Writing about my nomadic surrealist fiction.
A excerpt from my second novel in progress, Hermit Kingdom. This section is called “The Lover’s Nest.”
Polish sailor pubs. Rustic jazz clubs. Vibrating Pineal glands.
Self-branding, love and companionship,
monsters, MILFS, and satanic energy drinks
Nomadic journeys from Katowice to Madrid to North Carolina with beer butt chicken and pimento cheese sandwiches.
How to expand with it.
From my 1st novel in progress, Never Mind the Beasts. This excerpt from the section “Howling Dogs and Crinkled Whispers.”
“A part wants to break away from the other part. The part that wants to break away claims a different culture. How many cultures make the whole. Who are the true people from the part that wants to break away and the true people from the part that believes in the whole.| My flash fiction, Jitters, at Litro today. Chosen for Flash Fiction Friday.
(image: Frank Moth)
Some excerpts from my novel Never Mind the Beasts (formally The Autobiography of Don Whiskers) in the new issue of Dream Pop.
“In Milton Keynes, during the conversion, they watch E.T. with the branch, the branch is a small gathering, if it is a larger gathering it is called a ward, they don’t have a ward, they have a branch, it is a bootleg copy and the sound is not fully synced.” Read more over here:
From 8 year novel in progress, Never Mind the Beasts (formally The Autobiography of Don Whiskers). This part takes place after Don Whiskers has immigrated from N. Ireland to Las Vegas. It is the late 80’s. He feels the pull, temporally, towards the Cold War on his Commodore 64.
When Milo opened the window more students poured in. Not long after, there were 40 of them, in a room built for 20. Don’t be a lazy bird. When the lightning struck, the computer was fried, the projector was intact, but there was nothing to project. End of lesson. No more Animal Farm. Here, said Jonathan, take your shoes off. They found a damp towel together. But it was too late, his shoes were already submerged. It would take two days to dry them.When your feet are wet it’s hard to warm your body. If the river has overflown its banks, it is best to wade barefoot. If you climb on the fence it brings the lightning closer. The lightning hit the tree and then there was fire.
The bus stop was dark and street was dark but now and again a car would shine the lights and it was less dark, but still relatively dark. Don Whiskers wondered if the bus would arrive, and if so when. It was the eternal question. His toes were wrinkling inside his wet shoes. The faces in the holes were egg shaped. At the busstop a strappling young woman, with garters and a snake. They make eye contact, briefly, then back to looking down the street for the bus. The bus stop makes everyone anxious, storm or no storm. Will it come and when and if. Suddenly the sky opened into an egg yolk.
An excerpt from my novel in progress, Hermit Kingdom, is up today at Queen Mob’s Teahouse. Hermit Kingdom is interconnecting flash fictions, prose poetry, hybrids.
International Worker’s Day 2018, Pineapple and Don Whiskers, living in Madrid, walk the walk past Cazorla, with the best tapas, and the friendly waitress, down past the death ring, to gander at beautiful feminine male peacocks in El Retiro, eat homely tastes at the only Polish restaurant in the city, where Don Whiskers attempts to talk sports with little knowledge of sports, Pineapple dreaming the great dream of weekend getaways together, the nearby desert mountains, or northern, Basque and Asturian and Galician, magical escapes into nature, but also the realities of transient work and financial realities of lower middle class living, loving and living more with less, soaking into the sun, walking the walk, traveling to wake up, even if it is only within a few mile radius, friendship and travel and sometimes, despite the realities, a little hope.
An excerpt from my novel manuscript, The Autobiography of Don Whiskers, is over at #thesideshow. Partly based on experiences in Katowice, Poland, Cercedilla (Spain), Madrid (Spain), and Palermo (Sicily). It is part of an ongoing trilogy of nomadic surrealist novels. Part autofiction, part magical realism.
This excerpt begins in Katowice, at the Zoo, with pagan deities:
At the back of the zoo, in the magic forest, once a year in deep night, the pagan deities are resurrected, painted faces & spooky howling, primal yelps, very good, it’s a start, it’s not enough. The zoo is full of highlights, for example, the invisible hippos, complete with diving boards and lifeguards, but no hippos, the hippos are in hiding. Also the sleeping lion, you can sit on the still warm bench and imagine the lion. The bees, however, in full force, non-invisible, landing on creamy mountains of ice cream.
Read/listen to the story over at Five:2:One
Super happy to have an excerpt from Hermit Kingdom (formally The Autobiography of Don Whiskers) in Adjacent Pineapple.
Book 2 begins in Spain (Madrid) and the move to Barcelona. This excerpt is all about the body. And also the great Madrid fiesta San Isidro. It is also about friendship and creating a hermit kingdom as an outsider in a foreign country. It is also “toxic masculinity, toxic femininity, toxic capitalism, toxic Marxism, toxic plastic consumer frenzies, the news, toxic, his leather shoes, toxic, there is too much meat in the world and not enough vegetables.”
It is also about port o potties and peeing troughs and trying not to step in anyone’s drippings. It is expansive maximalist content in minimalist packaging. It is death and life and everything between. It is hybrid like all the great art.
Take a wee read over here:
“Destroyer and Preserver” was written in Madrid in 2016, near La Elipa metro stop. It was my first year in Madrid, and Spain in general, and it was a very windy day. The rats were scuttling behind the dumpsters and some older couples were linking arms leaning into the wind. I ducked under an awning and began scribbling. Of course the poet Shelley came to mind. He wrote “Ode to the West Wind.” Maybe you know it?
So yeah transience. Change. It is good to remember. Life. What is it. How does it blow?
The prose poem merged with my novel manuscript The Autobiography of Don Whiskers.
Then it became part of an album called Never Mind the Beasts (available over at Bandcamp). A collaboration with the U.K. musician, artist, and writer Stephen Emmerson.
Take a listen over here to the track over here:
