This and That

We closed the sale on Spackle Manor yesterday, getting us back in the only one mortgage business. During the closing, we discovered a reminder of a less pleasant era. The attorney (in South Carolina, all real estate deals must involve attorneys) had found a neighborhood covenant from decades past — Spackle Manor was built in the early 50s — that stipulated that the house could not be sold, rented, or otherwise conveyed to anyone “not of the white race.” Obviously that’s unenforceable and void now, but it’s nice to see what we’ve outgrown.

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I had the small misfortune of discovering last week that fire ants can be active even during the very late fall here in Mondoville, getting a sting near the knuckle of my right middle finger when I went to pick up something I had dropped. Mrs. M has had her share of run-ins with the little nasties over the years — to the point at which she now does yard work in galoshes, but this was my first. It’s actually impressive in its way — a week later, there’s still a welt like a mosquito bite, and an itch to match. All the same, a colony of somebodies will be getting poison for Christmas.

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The new issue of Dark Corners has hit the Amazonian newsstand, including stories from the Spawn and your genial host. Even excluding those two, there are some very fine stories from horror to Westerns to noir in the new issue, so if you owe yourself a Christmas present, you could do worse.

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Speaking of writing, I’m starting to poke at my novel-in-progress again. Historically, I’ve found the sheer size of novels to be rather intimidating, which I guess is why I’ve only finished one of them so far and have spent more time on short stories. There’s a satisfaction the short story offers of producing a more-or-less complete work of art in a couple of hours; the novel obviously requires a much deeper time commitment and a consistency of mind and voice over that time. As I said, it can be (and has been) intimidating. I’ve got a couple of decent characters here, though, which makes me hope that this one may have the wind to make it through the marathon of the novel. We shall see.

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Since we’re only a couple of days from Christmas, I thought I’d go with a bit of Christmas-themed garage rock today. This band was from Corsica, and were known on the Continent as “Les 5 Gentlemen”, but were billed in the Anglo world under the name of “The Darwin’s Theory.” So to keep you in the Christmas spirit,  here’s “Hosanna”, which is nothing if not celebratory.