Monthly Archives: January 2013

Short Stories, Writing

Little Fluffy Wiggletoes Lives!

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Just so you know, I’ve finally put “Little Fluffy Wiggletoes” up on this site.

For some reason, Little Fluffy Wiggletoes is one of my more popular creations. I’m sure I don’t know why. At any rate, I did write a few sequels to this story, and I plan on putting them online as soon as they undergo the necessary revisions.

Enjoy! But beware that this story contains content that is not safe for work, nor for children. Consider it rated R.

 

Just a Day in My Life

Best. Gift. Ever.

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Return of the Kings

 

As you know, my birthday was this past Monday, December 31, which also just happens to be New Year’s Eve. Jennifer and I threw a nice party, with about a dozen and a half people, most of them friends from my writers’ groups. It was during this party that Jennifer gave me the best gift I’ve ever received, and quite likely the best gift that anyone has ever gotten (not including new babies, kittens, or other mundane things like that, I suppose). That gift was the book you see pictured above, Return of the Kings.

It’s difficult to explain exactly what this book is. It’s a short novel, about 100 pages long, collaboratively written by thirteen people, and edited by Jennifer. The novel is about… Well, I don’t want to spoil it for you. However, I will say that it includes settings, characters, and themes that I’ve written about in my own stories and novels. San Augustin. Hastur. The National Weather Service Black Ops Agency. They’re all in there. Each author wrote a chapter, adding to the chapters that had gone before. Each chapter has a distinct voice (because each author has a distinct style of their own), but somehow the novel manages to remain coherent. And the cover art, featuring Cthulhu with a pair of rubber duckies, is brilliant. I read the novel on Tuesday, and it is seriously the most awesome thing I’ve ever read. Here’s Jennifer’s account of how the novel came to be.

I was very moved when I got this gift at the party; and I’m not too manly to admit that when I saw that my late friend Leonard Pung was one of the contributors, I got something in my eye. Not every author who contributed was at the party, but I had everyone who was there sign my copy.

You can’t buy Return of the Kings yet, but once Jennifer makes a few last edits, she’ll put it up for sale on Amazon and other places. Proceeds from the sales will go to the Leonard Pung Memorial Scholarship Fund, which helps pay for students over 40 who attend the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. I’ll post here, as well as to the Twitters and elsewhere, when it becomes available for purchase.

Update: The people involved in the project were:

B. E. Johnson

Bonnie Schutzman

Dale Emery

Bull Fuller

Andrea Stewart

Amy Holt

A. K. Cotham

Jamie Thornton

Leonard Pung

Jerimiah Honer

Renee Solberg

Lynn Townsend

Erin Hartshorn

And the cover was designed by Leigh Dragoon.

I am indeed truly blessed to have such wonderful friends.

 

Evil League of Evil, Just a Day in My Life

“History’s greatest monster”

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The other day, on Twitter, author A. Lee Martinez, who has written some of my favorite books (including Gil’s All Fright Diner, Divine Misfortune, and Chasing the Moon), called me “history’s greatest monster”:

Mind you, he wasn’t referring to my writing. I doubt he’s read anything of mine, aside from Tweets I’ve sent to him and the occasional email; rather, he was responding to my insistence on using the semicolon in my writing. He had said that his general advice to writers was to avoid the semicolon and to always use the Oxford comma. I responded, “You can have my semicolons when you pry them from my cold, dead, properly punctuated hands.” And it was in response to that that he uttered the epithet.

I was, of course, thrilled. The quote is now on the front page of my website. And I couldn’t help but post it to Facebook and everywhere else I could think of.

History’s greatest monster, indeed. My work here is done.