Tag Archives: The Guitar Hero Goes Home Marilyn Jaye Lewis

Really Windy Here in Crazeysburg!!!

First, some really good news:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9, 2020 – The Department of Education released new, final regulations today providing crucial free speech and religious liberty protections for students at our nation’s public college campuses. Institutions that violate those core rights will risk losing access to federal education grants. Put simply, the regulations require public institutions of higher education to do what they are already obligated to do: protect the First Amendment rights of their students.

Yay. (This doesn’t mean that Courts, and Colleges accused of violating First Amendment rights, won’t try to come up with new ways to define the First Amendment, but it is still a really meaningful step in a good direction. Plus, it is just better to debate about the Constitution rather than simply ignore and defy it.)

All righty. Well. My life, gang. I do not want to go into it on the blog because I would rather just face forward and look at the positive things, but I will say that every morning when I wake up these days, there is another little fire of hell burning that I somehow have to figure out how to put out, but honestly, I just don’t know how. I can only have faith that things will work out in some miraculous way, all on their own, without me trying to solve things that are unsolvable.

Here is just one of the key people, hard at work behind the scenes, trying to help me solve my problems:

Pin on Vintage Christmas

WAIT!! NO!! I meant:

The meaning of Byzantine Orthodox iconography.

All righty!!

So I’m only going to post two things for now. One is that I think I may have figured out how to fix one of the formatting issues of the printed text for The Guitar Hero Goes Home. (The eBook edition is fine. I’m still just having issues with how the printed edition’s text is formatted and how the cover looks.)

The other good thing is that I am still making really great progress with the new erotic short story, “1954 Powder Blue Pickup.” So that is making me really, really happy.

So that is really all I can say today.  Except for the fact that it is really windy here today! (Hopefully, this means that all my troubles will blow away!)

I’m gonna go get this day started. Thanks for visiting, gang. If you commemorate 9/11 where you live, I hope you have a meaningful day. If you don’t, well, I still hope you have a meaningful day. Meanwhile, Bruce Springsteen has a new album coming out; it’s ready for pre-order wherever you buy your music. Here is the official video for his new single, “Letter to You.”  (New album has the same name.) (Lyrics are in the video.) Okay. Enjoy. I love you guys. See ya.

Excerpt from “1954 Powder Blue Pickup”

My proof copy of the print edition of The Guitar Hero Goes Home, arrived this morning, and while I love being able to hold it in my hands, the cover art is skewed by about 1/4 of an inch on three of the borders, front & back.

It has been such a pain in the butt. Valerie keeps making the art work fit perfectly into the template, and then it keeps not printing correctly. So she’s going to try again…

Meanwhile, the book is actually already for sale, and so is the eBook. (Linked at the drop down menu above.) You might not notice the cover art being off, but we both sure did.

Well, I spent all of today on the new erotic short story, “1954 Powder Blue Pickup”. I am really , really happy with how it’s going, gang. It will probably run close to 20 pages when it’s done.

And while it’s intense and seriously skirts the boundary of “questionable consent” throughout, it is nowhere near as extreme as “Half-Moon Bride” was, so I’m going to go ahead and post a short excerpt here on the blog. I’ve tried to pick a segment that wasn’t too extreme.

However.

Please keep in mind that it is sexually explicit, it deals with subject matter that some readers could find offensive and it won’t be suitable for everybody. Thanks, gang!

Approx. 3 pages

************************************************

Excerpt from “1954 Powder Blue Pickup”
© 2020 Marilyn Jaye Lewis

When he was finished with her, she sat up, and grabbed a fresh Kleenex from her purse. She cleaned up her face as best she could, while he pulled up his trousers and zipped his cock back in.

Her skirt was still bunched around her waist and her panties were still down in back, revealing her ass, but first she reached for her blouse and put it back on.

“Wait,” he said. “Don’t button it up yet. Don’t hide those beauties!”

She smiled at him as he reached for her and pulled her breasts right up to his mouth. He licked her nipples and nipped at them and sucked on them. And while he did that, he reached a hand down her ass, feeling inside her underpants. “You’re soaking wet down there, you know that?”

She smiled, getting shy again. “I know,” she said. “I don’t know why.”

“It’s okay to like it,” he assured her. “Lots of girls like that.”

“They do? Are you sure? Because I’ve never heard about anything like this before.”

“Lots of girls do it – and like it. They just don’t admit it. It’s a secret.”

She gave it some thought “I guess it would have to be. Who’d ever talk about doing something like this?”

“Sure. Girls do all kinds of things that they don’t talk about.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.” He took out a cigarette, lit it with his lighter and then passed it to her. Then he lit another one for himself.

They smoked in silence as she sat there with her blouse still unbuttoned and her naked ass hanging out of her soaking panties. Then she spoke. “Can you show me something else that girls like that they don’t mention?”

He gave it some serious thought. He knew he wasn’t going to get it up again; his dick was spent for the night. What could he do that would still suit his agenda – keep her focused on her asshole, this new thrill?

“I tell you what,” he finally replied. “Lie back on the seat there. Just lie down and lift your legs.”

“Can I keep my cigarette going?”

“Sure.” But he rested his own in the ashtray. Then he pulled her panties all the way off and spread her legs wide apart.

She laughed in delight. “I already know all about this,” she said. “Not that I don’t like it…”

“This’ll be a little different.”

She lay there and smoked her cigarette, and watched him get the little tub of Vaseline from out of the open glove compartment. “Is that what that was,” she said. “Vaseline?”

“Pull your knees up high,” he instructed her. “Up there close to your tits.”

She did as she was told. And she watched him scoop a big smear of Vaseline from the little tub and then felt it rubbing all around her asshole, and even up inside it.

She moaned as she sucked intently on her cigarette. “I think I might know what’s coming next,” she said.

“Maybe you do,” he said, tossing the tub of Vaseline back into the glove compartment. “But maybe you don’t.”

He got down between her legs and began licking her. She was already a sopping mess, but he didn’t care. His tongue went straight for that little spot she loved so much, and then he pushed two of his fingers right up her greasy ass.

“Oh god!” she cried out. “That’s too much! Just use one! Please!”

He licked her clit and he wiggled it with his tongue and he sucked it, while his two fingers kept a steady pace, fucking in and out of her asshole.

Oh god – ow – no! It hurt but he wouldn’t stop, so she sucked like crazy on her cigarette, quickly smoking it all the way down, because what he was doing to her clit at the same time felt so good, so good. She wasn’t sure what to do. Oh god, she groaned again, because her asshole had opened now and was bearing down on the steady fingers that were actually fucking her. And her captive clit got stiffer and stiffer in his sucking mouth.

“Shit!” she screamed out, her body shuddering. “Shit! Oh shit.”

She was actually coming – already. “Shit!” she sputtered again, because he wouldn’t let up on her; he sucked her clit so intensely now – like maybe it was a tiny thumb, or a little nipple that milk might explode from if he only sucked on it hard enough. And his two fingers fucked her so deep now and so fast, that she knew for sure her asshole had opened way too much for any girl anywhere to ever be proud of – to ever, ever speak about, to anyone.

