Graveyards.

Beginning and ending, over and under, and all my stories lately seem to start and stop at the graveyard . . .

Let’s start with BOOK OF DEAD THINGS.  I just sent my signed contract, in the mail, for my short story (“Snow, Blood, and Sparrows”) to appear in the anthology.  I got an email from the editor saying my story was “one of the strongest pieces in the book.”  Twilight Tales Press will debut the book at Printer’s Row, a big book festival in Chicago, June 9^th and 10^th.  Twilight Tales will have a booth there and I plan on attending for signing/reading type activities.  Look for the guy under the black fedora.

In the meantime, you can preorder Book of Dead Things at 50% off.  Orders should be made and paid through PayPal:  sales@TwilightTales.com.  Normally the book will be $18, but preorder books will cost $9 (plus $1.50 per copy for shipping).  You can preorder through April 16^th (only a handful of days away).

Where were we . . .

The last time I posted was to announce winning the White Wolf Novel Contest.  The couple of weeks since then have mostly involved bouncing up and down Illinois and celebrating with various people . . .

. . . on March 30^th, I went down to central Illinois where I got to go to the DZ formal at Eureka, with the lovely, lovely Sara Joy Boeke (who was looking like a movie star in a dangerous blue dress).

. . . the 31^st saw me in Morton, playing a LARP game with friends and receiving the most kickassest bottle of rum I ever did see.

. . . April Fool’s Day and my cousin, Steve, sends me a nicely distorted picture of myself.  I’ll show you the before and after below.  I don’t know.  Even distorted, I think I still look pretty hot . . . in an inbred-mutant-Ringo sort of a way.  Yep, yep…it ain’t easy wiping the sexy off of this mug.  See the rest of Steve’s fiendish creations HERE.

. . . then, I sling shot back north, to go read the prologue chapter of my upcoming novel (Strangeness in the Proportion) and announce it’s immanent printing to the fine, supportive folks at Twilight Tales in Chicago, on April 2^nd.  The MC, Eric, called me “something of a hero.” Activate blush . . . engage.

. . . next day and I’m back down in central IL, seeing some friend’s in Bloomington, who I haven’t seen in a long, long time.  And I got to play with my Goddaughter, Reese, who can now walk and talk in a strange, dead language.  She didn’t pay much attention to me until I stuck out my tongue and spoke in the same language . . . but then she came running.  Which reminds me . . . I owe her one children’s book, to be written in the uncertain future.  Oh, and it was her birthday on Monday.  The big . . .1.  I’ll be back, again (come this weekend), in Bloomington, to celebrate with her and her parents at Chuckee Cheeses.  Oh yes my lovelings, the Whack-A-Moles will be singing dirges and telling horror stories of my unforgiving assault for generations to come!!!

. . . hung around the Eureka for the rest of that week, mostly with Wil.  I got to see a baby horse, moments after its birth (unfortunately, the mother died soon thereafter) and watch it learning to stand and walk.

. . . back up north, on Saturday, Matty and Sara Jacobsen held a little dinner to celebrate the novel, at a restaurant in Wauconda and a lot of strangeness, magic tricks, crude jokes, and hilarity ensued.  Luckily, the waiting staff seemed entertained with us (which was nice as they could have easily been annoyed or scared of us).

. . . Easter involved the standard get together with the extended family and lots and lots of good food . . . but then drifted into seeing Grind House with my parents and brother (the family that goes to see ultra-violent gore-fests on holy days is the family that stays together).

And here we are and I’m back at home and I’m playing catch up.  But my nights have been sprinkled with encounters with fellow nocturnal folk (which is always fun as everyone else is usually asleep).  One, via internet, was with someone with an increasingly larger and larger list of things in common with me (right down to the same cemeteries wandered and the same ghost stories in Key West listened to).  The second, via phone, was with a friend I already know (and who also shares some similarities with me).  He called me, from a cemetery and we talked.  We touched upon life and death and that depression that creeps in during the early to mid twenties that I like to refer to as the Wasteland (this deserves a longer post . . . at a later date).

And so we come back to the cemetery.  Enjoy the ouroboros loop . . . just don’t choke on the serpent tail.

Night.