subtropic topics

I entered my story, "El Dorado," in the Chizine 14th Annual Short Story contest... and I got an Honorable Mention!

They're a pro market, so I'm very psyched about it. Still no immediate plans to quit my day job, however. (Damn it!)

My violent pulp/horror short story, "The Lizard Pit," is available at Well Told Tales for download or just click and listen.

"A relationship between a low-life funeral director and a malevolent spirit turns messy … very, very messy.

"Explicit language, violence and sexuality."

http://welltoldtales.com/category/podcast/

It's absolutely free.

Hey campers, time for my semiannual post.

I hope that anyone still on my friends list is doing well. I may drift back into posting here again, don't hold your breath, though.

Some changes in the subtropics, but we're doing fine:
- my father-in-law died from colon cancer. RIP, Big Jim.
- Mrs. Sub was a victim of the mortgage meltdown and her company closed. Plenty of silver lining; she's digging the stay-at-home mom thing and is in low stress mode.
- my parents are actually living in the same house together, and it seems to be working out. These things take time (67 years of marriage, in this case.)

Now, about ME! I've started a new blog that's (supposed to be) centered around writing. I recently began using a pseudonym and decided to let this rather odd person (he's not like me at all, oh noooo...) be the man behind the words.

Why the pseudonym? Most of my stories are pretty damned weird, and I imagined the parents of one of my son's friends doing google-checks on anyone that might associate with their little darlings. Finding that the father of your kid's friend writes violent, freakazoid pulp fiction stories might not be such a good thing. I've let junior read some of my stories... he knows all the basic bad words already, and at 11 he's showing some creativity in usage himself. Not surprising, since (begin beaming) he aced -- 100% -- the writing section of the fifth grade FCAT and reads at the high school level. (End beaming)

Here's the blog: Horace James: The Web Presence ("another nutjob writes about Florida.")

Check it out!

One of my previously published stories, "The Lizard Pit," will be available as a podcast on Well Told Tales. Check it out, it's scheduled for July. They have some quality stories.

See ya on the midway, pilgrims.

See? I told you I was going to post more.

This is perhaps the best news story ever. I just couldn't keep it in.

Assuming it may disappear off the Miami Herald servers after a few days, I've pasted the text behind the cut.( Read more... )

This story has everything you'd want in a Florida news story: sex with a goat, an SGR (serial goat rapist,) the death of beloved family pet (pregnant, no less,) DNA analysis (CSI Willowes, report to Animal Services. Bring rape kit.) clueless state officials and best of all, that specialty of Florida Free Enterprise: t-shirts!

Baaaa means No!

Good thing they're making this illegal. It's not fair that two male Floridians can't get married, but anyone can fuck livestock with impunity.

Happy new year, and feliz a˜o, citizens.

I plan on posting more. Really. At least until I forget all about it.

In honor of the new leaf I've flipped over, I got rid of the colorful page theme and the fucking mangoes and have a simple white on black thing going. Nothing against mangoes, there's no fruit I'd rather have a consensual sexual relationship with, but it's time to move on.

Life updates. Some good, some not so:

1. writing's going well. Have been published three times, paid twice, for short stories. See previous entries for links. Have gotten some very positive feedback on my story, "The Lizard Pit," which was published in the first issue of Necrotic Tissue. Go to their site and download the .pdf. Registration is free, and the quality of artwork was a real surprise. Seriously, check it out. Unless you're scared.

2. writing's not going well. My attention span seems to be down to about 12 seconds. I have several million uncompleted stories - very frustrating. Maybe I should get a ritalin prescription.

3. weird year, familywise. My parents are living together after over three years. It's a long strange tale, yet somehow I'm feeling good about the situation. At least I can keep track of them when they're under one roof, and the costs are lower.

4. my in-laws are not doing as well, coping with Alzheimer's and other issues, including the hospitalization of Granddad for what we've just found out is cancer. Not a good situation, but we're hoping for the best.

5. must face facts that my kid is, well, a very smart kid. At ten, he reads at the eleventh grade level, and has tested off the scale on math and everything else. He's kind, affectionate and very, very quirky. A delightful challenge.

6. Work sucks, but it's survivable. I keep my head down and trudge forward.

7. Life in South Florida remains weird as ever. Thank the lord for that, it's a continual inspiration. (As my next post will illustrate... stay tuned.)

I seem to be on a roll.

(Actually, I taste better with butter on a croissant, but whatever...)

Just in time for the Holiday Season, you can read my story, The Sawing of the Yule Log, in the December issue of Red Pulp Underground. I promise you'll never think of Santa in quite the same way again. I can't believe anybody would actually publish this puppy. Apparently, it got the editor into the holiday spirit(s); he said, "James, keep writing. You're enough to make me want to drink, alot. hehe.. thank you..."

Another story of mine, "The Lizard Pit," was accepted for the inaugural issue of Necrotic Tissue, it's a new ezine dedicated to scary stuff, so apparently I didn't overpower the scary parts with the bizarro goofy parts. The story won't be up until next month, I'll email you a copy if you're interested. It's set in the Everglades and involves a horny third-rate undertaker, a violence-loving patch of fog and one hollow-point bullet.

Tropical storm Noel is boppin' around in the subtropics and is currently heading in our general direction. It's expected to veer east and not make landfall and, really, be rather well-behaved for a tropical system, for which I highly commend it. However, at about 7:30 EDT our power went out for about an hour.

