So Jacob Haddon, the publisher over at Lamplight, posted this to social media recently:

…which means that will soon be out soon..  My birthday–September 14th–if all the stars align.  All the stories have been accepted, everything is almost in-place (I have a little afterword due, but that’s it), so it’s lookin’ good. Spare me your gifts, go get this issue.  (Actually, go subscribe to the magazine.  Haddon & Co. are, to put it eloquently, amazeballs, and they didn’t need me to help them get the good stuff.)

On the writing end, this came out two weeks ago, complete with my ode to Tom Petty and Near Dark, “Crawling Back to You”:

I hear-tell that Rue Morgue did a special spotlight on it, but haven’t made it out to the local news-shoppe (imagine me saying that and enunciating all the syllables, ‘kay?) to pick up it up yet.  It looks good, reads better, and seems to be doing well.  Print and ebooks can be found here (and, say-hey-and-by-the-way, Grey Matter Press is running a 40%-off Labor Day/2nd Anniversary sale, so, y’know, there’s that (I speak aloofly, but Anthony Rivera and Sharon Lawson have been a dream to work for and have a solid body of work behind them; they’ve recently moved into novels and I hope they do as well with that as they’re doing with anthologies)).

Currently working on three stories, so–on top of teaching, fathering, and husbanding–I’ve been a little busy.  Working on one that, when I showed the editor the opening to feel him out if this was what he wanted (y’know, like a good drug dealer), the dude said, “I’m ready to cry,” which I guess is a good thing (he could be crying at the awful-ness; you never fuckin’ know).  Another story, based off a pitch I did that seemed well-received, needs to be written, but has the farthest deadline.  A third story, based on another pitch, needs to be rewritten.   Usually I’m in the trenches, sending things out and hoping they hit their mark and never really knowing for sure one way or another (my instincts in that matter are horrible, but that’s another post for another day). This is a new place for me–people saying, “Yes, send me that“; new, and weird, but good.  I’ll take it.

So, this image is appropriate:

Final thing (and, if I’m being honest, the real reason for posting this tonight):

I have a nice long yard, front and back, that ends at the forest and railroad tracks.  Lovely.  Beautiful.  Also, all hill.  My lawnmower, something I picked up for seventy-dollars eight years ago, is finally on its way out, so I borrowed my neighbor’s lawnmower, after using my old war horse on the particularly hilly parts (thank Christ I landscaped in college or I would’ve died).

Why is this worth mentioning?

Because, while riding this:

I had a chance to break out this:

Yes!  A Discman!  A working Discman!  My friend Josh gave me it when he went all-digital, essentially saying, “Look, I know you’re hopelessly stuck in the 20th Century, so, here.”

Yep.  I mowed my goddamn lawn while listening to a Discman.  I want to make a joke about how I listened to Nine Inch Nails so I wouldn’t notice all the skipping due to the vibrations of the mower, but actually it didn’t skip and, actually, I listened to this, another hopelessly 20th Century artifact:

This album is 20 years old, by the way.

Huh.  It’s funny, but that editor being all about to cry I mentioned?  I think he’s crying now, but for a wholly different reason.

Cheers.