Quick update…let’s talk stories…let’s talk photos (and graveyards, yes . . . always graveyards).

 

I sold a story today.  My short story, “Snow, Blood, and Sparrows,” will be featured in the anthology Book of Dead Things (Expanded Edition) from Twilight Tales Press.  The editor, Tina L. Jens, emailed me and said:  “This story is quite marvelous. It made me cry when you read it at the show, and it made me cry again when I read the manuscript.”

 

Yesterday, I got to romp around a cemetery on a very nice evening.  And I got photographed!  As mentioned previously, UIS wants to start doing READ posters, featuring that year’s Outstanding Graduate Thesis Award winners as the “celebrity” in the poster (with their favorite book).  The photography, Megan Hunter, and I looked over some examples of past READ Posters for ideas and yesterday, in a very large graveyard, we snapped some shots just a few skips away from the shadow of Lincoln’s tomb.  Here are couple of the shots we snapped:

 

 

There are many more and we’ll still need to pic one out and than they’ll touch it up and spookify it and turn it into a poster.  Stay tuned for the final product.

Well, good news for my brother.  An agency got Nick an audition for the new Batman movie (The Dark Knight) this Saturday.  He received his scene and last night I rehearsed it with him.  Wish him luck.

 

He and Sachiko are down in Eureka now.  I’m debating on whether to go up there tomorrow night (that is to say, today, Friday night), meet them, party with the Eureka crowd, and then drive up with Nick to his audition (lessening any possibilities of car trouble or other hazards keeping him from getting to Batmania).

 

Earlier this week, Nick took a big screen and a projector from work, we had some folks over, and bundled in coats and blankets, we enjoyed the relatively warmer night by setting up our own outdoor theater in the backyard.  We watched Serenity, wind jostling the screen, us facing the forest, with the occasional yip of a coyote in the background.  It was pretty sweet and I think we’re going to make a tradition of this in the coming spring.

 

SO COME ON DOWN TO THE DOETSCH BROTHERS’ OUTDOOR THEATER.

 

I’m trying to write a treatment/proposal for a graphic novel (I’m figuring out the logistics of a haunted Tommy-Gun)…but I’m tired and I think I’ll try and sleep.

 

Oh . . . yeah, I found out the surprise ending to Lost . . . the island is really a booger in Howard Hughes’ nose.  There!  I ruined it for all you fans.  HA!

It’s alive…it’s alive!!!

 

Apparently my knee (wounded in a grievous sledding accident months ago) is finally started knitting itself back together.  I’ve been able to go out running the last two nights in a row…with nary a wet crunch or a scream of agony. 

Running feels good…

 

…no…

 

…running (after all this time) feels horrible…

 

…but then it feels good.

 

Monday’s open mic reading at Twilight Tales went well.  I had a lot of visitors, including Wil and Val and Kristi and Jason and Todd and more besides.  I’m really loving the live reading.  I think I done durn good too . . . as the author in charge of Twilight Tales, Tina Jens, asked to see a copy of the story (“Blood, Snow, and Sparrows”).  I think it’s just about ready to submit somewhere.

 

The Monday before last’s Twilight Tales featured their annual “Red Light Night” which featured love stories, tales of an amorous nature, erotica, erotic horror…and all points between and up and down.  There were some strange stories told…and some disturbing ones.  Between stories, the MCs took and read pages from a romantic encounter/sex book for couples (each page opening to reveal a different game or scenario or scene for a couple to enact).  It got a lot of laughs from the audience, myself included . . . until the fateful moment . . . when . . . they . . . revealed . . . the . . . cover . . .

 

. . .

 

. . . (I get tax write-offs for using ellipses…in case you’re wondering)

 

I recognized that book cover.  I’d seen that book cover.  I’d seen that book cover on my parents book shelf.  AHHHH!!!  Suddenly every page/game/scenario took on visualizations of the most horrific nature.  I mean…on one hand I’m thinking, “Way to go Mom and Dad.”  On the other . . .

 

 . . . I don’t want to talk about it.

 

In news that I won’t shut away as a repressed memory, the UIS library wants me to come down to Springfield and get photographed so that I might be the “celebrity” on a new set of READ posters.  They want to start a tradition of honoring the Outstanding Thesis winners this way.  I get to be the first.  I’m quite tickled.

 

Now I know they’ll want to take their own photos and design their own posters and such…but I’ve already come up with a prototype:

 

Hey Kids!

Joshua says:

“Read a book…

…OR I’LL GNAW ON YOUR IMMORTAL SOULS!”

 

What do you think, America?  Be honest.

