Brackets letter

Saturday 1/15/22

Hey, brother man,

Was wondering if I might pester you for a sec.

So: I have another book coming out in the next little bit. Fear not, it is my last for a while, anyway. The Scrooge never did come together, on account of me not seeing my email in time and general confusion on my end. All my fault.

But this is a pretty cool book, and it's pretty wild. But good, controlled wild. Fresh, I maybe should say.

The way it's described on Amazon and what not is the story collection version of a punk rock triple album. Each story is in a totally different style. The scuttlebutt is that it breaks all of the rules of how you're supposed to do these things. Book is called If You [ ]: Fabula, Fantasy, F**kery, Hope. The cover is neat, too. It's based on the first story, which takes the form of a relationship coming apart via a grocery list. But there's family drama, magical realism, ecological fable, horror, humor, YA fiction for adults, sports fiction, a ghost story, a Beatles-related story, historical fiction. A bunch of the stories are pretty compact, and about the length of a normal piece on the site.

I was thinking one could perhaps hit the spot. I've been mulling what that one might be. There is, for instance, a story called "EAP and Abe," which is hilarious, about the ghosts of Edgar Allan Poe and Abe Lincoln in the afterlife. They're dead buddies. (People tend not to know this, but Lincoln was actually a big Poe fan in his lifetime, when like nobody was.)

Their deceased selves both suffer from depression--as the men did in real life--and they're trying to kill themselves, but it's not really taking, given that they're already dead and all. Poe is in the possession of this giant sex toy--he has to load it into the back of his car--called the Eaper, which Lincoln borrows, so that gives them something to do, anyway.

It's kind of a riff on where many of us are right now. In the COVID world, and the world of ennui, self-medication, neuroses, anxiety, depression. The hollowness of internet "relationships," the lack of real connection.

I have to check the word count, but I know there are some other good contenders.

Hope you are well.

Yours,

Colin