Apple-Obsessed Author Fella

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Chuck Under Microscope

Transmissions From Baby-Town: “Conversations With The Dictator”

I say to the baby, “Ooooh.”

He says, “Ooooaaaaaaaooooo.”

I say to him, “Goo.”

He says “a-goo” right back. Then adds another “aaaaaooooaoooo” for good measure.

“Tell me what you want, buddy,” I’ll ask.

“Ook,” he responds.

“Ook?”

“Oak.”

“Like, an oak tree? You want an… oak tree? An acorn?”

“A-goo-awooooo-ohhhhh.”

I am impressed. “Wow, dude, that’s like, a whole sentence.”

Then he makes a pterodactyl-like shriek. Or one of his coyote yips.

And he gets this big smile.

And then no matter what I say next, he starts to cry.

* * *

I’m pretty sure that whoever made babies — like, not this baby, because I know who made this baby, but rather, all babies, the “baby prototype” — designed them with systems that really don’t function right at the outset. It’d be like buying a car whose tires are half-flat and whose radio only gets staticky transmissions, but the more you drive it, the more functional the vehicle becomes.

Because this baby just doesn’t work right. The little sphincter flap between his stomach and throat — we’ll just call it his “abdominal butthole” — has about as much muscular tension as a piece of lukewarm tuna sashimi, and that’s why he spits up. His arms flail. His legs kick.

And the wires are crossed in his brain. Whatever portion of his “baby cortex” is given over to emotion is as yet just a tangle of wires that nobody’s sorted out, yet. So, when he gets close to happiness, I think it also means he’s just next door to sadness, too. One wrong move and the frequency switches. From big gummy, drooly smile to shrieking baby hell. From glee to grief in a moment’s turn.

* * *

Then again, maybe he’s just frustrated.

Maybe he’s trying to tell us something and here we think we’re “communicating” but really, we’re just parroting his garbled baby babble back at him. Meanwhile, he has intent and desire, and we just have goofy noises to which we hope he responds. He’s trying to say, “Dad, I would like very much for you to open your mouth so that I may reach in and grab hold of your lower lip. Then I would like some time in the swing where you play the shrieking tinny jungle noises that, conveniently, sounds like the rush of blood in the womb. Finally, when my time there is complete, I demand the boob. The boob, sir. The boob.”

And meanwhile we’re just like GABBA GOOBA GOO WOO OHH DADA MAMA.

I mean, shit, I’d get sad, too.

* * *

Sometimes he doesn’t really cry.

He yells.

No pouty lip. No squinty-I-would-weep-if-I-had-functioning-tear-ducts eyes. No simpering whimper.

Only yelling.

This is especially true when we sometimes stand him up. Because, trust me, he likes to stand now. And he’s just past two months. He holds his neck out real long and tall and his eyes bug out and his mouth opens and Sweet Crispy Christ On A Crumbling Crouton he just starts yelling. “Ahhh! AHHHHHH. Ahhhhahahhhhh.” Sometimes it looks like he’s enjoying it. Standing there. Broadcasting his insane infant rage to the world.

* * *

He said “Da” the other day.

Not Daddy, not Dada, but rather, Da.

Clear as the pealing of a bell.

I know it was just an accident of the lips, a clumsy positioning of his gooey slug tongue against the roof of his mouth as he was about to say “Oooh” or “A-goo” or “AHHHHH,” or maybe he was just trying to say “yes” in Russian, as in, “Yes, my KGB handler, I will assassinate these two pink apes — but I will not kill their bodies, no, instead I will kill their souls,” but there it was.

“Da.”

To say it melted my heart like a spoonful of duck fat on a hot skillet is underselling it.

The heart is still warm, runny, goopy over that.

“Da.”

* * *

He talks to the ceiling fan. He actually finds the ceiling fan in all rooms quite fascinating. Moreso if it’s moving, but even if not, fuck it, he’s still up for the chat. He sleeps in the bed with us (a super-big “no-no” or a giant honking “oh it’s a must” depending on who you listen to), and sometimes at night we will wake up from a rare moment of sleep to find him laying on his back, eyes wide, fists pumping, legs kicking.

And talking to the ceiling fan like it’s his best buddy in the whole wide world.

If only I knew what they were talking about.

* * *

“Da.”

Sorry, I had to say it again.

“Da.”

I mean, it’s stuff like that which prevents me from gently depositing him in an unlocked car at Target with a couple of $20’s tucked in his diaper and a note that says, “PRO-TIP: He likes to talk to ceiling fans.”

* * *

The other day he was in his swing, dead asleep in a rare moment of somnolence, when suddenly he started making these weird yips and peeps — then his eyes opened halfway and I could see them rolling back in his head. And I think, holy shit, he’s choking, and I tell the wife because she’s closer and she does this fantastic “slide into homebase” move where she gets carpet-burn on her knees and she rescues the baby from…

Well, from a dream, best as we can tell. No choking. I mean, what the fuck would he be choking on? A suddenly solidified glob of oxygen? Did one of my car keys accidentally fly down his throat?