When her body collapsed from the orgasm, he pulled his fingers out of her, then leaned up to her face. He took her spent cigarette from her and then said, “Lick my lips.”

“What?” She was panting, delirious.

“I said lick my lips. Go on, do it.”

She pushed her tongue out of her mouth and licked his lips, just like he told her to do.

“What do they taste like?” he challenged her.

She wouldn’t answer.

“They taste like pussy,” he said. “Your pussy. See? Dirty girls like you like all kinds of dirty things,” he said, kissing her full on the mouth then, knowing her own pussy smell would go right up her nose.

*     *     *

He pulled up to the curb outside of her apartment building, but before letting her get out of the truck, he said, “Give me a Kleenex. You can’t go inside looking like that.”

When she gave him a fresh Kleenex, he spit into it and rubbed every last trace of mascara from around her eyes – from where it had run and smeared. And then he said, “Put a little more lipstick on. You don’t wanna look like you’ve had your mouth anywhere where it shouldn’t have been, do you?”

She smiled at him, and fished her tube of lipstick from her handbag. “No,” she said. Then she took out her little pocket mirror and freshened her Wildberry Lipslicker.

He loved watching her do that to her mouth. He could feel it down in his balls.

“When can I see you again?” he said. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

“Well, I have to work…”

“I know, but what about after?”

“So soon? Do you think we should? Two nights in a row – my girlfriends are going to start asking me what’s up with you and me.”

“All right, then. Thursday – how’s Thursday sound?”

“That’ll be good,” she said. And as she opened the door to let herself out of the truck, he stopped her.

He pulled her face up close to his, kissing her cheek so as not to disturb her lipstick. “You be good,” he said quietly, “You hear?”

“I will,” she said.

“I mean it – don’t you go giving it away to anybody else. You need something, you get it from me. Right?”

“Right.”

He gently rubbed one of her breasts through her blouse. “Anything. You hear me? Anything your little mind can conjure up; we can do together. So you call me first.”

“There’s nobody else,” she said shyly.

“Okay, then. You have a goodnight. And I’ll see you Thursday. Unless you want me to stop by the store before that and just say hi?”

“Sure. That’ll be nice.”

“All right, then. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” she said.

She let herself out of the truck and he watched her ass in that tight skirt walk away from him; watched her walk up to the front door of her building and go inside. Then he put his truck in gear and started down the road.

Thursday, he thought to himself. How the hell am I gonna wait ‘til Thursday?

*     *     *

The following night, he drove by the drugstore, slowed down just enough to make sure he could see her there inside, working. He just wanted to know for sure.

His mind at ease, he drove across town – to where the street was better lit, where the people filled the sidewalks and the occasional girl leaned against a traffic sign or a parking meter. When he saw Shelley, he cruised to a stop.

He reached over and rolled down the passenger window and Shelley leaned in.

“Hey, stranger,” she said. “Long time, no see.”

“Get in,” he said,

“How much you got?”

“Enough to work it out. Come on, get in.” So she got in.

As he drove out to the edge of town, where it was dark and quiet and private, Shelley chattered up a storm, like they were old friends. But when he pulled the truck to a stop and parked it, she was all business.

“Really, hon – how much you got? I know what you want, but you gotta pay.”

“I’ve got enough,” he assured her.

“Let me see.”

He retrieved his wallet from the back pocket of his trousers, opened it and let her take out a twenty-dollar bill.

“Okay,” she said. Then she waited as he let himself out of the truck and then came around to the passenger door and opened it. He left it open so that the little overhead light stayed on. When he helped her get out of the truck, she turned around, leaned back in and bent over the seat.

“Let me just look for a minute, okay?” he asked.

“Okay,” she said, “but I don’t have all night.”

“I know,” he said, lifting her dress up high in back and then pulling her panties down. There was enough light coming from inside the truck for him to see her just fine. Then he squatted down and planted light kisses all over her ass.

“Well, this is new,” she said.

Then he spread open her ass cheeks and began licking her hole.

“This is real new,” she said, softly now. “What is up with you?”

But he didn’t reply. He went about his business, licking her asshole. Licking and licking, occasionally poking his tongue in, letting his cock get good and hard.

Shelley moaned and sighed deeply and lost herself for a while – forgot all about working.

And as he licked her hole and caught the scent of her there – the scent of aroused pussy and asshole and soap – he thought of another time he’d smelled aroused pussy and asshole and soap. Another girl who charged by the trick and not by the hour, and how she’d sat her asshole right down on his mouth, riding his tongue, while she leaned over at the same time and sucked his dick. That one had gotten filthy dirty with him, getting into the back of the truck with him, where he’d lain on his back on an old tarp and she’d straddled him, taking his cock straight up her ass and then grinding down on it, taking him in deep while leaning back on her outstretched arms and keeping her thighs spread wide so that he could look at her spread-open pussy while she ground her asshole down on his cock…

There’d been moonlight that night and she’d agreed to get completely naked. Out in the middle of nowhere. He’d seen everything there was to see. And he came in her ass. No condom needed.

“Let me cum in your ass,” he said now to Shelley.

“No chance,” she said. “My night’s just getting started. No man in this town wants to pay for sloppy seconds – you know that.”

“Come on, Shelley,” he urged her, getting up and reaching into the glove compartment for the little tub of Vaseline. “I gotta cum in there. Come on.”

“No.”

“How about an extra ten – will that help?”

She gave it some thought. “Twenty. Another twenty and you can cum in my ass.”

“Will you hold yourself open while I fuck you?”

She sighed in disbelief. “Okay,” she finally agreed. “For another twenty – that you hand to me right now – you can cum in my ass and I’ll hold it open for you.”

*     *     *

For some reason, he liked it better when the woman’s panties were halfway down her thighs and not all the way down to her ankles. He thought it looked dirtier that way. Like they were getting away with something and might get caught at any moment.

That’s how it had been his first time – because the first time that he’d gotten his cock up a girl’s ass, it had been his cousin’s ass. One summer at a family reunion, when she’d flirted with him until his cock had gotten so hard they’d snuck into an upstairs bathroom together – where she’d known there would be Vaseline.

She was a year older than him and she was the first girl to clue him in about how fucking a girl in her ass kept her a virgin so there’d be nothing at stake. You could both have fun and just walk away.

His cousin had bent over the edge of the tub, still in her high-heels, with her skirt pulled up high and her panties halfway down. She’d been the one to smear Vaseline on her own hole and also on the tip of his cock. They were both so slippery that he’d gone right up her asshole, even though his cock was thick and rock-hard. He’d held her cheeks open and watched his cock push in and out of that impossibly tight hole, while she gripped the edge of the tub and tried not to fall head-first into it – he was pounding her that hard.

How he had loved looking at that – his cock stuck up that snug hole, her panties down her thighs, until he saw a strand of that gooey wet stuff drip out of her hairy pussy and land right in the crotch of her panties. That was all it took. He came. He gripped her hips tight and pounded her asshole so hard that she’d started to cry, she’d even tried to pry his hands off of her to try to get away, but he held her and he fucked her good and then he jerked his load right up his cousin’s ass.

