A Beer At the End of the World

Artist Karri Klawiter just designed this great cover for me. Check out the rest of her work at her DeviantArt page: http://kek19.deviantart.com/.

A BEER AT THE END OF THE WORLD is a short story about time travel and how a cold drink can take the edge off, even at the end of creation. It'll be available as an e-book in February.

(Note that the title is "A Beer at the End of the World". The first time I typed that in the above paragraph, I wrote it as "A Bear at the End of the World". Which would be a totally different story.)

(A story I. Must. Now. Write.)

And if you missed it, my short story WE KEEP THE CARS RUNNING, became available exclusively on the Kindle last week. Here's a link.

That's all the shilling I can stand for a Tuesday night. See you next time.

How Phoenix Tried to Kill Me - Part 10

At some point in the second week, my stay in the hospital became not about the gigantic, stapled hole in my side, but the problems with my plumbing. This may sound like an improvement, but in a lot of ways it wasn’t. When I had pneumonia, I knew there were certain things I had to do to get better, and then it would all be over. When my body started basically rebelling against the medication it was being given, all we could do was change the drugs (note: non-narcotic pain killers are not as effective as narcotic pain killers) and wait for my body to work itself out.

I lost twenty pounds, and I suspect most of it was in that last week. I was on a liquid diet, sipping chicken broth and ginger ale three times a day. The thinness of my meals wasn’t really that bad, since I didn’t feel like eating anyway, but the weakness that came with it certainly contributed to what came next.

I’m sure I was edging toward clinical depression. My stomach was a mess, I didn’t have any energy, my ankles had gone all Fred Flintstone on me, and I hadn’t been able to take a shower for over a week. A feeling of wilted grossness had settled over me. I was sweating buckets half the time and freezing the other half. Trelina wasn’t able to come see me for a day or two because she and Jasmine were both sick, and I hadn’t seen Jasmine at all since just before my surgery.Two weeks in a hospital, in this day and age, seemed ludicrous to me. I felt like I was never going to get out of there. I knew, intellectually, that I needed to get out of bed more, but all the steps involved in sitting up and making sure my ass wasn’t hanging out of the hospital gown and sorting out my drainage tube and my IV and then carting them along with me wherever I went, would quickly overwhelm those thoughts. I’d wake up in the morning with the intention of doing a lap around acute care every couple of hours, and maybe manage it once or twice in a given day.

Most of all I missed my kid. I called home one night and Trelina put her on the phone for me. She said, “Hi, daddy!” and I simply broke down. I couldn't talk at all, I was crying so hard. I had to hang up and call back when I’d pulled myself together.

That was the kick in my uncovered ass I needed, though. I started getting out of bed more, even when getting out of bed sucked. While I was awake, I made sure to spend more time walking or sitting in a chair than on my back. The improvement wasn’t immediate, and I was probably pushing myself harder than was healthy, but eventually my mood improved, and my health improved with it. The sun came out and the cankles went away.

On November 17, sixteen days after I’d gone to the emergency room, I was given my walking papers. I still had a drainage tube hanging out of my chest, and a pile of instructions and prescriptions an inch thick, but the hard stuff was over.

How Phoenix Tried to Kill Me - Part 9

If “all” that had been wrong with me was the infection in my lungs, I probably would have gone home a couple days after my surgery and this would be the end of the story. Unfortunately, I had some side issues.

(I'm going to try to be as delicate as I can here, because this stuff isn't the kind of thing you discuss at tea parties. And frankly, it's all a little embarrassing. In the interest of full disclosure, though, I'll soldier on. Bear with me.)

