Bathroom Monologue: Happy Urban Legends

The Hook Hand

It's said he lurks on romantic cliffs and in abandoned parking lots. Wherever teens go to neck, he may be spotted in the rear-view mirror. At first you'll only hear a faint scratching. If you're attentive, the radio will warn you that a madman has escaped from a nearby asylum. But you won't hear it, because he wouldn't come for you if you listened to important information.

So as hands slip under sweaters and toes curl, little scratches will climb up the door of the car. You may mistake the whine of his hook hand on the roof for the moans of your partner. Most folks are scared witless when his specter finally looms, pulling on their clothes as they peel off for civilization.

It's miles of burned rubber and ruined hard-ons later that the survivors discover a wrapped condom hanging from the driver-side mirror. The hook-handed maniac takes reproductive health very seriously.

Lit Corner: Three Things Every Scene Needs

So The Bathroom Monologues is going to have a Sunday feature on the crafts of writing and storytelling. 'Lit Corner' is as temporary a title as it gets. Have an idea for a better permanent title? Please drop it into the comments below!

Recently on Reddit's /r/Writing forum, someone asked what things every scene needs. Not "chapter," not "act," but "scene." It was a wonderful thing to reflect upon because I'm a very scene-specific writer. Some of my scenes are as long as professional short stories.

Yet I try not to ask too many specific things from every scene because something so varied can have so many different appeals. The old Vonengut chestnut that every character ought to want something is fine, but honestly, Mieville's Perdido Street Station has some scenes that are almost all setting and they're splendid.

So here are my petty few. My Magnificent Three. I'd say to shoot for two of these three in any given scene:

1) Something that makes me glad I've read what came before it. Obviously this doesn't work for your opening scene, but pretty much any one after it ought to build, extend, reference, counterpoint, disagree with, or in some other way respond to something earlier, I ought to feel I'm benefiting from having read this far.

Think plot continuity or twists, think revelations, think character development. It can be Alice returning to a cherry tree she planted thirty years ago and seeing how it's changed, or it can George R.R. Martin killing off another parental figure.

2) Something that makes me want to read on. Usually not a cliffhanger, but something in this scene that is a good reason to want to read another scene later.

Will the Romans come back for Jesus?

Will Gatsby reach out to that girl?

What's in JJ Abrams's Mystery Box?

It can be much subtler than all of those, even just something the ominous in the background that I'll hope I'll learn more about or see more of later. This is the reflection of #1; it's making me feel I will be rewarded for reading on.

3) Something that's intrinsically entertaining, important or just worth reading in this damned scene.

Because you can't just rely on what came before and setting up what comes next. It can be some funny Douglas Adams one-liners, or you can have plot payoffs in every single scene. Inconsequential or hugely consequential. Are you one of those conflict-on-every-page guys? That's great if you can make your conflict worthwhile. Just make sure that there's something in this scene that is worth reading for other than it having to be here.

All three of these are exceedingly fuzzy items because storytelling is extremely fuzzy. J.K. Rowling and Jennifer Egan have insanely different strengths; you can't tell them both to write to the same scene-appeals. But if every scene does at least two of the above three things, I'm guaranteed to finish reading the book.

Man of Steel Podcast and Woman of Steel Fundraiser

Today's offering is a twofer of links:

Firstly, the first-ever one-man Consumed Podcast. Because Nat is on set and Max is in California, I ventured alone to Man of Steel. It's a shorter episode than usual, where I have to go give it up for Snyder and Cavill outperforming my expectations. There's also a short Spoiled segment at the end, arguing against the film's one major misstep. I can't spoil what that is, though, unless you listen.

You can download Consumed: Man of Steel
right here.

This episode is dedicated to Vira Gunn, our second link. Vira is a wonderful young woman who I've had the privilege of knowing since I was in high school. She has struggled with serious health problems for much of her life and fought through every one of them. But recently her neurological disorder mounted and she suffered a catastrophic shunt failure, requiring three surgeries in three weeks. It's wiped out her savings, her family can't afford to visit her, and she is in far too much pain to deal with this.

