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.

Underway

Wow, lots of stuff, now. Not only are four new things going to be in print by the end of May, but I just heard that another great anthology got sold and that my contract is on the way; I turned in the Mystery Story and am now half-holding my breath; I decided to quit fucking around and get a collection underway after all; and in a couple of days, I leave on a trip.

These are my eyes - gonna getcha! Couple of new photos are up here.

I did move my site to a new host, but the move has been a little slow, so forgive me if the site is sticky for a while.

Off to engage in Hell Weekend; I'm running late for my appointment with suck.


posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 2:19 PM

It Begins
This weekend is Holy Hell Weekend here at work - the school puts on a gigantic festival. The upcoming weekend means that the week before (ie, NOW) is just terrible and sickeningly stressful. The day itself? If it bombs, too late, right? And the worst that could happen would be that I'd come back to the office Monday and either get (1) yelled at or (2) canned. I can buck up under yelling, and would be, in many ways, very relieved not to work here anymore. Plus, I'm going on vacation next week, so I have to get all the events and crew schedules in order before I leave. Ick.

I was braced for all of the above, ready for it. Not a big deal.

But the cosmos has already started to behave like a particularly annoying little brother - nothing major at all, just a succession of tiny, dumb things that I'd rather not have happen. For instance, it was 95 degrees here yesterday. I drove, with my window down, past a bush with one very stickedy-outedy branch, which got inside my window a little bit. That's fine, but the branch was swaddled in silkworm baggage. Fucking GROSS. Robert's cat, Dammit, located a palmetto bug (ie, 2"-plus cockroach), and when I tried to threaten it, it flew ONTO me and ran around on my knee while I called it a motherfucker.

Then my own cat bounced onto my couch, thereby flipping a lit cigarette out of the ashtray and into the cuff of my shorts, and while I tried to rescue my laptop (I succeeded) I did not save my own ass. Nice burn.

Add the cigarette burn on my ass to the vast field of bruises all over my body from bouncing off the still-unfamiliar surroundings in the house, and I look like a bona-fide goddamn candidate for Saturday's episode of COPS!

Plus, my website is down again. That's it - three strikes and you're out, web hosting place. Time to jump ship.

DarkTales released Dead but Dreaming: New Excursions into the Lovecraftian Universe at World Horror last weekend. Damn, I wish I'd known that. Anyway, it's probably a neat book. I have a story in there. Lots of other folks (like Ramsey Campbell and Stephen Mark Rainey) do as well. It's for sale now.

Off to find a more stable fucking web host, I suppose. Or work, I could work, too.


posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 9:40 AM

Necro Dave Is Very Fast

... he is! As is illustrator Erik Wilson. These folks are blinding me with their publication-prep superpowers. If this chapbook goes into limbo or comes out later than expected, I WILL blame it on the printer, and mean it. I've seen firsthand that Necro staff gets shit DONE, prior to pronto, and such things make me happy.

The Skins of Youth info/purchase page is up at Necro now. Go! Go go! Click on the cover, shoppers!
When Dave said he planned to bring this out in May, I thought that was optimistic of him. Now I believe him, yes indeed. The interior illustration Erik did for "Growing Out of It" is great, too.

This edition comes in two states: 300 signed/limited softcovers, and 54 signed/lettered hardcovers. Two novellas! It's fat for a chapbook.

I'm finally getting a digital camera - this is great, because I'm rotten with cameras. I buy a disposable one for some special event. I take 1 photo, if any. The camera sits for years. I decide to see how that 1 photo turned out, and use up the rest of the roll taking shots of trees and cats and my feet and whatever else I happen to pass on the way to the photo store. I pay $20 and get back photos of trees and cats, and 1 dark, cruddy photo of the back of someone's head at the event. This happens every single time. A digital camera will be perfect for me, perfect. I can't wait. You'll see.

Tomorrow I get to, finally!, deliver the Secret Mystery Story to the Secret Mystery Publisher. It's a very big deal, to me. I'm happy with the story itself, but it could only work in the context of this anthology, so if the editors say no, my good story is useless. And if they say yes, I'll be in a hella rad anthology.