I had been getting pumped full of pain meds for over a week by this point, most of them narcotics. One side effect of taking lots of narcotics is what the pilots in my Air Force days used to call “GI distress”. GI in this case stands for “gastro-intestinal”, so you can probably guess where I'm going with this (or not going, as the case may be). Folks, I didn't do a two-sie for almost a week. My stomach got hard as a rock and I didn't want to eat anything because it literally felt like there was no room left in my belly. Good time for a liquid diet, right? Somebody also brought up the idea of laxatives, but I nixed that right away. Even though I was pretty mobile only a couple of days after my surgery, getting up to go to the bathroom was still a multi-step process, involving coordinated movement of my drainage tube, my IV cart, and my unbalanced body. An urgent call to the bathroom would have ended in disaster.

I got so uncomfortable that one of my doctors finally suggested a nasogastric (NG) tube. This is a small flexible plastic tube that is inserted up a nostril and down through the esophagus and into the stomach. I think the idea was that the tube would suction some of the stuff out of my belly, relieving some of the pressure and maybe even getting things moving again.

An NG tube is not a good time. In fact, I feel pretty comfortable ranking it as one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life. It hurt going in and it continued to hurt the entire time it was in. I mean, I was sort of getting used to hurt by this time, but this was persistent and not dulled by the pain meds. Talking and swallowing were possible, but the throat moving around that segmented tube hurt like the devil - and it was in for 18 hours, at which point I demanded it be removed. The doc who originally suggested it asked me to leave it in for a couple more hours so he could come take a look at it after a surgery, but I vetoed the hell out of that idea. In the end, it barely pulled anything out of my stomach anyway.

Eventually these problems worked themselves out, as these things often do. It wasn't the only post-surgery problem I had, though.

How Phoenix Tried to Kill Me - Part 8

I was in the hospital for almost two weeks, so I got to meet A LOT of nurses. That sounds like the beginning of a Penthouse Forums letter (“I never thought it could happen to me...”), but that's definitely not what I 'm getting at. What I want to say about the nurses at Howard County General Hospital is that 99.7% of them are amazingly helpful, patient human beings, somehow maintaining compassion for their patients no matter how whiny, belligerent, and/or needy those patients happen to be.

Unfortunately, two weeks is enough time to encounter a couple representatives of the other 0.3%, both of them in the ICU. The first one I don't even remember, but she gave Trelina a hard time early on during my stay in the hospital. The other left me moaning and squirming in pain, not responding to her call button for over an hour, and treating me like a junkie asking for a fix when she finally did respond. Lovely woman.

The rest of my nurses and techs (more than 20 cared for me over the course of my stay) were wonderful. I particularly remember the woman who helped me into the ICU bed after my surgery. She rolled up some blankets and taped them together for me so I could wedge them under my side. This allowed me to sleep sort of on my back without putting any pressure on my incision or jostling my drainage tubes. She called this wedge my buddy, so I decided in an anesthesia-induced fog that it should be named “Tommy”. I slept on Tommy for the rest of my stay.

The surgeon came back to check up on me the day after the surgery. Everything looked fine, but for some reason, he decided the higher drainage tube, the one that was practically in my armpit, should come out. I'm not sure if that was part of the plan all along or not, but he cut the stitch holding the tube in place, then had me roll over onto my uncut side and bear down like I was “having a bowel movement” (his words). At which point he just pulled the tube right out. It hurt, but that was probably just because everything hurt at that point. It was mostly just unpleasant, like I suppose anything sliding out of your body from a new and strange orifice would be.

Then he slapped what must have been five pounds of bandages and tape over my side and bid me adieu. I still had the lower drainage tube sticking out of me, but otherwise I was officially on the mend. After a day or so in the ICU, I was moved back up into a “normal” room in acute care. Now I could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I was sure I'd be home by the end of the week.

How Phoenix Tried to Kill Me - Part 7

I've had surgery before, but those were always of the “this is a useless part of you that's causing trouble and we're going to cut it out” sort. Also known as the “very low risk” sort. Obviously cutting my chest open to drain infected fluid out of my lungs was not in the same ballpark, but everyone assured me it wasn't too risky... while pointing out that I would want to make sure that my living will and... um, dead will(?) were up-to-date.