No big deal... after Andrew we were down for three weeks. But what's interesting is that our street is apparently the electrical Great Divide of Dade county. Our side lost power, across the street did not. In previous storms, it's been a mixed bag. We lost power for five days after Wilma, but not after Katrina; for the Other Side it was the opposite.

You can tell we have a good neighborhood, because each time there were extension cords stretched across the street, neighbors sharing the grid.

Joke:

A man goes to the doctor. The doctor says, "I got bad news for you. You've got cancer, and you've got Alzheimer's."

The says, "Wow, thank God I don't have cancer."

(from a Gilbert Gottfried disk, "Dirty Jokes." Also contains a twenty-minute kick-ass version of "The Aristocrats.")

Happiness is sitting on the front edge of three-day weekend.

Taking the day off, the kid's got it off anyway so the adults decided to join in. No major plans! The best kind of weekend, just do what happens, maybe ride the bikes, watch a movie, take out a kayak, sleep, read, eat, putter around the house.

Work goes on, it sucks, it's pointless, it's stupid, but I need the money. But oh, man... if the place closed it's doors tomorrow, I would experience a blast of euphoria that wouldn't outweigh the upcoming angst of being out of work, but damn... in the end, it'd be like drugs, a hell of a rush and then you crash.

This a widget thingy that links to a site called "EditRed" where I have some of my stories up. A lot of my flash fiction stories are public, as is a new short story I put up, "El Dorado." Other stuff is 'reader' status, but you can join for free if you're interested. Like other writing-type sites, there's a lot of really crappy writing (some of it mine) and some really good writing. Worth checking out.

Okay, here's that widget:



(Did it work?)

((edit - I changed it to a regular link.)

Looks like I finally found someone with bad enough taste to publish one of my stories.

There's an outfit called Subatomic Books that liked my story, "That Smell," enough to pay me $.01 per word. Guess I can quit my day job now, this puppy's gonna net me a cool $18.93.

They're putting out an anthology of stories that combine the worlds of rock & roll and speculative fiction. Which I think is what we used to call sci-fi or horror or something, still not clear on the concept.

It's rock & roll ghost story involving high-speed death, plane crashes, open-skull brain injuries, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Here's the first couple paras:

Squinting through a massive brainfuck of a headache, Dale Barrett stared down at the remains of his car. Despite drinking a fifth of Jack Daniels and eating a couple of crude tablets his buddy Dean called "pink fuckers," he was no longer buzzed in the least.
The back of his throat twitched at the acrid smell of automotive death - fumes of gasoline, antifreeze and hot lubricants oozing out onto the asphalt. His pride and joy – his 1974 Camaro SS – was wedged like a doorstop under the back-end of an an old tanker truck, now raised off its dual tandem wheels. The truck was otherwise undamaged. Even the chrome-plated girls on the truck’s mudflaps were unscathed and maintained their bare-breasted windswept poise.

It's one of those weird internet business models where they make money by giving it away. Right. Supposedly, you buy if you like it, so you're free to read the story from their website, assuming they're still in business by then. If you'd like to see the entire mess email me and I'll send it over. Great Halloween story for the kiddies.

Although I appreciate a good perception-altering poem, I'm not a poet.

One of the few books of poetry in my collection is a book of total and complete literary awesomeness, a green-covered book I picked up many years ago for two dollars - a close out.

It's an exhaustive collection called The Limerick, edited by G. Legman. The binding is falling apart and the pages are falling out of it, but I carefully pry it open once in a while for a laugh.

These are the most obscene limericks I've ever sniggered over, and some are works of staggering... limerickiness. "1700 examples with notes, variants and index." Wowzers.  Mr. Legman clearly spent a lot of time on this work, and claims that "the bawdy limerick has held its place ... for a century, as the chosen vehicle of cultivated, if unrepressed, sexual humor in the English language."

Furthermore, sez Legman, "the limerick is, and was originally, an indecent verse-form. The "clean" sort of limerick is an obvious palliation, its content insipid, it rhyming artificially ingenuous, its whole pervaded with a frustrated nonsense ... has never been of the slightest interest to anyone."

At first I thought he was talking about one of my short stories. But really, I can't say I disagree, G-rated limericks are lame, and he's certainly backed up his claim with some classics. The book is conveniently organized by subject, including:
Organs
Strange Intercourse
Oral Irregularity
Abuses of Clergy
Excrement
Gourmands
Virginity
Diseases
Losses
Weak Sisters
Chamber of Horrors

... and so on.

For today's lesson, I have prepared a selection from the "Zoophily" section for your reading enjoyment.

A habit obscene and bizarre
Has taken ahold of papa:
    He brings home young camels
    And other odd mammals
And gives them a go at mama

Okay, maybe 'bizarre' and 'papa' only rhyme in Boston, but really - that's the kind of family values I'd like to see of in this country.

I'll leave you with this two-parter:

A spinster in Kalamazoo
Once strolled in the dark by the zoo
    She was seized by the nape
    And raped by an ape
And she murmured, "A wonderful screw."

And she added, "You're rough, yes, and hairy,
But I hope - yes I do - that I marry
    A man with a prick
    Half as stiff and as thick
As the kind that you zoo-keepers carry."

This concludes our adventures in poetry for this evening. Go home, but watch out for those zoo-keepers.