Quite the Life (and all in Times New Roman 10pt!)
I wrote in Principles about my interview with Katie Koestner and Claire Kaplan.
That interview is live at Gel, Ink, and Rollerball.
For people who want to know the source material for The Augmented Man, The Settlement, Recovery Triptych, and much more of my work, here’s your chance.
I’m posting several excerpts over the coming days. Previous excerpts in order are:
Today’s excerpt is covers from my birth to leaving home.
Enjoy.
I wrote in Principles about my interview with Katie Koestner and Claire Kaplan.
That interview is now live at Gel, Ink, and Rollerball.
For people who want to know the source material for The Augmented Man, The Settlement, Recovery Triptych, and much more of my work, here’s your chance.
I’ll be posting several excerpts over the coming days starting today with Katie’s intro to the episode.
Enjoy.
I know.
You’re first question is, “Why are you telling us a year after the fact, Joseph?”
Simple answer: I received the award yesterday.
I received notification back in 2Q21. Various things got in the way of it being mailed and so on.
Hey, I’m happy to receive any award. Especially while I’m alive to enjoy it.
I originally wrote Sanctuary in June 1991. It’s a 920 word flash piece which has had little to no revision since the original version.
I workshopped the piece several times. The universal (I’m not kidding. Creatures in the Magellanic Clouds love it) response was extremely positive. One critiquer stood out with “I wouldn’t change a f?cking thing. This is abso-f?cking-lutely brilliant.” Another said, “I hate it. I hate what happens in it. I hate the outcome, and I never want to read anything like this ever again.” (pause) “And the fact you could get me this pissed off in nine-hundred words shows me you are a really good writer. You’re really good to get me this pissed off in nine-hundred words.”
Okay.
I’ve read Sanctuary publicly several times and always received enthusiastic applause. People come up and ask me the story’s origin and meaning. Some are weeping because the story so moves them.
And nobody wanted to publish it until Harvey Duckman Presents Volume 8 picked it up in July 2021.
Go figure, huh?
And now it received an WOTF Honorable Mention.
The times, they are a’changin’.
For the better, I hope.
Hello again.
Mani He had a successful serialization on Bewildering Stories Issues #947-952, and the wonderful folks there are sharing the first chapter of The Augmented Man, “In” 1 April 2053 Surface.
You can get some of The Augmented Man‘s backstory at 31 Years to Publication.
Enjoy!
Last week I offered Grandpa’s Pasta Sauce and this week a slightly longer flash piece, My Wife’s An Alien, a bit of a break from a steady diet of Tag.
My Wife’s An Alien comes from a family joke; my Mediterranean blood makes me a furnace compared to most people. Susan offers me to people she sees shivering. “Hold his hand, you’ll warm up fast.”
The contrast to this is, compared to me, she’s the arctic. She once walked up to a fellow worker and put her hands on the back of the coworker’s neck and the coworker (no kidding) jumped about a foot in the air. “Good god, woman. Have the courtesy of staying in the ground when you’re dead!”
The scene here about cold feet? Yeah, it happened. A lot. Took me a while.
My wife’s an alien. I found out on our wedding night. You see, I’m old school. None of that heavy breathing stuff until the rings are on the fingers. She didn’t seem to mind. I offered to…umm…pleasure…her in other ways. You know? If she wanted.
“No. I can wait.”
I can make a joke out of it. One of those “My wife’s so frigid…” but that’s just the point. She is.
We’re lying in bed that first night together and she lets out this heavy sigh. I mean, long, deep; it sounded like an airline ruptured in the honeymoon suite, but what’s pneumatically driven in a honeymoon suite?
“You okay?”
She smiles, her eyes on the mirrored ceiling. “Yes. Just relaxing.”
“Do you want to…you know…?”
“If you’d like.”
But just then I’m noticing the bed is getting cold. “Are you getting chilly? Let me adjust the temperature before we start anything.”
“It won’t matter.”
“Huh?”
She’s still staring at our reflections in the ceiling mirror, smiling, and her foot slides over towards mine under the covers.
Except her foot’s a good five, six inches away and I’m feeling like I’m Luke Skywalker on the ice planet Hoth. She touches me with just her toes and I swear to God my skin turns blue up to eyeballs and my nose hairs twitch.
“Holy Mother of…are you alright? You need a doctor?”
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