Honestly, though, I wasn't that worried about the surgery – not because I'm brave like a lion, but because I was so damn thirsty after fasting for 24 hours that “when can I have a drink” trumped “possible death” on my list of mortal concerns. The nurse assured me that I was well-hydrated thanks to the IV, but she knew and I knew that even the tastiest IV doesn't exactly wet a guy's whistle.

My anesthesiologist was the same guy who worked on Trelina when Jasmine was born. I've met him twice now and I still have no idea what his name is, and only the vaguest idea of what he looks like without his surgical mask on, but he did a great job with Trelina, so that also went a long way to setting my mind at ease.

(One interesting note: I'll bet I'm the only dude reading this who's had an epidural. That was part of my anesthesia cocktail that day.)

I was taken down to the staging area and met all the people who would be cutting me open that day. I remember, very dimly, being given the epidural (probably just because of the novelty). And then I went to sleep.

The next thing I remember, I was in the ICU. I had apparently woken up and started talking before that, but (surprise, surprise) I don't remember any of it. My nurse helped me scoot from the gurney into my ICU bed. My left side was a solid block of pain. I didn't even want to look at it or know what had happened there. I just knew it hurt and somebody needed to get me some drugs STAT.

Here's what happened: The surgeon cut a long, swooping incision under my left shoulder blade and around my side to get into my chest. Then, after cleaning up the abscess on my lung and clearing out as much of the infected fluid as he could, he cut two more holes in my side – one above the incision and one below – and threaded drainage tubes the width of cigars into them and between my ribs. Then he stapled the incision closed and sent me to the ICU, tubes and all.

Next came the fun part: recovery.

Goals for 2012

I'm a big fan of New Year's resolutions - not so much because I'm on a quest for constant self-improvement as I just really like to make lists. In fact, the satisfaction of crossing a task off of a list is probably the only reason I'm not living in a cardboard box.

So, without further blah-blah-blah, here's my list of goals for 2012.


1. Get my body fat down to 10%.

I didn't want to tie myself down to one activity (mountain climbing, swimming, martial arts, whatever) with my fitness goal this year, so I decided to focus on the results rather than the process for getting there. I've had weight loss goals in the past, but after accidentally reaching my goal weight of 185 after a stretch in the hospital last year, I realized that this weight (which is supposedly perfect for my height and build) was not a good look for me. Part of that, though, is that a lot of what I lost was muscle mass. So we're focusing on body fat this year. I'll post my current percentages later.

2. Finish writing one novel and 12 short stories

2011 was a pretty fallow writing year for me until the last couple of months. This year I'm AT LEAST going to finish the current novel (which is more than half done already) and write 12 short stories besides.

3. Level up at the day job.

I've never been a career-minded guy - probably thanks to my midwestern upbringing, where I was surrounded by adults for whom a job was just something you had so you could pay for electricity and beer. This year, though, I'm going to focus on getting promoted and taking on some new work-related responsibilities and, hopefully, skills. I've got a very specific promotion in mind, but I'm going to keep it to myself because it would probably be meaningless to anybody who doesn't work at my company.

4. Finish my bachelor's degree.

Considering how many degrees there are between most of my friends and co-workers, it's embarrassing that I haven't even finished my first bachelor's yet. I've got six more classes and a couple of CLEPs to go, and I'm done. I'd hoped to finish it last year, but work was so crazy that there was never any time. I'll make the time this year.

5. Get into a bigger house

This is the most important goal of 2012, the one that all the others are going to have to make way for, if necessary. With another baby on the way in July, there is just no way that this tiny, tiny townhouse we've been in for the last 12 years is going to be able to contain all the Andersons that are going to be living in it. We've been talking about moving out for years, but this is the year that we have to do it. That's going to mean fixing the things that need to be fixed and prettying it up as much as possible, which is going to take some time.


That's a lot of stuff to pack into one year. I'd better get to work.

