Praise for 'Milk Like a Melted Ghost', A Novella

My novella, Milk Like a Melted Ghost, will be published as an e-book April 1, 2011 by Thumbscrews Press. Anyone can read it for free. Here are some nice things some nice people I admire have said about it:

"One of the more impressive small press titles I've read in a long time. Beeny's control of imaginative image blending is on a level I've never seen. It's a book that moves the way more books ought to move in my opinion, unapologetically from one scape to another. The blur of it all will explode with clarity in your memory."

—Darby Larson, The Iguana Complex (Nephew, 2011)

"Milk Like a Melted Ghost makes a journey toward silence. Clarabelle is maybe the imaginary friend of Wittgenstein's Mistress. Sometimes Milk seems like a poem and other times like a collection of notes for a diabolically surrealist puppet show. I highly recommend it."

—Christopher Higgs, The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney (Sator Press, 2010)

Also, Andrew Borgstrom engaged the text of Milk Like a Melted Ghost in an interview:

Andrew: What exists?

Milk: It doesn’t matter.

Andrew: What is real?

Milk: It doesn’t matter.

Andrew: What exists?

Milk: Reality.

Andrew: What is real?

Milk: Existence.

Andrew: What exists?

Milk: Everything.

Andrew: What is real?

Milk: Everything.

Andrew: Does everything within happen?

Milk: Everything happens within.

—Andrew Borgstrom, Explanations (The Cupboard, 2010)

I hope people will read and enjoy Milk Like a Melted Ghost when it is published. Thank you for your time.

Social Networking / Jif / A New Pair of Slippers

How I feel about social networking is it gets really confusing. It’s a lot to keep track of. I feel sometimes like Facebook is a desert island I’m stranded on, only I got to bring everything with me. It feels really distracting. I find myself not reading people’s blogs as much. I don’t like that. I feel other people may be experiencing this, too, to some degree.

Not many people visit my blog anymore—though I doubt Facebook is 'to blame'. I can’t help but think maybe a couple of my reviews have alienated me from some people (it seems, since I started writing more reviews, people visit my blog less). I don't know. It seems my ‘internet presence’ is mirroring my ‘real-life’. The ‘internet’ is becoming ‘real’. Seems sadly humorous.

I’ve been thinking a lot about euphemisms lately. They’re very funny, and only serve to further infantilize adults (who behave and speak the same way around their children: as if nothing exists the way it exists, as if the concrete world can be altered simply by using a different set of words to describe it). Funny, but somehow ‘sinister’.

I don’t like it when Jif peanut butter commercials manipulate my emotions regarding family. Jif, please don’t make me feel like I’m not a good father because I don’t spread your creamy product on my daughter’s toast. Choosing Jif is not a simple way to show someone you care. It's peanut butter.

Television inspires me to imagine that someday I can stop watching television, that I can go out into the world and live a happy and fulfilled life, but it’s also gracious enough to make me too comfortable, make me feel secure and calm and thoughtless, makes me think I like watching television.

Most my time is spent reading things that make me feel incompetent and jealous. With almost the last bit of money I have in the world, I bought a pair of slippers at the dollar store the other day and wore them home. In them I felt my toes wiggle, and that gave me hope.

New 'Immortal' @ Metazen / Overcoming Discouragement

I have a new story called "Intventing the Victim" up at Metazen today (Thanks again, Frank...). It's a chapter from one of my unpublished novels, a novel of stories called The Immortals Act Their Age.

You can read other stories/chapters from The Immortals, along with stories and excerpts from other novels here. You can also read some of my poetry, essays, and reviews.

My other novels are Lepers and Mannequins, Mermaid Sackrace, and The Quarantine Ceremony. None of these are published yet either, though I've received some great feedback from the editors of presses I've sent them to.

It's been very hard and discouraging sometimes, getting my hopes up when a queried editor is interested and says, "I like this, please send the whole manuscript," but they ultimately reject it. Or when I'm solicited to send a manuscript along, but the soliciting editor ultimately rejects it.

So, what to do when all your novels are being rejected? Start writing a new novel. There's no better feeling than working on a new novel no one will ever publish. There's a freedom in that: No one will publish it so, like the others, I can do whatever I want in it.

I've tried to make all my novels different, so this new one will be different from those as well. I know different doesn't mean good, nor does freedom imply the absence of anxiety or that seeking publication will never occur to me. They key is to enjoy what you're writing. And I've done that. I'm doing that now...

'Of Creatures' Reviewed in March Issue of decomP

Spencer Dew reviewed my poetry collection, Of Creatures, for the March 2011 issue of decomP. Thanks to Spencer Dew for reviewing it, and for his kind words. And thanks to Jason Jordan for putting it out there, along with other works this month by Len Kuntz, Joshua Young, Casey Hannan, S Craig Renfroe Jr., Micah Dean Hicks, Stephanie Smith, Dan Walsh, Adam Day, and many others…