Vacating

My family and I are taking off for a couple of weeks, so I doubt I'll be roaming the blogosphere much. I'm looking forward, though, to some time off from the Day Job (TM) with long stretches of Nebraska, Nevada, and various other places in-between our destinations to write and read. People always worry about their kids learning to drive, but I'm quite happy that my wife and I can turn some of the driving over to our two oldest boys. Heading for Utah, then California, then back home to Madison to recover from the trip. See ya on the other side!

"Water . . . water . . . Oil . . . Oil . . . Room service . . . Room service . . ."

Name that movie . . .

Not too long ago, I posted (boasted?) about the amount of rain we had here in the Mad City.

I spoke too soon.

I lived in southern California during the early '90s - my parents still live there - so I know a little about drought. I was a willing participant in the "If it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down" campaign. Not happy, but willing. I've seen my share of wildfires, most notably being just over the mountain from the Yellowstone fires when I lived in Wyoming, which resulted in our town being invaded by moose and grizzlies, as well as a lot of smoke and ash. I know hot. I know dry.

But this is getting ridiculous. We've lived in Wisconsin for 16 years and today I did something, for the first time since we've lived here, something I never would have thought I'd find myself doing living in Wisconsin a block off the lake . . .

. . . I watered the grass.

Now, every bird and squirrel in a mile radius seems to have found my little watering hole. I've got cardinals, robins, hawks, crows, sparrows. I feel like Alfred Hitchcock has moved in down the street. And there's no relief in sight. At least the temperature is set to drop. Next week, it should be at least reasonably warm and bone dry, rather than hellishly hot and bone dry. The last three days here have been among the six hottest days ever recorded in Madison. Global warming, here we come!

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Exquisite Cadaver

Years ago, I discovered a game invented by the surrealists early in the twentieth century. The idea is to spontaneously create a sentence based on a grammatical model structure. I learned the model sentence as "The exquisite cadaver shall drink new red wine," though I have heard other variations on the same.

Breaking the sentence down into its grammatical components, one gets: Article, adjective, noun, verb, adjective, adjective, noun. While playing exquisite cadaver with my family (one of our favorite things to do together, incidentally), we discovered that we prefer to add a preposition between the verb and second adjective. Once you have the structure, a piece of paper for each person, and a writing instrument for everyone, you're ready to play. Everyone starts by writing an article ("a," "an," or "the") at the top of the page. The person then folds the word back over the top of the paper so that it cannot be seen, then hands the paper to the person next to them. Once everyone has handed papers over, each writes down an adjective, folds the paper over, hands it to the next person, and so forth. The idea is not to give too much thought to the word one writes down. Just write something, anything, and pass it along.

Most of the time, the result is garbage. Once in awhile, though, the group comes up with something that *almost* makes sense. Once in a great while, the cosmos are kind and distill upon us a sentence that really does make sense. No matter how nonsensical the resulting sentences, though, the results (which should always be read aloud and with a straight face, if possible) tend to warp one's mind into new thought patterns, new shapes of thinking. The other night we played a couple of rounds as a family, resulting in twenty sentences, most of which were, as expected, garbage. But here are few that kind of, sort of, in some twisted way, if you let your subconscious fill in the gaps, almost, possibly, nearly make sense:

"The incestuous thermometer defile parallel to fuzzy rusty breadcrumbs"

"The androgynous script commiserated within vivacious Lebanese skinny jeans."

And, my favorite:

"The obese infidel dallied after metallic wart-covered sewer pipes."

Enjoy the game, and if you see me at a convention and need something to do, I have a hard time resisting a good round or two or ten of Exquisite Cadaver!

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If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

My Birth-Month Gift

My birthday is in July. But this month, I'm giving the gifts. For one month you can download my novella "Archangel Morpheus" and my e-chapbook "Fossiloctopus" for free. Yes, zero dollars and zero cents! Use the coupon code "SSWIN" at checkout, and you get them for no cost whatsoever, though you will need to register with Smashwords (who does not spam you with silly ads, etc). If you'd really like to give me a gift, just rate the books and/or write a short review. I'd greatly appreciate it! Feel free to share the code around, but do note that the code will only work on the Smashwords site, not on any of its affiliates, and only for the month of July. Thanks and happy reading!

