Turkey Neck Stew Day

A few things I'd like to mention today.

Parker Tettleton has three stories up today at A-Minor, the journal I kicked off in late May.

You should be reading xTx's Zombie Summer. The stories, by a host of fine writers, are of high value. Value and fun. What more?

I need a haircut.

Read what Sean Lovelace has to say about my favorite writer of all time Breece Pancake at his blog. Then do as Sean suggests and get your hands on Pancake's only published book, a collection of short stories I've read more than I've blinked in the past year.

I have a spider bite I'm watching closely. Brown recluse issues. Past hospital stay including surgery for the same incident some years back. Nervous.

I understand I'm not promoting my new open forum for rants and all things crazy and edgy at a new site I've started called Fierce Black Hound. Here is another attempt to do that properly. Come talk.

It's possible there are spiders crawling on me at this very moment.

I'm addicted to the Josh Whedon series Firefly and I'm not much of a sci-fi fan. Been watching the DVD set into the wee hours of the morning the past several days. In fact, I need a fix right now.

The Camel Saloon, which has been publishing some great stuff of late, rejected a story I sent about some folks wringing a chicken's neck to prepare for supper. They said they were friends of the fowl and just couldn't publish the story. I understand, but it's how I used to eat, all jokes aside. Holler Monkey, you know. That sort of thing.

I'll end on something that amazed, humbled and thrilled me that went down recently. That hard-as-nails writer xTx honored the hell out of me by sending an mp3 of her reading my story "The Son of a Man," which is due for publication soon in Andrew Bowen's Divine Dirt Quarterly. It was the most amazing and generous gesture anyone has extended to me in a long, long time. Finally, I wrote and asked if I could share the file with others (her reading voice and the emotion she put into the reading of this story was outstanding and magical, seriously). Of course, she was fine with my request, but there's a problem. I'm touched. That is I'm sadly limited on my tech skills. When it goes beyond words and the rare picture, I have no idea really how to post an mp3 to either this blog or anywhere else I stomp around at here in computer land. But I'll keep trying, because this is a gift to be shared. What a voice, what a reading, what an extraordinary thing for someone to do for another.

Oh, also, I'm addicted to poker again. I'm very good, though, which helps.