Let’s DEWEY this! – The Man Who Couldn’t Stop

Several months ago I broached the topic of OCD with a nonfiction read about hoarding. Because OCD is such a personal subject to me, I decided to devote this month’s nonfiction more fully to the illness with a read of David Adam’s “The Man Who Couldn’t Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought.”

For the average, non-ill person, it’s normal to obsess now and then. It’s normal to have a senseless fear (clown in the closet?), a sudden and unsettling urge that does not fit with who we are (swerve into traffic, perhaps?) or a good-luck practice not founded on reality (certainly no one believes that knocking on wood actually works, but… just in case.) It’s normal to be picky about your books lining up straight or to lose sleep one night as a worry goes round and round in your head like a circling predator. This is not OCD.

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The INSTA-LOVE trope – just add water! (repost in honor of Valentine’s Day)

There are few things more grating to me than the insta-love trope seen so often in fiction. This device essentially involves shoving two characters in the same room, then poking them with a stick until they have nowhere else to go but each other’s arms.

The development of their relationship usually looks like this:

Margarine

It’s been a year since Slink Chunk Press published this short story, so to honor the occasion I am reprinting it here. Enjoy!

They say that everything is made from everything. Matter never disappears, it just becomes new matter. A cell from your skin catches a southeast breeze and eventually gets inhaled by a penguin; an atom expelled in some dinosaur dung finds its way over the eons to your pomegranate tea; a molecule from the sweat that glistened on Caesar’s temple evaporated and is now raining into your car through the window you left open.

We’re all just cosmos junk, recycled. Never ending, only changing. Ever since the universe’s first big sneeze, all that energy has been riding its waves wherever it can go, moving from one place to another. Perpetual tourists, all of us.

So then what happens if a bit of energy changes its mind? Has a change of heart on the metaphysical interstate and decides to detour over the center divider, head the opposite way?

Decides to come back?

The Selkie’s Husband

A full year ago today, I was honored to have this flash fiction published by Gingerbread House Literary Magazine. This is my personal favorite of my work, so to celebrate its anniversary I am reprinting it here. I hope you enjoy! 🙂

Rain fell the day he went to the shore, to see the place where his wife left him. Grey weighted the clouds like sacks full of stones, sagging closer and closer to the sea. Grey upon grey, water upon water, the sea and sky took hands. The way he once took hers.

She never held his hand long. Always wrenching from his grasp, her flesh still as slippery as a seal. Sometimes she would oblige him, sit shaking like a penned animal as he made hushing noises and rubbed her knuckles with his thumbs.

Please let me love you, he would say. I’ve earned it. I found your skin.

My year in books! 2016

How many books did you read this year?
66! I’m not a bookworm. I’m a bookpython.

(Why yes, I did make an almost identical joke last year, and I’m going to keep making it with slight variations until I’m tired of it, so there!)

What was your number one TOP FAVORITE of them?
Oh jeez, this is so hard, erm, agh, uhh… Gone Girl. No, wait. Wild. No! My Sister’s Keeper! WAIT, NO! The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake! A Man Called Ove! We Need To Talk About Kevin! WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT WHAT A CRUEL QUESTION THIS IS.

Final answer: “I Have Too Many Favorite Books: A Memoir,” by Shannon Noel Brady.

Logolepsy: an obsession with words

I’m a bit of a logophile. A word nerd, you might say. I have a long, long, very long list of both English and foreign words I’ve been collecting,  whether for their interesting definitions, their lovely sounds, or simply their usefulness in my lexicon. Here are some of my favorites. 🙂

To finish a bad book, or not to finish a bad book…

Allow me to set the scene: You’re on page 98, about a quarter of the way in. The story started well  – intriguing premise, characters with potential, even a few snappy one-liners. But as the pages went on, that intriguing premise got left behind, the characters now have more marshmallows in their heads than brains, and those one-liners have gone from snappy to crappy.

It’s not alllll bad… There are a few parts you like. Maybe you’re just in a slow spot. But slogging through is such a chore…

So what do you do? Read or flee? Finish or banish?

Let’s DEWEY This! – the 900s

This Dewey post is breaking allllll the rules by showing up on the first Tuesday of the month instead of the last Tuesday of the previous. Imagine this post in a leather jacket and riding a motorcycle, because it’s bad to the bone.

(I just really wanted to keep those travel-themed posts together, because splitting them up felt wrong.)

Anyway, after ten awesomely educational months of nonfiction reading, we’re now in the final section of the Dewey Decimal system! (But not the final post of this series… Will explain at the end.) The 900s are all about history, and my pick to read was Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero, by Michael Hingson, DD# 974.71044. Since this was a personal account more than academic, my post will not list factoids but instead summarize Hingson’s experience of escaping the Twin Towers during the harrowing attacks of 9/11.

Fingers

One full year ago, the awesome Jersey Devil Press published this flash fiction of mine. I decided to reprint it here to celebrate the occasion. Hope you enjoy!

The purple monkey hugs my kneecap with his armpit. Squashed into my front is the yellow dinosaur, her spinal ridges prickling my belly every time she shifts. The blue elephant’s hindquarters press against my ear, which is unpleasant, but not as much as the child’s face flattened against the glass.

Let’s DEWEY This! – the 800s (plus that time I embarrassed myself in front of David Sedaris)

In case you ever got the ridiculous impression that I am suave, let me clear that right up for you with a story.

In either 2007 or 08, I went to a live reading by David Sedaris. Perhaps you know him? Writes hilarious personal essays, often appears on the radio show This American Life, does an uncanny impression of Billie Holliday… Anyway, I first became a fan around 2003 when I read Me Talk Pretty One Day, and have giggled over several of his books since.

Naturally, I was excited to hear him read at Royce Hall in Los Angeles. I got to the theatre way too early and ended up milling around outside for a while. It was pretty empty – one of the few others there was this man wandering around by himself, eating a sandwich. There was something peculiar about him, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Maybe it was the flagrancy of his sandwich-eating. Like who does he think he is, right? Just eating a sandwich, like, right there? Doesn’t he know he’s about to see a David Sedaris reading?

I’m fuzzy on the details, probably because I blew up in a cloud of awkwardness, but what happened next was the man finished his meal, went around chatting to people who were now arriving, eventually made it to me and the person I came with, talked with us while I was like “why is this stranger talking to us, what’s his deal,” and then finally introduced himself as…

… David Sedaris.