The last time he’d seen her was at her wedding. The whole evening, she barely looked at him…

Excerpt from “1954 Powder Blue Pickup”
© 2020 Marilyn Jaye Lewis

Pornographers Hard at Work!!

I am of course just kidding ! Clearly, those are cats having tea at the club!

These are, in fact, pornographers hard at work:

Lighting Department stenographers, 1935 | Item 9929, Enginee… | Flickr

Anyway!!!!!

Yes, well, I hate to label what I write as “pornography,” try as most people have done, over the decades, to get me to see it that way.  I still call it “literary erotica.”

However, that said,  “Half-Moon Bride,” my new erotic short story that is inching ever closer to completion,  is probably leaning way over to the pornographic side of any “erotica” I’ve ever written.

I just cracks me up, gang. The story is just so intensely intense. And there is just no story arc whatsoever — unless you consider going from “being a virgin to being absolutely in no way whatsoever a virgin” a story “arc”…

However, even if I say so myself, it is very well written!

Yesterday, as I sort of paved the literary way for the grand “anal sex” finale of the story, I spent no less than 8 hours writing and re-writing and re-writing yet again, the 2 pages that lead up to the beginning of the anal sex stuff. It’s just unreal. It’s like this story is never going to end. Everything is so tightly focused.  (I’m already at 22 pages, 13,000 words, and except for some plot set-up on the first page, the entire thing is sex.  The entire thing. There’s next to no dialogue. No exposition. Very little to explain the setting — of course we know that there’s a full moon. And it’s their wedding night. But the rest is just endless, really tightly focused sex.)

Still, I am really having a blast writing this.  I will give up saying that I
“think I am going to finish it today,” because it’s clear that I have absolutely no idea anymore. All I know is that I want to finish as soon as I can because I want to send it off to the new publisher to see if it’s a good fit for them. And then go on to the next story, which is already tumbling around in my head.

On a related note… You might have seen my update last evening regarding The Guitar Hero Goes Home.

It is no longer for sale as an eBook on Smashwords. For now, it is only in Kindle Select, so that means it is part of Kindle Unlimited right now, so you can get it for free as an eBook on Kindle. (Or get it in trade paperback for $9.95.)

Once the 90-day restriction of Kindle Select expires, I will publish it as a global eBook through Lulu.com. The Windows 10 platform is not formatting the ePub file the way Smashwords wants it (they need it based on the 2007 model of Word docs.) And I already tore my hair out trying to learn the Windows 10 platform, and it works just fine on Kindle. So, since I no longer have 2007, which I need in order to format it for Smashwords, I had to simply remove it from there.

All of my other self-published titles are still available as eBooks on Smashwords, but I guess that, until they update their style guide for formatting ePubs with Windows 10, I won’t be publishing any new eBooks on Smashwords .

And you probably also saw by now the photo I took of the boy on his motorcycle zooming past my house yesterday afternoon, on his way home from school.

Well, as luck would have it, after I finally finished working on the short story last evening, I got up from my desk, and was standing in front of the window in my bedroom that faces east, and I saw the boy backing his motorcycle into the garage for the night. So now I know where he lives!  His house is across the street from mine, 5 houses down the street. Which means that the train basically runs through his backyard!

His house is one of those modular homes, which means it’s basically a really big mobile home. No basement, no attic, one-story. But it’s a nice one, and really well maintained. (And this morning, when I got out of bed at 5am, I noticed an incredibly bright star over his house. I’m not kidding. I’m guessing it was a planet or something, it was shining so bright.  I’m not sure which star would have been in the eastern sky and shining so brightly at that hour. Anyway, I thought that was kind of interesting.)

So here’s this teenage boy, just really good-looking, long straight blond hair, growing up in the tiniest town you can imagine, in a trailer home, with a freight train running through his backyard about 5 times a day , and he drives a motorcycle, and he smokes cigarettes, and he seems like just the happiest boy I have ever seen — he is always smiling. I can only imagine that every girl at that high school is in love with him.

And it makes me think that his parents have probably just been really, really good to him.  He just looks to me like somebody who is so loved.

Okay, so, Nick Cave’s Cave Things has a new tee shirt on pre-order. This one seems to be referencing his song “Girl in Amber” (the lyric “don’t touch me”), but with a nice felt spider as a cool accent! You can pre-order it here.

Okay, then!

Well, I guess I’m going to get started here today and see if we can’t move these happy hermaphrodites into some sort of anal sex extravaganza today!! And bring this short story to a close. We shall see. I at least managed to get them out onto the terrace before I quit writing last night. (Yes, they went from the enormous marriage bed, back out to the enormous stone terrace, overlooking the mountainside in the moonlight to have their anal sex — because I’m thinking that’s just how it is, right? We go outside to the terrace to have anal sex on our wedding nights…)

My god. Anyway. So I’m leaving you with a Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds song again today, this one from 1997, “Come into My Sleep,” which is on B-Sides & Rarities (2005). Enjoy it! I hope you have a great Friday, wherever you are in the world — and if you live Stateside, I hope you are gearing up for a great holiday weekend — officially, the last weekend of “summer.” (I’m guessing that a certain boy on his motorcycle will be zooming past my house all weekend long, with it being a holiday and the weather is expected to be absolutely perfect.) Okay. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya!

“Come Into My Sleep”

Now that mountains of meaningless words
and oceans divide us
And we each have our own set of stars
to comfort and guide us
Come into my sleep
Come into my sleep, oh yeah
Dry your eyes and do not weep
Come into my sleep

Swim to me through the deep blue sea
upon the scattered stars set sail
Fly to me through this love-lit night
from one thousand miles away
And come into my sleep
Come into my sleep oh yeah
As midnight nears and shadows creep
Come into my sleep

Bind my dreams up in your tangled hair
For I am sick at heart, my dear
Bind my dreams up in your tangled hair
For all the sorrow it will pass, my dear

Take your accusation, your recriminations
and toss them into the ocean blue
Leave your regrets and impossible longings
and scatter them across the sky behind you
And come into my sleep
Come into my sleep
For my soul to comfort and keep
Come into my sleep

For my soul to comfort and keep – my sleep

Come on,
Come on,
Come on,
[repeat and fade]<

© 1997 Nick Cave

My God, People! Yesterday Was Intense!!

First of all, continuing in the happy theme of my post here last night, The Guitar Hero Goes Home is now available everywhere! As an eBook, on Kindle, and as a trade paperback !!!!!

[UPDATE: I have removed the eBook from Smashwords.]

Yay!! Kindle is $2.99,  and the paperback is $9.95

Here are the links:

Trade paperback via Amazon: The Guitar Hero Goes Home

Kindle eBook: The Guitar Hero Goes Home

My test proof for the print edition doesn’t arrive until tomorrow, but I already saw an online proof and I know I’m not going to make any changes, so the fact that it is already for sale is fine.