Because I've known her for over a decade, I can vouch that this cause is very real. You should not have to stay up worrying about money when the nurses are demanding you sleep post-op. I have been stranded without financial help post-op and it bankrupted me. She does not deserve this. We can help her.

So if you can donate anything, it's welcome. She has a PayPal account set up right on her Tumblr. If you can't afford anything right now, you can tweet this, share this on Facebook or Google+ or Reddit or wherever the internet is found.

Thank you for reading, and listening. I hope you enjoy the podcast.

Bathroom Monologue: No More Starlight

She can't paint. She can't imagine what she'd paint. She can't imagine which side to start from, what stroke or shade to apply, or what to feel. All that's making her heart rattle is other people's feelings, hypothetical reactions to creations she's too afraid to try. The world is prying the roof off her house and reaching in to strangle her imagination.

There is only one thing to do on foggy nights like this.

She visits the door of her one-room apartment. It is closed. She opens it as deliberately as you can open a door. She closes it as deliberately as –

-          not as deliberately as you could,

-          not as deliberately as Pierre-August Renoir could,

-          not as deliberately as Corinne Vionnet could,

-          not as deliberately as the unmatchable and far too young Amy Shackleton could,

– her Freshman art teacher could, but explicitly and precisely as deliberately as she could. This makes the world go away so quickly that she leaves the drapes open.

Leaves losing shades into a singular dark green, and then to utter silhouette. They waver against the overcast sky, some clouds thickening, grey on grey violence hiding where the moon might be rising. No starlight to bother her, and soon no grey-on-grey, only a thing that feels black. Her windowpanes become plastic white outlines on a ceaseless void.

There is no lamplight. There is no starlight. No cars backfire, no distant bridges cajole, and there are no stars in the sky because they are all too far away to reach her. To reach here. The world goes away. Her apartment doesn't rest on it; she lives on her own asteroid hurtling through a private bit of space. Would Renoir have liked The Next Generation?

Space abides no sound. It abides no neighbors, no debtors, no family angry at her for things she never wanted or intended to do with her adulthood. Her little apartment and perfect studio is so far away from any celestial body that gravity has to give up, and with it, the weight of all things social drifts and evaporates. A physiological metaphor plays across her shoulders and she feels that lift that's supposed to be cliché and that is actually so welcome it stirs tears. She dabs at them with a paintbrush, because then –

-          then she can stalk up to the canvas and look it in the eyes she's yet to birth.

-          then she can work without thinking of the verb.

-          then she can sleep the way the verb out to work.

– then she can open the door and face the world. She paints the knob first. It'll be avocado green.

Bathroom Monologue: Superman has no weaknesses except…

…Kryptonite.
…magic.

…red suns, and apparently any freaking red lamp put together by a two-bit prodigy.
…the umpteen other Last Kryptonians Alive.

…the hundreds of other characters, non-Kryptonian and still depicted as equal or greater in strength.

…mind control.

…nanobots and other pesky SciFi infections.

…blackmail.

…declining ad rates. He is a newsman, after all.

…really, really sharp things, of which the DC Universe has a questionable abundance.

…the villain-of-the-week who beats him up to seem formidable when facing other heroes.

…constantly being outsmarted despite spending all his time thinking about crisis management.
…bad writing.

Bathroom Monologue: Wolfman Op-Ed

To any well-meaning bodies at NASA,

Ever since humanity grew tired of hunting down werewolves for sport and pretended to give us human rights, it's been suggested that we ought to play our role. To do our part. To contribute to man's world. The most recent evidence of this thinking is a suggestion at the TED Talks that we go into space where more mortal man has difficulty. This is a plainly racist presumption.

To be a werewolf is to suffer the curse of immortality. I myself still attempt to take my life on an annual basis even though I can't. Do you think this makes me durable? Well immortality is not invincibility. And just as I feel the sting of the knife, so I would feel my ass freezing off in the depths of space.

Have you ever seen one of us transform? It's hard on the wardrobe. Any space suit is going to rip and then you turn us into immortal ice cubes floating around the Sea of Tranquility.

