Building Up Steam

Hey Pyros,

A few announcements...

* Matchbook Story will be hosting a literary salon/issue release at Gabriella Cafe on October 2nd. I realize that this is very advance notice, but Gabriella is small and its literary salons are popular, so make your reservation now. To see the cafe's lineup of other hosts, go here.




* Matchbook Story now has a Twitter account, @matchbookstory. You will not find stupid little tweets about what I had for breakfast there. You will find useful announcements re: issue releases, distribution dates, etc. Also, it is my very serious intention to tweet each week's Pick-of-the-Week story. As matchbook stories run 300 characters and tweets are 140, the Pick-of-the-Week story will be serialized in three parts. This is a good thing as most winning stories come equipped with a beginning, middle and end, and should hold our attention throughout, right?

* I've written a letter of interest to Seven Bridges Cooperative asking them if they'd like to sponsor an issue. If they bite, I'd like to get the issue out before October. Either way, I'm always accepting submissions.

* I'm slowly making my way through the backlog of last year's submissions that languished in my inbox while I was climbing the steep curve of dad-dom. Apologies to the writers that submitted so long ago and got nothing but crickets. I know how it feels. Just last week I received a rejection letter from McSweeney's for some ditty I sent, oh, 14 months ago. I suppose it stings less once you've completely forgotten your submission in the first place.

Chugga-chugga-choo-choo!

-kp

Baby Here, Issue No. 4 Coming...

Hello? Anybody out there?

It's been awhile since I shot any sound waves into the ether. Nearly a year by the looks of my last post. In case you missed that one, it was all about still-warm placentas and visceral writing. I was an expectant father then. Now I'm a straight-up DAD.

Of course, it's still plenty biological around here. The placenta, my wife's: we ate it. Not all at once, but in small, measured increments. A few hours after my daughter was born, a swift and methodical woman entered our house, sanitized our entire kitchen, and placed my wife's placenta inside a large dehydrator. She came back the following day, ground up the dried placenta, encapsulated it, and split. For the next month or so, my wife took a pill in the morning and one before bed. And I took one, once. Nothing happened, except this story.

Shit. Piss. Spit-up. Snot. Whether you have kids or not, you know the deal. I won't bore you with the details, but, yes, these are the details of my life now. My oh-so-very domestic life. What I'm trying to say here is that the bar has been raised (by being lowered). The scatological is banal. You have to be a sharp, feisty, beautiful, blue-eyed baby girl to impress me now. So impress me.

That's right: Matchbook Story is back and seeking good stories. I'm currently romancing the proprietor of a very romantic cafe in downtown Santa Cruz to sponsor issue no. 4. It appears Gabriella Cafe is set to launch a Tuesday night literary salon which, when you do the math (candlelight dinner + authors reading their writing), equals Matchbook Story. So stay tuned, get writing, and make a Tuesday night reservation at Gabriella to get inspired. As usual--even if it is a year and a baby later--I'll keep you posted as things progress.