4 Blurbs
It’s Devastating
-William Basinski
Mark Gluth writes with brutal detachment about spectacularly unspectacular lives — his characters bleed and breathe all over the page. NO OTHER oozes unguent for no earthly wound, but there’s some kind of cure in the stark, poetic, carefully-culled language Gluth uses here. You won’t read anything this powerful anytime soon.
— James Greer
In clipped, incantatory verse shined from whorls somewhere between Gummo and As I Lay Dying, Mark Gluth's No Other invents new ambient psychological terraforma of rare form, a world by turns humid and eerie, nowhere and now, like a blacklight in a locked room.
-Blake Butler
In Mark Gluth's beautiful family gothic No Other, the reader encounters a landscape of mood and mystery, burning with a stripped-down pain. Gluth's sentences devastate in their raw economy, attempting to penetrate the everyday, tracing abbreviated existences struggling to survive through bare seasons.
-Kate Zambreno
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About the Cover, art and design.
I am honored to have had the wonderful Ken Baumann design the book. He took all my undercooked and partially thawed ideas, made them 1 million times better than I could have imagined, and incorporated them all into his top notch vision. He’s also the mad man who runs Sator and saw fit to bring No Other into the world.
Several years ago the amazing and ultra talented J. Paige Heinen drew a picture that just awed me in all ways. I am so lucky to have it as the cover art.
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Somewhere in the middle of writing the book I posted this on Facebook
I have no idea if this makes sense to anyone but here’s a thought on my novel- in-progress, tentatively titled ‘No Other’: What if there was a novel that was a huge room. Every word was a brick and every sentence was a column built from them, and in the same room there was a hidden, second novel, and it was made out of the space between the columns of the first novel. It ends up being bent and cramped, and obliterated by the larger structure it is working within, and which it is both dependent on and a reaction against. It’s poorly lit because the columns are massive and throw these shadows, and also the second novel needs to be as sharp as knives to carve the air into shapes it can inhabit. That second novel is the book I’m writing.
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Ken intro
When a manuscript came in from Mark Gluth, I woke up. I had read his first novel, The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis, and had been dented by it. The book left me unable to stomach other books for weeks, convinced that Mark had found a perfect voice——trenchant yet lyrical——to express so concisely fog-shrouded pains such as yearning, old age, artistic creation, and death. A book as powerful as Mark’s first novel was hard to come by.
In the winter of 2013, though, I read the manuscript for No Other, Mark’s second novel——which he had devoutly worked on for over five years——made me cry three times, and it’s a short book. More importantly, it haunted me further for three days and nights. Its language was even more lucid and emotional than Mark’s first book, somehow both transparent and roiling. No Other’s family, their elemental lives, and the mutative face of death and illness that surges through the text left me in a mood that I recognized from my reading of past Sator titles: I felt scorched and desirous, aching to take Mark’s book into my hands to then put it in the hands of everyone I possibly could. -- Ken Baumann
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NO OTHER trailer by Stephen Purtill
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Michael Salerno Interview
MICHAEL SALERNO: Where do you live? What is the view that you see when you look outside your bedroom window?
MARK GLUTH: I live In Bellingham, Washington. It's about 10 minutes from the Canadian Border, on the Puget Sound. It's hemmed in by the Pacific Ocean on the west and the Cascade Mountains on the east. Washington has several geographic and cultural zones and Bellingham is definitely part of the Pacific North West. I'm a proud Washingtonian, and I love the geography / weather / ecosystem in the PNW. I just think it's so compelling visually here, especially the fall and winter, the way the sky and the light and the trees coalesce. Culturally, Bellingham is a College Town, which perhaps is shorthand that's only meaningful in American English. It's a liberal leaning small city.
In bed, if I look out our window, I see the tops of the trees in the woods that run behind my house, then the sky behind those. More immediately I see the blackberry vines that are overtaking our house this summer, they stretch over the window a bit. I guess they're a non-native plant. Everyone treats them like weeds.