How Phoenix Tried to Kill Me - Part 6

Remember how I mentioned that cup that one of the nurses kinda-sorta implied that I might want to spit into, and how I blew her off? After day two of my confinement in the negative pressure room, I asked somebody when I would be free to have other people visit. Trelina was allowed in (I guess they figured if she hadn't caught my cooties yet, she wasn't likely to), but I was thinking in particular of Jasmine. I hadn't seen her in three or four days at that point, and that's just about my limit. The DTs get really ugly from that point on.

So this nurse-or-doctor (they were all sort of blurring together) informed me that getting out of the room depended on them finding out what was in my lungs. And their ability to do that was hanging entirely on me giving them four phlegm samples. What? Nobody told you that?

I had only given them one so far. I had to produce three more and wait for the results before I could get out of that room, and I was already going stir crazy. I learned that day that it is possible for a man to hone his will into the singular goal of producing and expelling phlegm, even when it feels like a Giger Alien is trying to burst out of his chest the entire time. I was focused like a freakin' laser, man. They'd bring me a cup, and I'd be calling (okay, moaning) (okay, whining) for another one before they even left the room.

It was another day and a half before the results came back, saying that I would not kill anybody with my lung fungus.

(Trelina and I just figured the timeline for all this out before I sat down to write this, and I cannot believe that it wasn't longer. It felt like I was stuck in that negative pressure room for more than a week. In reality it was only three or four days.)

So I got to see my kid again. Trelina's sister (who had come up to stay with her and help until I was out of the hospital) brought Jasmine to the room, and she ran around and explored and didn't destroy too much of the machinery keeping daddy alive. I still couldn't get out of bed or interact with her much, but at least I got to see her.

Now the doctors had identified all the invaders in my lungs and knew what they were up against... but they were also coming to realize that the drugs alone weren't going to do the trick. My right lung had cleared up by this point, but after five days of getting firebombed with antibiotics and anti-fungals, my left lung was still teeming with infection. Finally, somebody made the call to send me to the sawbones. It was going to take surgery to get all the crap out of my chest.

How Phoenix Tried to Kill Me - Part 5

I'm going to backtrack for a second here, because Trelina reminded me of some stuff that went down that first night in the hospital. And when I say she “reminded” me, I mean she told me about things that I don't remember at all. Whether that was because of the drugs or the infection, I'm not sure. Regardless...

The first night in the hospital, after they'd quarantined me, I was moved out of the little alcove in the ER and into a sealed room approximately the size of a broom closet, also in the ER. I stayed in there for a couple of hours, and then was moved into a negative pressure room in the ICU because (and this is the part where my memory fails me), my breathing and general well-being had declined severely over the course of a couple of hours. Trelina had gone home with Jasmine at this point, and she got a call telling her that I'd been moved and, “Hey, if your husband doesn't start improving, we're going to have to intubate him.”

Meaning they were planning to put a tube down my throat and have a machine do my breathing for me. On second thought, I'm glad I don't remember this crap. A lot of what's stuck with me from the two weeks I spent in the hospital is the aggravation and the sleepless nights and the cabin fever, and it's kind of a blessing that stuff has overshadowed just how hairy it got for a little while there.

At some point, the antibiotics must have started working and my breathing must have improved, because I never did get that tube, and I was eventually moved into another room in the hospital proper – still a negative pressure room, because they still didn't know if I was contagious or not, but at least I had a TV.

(For those that don't know, a negative pressure room allows air to flow in, but not to go back out the same way, so that sickos like yours truly don't infect the rest of the hospital. Wikipedia has a pretty good explanation of how it woks.)

They also weren't sure about how they were going to treat me. There was some talk while I was in the ER of doing surgery to drain the infection out of my lungs, but once the antibiotics and antifungals started kicking in, the constantly changing parade of doctors I was seeing seemed to be in agreement that they could lick this thing solely through the judicious application of drugs. Of course, they weren't sure yet, because they hadn't been able to identify all the different bacteria that had set up shop in my chest cavity. They got around this ignorance by firebombing me with every antibiotic they had... and it worked to the point that I started to get better, but there was still a whole bunch of infection in my chest that just wasn't going away.

