So Wil came down, gave me back my inquisitor’s guide book on hunting witches (which I’ll hopefully use on a History paper I have to write). We then went and did a little short story workshoping over at a local bar called Bootleggers (incidentally, last time Nick was down here, he could not remember the name of that bar and said, “Sweet. Are we going to that bar, what’s it called…Logjammers?”).

Ok…this is flippin’ hilarious. Someone put up this website that gives these couple-paragraph summaries of each of the Lord of the Rings books, for students who don’t want to read the whole mess for class…‘cause the internet is the place kids can go and get a quick synopsis. Only this person messes up the synopsis in subtle and very thorough ways, mixing events and messing up names. Someone who never read the book might be fooled, but any teacher would realize that the kid did not read a thing. What a wicked prank! Check it out.

And finally, I was starting to think that Raven Magazine was all but a hoax, as the February issue never came out and I lost contact. But…it appears, according to some news stories I read, that they had some trouble with the postal service, who said the magazine needed to be rapped in opaque packaging, for them to ship it. So they lost a few months getting the mags back an repacking. And, indeed, I just got an email from the editor asking for my home address to send a copy to. Hopefully this means money is coming soon!

That’ll mean “Poe Goes to the Singles Bar” will have a home and, with “Teddy Bear Rex” published in ELM (soon I think), I’ll have a little more bulk to my publishing credits (because the Masters degree doesn’t really mean anything on that plane of existence). Hopefully I’ll get some more out there soon.

Sin City has me inspired to go back and finish an idea that I started, but never fully fleshed out…of turning Oedipus Rex into a noir/detective story. It works. It’s a mystery with a nasty twist. Thebes is supposed to be a crime ridden and violent city – why not fill it with Tommy-guns and fedoras? I’ve already turned Oedipus into a Teddy-Bear (“Teddy Bear Rex”) as well as a day time talk show guest (“The Complex”) and turned the Sphinx riddle game into a radio contest that kills people (“The Riddle”)…why not make old Ed a PI? Of course, I’ll then have quite a collection of Oedipus Rex/variant short stories. Maybe I should just write a few more and make a book out of it. Maybe title it……….I WANT MY MOMMY: short stories featuring Oedipus Rex