Somewhere in the long silences and occasional chatter that made up the rest of our first evening together, my elbow brushed up against hers and stayed there. Her skin felt cool. She didn’t move away.

“So who are all these people you tend to?” I asked.

“Just one person, mostly. Danny.”

I didn’t want to ask the next question, but I did anyway. “He’s your boyfriend?”

The smile Melissa flashed then was closer to the one she used on Sherman Street. Quick and light. “Danny?” The smile vanished.

“Danny is my leatherwing bat. My black-hearted magician. My closest friend. But he will never, ever, be my boyfriend. No matter how much he thinks he wants to be.”

She went quiet again. The breeze drifting out of the pines had a furtiveness to it. By the time we began retracing our steps to the fields at the bottom of the mountain, the moon had filled the sky behind us. I’d been planning to take Melissa’s hand, but didn’t actually try to do it until the Sherman Street elms loomed overhead. Her fingers accepted mine but didn’t squeeze around them. Above us, warblers chirred and trilled.

“Okay, Paul. Time for your personality test. I’ve had a lovely night. So I’ve decided to grant you one of two wishes. You can kiss me, or you can find out what’s in my black bag.”

We were standing in front of Mr. Gene’s. For once, my eyes made no move toward the leafy canopy above.

“Is this a trick question?” I said. “I mean, is there a right answer?”

“Only your answer.”

My mind raced. My strained lungs tickled, which made me want to cough, but I managed not to. “Does what I answer determine whether I get another night?”

Melissa rose onto her tiptoes, then settled back down. “No. But it might determine what kind of night the next one is.”

“Get the bag,” I said.

Superblogger Charles Tan conducted an interview with me a little while ago, and it just went live. I think the only thing you really need to take away from it is that I want to write a Hellboy novel.

Here it is.

"I feel about Jackson exactly as I did when he was alive and I’m not inclined to mince words about him now that he’s dead.  He was a pedophile who had the wherewithal to build Neverland, an in-plain-view honey trap he used to screen potential victims.  He was such a hound for publicity he once thrust his infant son Blanket (there’s a name to conjure with) out of a hotel window for the paparazzi to shoot and for his fans to cheer.  He transformed himself into a gargoyle-quality freak through multiple plastic surgeries.  He was a pretty good dancer but so fucking what--I couldn’t have sat through one of his glittery, crotch-grabbing performances because his music sucked ass.  He hurt kids.  If you don’t buy that, wait and see how Blanket turns out.  And if all you care to remember are his “innocent” years and where you were when you first heard “Billie Jean,” might I suggest you make a contribution to NAMBLA in Michael’s name."

Okay, so I've let the blog go dormant for a while. Obviously I'm not one of these people who believes one should post something every damn day, regardless of whether or not there's anything to say. However, there is a happy medium between daily filler and a tumbleweed-strewn wasteland, and I will endeavor to find that place again.

So here's a highlight reel of what's been going on recently, told in an annoyingly disjointed Larry King style.

Mia is visiting her mom in Alabama for the summer. This time we're breaking up the visit into two segments, instead of one long stretch, in the interest of making the transitions a little easier for her. Summers tend to be a stressful time for the little one. So the first leg of the trip is due to end next week, and she'll be home for a couple weeks before going down there again. She turns nine right around that time, so we're going to celebrate by going whitewater rafting. Also, with kittens.

I went to the Sycamore Hill Writer's Workshop last week, and had a great time. The other attendees were Dale Bailey, Karen Joy Fowler, L. Timmel Duchamp, Molly Gloss, James Patrick Kelly, John Kessel, Alice Sola Kim, Meghan McCarron, Richard Butner, David Schwartz, Paolo Bacigalupi, Christopher Rowe, and Veronica Schanoes. I went with a story that wasn't quite ready for prime time, called "Alpha Dog"; it got a very enthusiastic reception, and I got some killer advice. It's now called "Wolves," and is about 600 words leaner. It's out in the world again, looking for a home. Alice Kim blew everybody away with a story called "Yellow Trash," which I hope you will all have a chance to read very shortly. Since both Timmi and Paolo flew in and out of Asheville, I got to spend some time with each of them, before and after the workshop, sitting over coffee. They're both pretty magnificent people. I think I left Sycamore Hill with some new friends, which I liked even more than the constant immersion in the craft. All in all it was a great experience.