 

And as a final bit of business, I’ve gotten some unfortunate complaints about using Hypno-Toad as my spokesperson, messenger, and well . . . mass manipulator of my audience.  I care what you folks think and I’ve retired Hypno-Toad (actually his remains have been ground up, samples of it strategically placed in several packaging plants, for the next peanut butter recall scare).  The frightening, controlling presence of Hypno-Toad has been replaced with a more congenial personality, one that families across this great nation have all come to trust implicitly.  None other than movie star Wilford Brimley, that wholesome presence, that star of such movies as Cocoon, The Thing, The Firm – not to mention Quaker Oatmeal and those Liberty Medical commercials.

 

Mr. Brimley, do you have anything you’d like to say to the nice people?

A whole week of being sick.

 

Ugh.

 

Freaking waste of time.

 

It was punctuated with some pretty strange fever dreams.  I can’t go into all of them, for lack of time and lack of memory, but let’s touch on one, one that was brief and one that I remember so well that a person could probably recreate if for me, with flash animation . . .

 

. . . my dream was a music video, all music and fast moving camera view.  It was a video for a techno style number, the kind with a manic bass, synthesized music, and flashing various late-night city scenes.  It was also the sort of techno track that involves just one word, repeated in various ways, in a rough, gravely, cool voice.  That word was “La Bodega.”

 

“La Bodega . . . La-La Bodega . . . Laaaaa Bodeeeega  . . . La Bodega . . .”

 

And as the beat picks up, we see the source of the voice, at least in this video:  Will Ferrell’s disembodied head.  So Will’s Ferrell’s head is floating through the cityscape, saying, “La Bodega” with stranger and stranger facial expressions (he’s really hamming it up).

 

And then I wake up.  Only I have no idea what the word “La Bodega” means or where it came from, so I look it up online . . . apparently is means “wine cellar” or some such.  Does anyone know of a techno or dance track that repeats “la bodega,” one that I might have heard (or has my diseased imagination made this from whole-cloth)?

 

Saturday, still sick, I went to a Catholic Charismatic Convention with my Grandma and cousins.  It wasn’t something I had looked forward to, but I found myself unable to say no to my Grandma (especially after she went all the way down to my awards ceremony for my Thesis…though I suspect part of the reason she wanted me to go, in the first place, was at the horror of hearing what my thesis was about…voodoo and fallen angels…tI was a little relieved that I wasn’t scheduled for an exorcism).  It was a . . . strange day.  I hadn’t been to church in years (“wayward” would be the pseudo-polite/pseudo-passive-aggressive term my former fellows might use) and I went through meetings, testimonies, confession, mass, the Eucharist, and the whole shebang in one day.  There were persuasive speakers.  There were some of the elements that I still find asinine . . . and there was a strange, diametrically opposed sensation of emotions: the irritation at being dragged there – and genuinely feeling touched that I have family members that worry about my spiritual being (even when I disagree).  There’s more to write on this…but I have to digest it.

 

That weekend, I also got to play some old, childhood video games with Steve, thanks to an emulator that converts my childhood past…into something that will actually play on a modern computer.  I also got to eat some lovely meals prepared by Heidi (who is a great nurse and is probably the only reason I survived my travels, while sick, that weekend).

 

A recent internet conversation with Wil, went something like this:

Wil : . . . and then writers came up.  I made a comment . . . then immediately retracted it in my head.

Me:  About?

Wil:  About how anyone who would call themselves a writer is clearly a fuck-head and something else derogatory.

Me:  Ah.

Wil:  Then i thought of you.

Me:  I usually go by “Writer.”

Wil:  You aren’t as flaky as, oh, say, anyone I’ve ever met who claims to be a writer.

Me: “Fuck-head” doesn’t fit on the business card.

Wil:  Ha-ha!
 

Not so long ago, my wonderful pet serpent, Lenore, was an oft featured part of this journal.  I used to even keep a death count on all the rodents that met their doom in her belly.  It’s been awhile since I’ve updated.  Lenore is now 2 years and 8 months old and is about 59 inches (maybe 6 feet) in length.  I’ve lost count of the dead rodents…but here are some pics I just took, to keep you busy.

Click here if you want to SOLVE A PUZZLE AND ENTER A REALM OF SURREAL MADNESS (and who doesn’t?).

What am I forgetting…oh yes…

 

OBEY HYPNO-TOAD!!! 

 

Hypno-Toad commands you to go to Twilight Tales, this Monday (the 5^th) at the Red Lion Pub at 7:30 PM, where there will be open Mic and where Joshua will read a story.  You will do this.  You must do this.  Obey Hypno-Toad.  There is no argument, there is no dissent, there is no resistance.  There is only Hypno-Toad.

 OBEY HYPNO-TOAD!!!