Trashing the Melancholy Room

So this is an extremely sporadic post. For the past two weeks I've been in what I like to call Editing Hell. This is when I have a number of things written and realize there are still many many mistakes in them and it might behoove me to try and remove them. One of them was a 400 hundred page horror novel called NEVERLY that I will probably end up using as some kind of high end artistic toilet paper (it's not bad but, at this point, the prospects of trying to sell a horror novel are not looking up). Another is a book Eraserhead Press will be publishing this summer called Jack & Mr. Grin. It is a fucked up, surreal mystery/suspense/bizarro type thing. I have to thank Rose from Eraserhead for going over this one. I used the word "sure" like 40 times. I don't even know if I use the word "sure" in everyday conversation. So I stabbed a lot of them with a pitchfork. On Saturday, looking at a menu in a restaurant, I had the urge to edit it, but my wife told me that would be weird. I agreed and asked her if I could punch the waitress in the face instead. She said that would be abusive and might attract the wrong kind of attention. I said okay and took a nap in the booth because napping's what I do best.

So I crawled out of Editing Hell and into a world that was vaguely springlike. In Ohio, spring is the season of mud and it's probably still a long way off. This has been an incredibly strange year so far. After writing for over ten years and having no books come out, I'm met with the odd fortune of having 3 books come out this year. I'm used to doom and disaster and this is not at all disastrous. I'm quite happy. And I'm quite happy that they're with a press specializing in bizarro, multi-genre books. I'm happy about this because, other than, I guess, the actual writing of the three books, they're really not a lot alike. So I'm eager to see how they do.

And now I'm turning toward fresh writing and putting new things together. If THE OVERWHELMING URGE does well, there might be another collection of short stories. I like the title "Trashing the Melancholy Room," but that could change. There's also another novel I've just written the first chapter for. It's a bizarre comic nightmare called MORNING IS DEAD.

Speaking of THE OVERWHELMING URGE-- it's been out for a couple of weeks now and I've been passing copies around to friends and coworkers. It's always amusing for me to witness fiftyish conservative Republican females chuckle over stories about people huffing glue and fucking their mothers or pointing to the cover of SATAN BURGER (from the catalogue in the back of the book) and asking me who the hell Carlton Mellick III is. I tell them he's a man with a lot of sideburns and big ideas. Another guy wanted to know what my fascination with mustaches is. I told him it all goes back to my father who I've never seen without a mustache and, therefore, assume he has something to hide. My first approach was going to be to tell them they probably wouldn't want to read it. After all, it's not exactly Nicholas Sparks or THE DA VINCI CODE, but most of them seem to be genuinely enthused and entertained by it and there are very few things that mean more to me.

Okay, Mr. Rambly needs to go get a drink...