a random list of some of my favorite lines from city of weird

Well, the list isn't random. It's basically a favorite line (or two or three) from each story, in the order in which they appear in the book. But all put together, the list looks pretty random. But I was just thinking about some of my favorite passages, and feeling thankful, again, that these lovely writers gifted our book with them, and I thought I'd like to share. Some of my favorites are the landings to stories (for instance Kevin Meyer's last line to his story "Out of Order" is one of my favorite last lines of a short story ever), but in the interest of not popping spoilers, I'm not including those.

There was only the sound of wind, and then rain, and that curious sound sun makes, when it is speckling on the flowers.

I recognized her in the motion of her eight elegant arms, the way she plucked that kid from the ground and squeezed the life out of him with deliberate grace.

I wanted to go on Craigslist and search for a new housemate. While I waited for the happy face screen to pop up, it occurred to me it might look suspicious if I advertised before filing a missing person report.

She let go of life. Her body drifted from the sleeping pod across the moonlit water. Her daughters woke at sunrise, knowing. The echolocation of grief resounded on the rock walls.

“I wonder if this was a nice place,” Red said. “For the creatures we destroyed, I mean.”

     “Hey, boys,” he says to his Santa minions. “On Christmas day I give toys to all the good girls and boys. What do I do the other three hundred and sixty-four days a year?”
     “Raise hell, Santa,” they all start shouting. “Raise hell.”

She stole the blue right out of the sky on a rare Oregon clear day, the kind of midday that makes shopkeepers lean against doorways, mothers sit and linger on swings next to their children, and dogs stretch out on driveway sunspots.

Shit shit shit fuck shit this shouldn’t be a thing I hate this place I hate biospheres I hate huge mystery buildings I hate the stupid fucking City of stupid Roses and Aisha’s dead and fUUUUCKKKKKKK.

He’s excited to see me, and we run around in the back yard. I show him how dexterous I’ve gotten at fetching, rolling over, and playing dead. This brings him joy, happiness, w0+w1∑j=1tγt−jCRj+w2∑j=1tγt−jEVj+ w3∑j=1tγt−jRPEj, what the Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran called “your sorrow unmasked.” I, in turn, feel its biomimetic equivalent.

The Yay-yay tilted her head and looked at me again with those same Christian eyes. Those eyes, he died for you. Those eyes, he gave you his one and only son. Those eyes, Yay-yay, she didn’t know nothing about all of that. The guilt and the guilty. The make believe. It all came from me.

And I especially didn’t want the dog once I started playing Polybius, the blackouts started, and the dog was dead set on chewing my face off.

I’m inhaling an atmosphere so thick with information that my lungs are full of whispers. I think I’m on the brink of becoming conscious of myself as text, as a transcribed dream, as something printed on pulp, exuding a cloud of dancing atoms that someone on one of the loftier levels might already be breathing.

I wondered, how would it feel to climb up onto the railing of that bridge at night, to look down into the darkness? How would it feel for that one brief instant to be released from any contact with the earth?

The colors veered around the walls. He wavered on his heels, waiting for his balance to return. Light and dark swapped places, then slowly swapped back.

Sometimes she can still feel the ghosts of the little butterfly flutters in her belly, the somersaults and loop-de-loops of another living thing sharing her body. Little fish swimming along, heartbeat under her heartbeat, until it wasn’t anymore. Just another lost thing.

Her face long like it was, no makeup but the orange lipstick she put on every day. The eyebrows she drew on with the little pencil. All my life she drew her eyebrows and wore the orange lipstick.

The door to the basement is slowly closing, but before it does, I think I catch a glimpse of drab muslin and maybe scales disappearing into the gloom. An appropriate supernatural rustling sound accompanies the creaking door.

Tiny black and brown Henri, a foxy mutt with huge, furry ears and round, brown eyes. When Henri became ill, his eyes filled with slate. Robert and Henri lay together most days, both sleeping their way toward God.

The vampire has a problem with his backside that he’d rather not discuss.

He’s uglier than sin on baby Jesus’s birthday.

The threat of crying kept cropping up inside of my nose the way disappointment does. Abject disappointment, if you wanted to get all SAT prep about it.