Plus I'm working on a ghost story, and the Other Big Project. And painting the living room and the stair risers, and preparing for my trip, and so forth - lots of stuff going on, and not enough time or money to deal with all of it. Certainly not enough energy.

Don't even have enough energy to add anything more here, so, ciao.



posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 5:02 PM

Taxes and Bills and Reeking Salt Marshes, O My

I spent the last few days doing the following:

1. Craving my Favorite. He's just so cool. Another convenient thing about his band is that strangers take photos of them when they perform, and post them on the web, and I get to see them. That's a treat, a strange one, but a treat nonetheless: I rarely get to see my lovin' man with my own eyes, but now and then, thanks to the admiration of strangers, I get at least a peek.

2. Clearing space for the new toys that I can't afford - my housewarming treats to myself are Dwight Frye as Fritz (a figure for which I've yearned for years, and bless Sideshow's hide for making them; I preordered one but had to cancel, and now, now my destiny is realized!) and my long-desired Godzilla 2000 Banpresto figure, 25" from nose to tail-tip. In order to make room for them, I had to:

3. Unpack. Yeah, yeah, I've been here for two weeks, but much of that time was spent recuperating (ie, reading, laying down, staring wide-eyed at all the boxes.) I loved my old apartment, loved it. Hate that there was no peace or quiet there, and we finally couldn't take it anymore. Ugh. I live in a neighborhood now. Ugh. I've only lived in downtown areas for the past ten years, and though we're about half a mile from downtown, I still feel old and defeated. BUT I also feel like I can turn my monster movies up really loud without bothering the neighbors, and I can learn to walk heel-to-toe again, since my stomping feet won't thunder over the heads of strangers now. Unpacking included:

4. Shelving the Books. Dear sweet jaysus, I have too many, but still not enough. Many of these books were written by people who spent the weekend...

5. ... in Chicago, at the World Horror Convention. I was in Georgia, doing things 1-4, and wishing mightily that I was doing #5 instead. (Well, I'd have been stuck on #1 wherever I was.)

I also read the new Morbid Curiosity - as always, it's full of excellent stuff. I'd have liked to see the open mic they held at World Horror. Woe. I'd have liked to participate in the BRAINBOX 2reading/signing. Woe. I'd have liked to spread the word about SKINS OF YOUTH. I attended the last two WHCs as "Mehitobel Wilson, Gothic.net Nonfiction Editor." I'd have liked to attend this one as "Mehitobel Wilson, yeah, I write fiction too. No, really, I do, published and everything." No dice.

That's alright, though. I have plots and plans. Next year I figure I will go, and maybe by then I won't have to say, "No, really, I do."

A guy on Art Bell the other night said that the Ark of the Covenant was probably a capacitor and databank. As if that weren't enough, the Ark-as-capacitor stored energy to fuel interstellar travel and communication. "Where would these people have gotten the technology to build a capacitor?" Why, aliens, of course. I love going to sleep to this stuff. That night, though, my own giggles were keeping me awake.

And this, my dears, was life this weekend.

I completely skipped over last week due to the extreme amounts of BULLSHIT and NIGHTMARISH DAY-JOB CRAP, and will likely skip over next week due to strange landlord configurations. But when locked away for the weekend, distracting myself from mundane stresses by remembering just how bloody frickin' cool my Favorite is, and by watching monster movies (CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON) and Sam Lee movies (COLOR OF PAIN was the best of my buys), and by unpacking shit and trying to organize it, massaging my 2-week-old bruises to see if they'll ever go away, winning a lot at Battleship but, sadly, losing a lot at Tekken 2, and wishing like hell that I was at WHC... when locked away, things are all right.

Now all I have to do is finish writing this important ghost story.

According to David J. Schow, it wasn't wise of Robert and I to invent & attempt the CREATURE drinking game (drink whenever the Creature's theme plays, bom bom BEAAAAAAAAAAA!!!) because the theme plays 151 times during the course of the film. Where's the hospital?
posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 3:53 PM

Chill pill chill pill chilly frilly chill pill

The marvelous, suave, centered Mehitobel came damn close to committing a felony today. Her road rage - damn near justified, I promise - was stoked to the point that she engaged her parking brake at a red light so she could leap from her vehicle and assault the fucking clot of cocksnot in front of her. But a cop pulled into the turn lane next to her and she saw reason and chose to stay out of prison.