How Phoenix Tried to Kill Me - Part 4

I spent most of my first day in the hospital in one of those curtained alcoves that pass for patient rooms in ERs. Trelina had to leave eventually to pick up Jasmine, and it was about that time that the attending doctor decided that it might be a good idea to semi-quarantine me, just in case whatever plague was filling my lungs was contagious. They closed the door and decreed that anybody who came inside had to wear a surgical mask. They even tried to get me to wear one, but I just laughed my wheezing, half-conscious laugh at that. It was hard enough to breathe without installing a filter over my face, after all.

A nurse came in at one point and had me breathe some medicated mist through a tube for a few minutes. This was the first respiratory treatment of literally dozens over the next couple of weeks. When we were done, she left me with a plastic cup and mentioned offhandedly that I might want to try to cough some phlegm up into it for analysis. As she didn't make it sound urgent, AND I didn't have to cough, AND making myself cough hurt like a bitch, I took this for a suggestion only and ignored it.

This will be important later.

By that evening, they'd moved me into a sealed room in the hospital proper and started getting serious about filling me with pain-killers and antibiotics. I was only sort of aware of the fact that I was still under quarantine, partly because my head was still fuzzy from the pneumonia, but mostly because the quarantine room wasn't at all different from a normal hospital room. I even, I was told, had a sweet view of the hospital helipad from that room, even though I never saw a helicopter coming or going.

I've often thought that if I ever had to spend any time in the hospital, I would use it to catch up on reading and writing. What better time to do that than when you're forced to lay in bed most of the day anyway, right? The thing I didn't take into consideration was that I would be so uncomfortable that it essentially made those activities (or anything that required more than ninety seconds of concentration), impossible. Fortunately there was a TV on the wall, and even though there wasn't a DVD player attached to it, I did have some basic cable channels. Thus began my two-week Food Network and Travel Channel marathon.

I did eventually spit into that cup the nurse had left me, but when they brought me another one, I just put it on the bedside table and forgot about it. Nobody had made a big deal about it yet, and coughing still hurt, so I just laid in bed for the next day or two, No Reservations flickering on the opposite wall, and waited for the doctors to decide what to do with me.

Nominations Open for Pulp Ark 2012

Nominations are open for the 2012 Pulp Ark Awards. Please consider nominating HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD, VOL. 2 in the following categories:

Best Collection/Anthology
Best Short Story (if you've read the book, pick your favorite)
Best Cover Art

Here's how it works:

1. Send your nominations to proseproductions@earthlink.net by December 31. The entrants with the most nominations will be added to the ballot.
2. In a couple of weeks, you'll get a ballot. Vote for your favorite from the options listed and send the ballot back.
3. There is no step 3.

Most importantly: Anybody can nominate, but only the people who nominate are going to get to vote. So please nominate us if you have the time.

The full details, including a complete list of available categories, are here: http://allpulp.blogspot.com/2011/11/nominations-now-open-for-pulp-ark-2012.html

We will return to more talk about my stay in the hospital next time.

How Phoenix Tried to Kill Me - Part 3

When we got home, Trelina told me to go inside and get in bed while she took care of Jasmine and the luggage. Still out of it, I went in and sort of shuffled around in the kitchen for awhile until Trelina once again directed me up to bed. When she'd finished taking care of everything else, she had to actually help me onto the mattress, as any activity on the left side of my torso was enough to set all the pain bells ringing. I remember crying out as I put my back fully on the bed, laying there gritting my teeth and gasping while Trelina stood over me without any idea of what to do. She wasn't alone in that.

(Also - and I mention this here just to fully illustrate how much the first couple days of November sucked - we found out that night that we couldn't use the upstairs bathroom, the one closest to our bedroom, because every time we flushed, water poured through the kitchen ceiling. We had to go down two floors to the basement if we wanted to take a leak. Welcome home!)