MS: I believe that the landscape of where we grow up ends up defining us in some way, that it leaves a deep mark on us in some inextricable way. Do you agree? Can you tell me about the landscape you grew up in?
MG: Yeah, I totally agree. I grew up in Northern Ohio, in a suburb of Cleveland. It’s a big, flat place with dry and long summer days. Something about the weather there just did not correlate for me. I always really liked the fall there, short as it is. I guess a lot of the weather in Washington is like the fall in Cleveland. I always liked the big summer thunderstorms in Ohio, where the sky turns dark in the middle of the day and the thunder is so loud it shakes your house. It always created a space to escape into.
MS: You grew up in Ohio? That's tornado country. Have you ever experienced a tornado?
MG: Yeah, Ohio is tornado country, but no I've never experienced one, luckily. Honestly, I think I was too north in the state for tornadoes, though in school we always practiced tornado drills where we'd line up in the hall and practice getting on our hands and knees and such. Though I've not experienced a tornado, I have experienced tons of windstorms both in Ohio and Washington. Our roof was crushed by a tree that fell on our house during a windstorm a few years back. When it happened, it felt like we were inside a drum or something… anyway I love them, scary and trauma- inducing though they are. There's something about a wind storm at night, how the darkness merges with the sound, especially when the wind is gaining speed… it's hard for me to explain but there's this line where the wind becomes a physically solid thing. Like, the air just becomes so dense or what have you. But yeah, they are transportive for me.
MS: Okay, let me pose the question to you this way: You DID experience a devastating tornado when you were a child. I believe you were about four years old, so your memory may be foggy. You may also have lost your brother in this tornado. Can you tell me what you remember about this experience?
MG: The thing is, there was this storm, and a tornado came out of it, but it wasn't why I was hiding in the basement, because really someone had taken me there, and anyway once the house the basement was below had been shattered to shit it was just a pit beneath this upheaval that there was no way I could climb out of so I climbed behind this furnace in the corner and watched the sky get lighter once the tornado disappeared and then get darker as the day progressed until these people showed up with a ladder and flashlights and I watched them climb to where I was and unbolt the furnace to get me out so they could take me to the hospital that was just a big tent because the hospital had been destroyed.
MS: What is the strongest memory you have of your childhood? Is there something in particular that left a really strong mark on you?
MG: As far as a strong mark, I had a deep-seated emotional dread whenever the sky was sunny or brightly overcast (like where the sky is white, but the light from behind the white is strong so the white is bright). Looking back I would say I had anhedonia as a child, mainly in the spring and summer. Looking back I realize it was not normal to feel depressed and panicked the way I did. That's more general.
The strongest memory from my childhood... watching the show 'In Search Of’ with my dad. It's beyond my ability to put into language, but something about the show, and the reenactments they did regarding their topics triggers this sense of what I call 'otherness' in me. Like just thinking about it now I am overwhelmed by the sense that there is something secret and hidden from the world, that is happening concurrently to it. It captures for me the feeling of when you are presented with something mysterious or unknown, and that somehow opens up the entire world for you.
MS: Have you always wanted to be a writer?
MG: Yeah, for as far as I can remember. When I was ten, for a school project, I made my first book. It was a short story bound as a book, with a cover and art by me. And I'm a horrible artist now, but I was truly something awful as a child. It's called 'Night Raid' and it's about one ninja clan attacking another ninja clan. I dedicated it to Chuck Norris. But yeah, when I was a kid I wanted to write those ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ novelizations and stuff.
MS: Your new novel 'No Other' is stunning. The book is made up of very short sentences, which are just compressed with mood and feeling. It's also very visual. How long did it take you to write it?
