Pear Noir! #9 -- only a few left!

Only a few copies left of Pear Noir! #9! Exclamation point! Order Pear Noir! #9 now!

Pear Noir! #9

I am pleased to have my short "Holistic Memoir, ToC" appear in the upcoming Winter 2013 issue of Pear Noir!, now available for pre-order. Issues are limited so snap one up while you can:

www.pearnoir.com

Passive Aggressive.

There's nothing quite like the moment when that obnoxious person in your office finally, at 2:30 or so, emerges from the cloud of her hangover and begins once again to narrate her entire waking consciousness in slipstream fashion, not allowing incidental pauses in cognitive activity to quell the never-ending stream of words. I know we're all in this together, and I know we have to live in harmony, and accept one another's faults and idiosyncrasies, but damned if I don't find my empathy tank completely drained by thoughtlessness and trivial annoyances perpetrated AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN. It's the complete lack of awareness that drives me up a wall. I'm actually blogging about this. My God how lame. How did we get here? Anyway, my iPod is handy, so I'm listening to Wolf Parade. But I resent being driven into my shell. So, how's your day? I just read The Gunslinger. I've been under the weather for a few weeks and wanted a comfort book. It was a spare read. Engaging, but a little plain-- everyone assures me it blooms into this incredible, epic tale, and I'm willing to take the journey. But I found the first installment to be a little like shadowboxing. We'll see where it goes.

Heart Shovel.

There is an exhilarating dread that accompanies an editor's request of an author that he explain himself. The exhilaration, of course, comes with the implication that your work made enough of an impression so as to cause a momentary halt in the editor's process of feeding human hearts into the wood chipper beneath his desk; the dread comes with having now to account for what you've done. The editor wants to be sure you were not in the throes of a schizophrenic episode when you wrote what you wrote; he wants to be sure you've made some sense.

Obviously he is not sure. Like you are not sure. You are playing poker with invisible cards.

Well-- have you? Made sense? Maybe the reason you did what you did is because it is a shadow form of the truth; it lurks at the periphery of your being, unobservable. Some people are of the opinion that an author's themes are intentional like breathing oxygen is intentional; I agree with that, particularly because sometimes I don't find the hairpin turns of the psyche are well-suited to be traveled by cumbersome vehicles of intellect. So I find that explanation conveniently suits my aversion to dissecting a thing.

Nonetheless, things need dissected. It's how we learn. And so I am wondering if it's a valid question to ask an artist, "What is this?" If you read something and it blows your hair back, do you need it explained? Do you want it explained? I like ambiguity; I crave ambiguity. I crave cracks in meaning big enough to fit a bedroll into so I can spend the night in there. So much of the short fiction that I love is impressionistic and strange and vibrant and deliriously focused, in its own peculiar way. It is a tune you have not heard. An air sculpture. I like the towering Jenga(tm) that language can be: There is as much meaning in the collapse as there is in the construction. Also, when things fall apart, everyone laughs and it's an overall good time for the whole family.

But the editor has a task. He cannot expose his readers to the contagion of your lunacy-- he must ask! And when he asks, I pose the question to myself, because I want to send this story out there into the world. And so, the exhilaration and the dread. I second guess my craft. The editor only stops shoveling for so long.

"I Didn't Mean to be Kevin" is FREE.

You mooches. You leeches. You barnacles: Caleb Ross' "I Didn't Mean to be Kevin" is absolutely FREE for the Kindle, August 24th through Aug 28th. Don't delay. Caleb wants you to want him. He needs you to need him. He'll shine up the old brown shoes and put on a brand new shirt. Seriously though, what reason do you have not to get this? It's FREE. The proof is HERE, on AMAZON!

Reviews:

"A stirring novel, this extraordinary work plays upon the reader's willingness to suspend disbelief and turns it on its ear...Covering ground similar to the works of Sherman Alexie and Chuck Palahniuk, this is an author worth keeping an eye on." -Publishers Weekly

"Brilliant...one of the most amazing fiction concepts I've ever read." -Rayo Casablanca, author of 6 Sick Hipsters and Very Mercenary

"In I Didn't Mean to Be Kevin, Caleb J. Ross writes fearlessly, never shying away from the wild, insane places where his fertile imagination leads him. The first half a twisted take on small-town aimlessness, the second half the American road novel from hell, the book is ultimately a darkly comedic evaluation of a generation of motherless men." -Joey Goebel, author of Torture the Artist and Commonwealth

The Worst, Officially.

Well, here we are. I'm officially the worst at everything-- if a reputable source told me, "We will give you a million dollars-- all you have to do is just log in to this one site, once a month, for 6 consecutive months," I would lose out on that. I can't do it it. Why? I am the worst. More specifically? I think it's because I don't care about anything. Not in a flashy kind of look-at-me-I-don't-care-about-anything type of way-- as might be dramatized in a great many works of fiction and/or popular modern musicks-- but in a genuine, weary way. The earth is a transient body. No amount of elbow grease is going to stop our sun from exploding. I realize that is a total cop-out when it comes to how I choose to spend my 80-ish years here, window shopping. But when the chips are down or, at least, when they seem obviously finite, I am constantly pulled back to scientific knowns. The earth is a flash. The sun will die. The universe itself is a mere gust of an idea. This is a very juvenile thought process-- one that leads to getting an earring and possibly a ferret-- but I can't help what my mind does. I don't care. Some minutes I care. Some hours I care; some days I care. Sometimes I care for long enough stretches of time so as to string together "meaningful" little pearls of existence-- but generally speaking these are the times during which one does not count his blessings. I find myself interested only when the metaphorical basket is empty. At which point I generally choose only to remark on the emptiness. Whether that occurs for the duration of a second or ten seconds or ten minutes or ten days, it doesn't matter. Time is irrelevant. Space is irrelevant. At the center of the visible universe-- perceived as a helpfully concise 360 degree vista, viewed, again helpfully, from my exact, current spot-- there is a tiny gray star the color of my brain. Some days it shines. Some days it flickers. Some days it blinks out entirely. Sometimes this is recorded via fantastical technologies. If you cannot see my brain, you are obviously not standing where I am. If you can, I might ask you to move along so I can have a moment or two to myself, gosh. I am currently reading "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe. It's good.

I Am Selling A Guitar Amp, and I Propose That You Be the One To Purchase It.

I am selling a guitar amp on eBay. I think you should buy it, but that's just my opinion. If you're local I'll hand deliver it. I promise to leave. That's Kane's Promise # 3 -- You don't have to tell me when to leave; I know when I'm not wanted.
Item number: 280878470647.

That's a picture of the amp. That's my bed it's sitting on. Will it help the sale if I post more pictures, some of me lying seductively next to it?