I managed to get in and out of bed on my own during the night, and even to sleep a little bit, but I didn't feel any better in the morning, so we got dressed, dropped Jasmine off at a friend's house, and went to Howard County General.

It was like how I imagine JK Rowling must have felt after finally finding somebody willing to publish her silly little book about kid magicians. The doctors could tell immediately that something was seriously wrong with me. They EKG'ed me and X-rayed me and I got the obligatory IVs, just like in Phoenix, but nobody was shrugging their shoulders and going, "I don't know... muscle pull?" Even the male nurse said something to the effect of, "Dude, I'm not a radiologist, but your lungs look awful!"

I was asked a battery of questions by half a dozen doctors... who obviously weren't comparing notes because they were all asking me the same things. "Where've you been?" "What've you been doing?" "Got any history of lung problems?" "Are you HIV positive?" "Why are you so sick and your wife and kid aren't?"

The radiologist finally made the call: pneumonia in both lungs, along with an abscess on the left lung that looked like it had been there a long time. I saw some of the original CAT scans of my chest cavity, and the left lung was 2/3 full of infection. I have no idea how the doctor in Phoenix missed all that, or if it all just manifested in the three days between ER visits. In any case, I was going to be in the hospital for a while, and Trelina had a lot of calls to make.

How Phoenix Tried to Kill Me - Part 2

In retrospect, I'm not sure why I didn't go back to the hospital at some point over the next two days in Phoenix, because I was nearly incapacitated with pain, which had spread over my left side and chest by Sunday morning. Probably I didn't want to lose another day of vacation just so they could tell me to ice the shoulder again, but I was losing time in other ways. On Monday - Halloween - I skipped out on seeing Trelina's parents that morning so that I'd be able to go trick or treating with Jasmine that night. As it turned out, I spent most of that night first stretched out in my sister's recliner and then in her spare bed. No trick or treating for me.

My memory of those days is foggy, but the real problems started on Tuesday, when we were packing up to fly home.

You remember how in Inception, Leonardo Dicaprio talks about how you never go anywhere in a dream - you're just in one place one moment and in another the next? That's what that Tuesday was like for me, like photographs of a day rather than a single continuous stream of activity.

Click. I'm getting out of bed. Click. I'm in the shower and Trelina's poking her head in to ask if I'm alright. Click. I'm staring at my breakfast, with no desire to eat it. Click. I'm at the airport waiting to board. Click. I'm on the plane.

I was still in a lot of pain, but based on what I found out later, I'm pretty sure I was also a bit oxygen-starved at this point too. Poor Trelina had to take care of me AND Jasmine for that long (thankfully non-stop) trip home. Most of my "awake" periods started with her saying my name sharply because she could see that I was starting to go glassy-eyed.

As with the rest of the day, I don't remember much of the flight home.I'm pretty sure I didn't actually sleep, and I'm certain I was in agony, but the blackouts - or whatever they were - ended up being a blessing. I'm sure if I hadn't been checked out most of the time, that I couldn't have made that flight home. I would have been writhing in the aisle and screaming the whole time.

Getting off of the plane and getting our luggage was a bit of an ordeal, but Trelina handled it without much help from me and got us to our car without incident. She wanted to take me straight to the ER, but it was after midnight and I just wanted to try to sleep. So we went home, deciding that if I didn't feel miraculously better in the morning, the hospital was going to be our first stop.

How Phoenix Tried to Kill Me - Part 1

At the end of October, the family and I took a trip to Phoenix, AZ. Trelina and I both went to high school there, and we still have a lot of friends and family that live in the area - and since we hadn't been back in a few years, there were still plenty of people who needed to meet Jasmine. Our days were going to be pretty full, but the Big Event for the visit was the big Halloween party/bonfire/hootenanny my cousin Mike was throwing out on his ranch on Saturday night.