MG: Thanks man, wow. I'm glad you like it. It took me about five years to write. I started it a couple months after I finished my first book. Large chunks of it came quickly. Like, for example, the first paragraph is essentially a first or second draft. That was unheard of for me, being happy with something initially. So that gave me hopes that I could write the book quickly but I hit various road blocks, things that didn't work, things I couldn't figure out how to make work. Massive and radical self doubt... Anyway, I'm glad it took longer, I'm happy with how, when I write a book over years and years, various influences come into play. One of the main influences early on was Black Metal, trying to capture the despondency and hopelessness Black Metal embodies. That stayed as a prime thing in the text, for sure, but then other things came in. The second section is really influenced by these American mumblecore films, in particular ‘The Exploding Girl’. Close to finishing the book I saw another masterpiece, ‘Wendy and Lucy’, and I'm glad I didn't see it until I was done because she really captures something I was going for. Oh yeah, this Claire Denis film, called ’35 Shots Of Rum’ in English, was also a huge impact. I really got into the idea that if I authentically portrayed, via narrative, a section of the life of a character, that that could work and be compelling by itself. Having written ‘The Late Work Of Margaret Kroftis’, this stripping away of structural intricacies felt very freeing.
MS: How do your ideas come to you? Do you usually know where you're going when you're writing, or are you just feeling around in the dark?
MG: I don't really fully understand how my ideas come to me, and I don't really want to either. Usually they are a result of daydreaming, sometimes they just pop into my head. Sometimes I'll see something concrete that I want to represent. Sometimes I want to use a word, or emulate a particular writer... Then I work with those ideas and they either become other ideas, or lead to other ideas. I dunno. I attempt to remain willfully ignorant regarding my creative process. Essentially the way I write a book, is I write a bunch of stuff by hand in notebooks, type it up, then print it out, and edit the print out, type that up… Also I listen to music while I do this. It grows slowly, a book. As far as knowing where I'm going… kind of. I knew the book would end with such and such dying, and I knew the structure of the book, meaning the shape of the narrative. I knew I wanted the book to be broken, meaning it didn't work, that it failed. That informed the structure I wrote within, but so much of the work within the structure was, as you put it, feeling around in the dark.
MS: There seems to be a repetitive thing going on in all your books, where names and circumstances can swap around, but death is always constant. As is grieving. I'm interested to talk with you about this, but I'm not exactly sure what my question is. Can you say something about this?
MG: The repetition thing is true, for sure. Sometimes consciously sometimes not. I think of it, sometimes, as a chord. Like if these nearly identical narratives coexist and overlap, even slightly, something exponentially larger than the components is formed. As far as the grieving, the death, etc… this probably sounds strange to someone who knows my writing, but I've never thought about it much. I know I'm someone who is easily affected by things, but at the same time I've never tried to emulate anything specific with the deaths in my books. Actually that's wrong. One of the deaths in ‘No Other’ is me trying to pay homage to something that really happened… anyway, all I know is I want them to feel emotionally authentic, and death and grieving plays into that. If I'm totally honest I would have to say, when I'm laying out the structure to my books, having someone die is easier than having them live and having to figure out what happens to them in a narrative sense. In the end, the writing process is so long, and I think about so many pieces of the book from so many different angles that I'm never exactly sure why or how I ended up with all the pieces I did. My writing process is very reductive and it's a process that takes time. Ultimately, I know I'm done with a book when it feels 'right' to me. It's a gut thing. So I don’t have a good answer as to why the three books I've written (including ‘The Goners’ which will be published in early 2015) included narrative lines that mirror each other, or how they are all kind of death-obsessed. I'm scared to understand my writing, because I feel that once I understand it, it will be dead, the process. I want my books to be mysteries, and if they are not, at some level, mysteries to me, how can I expect them to be a mystery to anyone else?
MS: Are you afraid of dying?
MG: No, but I'm afraid of suffering before dying. Like, being buried alive is my worst nightmare.
MS: In another reality, one where you can change form, be anything, live or experience anything, who would you be? How would you be living?
MG: You know, I wouldn't change anything about my life or anything. What I would change, is I would like to live in a world in which the current mysteries of the universe, for lack of a better phrase, are answered. Such as, what is the nature of the universe, how did it come to be. All that trippy stuff like dark matter, black holes, multiverses… I would like to live in a world in which all the questions on those topics are answered… a) because it would so amazing to know most of that stuff, and b) can you imagine what new mysteries would come out of that? The vast majority of my daydreams surround that topic. Having said that, and tied into that, I'd like it if we could all untether our minds from time (if it exists) and space. Like just be roaming consciousness. But I think we'd miss how the physical world can be so beautiful, so I'd like that to be an optional, temporary thing.
