I pick five short stories you shouldn't miss...

Over at his blog Death By Killing, Chris Rhatigan is running his annual "Five You Can't Miss" recommendations for short stories. I weigh in today. You can read my picks here.

Photo by Zsuzsanna Kilian

If one of your New Year's Resolutions was to read more books, one place to start is by reading more book blogs to help you sift through the literary silt to find the gold. Here's a  list of top book blogs compiled at Blogrank from a variety of sources (including Feedburner, Google PR and Alexa).

Z is for Zebra

Courtesy: My Cute Graphics

I'm in word snoot mode today, thinking about why my Q and X keyboard  keys aren't more worn because I am VERY fond of words that begin with those letters and even fonder of words that use both--quincunx, exquisite, quixotic. (If you want to see more words that have both letters, or any other letter combinations, check out Scrabble Wizard.)
I started wondering why Z is the least-used letter. Are there that many fewer words that start with Z?  (I mean sure, that would be the obvious conclusion but what about some facts?) As they say on NPR's marketplace, "let's run the numbers."
There's a  site called words by letter that lets you search words by length, by definition and by suffix and prefix (two words with Xs).
Vocabulary.com will give you interesting factoids like 100 SAT words that begin with W,X,Y & Z. There's only one for X (xenophobia) but seven for Z.  So that's a little counter-intuitive.
Over at TalkTalk where there's a dictionary of difficult words, the Z word list begins with zaibatsu (from the Japanese, meaning a large industrial or financial corporation) and ends with zymotic (defined as: a. pertaining to fermentation; due to development of germs entering body from outside; n. contagious or infectious disease.) I will definitely be back to that site because I love obscure words.
If I still had a paper dictionary, I'd just count the number of pages devoted to Z letters and compare it to the number of pages devoted to E.  Further research must be done!  But not today. 

K is for Katherine

Photo by Brian Lary

I learned to type my junior year in high school--thank you Pela Love Bobbitt, and I've been touch-typing ever since. Because I don't have to look at my keyboard when I type, I don't notice when the letters start rubbing off the tops of the keys until someone else sits down to use my computer and is confronted with a nearly blank keyboard.
Right now, out of 26 letters, the only ones that are still labeled are Q, P, F, G, J, Z, and X. 
I got curious. "Everyone" knows that the most-used letter in English is E but what are the least-used letters?
According to Wikipedia (don 't you love Wikipedia?) The letters least frequently used are:
Z
Q
J
X
K
V
B
P
It makes sense that I use "K" more than most people because my name begins with K but why am I typing so many more words that begin with V and B than everyone else? Do I send that many emails to my friend Berkeley?  And V?  It's not like I write about vampires that much. It's a mystery.

Tales of the Misbegotten: Star Quality

I am days from finishing Starcaster, the novel I'm writing in a shared world environment with authors Charlotte English, MeiLin Miranda and Joseph Robert Lewis.  I have promised myself that I won't write any more short stories until Starcaster and Misbegotten (due in May!) are finished, but this story came to me while I was perusing a gossip site and it would not go away.  It is set in the paranormal L.A. that is the setting for Misbegotten (and the stories in L.A. Nocturne and L.A. Nocturne II).

Star Quality

When the Star found the Stranger lounging on the $12,000 sofa in his trailer, he wasn't afraid at first, just annoyed.

His first question wasn't "Who are you?" because frankly, he didn't care.

Nor did he ask, "What do you want?" because that was obvious. Like everyone else, he wanted to tear off a little piece of star-shine for himself.

The star, whose name was Denis Flynn, had been a child actor who had had a rocky transition into adult roles, languishing in horror movies with numbers after their titles and doing television guest roles as ex-boyfriends on sitcoms and designated victims on crime shows.

There'd been the obligatory bar fights and rehab stints and everyone assumed he'd be another TMZ headline before he turned 30 but three years ago he'd done a Robert Downey, Jr. and blown everyone away in an indie movie called Slanguage. Since then they'd been offering Ryan Gosling his cast-offs and he'd been balls-deep in quality pussy.

