What do you think is happening in Lake Woebegone now that Garrison Keillor has packed it in and gone back to his home planet? I'd like to think that without Keillor's folksy wisdom to keep them in check, those above-average children are going to invent doomsday weapons and overthrow their strong mothers and good looking fathers, and Lake Woebegone will become something like Ender's Game meets Children of the Corn. 

That, or it'll be an epic showdown between technologically superior, heavily-armed above average children and hulking, nigh-unstoppable strong mothers, with the good-looking fathers as the damsel-in-distress figure threatened in the middle. Rugged, capable midwestern farmers in tight, dirty Levis and ripped flannels, their dairy-fed muscular torsos heaving as they try to get enough wind to continue screaming as their irradiated powerhouse of a wife rends steel and titanium asunder in an attempt to get inside the mechanized powersuit designed and worn by her misbehaving above-average eight year old. 

I suppose there were probably strong women and good looking men in Woebegone who weren't parents, but if I had to guess, they left town as soon as the first quiet, nerdy little boy with a polish surname and an irritating precocious affect came lumbering out of the garage in a fifteen foot tall ambulatory tank powered by extraterrestrial elements. I mean, I would. 


Been building the books nonstop the last week or so, and I think I'm finally ready to bust down an agent's door and hold them at squirrel-point until they agree to take over my book-building and publicity responsibilities. Jayzuz, I hate this shit. I mean, I don't hate it totally, but I definitely want to get rolling on the next book, which is in the planning stages and needs another seven or fifty hours of stoned-out brainstorming barnstorm work. I just sent in a proof order for the Origami Man reissue, so that's that. I think I get to do some of my chosen creative crap later on this afternoon. Holly looyah. 

Covers are looking amazing. First one is done, I just plopped it across the Origami Man page. Tom McGrath does some amazing work, I must say. Check him out here, he's really something. 

Saw the debate last night. I have a working holiday visa for New Zealand, I have a fresh passport and some money, and Diane is running around in those hills with my kidney, so I suppose now is as good a time as it'll ever be for me to hit the far side of the planet for a while. I'm excited for a change, I just wish that I didn't feel increasingly like there this country is nipping at my heels, trying to get me to leave. It was cute when I got my new passport in less than a week. It stopped being cute when I watched Trump in the first debate, and it turned into something like a microwaved suppurating guinea pig when I saw him last night. Motherfucker needs to get darted in the neck by animal control. 

To paraphrase a quote from the great Jack Nicholson, "This [country] needs an enema!"
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You ever open up your website and there's like, more cobwebs than not cobwebs? And then you inhale some of the cobwebs when you're groping for the light switch, and you start coughing and a lot more cobwebs fall on you and you wonder all of a sudden if 'cobweb spiders' are a thing, and then you fall on you ass and you're covered in cobwebs and you realize none of this actually happened, because web sites are just digital images on a screen, and however terrifying they might be, cobweb spiders can't live inside a flat screen? 
But if you're reading this on an old school CRT monitor, watch out. Cobweb spiders. 

Been editing my ass off lately. That's a clever way to tell you that bikini season is coming, and I've been hitting the squats hard. 
Wait, no, I'm talking about writing. I've been editing the book. Still on track to release the sequel sometime in the next several months, although given that advertising is a thing I have to do, I may delay the release in order to foster interest. Foment? Fricassee. I need to fricassee interest in my book. 

But I am editing. And the editing goes well. I just haven't been on my hustle, lately. Jay-Z would be disappointed in me. He might even say I've been knocking the hustle, even though presumably you can't do that. He might, however, tempter his disapproval with some recognition of my grind. Been grinding on this book like Beyonce grinds...the heads of screws down when she's refinishing her deck. She's got kids running barefoot, nobody wants their foot cut open on a rusty screw. Nobody is putting a ring on that. 

​This is the view from where I am:

This is where I live, now. This desk. Typical day is wake up, edit until I start having fantasies about running away and joining the Marine's Circus (they have SEALs) go to the gym to remind myself I live in a world populated by people who aren't just extensions of myself, then go to work and make those people drinks. Rinse, repeat. 

It's not surprising to me that I chose to do this. What surprises me is the degree to which I am compelled to do this. If I had done anything else, if I were a lawyer, or a sanitation worker, or a professional killer, I would still be telling myself stories in my head. I'm still doing it, even as I work on The Adventures of Gregory Samson, Space Explorer. I'm coming up with other stories, writing them down, putting them aside for later, like a squirrel hoarding nuts that fall out of his ears. 

That would be one confused, happy squirrel. I suppose that's me. A happy person, confused at their luck. 

I'll update this when I have more to say. In the meantime, my idiot twitter feed and utterly narcissistic Instagram feed will most likely remain idiotic and narcissistic, respectively, and sporadically amusing. 

Hemingway never had to run his own god damn twitter feed. 

I've done a strange thing...