What galls me is the suggestion that we're doing this because we're forgiven. The proposal acts like we're supposed to be happy to get a supply of oxygen. Suffocating and starving still suck even if they don't kill you, and there's no guarantee all of us won't wolf out on the shuttle or on the surface. Trust me that when you arrive expecting me to have built a space station, my hairy ass will have been in no mood to greet you.

On behalf of the damned among you: we politely decline.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Talbot

True Stories of John: Tree Gunner

A few weeks ago Myke Cole ran a polite little contest. In order to teach people the trigger discipline that gunners so seldom display in movies and television, he picked up an umbrella and showed it. Your finger ought to be above the guard, and if there's a stock, it should go in the crease or pit of your arm.

Myke Cole. Three tours in Iraq, one tour of the laundry room.

Cole then invited anyone who take up any object around their house and demonstrate such caution. Any object other than a gun. I enjoyed his lesson so much that I went outside to practice.

But my first choice didn't feel ambitious enough. Anyone can aim a sapling.

Bathroom Monologue: Werewolves on the Moon

If it is a curse from God, then it is for humanity to forgive. We can give them a better and brighter future, and they can send down a ladder so that we may climb up after them.

It's been their antagonist for millennia. Yet wolfsbane cannot grow there, and most of its surface is absent of silver deposits. Our engineers suggest there is no real moonrise in space, and so they ought not to turn, especially not in a shuttle without windows.

The bounty will arrive upon landing, for once a werewolf stands on the moon, he will not ever again see it rise or set in full. There will be no further changes or demonic impulses. They are cursed to live eternal, but they will live eternal as men and women. There is no howling on the moon itself.

If their immortality is so great that they cannot take their own lives, then can they suffocate? If not, then they can live on the surface as they erect our way stations. If they can, then we will support them, sending as much air as they will need for years.

Despite their legendary appetite, we know werewolves cannot starve themselves to death. Too many wretched souls have tried. Thus they will require no food as they become the explorers, the miners, and the maintenance crews for the stations that will erect our shuttles to Mars and beyond. They'll never have to leave the moon, and play a hand in the culture that grows there as it becomes the first stop in interplanetary travel.

One great experiment, too: to see what changes in the breast of man when he sees a full in earth his sky.

And for the dissenting opinion...

What I'm Learning from Beta Reading

If Sundays are going to become the lit corner on The Bathroom Monologues, then I might as well start with the book I've been hammering at all week. I'm fully editing Last House in the Sky, hoping to have a sparkling draft before ReaderCon in July. Four beta readers turned in fully marked up manuscripts, fewer than I was counting on, but these four did thorough and wonderful jobs.

I cheated on this novel, soliciting an alpha reader to let me know if the whole things too nuts. It's about thieves trying to steal a flying city from a cult, with a backdrop of dinosaurs and hungry robots, so there was the slim chance that it wouldn't make sense. My alpha was enthusiastic, and luckily the betas have agreed that running with my love of The Weird works. I'm considering running the very brief first chapter as a Friday Flash some time.

I'm not tired. I could write longer.

If you want it, I'll write about how the revisions process is going. It's been surprisingly fun so far, when I'm not shaking. But today I'd like to chat about what I'm learning from my betas, both about them and myself. All my old convictions remain true: a spread of specialties and interests among betas helps, you need people who will call you out, and there really is nothing as good as getting multiple betas to laugh at the same line.

Bathroom List: Seven Reasons Why Chess is Not Like Politics

1. The pleasant fantasy that you have only one opponent.

2. That the opposing forces in front of you at the start are all that will show up.

3. That the sides will have equal membership.

4. That all of your members will do what you say.

5. That the sides will take orderly turns.

6. That you will get to see everything your opponent does.

7. That anyone can only do one thing at a time.

Bathroom Monologue: Infestation of Nightmares

Every home in the burg had its share of nightmares. They'd settled out on the slope of an ominous forest, and the looming mountains lengthened night by a half an hour every summer, so it was their own fault. They understood. They accepted responsibility, and considered the number of nightmares that crept into their basements and attics and air conditioning systems to be the price for country living. The rest of the world wasn't exactly a peach.

