What's Bootsy Doin?

Oh, Trusted First Reader, how I love thee.

I've finished the third draft of MINDKILLER, which means it's in good enough shape to give to Trusted Reader for a critique. This makes me nervous, and I have to restrain myself from hovering over him and repeatedly asking: What's going on in the book now? How do you like it? Are you buying it?

The good news: He claims to be so caught up in the story at times that he forgets to critique.

The bad news: He has some solid suggestions. But that isn't bad news. Not really. It's what I want to make it better.

While he works on that, I've begun reading for my next book, a take on the exorcist/demon possession narrative. I can't say any more than that without jinxing it, but I have a confession to make: I'm afraid of the devil.

The first book I (re)read was The Exorcist. It wasn't nearly as scary as it was when I was a teenager what with all the adverbs Blatty overuses. What's freaking me out is the non-fiction.

Even though I don't believe in the supernatural, I can't help worrying that the more I find out about demons, the more demons will vex me! So far, though, I seem to be un-afflicted. No moving furniture, no vomiting, no writhing. Everything carries on as usual. But man, if you believe some of those books, America is crawling with demons! We're all at risk.

In other completely unrelated news, I've started a fish blog over at tumblr. If you love fish and fishing, come visit. And if you have any fish stories or photos, please submit to me. NOW! (Sorry, that's the devil talking.)

Shoe Pron

A couple of posts back I asked for shoe recommendations. A few people responded--and they all recommended Fluevogs! Which happened to be the shoes I wanted.

I was ready, primed. fluffed and pumped for those shoes. On the Saturday of my panel, I took the subway to Soho and found the store. It was small and stuffed with adorable funky shoes. To be fair, I already knew I was going to buy a pair before I even walked in. It was an easy sell because I was determined to come back to Toad Suck, Arkansas with a pair of expensive New York shoes, by gum!

After I brought the shoes home, things got crazy. We had a glass of wine and somehow the laces came undone! Oh Fluevogs, I love you.

This Post Isn't About that Mosque

It's about Puget Sound--and zombies!

Last week I left the triple digits of Arkansas for the coolness of the Pacific Northwest. It's an alien landscape up there, gray and foggy and teeming with supernatural sea life. Every day at low tide, we walked the beach and discovered an entirely new species (for us). Here are just two:


At first I thought this was a giant pile of stinking horse manure--but it's sea anemones and they were all over the beach. If you put your finger in the center of one, the creature grasps you gently, thinking you're food.


Gigantic oyster bed! Everyone ate oysters but me. I think they're gross. They taste like the bottom of the ocean, but I gather that's the appeal.


Another thing I did was read Mira Grant's Feed--almost! I'm not quite done yet. I learned a lot from that book. It's a novel set in the post-zombie apocalypse. Humans and zombies share the world. The book focuses on a group of bloggers (who drive the news) and their coverage of a presidential election as well as their continuing struggle against the Rising.

It's a very different book from Brains. And I like that. It came out around the same time, so I can't help but compare the two. Grant reaches a different audience than I do, however. Her book is entirely plot-driven--and it's a good exciting plot. Reading it has been liberating. I'm currently writing a book that is also plot-driven and that is aimed at a broad audience. I began my writing career as a poet and a poetic sensibility still influences my daily writing, but Feed has taught me to not worry so much about words words words and have fun! Not that Grant is a slouch of a writer--not at all. She's got it going on. But I see her devotion to story--and I see that it is good.

Oooh Cher, Dat's Some Good Cookin

I'm here in the Bayou for a gar conference in Thibodaux. First order of business was to visit one of my dearest friends, Sharon.


Sharon and I have been in a few bands together: InstruKtor, Humpback Guardian Angel and Imminent Victorians. They were all sort of the same band, though, with different names. She's so cool.

My husband was the keynote speaker for the conference and I went to his reading. He rocked, of course, and the scientists love him. They're glad to have a non-biologist spreading the gar gospel.

Today we went fishing. I was expecting to see damage from Katrina and maybe from the oil spill, but Bayou Beouf was spared. Apparently Thibodaux and Houma were too. I lived in Louisiana from 1997-2002, and the swamp was as magical and surreal as ever.


It looked untouched by those disasters--but I knew that it wasn't in some areas. New Orleans is still recovering from the hurricanes, Grand Isle and many other places from the oil. It's a region that's seen more than its share of heartache in the past five years--it's doubly heartbreaking that they could have been avoided. And we just learned, the gar population is in danger from the oil spill.

But let's end on a happy note: Cher, the food is to die for! Here's Mark eating fried alligator.

Garfish, zombies and me

Those of you who know me or who've read this blog before know that my husband, Mark Spitzer, is a gar expert. Mark has fished on television with Jeremy Wade and his book, Season of the Gar, just came out.

I'm a good wife. Supportive, even enthusiastic about Mark's obsessions. That's how I find myself going to this next week: International Network for Lepisosteid Fish Research and Management

That's right. A gar conference deep in Louisiana. Mark is the keynote speaker. And I just can't decide if I'm going to attend the 6-hour gar aging workshop or the panel on Feed Rates for Juvenile Alligator Gar! I mean, what would you do? It's a tough call.