She likes the apartment, though the neighborhood itself, with its thousand porches, bothers her. Porches have hippies. Hippies have smells. Smells have water. Water has bugs. Bugs have eyes. Eyes have caps of flesh.

Alex squeezed his bottom lip, which escaped, worm-like.

At first I was like, “Oh, great, more yuppie chic from Uncle Thrak!” But I have to say, heating my mammoth rump with fire was life-changing. Intentionally burning your food (or “cooking,” as they call it) really unlocks the mammoth-flavor. I kept thinking how great it would be paired with a marionberry compote or live ants.

     “I’m a window,” he said. “Look at me like I’m a window.”
     I looked at the window.

My name is Melquiades, and I am, in that misleadingly innocuous phrase from your police procedures, the “person of interest” wanted for questioning in connection with the disappearance of some twenty thousand of your city’s residents. Before we take up the matter of those missing citizens, nearly all of whom are quite safe, I assure you, you must first understand with whom you are dealing.

Virginity melted down into the earth with the stegosaurus bones.

     “I found a jar of mayonnaise a few days ago,” Weisman said, chewing slowly, his eyes distant. 

     Martin perked up. “Really? What’d you do with it?” 

     “I left it. A man can’t just eat mayonnaise."

The irises of your eyes got all squishy after the X. Your black irises were a painting my vision could change. I could smear the paint job of your end-of-India eyes to match the world as I saw it. The weight of your forearm, heavy on my back, our two bodies fed into each other, skin was weight and energy and bodies and warm.

*

The authors, in order of their passages: Rene Denfeld, Brigitte Winter, Leslie What, Leigh Anne Kranz, Dan DeWeese, Brian Reid, Stefanie Freele, Jonah Barrett, Jonathan Hill, Andrew Stark, Bradley K. Rosen, Kevin Meyer, Jason Squamata, Susan DeFreitas, Karen Munro, Nicole Rosevear, Doug Chase, Linda Rand, Kirsten Larson, Justin Hocking, Sean Davis, Suzy Vitello, Leni Zumas, Art Edwards, Mark Russell, Kevin Sampsell, Stevan Allred, B. Frayn Masters, Jeff Johnson, Adam Strong
 

bad faith

Recently I watched the short film Bad Faith, written and directed by Jonah Barrett. I got to know Jonah when he became one of thirty writers contributing a short story to my anthology City of Weird, a few years ago. Jonah's story in the book has human-sized newt creatures and a secret underground biodome and a woman who controls crows with her mind, so yeah, I could have predicted his film was going to be super imaginative.

If you want to check it out, you can view it in its entirety on Jonah's artist website Malicious Wallydrags here.

The movie concerns Jeane on her first week of work in an office job, plagued with anxiety attacks and the loss of a best friend - but it also concerns a monster with a mouth full of teeth and a journey to the edge of the world.

Look at that creature! Can you see its trio of eyes? Look close. That's "Crystal the Puppet," which Jonah's crew constructed from PVC pipe and wire and papier-mâché - in fact, there's a cool clip on how they made it in the very cool "Making of" video you can also find on the Malicious Wallydrags website.

There's some beautiful film craft in Bad Faith. I don't like to give things away, so I won't say what it is, but there's a bit of artistry that happens right at the beginning that made me gasp out loud. I loved the worlds created by Jonah's camera, his eye, and his storyteller brain, both in the bright, sterile office and in the bleak landscape of Jeane's fantasies. Jonah weaves fantasy with reality throughout Bad Faith, making you ask the question: what is scarier, monsters or loneliness... monsters or the endless soul-sucking drone of the corporate working world.

OK, don't answer that.

The film has a great cast of characters, including Jonah himself, who shouldn't be allowed to have so many talents that, wait, yes, it suddenly occurs to me that he made a pact with the devil in which he was allowed to steal the talents of three other people (sorry, guys) and keep them all for himself. He's great as Paul, the best friend Jeane has lost, who we meet in Jeane's fantasies and who accompanies us to the edge of the world.

Sarah Robertson plays Jeane with wonderful range, and a sense of so much pent up emotion - terror, shame, loneliness, even hope - just below the surface.