Mr. Rabbani had lived on the haunted slope for two decades. He kept an array of lamps on starting an hour before dusk and never slept with his feet jutting from the covers. These were reasonable precautions for his mortgage rate. That his only neighbor was an empty house seemed downright funny around Halloween.

Yet one November, Mr. Finkelstein moved into that empty house. It was three days of a veritable haunting, with all the clatter of moving furniture and groaning middle-aged men. Mr. Finkelstein had only a fuzzy notion of how many nightmares lived in the burg, and so he lost a few toenails to one on his first night. The neighbors saw him through his bathroom window around dawn, clutching a flashlight and barricading himself in.

Bathroom Monologue: I'm Weak

“That thing you’re saying isn’t a weakness? It’s a weakness. There is nothing abnormal or immoral about weakness. I have yet to meet a person who didn’t fail, possess shortcomings and vulnerabilities, and additionally was simply weak in an arena or three. Some of the most beautiful times in love and friendship are helping others with theirs. I have them. You have them. You can have a weakness for alcohol, or gambling, or low-cut tops. Some weaknesses can be corrected with habit or surgery or mere mindfulness. Others will always be with us, and they shouldn’t be paved over, or draped with willful ignorance. The people worth having in my life compensate for my weaknesses, or outright enjoy them.”

Five Reasons I’m Glad I Joined Reddit

1. Better Conversation

In my social circles, Reddit has a terrible reputation for being full of trolls and backbiters. This isn’t my experience at all, though more nasties probably lurk in other sub-reddits. I've only registered on forums of interest – r/Fantasy, r/Books, r/Science, r/Anime, r/WorldNews – all of which offer bouquets of content that I otherwise wouldn’t have seen, as well as meeting authors and getting valuable publishing advice. And then there are the conversations.

Some of the best literary chats I had from March-May were among the comments on r/Fantasy, about how Horror and Fantasy can overlap, why Fantasy tends to stall in the first hundred pages, and even reflecting on the works of Gene Wolfe. Jerks tend to get isolated, called out, and most refreshingly, reasoned with until they’re disarmed. It’s actually deeper and nicer than most of conversations I've seen on Facebook walls, though I haven’t visited r/Politics yet.

2. Mary Robinette Kowal is my Editing Pop Idol

People say Seanan McGuire is amazing with her fans on Twitter, and she is, but I’ve never seen anyone interact with their readers like Mary Robinette Kowal did on r/Fantasy.

A reader linked to her article about revising old works to weed out idle prejudices and colonial attitudes, from both wording and plotting. It takes amazing guts to admit your mistakes in public. More amazing: when users questioned her motives or practices, she responded in considerate fashion and was open enough to change her mind on at least one edit. Twitter is too brief, and too easy to read as glib or hostile, for these sorts of exchanges. Here we had an author inviting people into her process and producing work she preferred thanks to the interaction.

Bathroom Monologue: LIVE from the Shoe

There was an old lady who lived in a shoe. She conceived what can only be considered an implausible number of children for a woman who lived in a cramped one-bedroom, but there they all were, living in abject poverty, thirteen people living where only five toes belonged. Yet this poverty did not last for long. Not in the age of Youtube.

One video was all it took for her soleful family to viral, and for CNN and Wired to herald her as an economic genius, making shoe-life work in a bad economy. Warren Buffett invited her to lunch, and she hosted the first-ever TED Talk from a Footlocker, on the wisdom of laces and how to expand your personal spaces. Before the end of the fiscal quarter, she was a real estate tycoon, able to flip any property into a spacious dream house.

She only started as an old lady who lived in a shoe. She was a visionary, and I believe she invented the Tardis.

Bathroom Monologue: The Congressman Sleeps in a Coffin

Takes limeade and half a bagel in there every morning, and doesn't rise from the grave until 8:00. Until then he e-mailing, blackberrying and other verbs you don't associate with coffins. I've even seen him doing sit-ups.

