end of school

School is over for good. I feel relieved. I will miss the campus. I am wearing a shirt today that I wore on Friday, when I nearly died. Vomit, convulsions, hallucinations. The "do-not-disturb" sign on the hotel room door blinked in and out of existence. Everybody else, too, writhing and trying not to die. Our group made noise everywhere we went. The lights at Nocturnal were amazing. The bass, too. The half-naked everyone.

I was thinking that maybe I would go somewhere but instead I think I'm going to work on tires for a bit. Save some money, drink some beer. Then maybe I'll go. As of right now, how would I?

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.

road trip

I accompanied my brother Andrew on his journey from Oklahoma to Orlando, along with a friend of his.

Got in the car about 6:30. Icy cold. Drove for a bit, had to poop, did so in some bushes. Wiped with Mapquest directions, long live TomTom. The back suffocated me. Had to sit with my legs up, straight, not moving. I got to drive through Louisiana. That state is goddamn beautiful. Trees and rivers and steel bridges. Marshland, stumps just rising above the waterline. Around eleven o'clock that night I got tired. Lawton, Oklahoma to Pensacola, I believe. We had about six more hours to go. My idea: get a hotel, get something to eat, crash. Wake up at six AM and get to grandparent's house about 12. Little brother was not having it. I don't know whether that thought made him nervous or whether he was simply a mess, frantically needing to be near his woman. Shrug. He decided, instead, to drive straight through, get to grandparents house at 4, and sleep until...you guessed it, 12. This made no logical sense to me. But I disagreed and therefore I was just a grouchy naysayer. You were with Andrew or against him. Rational dissent was not to be had. I disappeared into a Flying J to charge my phone, and this enraged him, which enraged me. I needed fifteen minutes to charge my phone. That was it. He told me "you have one minute. you can do without facebook for four hours." When I told him he was being uncompromising, he said, "I let you poop". Sigh.

So now we are here. I enjoy visiting the family. Florida is palm trees and fountains. Strip malls that look like Colombian drug lord compounds. Tomorrow I'm going to get a hot shave. Then I'm going to go to a comic shop. What I need to do, is hit up a bar. I need a drink.

5 best albums this year

1) Sleigh Bells - Treats. Probably the most unique, loud, obnoxious sound I have ever heard. I love this album so much, the only thing guaranteed to make me dance, regardless of mood or limbic fortitude.



2) Das Racist - Shut Up Dude/Sit Down Man mixtapes

These are for free online. If you heard them from that Taco Bell song, man you really don't know how hard these dudes bring it. The best beats, the funniest/cleverest/dumbest lines of the year.



3) Robyn - Body Talk

My new muse and inspiration. This woman has charisma and strength out the ass. And the songs, this one I listened to over and over and over.



4) Major Lazer and La Roux - Lazerproof

This one's another freebee mixtape that I just wore out this year. You've got a little dub, a little Carribean, dance hall kind of stuff. It goes so hard and yet I'm 90% sure you can make a baby to it.



5) Big Boi - Sir Luscious Leftfoot

Albums like this make me wonder if I'm not too forgiving with the hip hop I normally listen to. When someone brings it this hard it makes you shake your head at the rest of the hip hop in your collection, at least for a little bit.

My first novel, BY THE TIME WE LEAVE HERE, WE'LL BE FRIENDS, is available.

It's got a badass wraparound cover by the awesome Alex Pardee:



From the back cover:

Siberia, 1953. Stalin is dead and a once-prosperous thief named Alek Karriker is feeling the pressure. Trapped in an icy prison camp where violent criminals run the show, betrayed by his friends and his body, Karriker is ...surrounded by death and disorder. Bizarre Inuit shamans are issuing ever-stranger commands that he must obey. Opium is running scarce and bad magic is plentiful. Razor-tooth gangsters can smell Karriker’s blood and they plan to murder him more than once. The only option: ESCAPE.

Enlisting the aid of an aging guard, a cold-blooded killer, and a beautiful, murderous nurse, Karriker must now secure his getaway by finding a "calf": a gullible prisoner to be cannibalized when the tundra is at its most barren. As the vice grows tighter and life in the gulag becomes increasingly surreal, Karriker must hurry to find his mark and convince him...

BY THE TIME WE LEAVE HERE, WE’LL BE FRIENDS

It's also got some lovely praise from kick-ass authors Monica Drake, Cody Goodfellow, Kris Saknussemm, Stephen Graham Jones, and Paul Tremblay.

This is a cold, brutal, bizarre piece of fiction that I am extremely proud of. I sincerely hope you enjoy it.