I feel like I always have to make a little disclaimer for fiction. All of it. “No, I’ve never even attempted to kill anyone, please do not read that into my horror stories.” There is this inherent want for an audience to attach the story to its author in a deeper capacity than “I wrote this.” Of course, I attach more meaning than “I wrote this”, I am not immune to wondering if secretly J. K. Rowling attended wizard school. And yes, the characters and actions stem from somewhere, but never so close to the surface that it can be pulled out by someone who does not already know the author. But its like we want that magic of fiction to bleed into its author… A while ago I read an interview with Janelle Monae (she’s a singer/musician who worked with Of Montreal and so I Iooked her up and she does concept albums around the idea of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. They’re fun!!) and the interviewer was going on with the little preamble: where they are at the time of the interview, what Monae was wearing (always a tuxedo, it doesn’t need to be stated) and within the preamble the author mentioned how like an android Monae was during the interview. I found that funny, because it would seem to me that Monae was probably just patiently answering questions and because this interviewer had already listened to her albums (monae sings the part of an android, and is a total sci fi nerd) she was expecting something otherworldly and hinged it on Monae’s normal behavior. Which happens! We do this! It takes a little work to remember that we do this.

All that being said, I’ve written a short story about an evil vampire and it’s going to be published by Evil Girlfriend Media in an upcoming anthology called Stamps Vamps and Tramps. Check out their website at http://www.evilgirlfriendmedia.com I’ll put up more information as I receive it. Exciting stuff!

(Dear friends and family, the story is brutal and filled with gore, but I am no closer to being a serial killer than Beatrix Potter is to being a rabbit.)