lost time incident 44
This is a celebratory week. I’ve managed to publish something for the first time since the release of THE SPIRIT LEFT ME, which was over 2 years ago now. (Yeesh.) Some of the credit has to go to this “lost time incident” project. It’s got me setting aside weekend time for creative pursuits that had previously been going to idle entertainment.
There’s hours and hours of time left in FALLOUT 4, waiting for me to finish saving the radioactive wasteland from… uh… someone. Now that I haven’t played for a while, the plot’s slipping away. Good rule of thumb, though, is anyone shooting at me is an enemy. Don’t worry about my wasteland persona. She’ll be fine, whenever I get back to her.
The election has left a stick in my spokes, though, creatively speaking. My Twitter account has just been political retweets. The shift to self-promotion is a welcome change of pace.
a shift to self-promotion
I wrote a short work of fiction for Horrible Vacuum Industries and it just came out this week. Horrible Vacuum, as publishers, are dedicated to putting out “word-movies.” It’s an invented term that essentially means fiction with a catchy high concept, a pun-based title (ideally), and then written with an amateurish charm. Characters have stupid names, the writing is clunky, metaphors collapse under their own weight and conversations go nowhere. It’s as close to a b-movie as you can get in text form.
Honestly, I wanted to work with them just to see them design a cover for me, because all their ebooks have covers designed to look like VHS movie covers, complete with genre names in a tiny circle. All works are released under a pseudonym as well, should their authors ever need to distance ourselves from our dumb stories.
On the off chance you somehow missed it on social media, my ebook is called SWAP MEAT, written as George G.G. George. For only 99 cents, you can read one of the oddest things I’ve ever written. It’s about a small town swap meet that serves as a cover for some murderous cannibals.
(Those are worst kind of cannibals. The kind that don’t murder, but still eat human flesh, are a distant second. Cannibals who’ve never actually eaten another person, but think about it a lot, are an even more distant third place.)
Anyway, if you’ve enjoyed the nonsense you’ve seen as subscribers to this newsletter, you should dig it.
thanksgiving
Jaffid the pilgrim kicked a rock into the middle of his barren field. “Aw, nuts. The Devil has cursed this rotten land. Nothing I’ve planted grows here. Not vetches, or rape. Not a sugar tree where I buried that Hallow’s Eve candy that I had told my children was taken by witches. Not a grove of sturdy young worker trees grown from where I buried my sugar-mad children, which in turn lead me to tell the remaining children that their siblings had been taken by witches. It’s eighteen kinds of awful. I wish I had never sought religious freedom.”
“Hey, what up,” shouted Tisquantum. “I couldn’t help but overhear that you were regretting ever coming here. Cool, cool, cool. You need help packing?”
“Please don’t talk to me,” said Jaffid. “I know that all you’re here to do is to slip the Devil’s words into my ears under the guise of friendship.”
“We’re not friends,” said Tisquantum. He squinted at the sinking sun. “Hey, uh… shouldn’t you have a harvest by now? Me and my boys have a harvest festival planned, so I came all the way over here to tell you how much better it’s gonna be than whatever you have planned.”
Jaffid sighed. “We don’t have a festival planned. Right now my plans are to either starve to death after snow starts falling, or go back to England.”
“Huh,” said Tisquantum. “I thought they hated you there.”
“They do. But there’s food.”
“Yeah. Hey, you keep mentioning this Devil who you say has a lot of power. Have you considered asking the Devil for help?”
Jaffid’s eyes narrowed. “Did he put you up to this? To asking? ARE YOU ONE OF HIS MINIONS?”
“Totally. You got it, good job. So hey, if you’re not doing anything, about mid-day tomorrow? Wanna stop by? We’re having corn cakes and stuff. Big feast. Bring the wife and unburied children. I’ll even tell you about farming. Why not.”
Jaffid took off his ridiculous buckled hat. “That sounds nice. Maybe we’ll be there.”
In an explosion of brimstone, the Devil appeared between the two men. “Hey, guys. I heard that there was no planned way to end this bit, so … uh… Happy Thanksgiving? The end? We’re done. Go read the next bit. Okay, thanks, I’ve been the Devil and you’ve been great.”
ending theme song
Well, well, well. A little glimpse into actual American history there. Like a window through time.
Can you believe there’s been 44 weeks of this goofery and nonsensification?
—Michael Van Vleet