It's the only coffin in the capitol with a chamber pot. He sleeps there every night, and it's probably killed his sex life. Now I always assumed it was a penance thing, wanting to rest in the same accommodations as his son, yet when the honorable Horace Tetley of Nebraska asked him about that, well, you'll have to excuse the expressions, but our man turned downright grim.

It seems it's not as simple as losing a son overseas. It's that he wants to know exactly what he's advocating against. The publicity stunt leaves most of his staff uncomfortable, but his colleagues find it very difficult to argue in favor of another foreign war to a man who can ask if they know what's like to spend a night in a coffin.

John wins the "Sunshine Award"!

It must be meme season, because I've received at least four blog hop invitations this week alone! The one I've been most tardy about is Laura Besley's "Sunshine Award." This has to be for what a nice guy I am, since it's been overcast, raining or tornadoing every day for weeks.

The second-only hand-drawn award I've ever gotten. They're some of my favorites.

They're fairly standard blogger rules:

1. Include the award’s logo in a post or on your blog.
2. Link to the person who nominated you.
3. Answer 10 questions about yourself.
4. Pass it on to a few cheery souls.

I've edited them a little to make Sunday easier. Laura's questions are much more normal than the ones I typically get! Here we go:

Emma Newman's Any Other Name and Scavenger Hunt!

The swank cover art for Any Other Name.

It's a hectic time in my little world. We've been touched by two tornadoes in just the last week, and while I'm not sure, I may have been electrocuted. Tornadoes bring a lot more lightning than I'd expected. May have to blog a bit more about that soon.

There is some good news in the world, though. Emma Newman is launching her second novel in just one year, Any Other Name, with the brilliant Angry Robot Books. It's already out in the U.S. and will launch on June 6th in the U.K. She's invited me to help play a little game with the launch. Here's her pitch:

Bathroom Monologue: Strange Drugs

Photo by Stephen Shore.

   This one removes all your fears. It's said they're replaced with a smoky nothingness and a faintly yellow flavor.

   This one replaces all your fears with the fears your parents have for you.

   This one replaces all your fears with identical fears in different orders. Said to be very useful for schizophrenics seeking introspection.

   This one makes you admire clouds more often.

   This one makes clouds admire you more often.

   This one has no clinically proven effect, yet many customers claim to find rainstorms friendlier.

   This one allows you to read, comprehend and discuss philosophy with absolute acumen. You'll go through Kant in an evening. It, however, provides no satisfaction.

   This one provides absolute satisfaction with no application. You'll achieve nothing and be perfectly alright with it until the drug passes.

   This one lets you read, comprehend and discuss the shortcomings of others with absolute acumen. You'll achieve nothing and be perfectly passionate regardless until the drug passes.

   This one makes you taller.

   This one makes you smaller.

   This one stops up rabbit holes.

   This one fills you with the fear of God.

   This one makes you realize you have always been full of the fear of God.

   This one gives you a radically incomplete and yet hardy appreciation for what God fears.

   This one unlocks your full mental and emotional potential.

   This one dulls any anxiety from having realized how meager certain potentials are.

   This one makes you feel exactly like you think you used to feel before all those unfortunate revelations that come with time. You never actually felt this way, but the drug doesn't know better.

Bathroom Monologue: Christopher Lee is Not Dead

Dear Twitter,

Please stop scaring me into thinking Christopher Lee is dead.

We both love his infernal majesty. His grace, his voice, his simultaneous humanity and inhumanity - he is the most charming stuff of nightmares. And he has a new metal album coming out, which is very funny and apt and other adjectives.

Yet you must understand that when you talk about him, he trends worldwide. And when any aged celebrity trends worldwide, I presume they've died.

Bill Cosby has died at least five times. It's been very hard on my nerves.

With Lee shooting up the social media ranks over and over for his album and popular interviews, I've been terrified to think our lord of darkness in cinema had passed twice just this week. On Tuesday I got remorse whiplash and had to start wearing a brace on my empathy.