There are only 2 things that really bother me, that I could not change — the page numbering — where Page 1 begins on the Copyright page. And then the pages that set off the different sections — i.e., Part I, Part II, Part III, etc. — I could not give those their own, stand alone pages. Traditionally, they should appear on the right hand side of the book, with nothing printed on the back of the page. But they wouldn’t allow me to have any blank pages. So I find the formatting weird, but it can’t be changed and it won’t keep me from selling the book.

So it’s ready!!!!

In other brief news — I think I may have a publisher for “Half-Moon Bride”, even as a stand alone short story. I don’t know for sure yet, but I will keep you posted! And if it works out, then it could be likely that all my new hardcore D/s erotica that pushes the boundary of “questionable consent” could have a new home.

After yesterday’s seemingly endless nightmare, just trying to get the fucking eBook published for The Guitar Hero Goes Home, I would be happy to focus on writing as much as I can, and less on publishing when at all possible.

I have not formatted an ePub doc for eBook publishing since upgrading to the Windows 10 laptop. And the upgrade made all my old style-guides for creating ePub docs 100% obsolete.

So, what used to be something I could do almost on automatic, became something I had to learn all over again.

I was not at all in the mood for that yesterday, gang. I was having a seriously not happy day. And almost every single thing I needed to do to format that stupid ePub file got fucked up, and I spent hours sitting here at my desk, pretty much saying “Are you fucking kidding me??!!” every 5 minutes… I had to keep starting over, and starting over, and starting over.

Eventually, I took a piece of a piece of a piece of a Tylenol PM, so that I could at least calm down without actually going to sleep. And I started yet again, and finally figured out what the fuck I was supposed to do to get everything to work right. And at long last, it did.

And so it “went to press” as it were! And since it is not an erotic title, but merely “adult”, it means I did not have to go through the outraging insanity of having the Amazon keyword machine reject the entire manuscript based on a keyword it detected as objectionable yet without enlightening me to what taboo words were triggering the rejection.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that this happened to me when I published The Muse Revisited, Vol.1 (on both Amazon and Smashwords back in 2012, or whenever it was), but Amazon rejected the manuscript without telling me why.

I eventually discovered, through endless and annoying trials and errors, that the thing that was triggering the rejection was in my short story “Muriel the Magnificent.” When Muriel is 7 years old, she gets a spanking from her dad, with her pants down– and the scene is not erotic at all. In fact, it’s the key scene of the whole story — it sets up Muriel as an adult, who is unable to feel erotic about her own body.  And she finally learns how to open up by accidentally seeing porn on the Internet.

This was back when the Internet was still brand new. And the story was written expressly for a British compilation at Hodder- Stoughton, The New English Library Book of Internet Stories (a non-erotic collection — mine was the only erotic story in there, but it was included because the story was good). And the story was indeed a huge hit. It got picked up as one of the best erotic stories of that year. And by the time I was trying to publish the eBook of  The Muse Revisited, Vol.1  on Amazon, “Muriel the Magnificent” had already been picked up for publication in a few other collections, in the US and overseas — all of which were on sale on Amazon and had been on sale on Amazon for several years.

But since eBooks at Amazon are judged by keyword machines and not human editors,  and since my eBook was labeled as “erotica,” a 7 year-old girl simply can’t get spanked by her dad with her pants down, regardless of the context.  So they spit back the entire book. And kept spitting it back, and kept spitting it back, until I finally figured out what the problem was, and as much as I hated to do it, I had to completely censor that key scene in order to get the book published. (So, yes, if you only know that story from The Muse Revisited collection, you’ve read a censored version of the story.)

Anyway, that’s annoying as hell, but it didn’t happen this time. Yay.

So — The Guitar Hero Goes Home is at long last published. I hope you’ll read it. There is sex in there, gang!! But … alas, not a lot (although there is a really cool spanking scene in it!!) Perhaps that will entice you… (Although it’s between 2 adults and… alas, it is not eroticized. It’s in fact one of those spankings that you don’t want to get…)

But anyway. I’m very happy and I can’t wait to get my test proof of it tomorrow. To hold it in my hot little  hands.

And I’m glad that at least the next 2 publishing projects are not going to require ePub files!! They are strictly POD. Thank God.

Well!! In case you were really busy doing something on July 23rd and weren’t able to catch Nick Cave’s solo concert on Dice — Idiot Prayer: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace — the Nick Cave website announced this morning that there will be a theatrical release of the concert, starting November 5th, and that there is also an album coming — vinyl, CD, and streaming — November 20th. All the details are here.

I have to say that every time I see the title of that show, I always think it says Nick Cave Alone at “Berlin Alexanderplatz” — which was this amazing TV miniseries from Germany, back in 1980, adapted from a German novel of the same name about Berlin as it gradually falls under Nazi influence. It was directed by Fassbinder. I think you can probably stream it online — and you should, if you can. It was really, really good. However, Nick Cave is not in it, alone or otherwise. (But that should not deter you from broadening your intellectual horizons.)

Well, all righty!!! I need to get started here today. I haven’t done my yoga yet — I guess I’m still in the mindset of rejecting routines.  But I do want to do it since I didn’t do yoga yesterday. And then I need to finally finish “Half-Moon Bride.” Which means we need to have copious amounts of anal sex! Well, the characters do, at any rate. (However, if you’re feeling like your own day needs to move in that direction as well, far be it from me to attempt to dissuade you!!)

To be honest, my life is a little challenging right now, for reasons that I don’t want to post about, so to spend the rest of the day, sitting at my desk, encouraging our 2 love birds to have copious amounts of anal sex, as their wedding night wanes and before the sun comes up and our half-moon bride loses her erection for an entire 30 days… Well, that to me, sounds like a really great way to spend the day.

I hope Thursday is as good to you, wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting, gang. My breakfast-listening music today was once again from Tom Petty & the Heartbreaker’s Live Anthology (2009).  This time, “Square One,” recorded live in Missouri, June 17th, 2006. I hope you enjoy it. It’s a song that gives me a lot of hope. I know, somehow, I’m going to get to a good place. Okay, I love you guys. See ya.

“Square One”

Had to find some higher ground.
Had some fear to get around.
You can say what you don’t know.
Later on won’t work no more.

Last time through I hid my tracks.
So well I could not get back.
Yeah my way was hard to find.
Can’t sell your soul for peace of mind.

Square one, my slate is clear.
Rest your head on me my dear.
It took a world of trouble, took a world of tears.
It took a long time to get back here.

Tried so hard to stand alone.
Struggled to see past my nose.
Always had more dogs than bones.
I could never wear those clothes.

It’s a dark victory.
You won and you are so lost.
Told us you were satisfied,
but it never came across.

Square one, my slate is clear.
Rest your head on me my dear.
It took a world of trouble, took a world of tears.
It took a long time to get back here.

© 2006 Tom Petty

Getting There

I think the full moon is making my brain a muddled mess today.

I keep puttering around, doing weird stuff.  Sort of sticking to my morning routine, sort of not. I even sat down here to post to the blog, totally forgetting that I hadn’t even done yoga yet, so I came to the unexpected decision that I’m not working out today. Even though I’m wearing my little “do yoga” outfit as I type this.