MS: I know you’re a ‘Twin Peaks’ fan, so I’m going to leave you with this question: Which do you like better, the blossom of the evening, or the full flower of the evening?
MG: Man, that is one of my favorite ‘Twin Peaks’ scenes. It's so inexplicable, you know? My preference goes in both directions but that's totally beside the point. That scene captures this perfect mood that's really beyond language for me. It's what my friend Dave calls a 'closed world'. It’s perfect.
MS: A closed world…
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Three Excerpts
Part 1
Hague was just there, or barely. The packed dirt was damp in the shade of the tires. It soaked through his jeans then underwear. Beyond it this field was baked and flat. It was the sunlight that was everywhere. The cone or whatever he was in was cool considering. This playground was what it was part of. It was this ersatz junkyard attached to the school that was the building that just loomed there. Hague heard a train in the distance. He pictured it. It disappeared when he shook his head. His headache didn’t. It didn’t matter. The opening over his head was blue. It moved way too slow for him to be able to handle so he dug at the dirt at his knees with this stone. He didn’t notice he was holding it until he did. The smooth point dented the ground. The stone was slimy and it slipped from his hand. He pressed it against his forehead after he picked it up. The dirt and crap stuck underneath his fingernails was what he felt. He punched at something, everything. His fist hit the wall of the stack of tires he was in. They were strapped together by bolts. The whole thing rang. It gave way to silence. A cloud gave way to the sun. His knuckle was cut. It’d scab if he left it alone. He licked at it. His tongue was numb. The world sounded like his ears ringing. It smelled like ozone and tar. When he pulled himself up the playground was empty. Swings swayed as heat washed over sliding boards, the tan school. Hague stood in the middle of the parking lot. He walked towards some cars. It was just the direction he was walking in. When he leaned forward he spun then vomited. It pooled all acid and bilious on the cracked cement. He wiped his face and nose with his hand. He looked up when he stood up. These kids in the street were on skateboards. Hague’s mouth tasted horrible. He’d pulled something in his throat. A boy on a bike laughed and shouted. Hague’s teeth ached. He looked away. One of the skaters landed a trick all blearily in his periphery. Hague closed his eyes and started walking home. He thought maybe he could make it, or not really.
Part 2
Rachel and Ingrid walked into the kitchen. Tuesday stood outside. She opened the car door and pushed the passenger seat forward. She climbed into the back. Burns pocked the lamb’s wool seat covers. The car started after Ingrid played with the ignition. She drove them through the suburbs and out into the fields that surrounded the city. They took the freeway past malls and lights and stores. Ingrid blasted music. The door panels rattled because of the speakers. The exit they took was lit by a gas station sign. They drove on a road that was gravel and dark, thus empty. Rachel and Ingrid passed a can of beer back and forth. The road ran parallel to the freeway. Tuesday closed her eyes. She opened them. Flooded floodplains were glassy planes. They rode over railroad tracks. When Tuesday turned she looked. The freeway looked like lights tracing the shape of the freeway. Fence posts spun away against the darkness. Rachel and Ingrid spoke and smoked. Rachel cracked a tall boy. When she passed it back Tuesday said she didn’t feel like drinking. Then she didn’t say anything. She took it, sipped on the can until it was empty. The booze made the world stretch out until it just lasted forever. She tilted her head back. She looked out the back window. It was all a smudgy arena. That’s what she saw. She watched the lights of the city as they approached it from a ways off. Her thoughts and the night just drowned in the shimmer. Their street was a hill and it didn’t have any streetlights. The car began to rattle as Ingrid pulled it into the driveway. It was all shadows because it was between two houses. Tuesday coughed because of the cigarette smoke. She stepped in a puddle because it’d rained and the driveway was packed dirt and level. It was because she was too buzzed to pay attention. She said Fuck. She stumbled as she walked inside. The house was old. The foundation was bricks and cement. The floor shifted beneath their feet when they walked. Ingrid stood in her room with her. She said that the smell was coming from the carpet. She told her to nail a tarp down over it. Tuesday bought old blankets and laid them over that. Her room was on the side of the house. The stairs led right to it. Her window showed an alley. With the angle of the light her room was all golden in the afternoon. The days were so short. The tree limbs shifted in the wind. Rain washed away snow. It all turned to ice when the sky turned clear. It wore on. Tuesday walked home in the dry cold at night. She peeled off her scarf and hat. She left them where they were. She had to hang fly paper from a tack because flies filled her room. They poured through a crack in the ceiling that lead to the attic.