And yes, I know that Christopher Lee can't really die, only explode into a cloud of bats. But don't be so semantic. You're killing me.

Sincerely,
John Wiswell

Bathroom Monologue: Three Laws Concerning Children

"Don’t have sons. If they survive childhood, they’ll be drafted off to war, sentencing you to spending every day dreading news. You’ll imagine them sweating, and fleeing, and crying out for you, all while you have to pretend how proud you are, instead of how your life is defined by dread of mailmen.

"Don’t have daughters. You’ll fear for their safety every time they leave the house, and you can’t fix the world that wants to abuse them, and you’ll never be able to prepare them for everything out there. They’ll be degraded, and paid less, and attacked more, and expected to appreciate it.

"Don’t have no children. Then you will spend your entire existence haunted by who should have been born, and the successes they could have wrought, and the mud they could have tracked onto your carpet. If you keep your carpets clean for fifty years, they will not be as valuable to you as will be if they suffer a single indelible foot-shaped stain. It will be an accident that fills all the empty moments, and emptiness is something the soul can not abide. You must have children.

"It's so hard being a parent. So hard not being one. The weight of being both has about broken me."

Writing for Millions

Everybody wants to be a writer and they should. Go to any bookstore and read the names. Stephanie Meyer. J.K. Rowling. The Da Vinci Code Guy. I never hear about these people collecting garbage or working at Wal-Mart. Writing must be all they have to do, which means they have to get paid a lot. Now look at the whole bookstore. That’s a lot of writers, all getting paid millions of dollars. And it’s so easy to write!

I read a book by Mark Twain once and it sounded like how people talk. Imagine how easy it was for him to just write what he’d say. You could talk into a tape recorder for a while and then pay someone else to type it out for you with the millions of dollars all writers get paid.

But if you are old fashioned and want to write by hand, that’s fine. All you have to do is sit and type. You don’t even have to type that much. Ernest Hemingway once said that if you write a page a day then you have a 365-page novel at the end of the year. I’ve never checked his math but assume he’s right because he’s famous. So if you write about a page, you’re pretty much done for the day. Thanks to Spell Check you don’t even have to edit anymore.

Also, I never heard of Hemingway doing anything but writing and getting drunk. Again: writing is a sweet job since you don’t have to do anything else in your whole life.

I don’t really know how publishing works, but you get paid in a lot of ways. There’s the advance before you even write it, then they pay you when you give them the book, and royalties when they start selling it. Since you get millions every time, that’s three million for one book. You get even more millions after they make a movie out of it. A lot of movies are based on books, so I assume all books become movies that pay you extra and you don’t even have to pay taxes on that.

It’s not all fun, though. Eventually your hand cramps up from signing so many autographs and people who are scared of crowds might get nervous from being stopped and fondled on the street by their flocks of teen fans. I’m sure it gets annoying eventually. It’s probably why Hemingway drank. I don’t know because I’ve never read his books. But what I’m saying is that if you’re not ready to be rich and really popular, writing might seem overwhelming. Fortunately book tours and interviews are totally optional since they pay you the same no matter what.

I’d tell you more but this is almost a full page. So in conclusion, I want to write because it’s easy and pays a lot.

Bathroom Monologue: Sweet Potato Revolution

Sweet potato soup, sweet potato casserole and sweet potato pie. You can get everything sweet potatoes make at the festival, the fourth annum of the revolution. Sweet potato toast in the morning, and sweet potato shakes for the health-conscious. There are sweet potato fries served hot from dawn to dusk, though some sweet potatoes dislike that they're fried in mammal fat. Others decry that as a bit of a hypocrisy and against the spirit of the festival. Most sweet potatoes savor the flavor, and they experiment in realms culinary with their livestock. It's said to be like what Thanksgiving was for humans, though since the revolution it's sweet potatoes that eat humans, and in so many ways.

12 Questions for SF/F/H Readers

John DeNardo of SF Signal introduced (and possibly created) a little questionnaire for SciFi, Fantasy and Horror readers. They're interesting questions because, as common as most are, they split people in huge ways. I'm sharing them and my answers here; if you're interested, please follow suit in the Comments, or link back here on your own blogs. 

1.         The last sf/f/h book I read and enjoyed was:

Roger Zelazny's The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth. Incredible short story collection; "Divine Madness" has one of the most affecting endings I've ever read.

2.         The last sf/f/h book I read and did not enjoy was:

Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle. The characterization and prose style just were not for me. Didn't help that I read it while insanely ill.

3.         A sf/f/h book that I would recommend to new sf/f/h readers is:

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. What the hell? You're not exposed to any of the genres, so give this a shot and see if the roots of Fantasy are for you. If it is, then we can have many happy chats.

4.         A sf/f/h book that I would recommend to seasoned sf/f/h readers is:

Bathroom Monologue: Thinking over what to say when Mom says she wants to date again, Redux

"Date me? No? Then it sounds fine. It’s been years! And the woman next door was totally looking you over. If you go lesbian it’ll take care of any Daddy Issues I might have. I hear women are more sensitive than men anyway. Don’t have any empirical evidence of it, but it’s a rumor. You can date any woman you want, but leave the under-25’s for me. Men? Well, if he mows the lawn. And make sure he’s rich. And generous to his step-children."

Bathroom Monologue: Anton and Anton

Anton sits on his knees before the grave of Anton. For a while, Emil and Yulia's son holds Anton's left hand and does his impression of prayer; at three years old, he no better understands prayer than he does who is buried beneath his soles.

"Amen," Emil and Yulia's son mutters, releasing Anton's hand to rub at his eyes. The drive here has made him drowsy, and Yulia stoops to pick him up. She bows a quarter of the way she normally would, dipping herself and her child toward the headstone.

Instead of 'Amen,' she says, "Thank you for saving my husband, Anton." She says nothing more, and ends her bow. She did not think much of Anton, the drunken shadow of her Emil. She is two paces behind Anton when he checks her, her gaze already on the car.

It is four years to the Saturday since Anton Behrs was blown up pulling Emil from a foundry. That is what everyone knows. They commemorate it on Saturdays because Emil Behrs has never in eleven years missed a day at the exchange, and Anton will not let Emil fail now. He misses absinthe.

No E-Book of Joyland, and Shut Up About It

Too much is being made of Stephen King's Joyland going print-only. So his initial run will be paper-exclusive, intended to help bookstores and accentuate some nostalgia for the pulp presses that inspired his detective novel. He is now being misquoted as thinking e-books aren't real books and decried as a luddite.

Bathroom Monologue: Refugee Camp Regrets, Redux

"I don't regret why I'm in here. They can starve me, beat me. Call me a traitor. I'm not one. What I did was for the good. I was a General in name only, put in charge of the children and the lame. A sea of starving, helpless people, with less than a dozen armed guards, all of whom were routinely called away for more glorious service. I couldn't lead my charges to safety. The raiders would find us in any cave or stronghold I managed to reach. We were ransacked weekly. We lost our supplies and the youngest starved. When the raiders returned to find no more food, they took the near-pubescent girls as slaves. No number of missing or dead on a report changed the minds of those in command.

"I remember the fifth attack most clearly. The smoke from tents they burned out of malice. The lamentations of young and feeble. A crippled mother crawling after them escaping raiders, barking for them to return her daughter. I watched her legs drag in the sand behind her, like a split fishtail. It didn’t even flop around. Other men would have found it heartbreaking. I found it inspiring, and I am not sorry for the idea it gave me.

"I took arms. Only one per child. I took a couple of hands, but that wouldn’t be enough. I took no legs – every one of those children would grow up to walk. I even mailed them one of the limbs along with the reports and testimonials from children who could no longer write themselves. I packed it in salt. Six mutilated children and one arm were somehow harder to ignore than thirty dead parents.

"The next week we had a brigade defending our camp. The raiders were rebuffed by bronze shields and long lances. Able-bodied men did their duty by the meekest.

"Which of them gave me away? I don’t know. From the looks, I think it was some of the same children who had sworn by my testimonials. You can’t trust children, even parentless ones, to keep up your stories. I can understand the juvenile mind begrudging me my work. I don’t blame them. But I’m not sorry. Those one-armed children will live behind shielded camps because of me. If my story is spoiled and Command withdraws the brigade, then I’m still here, in a prison twenty days away from whatever carnage happens, with nothing but the story that they are safe. I have no regrets."

After Three Years, John Finally Goes Book Shopping Again

In April, I finally did it. After three years of reading as hard as my Little Engine of a brain could, I knocked my To-Read list down to double digits. Despite constantly piling up with gifts and loans from friends, and copies seemingly materializing out of boxes, I defeated the tide. Friends know I was banned from deliberately purchasing any more books until I was out of the hundreds, a rule I followed as best I possibly could. Thanks to my victory, I got to freely wander around a book store and grab whatever I wanted for the first time in three years. My girlfriend was so proud she even gave me a giftcard to help.

It didn’t take long for me to empty that giftcard, because my Hoped-For list is enormous. Sales definitely helped me pick most of what I grabbed, while two driven by desperate desires to see what they were like. It’s the first batch of books I’ve bought in over two years. I figured I'd share the things I came home with (or that are shipping from Amazon).

C.S. Friedman’s Black Sun Rising

Her Coldfire Trilogy has been popular in my college-circle of friends for years. Two of those friends say its one of their favorite trilogies of all time, and recently I’ve seen Friedman come up in more discussions about the great dark fantasists. Given that grimdark isn’t my thing, I’m tempted to push at it and see what spills out.

Tom Holt’s The Portable Door

Another legacy purchase. I discovered Holt’s wonderful Blonde Bombshell (easily the best novel that could ever be written with such a title), and enjoyed its humorous take on SciFi so much that I leapt to try his Fantasy. I’m told it’s about bureaucracy handling and perhaps marketing the impossible, which is a pregnant premise. High anticipation for more good humorous Fantasy.

Jeff Smith’s RASL

This is the next big work from the author and artist of Bone, which is one of my favorite comics I’ve ever read. RASL is obviously very different, as skimming it revealed graphic violence, booze and partial nudity. While those things don’t typically attract me, Smith has more than earned my interest for experimenting in something radically different than the amazing adventures out of Boneville. He was on my list so hard after Bone that I actually read his Monster Society of Evil by accident at a friend’s house. Seriously – slipped, fell and read four hundred pages.

"This is a bathtub-in-the-kitchen apartment, right?” –Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

"This is a bathtub-in-the-kitchen apartment. The four of us share a fold-out bed, tucked underneath cheap sofa cushions, and when it's a sofa, at least one of us has to sit an arm-rest. I've gotten good at balancing up there. This is an oven-is-also-a-space-heater apartment, whether you want it or not, winter or summer. This is a the-only-window-is-our-air-conditioner apartment. We don't have wifi, we don't have cable, and our musical selection is whatever the guy upstairs plays too loud, a station that broadcasts all night. He loves Thrash Metal and we're trying to learn to appreciate it. We love it here. If you pity our bathtub in the kitchen apartment, then you must not know where we came from."

Consumed Podcast 17: Star Trek Into Darkness

The Consumed Podcast rose from the dead this weekend for a double-feature. Max Cantor and I gathered in New York for the opening of Star Trek Into Darkness and spent over half an hour hashing Bad Robot's franchise. We start off questioning if this is really a reboot, which leads to the many ways the company has changed the franchise.

But the big stuff lies in the Spoiled section, where we get to discuss the mystery villain, villainy in Star Trek, and most interesting of all, Into Darkness as an action movie that attempts to condemn revenge and violence. It's a conversation I'd love to expand on. You can join us in the Comments and download the MP3 of the podcast right here.

The second half of our double-feature, discussing Iron Man 3, ought to be out in the next week. With good luck the podcast may get up and running routinely afterward. We're deeply looking forward to some episodes about Naoki Urasawa's Monster, which you can watch for free on Hulu.