Monthly Archives: January 2015

My Last Day Without You

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Last month, in advance of its December release on DVD and VOD, I screened a little indie flick from 2011 starring Nicole Beharie of Sleepy Hollow fame. Beharie’s smiles are magical on Sleepy Hollow, so I welcomed the opportunity to see more of them in this Brooklyn tale of musician Leticia (Beharie) striking out on her own and German businessman Niklas Hank (Ken Duken) vowing to seduce her on his one day in town.

That sounds like the set-up for a bigscreen whirlwind romance that I rarely buy into, but My Last Day Without You resists taking the predictable paths toward superficial love connections. Leticia is no manic pixie girl, and Niklas is not a floundering manchild. Rather, he’s a corporate hatchet man in the vein of George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air, and he shows little compunction when confronted by the people whose jobs he’s just ended.

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During one of many shots beautifully framed through windows, Niklas meets Leticia, who offers him one of those smiles and a sample of her CD.

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Niklas is entranced by this charismatic woman. With the encouragement of his chauffer, an avowed romantic played with relish by Robert Clohessy, Nik vows to seek Leticia out as a distraction until his flight back home that evening.

Site Update and Newsletter Sign-Up!

Treasured Readers,

The site has been quieter than normal as I’m in the midst of re-categorizing posts so the food/drink/travel section is easier to navigate. Thus, you can now access any of those categories under the Food/Drink/Travel heading above or through the master page here:

Click Me!

I am halfway through the process of re-categorizing posts, so everything from 2011 to the present is listed in those pages. I’ll be working on the 2007–2011 set over the next week. I believe I’m well over 2,000 posts at this point. That’s a lot of food writing!

Can I take a break yet?

In other news, I now have a mailing list set up so I can e-mail you, treasured readers, whenever I have exciting publication news to share. That’s roughly 3–4 times a year, so I can promise that I won’t spam your mailboxes. If you’re interested in getting news on that front delivered straight to you, then sign-up through the widget at the right or right below. They won’t bite.

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Coming up: Pink’s of Hollywood! Barcelona’s beautiful architecture and tasty tapas! San Francisco’s Sutro Baths! More wine and absinthe! And the return of my camera from the shop! Yes, yes, that’s another reason things have been a little quiet here. My trusty Rebel T3i is getting thoroughly cleaned up in the shop. It’s as though I’ve lost a limb–well, a third limb that occasionally gives me neck pain from too much time spent together. Regardless, I miss you, pretty little camera!

Me and my bestie at Yosemite in 2012.

Our reunion will come soon.

“Thlush-A-Lum” is Available Now!

I am happy to announce that PULP Literature Issue #5 has officially launched, which means my horror short story, “Thlush-A-Lum”, is now available for purchase as part of the issue!

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You can buy Issue #5 straight from the PULP Literature website here:

Just click on the image to be taken to the ordering page. A print issue is $15 and an e-issue is $5. Lest that seem like a lot to you, I can confirm that I was impressed by how thick the magazine was when I received my author copy in the mail. I’m looking forward to reading all of these stories from my issue mates as described on the order page:

We dare you to be held captive by Eileen Kernaghan’s ‘The Robber Maiden’s Story’, and then try to escape alongside the intrepid Stella Ryman as she attempts a jailbreak in The Four Digit Puzzle by Mel Anastasiou.
Next, travel by boat and by bus to places you’d rather not go, with the fantastical ‘Polycarp on the Sea’ by Stephen Case and the gritty detective Finley in ‘The Pledge’ by Donald Dewey.
Three pulp poems by Mark J Mitchell will prepare you for the cruel transformations of ‘Thlush-a-lum’ by Rebecca Gomez Farrell and ‘Some Say the World Will End in Fire’ by R Daniel Lester.
These are followed by a few stories of wishing for more, in ‘A Discussion of Keats’s Negative Capability’ by Susan Pieters and Margaret Kingsbury’s ‘The Longing is Green when Branches are Trees’.
A treat lies in store as we publish the winners of the first annual Hummingbird Prize for Flash Fiction, followed by the short, sharp horror cartoon ‘Bait’ by Kris Sayer.
For dessert, we hope you’ve saved room for the next installment of Allaigna’s Song. It’s the perfect way to round out a good family feast.
All this beneath a beautiful new cover entitled “Fondly Remembered Magic” by our first cover artist Melissa Mary Duncan.

For those of you who contributed to PULP Literature’s Kickstarter campaign last month, thank you so much! I believe you should have received your Issue #5 already.

And for those of you who didn’t, here’s a little teaser of “Thlush-A-Lum’s” first few paragraphs:

Markella’s earliest memories are of the sounds outside her window. At hours when no men moved, rustling branches and shuffling grass woke her. A beating pulse like slower, fleshier helicopter blades banished sleep: thlush-a-lum thlush-a-lum. In summers, the heat in her attic bedroom hot enough to incubate, Markella pushed the window open and dozed to the endless static drone of cicadas. In winters, choking radiator warmth wrapped tight around her, she cracked the window and the low, deep hoots of an owl drifted in with the freezing breeze.

The sounds crept in no matter the season.

And a photograph to set the mood…

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I hope you enjoy “Thlush-A-Lum”…and you remember to keep an eye on those bedroom windows.