No, we just interrupted his dream.

He looked at us with his wide-eyed “What The Fuck?” face.

We’re starting to see that face a lot.

* * *

I gotta ask, though, what the hell is he dreaming about? He’s got all of two months under his belt. Is he dreaming of full diapers flying at his head? Of a boob with endless milk floating before him?

* * *

He talks to the TV, too. I am both disturbed and pleased by how easily the TV placates him. No, we don’t intend that to be a habit, nor do we plan on even letting him watch much television, but at this stage, I would do anything to extricate him from his own worst moods. If it took me placing him in the lap of a starving panda bear covered in bamboo, I just might do it.

Regardless, the other night Craig Ferguson was on the tube — not the talk show, but rather, one of his comedy specials on some channel I didn’t know we had called “Epix” — and B-Dub clearly believed he was holding some comedy palaver, some Scottish tete-a-tete, with Mister Ferguson. The child was having a lovely time, so I dared not interrupt.

He will also talk to Jon Stewart when given the chance.

I guess he likes comedians.

Which means he is truly my son.

* * *

The baby tries to laugh. Tries, but mostly fails. We’ve yet to earn a proper laugh. Which is perhaps his way of telling us we’ve yet to do anything properly funny. Someone — I believe it must have been Twitter’s own “TheRussian” — said that baby smiles and baby laughs are like crack. You’ll do anything for the next fix.

This is truer than I care to admit.

* * *

He also talks with the boob in his mouth. He stares at his mother while breasfeeding and offers an “mmmph” or an “ooopppph.” It’s not a microphone, kid. I mean, c’mon.

Shit, it’s cute, though.

* * *

We all packed up our shit and went to Target the other day. The child did pretty well — really, taking him anywhere is like a game of Russian Roulette as you never know when the cranky bullet is in the baby’s chamber — but toward the end he started getting “fussy.”

(That’s always the word, isn’t it? “Oh, he’s fussy.” No, he’s cranky. Or pissy. Or acting like King Dickhead. Fussy is someone who can’t decide on what thread to use to sew a button onto a ladies’ frock coat. What my baby does is nothing short of doom-bringing, spit-flinging apoplexy.)

At the time of said, ahem, fussiness, we had just pulled into one of Target’s baby-gear aisles.

The toy aisle, specifically.

And so we made a desperate attempt — like many failed attempts before — to appease him with a toy plucked off the shelf.

It worked.

First, an elephant who sang songs (and cricket chirps for some odd reason) when a cord is pulled.

Second, a ball composed of plastic webbing with another smaller ball inside.

Further, at home we discovered that B-Dub now has a new best friend to replace the ceiling fan: a glowworm. Er, not a real glowworm, but rather, one of those plastic-headed oddballs whose face lights up and who sings songs when you depress his shattered breastbone. B-Dub loves this creature. He is rapt. He grabs at it. He holds its hand. He talks to it.

The boy is beginning to interact with the world.

* * *

And that’s really what this is about. He’s interacting. His brain is changing. His mind is emerging.

He’s growing up, one little thing at a time. Whether it’s how he now interacts with his own feet or how he tries to chew his tongue like it’s a piece of gum, he’s starting to become more than he was, more than just the, well, weird little glowworm he’d been for these last two months. Smiling and laughing and babbling and yelling. Not just at nothing, but at the world.

Talking to us. Yammering at the ceiling fan. Reaching for the glowworm.

It’s a weird and wonderful place. I know, I know. They grow up so fast. I should hold tight to the days lest they slip away. But the old days of the early baby are limited in their excitement — he’s not really a person at that point but rather, an adorable grub of some kind with limited understanding. Can’t talk. Can’t grab. Can’t even really see you. But now he sees. Now he speaks. Now he interacts.

And he then becomes interactive. Like a game or a toy, like the elephant whose tail is pulled so that he plays music. He’s more than that, of course, I only mean that suddenly we have both stimulus and response.

You can start to see tiny synaptic flashes of the person he’s going to become.

I only hope that by the time he’s 20 he stops that “standing up and yelling at people with bugged-out-eyes” thing. Because that’s probably going to get him kicked out public places.

Of course, again that would mean he’s truly my son.

Penmonkey Incitement: T-Shirt, Unlocked

And, bam.

The CERTIFIED PENMONKEY t-shirt is unlocked now that we’ve reached the “100” mark for the PENMONKEY REEDUC… er, INCITEMENT PROGRAM.

(We’re now at a total of 430 sold.)

What that means is, this t-shirt —

— will be sent to one lucky COAFPM procurer.

That PENMONKEY will be —

*is delivered an envelope by a whirring Doom-Bot*

Holly West!

Woo! *confetti, applause, buzzsaws*

And, because we hit the 100 mark, that also means: postcard.

That postcard goes to —

*drum roll using the skulls of my foes as drums, Ewok-style*

Lynda Kachurek!

If the both of you could e-mail me to confirm your mailing addresses, that would be super-sweet.