Brains comes out on Tuesday. It's my first book. And I'll be surrounded by scientists who love and write about gar fish. But they're zombies of a sort, aren't they? Maybe I can sell a few books. At the very least, I'll get some marriage points.

Make Faulkner County Wet

I live in Faulkner County, Arkansas. And it's dry here. Not dry as in it doesn't rain. It rains plenty. It's dry as in no alcohol. It's a Baptist-stronghold, Bible-belt, alcohol-free zone. You'd think with the name Faulkner--great southern writer who loved his booze--we'd be swimming in bourbon. Not so.

Because Faulkner county isn't named after William Faulkner. And it's not entirely dry either. It's moist. And that's a lot less sexy than it sounds. Moist means you can buy booze at restaurants that call themselves "private clubs," but you can't go to a flat-out bar and you can't buy any package alcohol at the supermarket or convenience store. To buy a six pack or a bottle of wine for at-home consumption, we have to drive to the next county.

And that's just wrong, not to mention un-American. So I am on a mission to make Faulkner County wet! And the first step in any political fight is a folk song. A protest folk song that galvanizes the movement.

Lucky for me, I didn't have to write one. My bandmate Julee did. We're going to start the revolution, one cocktail at a time. Get wet, Faulkner County. Get wet.

Dead Duck

Arkansas is the only state where yo-yos are legal. Or so I hear. For those not in the know, yo-yos are fishing lines you hang from tree limbs and just leave there. They're spring-loaded, so if a fish bites, the yo-yo reels it in like magic. When you paddle out to check your yo-yos later on, after a good night's sleep or some beer, the fish is there waiting for you.

We've caught a lot of big catfish this way--but a few days ago, there was a duck on the line.

The poor thing. It drowned dive-bombing for the bait. Mark brought it in to the house with the intent to dress it. Our neighbor, who is an authority on ducks and deer and fryin fish and all things natural and southern, said that the breasts are good eatin.

Mark set it on the kitchen counter. The cats meowed at our ankles. And my inner goth teenager came out. Here was death, staring me in the face, the stiffened corpse of a duck who died for nothing. Like all of us! Doomed!

It was the dead of winter, with snow on the ground in Arkansas. The trees were bare; ice hung from the gutters; the duck was dead.

I took pictures. We decided it'd be too much trouble to extract the breast. Mark threw the duck back into the lake. I ran upstairs to put on black eyeliner.

How to make a gar-shaped cake

All Mark wanted for his birthday was a gar-shaped cake. Of course I had to make him one. Luckily our friend Eric was in town to help. He's biking around the country and only has one pair of pants, but with his shapely legs who needs 'em? He's starting a blog about his adventures called Me Cycle Long Time.

We decided on two 10-inch roll cakes for the body because gars are long and skinny. The cake part was pumpkin spice with a whipped cream and toffee filling. The first roll held together like a tight cigarette--the second broke, but then inspiration struck! This gar cake had been hooked--maybe by Mark--and the broken part was simply a battle wound.

After baking the roll cake, we made traditional chocolate cake for the head and tail. We approached the task like sculptors--the source material was like a giant piece of granite, and we simply cut away everything that wasn't gar. Here's Eric finding the tail:



While Eric took care of the tail, I concentrated on the head. Don't look for any significance in that division of labor. There is no insight into the characters in this narrative. It is all about the gar cake.



Next came the icing. I made the first batch, which accidentally became caramel. So Eric took up the task. First it was too thin. I consulted the Joy Of Cooking which said to beat watery icing in strong sunlight. Unfortunately it was overcast, so Eric just had to keep on beating that thing until it got stiff. He beat it for 25 minutes! I believe that's a record. It was also the occasion for many puns.


After putting the cake together came the fun part: Decorating!

The finished head:




The entire gar in all its glory.



It took us close to seven hours over two days to make this cake. But it was worth it. Look at Mark's smiling face!

Lost Canoe

We almost went Chris McCandless this weekend. We were that close to the wild.

Mark and I put the canoe in at Ed Gordon/Pt. Remove. It was an unfamiliar launch, but it smelled like dead fish and there were bait containers littering the ground. We paddled a mile or so up the creek. It was wide, deep and cold. That should have been our first clue something was wrong. This is Arkansas, where it's hot, shallow and narrow.

It soon became clear the whole area was flooded. After two miles, we couldn't distinguish the creek from the forest and started paddling through the trees. Branches and brambles scratched at our faces, spiders invaded the boat, logs and stumps blocked our path and there was nary a gar or turtle in sight. Still, we continued to put out jug lines, as evidenced by this pic.



We made our way through the forest over to a field of white flowers commonly known as marsh mallows, or so our friend Ben says. This is where I began to get scared. Because there was a monarch butterfly, a few of them actually, but one in particular that was evil. It was the way she attacked the flowers, like she deserved the nectar, like it was her due. That butterfly knew each flap of her wings affected people in China. We had to get out there.

So we paddled back. Only we didn't paddle back. We paddled until we were lost. Nature-it all looks the same. See what I mean?