I just found out a story of mine is getting reprinted in a forthcoming anthology, but since I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about it yet, I'll just leave it at that and announce the specifics later. Suffice it to say it was welcome news, and it's a story I'm still proud of.

My friend Alexandra Duncan, who -- along with her husband Jeremy -- comes over to my apartment on Sundays to play boardgames with my daughter and me, just made her first professional fiction sale. Her story "Bad Matter" will be appearing soon in F&SF, and you should really seek it out. (I'll let you know when the issue hits the stands.) I'm not just saying that because she's my friend. I think this story will garner her some well-deserved attention. Congratulations, Alexa. You deserve it.

Finally, I will not be able to attend Readercon this year, as I am just too damn broke. Laird, I expect you to do all my drinking for me. I like good Scotch and dark beer. Man up, big fella.

Grandpa Elliott, one of the best buskers in New Orleans


My dad sent me the link below. It's pretty damn great. I'm glad to see that New Orleans is well represented here; I listened to Grandpa Elliott on many occasions in the French Quarter, and was both surprised and thrilled to see him here, and to listen to him again. I was constantly amazed by how good the buskers were down there. Better than any record.

Follow this link!

"Good writing is not an act to excite tolerance because it is good, but anguish because it is not better. Who can swear there has not been something catastrophic to America in the failure of her novelists? Maybe we are the last liberators in the land, and if we continue to thrive on much less than our best, then the being of us all may be deadened before we are done"

Also:

"It is this necessity to travel into one direction or the other up to the end which makes the writing of novels perilous to one's talent and finally to one's health, as the horns of a bull can be doom for the suit of lights. If one explores the world, one's talent must be blunted by punishment, one's artistic integrity by corruption: Nobody can live in the world without shaking the hand of people he despises; so an ultimate purity must be surrendered. Yet it is as dangerous to travel unguided into the mysteries of the Self, for insantiy prepares an ambush. No man or woman explores into his or her own nature with submitting to a curse from the root of biology, since existence would cease if it were natural to turn upon oneself."

And a little later:

"Yet a turn into the other direction, into the world of the Self, is not less difficult. An intellectual structure which is debilitating to the instinct of the novelist inhabits the crossroads of the inner mind -- psychoanalysis. An artist must not explore into himself with language given by another. A vocabulary of experts is a vocabulary greased out and sweated in committee and so is inimical to a private eye. One loses what is new by confusing it with what may be common to others. The essential ideas of psychoanalysis are reductive and put a dead weight on the confidence of the venture. If guilt, for example, is neurotic, a clumsy part of the functioning of a great machine, then one does not feel like a hero studying his manacles or a tragic victim regarding his just sentence but instead is a skilled mechanic trying to fix his tool. Brutally, simply, mass man cannot initiate an inner voyage unless it is conducted by an expert graduated by an institution."

-- from "The Argument Reinvigorated," collected in The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing, by Norman Mailer.

I just received word that "The Crevasse," a short story I collaborated on with Dale Bailey, sold to Ellen Datlow's forthcoming anthology of stories inspired by Lovecraft. This was my first effort at collaboration. The process was a bit tentative at first. Both Dale and I have pretty strong ideas about what we want a story to do -- not to mention healthy egos. But after some minor wrangling, some concessions from both sides, and finally each of us just retreating to our corners with our laptops, our shared aesthetic won out and we came up with a pretty darn good story, if I do say so myself.

I was kind of stunned by how quickly it came together. We sat on Dale's back porch one Saturday night -- bottle of Scotch close to hand -- decided to do it, and kicked around some ideas until we found one we could agree on. We started the next morning and had a finished draft by the end of the day. We made some very minor edits over the ensuing week, shunting the manuscript back and forth over email, but most of what we produced in that day is what eventually sold.

This is a wake-up call for me. I've always been a notoriously slow writer, and I've allowed myself to believe that this was a necessary side effect of producing the kind of fiction that I do. I've now discovered what a load of crap that is. That weekend we were fueled by a need to get this done quickly, and also by a healthy competitive streak (neither of us wanted to be outdone by the other); the end result proved to me to what degree this illusion of meticulousness and fine tuning is really just an avoidance mechanism for getting work done.

It was an epiphany of sorts. And a welcome one. I'm working much harder since that weekend -- to good effect, I think.

Also, Dale and I will be writing more stories together; it was too much fun to stop now. (Well ... at least as long as the Laphroaig holds out!)