Remember: at certain “incitement procurement targets,” awesome things (like cybernetic Dobermans) are released. If you need a reminder, the releases go according to this handy-dandy chart:

For every 50 sales, a postcard.

For every 100 sales, a t-shirt.

For every 200 sales, a copy-edit of your work (5000 words or 50 script pages).

For every 500 sales, a brand new Kindle.

Also, please note that if you haven’t already done so, you need to send me proof of your purchase to terribleminds [at] gmail [dot] com, so the Doom-Bots know to count you in subsequent incitement draws.

Though, if you bought COAFPM as PDF, you do not need to send it to me. I’ve got it covered.

Other Updatery-Doo

If you’re so inclined to know how all the e-books are doing, stick around.

COAFPM (now with 12 great reviews at Amazon, and always seeking more) is doing very well. That $4.99 price point is a strong one. It allows me to see some bill-paying money come in without necessitating epic sales numbers — further, it allows me to do cool contests like the incitement program.

You can read a nice review of COAFPM here.

250 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WRITING actually has the opposite going for it — I’ve already sold 350 copies in four days (compare that to the 430 sold for COAFPM over two months), but of course at $0.99 you only get 30% opposed to the 70% with slightly higher prices. But that’s okay. This book is meant to whet people’s appetites and force them to grow addicted to my “Chimp-on-PCP” style of writing and further increase in them a desire to don red robes and drink my hypnotic Flavor-Aid. (Remember, everybody: Reverend Jim Jones did not use Kool-Aid. Is it sick that I envision a wife trying to force feed her husband a cup of cyanide-laced Kool-Aid and he’s like “No — no!” and then the Kool-Aid Man comes cannonballing through the tent-flap and he’s all like “OH YEAAAAHH”…?)

Seems like self-published authors are best served by a diversity of product and price point.

I might just be making that up, though. Don’t quote me on it. You do what you like.

IRREGULAR CREATURES, my short story collection, is continuing its “slow and steady wins the race” approach. Getting near 750 sales, so I’m pretty happy about that. I’m even happier about the incredible reviews over at Amazon (38 of ’em so far, all surprisingly kind).

You can find a nice review of IC over at JD Rhodes’ blog.

And I think that’s all, folks.

If you got questions, comments, complaints, prayer requests, or wedding proposals, now’s the time.

Transmissions From Baby-Town: “Turning Corners”

Let me be your birth control, those without kids: the first six weeks of raising a Tiny Human provide a lesson in small miseries. You have not slept. The pieces of your life — the schedule that holds your sanity together — has been hammered apart like so much peanut brittle and, for added measure, is then thrown into Cookie Monster’s crushing maw to finish the job. You feel like a tooth cracked apart, the raw nerve exposed. Everything feels like the blood test from THE THING: a hot wire stuck in a petri dish of blood, then pop, then monsters, then something has to die screeching in fire.

That thing that’s dying in a fire is your old life.

The old ways are gone.

The old roads are shut.

It is the dawn of a new day.

These are the poo-dimmed tides.

* * *

Raising a baby might as well qualify you for credits in a class called FECAL MANAGEMENT 101. That’s what you’re doing a lot of the time: just managing poop, both literally and figuratively. Very early the poo is nasty. You could shingle a roof or fill potholes with the black tarry meconium. Then it gets a little better. Poop from pure breast-milk is nutty, popcorny, not entirely unpleasant. (I won’t lie. It made me hungry.) But soon as a drop of formula touches that kid’s lips it’s like his gut flora turn into teenagers — the innocence of his bowels is lost, and now his intestinal bacteria are all a bunch of hooligans hanging out under lampposts, smoking noxious cigarettes.

Give the kid formula to supplement and his shit starts smelling like shit.

And the wee one blows ass like a champion. You could push a sailboat with the wind that comes out of his bediapered hindquarters. And kill flowers with the smell.

* * *

Everything was going fine down below, but then suddenly: the specter of constipation.

B-Dub hadn’t gone for… I think it was four days? I know how I feel if I don’t, ahem, take out the biological garbage once a day, so there we are, starting to worry. We think, ye gods, he’s probably swelling up with poop. One day he’ll be like Violet Beauregarde in the Wonka Factory, blowing up like a blimp — except instead of purple, he’ll be the color of caramel sauce. Then he’ll rupture. Pbbt.

So we call the doctor and the nurse says, “Give him an infant suppository,” except she doesn’t tell us that you don’t buy infant suppositories, you buy larger suppositories then cut them up into quarter sticks. And nobody else tells us this either, so we run around like assholes for the evening until finally we come upon the truth and my Mother-in-Law thankfully shows up with what we need.

Giving a suppository to a wiggly infant is like trying to punch a moon bounce — your intended attack always returns. It calls to mind giving a pill to our terrier: the medicine ever comes back into your hand.

Finally it worked. The child purged. And what came out was almost disappointing: no epic flush, no apocalyptic explosion, no crap tsunami. It was just… a normal baby bowel movement. And it wasn’t even constipation, technically. Not like he was pooping little ball bearings or anything.

* * *

Four more days, same problem.

No poop.