When he saw the Stranger, whose name was Alex Mariana, Flynn was annoyed because Alex was a blip and when you're a star, there are people who are supposed to take care of blips before they cross your radar.

So while he made a mental note to make his personal assistant's life miserable for not dealing with Alex, the question Flynn asked was, "How did you get in here?"

And actually, it was a serious question because after a series of stalker incidents involving a female director working on the lot, security was supposed to be tight.

"Wasn't that hard," Alex said with a grin, and just like that, Denis was looking at a perfect double of the movie's cinematographer.

"Shit," Flynn said as the shape-shifter melted back into his original shape.

"So what do you want?"

Alex grinned wider. "I'm here to talk business," he said.

Alex had to give the Star credit. He'd been pulling one of these jobs once a year for the last decade and almost without exception he'd had to spell things out for the marks. It wasn't that they were stupid; they just couldn't quite wrap their heads around the idea that they were so vulnerable. Flynn, though, he seemed to grasp the situation perfectly right away.

Instead of launching into a lot of hand-wringing and macho posturing, Flynn just went over to the full-size fridge his assistant kept stocked with gluten-free snacks and artisanal glacier water, and pulled out a one-ounce bag of organic kale chips.

He sat down in a chair that matched the sofa, kicked back and started snarfing his chips.

"Do me," he said. "I want to see your me."

Alex obliged. "We're the same height," Alex said, so that makes it easier. I'm pretty flexible, so I can go up or down an inch or two. But if you were really six one like it says on IMDB, we wouldn't be a perfect match.

Alex could tell the star didn't like that but he just shrugged. "Fair enough," he said.

Flynn seemed mesmerized by Alex's counterfeit of himself.

"Change back," he finally ordered. "Looking at you is too much like being in a dream and seeing myself dead."

It was quiet in the trailer for a bit, quiet enough Alex could hear each individual crunch as Flynn ate his chips. Finally Flynn screwed up the bag and looked around as if waiting for someone to take it from him and dispose of it properly.

When no one materialized, he set his trash on the birdseye maple coffee table that drew the trailer's décor together with its golden hues.

"How much?" he asked.

"A hundred thousand," Alex replied.

Flynn lifted his eyebrows. "You think small," he said.

"I'm not greedy," Alex replied.

"And if I don't pay?"

"There are so many options," Alex said. "Couch jumping on a talk show; melting down in a racist rant; propositioning a male masseuse."

"The couch jumping was a good one," Flynn said.

"Thank you."

"So how does this work? You want me to write you a check?"

"Money orders. In thousand dollar increments. Have your assistant buy them at separate Western Union branches all over the city. Don't fill out the buyer's section, I'll take care of that."

"And how do I get you the money?"

"Put it in a Fred Siegel bag and give it to that hot girlfriend of yours."

For the first time Flynn looked angry.

"Leave Danica out of this."

"She'll never even see me," Alex promised. "Get the money together," he said. "I'll let you know where and when Danica can make the drop."

It turned out that within three miles of the studio in either direction there were more than a hundred PayDay Plus and Paycheck Advance and Western Union franchises and it only took Flynn's assistant three hours to buy100 money orders.

He didn't bother to ask Flynn what the money orders were for because he never questioned his boss, and Flynn wouldn't have told him anyway.

He did, however, make a discreet phone call to the National Enquirer to tell them Flynn might be falling back into his old drug-buying ways. It wouldn't be the first time he'd scored some cash for a hot tip.

Paris in Motion--video by Mayeul Akpovi

Posted on Arch Daily today (part three) is a great time-lapse video of the City of Lights.

And speaking of southern cooking...

Check out the Daily Shot's listing "The 10 Best Southern Food Blogs" here. How can you resist blogs called Biscuits & Such or Sinful Southern Sweets?