Seriously?

My alarm radio went off this a.m. and I woke to the voices of various people urging me to come see them on the Gulf Coast. Men and women with heavy Southern accents were saying their names and their home towns (Biloxi, Mississippi is the only one I can remember) and urging me to come on down. The sponsor for this travel commercial?  BP.  That's right. The people responsible for despoiling said Gulf Coast. 

Mother's Day Reading: "Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu

Mother's Day is coming and I have been reading stories about mothers for the 365 Short Story Challenge I've been involved in. I ran across this story by Ken Liu, which is in the archives of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine. (You can read it online here.)
"Paper Menagerie" is a beautiful story, nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula Award and I don't know what won instead but this is a story that will haunt you. Check it out and then go to Liu's site to read his other stories, which have similarly been picked out for honors. He's a tremendously good writer.

Feminist (Non-) Fiction Friday--Erma Bombeck

When I was growing up there were a number of women writers whose stories of family life were published in magazines like Ladies Home Journal and McCalls and Good Housekeeping and in newspapers coast to coast.  There was Jean Kerr (wife to theater critic Walter Kerr and author of Please Don't Eat the Daisies), there was Peg Bracken of the I Hate to Cook cookbook. (Great recipe for oatmeal cookies but most of the other recipes are ...let's just say the title is not a joke.)

And then there was Erma Bombeck, whose obituaries described her as a "housewife humorist" when she died in 1996 at the age of 69. 

  Doesn't that sound ... dismissive? The "housewife humorist" had an audience of 30 million readers in 900 newspapers in North America. From 1965 until her death, she wrote more than 4000 newspaper columns. Every once in awhile when I'm looking for a recipe in one of my mother's cookbooks, I'll find a Bombeck column that she cut out and used as a bookmark. They always make me smile. "Housewife humorist?" I guess people need their labels. But she was no hobbyist proto-mommy blogger, the lady could write.

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me'.--Erma Bombeck (See more quotes here.)

Billy Bishop Goes to War--the Movie

One of the best experiences I ever had at the theater was at the Mark Taper Forum in L.A. where John Gray and Eric Peterson performed their play, Billy Bishop Goes to War. (It won the L.A. Drama Desk Award.)
Billy Bishop Goes to War is a musical based on the life of Canada's WWI flying ace, Billy Bishop of Owen Sound, Ontario. Peterson, one of Canada's best-known actors, played Bishop and a host of other characters, zipping in and out of the roles with the ease of changing a prop. It was an amazing show.  I've since seen it performed in other venues, by other actors, including, David Ogden Stiers (of M*A*S*H). He was so physically different from Peterson (tall, robust, balding compared to Peterson's slight, wiry frame and red hair) that it was strange at first but it was also an excellent performance.
Gray and Peterson have been performing the play for 30 years and now they've re-imagined it, tailoring the title character to Peterson's real age. They've also filmed it. It was supposed to be released on DVD last November, but if you search for it, all you find is a paperback copy of the play. You can watch the trailer here. You can buy a copy of the play here. I am going to track down the movie.

Richard Godwin interviews me

Richard Godwin, author of Mr. Glamour and Apostle Rising, as well as many, many short stories (including "Getting High on Daisy" in the Drunk on the Moon anthology) has interviewed me on his "Chin-Wag at the Slaughterhouse" blog.  We talk noir, Joseph Conrad, what scares us and more. You can read it here.

It's Here--Drunk on the Moon!

Drunk on the Moon, the anthology of stories based on the werewolf/private investigator character created by Paul D. Brazill is now available at Amazon and OmniLit. (It'll soon be available in other stores, including B&N, but they take longer to publish.) This is the e-pub version. The print version will be out early in May.
There are 11 stories in all--including a prequel by Brazill, and the stories were gathered from an international group of writers--Julia Madeleine, John Donald Carlucci, Richard Godwin, K.A. Laity, B.R. Stateham, Paul D. Brazill, Jason Michel, Frank Duffry, Allan Leverone, and me!!
My story, "A Fire in the Blood" features Roman facing off against a Persian fire demoness with the help of another wolf and a mysterious freelance pharmacist.
The stories offer a little something for everyone, and shortly there will be blurbs, including a lovely review from Les Edgerton. The book is $2.99 and well worth it.

Seriously?

According to Blogger stats, the second biggest source of traffic to this blog is a site called Americans Who Hate Obama. WTH?  Not sure what anyone who is on that site could possibly see on my site that says we'd be kindred spirits.