Moderate discomfort.

Awesome.

You look online — i.e. gaze into the doom-eye of the mad oracle — and you find that, as it turns out, Every Baby Is A Different Baby. Some kids poop five times a day. Some kids poop once every five days. Some are efficient little processors and don’t need to go all that often — after all, it’s not like they’re eating cheesesteaks and bran cereal every couple hours. They’re on a liquid diet. Most of that can be peed out.

Even still, everybody wants to make you feel like a shitheel because your baby isn’t pooping. Like it’s our fault. “Oh, am I not supposed to store my wine cork collection in his butthole? Oops! Mea culpa.”

The other problem is, apparently you can, Pavlov-style, train your child to poop only with suppositories accidentally. Instead of a dinner bell ringing meaning food, it’s the rectal plunging of a glycerin tab to signal unconsciously that, hey, it’s totally time to take a crap now, thanks.

It’s times like this you suddenly realize, oh my god, this is our lives. We can barely make the time to go to the bathroom ourselves but here we are, obsessing over the effluence of our child.

* * *

For the record, it was just the formula. We cut back and moved him from Enfamil Gentlease to Similac and, ta-da, no more constipation. Stupid razzafrazza formula. Oh, and thank you, doctor, for not recommending this course of action and making sure we figured it out all by our lonesome.

Did I mention we need a new doctor?

* * *

I was eating cottage cheese the other day, holding B-Dub, when he spit up. And I looked at what came out of his mouth, and I looked down at the cottage cheese I was eating, and I was struck by the notion that the cottage cheese companies (aka “Big Dairy”) were probably just repackaging Baby Puke and selling it to us as a snack. I mean, I kept eating it. Whaddya gonna do?

* * *

Our standards for cleanliness have dropped. We’re basically something out of a National Geographic special these days, like, we’re people from one of those tribes only recently discovered. The constant nursing. The origami boulders of spit-up paper towels everywhere. The fact that when I put on a shirt, I examine it not to see if there are any stains but rather, how bad the stains happen to be before I throw it on.

And I inevitably wear it. Because, who’s got time for laundry?

We’ve gone back to some primal state.

* * *

I wear earplugs now when we bathe him. His cries don’t really bother me, but there’s this special horrific alignment when we get him in the echo chamber of the bathroom — his shrieks of horror turn into this pandemonious cacophony, a sound not unlike all of the souls of the damned being thrust into a cauldron of bubbling pitch. For some reason, this sound doesn’t bother my wife as much.

But me? It raises my blood pressure, makes my ears ring, tenses my shoulders into hard bundles.

Only then. Only during bathing.

You’d think he’d like it.

“Oh, hey, I’m being dipped in a gently warm bath and being softly sponged by a beautiful woman whose boobs I see frequently. I think I’ll take a special moment to scream as if I’m being covered by a thousand papercuts and washed in a tub full of Sea Breeze and rattlesnake venom. Everybody good with that? Super.”

* * *

The other day, two fawns played on our lawn while the mother stood off to the side, chewing on some leaves. I wanted to ask her, “Do your babies explosively poop up their backs?”

Nobody talks about that milestone, do they?

First smile.

First word.

First breach of the fecal containment unit.

I almost wish I could attain the “up the back blow-out.” Just to see if I could.

* * *

He won’t sleep in his bassinet anymore. Only sleeps on his mother. Which means she has to rig up this whole thing so he stays laying across the Boppy at night. Which means she basically is developing some kind of Mommy-fed scoliosis, some joint-cracking arthritis at a young age, some mad calcification of her bones. All to support the Little Pink Dictator that rules our life.

Once, I was ruled by an entirely different Little Pink Dictator.

But he’s staying quiet these days. As well he should be. I won’t tolerate any nonsense from him because it’s his fault we’re in this mess. Don’t think I’m not savvy to your games, you little cock-waffle.

* * *

You start to have serious conversations. Conversations that can only happen when you haven’t slept and the baby is inconsolable and the air smells of baby powder and burned nerves.

You start to say, “Maybe we just run away. Hawaii, right? Still in the country. No need for a passport. We live on the beach. Leave the baby here with a note. Our parents will handle it. Or the neighbors. Or whatever homeless person moves into our domicile when we vacate. Is there a rescue shelter for babies? Maybe we can just take him there. I mean, pssh, pfft, we’ll leave some money. For… toys and… baby things. It’ll be fine. Let’s just go. It’s the dark of night. We can just go. We can just leave. Hurry before he notices!”

But he always notices. Because he’s good like that.

* * *

Thing is, it all sounds horrible.

And anybody gazing in from the outside as you are now, anybody who doesn’t have kids, probably thinks, man, that sounds awful. And at times, it is. Even still, you get your moments.

Better yet, around the six week mark we turned a corner. He stopped being Herr Doktor Pissypants all day. He’s alert, now. He smiles when we smile. He babbles at us. He says A-Goo and Ook and he yips like a coyote and howls like a wolf and he laughs when you mess with him. Moreover, not only is he changing, but we’re changing, too. We’re figuring stuff out. We know about gripe water. I know about the Magical Daddy Football Hold. I know that if you take him outside he becomes rapt by all that he sees.