Part 3
The sun on the mountain was grey and the interior of the ambulance was lit by the dome light because the driver was looking at a map or something. Karen saw him hold the wheel with his knees. They ran over a branch in the road and he pulled the ambulance off and onto the shoulder. Karen sat in the cab as he kneeled by the front bumper. Chill air came in through the vents and off of the windows. She shook beneath her jacket as she stared forward. All she saw through the windshield was shadows and trees smeared by the rain that washed through the forest and over the road. Spray drenched her when the driver opened his door. The road hit these switchbacks. They lead to this meadow. The drive they took was gravel. Coppice as tall as the wheel wells hemmed both sides. The rain stopped and everything that Karen saw was lit by the rose colored light that came in low and from beneath the trees in the distance. The driver parked where the grass had been matted. The facility was house shaped and backlit. The driver put Karen in a wheelchair. He pushed her on a foot path with her leg propped on a bracket. Boards and bricks were steps and he lifted the chair and Karen backwards over them. The sky was blue and orange behind the building. That’s what Karen saw. It was this enormous door that they were stopped before. Karen looked like she was staring forward but she was just facing the door. A woman stepped out of it. She said Hello, Thank you. She did something to the lock after the driver. The foyer gave way to a hall. The walls were sheetrock panels taped to OSB boards. The woman told Karen she should call her sister. Karen nodded. The nun told her that she needed to apologize for the cold. She said it was the boiler. There’s just the kitchen, and a handful of rooms that can be heated. Karen didn’t know where the nun was when she stood behind the wheelchair. Her neck hurt when she turned. Window light showed dust in the air. Karen watched it hang. She heard the wheelchair wheels against the carpet as the nun and she encroached on the hall.
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These are Youtube clips for the songs the book and chapters are named after
Grouper, No Other
Leviathan, The Idiot Sun
Gowns, Fake July
Boards Of Canada, Reach For The Dead
Spem in Allium, composed by Thomas Tallis
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West Coast Book Tour
Saturday, October 18, 7:30 pm
Los Angeles/Echo Park
Stories Books & Cafe
1716 West Sunset Boulevard
w/ James Greer, Jarett Kobek & Janice Lee
Wednesday, October 22, 7pm
San Francisco
Alley Cat Books
3036 24th Street
w/ Lorian Long, M. Kitchell, & more
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The NO OTHER Scrapbook
Buy NO OTHER @ Sator Press
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p.s. Hey. Well, this is a great day or rather weekend because the blog has the honor of hosting this amazing launch post for the second novel by the truly extraordinary writer and very longtime d.l. Mark Gluth. I had the privilege of publishing Mark's first novel 'The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis' through my Little House on the Bowery imprint, and 'No Other', which is reaching the world through the awesome Ken Baumann's SATOR Press, is even more incredible. It's easily one of the best novels of the year, and I massively encourage you to get your hands and eyes on it. Huge thanks to Mark for letting this place participate in the birth. ** Oscar B, Bene! You are a sight for very sore eyes, my buddy! I miss you big time! Everything's good here in your former and future (I hope) hometown. Yeah, I'm all well now, sprightly, the usual. I'm obviously really glad that the course is interesting so far. Group work: so it's different than, say, the acting classes? I mean, do they want you to make performances via a group collaboration? That does sound hard, but interesting hard? Anyway, yay, you! I told Zac you said hi and sends you back a super enthusiastic hi and hopes that he'll get to see you soon here or there. Big love, me. ** David Ehrenstein, Excellent Duras piece, sir. I am making Duras film post, and I'm borrowing a chunk of your piece as the post's textual meat, if that's okay. I never saw 'Death Becomes Her', strangely. ** Steevee, Hi. Weird, I had trouble sleeping