I also decided that I had to do laundry today — it was suddenly imperative. So I put the dirty clothes in the washer and there was maybe a half an inch of clothes! I sort of stared at it, wondering why I was so hellbent to do laundry, then I went ahead and started the machine anyway.

And even the trash pick-up truck seems to be acting strangely this morning. I’ve seen them drive by my house 3 times already, but they haven’t picked up my trash yet — they’re going on a whole different route. Which is incredibly weird because we have about 6 streets here in Crazeysburg, so why on Earth would you suddenly need a new route, you know? Is it more efficient to drive past people’s houses 3 times?

Not sure what’s going on there. But part of me immediately panics when I see them pass me by, thinking that I forgot to pay the trash pick-up bill again. But they seem to just be driving strangely today.  So before I call them up and lose my fucking mind on the phone, I’ll just wait and see what happens.

Okay, well, yesterday evening, we came SO CLOSE to ordering the test proof for The Guitar Hero Goes Home. The print-preview machine was grinding out the proofing copy over at Amazon, it took forever, but when it was finally finished, the cover art was a fraction of a hair’s breadth too big for the template.

And this was after just a whole big long line of things yesterday that had already exasperated Valerie in trying to get the cover art, within the template specs, to me so that I could upload it. So it was disappointing. But we are almost there, gang.

I already know I don’t like some of the aspects of the layout of the text (well, 2 things), but they are super minor, and the next time around, I know better than to type an entire manuscript into a Beta-testing template. So on we go, right?

And another weird thing — suddenly, this morning, Instagram has started putting people I don’t even know at the top of my feed, putting the posts of people I actually do know, down lower in the feed. Of the 13,704 people I now follow on Instagram, I know maybe 4 of those people, so I would really like to have their posts at the top of my feed, since right now, I don’t have time to hang out scrolling on Instagram; I want to see only my favorite posts at the top of the page and then get off Instagram, because I need every spare moment right now to sit here and quietly lose my mind.

Actually, one of the downsides of letting go of my private Instagram account and making it a public one, is that now I have way too many people that I’m following. And the people I really did enjoy following for such a  long time,  almost never come up in my feed anymore. Yesterday, I saw a post from Benmont Tench and it was the first post of his that I’d seen in, literally, months. And he’s someone who posts all day long. I used to see him first thing in the morning and then last thing at night, and his posts were always funny, charming, etc.  And I really loved his posts. (He was the life-long piano player for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.)

Oh, which reminds me. Today is the anniversary of the death of Conway Savage, who was the piano player for Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds for a really long time. Nick Cave wrote an amusing tribute to him in his Red Hand Files for today. You can read it here.

Okay, well. I’m hoping today will be productive, even though I am clearly in this strangely befuddled mindset. I had wanted to drive into town today to do something very important but now I’m wondering if getting into the car and driving 95 miles an hour today is the best idea. I guess we’ll just find out.

I’m just in one of those weird spaces where life feels intensely unmanageable. I know it will pass…

I’m going to leave you today with Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ version of “Stagger Lee”, because for some reason, I always really liked Conway Savage in this video. Well, I like everybody in this video. I just love this video. I’ve posted it here before, of course, but here it is again.  I hope you have a good Wednesday– enjoy that full moon (btw, they just picked up my trash! So if I lose my fucking mind today, it won’t be while I’m on the phone talking to the trash pick-up people). Okay. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya.

Another New Adventure in Pussyland!!

Oh jeez, people — you know?

No, I’m still not done with the new erotic short story, but we’re getting there. Yesterday was all about spending 7 hours streamlining a page and a half of text down to one and a half paragraphs.

That kind of thing — it takes forever, it taxes the brain, but it is really worth it once it’s done. But that kind of focusing takes a lot out of me, and while it’s going on, I have to battle with the feeling that the whole story is insane and why am I even writing it?

That kind of unproductive thinking leads nowhere productive.

But “Half-Moon Bride” is just one of those stories that I rarely write , wherein the sole reason it exists is to be erotic. There is only the flimsiest story arc (a wedding night). And the alleged character arc only serves as the vehicle to tell the flimsy story — we have the half-moon bride herself, who is the “female” hermaphrodite because she only grows her male appendage (minus any testicles) on the full moon (a half-moon futanari). Otherwise, she’s entirely female.

Whereas the “male” hermaphrodite, a man of enormous proportions in every imaginable way, completely larger-than-life (the Oracle who lives in the palace up in the mountains — whatever the heck that really means), is what’s called a “full-package futanari” — he has it all, all the time. Fully male, fully female.

So the only “character arc” is for the female, who starts out sheltered, naive, clueless, and virginal in every way. She finds out that she’s not only a half-moon futa, but also who she’s the intended bride of, on the same day.  And then her character makes the fretful but wonderful journey from “naive, clueless and virginal” to a little less naive and clueless, as every imaginable aspect of her virginity is done away with — quite rapturously — on her wedding night. (And I guarantee you, I only wish that either one of my wedding nights had been even a fraction as rapturous as the half-moon bride’s is. Jesus.)

And since these are two hermaphrodites getting married, there is truly an amazing number of ways in which this young woman is a virgin. (And it is my humble job, as the lowly yet often celebrated writer, to unburden her of every single one.)

Anyway, it is really, really fun. And it often makes me laugh, but it is also just filthy as hell, with no real reason for existing except to be filthy as hell.

Although, actually, in reality, the story was “inspired” by the real-life person of Peter Freuchen, who was both a large and larger-than-life Danish explorer in the early-to-mid 20th Century. (You can read about him here — he truly had an amazing life as an anthropologist and an Arctic explorer, starting back in 1906.)

Here he is, with his 3rd wife, a Danish writer and editor for Vogue and Harper’s  fashion magazines. (They met in America in the 1940s.)

An Irving Penn Portrait for the Coldest Days of Winter: “Peter and Dagmar Freuchen” | The New Yorker
Photo by Irving Penn

So you can see the “gigantic proportions” I am referring to. Why I made them hermaphrodites is anyone’s guess. But honestly, you don’t have to be me to look at those two and wonder what certain personal things were like, right??? What the possible challenges were…

So anyway. For some reason, I’m using a sort of archaic and formal language for the story, as well. Which tends to make it even stranger.  (Words like vagina, testicles, rectum, vulva, eventually give way to words like cock and pussy, once she goes from naive to a little less naive in the course of her wedding night.) (She has to stay at least somewhat naive, though, throughout, otherwise the D/s aspects of the story just don’t work.)

And there you have it — the utterly intense and insane world I am steeped in for hours and hours and hours at a time, every day, for something like 10 days running, so far. So I’m sort of exhausted.

Meanwhile, last evening, I went to bed sort of early. Not to sleep, really, just to hang out on the bed, listen to music and collapse. And while I was lying there, the blond guy on the blue motorcycle, zoomed by twice. God, is he lovely — his energy (see yesterday’s post). But it made me feel wistful — thinking of all the things I had hoped would work out in my life, but didn’t. (Primarily, two marriages, no children.)