We know to just listen.

The other night we had him laying (not sleeping) next to the bed and he was just… yammering away at whatever ghosts and bugs live in our house. Laughing and yelling and oohing and aahing. And it’s sweet.

We think he’s advanced, of course. Every parent thinks their kid is advanced. They’re like, “OMG LOOK AT THE WAY HE SPIT UP ARE THOSE THE FIBONACCI NUMBERS.” But the way he tracks objects and smiles and says consonants and kicks his legs and tries to push off and stand up and memorizes the stories of Mark Twain (okay, I might be lying about that last part) makes us sure he’s going to be a smart kid. Which is probably more trouble than we’re prepared for, but oh well, so it goes.

We think he’s cute, too. Every parent thinks they’re kid is cute.

But look at that face.

Look at it.

I SAID LOOK AT IT GODDAMNIT — see this gun? Yeah.

Like I said. Cute. Objectively. Shut up.

Point being —

There it goes, that corner we just turned.

We smile and he smiles. I ask him to tell me a story and he burbles and coos. And it all starts to make a weird kind of sense. It all comes together and says, this is why you’re here, this is why you do things, this is why I write and why my wife gets scoliosis and why we work and love and live, and it’s all for him, all for the ever-adorable and totally-advanced Wriggly Napoleon who governs our lives.

Every day, it seems, is a new corner to turn.

Which is terrifying and beautiful in one weird bundle.

* * *

(Required continued reading: “Sailing Over A Year,” and “Dinosaur Vs. Parents,” both by Lauren Beukes, both about her experiences as a parent during the first two years. In short: awesome.)

I Am The Monkey On The Back Of An Angry Robot

*whistles innocently*

Angry Robot Books is going to publish my novel, BLACKBIRDS.

I’ll let that sink in.

They’re also going to publish its followup, the tentatively titled: MOCKINGBIRD.

I’ll let that sink in, too.

That sound? The one you hear? Not just in your ear, but in the deep squishy pockets of your mind?

Yeah. That’s me. Screaming with mirth. Cackling like mad. Singing some forbidden hymn to whatever ancient gods decorated my brow with their blessed seed and let fortune favor a wee bearded penmonkey such as myself. I’m dancing. I’m grinning.

I’m lacquering my lederhosen.

BLACKBIRDS has been Out There for a good while now. It’s been ping-ponging from editor to editor. It’s been collecting lovely rejection after lovely rejection, all of them hinting that it deserves to find a home and will some day, but over time, with every month falling off the calendar you start to feel like, “Oh, ohhh, fuck, it’s not going to happen, is it? I’m either going to have to drop it in a box somewhere or self-pub it.”

So, to be picked up by Angry Robot — publisher of some, I mean, c’mon, truly astounding writers? Lauren Beukes? Matt Forbeck? Mike Shevdon? And they’ve also picked up fellow DMLA-ers Adam Christopher and Chris F. Holm? I’m over the moon to be lumped in with that level of talent. My goal is simply not to poop up the place. Here’s a clue how much I love Angry Robot: every since they were made manifest in this plane of existence and began showing up in bookstores, I would constantly go over, pick up their books and say to whomever was standing nearby (my wife, a stranger, a pet goat): “Holy shit, this looks awesome.” Every time. Great authors. Killer concepts. Incredible covers that look like nothing else on the shelves. Plus, they’re incredibly author-friendly, and how can you not love an ecosystem like that?

BLACKBIRDS features a character near and dear to my heart. A character whose struggles are fundamental and human but are reflected in a paranormal condition that exemplifies some far bigger, far weirder shit: fate versus free will, life versus death, what hair dye to choose, and so forth. Miriam Black — the protagonist of these books — is deeply troubled, very angry, and a total pill. But she’s funny, too, and foul-mouthed as anything. It’s great, because I actually care about her. One of my earliest note files when I was conceiving this character was titled, quite simply, “Poor Miriam.” Because I felt awful for the cross I’d strapped to her back and forced her to bear. I had nothing but sympathy and guilt for what I was going to do to her.

(That cross, for the record, is the ability to see how and when someone will die just by touching them. Fate and death, ever-present with naught but the contact of skin on skin.)

Good times.

So, not only does Miriam get one book, but she gets what I hoped she always would: the chance to carry her misanthropic “spit-in-the-eye-of-fate” attitude into other adventures.

Thanks to those who have supported the book all this time. Thanks to Jason Blair and Matt Forbeck for suggesting Angry Robot as a home to begin with. Thanks to Stephen Susco, my screenwriting mentor, who helped me hammer the shit out of this story way back when. Thanks to my wife, who for some reason always seemed to believe in me. And thanks to my kick-ass rock-star of an agent, Stacia Decker, who rocket-launched this through the ionosphere.

And thanks to Angry Robot. Marc Gascoigne, Lee Harris. Gentlemen. Scholars. Biblionauts.

Look for BLACKBIRDS in April/May 2012.

And MOCKINGBIRD not long after.

In Other News…

COAFPM continues to sell very well. Been out for not-quite-one-month now, and it’s sold ~260 copies. Because of the slightly higher price point, it means I’m fast approaching what I’ve earned over four-to-five months with IRREGULAR CREATURES (but that collection has seen a boost since COAFPM‘s release, which is nice). Together the two have paid a couple mortgage payments, so I can’t say boo to that.

IRREGULAR CREATURES has 36 four- and five-star reviews at Amazon, which is incredible. Fills me with giddy bubbles. Or maybe that’s just gas. Even still, thanks all to have bought and loved the collection. Means a lot to me. I hope that more Cat-Bird will show up in the future.

COAFPM — well, I wouldn’t complain if it got some more reviews over there. It’s standing at three reviews at present, and would love to see more added if you’ve read it, enjoyed it, and have the time.

In related news: Andrew Jack interviews me over at his space.

DOUBLE DEAD is back from a first pass edit, and — holy shit! — it doesn’t suck. Looking forward to getting a second major copy-edit through. Jon Oliver and Jenni Hill at Solaris/Abaddon are incredible folks to work with, and I am very pleased that DD is in such excellent hands.

I’m nabbing some secret hush-hush work at my old stomping ground, White Wolf Game Studios. Developing something pretty cool for them which is all about [REDACTED].

Still bouncing my wibbly-wobbly baby-schedule in terms of writing. Some days the word count trickles. Other days, it floods. I was able to finish a new novel — codename: POPCORN — by churning through a 9,000 word writing day last Friday, so that was exciting.

Also planning a series of novellas to release over the course of the summer. Kind of crimey, I guess? High school? Not-quite-noir? Veronica Mars, but more violent? Something like that. Interested?

And that’s all she wrote, folks.

Thanks for reading.

EDIT: Today, Abaddon is also posting the first chapter of DOUBLE DEAD for those who care to read it.

#coburniscoming

Transmissions From Baby-Town: Love In The Time Of Diaper-Changing

Nobody tells you the truth. Every parent upends buckets of advice upon the new parent’s head, because, not for nothing, they’ve accumulated knowledge both good and bad that they feel is best to share. But what they never tell you as you’re building a crib or painting a nursery or buying a small desert island comprising a hundred boxes of Pampers Swaddlers is this:

“You’re building the walls of your own prison. And the baby, the baby is the warden. Oh, he’s a cherub-cheeked warden, all right. He’s cute. Chipmunk cheeks packing love and adorability the way real chipmunks store acorns. But don’t misunderstand. He’ll run you ragged. He’ll punish you when you least expect it. And you can’t predict it. Can’t understand it. Because what we got here… is a failure to communicate.”

* * *

The way this kid eats and destroys our sleep, he should be a goddamn Batman villain.

The Catnap Killer. Doctor Hypnos. Mister Dozer.

The Sinister Sandboy.

* * *

Seems right now he’s maybe going through a growth spurt. That’s what all the Internet forums say. Of course, all the Internet forums say we’re probably three days away from accidentally smothering our child with crib bumpers or improbably infecting him with some kind of Baby Smallpox. The Internet is rarely a place to find sanity, but even still: most concur that three weeks is the time of a growth spurt, but right now it just feels like the only thing that’s growing is the child’s propensity to be a tiny pink dictator.

(And remember, the root word of “dictator” is “dick.”)

Yesterday it’s like someone stuck a crank in his back and just kept on winding it.

Cranky, cranky, cranky.

Oh, the tears.

The screams.

The lobster-faced apoplexy.

He wants to eat. All the time. GIVE ME THE BOOB, tiny dictator cries. He pounds the teat the way a frothing professor pounds his lectern. He grabs for it with witch nails. He draws it close in his taloned grip.

You know he’s hungry. Because he’ll try to eat anything. He shark-bites his own fists. He’ll gum my thumb. He’ll even try to eat my beard. Which is not recommended in any of the baby books. Especially since I save food in my beard like a diligent hobo should.

It’s every hour. The storm of cluster feeding.

With each lightning strike, the baby descends once more to feed.

The lone piranha must eat enough for his whole concatenation.

* * *

We’re supplementing. With formula. Doctor’s orders. He wasn’t gaining enough weight, she said. I mean, he wasn’t some tiny peanut, either, some little kewpie doll. But of course he didn’t conform to somebody’s magical chart that says ALL BABIES ARE LIKE THIS ALWAYS FOREVER AND EVER. Those that don’t conform to the Chart of Truth must submit for re-education immediately. She scares us with the comment, “We don’t want him to have a failure to thrive.” A failure to thrive sounds like the next thing to, y’know, death. “This is our child: the limp weed that clings to life but never flourishes. Don’t hug him too closely. He may crumble like an over-baked cookie.”

With formula, he did gain weight and gain length. (And not all of it in his penis. BA-DUM-BUM. I’m here all week. Don’t forget to try the swordfish. And the vodka.)

