 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

a million lights are dancin' and there you are a shootin' star

Read it here.

11:02 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment