ReaderCon 2013 Recap

I attended my first ReaderCon this weekend. ReaderCon is a lovely Speculative Fiction convention in Massachusetts, this year held on the ground floor of its host hotel. The Marriott was under construction, which meant no bar, no Irish pub and fairly jammed hallways. However, the hundreds of visitors were remarkably polite and maybe the best crowd I've ever seen when it comes to not stopping two paces in front of a door. Other cons take note: it's not that hard to walk out of the flow of traffic before pausing to check your iPhone.

Being a newcomer, I missed the controversies about sexual harassment at previous ReaderCons. They seem to have confronted this ardently by implementing a clear policy on prohibited behavior and greenlighting at least a dozen panels that critiqued various angles on privilege. There were two consecutive panels on "Writing Others" (after the second, John De Lucca joked that the room was hosting panels like this all the way to dinner),"Egalitarian Character Trauma," "The Gender of Reading Shame," "Agency and Gender," "Sociolinguistics in SF/F," and many more. Such topics fascinate and always worry me, and so I attended three on my first day. Part was for the pleasure of hearing so many smart critical thinkers weigh in, like Anil Menon, Rose Lemberg and Daniel Jose Older. And part was to keep challenging my notions of inclusion and compassion.

But the highlights of conventions are usually face-to-face exchanges. It was good to meet Neil Clarke and thank him for running such a fine venue as Clarkesworld. I met Scott Lynch three separate times; he's the author of The Lies of Locke Lamora, one of my all-time favorite debut novels, and a very sweet man. He was alerted that he'd been signed to do a reading five minutes before it started, and ran in to call it off when he saw the people outside.

"Are you guys here for me...?" he asked with an adorable pity. In a minute he convinced himself to grab his laptop and improvise a reading for the seven people who'd waited it out. In an amazing event of spiritual dissonance, he then settled in to read about a thief tyrant breaking the spirits of orphans. Then he stayed late to take questions.

I attended two "kaffeeklatches," which is German for "a dozen of your fans sit around drinking with you." One was with the brilliant short story writer Ken Liu, who went frank and deep into his anxieties over copyright law and transition into longer works like novels. I am a huge sucker for earnest shop talk. I gained an entire additional level of respect for Liu in how much he was willing to reveal about his personal projects and even reading habits. Many of the best parts of panels across ReaderCon had writers and editors similarly letting you in on their internal lives regarding why a social issue scares them or excites them to type faster. I probably saw more people talking like that than at any other convention I've yet hit. And there's always more to be learned from hitting intimate readings and studying how authors present themselves.

The capper on my weekend was a special dinner with all of the Viable Paradise students and alums in the area. We assembled at a nearby Thai restaraunt, and I got my first chance to meet my roommate and chat about kaiju fiction. We walked in just late enough to miss all 24 seats at the table and ate in the adjacent corner next to the giant VP conversation, which still seems to funny to me. Two VP alums, Kate and Fran, sat with us and dropped some knowledge about pacing and getting the most out of the workshop. I'm going to strive to take Fran's advice to rise early and go for dawn walks on the pebble beach.

Especially for its cramped space, ReaderCon did a wonderful job of feeling open and having plenty of events available. It's a convention I'm marking to try to hit again next year. The only thing I'd change is not commuting into the hotel every day. By the lunch drive on Saturday, I averaged 400 feet of road every fifteen minutes.

Bathroom Monologue: Big Brother and his Faithful Five

Established in 1948 to defend our country from a world in stark peril, they are the First Family of National Security.

Big Brother: a born leader, Big Brother's skin is as invulnerable as his righteousness. Possessed of the superhuman strength to keep the nation aloft, he is on constant patrol to prevent his countrymen to prevent them from harm. Only those who do wrong have anything to fear.

The Unknown Soldier: he's been slain in every foreign war, he'll fall in every one to come, and he never ceases to inspire. Where is he buried? Where is his tomb? It is in all our hearts. He'll sacrifice for so long as we are at war – and we have always been at war against injustice!

Interrogirl: your safety is always on her mind – and so are you! The world's foremost telepath is constantly scanning brainwaves for signs of danger from her maximum security detention center.

The Prism: a technopath of the highest order, he knows what friends you'll add to that app before you've even downloaded it. Never forget to add him!

Together these five stand vigilant on every frontier of conflict. They're on distant shores, on our streets and in our homes, keeping the world exactly as it should be. They make justice count – to five!

Bathroom Monologue: Punctuation Remarks

"!"

"..."

"?"

" :( "

"...?"

" :| "

"~!"

" :| "

" o.0 "

" :| "

"..."

" :) "

"I knew that would cheer you up."

The Last Eight Books I Abandoned and The Psychology of Abandonment

Recently an interesting infographic has been circulating from Goodreads. Elizabeth K. Chandler tried to sort out why readers continue reading or give up on a book, peppered with interesting quotes from a few of the participants. It caused me to reflect on the books I've given up this year.

ReaderCon and the River of Stars Invitation

This is a hub post for the weekend. I'm abroad right now, at ReaderCon in Massachussetts, the first of my many business trips this summer. It's my first time at ReaderCon. I'm pretty excited, if only for the amazing roster of authors who lecture and schmooze there. Kelly Link, Peter Straub and Scott Lynch have written some of my favorite works.

I may livetweet some of the more interesting panels, or blog up the highlights here. It all depends how my Kindle Fire holds up and how strong the convention wifi goes. If you see something on the schedule that looks highly appealing, hit me up on Twitter. You can find me @wiswell - unless my Kindle implodes.


This is also my first chance to meet my fellow Viable Paradise students and possibly meet some of the instructors. If things go according to plan I'll be having tea with Elizabeth Bear while you're reading this. Tonight the students are gathering for a big dinner in town. I've chatted with a few by Twitter (all have been friendly), but it'll be good to have faces to go with screen names.

I also want to give a shout out to a little reading program starting next week. Beginning July 17th, Sonia Lal and I will be reading Guy Gavriel Kay's River of Stars. It's Fantasy inspired by the Song Dynasty of China, set centuries after the previous novel so that it can stand alone, being about the conflict between rival factions as its world moves forward.Kay has repeatedly impressed me with his words about anthropological fiction, and particularly his unpopular stance that characters from other cultures shouldn't be "relatable" or "likeable." There is a tendency to make The Other just like us, which can be welcoming, but also often ignores significant external and internal life.

Sonia and I will be chatting about River of Stars as we make our way through. Anyone is more than welcome to pick up a copy and join us.

Bathroom Monologue: Shredded Viagra for Andreas Sundgren

Andreas Sundgren asked for a flash based on this image.
Who was I to deny him?

Andri spotted the little boy half an hour before anyone else. He slid down the slope to the foundation of the dike and water splashed beneath his shoes. There was a leak. Andri recognized the boy's chubby face – Hans Something, one of the skater kids from in town. Now the boy shivered, jamming his hand into a cleft in the stone. Water spurted around his little fist, and his arm was turning a deeper shade of blue than Andri had known possible.

"Help! Help!" Hans called through chattering teeth. "It's leaking!"

Damn, and he'd been on his way to a date. He'd been looking forward to this for weeks, too. Telma did not open her doors easily.

Andri slid up behind the boy, nudging his shoulders. The boy jerked his blue hand free, water gushing from the hole and threatening to tearing more stone with it. Immediately Andri leaned in, jamming an index finger inside, but water streamed around the digit and soaked his sleeve. He tried pushing his middle finger in as well, but while they were tall enough, they weren't thick enough to plug the hole. Too small for his fist, too big for his fingers, and now he felt the water's chill rising up to his heels.

Hans, or whatever the kid's name was, rubbed his numb little fingers and commiserated, "Mine weren't big enough either, sir."

Andri clenched his teeth, thinking of the bottle of wine and the too-small sweater Telma had promised to bring. He muttered, "God damn it."

"Should I go get someone?"

"You know Telma Søvndal?" he asked, unzipping his fly. He wasn't sure if the name or the action made little Hans look so excited, but the boy certainly perked up.

"The dancer?"

"Yeah," he said, opening his jacket and retrieving a cardboard package. He bit the top of the package open, feeling two pills pop loose. He swallowed them dry, then scratched the rest of the packet open. "Tell her our date's postponed another week depending on the pruning, but somebody had to plug this thing."

It was twenty-three minutes before he was relieved of duty, and two days before the swelling subsided, and really three weeks before feeling came back. He opted for physical therapy instead of surgery. On the upside, Andri never had trouble getting laid again. Not with this story.

Bathroom Monologue: The Shoemaker's Profits

Walk two leagues west of the Cloud Hills and you will see The Ascent, the city that was once the first outpost in this region. It was settled before golems did the work of humans, and grew into one of the first cities in the entire Empire of Gold and Jade. It is built into along the steepest slope in the region so that the hands that built it would never forget the feet that supported them.

Everywhere in The Ascent is a fetish for staircase, and every structure in it is only one story tall. There are no houses as there are on farms or in modern cities; instead, every baked clay abode is covered by another overlapping set of stairs, going diagonal, or winding amid each other, and every door is set beneath where someone treds. This way anyone can walk anywhere, and this way every head rests to sleep below where feet will run, and so everyone in the city knows they are not alone. It is a comfort and an obligation, reminding every citizen to rest no longer than they must and to return to service.

These tiers of houses run up to the mayoral residence, above which no one lives. Passages have been built throughout the intricate staircases to carry the noise of all the footfalls in the city up to the apex, and so they echo through the mayoral residence and the chambers of his staff, thus reminding them more than any who they must rise to serve. When policies are unfair, people climb The Ascent with heavier footfalls, or remove their shoes to beat against the mayor's door. At the worst times, the citizens have hurled loads of unwashed shoes at those windows. The shoemaker profits on every discontent.

Bathroom Monologue: Dear Skeletor

Dear Skeletor,

I am a big fan of yours. You work much harder than He-Man. He is lucky to have so many muscles and his friends are much smarter than yours.

You are much smarter than He-Man. One time you attacked Castle Grayskull during an eclipse where his powers went away and you almost won. Another time you built a really big robots with spikes that he almost couldn't beat. Sometimes you find mutant armies that seem pretty tough.

Have you ever thought about doing all those things at the same time? Since He-Man can barely beat your giant robot, if you send it when he has no powers, then he will be easier to beat. Even easier if you send mutant armies at the same time.

Please try this. I would like you to win.

Sincerely,

John Wiswell (Age 7)

The Perfect Crime

I've been swimming to tinker with my health recently, striving to make across the little lake in our area. I was finishing my one and only lap of the day when I saw the three girls on their inflatable raft.

There was a tiny one, perhaps five years old, wearing a bright pink one-piece. There was also a slightly taller girl in a blue one-piece, and a significantly taller girl in a plaid bikini. Even with lake water in my eyes, they were instantly recognizable as Little Sister, Middle Sister and Big Sister. Big Sister was shoving Middle Sister's shoulders, teasing that she'd shove her overboard. Middle Sister struggled to remain undampened, while Little Sister huddled at the back of their raft, trying to keep it stable.

This was the scene of the perfect crime.

Happy Urban Legend 4: Alligators in the Sewer

There is a venerable urban legend of alligators living in the sewers of major metropolitan areas. It began as one baby gator stolen from the pet store by a capricious child, and once discovered by his parents, is flushed down the toilet. It grew up, spawned and proceeded to stalk the sewers for the rest of its days. Three things are patently untrue about this urban legend:

1)      Alligators aren't sold in most pet stores. It wasn't stolen from one.

2)      The child flushed it not because of parents, but because children as sadistic and evil monsters.

3)      It was actually a baby crocodile, but most people don't know the difference.

Some version of the gator/croc infestation is real in most cities where children have access to wildlife and toilets. However the average sewer croc is friendly to the point of being entrepreneurial, perpetually stalking the sewers in order to collect all the change people drop down grates, pipes and sinks. The reason there is not one, but many crocs in the average sewer is because the original croc made enough money to get his family across the border and into the neighborhood.

If you find yourself underground and cornered by something like an alligator or crocodile, offer it a dollar. If this does not dissuade it, offer to flush anything from the surface world it wants as soon as you get topside again. This usually does the trick. Be sure to follow through with the sewer croc's demands, though: the part about them coming up through the toilet for revenge is truer than is worth risking.

Lit Corner: Remembering Matheson By Reading *What Dreams May Come*

Having grown to admire Richard Matheson's work in recent years, I had to pull another of his books off the shelf during the outpouring over his death. I've already written about his substantial contributions to the Speculative Fiction canon, and today only want to discuss What Dreams May Come. It's an odd one to read as a farewell, being about a writer of novels and screen who dies and uneasily tours the afterlife. If the original audience felt he was writing about himself with all his sentimentality, abandoning much of his Horror roots, it reads even eerier this weekend.

I don't really remember the movie. Pretty sure this ain't in the book.

My copy contained an odd preface in which Matheson claimed only the characters were fictional. He'd studied so many near-death experiences, particularly those following suicide attempts, that he was convinced his vision of an afterlife was as accurate as it could get. Quite the claim from the guy who tried to make vampires plausible in I Am Legend. I largely tried to put it out of my mind as I consumed the book. It's a funky artist's statement to put in front of something otherwise so infinitely interpretable.

Whatever else I can say for What Dreams May Come, I never stopped wanting to read it. When I woke up Saturday morning, and my second thought was to read another chapter. That's an engagement very few books get, especially ones with so little plot. It's a simple novel, half a tour of a new-age Heaven ala Dante's Divine Comedy, and half a rescue mission into the incoherence of Hell.

Bathroom Monologue: Does sex change how you feel about someone?

"Sex absolutely changes how you feel about someone. It'd make you save her life over some virgin's."

"I don't know. Life's complicated, man."

"No, really. It's a serious change to the game. You've got some pirate in front of you, and he's going to kill one of two women. The one on the left is a stranger, the one on the right you banged last night."

"I don't want to live in your hypotheticals. They would not pass a building inspection."

"Who do you save? Left or right?"

"I don't know. The human mind is flighty. Who looks more desperate? Who's more pathetic? I'm a sucker for pathetic."

"They're equally pathetic. They're tied up by Captain Blackbeard."

"No two people are the same. They'd move differently, talk differently. Their faces, you know? It messes with neurons."

"They have identical faces."

"Body language."

"Identical bodies. And they're absolutely still. The only difference is you had sex with one of them, and one of them is going to die."

"Identical faces. Identical bodies."

"Yes."

"How can I tell them apart? How do I know which one is which?"

"Fine! There are nametags."

"Are they perspiring the same way? Because if one go so sweaty that her nametag fell off, I'd probably feel sympathy for her."

"You know what? Fuck you."

"No. Then I'm going to have to save your twin from a pirate."

Bathroom Monologue: Frankenstein's Monsters

When they heard what Frankenstein was up to the town put up quite a ruckus. Anyone without a flashlight (and there were quite a few, as they hadn’t been invented yet) lit a stick on fire and called it a torch. Dozens of howling fire-bearers in jockey shorts hustled up to the gates of Castle Frankenstein and beat on the doors until the Doctor showed his face.

“There is no — ” he started to lie, but was cut off by the town Point Guard.

“Germany hasn’t won the gold medal in basketball in years and we hear you’ve got a seven-foot undead countryman up there. Can he come out and play?”

“You can’t…” The Doctor paused. “Wait, you want to what?”

“We want to see if he can slam dunk. We’ve never had a player who could reach the net without a step-ladder, and that’s illegal in the Olympics.”

Dr. Frankenstein kept most of his body braced behind the door, but poked his face out to stare at the jockey-shorted rioters.

“You don’t want to kill him?”

“Listen,” said the Point Guard, “we aren’t very tall and we don’t bathe often, but we’re very technically sound.”

The Doctor put a hand on his hip.

“I didn’t know there was a local basketball team.”

“Yes, advertising is difficult without moveable type. We’re buying a machine on lay-away, but all we have right now is the letter A, and eventually we get bored of stamping everything with the same vowel.”

“So you don’t want to kill my creation?”

“Heavens no! We want to kill that insipid American team that wins all the time. President James Monroe drives the lane like it’s his doctrine. It’s terribly frustrating. That’s why we need your giant. Let’s see him bowl over a man stitched together from the best German bodies available.”

The Doctor laughed nervously. “Here I thought you were coming to kill the Monster…”

“Monster?” the Point Guard exclaimed and looked back at the crowd. Their faces lit up in unison.

Another in the crowd cried, “That’s brilliant! We needed a team name.”

The Point Guard thrust his arm in the air. “Here’s to Frankenstein’s Monsters!”

Then the jockey-shorted peasants began pumping their torches and chanting, “Mon-sters! Mon-sters!”

Except in German.

This story was originally published at Every Day Fiction.

Independence Day and Helping Those in Need

Monday was Canada Day. Today is Independence Day in the United States. It's been a week of celebrations, but also great hardships. The west coast is seeing horrible heat and fires. Here in New York there has been some ugly flooding; one woman nearby was swept away in her mobile and drowned. Many lucky survivors have still lost their homes.

Yesterday, for no discernible reason, I started gathering food in a box that my family wasn't using. I do this every few months; I started while I was on the phone checking up on my grandmother, picking things up with my spare hand. I gathered pasta and cans of ravioli my family lost the taste for, bottles of cranberry juice leftover from holidays, canned peaches nobody wound up eating. The items that linger in too many households that don't realize how well they're doing. Maybe I did this because I wasn't always this privileged. But before I ran out for errands, I called the local library, which forwarded me to the Methodist church on the corner of so-and-such. The librarian then pulled me back onto the line to talk about how, when her son had lived in Alaska, his local food pantry had saved his life.

It took me two minutes out of my way in-between errands to hit the church. I drove around back, spying two men who were patching the rear wall. The weather had hit here, too, I presumed. They looked nervous when I asked if this was the food pantry. When I pulled out the box, one of them ran over to hold the door for me. I followed me inside, asking if this was from the church at the next county over. It'd been a while since I'd seen someone's eyes bulge. His did when I told them this was just from my family.

The way he ogled my box suggested he was probably going to rely on some of that tonight. He shook my hand three times, and we exchanged names. He wanted the head of the pantry to call and thank me. We stood by the road for a while, talking about camping sites and the local flooding. He was a charming man, only confused as to where I'd come from.

There were times when I desperately needed the capricious kindness of strangers. If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you've probably read enough about that. It's left me a little more willing to stump for people in need, be they shooting victims or just a girl who desperately deserves a break.

When I was a child, imagining the homeless scared me so much that I tried to imagine they didn't exist. I now suspect that's a blindness most people invest in. I'm not passing judgment about this because judging someone's irrational hang-ups is both cruel and futile. I don't believe most people need to be shamed on something like this. For most, I think looking it in the face will do.

I appreciate that some people don't trust the Red Cross or disagree with the homophobia in the Salvation Army, but when I see a post like "The Ten Worst Charities in America," I get physically ill. It starts to look too much like people covering their own myopia and greed in a simplified solution of arbitrary distrust. If you don't like the Red Cross or Salvation Army, that's fine, but it's no excuse to ignore every food pantry, every blood drive, every soup kitchen and disaster relief org and IndieGogo for a needy cause.

I don't like to proselytize on here often, and I'll shut up in three sentences. Just, please, if you don't do anything, look your reasons in the face. And if you have no reason, that's a perfectly good reason to help a little.

Thanks for reading, enjoy the fireworks tonight, and for the love of God, appreciate what you have.

Bathroom Monologue: Mother-in-Law Vs. Mother of her Granddaughter Redux

“Oh God, can we just leave? I can’t take the stares. It's like I'm meat.”

"You look great, honey."

"You think?”

“For a human wheelbarrow? Yes! You should be proud.”

“…for a what?”

“It’s your body. You should be proud of your decisions, like the one to put on more pounds here and there.”

“I’m carrying a child!”

“Not in your thighs, deary. But don’t make excuses. Own it.”

“I haven’t even gained that much weight. My doctor says I’m at the dead-on average for seven months.”

“Dead-on average for the McDonalds generation, sure. But when I was carrying your husband? I was tight as a deer. Almost sinewy.”

“You have that look in your eyes sometimes.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Can we go?”

“We need to get dinner for Christmas, don’t we? Got to feed that fetus. And the rest of you.”

“Oh my God, you’re making more people stare.”

“If you can’t take the stares, then maybe you should take the stairs more often.”

“What the hell? That’s bad for the baby.”

“According to whom? When I was carrying Tim I lived on the seventh floor of a tenement with no elevator. The super always said I was very tight. When she stared, it was out of admiration. Those stares would have been grounds for divorce in six states.”

“This explains so much about Tim.”

“What was that? I can’t hear a thing in here. You'd think shoppers would use their in-door voices.”

“I said you’re not going to see this baby until she’s got her Masters degree.”

“Goodness, it’s noisy in here. Maybe we should leave. Want me to push the cart? We know how you feel about exercise.”

“…That’d be great. That’d be great.”

Happy Urban Legend 3: The Killer in the Backseat

This one tends to have befallen the sister of a friend of someone you met on MySpace. The true urban legend is that anyone ever met anyone real on MySpace, but will require its own entry. For now, let us concern with the Sister of Dubious Origin and the man in her backseat.

She was driving home – from work, from a party, from college, it really varies based on the Sister of Dubious Origin, and has befallen one or another of them at some time. What's constant in every story is the truck that began following her. At first it only flashed its high beams, but seconds later it was tailgating. When she slowed down, it refused to pass. When she sped up, so did it.

She tried pulling onto back roads, but the truck continued following her, even nudging her rear bumper as its horn blared. In some versions she called the police on her cell; in others, a parent or boyfriend. The truck always followed this sister in every version, to her apartment, to her parents' home, or even a police roadblock. As soon as she jumped out of her car, so did the trucker, screaming that there was a man in her backseat.

She whirled and saw that, yes, there was a fastidious and photogenic man leering from the backseats. Every Sister of Dubious Origin who ever lived heard him ask, "Did you know you can save 15% on your car insurance by switching to GEICO?"

The Sisters of Dubious Origin filed a class action lawsuit against GEICO in 2008 and settled out of court. It's widely considered the second most obnoxious GEICO ad, after the ones with the talking pig.

John accepted to Viable Paradise!

I'm thrilled to make two announcements today. It's pure accident that they're coinciding on the same day, but it's brought me to quite a high.

First off: The Last House in the Sky is done. It's been beta read, edited and revised into something I'm truly proud of. This novel is an absurd passion project of mine, about a trio of misfit thieves who decide to steal the last remnants of culture before a cult can waste them on blowing up what's left of the world. It's one of the Post-Post-Post-Post-Apocalyptic novels I'm always joking about, and I think when I can give it to you, you'll find it's something different.

I'll be bringing it with me to ReaderCon next week, and possibly to other events over the summer.  But something bigger looms in October.

Because my second news is that I was accepted to Viable Paradise! VP is one of the most prestigious F/SF workshops in America, hosted by Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Elizabeth Bear, Steven Gould (Jumper, not punctuated equilibrium) and a roster of professional authors.

I have to thank Moses Siregar III for turning me onto VP in the first place, and Theresa Bazelli for encouraging me to submit for this Fall. Some of the authors to emerge from the program are the top of the field, and I'm too excited to go dive deep into fiction with the hosts in October. I'm working out travel arrangements now.

What a day. There can't be many like it in a year or a decade, but I'm extremely privileged to get just one. Thanks to everyone who's extended their support over the years. I'm doing as much with it as I can.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to jump up and down a few times.

Lit Corner: John Vs. Don Quixote

One practice I'm going to change up on The Bathroom Monologues is a weekly Lit corner. This may primarily be a venue for book reviews, because I'm lucky to have read many great books and want to discuss them a little. But Sundays can also be a hub for interviews, big topics in publishing, breakthroughs in my own work and, hopefully, something more interactive. If you have a good name for our reading corner, please, drop it in the Comments.

Picasso showing his penchant for detail.

Let's start with something simple: the weirdest book review I've ever written, for Don Quixote. It was such a journey that I turned my review into a journal of climbing through the text. My mother kept a painting of Quixote in our play room as kids, and today's post is dedicated to her. The novel is a classic that I'm uncertain anyone else has ever actually finished. You'll see why shortly, as well as why I think it's closer to Naruto than anything else.


So, Book Review: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. The full review originally appeared on Goodreads.


Day 1: Here goes nothing. Here come 1,000 pages of translated text. The opening was insufferably cheeky and the origins of Quixote are slower to unravel than a heroic anime. Still, I see promise here, and the reputation earns it a couple hundred pages before I pass a strong judgment.

Day 2: Just finished chapter two. Couldn't help but notice the dope wearing ill-fitting armor, his sidekick riding an ass, and the party attacking wind mills all occurred within the first two chapters. That about sums up the culturally famous parts of the novel, making me wonder how many people in human history made it to page 50.

Bathroom Monologue: Biograffiti

It's untold true story the author was never privy to. It's what Lincoln told his wife and never told anyone else, and told her with curiously curated story beats and concluded with a great sensitivity to how people would reenact it for a punchy film centuries later. It's what Nixon really regretted. It's what truly tempted Christ last.

It's based on real events you don't know well enough to disbelieve. It's a ghost story, it's a war story, it's a once in a life time love story that will somehow be told in ten different movies this summer by ten different ensembles.

It's bringing history to life. It's exploring the depths of people we never consulted. It's turning text books into coloring books.

Bathroom Monologue: Ghost Culture

I've never enjoyed waking up early. My body just did it to me, as it did a lot of things to me in my childhood, which is why I had to live in the Special Wing. No one else in the bunks was awake, so I sat up and pulled my blanket over my head, turning myself into a human tent. I don't remember when I started doing it, only that from my earliest memories, it felt better than lying in bed. It's like a denial of the day, or at least a stay of execution.

My bunk shifted with as someone else climbed on. I tensed up, afraid an orderly would chastise me for not sleeping, but this girl lifted the foot of my covers. She was no older than I was, with spindly arms and legs and splattered with freckles, and perched there, draping the end of blanket over her head as though mimicking me. Like everything other kids did back then, I thought she was making fun of me, even when she spoke.

"I like playing ghosts, too."

Super Sweet Blogging Award

My friend Catherine "Ganymeder" Russell bestowed upon me the most colorful blogging award I've seen yet. It's also the most appetizing.

I actually postponed posting about this one until I was allowed to snack. I've been on a strict diet during my editing sprints, but today I got a little candy, and life got a little better.

The rules are fairly standard. Answer five sweet questions, and the pass the hop onto whoever you like. Here we go:

1. Cookies or Cake?
If this counts ice cream cake, then cake. If not, then cookies.

2. Chocolate or Vanilla?
Vanilla is highly underrated, but it's chocolate. It has too many applications independent of ice cream and baking.

3. Favorite Sweet Treat?
Shifts on the mood, definitely. Sometimes I've got to have Reese's Cups, or ice cream cake, or muddy buddies. None of which I'm allowed right now, so I've just made myself miserable!

4. When do you crave sweet things the most?
Usually as I'm passing through a stressful self-regulated activity, like marathon editing. I want that reward, and holding it off is big. Typically I crave that snack more in the throes of the labor than when it's done and I'm allowed it. I also don't often allow it.  Today I'm on my last push on Last House in the Sky, having nearly all the revisions done. I hit my penultimate landmark last night, and am celebrating right now with a couple handfuls of Reese's Pieces.

5. Sweet Nick Name?
Invincible Jello. You'll have to ask my friends why.

My Three Sweet Recipients
-Danielle La Paglia: has put up with so much from me lately, and is generous with digital Fritos.

-Theresa Bazelli: my favor writing baker. I sometimes avoided her blog for fear of the cravings her kitchen photos would give me.

-Chuck Allen: just this week he took to Twitter offering to help any writer who was stuck and needed to talk out problems. That's a sweetheart.

Bathroom Monologue: Cleaning for the Mob

"Months later one of the gals in catering told me that the Black-Ties were only after the Jersey contingent. I'm from Jersey, and so I'm even more grateful to Mike for that day. It eleven in the morning when dozens of men in black ties flooded the compound. The two Jersey boys to my left were down before I recognized the gunshots, and I hit the floor, and Mike grabbed my wrist. He dragged me through halls that stank of gunsmoke and blood, and through two separate firefights. The hairy bastard beat one Black-Tie to death with a mop. A freaking mop.

"We ducked out the side alley and he led me to his compound. There were Black-Ties there, too, but they wouldn't screw with him. Not with any of the hosting contingent. He jammed the mop into my hands and ordered me to clean it off, to ditch my jacket and pretend to clean wherever I was. I think I produced more stains on the floor than I got rid of as all those Black-Ties swarmed through, and Mike and his men corralled them out of the compound. One paused just inches from my face. I think he knew.

"I knew he knew because he drove by the compound that night, while I was wiping down some windows. I couldn't quit the act with Black-Ties in the area – and Mike never pulled me aside to break character. For all I knew, his staff were bugged. I still have the mop from that day – it works wonders on the first floor of the main house, and the kitchens. Other people from the local contingent came through and acted like they didn't recognize me, and even now I don't have the nerve to put down my bucket of suds and say 'Hello.' I'm a maid man."

Who's Richard Matheson? He Was Legend.

Richard Matheson died yesterday. He was an author far too few people recognize. Many of my age are surprised to learn the same person wrote I Am Legend and What Dreams May Come. He wrote Hell House, one of the most influential ghost stories ever told, and my personal favorite. When you gather up his pseudo-scientific vampires, his new-age Heaven, his house of skeptics chasing ghosts, and add in The Shrinking Man inspiring the film craze of tiny people in peril (it beat Fantastic Voyage by nine years), you begin to realize he kickstarted a great deal of the Science Fiction of the last sixty years.

I Am Legend alone was adapted by Vincent Price (as "The Last Man on Earth"), Charlton Heston (as "The Omega Man") and Will Smith (finally, as "I Am Legend"). If Smith's I Am Legend flick seemed too much like zombie fiction for you, you'll come to realize Matheson not only pushed the modern more secular vampire on us, but a lot of what George Romero pulled out to invent the modern zombie. George Romero says so.

Did you see Real Steel? That was an adaptation of his short story, simply titled "Steel." It had also been adapted for an episode of The Twilight Zone, a show he wrote for frequently. He was often writing the intros Rod Serling's voice made famous. And he's the guy who wrote the gremlin on the wing of a plane that only William Shatner could see.

Do you like old school Star Trek? He wrote for it from the first season, starting with "The Enemy Within." He's the guy who split Kirk into two Good and Evil captains.

Happy Urban Legend 2: Chain Letters

One of the first superstitions of the digital era was the chain letter. An immigrant from the postal service, the superstition came in the form of a letter, and later an e-mail, threatening you to copy the message and send it to several friends. Why you'd do that to a friend has always been a course of mystery, stretching back to the first girl to ever compose a chain e-mail. To be fair, she was dead when she did it.

Anyone who follows the instructions of a chain e-mail is passed over and experiences none of Google's first paranormal agent. Anyone who disregards such an e-mail, though, will be haunted by the ghost of the girl who set the scheme up. She will haunt your inbox for the rest of your life, complimenting your good taste by acting as a secondary spam filter. You will very likely never see another penis enlargement ad that she thinks you don't need.

Skeptics should still be wary, for though disregarding her power has benefits, calling her work a superstition is hazardous. Doing so upsets her ghost and cause her to expose your search history to a loved one. That has never ended well, and ironically, its contents are always passed on by word of mouth.

Lit Corner: Google Reader Retires, What Can Replace It?

As of July 1st, Google will retire its Google Reader program. The Friend Connect and Follower feature on Blogspot blogs will also disappear along with it. It's a favorite widget among Blogspot bloggers; one of the first pieces of encouragement many of us give each other is to click our avatar into place. The connection between the two services has been like a friendlier RSS.

What are you looking for to replace the service? If you're not looking for a Google Reader or Friend Connect replacement, why?

While the Google Friend Connect widget is also like a popularity badge, it never got on my nerves. It was particularly nice to see if other friends liked a blog as well. It seemed like such an efficient way to add something to your feeds, and Google did the legwork for you.

J.A. Bennett pointed me toward Bloglovin, which offers to important all of your Google Reader preferences with a log-in. It's been scoped out and lasted long enough to prove it isn't a scam. Signing up and importing my bookmarks took all of two minutes, and they offer an array of buttons to throw onto your blog so others can follow you. I'm testing one out on the upper right today. How does it look? None are as personal - the counter of followers itself feels more aggrandizing than Friend Connect's tiles of faces.

I picked the pink button because pink is bad ass.

A few articles have buzzed about Feedly playing successor to Google Reader. It seems slightly neater than Bloglovin, and certainly more reminiscent of Reader's presentation. That import jaunt took ten seconds, and it services other kinds of sites too, including Youtube. It's definitely worth having a look as it feels tighter, even though Bloglovin's site is technically more minimalistic.

But neither is as convenient as Reader could be for my routine. When I logged in to make this post, I had Reader set up to show me all the recent posts on my dashboard. It was blogging inlaid with blogging, perfect timing and synchronized. If someone knows how to wedge such functionality back into the program after July 1st using any service, I'll be keenly interested.

Bathroom Monologue: Bald Propaganda

He does not die. The world only dims one shade of greatness.

He does not bleed. The world dampens.

He does not suffer. The world forgets joy.

He cannot cease to be. Everything else ceases to matter.

When he comes back, it will be as though he never left, because time may as well have given up until he rings again.

Bathroom Monologue: Fuzzy Kind of View

The bandages on my wrist itch, and I'm scratching them for a while, for so long that my chin gets comfortable on my chest. For a while I forget whether my eyelids are open or closed, until the bed creaks and I slide left, into Sherri's side. She sits down beside me, you see, which I don't see because these new drugs retard my system. That's what Carlos said they'd do, and he'd know, and he was right.

Sherri puts an arm around me like Carlos was never allowed to in the hospital, tucking my shoulder into her flabby armpit. She feels like dough taken out of the oven too early, and she smells like sea salt and basil, and I dread what she's been cooking while I've been in the hospital.

"Getting drowsy?" she asks, or prods. I can't tell which. I used to be able to. The differences used to annoy. Before these new drugs.

"Nah," I say, shaking my head briskly, trying to wake myself up. I get more tired with every swipe of my head. Dr. Preisblatt's drugs have reversed the way my body wants to act. "I'm good. I'm great. I'm the best." I repeat things more often now.

"Because you look drowsy. It's about time you slept."