And for some reason, I had decided to listen to Tom Petty & the Heartbreaker’s Live Anthology (2009) while hanging out on my bed.  When I drove into town yesterday morning, I was listening to the live version of “Learning to Fly” from off that album and it is just incredibly gorgeous. So I decided to listen to the whole album, while lying in bed as the sun was going down, forgetting that the reason I don’t usually listen to that album, is because 2 summers ago, when I fell in love with the man who died, we listened to Live Anthology constantly while making love.

I guess I don’t have to say that I was suddenly flooded with memories, and then I realized September is upon us, which marks the 2nd anniversary of his death, so I just got really, really, really sad.  Just sobbing for a little while. I miss him so much. And those songs — the music, it just brought it all so vividly back to life.  It just all came out — those things I miss so much that I try never to think about or to dwell on. It all just smacked right into me, and I had not been expecting it at all.

I eventually stopped crying, because I felt like his spirit came into the room. I really did feel it. And I know that I have to figure out some way for the future that is ahead of me, for however long is left — for it to just be okay. That something good could still be waiting for me, somewhere. (Perhaps not a wedding night like the half-moon bride’s, but something comparably rapturous!) And in the meantime, I will simply continue to write.

Beginning, once again, with today.

So, Nick Cave’s Cave Things announced another new “coming soon” product this morning. (And these Polaroid-thingies sell out immediately once they get posted, folks, so if you want one, you should probably just stay poised on the website indefinitely for its release and then immediately hit the purchase button. I don’t remember how much they cost, but they’re not cheap.)

All righty!! So I’m going to get started here. My printer ink arrives today, so that’s pretty darned exciting! I hope you have a terrific Tuesday, wherever it leads you. Thanks for visiting, gang.  I leave you with the live version of  “Have Love, Will Travel” from the Live Anthology and you can fill in your own rapturous boudoir memories, if you so choose!! Enjoy. I love you guys. See ya.

“Have Love, Will Travel”

You never had a chance, did you baby
So good-looking, so insecure
And now you say you can’t remember
When the lines you drew began to blur

Yeah, when all of this is over
Should I lose you in the smoke
I want you to know you were the one

And may my love travel with you everywhere
Yeah, may my love travel with you always

Maggie’s still trying to rope a tornado
Joe’s in the backyard trying to keep things simple
And the lonely dj’s diggin’ a ditch
Trying to keep the flames from the temple

Oh, and if perhaps I lose you
In the smoke down the road
I want you to know you were the one

And may my love travel with you everywhere
Yeah, may my love travel with you always

How about a cheer for all those bad girls
And all the boys that play that rock and roll
They love it like you love Jesus
It does the same thing to their souls

And when all of this is over
Should I lose you in the smoke
I want you to know that it’s all right

And may my love travel with you everywhere
Yeah, may my love travel with you always

© 2002 Tom Petty

Who the Heck Knows Anything, Right??

So much for working on Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town yesterday.

For some unknown yet delightful reason, I suddenly began writing a new erotic short story yesterday — I didn’t even know it was lurking in there, even though I do want to write more erotic short stories (see yesterday’s post). I came back from the market, put the groceries away, sat down at my desk and suddenly, the story was there.

It’s maybe almost halfway finished. I’m already at 4000 words. (I know! So odd, right? How stories will just suddenly come. Aside from speaking with Valerie for a bit yesterday, I was working on the short story for 9 hours, and will be working on it all day today, too.)

And what’s even all-out weirder is that it’s a futanari story. Futanari is now pretty much only a hentai porn term for hermaphrodites (generally: extremely sexy females who also have huge cocks) (in hentai animation). But it used to be more of a Japanese folklore term, a long  long time ago.

But anyway, I am not into futanari porn.  I find androgyny sort of appealing, a tiny bit, maybe,  but not enough to think I would ever in a million years write about it erotically. Ever.

And yet… 4000 words later, I’m not even halfway done.

So strange. But I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

The story is titled “Half-Moon Bride”. In Japanese folklore, a “half-moon” futanari was someone of one sex who switched sexes on the full moon. So I’m guessing you can kinda see where the bride on this particular wedding night is headed…. (and our poor bride has no idea what she is yet, but as luck would have it, she’s marrying a full-futa and so he/she is going to be able to help her out with that.)

I won’t go into any more of the details. Obviously, it’s hardcore fantasy erotica which is not the kind of erotica I usually write. So everything, on every level of this story, has been a complete surprise to me.

Well, okey-dokey.

The trip into town yesterday was illuminating. With school starting back this week, the grocery store was empty. However, the Home Depot parking lot next door to it was jammed. And some of the more breakfast-type restaurants were busy again (by social distancing standards). But, overall, lots less cars on the streets.

Going back to school seems to still change everything, with or without COVID. It just signals: Fall is coming. (And yet, it’s still August…)

Anyway. Life’s good.

Valerie and I are just about ready to sign off on the cover layout for The Guitar Hero Goes Home. And then I can order my test print and see if I’m happy or not. I still have to format the ePub file, but once I do that, the eBook will be published, too.

So we are almost there.

Well, I’m going to get started here today. I hope you are having a truly terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world!! I leave you with a song I have posted here before — one of my favorite songs by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, “Do You Love Me (Part 2),” from that truly amazing album Let Love In from 1994 (which seems like yesterday, but my higher math skills assure me it was 26 years ago… wtf???). However, in case you missed it the last time I posted it, here it is again!! So enjoy and thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.

“Do You Love Me? (Part 2)”

Onward! And Onward! And Onward I go
Where no man before could be bothered to go
Till the soles of my shoes are shot full of holes
And it’s all downhill with a bullet
This ramblin’ and rovin’ has taken its course
I’m grazing with the dinosaurs and the dear old horses
And the city streets crack and a great hole forces
Me down with my soapbox, my pulpit
The theatre ceiling is silver star-spangled
And the coins in my pocket go jingle-jangle

There’s a man in the theatre with girlish eyes
Who’s holding my childhood to ransom
On the screen there’s a death, there’s a rustle of cloth
And a sickly voice calling me handsome
There’s a man in the theatre with sly girlish eyes
On the screen there’s an ape, a gorilla
There’s a groan, there’s a cough, there’s a rustle of cloth
And a voice that stinks of death and vanilla
This is a secret, mauled and mangled
And the coins in my pocket go jingle-jangle

The walls of the ceiling are painted in blood
The lights go down, the red curtains come apart
The room is full of smoke and dialogue I know by heart
And the coins in my pocket jingle-jangle
As the great screen crackled and popped
The clock of my boyhood was wound down and stopped
And my handsome little body oddly propped
And my trousers right down to my ankles
Yes, it’s onward! And upward!
And I’m off to find love
Do you love me? If you do, I’m thankful

This city is an ogre squatting by the river
It gives life but it takes it away, my youth
There comes a time when you just cannot deliver
This is a fact. This is a stone cold truth.
Do you love me?
I love you, handsome
But do you love me?
Yes, I love you, you are handsome
Amongst the cogs and the wires, my youth
Vanilla breath and handsome apes with girlish eyes
Dreams that roam between truth and untruth
Memories that become monstrous lies
So onward! And Onward! And Onward I go!
Onward! And Upward! And I’m off to find love
With blue-black braclets on my wrists and ankles
And the coins in my pocket go jingle-jangle

© 1994 Nick Cave

What Mondays Look Like in My Refrigerator!

