On the good news front, my new collection of short stories, "If I Knew the Way, I Would Take You Home," will be coming out next year from Dark Sky Books. This is a book of rock and roll short stories, and I couldn't be happier to have placed it at Dark Sky, which is awesome and getting awesomer all the time.

Here's Dark Sky's press release thingy.

My story "Seven Clowns Before the Explosion" is up at the newly redesigned and really nice Dark Sky Magazine.

Here's the opening section:

He is driving, like always, curling the little car in ever-tightening spirals, pushing it, feeling the centrifugal force and allowing the audience to blur in his vision, a whirl of light and color, color and light, a beautiful hallucination, one of many that exist only within the small universe of the circus.

You read the whole thing over here at Dark Sky.

I have a short thing up at Wigleaf, called "Pop Star Dead at 22."

Here's the first paragraph:

Do you know what it's like when Myspace tells you they have to pull your profile because you're getting too much traffic? When Spencer Pratt friends you on Facebook? And then the next day, Brody Jenner? I mean they are friending you. You know what that's like? I do, bro. It's fucking awesome.

And here's the rest.

I have a short, odd little story called "How We Got from There to Here" up on Pindeldyboz right now.

Here's the first paragraph:

1.

At first, we didn't know what they were. Some people thought they were aliens, some thought god had dropped them out of the sky. They talked about them on the news, debated endlessly. There were articles in all the newspapers, the morning talk shows, even the celebrity gossip tabloids. We talked different then, talked a lot, used big words and sometimes talked just to hear ourselves talking. That was Before.

You can read the whole shebang here.

I have a short, odd story, called "Me and Drunk Me," up at Thieve's Jargon.

Here's the opening:

Drunk Me is completely misunderstood. He's killing Sober Me, people say, literally drowning me in Irish whiskey, German beer, and Italian wine. I hear the whispers: he's the reason things went bad with Stacey, why I can't finish the novel and haven't placed a story in a year and a half, why I'm on this bullshit "probation" thing at work.

But they don't understand. We have a symbiotic relationship. Yin and Yang. Chang and Eng. An action and an equal and opposite reaction. Me and Drunk Me are made for each other. We are soul mates.

Check it out here.