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If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!

Taking it Down

I will be taking my novellas "Cloaks of Vermin and Fish" and "The Doppelganger's Shadow" down from my Smashwords site. Not because I have any beef with Smashwords - quite the contrary. But because of a super-secret something that may or may not come about. Time will tell, but in the meantime, I need to tuck Italo and Vincenzo away from the world so that they can emerge stronger, more resilient, and maybe even a touch smarter (not the most difficult of feats, if you've read these two novellas). Look forward to *more* Italo and Vincenzo, not less. It's just a question of how they're going to be wrapped up. I'll keep you posted.

Of course my two free stories, "The Butterfly Artist" and "An Apotheosis", e-chapbook, and novella "Archangel Morpheus" will still be available. I am hoping to get another novella up there in the near future, as well - a blast from the past to be re-revealed in electronic form.

The Book of Apex 3

My story "Langknech and Tzi-Tzi in the Land of the Mad" was published a little ways back in Apex magazine, for which I am grateful and pleased. Now you can read it, along with a bevy of other great fiction from such authors as Shira Lipkin, Darin Bradley, Cat Rambo, Nick Mamatas, and Theodora Goss, among others, all edited by the indomitable Catherynne M. Valente.

Not only that, I'm giving you a discount . . .

 Go here to buy the ebook. Enter the code "eBOA3AGUIRRE" for 10% off at checkout.

Or, if photons are not enough and you need the book-artifact (I understand that need!), you can preorder a physical copy of the book right here. Enter the code "BOA3AGUIRRE" for 10% off at checkout. Use the money you saved to buy a nice bar of chocolate to enjoy with your read and . . . well, enjoy!

Gargoyle 57 review

Gargoyle 57 by Richard Peabody
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the second time editor Richard Peabody has published my work in the pages of Gargoyle. In fact, I've taken my first-published Gargoyle work as the title story in my e-chapbook collection Fossiloctopus. So I'd be ungrateful if I didn't acknowledge some debt there to Peabody's good taste.

Still, I felt that this issue of Gargoyle ran hot and cold. When it is hot, it's white hot. But when it's cold, the stories and poetry seemed like so much navel gazing. On balance, the mix is good. Not fantastic, but good and recommended because of the sheer breadth of work.

I recall a conversation I had with author Stepan Chapman after Jeff VanderMeer and I won the World Fantasy Award for editing Leviathan 3. Stepan remarked that the volume was so big that "there's something for everyone to hate". And this might just be my problem with this issue of Gargoyle. It's huge, 591 pages. And there is something here for everyone to hate, no doubt about it. The flip side of this, of course, is that there's something here for everyone to love, as well. Really, there are some great stories and, if poetry is your bent, great poetry, as well.

I particularly enjoyed the stories that bordered on the fantastical and surreal. Standouts for me were Joyce Mansour's "Four Poems: Paris of the Surrealists in 1977", Robert Kloss' "How the Old Man Trained his Assassins", Ben Loory's "The Swimming Pool: A Fable", and Jonathan Mack's "The Extinction of Stories". But the standout piece was Wena Poon's excerpt from "The Biophilia Omnibus". I will be seeking out the full book, for sure. Rarely does an excerpt grab me like that. It has that mix of literary aloofness and Science Fiction thriller intensity that I love. It's a beautifully dark melange, one that leaves me craving more.

I count 77 pieces of fiction alone in this issue of Gargoyle. I guarantee there is something in there to strike your fancy, maybe even punch your fancy in the mouth and break its teeth. Poon's work did that for me. Brace yourself and wear a mouthpiece while reading. You're bound to be caught by a surprise uppercut somewhere in there.

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