Yes!! It’s Monday!!

Me and Henry, my AI sexbot (pictured above in the driver’s seat!!), will be heading out to do our weekly marketing in the next county over within the hour  — the county that is no longer in Code Red! Yay! The county where we hope people are still wearing their fucking masks so that it doesn’t go back into Code Red again anytime soon!!

The summer is basically over, after all! School starts this week! No need to frolic around joyfully without our masks on, right?? We’re sad now. School is starting. Let’s wear our masks…

Okay! Re: the title of this post — here is what my fridge looks like on Monday mornings:

The taste-tempting options on Monday morning!!

It’s really ridiculous how things look first thing in the morning on Mondays, compared to how it looks a few hours later when I come back home from the store.

(And those packaged broccoli crowns are a week old, so I’m not really sure they’re even any good.)

So, Mondays are always exciting around here, if only that it means we get more food!!

Okay!! Two winners were selected for the Bad Seed TeeVee fan music video contest. (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds.) I didn’t see either of the videos!! I wish I had, but there were just tons on there. (And wonderful, wonderful stuff, gang. I hope you got to see some of them.)

Anyway. The winners were: “Waiting for You” performed by Juldiz. And “Spinning Song” performed by Ilya Gruzdev. (Both songs are off of Ghosteen.)

I still just marvel at what people can achieve so economically these days when it comes to music and music videos and/or visual images set to music on a video.

I feel pretty grateful that I even know how to take a 5-second video with my phone.  Even though I have plenty of apps to help me make videos and also to make music, and even though I know how to read and the apps I have are in English, I still can’t figure this stuff out.

And I mentioned this last summer, too — how amazing it is that a lot of people learn how to play (often electronic) instruments on their phones.  For instance, a woman I know bought an inexpensive drum machine recently and learned how to play it through an app on her phone.

In my totally outdated opinion, those aren’t real drums, and to be a drummer, you need to know how to actually play drums. But that is no longer the case. She’s considered somebody who now knows how to play drums. Plain & simple. And every single bit of it is electronic and app-driven.

Well, I think it’s just incredibly cool. I’m on this tangent only because I think it’s amazing how quickly these Nick Cave fans put together such incredible videos. If I had wanted to submit something, I’d still be sitting here, trying to figure out how to work the app. And I’m a classically trained musician, with years and years of experience in audio engineering and multi-media production.

So, the Universe is sort of becoming this place wherein the less you know, the better equipped you actually are.

If you want to read what Nick Cave himself had to say about all the entries as well as the winners, his Red Hand File from today is here.

And on a related note — Cave Things Instagram feed announced today that it is adding more “coming soon” stuff so check that stuff  out here.

Okay, gang. So this is what I’ve decided to do.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I have decided to start self-publishing all my books from now on, and in anticipation of that decision, I will soon have a separate web site for Marilyn’s Room Books.

The books coming either soon or in the very near future are:

  • The Guitar Hero Goes Home
  • The Muse Revisited Vol. 4: Selected Erotic Fiction 1994-2012 (POD)
  • Twilight of the Immortal (POD edition)

And then, coming in a slightly more distant future:

  • Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse
  • Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town
  • In the Shadow of Narcissa: An Intimate Memoir of Childhood

These books will be listed on the new web site but actual orders will be fulfilled by Amazon.

However, I have also decided to start selling new erotic short stories through that Marilyn’s Room Books site, as well. These are stories that I will post for sale as I write them, and they will sell electronically for extremely cheap (and I mean cheap) and the sale will be processed through Lulu.com (Paypal or CC), so I will not have access to any of your private info, gang. And once I accumulate enough new stories, they will be gathered into a new POD collection and the individual electronic stories will be  removed from the site.

I really, really love writing erotic stories, gang. I really do. But the economics of doing that for a living became just crazy once the publishing industry imploded back in like 2010 or whenever that was. At the height of my career, I was paid between $300 -$1200 per story, and each story would be 1000- 3000 words; I could turn those things around in a couple of days. And then I earned ten times that (and upwards) to edit anthologies of stories by other erotica writers. (And this was strictly through the small presses; a fraction of what the large presses paid.)

And this was not erotic romance, either. This was hardcore literary erotica by writers that would really just amaze you.

That market simply does not exist anymore. Not even close. Now, an original erotica story will pay between $5-$30.  And usually they do not come out as an actual print book that you can buy in the bookstore , they’re all eBooks or audio. Which is great, but still, you can readily see why writing stand alone erotic stories got pushed way to my back burner.

Yet, I feel bad that so many of you (those of you still willing to pay for them and not download them free through torrents from game boys in distant lands) keep buying that really old stuff, over and over. So we shall see how it goes: In between (erotic) novels, memoirs, screenplays and plays, there will be new erotic stories for you, and about 50¢ for me!!

I’m actually really excited because I do love writing that stuff, but I also do need to earn a living around here.

I will of course announce any new stories here on the blog, but if you want to be updated about new content, there will be an email sign-up on the other site.

Well, all righty. The grocery store is beckoning me!! So I will get going.  I hope you have a great Monday, wherever you are in the world today!! I leave you with my listening music from last night: Yo Yo Ma playing “Cantata BWV 147, Jesus bleibet meine Freude”. I had it on “repeat” for about an hour. Listen and rejoice!! Okay. I love you guys. See ya!

What A Great Day Yesterday Was!!

Oh my gosh, gang, I got such great writing done yesterday.

It was one of those days, where I sat down to the manuscript around 10:30am, and then the next thing I knew, it was 5pm. The day had absolutely flown. And the words just hit the page without any trouble at all.

I was so happy. It was just such a great day.

But then for some reason, I had some trouble sleeping last night. I’m not sure why. I awoke and then started checking stuff on my phone in order to keep my mind off of worrying. And there was an email from Valerie and she sounded really fed up with trying to get the text to look right for the back cover of The Guitar Hero Goes Home.

But as far as I could tell, the images looked just fine. I even got out of bed and checked them on my laptop, and I couldn’t understand what she was talking about. But she did seem really fed up with it.

Anyway, then I laid awake for 2 hours. Trying not to worry about everything under the sun. And then I was suddenly dead asleep for about 5 more hours (!!), and I had a really unpleasant, sort of post-apocalyptic dream. I had never actually had a dream quite like it before. And then my eyes sort of sprang open and I was awake.

But now — well I did all my Inner Being journaling, and my re-calibrating journaling and my meditation and I did the treadmill AND used my amazing new vacuum cleaner again!!! So I am once again in a great space and I think I’m going to have another great day.

Well, I guess this is going to be a short post today, folks. I want to get back to Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town. I hope you are enjoying your Sunday, wherever you are in the world.  Sort of scary that there is only one more weekend after this and then it will be September. I am really seriously trying not to dwell on it, how quickly this summer disappeared.

Don’t forget that the fan music videos are still going on today over at Bad Seed TeeVee. You can check them out at that link!