I love Deane Shellman as Mrs. Vander the office manager. She's the perfect corporate office trope, whose enthusiasm for the job reminds you why existential angst is a thing and whose chirpy helpfulness, as Jeane keeps screwing up on the job, just creates more tension.

And Amber Atalaya is pretty delicious as Phillis, the conniving coworker out to step on anyone's nose she can to keep her beloved place in the hierarchy of the office.

But the heart of the film is Howard, played with lovely realness by Kela Kealakai. I love the subtlety Kela brings to their role as maybe the one truly grounded character in the whole story. With all the peril Jeane endures, from betrayals to failure to loneliness to encounters with ferocious prehistoric beasts, Howard  brings to the story what was, to me, the most unexpected thing of all.

No, I'm not going to tell you. Watch it here. The website also has info on Jonah's writings and photography and more. This profile I wrote about Jonah's contribution to City of Weird contains some more fun info about him and his projects.

On its birthday: City of Weird, a random photoplay

October 11, 2017, is the official first birthday of City of Weird. And October 12th is the first anniversary of our book launch at Powell's.

I kind of can't believe it. A whole year.

Bear with me. I'm feeling very nostalgic.

I thought I'd pull together a bit of a photoplay on the life of the book. I have far too many pictures and don't want to go on and on, so I'll just choose a smattering, mostly from the many lovely events we did. A couple writers who lived out of state didn't make it to events, so I don't have pictures of everyone, but I'll try to get as many in here as I can.

^When books arrived for the first time.

^Powell's put us up on the marquee!

^Karen Munro talks with Ken Jones, host of KBOO's Between the Covers

^Suzy Vitello on Between the Covers.

^Octopus cupcakes for our book launch at Powell's City of Books, October 12th, 2016.

^Octopus swag on all the chairs.

^A nice, big crowd for the Powell's launch. This is when we had contributors in the audience stand for applause.

^Powell's readers answering questions during the Q&A, left to right: Dan DeWeese, Brigitte Winter, Mark Russell, and Rene Denfeld.

^In the signing line. Left to right, contributors Brian Reid, Brigitte Winter, Mark Russell, Rene Denfeld, Doug Chase, Kirsten Larson, Adam Strong, and Brad Rosen.

^Jonah Barrett and Jonathan Hill.

^On the right, our primary copy editor, Sharon Eldridge.

October 26th was our event at Broadway Books. We encouraged people to come in costume and there was more octopus swag and a City of Weird doughnut cake donated by VooDoo Doughnut.

^With Broadway Books co-owner Sally McPherson.

^My costume was this big hat that I had to take off halfway through because it kept falling off.

^Leslie What in a fabulous giant squid costume.

^Stevan Allred, in the costume of a well-dressed man, reads from "Notes from the Underground City."

^And my favorite costume of the night, contributor / reader Kevin Meyer dressed as a Carebear, along with audience members Colin and Aubrey.

On November 4th, we were part of Wordstock's Lit Crawl®, reading alongside Lauren Kessler at the Oregon Ballet School.

^Jonah Barrett reads from his story "Alder Underground."

^Leni Zumas reads from "Tunnels."

^Sean Davis congratulates fellow contributor Susan DeFreitas on the upcoming publication of her novel Hot Season.

^Kevin Sampsell brought the house down with a hilarious and moving performance of his story "In Transit."

The next day was Wordstock. City of Weird contributors Jonathan Hill, Stevan Allred, and Karen Munro read at a pop-up event but sadly, I didn't get any pictures as I was moderating.

Our event at Annie Bloom's was on November 16th.

^Look at this fabulous window display they put up!

^Doug Chase reads from his story "Squatty and Weasel Boy" as Art Edwards and Suzy Vitello look on.

^Justin Hocking had everyone laughing.

^With Linda Rand and Justin Hocking in the signing line.

^Readers and contributors posed outside in front of the window display. Left to right, Justin Hocking, publisher Laura Stanfill, me, Suzy Vitello in jaunty hat, Doug Chase, Brad Rosen, Linda Rand, and Art Edwards.

On December 6th, we were invited to read on KBOO's Bread and Roses, the country's longest-standing feminist radio show.

^Susan DeFreitas reads from her story "The Mind Body Problem." Behind her head: Don't take equipment! Don't take equipment!