Even still, after two weeks of gaining, the doc still wants us to supplement.

Then we wonder: maybe she’s a shill for the formula companies. She goes home and goes into her bedroom and rolls around on all that sweet-ass Similac money. Big Formula sends her kids to school.

You look online — remember: never a good idea — breastfeeding advocates will make it very clear that supplementing is a death sentence. That we can now expect our child to be a rubicund, languid fatty sitting on a throne made of Happy Meals, his body lubricated by the grease of French Fries, his toddler diabetes running rampant through him like a wildfire. I’m surprised nobody’s linked it to autism yet. That’s another fun one. In the baby world, everything causes autism. Mercury. HFCS. Plastic toys. Chinese nipples. Funny looks from Mom. Dog hair. Oaken cribs. Rain on Tuesdays.

So, we straddle worlds between breast milk and formula.

Pariahs to both.

* * *

Formula makes him gassy. Where before his poop smelled like buttered popcorn drizzled with caramel (no, really), now it smells more like, well, poop. He’s gassy like an old man is gassy. After eating Brussel sprouts. And his own poop. I don’t even know how the tiny human can be this gassy. I couldn’t let that much air out of a balloon. Formula helps to defeat a child’s protective defense. A baby’s breast-fed effluence smells pleasant so we don’t decide, “You know what? This kid stinks, I’m going to go throw him in a river somewhere.” Formula removes that protection. It’s good we don’t have a river nearby.

* * *

I kid, of course. I would never throw my child in a river.

I would put him in a box labeled FREE KITTENS.

Or maybe that’s not exotic enough.

FREE PANDA.

Much better.

* * *

Oh, wait — look! A website that suggests both formula and breastfeeding could cause autism.

*punches the Internet*

* * *

We are, like most parents, deeply concerned about SIDS. Everything is SIDS this, SIDS that. Everything “causes” SIDS. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. No crib bumpers. No toys. No crib sheet. If you don’t appease the beast with the ritual sleeping configuration, it shall steal into your home at the stroke of midnight and steal thine child’s breath, and it shall use the stolen breath as a perfume for his own shadowy daughters.

Or something.

Don’t let him sleep in bed. Don’t let him sleep in the car seat. Don’t let him sleep duct-taped to the ceiling. Don’t let him sleep in a lion’s mouth. (Well who else is going to clean the lion’s teeth?)

They say, no sleep positioners. Of course, our nurse tells us to feel free to prop him up with rolled up blankets — a no-no in SIDSlandia — and in propping him up we’re stopping him from rolling over and, y’know, contracting SIDS. So in attempting to defeat the demon we are simultaneously inviting the demon into our home. SIDS if you do. SIDS if you don’t.

Some people say that our baby shouldn’t be able to roll over yet.

They don’t know our baby. The kid is like a tumbling boulder chasing after Indiana Jones.

They say, well, then, swaddle him. Swaddle him up tight.

They still don’t know our baby. Our baby is fucking Houdini. He’s not supposed to be able to get his arms free? Fuck you, he can get his arms free. He flexes his body, wriggling and writhing, until finally one hand sneaks out the top like a worm popping out of an apple. And with one free it’s not long before the other is free, too — a pair of Devil’s hands undoing all our good work. And inviting the SIDS angel with a come-hither finger.

This is one time when the Internet actually helped lessen my fear. I decided to actually look up SIDS, and it’s not what everyone seems to think it is. It’s very rare. It’s a diagnosis of exclusion. It also necessitates that other factors be in play beyond merely, “Oh, shit, I let my baby sleep on his tummy and OH GOD THE SHADOW MAN CAME AT NIGHT AND STOLE HIS ESSENCE.”

I’m not saying you shouldn’t protect against it, but it feels like I’m shouting at the tides.

* * *

We have people over who want to see him, and nine times out of ten he’s in a coma when they get here. Sure. Fine. Nice. That’s when he sleeps. I say to them, he’s like the tigers at the zoo. You go to the zoo you want to see the tigers doing all kinds of bitchin’ tiger shit. Chasing goats. Eating Himalayan explorers. Playing with a massive ball of yarn. Watching funny cat videos on the Internet.

But when you get there, all they’re doing is sleeping on a rock.

B-Dub is like that. When you get here to the Baby Zoo, he’s gone. Oblivious to the world.

Dull as a saucer of cold milk.

* * *

Just moments ago, his reward for a long cluster feeding session was to throw up on his mother.

I suspect this will be a theme for the next 18 years.

“Thanks for the car keys, Dad. To pay you back I stole your Laphroaig Scotch. Dude, that stuff tastes like the burned pubes of a swamp hag. Also, I threw up in the glove compartment. See ya!” VROOOM.

* * *

I say all this but the reality is, it’s worth it. All the spit-up and screaming and arcs of golden urine and sleeplessness and madness. All of it does little to defeat his puckish smiles, his big eyes, his searching tiny fingers, his waggling monkey toes, his look he gets when he sleeps where he laughs like he’s remembering a joke he heard (“remember when I was coming out of the womb? yeah, good times”), his discovery of his feet, his coos and burbles, his gurgles and coyote yips, his funny faces, his Daddy look where he cocks one eyebrow and looks at you like you’ve lost your goddamn mind, his squirms and wiggles and flails.