I leave you with my evening-listening music from yesterday. An old song that always makes me think of my biological half-brother, because this album (Centerfield by John Fogerty) was a huge hit the spring that I met my brother (1986 ). The album had already been out for a year, but the songs were still really popular. I was 25 years old when I met my half-brother for the first time, and he was 19. It was incredible and intense and he meant so much to me, from the very moment I met him.

He was/is an unbelievably insane alcoholic, and back then, he had a really violent temper when he got drunk. And he would just get SO drunk, with that hair-trigger temper. It got scary. But back then, my birth mom was living with this wonderful truck driver who was a lot scarier when he wanted to be, so it kept my brother balanced out. For a while.

Anyway. One gorgeous spring morning at dawn during my first trip to visit them, I awoke to find my brother standing next to my bed, teetering and swaying — he was so fucking drunk. And he looked down at me and said, “You are so pretty.” And I thought: oh, shit.

But he had his little portable boombox with him and he suddenly hit the play button and, super loudly, at dawn, everyone in the house sleeping, John Fogerty’s Centerfield album came blasting out. It was already one of my favorite albums , but now all I think of when I listen to it are those memories of that first time I met my half-brother.

All righty. Thanks for visiting, gang. I leave you with “I Saw It On TV” from Centerfield (1985). Enjoy!!! I love you guys. See ya.

“I Saw It On TV”

They sent us home to watch the show coming on the little screen
A man named Ike was in the white house big black limousine
There were many shows that followed from hooter to dootyville
Though I saw them all I can’t recall which cartoon were real
The coonskin caps Yankee bats the hound dog man’s big start
The A bomb fears Annette had ears I lusted in my heart
A young man from Boston said “sail the new frontier”
And we watched the dream dead end in Dallas
They buried innocence that year

[Chorus:]
I know it’s true oh so true cause I saw it on T.V.

We gathered round to hear the sound coming on the little screen
The grief had passed the old men laughed and all the girls screamed
‘Cause four guys from England took all by the hand
It was time to laugh time to sing time to join the band

But all too soon we hit the moon and covered up the sky
They built the bombs and aimed their guns and still I don’t know why
The dominoes tumbled and big business roared
Every night at six they showed the pictures and counted up the score

[Chorus:]
I know it’s true oh so true cause I saw it on T.V.

The Old man rocks among his dreams a prisoner of the porch
The light he said at the end of the tunnel
Was nothing but a burglar’s torch
And them that was caught in the cover are all rich and free
But they chained my mind to an endless tune
When they took my only son from me

[Chorus:]
I know it’s true oh so true cause I saw it on T.V.
I know it’s true oh so true cause I saw it on T.V.

© 1985 John Fogerty

Things Are Pretty Swell Here in Crazeysburg!!

Yes, we have finally hit on the cover layout for The Guitar Hero Goes Home, now all we need to do is insert the text on the back cover and I can order the test print!!

I already know that the page numbering is screwed up and I can’t fix it, because my manuscript is locked into that Beta template that no longer exists. But if that’s the only thing that’s out of whack, I’m going to be okay with it. (The page numbers begin on the first page, which is the copyrights page, which is never where the page numbering begins, but that’s that.)

Here is a sample of the cover design without the info for the back cover:

It’s actually a very bright yellow, which isn’t really coming across here, except in that little square for the barcode. But you get the idea. The color really just pops.

So I’m very happy! We are almost there, gang.

Another thing that has me over the moon with happiness: Wow!! My brand new vacuum cleaner arrived yesterday and I can’t believe how fantastic it is.

I have had so many different types of vacuum cleaners throughout my life, from really cheap no-name brands, to the expensive Dyson models. I’ve had canisters and uprights and no-cord stick models. And my favorites by far are the Eureka Uprights.

I thought I really loved the Eureka Airspeeds, but this time I bought a Eureka Powerspeed because it was on sale and I have to watch every penny right now.

When I took it out of the box, I was feeling disappointed because it just seemed so cheap compared to the Airspeed. Meaning really cheap plastic, and less parts, and it just didn’t seem like it was going to tackle all that cat hair.

But, wow. I could not believe how great it was. It is just the most awesome vacuum cleaner I have ever owned.  And it is light as a feather. And it was just amazing, the amount of cat hair it picked up.  I haven’t seen my carpet looking this good since I moved in. (Although “good” is qualified by the fact I actually need to replace all the carpeting because it’s really old and has stains from the previous owners. But still!!)

Between that dust buster I bought a few months ago, and now this new vacuum cleaner, I am at last a very happy homemaker.

Okay, I had the funniest dreams. Both of them had my adoptive mother in them, but in a very nonthreatening way.

In one dream, I was standing at her bedroom door, trying to get her attention to tell her something, but she was in bed using a vibrator that was so loud, she couldn’t hear me.  (So weird, right??) (And as far as I know, my mother was not the vibrator-using type. There was a vibrator still in its box, with no batteries, that was stuck in a drawer in the buffet in the dining room (!!). It sat there  for a few years, until I finally figured out what it was, when I was about 13, and I absconded with it to my room and there it remained, fulfilled in its purpose for being, and unmissed by anyone else in the house.) (And I guarantee you, the vibrators today are way more amazing then they were back in those days, but we made do. Beggars can’t be choosers.)

And in the other dream, I was getting ready to go to Girl Scout sleepaway camp and I was worried that I was going to miss the bus that was going to take me there. And then I had a sort of epiphany and I said to my mother, “I don’t think I should go to camp. All the girls in the tent will be 9 years old and I’m 60. It just doesn’t make sense.” And then my mother smiled at me. This smile that implied I had finally grown up.

So weird! But really funny when I woke up and thought about it all. (I’m still not planning on acting my age anytime soon, but I don’t think I need to go quite so far back as 9.)

Okay! The weekend has begun over at Bad Seed TeeVee, where they are going to show music videos made by fans of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds throughout the whole weekend.  I’ve watched a couple of them so far, and they are, once again, really imaginative.  You can watch them here.

And as I mentioned yesterday, the official Tom Petty website has begun releasing songs from the upcoming Wildflowers part 2 boxed set onto YouTube, so now we can watch them until our wee bonny hearts are content.

(I believe it is actually going to be called Wildflowers & All the Rest.)

The collection won’t be coming out until mid-October, but I really do think it’s going to be an amazing set. I think Tom Petty, wherever he is now, is really happy about these songs being released finally, since he wanted them released in his lifetime, but apparently could not figure out how best to market them if he did.

What better way than to market them posthumously, when they are guaranteed to sell?

Problem solved.

Okay, gang! I have not yet worked out here. And I’m not sure what I want to do– yoga, treadmill, aerobics… So I’m going to think about that and then get this day underway.

Thanks for visiting, gang. I hope you are enjoying your Friday, wherever you are in the world. I leave you with 2 of the new releases from Wildflowers part two (“There Goes Angela” — I love that song — and his original home demo for the song “Wildflowers”  — a video that features Tom with one of his many dogs and a cat.)  Enjoy!! I love you guys. See ya.