^Goofing off with the microphone. Susan DeFreitas, Leigh Anne Kranz, B. Frayn Masters and me.

On December 7th we were part of the Plonk Reading Series at Corkscrew Wine Bar, with a winter/Christmas themed show. Apologies for the less-than-clear pictures. I took these, and my phone does not take good pictures.

^Nicole Rosevear reads from her story "This Many Lost Things," set in Portland in wintertime.

^Brian Reid, whose story is about a SantaCon gone bad.

^Brad Rosen dressed up as his narrator from the story "Yay" and played the waldteufel, an instrument that has the power to ward off the Krampus.

December 13th we went to Longview, Washington, for Wordfest. As host, I sat behind the authors, and I took a few discrete pictures, but, yeah, they were all from behind. Still, at least I got something.

^Brian Reid.

^Kirsten Larson reads as host Alan Rose looks on.

^B. Frayn Masters, who read and also favored us with a very skilled rooster impersonation.

^Jason Squamata.

^Special guest Stephen O'Donnell read Justin Hocking's story "Vampire."

Our event at Another Read Through was March 11th, 2017. Every reader read from their own story PLUS another favorite story from the collection.

^The whole crew. Left to right: me, Leni Zumas, Art Edwards, Doug Chase, Suzy Vitello, and our host Elise Saphier, owner of Another Read Through.

^Brad Rosen listens to Doug Chase read from his (Brad's) story.

^Portland writers Steve Arndt and Dan Berne.

^Art Edwards, Doug Chase and Suzy Vitello. That little drum-and-stick thing on the table is a waldteufel, which I mentioned before is an instrument that wards off the Krampus and other evil things. The drum is on a string connected to the stick, and you twirl it around to make a sound that, according to Brad's story "Yay," sounds like a thousand and one wet frogs singing.

^I did a demonstration.

^Another Read Through has a cool reading tree, which we gathered around after the reading. That's publisher Laura Stanfill tucked into the hole in the tree.

On March 7th, Mark Russell and I were invited to speak to Willamette Writers.

Our final reading event of the book launch was April 17th at American Legion Post 134, which was the setting for part of Sean Davis' City of Weird story "The Fixer."

^Sean Davis reads from "The Fixer."

^Susan DeFreitas.

^Linda Rand.

^Karen Munro.

^Leigh Anne Kranz.

This event was supposed to be a winter event the year before, but big snows postponed it. I'm glad we ended our readings here, a favorite event space because of its warmth and its connection to the book. But more than that, I'm glad we ended here because our last reader was Adam Strong, whose story is the last story in the book.

^Adam Strong reads from "Always."

^Readers and contributors on hand: Sean Davis, publisher Laura Stanfill, Doug Chase, Linda Rand, Nicole Rosevear, Adam Strong, me, Susan DeFreitas, Leigh Anne Kranz, Karen Munro.

But then the Willamette Radio Workshop took four City of Weird stories and adapted them into radioplays, which they performed on stage!

The first was at the Kiggins Theater in Vancouver, Washington.

^The stories they adapted were "The Fixer" by Sean Davis, "Transformation" by Dan DeWeese, "Letters to the Oregonian in the Year 30,000 BC" by Mark Russell, and "A Code for Everything" by Andrew Stark. The above image is from their performance of "A Code for Everything." I was extra excited that they adapted this story, as Andrew lives out of state and was unable to attend any reading events.

^Another thing I was excited about: they also showed and provided sound effects for "How Do You Say Gentrification in Martian," by Jonathan Hill, our one graphic novelist contributor.

^And lastly, they performed at UFO Fest in McMinnville, at McMenamins Hotel Oregon. What a blast.

^A UFO Fest makes book signing extra fun.

Gosh, that was a lot of pictures even though I really held back. I'm sorry we don't have pics of authors Jeff Johnson, Stefanie Freele, and Andrew Stark. Their contributions to the book are wonderful, but they just happened to be out of state / unavailable during event time.

Anyway, I want to say happy birthday to our little book. I've been thankful for every minute of this year in the life of this collection.

And with all the excitement of readings and performances, one of the sweetest things is just seeing it live in the world.