Mehitobel Wilson: writer, reader, chronic curmudgeon.

Tomboy bombshell cowgirl; lover of funk, attracted to roadsides.

Besotted with spots.

Friend to sleaze.

Admirer of filthy films, fleshy steaks, Hong Kong rap, new felt and pocket-knocking 8-balls; prefers 10 gallons of hat and 4 fingers of Jack.

Procrastination here breeds urgency there. Urgency begets sharper fiction. The dream: hone it to a splinter, and sink it deep.

So I'm here.

Girl, where you been?

Ah, I've had a hell of a stormy head, recently. The first two weeks of January were spent getting my chickens in a row for my visit from Providence Jeff. Then I entertained for a week or so, and this past week has been spent catching up on work and starting new projects.

Jeff, Robert, and I went to a couple of hockey games. We were in the rinkside green room. My fascination with the nature of audience/spectator was sent into overdrive there at the glass. There we are, looking through this pane at the rink, a few feet behind and to the right of a goal. I'm standing there munching on meatballs, chatting with my friends, sucking on whiskey sours. Now and then men pile up face-first against the glass, an inch away from me. Sometimes we make eye contact. Folks around us interrupt their
conversations to yell things at the faces on the glass. The game goes on. How fucking ~strange~ it must be to be one of those players, zipping around, playing a game hard, getting hurt, and slamming against a thin barrier, eye to eye with some stranger in street clothes.

Also, I got a puck.

Also, I got a jones. If I quit smoking, I could afford cable, and have all the hockey a girl could ever want. And all the History Channel, too.

(Or I could quit smoking and have enough money to pay the IRS, or go to WHC, or buy plane tickets to Rhode Island, or any number of things. Hm. Redirecting the beer budget would help all of the above, too. Priorities!)


Dig it: Brainbox 2: Son of Brainbox, edited by Steve Eller, is available now. It's sharp. The trade paperback is $12, shipping included.

If I can crank out a story sometime in the next couple of weeks (I can, don't you worry none) - then I'll have a cool announcement to make.

To those of you who have been hearing rumors during the past couple of years of a soon-to-be-released collection of my short fiction: don't listen to the rumors. I've said no time and again to prospective collections because I'm not ready yet. Releasing a collection now would be basically stacking everything I've written between covers, and that's not what I want. I haven't written much as it is, and of the stuff I have written, only two or three of those stories ought to have been published in the first place, far as I'm concerned. I don't even want to commit to a collection until I feel satisfied with a few more stories. This means everyone ought to just forget about it for a few years.

Now that my local talk radio station carries Art Bell, I fall asleep listening to the show. The other night Dean Koontz was on, and one of the first things he did was firmly distance himself from the label "horror writer."

Meanwhile, word's gotten out at work - after nearly five years of my having hidden it brilliantly - that I write. This sucks. I really don't want anyone at work reading the stuff I've published. Strangers can, sure. But if my coworkers read "Blind in the House of the Headsman" and the accompanying essay, or stories like "Tools of the Trade" and "Do You Love Me" - the stories about which I've gotten tons of emails saying I made people feel very bad and ruined their weeks - office life would be even more awkward than it already is. I'm afraid I'd be treated far differently than I am now. At least now things are kind of on an even keel - everyone's used to me and that's the way it is. Throw real, published indications of my thought patterns into the mix, and... whoa, I don't want to deal with that at all.

As it is, I'm already disappointing my parents a lot. Not because of what I write, but because I won't let them read it. "The new Brainbox is out, but you can't read the story. Peepshow 2 is out, but you can't read the story. The book that 'Madeline in Effigy' is in made the final Stoker ballot, but you can't read the story." They are very frustrated with me. They're looking forward to the release of Darkside 2: The Darker Side because I promised them that they could safely read "The Mannerly Man," though, and we're all looking forward to Dead but Dreaming - they're excited because I'll let them read "Fire Breathing," and I'm excited because they'll be introduced to Lovecraftian stuff.

Other than all that, I've been camped out in front of my mailbox, waiting for China Mieville's THE SCAR to materialize.




posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 12:19 AM