This morning I went out onto the porch with my coffee […] but as soon as I stepped out, I saw on the deck boards a little grey lump. A big black beetle was rolling the lump around. Sometimes burying its head into a softness. And as it moved the lump around, I realized what I was seeing was a very small, very dead bird. I do not know what bird it was. It hadn’t any feathers to speak of, just the moldy fuzz of a hatchling. The beetle unfolded the bird’s bunched-up neck and articulated its clenched legs. I know the beetle was just feeding, but it seemed it was trying to reanimate the bird. As if by exercising its limbs, it could bring it back to life. I crouched there on the porch watching the beetle work to resuscitate this little rotten thing.

It’s hard to know sometimes when a project actually begins. The oldest story in Blue of the World was drafted in the October of 2009 for a contest I did not win. The most recent was composed in July of 2016 for the simple excuse of I wanted to. Somewhere in between, seventeen more were written, though I know many of the ideas go way back to the unrecallable crags of the early- to mid-00s or possibly even further (who can say). Regardless, on April 15^th, Blue of the World will officially be a tangible book in the world as part of Tailwind Press‘s 2019 catalog.

In a celebratory display of welcome, a multi-disciplinary performance event will be held on May 30^th at SPACE in Portland to mark the collection’s Maine release. Co-presented by the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, the event will feature readings and live music, as well as interactive pieces and other dark slips of the unusual. More details to come.

Copies of Blue of the World can be pre-ordered through Indiebound, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon, as well as through your local bookstore.

“If the character is unalarmed by and accepting of the muppet in the kitchen, man, who am I to say that’s weird?”

For some insight into Blue of the World (as well as my first novel, To Sleep as Animals), an interview with Danilo Thomas of Baobab Press is currently featured on Baobab’s site. In it we discuss landscape, the surreal, and the intersection where the interests and joys of being a reader and a writer collide.

Across the distance, I saw the kitchen light was on. You were sitting at the table when I walked in, playing solitaire and drinking a glass of ginger ale in your hospital gown. It’s the last thing I’d seen you wearing. Two moths fluttered about the yellow light above your head. There were eyes of wet on your glass.