Cormac McCarthy’s THE ROAD is one of the best books I’ve ever read. But to get me to read it again, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush would have to waterboard me, beat me, tie me to a chair and shine bright lights in my eyes. The thought of delving in that beautiful, horrifying nightmare world again makes me want to swear of reading books forever.

However, I’m pleased to note that it just won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Surprisingly, it looks like Oprah had it in her book club. That’s one messed up book club, in my honest opinion. I could never imagine my mom getting the first chapter, much less the millions of women around the country who delve into Oprah’s reading list.

A quote from recent Vonnegut:

“But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.”

Read more here.

I spent the summer writing a story about a girl who finds a photograph, and I’m happy to say that the first draft is now complete. It’s time to edit and polish and get it ready to be the centerpiece of my graduate school application packet, and possibly begin shopping it around. If you’re interested in reading it, I will be printing a very limited run in chapbook format for friends to see. I also have to return to some other writing projects I’ve neglected, including my comic book, “The Alberic Heresies,” and some things I’ve agreed to do for other people.

The one thing “The Purple Girl” has taught me is just how much I love fiction. There’s something undeniably appealing about having complete control over your characters and the world they live in. As much as I enjoy working in the comics medium, it is a collaborative process — there are benefits to it, and there are also big hurdles. You are required to have an artist, which makes writers like me who don’t draw beggers, essentially. We really do depend on the charity of artists — without them, there is no way to realize our scripts. I’m fortunate that I’m able to work on “The Alberic Heresies” with an old friend, but other writers aren’t so lucky. I see them at the DC Comics Conspiracy meetings, desperate to get someone to draw their work. Even if they are fortunate to find a collaborator, their next big hurdle is trying to sell their book to an audience that doesn’t care. Unlike readers of short stories and novels who are always looking out for new writers, the comics audience is much more conservative. The majority are happy to read their nine X-Men comics a month and overlook innovative and great stories being produced independently. That’s the price of working in a dead medium.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to get so gloomy. What I am excited about is the cycle of stories I’ve begun about people living on the margins of the middle class in Washington, D.C., of which “The Purple Girl” is the first. Part of the exercise is, with the exception of one story, to write only about characters with very different viewpoints from my own. That’s a tough challenge, but it’s fun. We’ll see if I’m up to it.

Kelly Link is one of the best writers working in fantasy & horror today (though she leans way more towards fantasy) and is well regarded even in traditional literary circles. I recently came across this excellent interview with her at Maud Newton.com. It’s definitely worth a read if you’re so inclined.

If you’d like to read some of her work, Link’s first collection, Stranger Things Happen, is available as a free and legal download here.

Tina emailed me this morning to give me the heads up that someone has placed the first issue of the original Restaurant Fuel print ‘zine on ebay. Surprisingly, the “buy it now” price is set at $25.

Tina and I started work on Restaurant Fuel back in 1996 as an outlet for personal writing, band interviews, travel stories, and just about anything else we felt like publishing. We even ran a scientific article about two dangerous diet drugs years before the drugs were taken off the market. As much as I love blogging, doing a ‘zine was so much more fulfilling. The writing had to be sharper, and there was a lot of fun in designing and producing the magazine. We went out of our way to come up with elaborate inserts to enhance the experience. You can’t do that with a blog.

Restaurant Fuel, obviously, is now long out of print. This is really the first time an issue has been available in years. Tina and I have very, very few copies of it ourselves. If you’d like to see a bit of zine history, it may be worth bidding on.

In my previous post about fantasy/horror publishers, I neglected to mention the excellent Cemetary Dance, which is putting out truly amazing work, both as a magazine and as a book publisher. If I were to start a fantasy and horror ‘zine, they would be the benchmark I’d try to meet.

As part of my ongoing research into what’s new in the fantasy and horror genres, I’ve been digging through a lot of websites, ‘zines, etc. I’ve got to say that I’ve been really underwhelmed by what I’ve seen. I guess my tastes may be a bit too high brow, but there seems to be a real drought of what I’d describe as literary fantasy and horror. No offense to the great people out there publishing fiction, but most of what I’ve read is subpar.

The strongest writing I’ve found is on Scifi.com’s now dead Scifiction site edited by the great Ellen Datlow (who you may also know from The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror annual anthology). You can still read all the back content on the site, and there’s a lot of good stuff there.

So I’ve been playing around with the idea of putting together my own online anthology, or perhaps even publishing a small ‘zine or chapbook. I’m not sure I actually want to read random submissions, or spend the time I’d need to commit as an editor, but I feel like there’s a real hole out there that needs to be filled.

Sigh. Decisions, decisions …