Bathroom Monologue: Zombie Parakeets for Adriana

Mrs. Merrick knew she was going to die. She was a Lapsed Catholic, but even as lapsed as she was, she recognized an apocalypse when it ate everyone in sight. Pet owners pounded on the glass of her shop for sanctuary, but she dared not open up and risk the zombies getting in with them. She had work to do.

Zombieism was an exotic strain of bird flu. Scientists knew it because they had isolated the virus. Mrs. Merrick knew it because all of her parakeets had it, and set about devouring her canaries. She only managed to save ten pigeons and her most obnoxious parrot, forcing the flock of zombie-keets into a glass cage. They only ate their own for now, and that meant working fast.

The parrot went first after it repeated her weight. She found the zombie-keets preferred their parrot raw, and so she put out feathers and bits of wing to start, only letting a zombie-keet bite if it first picked up its string and rod.

By Day 3, they only ate if they carried the rod and string appropriately, and if they visually saw her eat.

By Day 6, the zombie parakeets brought her a bagel in return for some pigeon. No matter what she did, she could not condition them to butter it.

By Day 8, she tied the dozens of strings to her arms and had her first successful takeoff. The zombie-keets didn't even attack their prey until she'd had her bagel.

On Day 11, the inevitable happened. A couple of star-crossed lovers smashed in her front window looking for supplies, and pedestrian zombies followed them in. Mrs. Merrick was bitten before she even got out of bed, and she died with a surprising poise. She'd known this was coming. As the infection overtook her, she slipped on her strings and loosed the flock of parakeets.

You can still see Mrs. Merrick. She planned well, and now she's the terror of downtown. She's the only zombie in the known world that can fly, and her minions never rest until she catches her man.

Bathroom List: 16 Things That Are Not True About Salvador Dali

1. The real Salvador Dali had a secret lair in the base of a dormant volcano somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

2. The volcano was not actually dormant.

3. The real Salvador Dali had three pet ocelots that he trained to alert him when the volcano was waking.

4. There were actually four ocelots, but the fourth ocelot oscillated between our plane and a more fruited one, and so could not be counted in my father's census.

5. A Salvador Dali was a founder of the Census of Dark Artists and recruited my father for a living wage.

6. A Salvador Dali's "Persistence of Memory" was a self-portrait, done of a self from a parallel plane of existence where he had more ambition.

7. A Salvador Dali drowned this parallel self in a vat of unused cooking oil.

8. The real Salvador Dali collected vats of unused cooking oil to preserve their unuse.

9 & 10. The real Salvador Dali did not spend his final years in Spain; a body double did, and spent its final years there securing vats of unused cooking oil.

11 &12. The real Salvador Dali did not flee the Spanish Civil War; his body double did. The real Salvador Dali painted the Spanish Civil War into existence and could not flee until 1939, when he finished it.

13. A second body double still operates for a living wage.

14. A body double of Andre Breton continues to persecute this hypothetical second body double of Salvador Dali to this day.

15. A body double of Andre Breton cannot sufficiently slay the hypothetical second body double of Salvador Dali because it fears volcanoes.

16. A body double of Andre Breton is not allergic to ocelots.

Bathroom Monologue: The Produceds

"My partner and I began our careers with a plan destined for failure. We would hire the worst playwright, to write about the most offensive material, performed by the least competent singers and dancers on Broadway. It was a bombastic production for which everyone in town presumed we had to have a good reason, and so everyone in town bought shares. I believe we sold over two thousand and five hundred percent of the holding interest in our production. When it flopped, we'd keep all the money they gave us, that we'd spent almost none of on the awful show, and walk away rich. Maybe go see Turn Out the Night.

"The calamity was that we hit it big. A musical comedy about Hitler was exactly what the scene wanted – the avant-garde, the nouveau richesse, and the pre-hipsters all ate it up. Our box-office overflowed such that we wound up owing ungodly amounts of money to ungodly amounts of investors.

"My partner tried to blow up the theatre. I wasn't part of that, no matter what he says. I was upset, but upset to misdemeanors, not felonies. My spirits lifted after I got a call from New York.

"Actually, I got nineteen calls before nine in the A-M. See, when you get the single biggest hit in the musical world, everyone wants to work with you. By Thursday I was co-producer on three projects for which I'd never have to visit a building. I was signing my name in exchange for checks, and my new friends wouldn't let me go to jail because they needed me. They squeezed out fat checks, and bags of money as door prizes, and some sums coming pre-laundered.

"You see, I thought bankruptcy was the only option. But there's another option. There's not returning investors' calls, and when people corner you on the street, saying another investor they hate took too deep a slice and needs to be consulted, and forwarding people to lawyers who only tenuously exist, until you've got another play out. And another. And another, until something you didn't really help build is a smashing success that will forever have your name in the playbill.

"According to the blogs, I'm a genius. They're begging me to direct next year. I had a producer burn me a smoke signal using hundred dollar bills. It's a play about Native Americans. It's about as tasteful as broken glass.

"So I'm thinking about directing. I'm also thinking about how many shares I'll sell."