review of BTTWL up at the Velvet

Chris Deal wrote a fantastic review of BY THE TIME WE LEAVE HERE, WE'LL BE FRIENDS over at The Velvet. Easily one of the best online resources for finding new and exciting (usually dark) fiction, the Velvet is a community of writers and readers who have a shared love for the works of Will Christopher Baer, Craig Clevenger, and Stephen Graham Jones. It is an honor to have BTTWL featured on their home page with such high praise.

The Velvet

tunnels

There's a feeling like a picture being taken off the wall in another room on the other side of the house any time I reach the end of a tunnel. I think humans feel this strange, not sadness, but maybe microscopic anxiety, because the two major tunnels in our lives, the uterus and the One-With-The-Bright-Light, have at their end the embodiment of unknowing, except we know how one ends, and are living it, and that certainly doesn't ease our fears about the second.

drunken belligerence

Earthquake is a "high gravity lager" in the vein of Steel Reserve. It is 24 oz of 12% alcohol. In Oklahoma our grocery store/gas station beer is 3%, meaning one can of Earthquake is like drinking eight beers. I drank mine in a little under a half-an-hour, shooting it once a minute. Vile stuff. By the end of it my stomach was in knots and I was screaming through my teeth.

I ended up going to a party, where I subsequently went about attracting the ire of everyone there. I think it started when I went into the kitchen and flipped everyone off. I didn't mean it in a bad way. Then a girl became convinced that I'd called her a bitch, which I am 90% sure I did not do.

A tiny girl with a pixie haircut kept coming out to scream at me for various reasons.

I was confronted by a large, slightly chubby male who had puffed himself up to me a few times over the course of the night. He was flanked by two other men, one of them a timid guy in glasses and the other a less-timid guy in glasses. He proceeded to regale me with my laundry list of misdeeds. I listened, and when he was done, I said, "Okay. First of all, your pea coat is gay." Then I laughed. He screamed "MY PEA COAT IS GAY?!?!?! THAT'S ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY TO ME?" And I continued to laugh. The pixie girl kept coming out and yelling at me, which was funny.

I am not saying that I blame the Earthquake, but I don't think I've ever attracted that much negative attention in my life. Maybe I'll stick to my 3% gas station beer.