We arrived on a Thursday, and those first two days went pretty much according to plan. We got settled in at the hotel (which wasn't as centrally located as I'd intended, but still not THAT far from the action) and managed to see my sisters - one of whom had driven over from Texas just for the occasion - and have a nice dinner with a few select friends on Friday night. Jasmine was even sleeping well, despite the fact that that kid NEVER sleeps well unless she's in her own crib.

Saturday, I woke up with some pain in my shoulder. Specifically, it was under my shoulder blade, and it hurt when I took a really deep breath. I'd had this type of pain before, though not this intense, and I decided it was probably just muscle strain from sleeping on a strange bed and pillow. After breakfast, I went to the hotel gym and ran a couple of miles on the treadmill, trying to work out the kink. Afterward, I was exhausted out of all proportion to the effort of the workout, and I laid down for a quick nap. When I woke up, the pain in my shoulder had multiplied and I was now dizzy and nauseated if I tried to be any direction but horizontal.

One of the nice things about being back in your hometown for a visit is you've usually got a vast number of willing babysitters. My sisters took Jasmine while Trelina and I spent most of Saturday in the emergency room. They IV'ed me, X-rayed me, and probably did other horrible things I can't remember (more on that next time) and finally decided that I was right all along - it was a pulled muscle. The doctor on duty suggested I load up on Motrin and maybe ice the shoulder. The pain would take care of itself in a couple of days.

I wasn't feeling up to partying after all this - the pain seemed to be getting more intense by the hour, as did the difficulty with breathing - so we picked up Jasmine and went back to the hotel. We had missed my cousin's party, and caused my sisters to miss it too, and even though that seemed like the absolute nadir of the trip, things would start to suck a lot worse before we got on the plane home.

Podcast Recommendation: Decoder Ring Theater

I like podcasts. They break up the "monotony" of listening to the same 1500+ songs in my iTunes library over and over again. I want to talk about (and recommend) some of the podcasts that get me through my commutes.

First up: Decoder Ring Theater (http://www.decoderringtheater.com/).



Decoder Ring Theater is an old-fashioned, full-cast radio show, mostly featuring adventures of the super-heroic Red Panda or the hard-boiled detective tales of Black Jack Justice. With these characters as the anchors, DCR also occasionally do special done-in-one (or done-in-two) stories set in other genres - sci-fi, horror, etc. - as part of their Summer Showcase series.

The bombastic style of some of the voice work, especially in some of the earlier episodes, may be a little off-putting to those who've never listened to Depression-era radio drama before (such as the Green Hornet or the Shadow or any of the thousands of others); and some of the storytelling in those same early episodes is a little rough as Red Panda creator Gregg Taylor works out how to tell an action story with dialog and sound effects and nothing else. (You can tell he hit a rough patch when he resorts to third-person narration, which, to his credit, is only once or twice in those first 12 episodes.) If you can get past that, though, DCR has a lot of fun to offer. It's not all superhero-y Red Panda stuff, but it's all rooted in pulp-style genre material.

Surprisingly (because I would have sworn I'd take the superhero over the PI), I slightly prefer the Black Jack Justice stuff to the Red Panda, probably because Black Jack uses a first-person narrator, making it a little easier to follow. I haven't cared as much for the anthology-style Summer Showcase episodes, but that might just be me wanting to get back to the Panda and Jack. (Summer Showcase did feature what's probably my favorite of what D.C.R. output I've listened to so far, though - a one-shot sci-fi noir called I.D.0 that has more than a little Blade Runner in its DNA.)

Episodes are generally between 20 and 30 minutes, and there are A LOT out there. I've listened to dozens of these things, and I'm still back in 2007 in the archives. The Decoder Ring Theater podcast is available for download from their site and all the major podcast sites. Or you can just subscribe through iTunes, like I do.

Decoder Ring Theater isn't going to be for everybody, but those of you who dig old-time radio shows are in for a treat.

Solace and Zombies

WRITING UPDATE

I had to put BONES OF AFRICA aside for the moment, in lieu of doing something really cool for Tommy Hancock and Pro Se Productions. I haven't abandoned "Bones", but the deadline is a lot sooner for Tommy's project.