All of it, the sheer measure of adorability.

Like a baby seal, we cannot club him.

* * *

“I said, what we have here is a failure to communic OH MY GOD YOU ARE SO CUTE I WANT TO PINCH YOUR CHEEKS AND PUT BUTTER ON THEM AND EAT THEM UP NOM NOM NOM.”

I guess we’re keeping him.

Blue Eggs From Bitch Chickens (Or, “Scenes From A Farmer’s Market”)

I fucking love the farmer’s market.

It’s not just that I’m some kind of food snob. It’s not just that I’d rather think local and eat local and support the little guy farmer over and above the aggro “big agra” executive. It’s not just that I like playing a game where I tally the number of Suburus, designer dogs, yuppies, hippies, old folks, and strollers.

It’s that sometimes, crazy shit happens at the farmer’s market. Maybe it’s something in the air. Maybe everybody’s goofy on rhubarb. No idea what it is, only that it is.

* * *

He’s the Honey Man, but also, the Egg Man.

(Coo-coo-ca-choo.)

The guy’s a ninja with his bees and bee-hives, and he’s got every type of honey you could imagine. Clover, wildflower, blueberry, knotweed. It’s the knotweed that’s most interesting and most complex: it’s thick and dark and tastes like scorched molasses (er, except, in a good way — it’s like the espresso of honeys). But he’s got the honeycomb and the bee pollen and all that shit.

But, as noted, he’s also got eggs.

His eggs are sublime. Farm eggs are like eggs pooped out of chicken-shaped angels. You get an egg from the grocery store, it’s fine, it’s suitable, it does the trick. But you don’t know real eggs until you’ve had one straight from a healthy itinerant chicken — the whites are whiter, the yolks are a sun-bright orange instead of a sad ochre, and overall the eggs just taste more… well, eggy. (This is the truest thing I can say regarding meat from healthy, well-bred livestock. It always tastes like the thing it already is, only moreso. Pork is porkier. Beef is beefier. And so on and so forth. It’s like the flavor volume goes to 11.)

Point is, the Honey Man, he also sells eggs, and this is why we dig him.

He’s a quirky dude, this Bee Guy. Ex-Marine. Ex-chemist. Built like an M1 tank. Teeth like a busted-ass jack-o-lantern. He frequently wears cut-off denim shorts so cut off they might as well be Daisy Dukes.

He’s a good guy, though. Quick with a story and a chat. Friendly as anything.

I went to the farmer’s market yesterday.

There, sitting at his booth is his girlfriend. Attractive. Maybe in her early 40s — and he’s in his 60s, I’d guess. She’s hay-blonde, and doing something that I thought blondes only did in books or movies: twirling her hair around her finger and staring blankly at nothing. I try talking to her, but she just calls for the Honey Man, and by “calls for” I mean, “lamely mumbles his name so he can’t hear her.”

Then I hear clucking. I look over and next to the table in the back is a big chicken cage where the Honey Man — acting as Egg Man — brought some chickens. The chickens begin to freak out. They’re chickens, after all, which pretty much means they’re dicks. Stupid dicks, at that. The fact you can lop a clucker’s head off and he’ll still live for days is a sign. Any creature whose only true need in this world is a barely-functioning brain-stem is not high on the intelligence list (though somehow Snooki still got a book deal).

See, the Egg Man, some the eggs he sells are blue. Not robin’s egg blue, but rather, a blue-gray hue — pretty, but you wouldn’t hang them from your ears or anything. Even still, the guy gets a lot of questions: “What kind of animal lays the blue egs?” as if he’s got a secret dodo farm off of the Turnpike. Thus he decided to bring in two of his hens since they’re a unique lot — the “Araucana” chicken.

Well, these two hens are, as noted, being dicks.

So, Egg Man storms over, grabs the cage with both hands, and gives it a violent shake.

CLANG CLANG CLANG.

Then he yells — loudly, in a farmer’s market full of sensitive yuppie-types and their delicate progeny —

“SHUT UP, YOU BITCH!”

And a chill filled the air.

Everyone paused. The bakery lady in the booth next had a look on her face like she just saw a circus geek bite the head off a poodle. People either stopped to stare or instead chose to hurry past.

It was awesome.

I don’t know if he was mad at the hair-twirling girlfriend and was yelling at her via her proxy, the exotic chicken. I don’t know if he just had some momentary PTSD. Maybe he’s just pissed off at chickens.

God knows we remember what happens when I got mad at a chicken.

Egg Man then took the Araucana out of the cage and brought over this gnarly-footed lion-maned chicken to coo and burble in his denim-clad lap. Then I bought my eggs, chatted for a while, and went on my way.

But I love that moment where he dropped — in effect — a turd in the otherwise serene punchbowl of the farmer’s market. Blue eggs from bitch chickens.

You don’t see that shit at the grocery store.