The conversation went like this:
Does anything look familiar?
Do you remember this cypress?
I don't think we saw that gnarled log before. Did we?

Finally we heard a train--civilization--but we still had no idea where the launch was, so we parked the canoe and climbed up an embankment. At the top was the levee. So we walked. And we walked. Here's a picture of the path.



After an hour and a half trek around Fish Lake, we came out a private hunting club. Thankfully no one met us with guns, but there were duck blinds and deer blinds and duck decoys and three giant wire contraptions full of Busch Light cans. Only Busch Light! No other beer. A political statement, obviously.

We stealthed through the private property and hit the blacktop, then walked another few miles to a liquor store, where the clerk called the sheriff who drove us to our car. We rode in the back like criminals.

Later, in the comfort of our home, Mark found our path on Google Earth--we were way off. Because it was a maze of creeks in there, made more confusing by the flooding. We're lucky we didn't cannibalize each other in desperation.

The next day, again thanks to Google Earth, we drove on the levee and found the canoe.


We checked our jug lines and there was a catfish on one. We ate it for dinner, and in that small way, scored one for humans.

Barfalo River

This is a hangover story. You've heard it before. Here it is again.

So I drank too much. I blame Jamie, my sister's boyfriend. No particular reason except he brought the rum. We canoed on the Buffalo River on Tuesday--it's pristine, so clear we could see all the fish beneath us, and the bluffs were gold and red and brown. There were no other people around.

Then we found a gravel bar. Emphasize bar. I had a few rum and cokes. Then a few more. We set up camp. If this sounds like a Bukowski poem, it is.

We told stories by the fire, which Jamie stoked with the attention of a butler or a sprite. Bats flew around us. Then owls. Then we thought about bears and went to sleep on a bed of fossil rocks.

At the crack of dawn I felt wiggly. I drank some water. For a second, I thought I might escape unscathed. But then...the pain! the pain! the dryness like a desert yet so much clear water ahead! I jumped in the river and said, This is it! This will cure me. Like the thermal bath at Hot Springs I took with my sister a few days before. Curative! The river was Adderall or morphine or Freud!

No such luck. I barfed in the Buffalo. After that, I ate a peach. We broke camp and paddled another six miles. I barfed once more, over the side of the canoe and I learned something. Really, I did.

Worms

My husband and I have a running joke. Whenever one of us makes a pithy and/or witty and/or stupid comment like "It sure is hot in Arkansas" or "This is my favorite swimming hole" or "I love ice cream," the standard reply is "Why don't you blog about it?"

We mean this in a snarky, sarcastic, Chuck Klosterman, Gen-X way, because that's how we are, but also because blogs are generally filled with funny and charming voices writing about the nothings of their daily lives. I don't mind this one bit if I love the person. In fact, I like to read about the children and pets and food choices of my friends and family. That's what our lives are made of (mostly)--a series of unrelated events culminating in death! (And I especially like to read about winning softball games when my nephew is on the team.)

This is all to say that from now on, when I hear or say: Why don't you blog about it? I'm going to do it, by gum.

So the first subject is worms and Bono's Bait Shop out on 65, towards Greenbrier. There's a pic of the sign some guy posted on Flickr here but I can't copy and paste it.

The shop was crawling with either super skinny or super fat guys--there was no in-between. The skinny ones were shirtless and Bono hisself was there and they were all standing around someone's minnow bucket, looking in like it was holding something besides fish. It wasn't. We wrote a two-dollar check for a container of Canadian nightcrawlers and headed out to go fishing.

And here's the part where my husband said, Why don't you blog about it?

The nightcrawlers sucked! Nightcrawlers are supposed to be big and fat and juicy. They're supposed to wiggle when you hook them so that you can feel their muscles struggling to escape your God-like grasp. They're supposed to swim for their lives. But these worms were skinny as angel hair pasta. Hell, we've found better worms dried up on the sidewalk. Worms are supposed to die trying to catch fish for you--drowning valiantly! These died when we impaled them. Pffft.

Bottom line: Bono might be an okay musician and ubiquitous humanitarian, but he don't know nothing about worms.

Disclaimer: it's not the same Bono!

The Truth about Gar

My husband is a fisherman. Specifically, he's a gar fisherman. He's written numerous garticles and has been on Animal Planet as a gar expert. Gar are long skinny primitive fish with big teeth, lots of bone and scaly armor.

As a result of his gartitude, I've eaten a lot of the creatures. And here's the truth about gar: They don't taste good.

Case in point: The other night we had fried gar. My husband makes a delicious beer batter. There was no problem with the breading. But the meat...I tried to cut into it with a fork; after all, catfish easily flakes with one. Nope. Then I got a steak knife. It still wouldn't cut through that gar. Finally I went to the kitchen and returned with a butcher knife. Sound extreme? It wasn't.

My husband insists this is not a negative culinary attribute. "The texture is like chicken," he said, chomping on the rubbery gar. "It's dense. Hearty, even."

Gar populations are dwindling. Here's how everyone can help out: Don't eat the gar.