Noz

By Mike Cooley

The thump woke me up. Noz looked at me, blood dripping from his fangs. The body was on the floor in the kitchen; she looked young. The cigarette between my stained fingers was still lit and my hair was matted against the side of my face. I was lying on the ratty couch and an empty bottle of something cheap was on the carpet between me and the dark glass table. The cabin smelled ashes, spilled red wine, and fate.

“Noz. What have I told you about bringing home strangers?” I nodded toward the young lady, who was lying on her back, motionless and pale. Her hair was sandy blonde, and she was wearing a jade necklace, a turquoise blouse, and black shorts. The smell of her perfume wafted toward me, floral and ephemeral.

Nozfuratu’s satisfied grin morphed into a look of apology. He licked his…

How to write a response to a love letter (which is more fun if it isn’t addressed to YOU)

Part One: How to Write A Love Letter

How would I write a love letter?

As if I’d tell my teen that. Teens usually know but forget as they grow old and fearful.

I would write it by hand on a yellow legal pad with pencil. I would write it over and over until it was exactly right. Then I’d get a fine piece of stationary and write the perfect letter with perfect script.

There are different kinds of love letters. There are those that say:  Hey, I really like you a lot, let’s get together. There are love letters that are heart breaking and say: I’m lost without you. There are those that say: You are the one, the only one, the absolute only one. And there are those that say:…

Some stories just can’t be told in three hundred and fifty pages.

Some stories need at least eight hundred pages, or twelve hundred, or even a few more than that.

For me long books are like road trips. Epic road trips. My kind of road trips.

Don’t be intimidated by long books. Read them. Savor them. Enjoy them. Add one to your summer reading list, even if you have to bring it into fall.

Seriously, I kid you not, I read Itby Stephen King in one weekend. It is 1,138 pages. No problem. The next week I read The Stand, also by Stephen King . It is a little over 800 pages.

Here is my list. I might not have pictures for all of them. I don’t have exact page counts for all of them because that varies depending on addition and media, but all are long. I will…

2019 Summer Reading: Escape into Reality With Four Nonfiction Adventures

Today I’m featuring a quartet of absolutely wonderful books that will suck you into adventure, mystery, and places you’ve never imagined you’d be. You’ll meet a colorful, dangerous, interesting, lovely, and witty characters. Best of all it is all true.

Good nonfiction is a wonderful thing. I think about some of my favorites that I could read again and again and again. Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness is an autobiographical work by Edward Abbey is one book that should be on every book list and every book shelf. Arctic Dreamsby Barry Lopez moved my soul. A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson made me think and also made me laugh almost unlike any book I’ve ever read.

Copies of these books, even those now out of print, can be…

For years we’ve looked forward to watching the Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts. Holy shit in a wheel barrow, this year the real show was watching the stunned movie goers stagger out of the theater shell shocked and depressed.

One had a slightly bitter sweet message, but the rest were just depressing.

Skin (United States)
The was the only American film in the group. It was sort of a skin-head white-trash revenge film. It was squirmy and uncomfortable with a totally unrealistic ending that sort of wasted the message of the movie. We came up with a lot of much better endings and resolutions.

Marguerite (Canada)
This was a bitter sweet story of an elderly woman and her caretaker. The message was about missed love and understanding. It had a bitter sweet ending. This was the only one that didn’t make me want to cry, scream, or throw something.

Madre…

In 1835, the Southern Literary Messenger published a short story so shocking, so graphic and ghastly, that outraged letters poured into the office of editor Thomas W. White. Written by a relatively unknown Edgar Allan Poe, the story, Berenice, tells of Egaeus, a young man of family and wealth who is stricken by an obsessive disorder known to 19th-century psychiatry as monomania, a pathological fixation on some specific item. In the case of Egaeus, this fixation centered horribly on the gleaming teeth of his cousin and fiancée, Berenice, a porcelain rictus staring out from an ill and wasted visage.

“God of heaven! — is it possible? Is it my brain that reels — or was it indeed the finger of the enshrouded dead that stirred in the white cerement that bound it? Frozen with unutterable awe I slowly raised my eyes to the countenance of the corpse. There had been a band around the jaws, but…