It’s been well over a week of waking up after dark. It’s not the same kind of delirium as jet lag…but it’s definitely a first cousin – it definitely sees jet lag at the Sunday family barbeque.

I wrote all night.  I’m too tired for a real update.  Instead, here’s a little passage that I put down, one I particularly like.  It’s about a very sad character that wandered into the scene…

Now he stairs in the bathroom mirror,

eyelids fluttering like dying moths,

empty eyes –

if you dropped pennies down his eyes,

you’d never hear the splash.

The Cook Book

© Joshua Alan Doetsch

            “Have you ever heard the word ‘satire’?” I asked.

            “No,” he said.

            And that explained the copy of A Modest Proposal open on his kitchen table and the little legs and hands bobbing out of his stewpot.

Today I was awoken by a call from the Chicago Tribune.

“Hello?”

“Is this the Wauconda Funeral Home?”

I look around my room and notice the various skulls, crossbones, and skeleton carving décor.

“………no.”

I wrote long and hard tonight…and I think I spotted Lord Byron, smiling from a dark corner of the room.  It’s funny when you are randomly surfing the web…and you come across and image that you thought was just in your head…

…the place I’m at, in the story of my epic poem, at this very moment…

…looks exactly like this.

So Mike Urnikis’ indi flick, Black Days, is going through those touchy stages of post production promotion.  YOU CAN HELP OUT!

It’s on the IMBD website at (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411168/).  If you’ve been to one of the premier showings of it with me, or if Nick or I have shown it to you on DVD, go log on (or register if you are not…it’s free) and vote and/or comment on the film.  More, visible feedback is only going to help Mike sell this.  If you haven’t seen it, Nick and I have the DVD.

So help Mike out…if for no other reason than to get him rich and famous so that Nick and I can ride his coattails…

Come one!  It’s got prostitutes and sledgehammer fights…oh yeah!

OK…I heard back from the editor of Bloodlust.  She got my info.  Now she just has to wait and see which stories the print magazine wants from her webzine.  So…my name and one or two of my stories might get print in BITE ME MAGAZINE.  Until then, if you haven’t and you’d like to read the stories, you can read one or both of them, online, at BLOODLUST UK (just scroll on down to find  “Varmints” and “For Poor Lucy”).

It’s nice to know that some future editor will be looking over my credentials and my submission letter might suddenly read “Bite Me.”

Time to work some word witchery in my plasma screened cauldron…

Last week, a pack of coyotes all howled and whooped in waves of wailing. One coyote howling is cool and spooky (not as spooky as a wolf howl…but certainly distinguishable from a dog howl). When more than one go at it, it goes in rolling waves of unexplainable sound and is, I imagine the very same sound a person hears at the exact moment they go insane. I think they made a kill of some kind, and wailed thanks to whatever shivering, fanged thing that wild dogs give thanks to.

The other night, when a foot of snow came, my dad dragged out the snow blower. After our drive, I went with him and helped those neighbors who didn’t have any shovel (some we knew…some we didn’t). It was kind of like being a duo of superheroes…only our power was to fling snow at great velocity.

Writing and writing and writing and cabin fever is starting to intrude and soon, very soon I’m going to have to seek out some friends, old or new, and spend some socializing time, and stay just sane enough.

…and sometimes you blow through the wrecked semi, cackling in the flames, now remembering that your tricycle is armed with laser guided missiles, and an Artificial Intelligence named Optimus Prime.

It’s been a while since I really updated.  Last big update, I was sick.  I got better.

My days this week have consisted of me waking up at 5pm, going out (usually to Café Aeon) to write amidst the nicotine smoke…then I come home and write.  I procrastinate here and there.  And write.  Then I run just before sunup, take care of emails, and, if I’m lucky, get to bed by 8 am.  It’s a strange cycle.

The epic poem is coming along painfully at times and exciting at others.  When you top writing, it’s like letting go of a muscle and the convalescence of bringing that sucker back to life is full of aches and doubts.  But it’s coming back to me.

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

-Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

I now have a second reptilian pet.  It’s a Argentine Black and White Tegu.  They’re a big lizard.  I don’t know its sex yet nor have I seen it much, because it is hibernating (I thought it was dead when I got it).  So a name will have to wait.  They look something like this –

A while back, the British web-magazine BLOODLUST UK featured two of my vampire stories (…those may be my only vampire stories…I’ll have my secretary look into that…as soon as I hire her), “Varmints” and “For Poor Lucy.”  The editor of that ‘zine has been looking to publish an anthology of some of the stories on the website (including mine) and, in her promotional efforts has a print magazine wanting to feature some of the archived stories.  So I sent my info to her today.  The magazine is BITE ME MAGAZINE.  It wouldn’t pay all that much…but it spreads my virus thoughts to more poor victims.

I updated my bio to send to them:

Joshua Alan Doetsch is a Masters student in creative writing. He fell back on writing ever since the heart wrenching day that the high school guidance counselor informed him that “Spiderman” was not a viable vocation. He’s currently finishing his thesis – a modern epic poem about a fallen angel, a voodoo priestess, and a crow.  He has stories featured in both Bloodlust UK and Eureka Literary Magazine.  He is also one of five finalists in White Wolf Studio’s novel contest.  One night, on a long drive, out of sheer boredom and morbid curiosity, he wrote a blues song about necrophilia.  In the meantime, he stays up late with his pet serpent, Lenore, writing the things that come to him post witching hour – and typing bios in the third person…

Though…if I want to go for more brevity…I suppose I could just use Torrie’s Mom’s intro of me that she tells people:

Joshua – parrot head, poet, and wanderer in the dark.

OK…the sun is coming up…or at least thinking about it.  I’m going to go sleep.  Nighty-night kiddies (or day-dee-day).  Do something today that makes you happy.  Just put it on my tab.

Writing is playing chicken with self-doubt. And sometimes it rides down on you in a semi-truck and you’re peddling on a tricycle with a busted horn.