Dime Store Riot

My wife didn’t have it easy growing up. Her mother was an abusive alcoholic who lived to torment her. A childhood surgery to remove a tumor growing on her left eye took her sight when it took the growth—she’s never been able to see anything with her left eye but changes in shadow and light. Her mother died in a house fire twelve, almost thirteen, years ago—a single year after my wife and I were married. Roughly five years ago, my wife’s sightless eye started bothering her. It felt irritated all the time, like something, a piece of grit maybe, was stuck in it. Then the headaches came. We immediately went to a doctor in town who promptly sent us to a specialist at an eye clinic in Indianapolis. A series of eye drops several times a day got her eye pressure under control and we hoped that was that. It wasn’t. Around two and a half years ago, while resuming therapy in an attempt to stop paying the emotional toll from her terrible upbringing, the lovely wife began havin

Three of Shane Stevens’s books have recently been reprinted in some lovely Italian editions. I’m fond of the artwork and the layout. A lot of times, I think, reprints of lesser-known author’s works end up being rather unappealing to the eye.

Yesterday, while I was making dinner, the pug wanted to go outside. I let him out and watched him for a moment, struck by how pale his fur looked in the dim light of the evening and the stiffness of his back legs as he walked along the sidewalk, sniffing the tall grass along either side. Naturally, of course, this lead me to the most dreadful of places for any sentient being. He too will die. Sometimes that’s an overwhelming thought. It’s a thought like a hook, baited with a worm, that catches a small fish, that in turn catches a bigger fish, that in turn catches another even bigger fish, until finally the weight of the pole threatens to drag you into a pond full of fish, and we all know that fish are thoughts not worth thinking unless you purposefully enjoy courting worry, don’t we?. The thing that usually breaks this for me, and it’s what I’ve been ruminating on all day, is a koan from The Gateless Gate called Joshu’s Dog: “Does a dog have Buddha-nature?”

If you liked the cover art to  Hoods, Hot Rods, and Hellcats , you should head over to Kickstarter now and help fund the latest project from  Sleepy Oni , a.k.a Skott Kilander. A limited-edition pack of trading cards featuring selected covers from the 20th Century's greatest non-existent periodical!

Hoods, Hot Rods,and Hellcats has suddenly netted a fistful of reviews on Amazon in the past couple days. Go check them out, if you’re still on the fence about the anthology. Also, if you missed it, Nigel Bird was kind enough to not only let me ramble about Hoods but review it himself .