secret

came across this posted anonymously and thought it was pretty cool:



I am your brother - a part of the human collective. You can meet me, shake my hand, hug me, kiss me, fall in love with me, hate me, fuck me, shoot me, and love me again. We can share stories, we can unfold ourselves, reveal our innermost fears and desires, talk about music, about the world, about our pasts, about ourselves. I may know you for two seconds or I may know you for a hundred years. We may be enemies or friends, lovers or strangers. But you, my brothers, my sisters, my parents and children, you will never know me, nor I you. It is the one true bond between us, and it keeps us apart as the ocean divides up the lands. Forever, no matter what, we will always be apart, and although you may gaze in my eyes until the stars shatter, you shall never know the mind behind those eyes, nor the heart that, like and unlike yours, hopes in vain for the comfort of knowing that somewhere in the universe, there is another one just like you.

This is our secret.

Sad News

Sad News to hear first thing this morning that the satirical, witty, though-provoking comic genius known as George Carlin, has died at 71.

Some of his gems:

“Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town.”

“If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten”

“If God had intended us not to masturbate he would've made our arms shorter”

“I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.”

“"I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?”

“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”

“You know an odd feeling? Sitting on the toilet eating a chocolate candy bar”

“I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It's so fuckin' heroic.”

A Rose from My Garden

No real secret that I've been in something of a writing funk for the last few months but have been working my way back out of it. I'd been breaking the cardinal rule of abusing the muse and it took me far too long to realize it wasn't working.

So I changed pace. Modified my patterns. Adapted.

Recently I gave my Muse a rose from my garden. The question I heard whispered back was "Am I still your Muse?"

I've been working on Samson and Denial (I know... I hear you all groaning in the back of the room. It's coming along a lot more slowly than I'd ever possibly imagined, but it'll be worth the wait). Wrote a script treatment for a romance-comedy (again with the groans... yes, not my normal type of thing, but circumstances are what they are and it needed to be done), and last week my Muse returned my rose back to me in the form of an entire novel outline I'm calling Crimson River.

Crimson River is very different from what I normally would approach, but my Muse knows best and apparently it's what I need to get the train back on track so I'm listening to her.

I'll be working on that and a screenplay until they're done, then get my hands dirty while they age a bit and finish Samson and Denial and Big Stakes Jackie. Have to limit my projects or else I definitely fear getting lost. My "Ramblings" file of ideas, brain farts and snippets of stories, dialogues and ideas is an 80 page file that's akin to that scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana finds that government warehouse of all the wooden crates. But I'll get to them all eventually.

And Muse? Yes, you're still my muse. You've always been my Muse... even before I know what that meant. An endless well of inspiration and spirit and faith that if I just continue on and push through, it'll all be okay.


P.S. I did find out where that damn suitcase of money came from... but you're all going to have to wait.


Recent Reads:
Kill Whitey, Brian Keene. Can't say enough about this one. Fast paced, well written... the only thing that stopped me from finishing it in a single sitting was going out of town to New York City.

Jack Canfield's Key to Living the Law of Attraction. Pretty interesting read, but didn't cover a lot of ground already covered in other books of the same vein.


Recent Movies: Mr. Bean goes on Holiday and... and... that's about it.

Current Music... various.. though I'm itching for something new.

Current Infatuations: Summer Squeeze and Texas Hold 'em

question for the day...

where'd the briefcase full of money come from, damn it?

I'm going out for a walk in the cemetery.


drive-by update:
current reads: Fetish, J.F. Gonzalez. As kick ass as everything I've read from him.
No Country for Old Men. Cormac McCarthy. This one better f'ng get better because so far all I see is that he's in love with the word "and" and half-page paragraphs. Yes, he's a name author, but if anyone else low on the totem pole submitted something like this, they'd have spikes driven through their wrists.
Next up: Kill Whitey, Brian Keene. And believe me when I tell you, I've been waiting for this one for a long while.
After that... The Raw Shark Texts. Google it and once you read the book deal, you'll see why I just had to read this.

current tunes:
The Black Keys: Attack and Release. This is SUCH a kick ass cd I can't even begin to tell you. Get it.

current infatuations: among other relaxing things, mental breaks with Uno/Poker/Trouble

recent movies: A FUCKTON of chick flicks for reasons I won't reveal just yet. Sugar, and Living in Oblivion. Both of which I had high hopes for, but ended up with me wanting to hollow out my brain with a melon spoon.

I am extremely pleased to announce that my great friend Kelli Dunlap has had her first novel purchased by Larry Roberts at Bloodletting Press. It will be published under their new imprint of Morningstar in 2009. I am ecstatic and overjoyed and I know she is levitating in her living room with excitement. This is the first of many to come from her.