Have any of you heard of FRAILTY? I hadn't. This is odd for two reasons - first, it's a horror movie with axes in it. Second, it's a horror movie with BILL PAXTON in it. In fact, Bill Paxton DIRECTED it. Ooooola! I stalk Bill Paxton with nearly the fervency as I do The D'Onofrio.

(Fun fact about Wild Bill: he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in the video for Barnes and Barnes' "Fish Heads." No, I'm not lying to you.)

Anyway, FRAILTY looks rad and I might have to work up the gumption to go to a theater sometime soon.

Since I've been overtired and undercaffeinated for the past few weeks, I've been commanded to play some motherfuckin' eightball today and drink some goddamn beer and get a dang grip. I shall do that now.

First, look what I found on Amazon today:

Cover art's pretty cool; lineup looks rad. It's been so long since my contribution ("The Mannerly Man") was bought and paid for that I kinda forgot about it. So, neat. Y'all buy it.


posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 5:18 PM

Squatter's Rights

We moved this past weekend. I, stubborn lunatic that I am, carried my share of 2 moving trucks' worth of books and furniture.

I can't walk now. And I'm a tender kitten and covered in bruises. My legs, I swear, are visibly chunkier - swollen muscles? Nitrogen inflation? Unsure. Pain!!

So we're in this new house, but the landlord doesn't know it and we have no lease. This means that at the moment, we're basically squatting. Flashbacks galore, there. Except before, I only had my leather and what I could zip into its pockets, and this time, I drywalled stuff and rewired stuff and painted stuff and used trucks to get my shit into the not-ours apartment. High-class squatting, this.

There are squirrels in my office ceiling. At first I thought they were rats, until I saw sense and decided that rats don't like attic ceilings. They are large squirrels, large ones who wrestle, bite each other, and chuckle. Guess I have to trap 'em and then steel-wool the roof joint or something fun like that. I was conflicted when I thought they might be rats - I've kept pet rats and did not want to have these wild attic-rats exterminated, you know.

There is also a boy living in the attic, Charlie. Charlie has a sweet motorcycle and a giant scab on his arm from where he wiped out last week. I like Charlie and don't mind him being in the attic. It's very Southern, having folks in your attic. I'd like to know Charlie a little better, I think, because it's just funny to have a stranger living in the attic. But I get a good vibe from him, and like how he watches the same Simpsons video over and over again (the one with Michael Jackson and the "Lisa, it's your birthday" song.) He'll be moving out soon, I think, and I'm going to miss him, our little attic ghost.

My cat, Hazel, is adjusting better than I'd expected. She's horrifically neurotic (got it from me) and I didn't expect to see her for a few weeks. She's still spending the days hiding under my quilt (her Lumpen mode) but when I'm home, she wanders. And makes her sounds. They are not meows, they are... throaty floundering-caribou sounds, I think. She's maladjusted and grew up with no other cats around from which to learn meows. So she imitates me instead, I guess - I think she's saying "fuck." Thing is, she usually says "fuck" when she brings me a bottle cap in the middle of the night, and right now, she's saying it nonstop. Just wandering and croaking and kicking herself in the head (it's her form of recreation.) Silly damn thing, heart of my heart.

Why is my boyfriend's band playing with Ludacris? Why? I don't know what promoter thought that would be wise, but there ya go. I'll be there. All the folks there to see Ludacris will HATE Jeff's band, and I'll have to fight ALL of them. You'll see it on the news. (Funny thing is that when Jeff was here I made him suffer through 947 playings of "Roll Out" because I've invented this whole backstory to the song and I love it because of that. Also I love to say "bizNASS.")

We did get our phones hooked up today. That's good. That's why I'm able to write this now. Last night I could only achieve an 8kbps connection, can you believe that? There haven't been phones in this ex-crackhouse for years.

Yes, I'm even more incoherent than usual. I have excuses.

Oh, the cover art for SKINS OF YOUTH came in from Necro, and it's neat. You'll see.

Gothic.net is a nominee for the Stokers again this year. Rock on.

My date with Art Bell is nigh, I must go. Ciao, friends and strangers.
posted by Mehitobel Wilson at 12:44 AM