In the meantime I’ve got a short story coming out in an anthology called Florida Heat Wave edited by Michael Lister. The collection will be published by Tyrus Books in August. There are some big name crime writers in the collection including James O. Born, Jonathon King, Jim Pascoe, John Lutz, and Lisa Unger.

I’ll be sure to give out more details as I know them.

Where do you go for online short stories?

That is rock n’ roll.

Long live Hasil Adkins.

You never really understand the approach of death like you do in the moments before a thunderstorm. The clouds. The threat of something coming like a freight train. Something heavy and powerful that you can’t control.

That’s the good stuff.

If you’re on Twitter, I’ve joined. If you can explain why the hell anybody would be on Twitter that’d be great.

b.

I spent the morning thinking about a game my crazy-as-a-two-legged-fish cousin Walter taught me one Christmas when we were both too young to know better. He called it Stacking the Row, in hindsight a better name might have been How To Kill Yourself as a Dumbshit 8 Year Old.

With that introduction, I bet you’re in a hurry to play. Fair enough. Here’s what you’ll need.

(1) a short length of 2×4
(2) three piles of leaves
(3) three kids who feel invincible or are dumb enough to pretend. The roles are Swinger, Checker, Jumper.

It goes like this.

Wait until dark. Build three piles of leaves. One kid crawls into a pile with the 2×4 (Swinger). The other two kids have their backs to the piles. After thirty seconds the Checker verifies that the Jumper has no idea which pile the Swinger is in. The Jumper then runs toward a pile of leaves of his choosing and either (a) successfully jumps over it, or if he picks the wrong pile, (b) gets clubbed with a 2×4 in mid-jump. If he clears the pile without getting hit, he switches positions with the Checker. If neither boy gets hit, the process happens again. If one of the boys gets hit, they become the new Swinger.

I swear to God it’s a miracle that any of us are still alive.

I don’t have cause to talk to Walter any more, last I knew he was selling cars in Modesto, CA. My mother tells me that he took up with a woman who already had a dozen kids (an exageration, but she already had a Brady Bunch of her own). I sometimes wonder if that crazy sonofabitch passed that game on to the kids.

Here’s to you Walter, you crazy sonofabitch–Merry Christmas.

For those of you who want a little taste, here’s the first paragraph:

When Mikey’s old man got back from Vietnam he spent the first week hanging around the meat plant looking for work, drinking in the Oscar Mayer parking lot, and then once he was hired, screwing the lady who had kinda/sorta waited for him while he’d been shooting motherfuckers in southeast Asia.