Also, I assure you... that is only a working title.

QUANTA OF SOLACE (did I mention that's a working title?)

Words written today: about 1500 (that's a good day for me)

ZOMBIE 5K

In other news, I signed up for the Run For Your Lives 5K in Baltimore in October. A 5K obstacle course with zombies chasing you throughout. Should be a good time... even if it's against the rules to punch the zombies in the head. I'm sure there will be pictures.

OPERATION BACKPACK

Finally, today and tomorrow are the last days you can buy the ebook pack to benefit Project Backpack. The pack includes 17 e-books in multiple formats for a measly $10 - including HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD and HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD, VOL. 2. We've already raised more than $1500 for PB, but I'm sure there are some more underprivileged kids out there who wouldn't mind some help buying school supplies. Please buy a pack if you can.

Operation Backpack Giveaway

HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD and HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD, VOL. 2 are part of an e-book bundle being offered this month to support Operation Backpack. Operation Backpack buys school supplies for kids who are homeless or in foster care. With this e-book bundle, you're getting 17 books (including both HTWWW volumes... did I mention that?) for $10 bucks. My two books alone would normally cost you $7.

• Here's a PDF with blurbs and cover images for all 17 books.
• E-books are delivered in both .mobi and .pdf formats.
• This bundle is only being offered until the end of August, so go get it now.

So... yeah, that's an awesome deal and a great cause. You should totally go buy that. You can do so here.

(And check out this Volunteers of America page for more info on Operation Backpack.)

***

In other news, I wrote a measly 311 words on BONES OF AFRICA tonight - barely more than a page's worth of new words. I have a feeling I'm not going to be able to do much better than that most work nights...

Bad Reviews and African Bones

First of all, this guy didn't like How the West Was Weird, Vol. 1. He gave us a very well written review, though. Obviously I don't agree with most of his points, but they're worth a read.

Secondly, for the first time in more than half a year, I'm working on a new story, called Bones of Africa. I'm woefully out of practice, but I've been chugging along on it to the tune of 2-3 pages a day. If I keep that up, I should be done with the first draft early next week. Let's see if I can keep up with posting my daily progress here until then.



(Thanks to Writertopia for the word count widget.)

The West Gets Weird Inside the Book Cave

Josh Reynolds, Tommy Hancock, David Boop, and I joined hosts Ric Croxton and Art Sippo on the Book Cave podcast to talk about the latest volume of HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD. We were wrestling with some pretty serious technical difficulties, but we managed to get nearly an hour of weird west talk in before Skype went quietly into that dark night.

Check it out here: http://thebookcave.libsyn.com/the-book-cave-episode-131-how-the-west-was-weird-vol-2

HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD 2 Now Available for Pre-Order

On July 1, HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD VOL. 2 will be available to the whole wide world, through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and a host of other places, both offline and on. Twenty stories by some of the top names in New Pulp, mashing the western with horror, sci-fi, and fantasy - and all wrapped in a gorgeous new cover by Jim Rugg.

But say you don't want to wait - nay, you CAN'T wait - a whole month for the release of this 368-page blockbuster. There's no need! Pulpwork Press (in association with Anderfam Press) is now taking advance orders for HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD VOL. 2.

Here's what you get with your pre-order:

1. The book, of course.
2. Free shipping.
3. A free bonus e-book: HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD: CAMPFIRE TALES. This e-book, available in just about any format you like, includes weird west stories by Josh Reynolds, Joel Jenkins, Derrick Ferguson, and Russ Anderson. These are stories that aren't included in either of the HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD books, and this is the only way you're going to get your hands on them. Here's the cover.

HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD VOL. 2 is $14.99. To order, click the "Add to Cart" Paypal button below.

This limited time offer has expired... but you can still buy the book in print ($14.95) or Kindle ($3.99) format at http://www.amazon.com/How-West-Was-Weird-Vol/dp/1461145023.