WANT TO SEE

SQUIRRELS WITH DIRTY MOUTHS

I just tossed an apple core in a trash can at the pool and the trash rustled and a squirrel hopped onto the edge and glared at me.  The fur around its mouth was darker, matted, and wet.  It was like a wino squirrel.  I was relieved when it wandered away.  A few minutes later I was sitting in a beach chair in the shade and reading when the tree above me shook and a squirrel fell to the ground, far more clumsily than squirrels usually descend from trees.  It looked at me angrily.  Its mouth looked dark, wet, and strange.  Then it ran away.  I wondered if it might be the same squirrel, but I was pretty sure this one had a stringier tail.  Then from the bushes I heard some of them barking at each other hysterically.  I started to be worried that they all had some disease.  I put my book away pretty soon and left.  On my way out, I heard a shuddering in the bushes beside the path and saw one of them hunched there, eating what looked like half a Fig Newton caked in dirt.  Its slimy mouth was coated with crumbs and it just kept munching as I walked by.  It didn't fear me at all.

NEW NOVELLA: "THE OBESE" COMING IN 2012

My novella The Obese will be published in "The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction #5" then later as a standalone novella by Lazy Fascist Press next year, early in the year.  It's like Daphne du Maurier's "The Birds" except instead of the birds, it's the obese.  This really is a novella; it's about half the length of Midnight Picnic, around 20,000 words.  Much thanks to Cameron Pierce for taking a chance on a very demented piece of writing.

PRIZE MONEY

Yale's giving out huge literary prizes starting end of next year or beginning of 2013.

STORIES V!

I've been reading Scott McClanahan's new book of stories.  Actually I don't know how new it is anymore, but it's new to me.  And it's very good.  Stories V!, go get it.

I'm in a sort of unsettling grey zone right now, just finished working on some things, waiting on notes on another, and a thousand nascent projects.  Time to select a wave.

I LIKE IT

Tonight is the season finale of Game of Thrones, which I've been impressed with, and The Killing.  But I've also gone on record as being a huge fan of MTV's Teen Wolf, which is on Monday nights... surprised and impressed that they made not a comedy but a show with a legit horror aesthetic.  I like how they're branding it, too.