last night too, though nowhere near as badly as you sound to have. I don't know, stress? Isn't that almost inevitably insomnia's source? ** Bill, Thank you, whiskey voiced one, ha ha. Halloween gay porn really should work in theory. I mean, in theory, what's not to like? But, for me, in most cases, it's like porn as high school play, which kind of makes you think too much about the making-of, which I usually like, but only/mostly when that reveal is accidental. Have lots of fun with Omar! ** Keaton, Aw, shucks, you're modest, and me too maybe. Nice. Which 'Torture Garden' do you have? The RE/Search one or a regular one? I should like the RE/Search one, but I don't so much. Too many illustrations. Is that even possible? Oh, thank you for the horror book list. Nice, very classic and classy too. If it's in the works, write it. That's my motto. ** Thomas Moronic, Glad you dug it and said so and said so in your inimitable, attentive style that always goes such a long way towards making me feel like a post was worth making. Yeah, it's an interesting way to work, the transcription thing. I always liked editing interviews back when I used to interview movie stars and rock stars and stuff, and it's like that but to the max 'cos I get to change whatever I want without having to be loyal to their truth, although working within that loyalty's strictures is very interesting too. ** Kier, Ha ha, a 'C' was very generous. I'm not even going to try today. I'm going to refuel my cleverness and try afresh on Monday. 'Bull' is really great, yeah. I mostly like boysenberry pie. I kind of adore boysenberry pie. Served hot with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Oh my God. Yeah, good question why the theater would do that. I think maybe the guy who did it is a guy they usually have write the intro pieces for the shows they host and that this time they struck it unlucky or something? Was your co-worker charmingly high, or was it just annoying. I find stoners charming most of the time. Or when they're young. Nothing yuckier than a 50 year old stoner for some reason. 'Le Peste' was really, really fun! I hadn't been to Le Manor de Paris since Zac and I went almost two years ago, and it was sweet and cool back then, but they've really worked on it since those early days, I think because it has become very popular and successful. Last time we went, it seemed like it was probably going to go out of business really soon. Now, it's an A-class haunted house attraction. It's huge and labyrinthine and probably quite scary if you get scared by that sort of thing. In the little group we went through with, this young woman screamed her head off and held onto Zac like he was a lamppost in a hurricane. The place didn't let us take photos or video, so I can't show you anything, but it was very awesome. And we had great vegetarian Indian food beforehand. It was a really good night. So, it's the weekend now, and you'll be doing ... what? Tell me, please and obviously! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, _B_A. Excellent, excellent, excellent! ** Nicki, Hi there, pal. Thanks for dipping inside us. Oh, do kill and dismember all those people you mentioned, but don't say that I encouraged you. ** Nemo, Hi, Joey. Thank you for the couch offer. I'm traveling with someone, and we have a place to stay. It's looking pretty unlikely that I'll get to have hang out or dinner time in NYC, unfortunately. It's very much a work trip rather than a social one, and I think I'll be out of the city a lot doing some shooting for a documentary film I'm co-working on. I won't even be at most of the 'Kindertotenlieder' shows. Alas, I wish I could. Oh, I don't know about what's best re: the pills vs. supplements. Yury knows much about that than I do. I would go for a careful and cautious approach whatever you do. I've never been on pills, but I understand that getting off them is no picnic. Lots of love, me. ** Schlix, Thanks, pal. Yeah, when Krug/Moonface played in Paris, he played at this really unlikely venue where nobody even remotely cool ever plays. His opening act was some horrible local band, and about 80% of the audience was family and friends of that band who immediately left as soon as they finished. Really strange. It's so weird when life suddenly feels voodoo cursed. It's so confusing, but, yeah, predictability is the worst thing of all, at least in larger than tiny doses. Luckily, peace is the opposite of predictability, so I hope you get a ton of it starting ... right ... now. Love, me. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Good, glad to hear the nutritionist basically approved of your approach and offered you some hopeful refinements. I don't eat chicken, obviously, but it doesn't take a psychic to know those supermarket nuggets are not your body's friend. ** James, Hi! Uh, nah, that's not why. Or I don't think so. I've been way into boysenberry since I was a little boy with no interest in my penis at all. The film: we've finished shooting. We might shoot just a little bit maybe for the title sequence or something, but it'll be minor. We're currently organizing the footage and syncing the sound, and we'll start editing in the next day or so. Then we'll be doing that for months and months, I reckon. It has been a very collaborative experience. I mean, we all have our roles. Zac's the director. Michael/Kiddiepunk was the cameraman. And etc. But Zac and I are heavily involved in everything about it, so it definitely feels like a collaboration more than something I wrote that he filmed. Glad you're still alive, natch. ** Cal Graves, Hi, Cal! It does feel like it's been too long. I'm better, yeah, thanks. I'm fine. Things are awesome! Well, yeah, I'm going to NYC for a bit in a little over a week and then I'm spending a little under two weeks traveling in Iceland, so that's pretty fun. Spooky stuff? I hope so. I'm hoping to hit a haunted house while I'm in NYC. But Paris isn't very into Halloween, or rather into celebrating it, so it won't be spooky enough for me whatever happens. Fucking a pumpkin really seems like one of those ideas that would have been best left on the drawing board, but I admit I've never had that experience, so who knows? Shit, I hope you woke up without that headache. You're writing a novel! Very cool. What can you tell me about it? Ryu Murakami: I read 'Almost Transparent Blue' and 'Coin Locker Babies', and I quite liked them. Then I interviewed him for a magazine right around the time 'CLB' came out, and I didn't like him personally at all, so stopped reading him, which is probably juvenile of me. But, yeah, I like those novels. They're pretty good. Bye to you, man! ** Craig, Hi, Craig! Oh, I don't know, life is just very happy and exciting these days, so that's why it's better. Thanks about the output from my Halloween love. If I ever get interested in hockey, and weirder things happened, I will ask you for info and advice. I don't even think they play hockey in France. You never ever hear about it over here. It's like baseball. They just never got into it here for some reason. I'm still in Paris. I still have my apartment in LA, but I don't go back there as often as I used to. I'm really happy in Paris nowadays, and I think it'll be my home base for a while, at least. ** Kyler, Ha ha, yeah, me? Cool that you'll be at the talk. I'll be nervous and distracted, but it'll be nice to see you even if I seem edgy and like I'm wishing that I was anywhere else. I really don't like public speaking, But there you go. Yay, I'm glad the reading went so well! That's great news! Submitting to awards? Like book awards? Go for it! ** Rewritedept, Hey. Thanks, buddy. Gallery show? Interesting. That would be ultra-cool. Bongo pix? No, I didn't see them. I'll go look. 'The Keddie Cabin Murders': mm, sounds familiar. Wait, I think maybe Scott Heim posted something about that in his newsfeed the other day? I'll find out what it is. Thanks. Friday was a ton of fun. See my Kier description. I'm sorry you're missing Richard. It's sweet that you do, though. Have a lovely weekend, okay? ** Misanthrope, Always a pleasure to scare you. Enjoy the cock while it's there 'cos it's an oddity at least until the next slaves post if you're lucky. The dots are all over? Hm. Well, they're, like, tiny bits of blood coming up through your pores or something? Or a rash? One or the other? I'm no doctor, though. Pad thai, man. There are few things better that fit in the mouth than pad thai, and that, yes, includes cock, you whore. ** So, really, truly enjoy the celebratory launch of Mark's amazing new novel until I see you on Monday!