A Small Review of Colin Bateman’s “Dublin Express”

This edition of Dublin Express was a special Kickstarter limited edition Colin Bateman produced himself. [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/856843652/get-on-board-the-dublin-express]

Dublin Express, by Colin Bateman
Dublin Express, by Colin Bateman

My favorites of the bunch were the title story, “Dublin Express,” “The Case of Mrs. Geary’s Leather Trousers,” which was the start of Colin Bateman’s novel Mystery Man, and the screenplay, “National Anthem.” They’re very typical Bateman humor, very dark, and filled with entertaining characters. Not characters you’d necessarily want to give a hug, but ones you wouldn’t mind sharing a beer with, though possibly from across the room.

The play, particularly, contains the sort of spectacularly hapless characters who attempt to wrestle some control and decorum into their lives, but, due to circumstances and conspiracies beyond their ken, they fail in an entertaining fashion. They’re the sort of characters Colin Bateman excels at writing and make for a great read.

If you have a chance to see it or get ahold of the script it’s well worth picking up.

You're Welcome
You’re Welcome

Where You Been?

So for the last… well, a long time. In February, 2011, after finishing the first draft of a novel entitled “Rudyard Kipling’s Chair” which is still sitting in a desk drawer somewhere, unwieldy and cumbersome and full of far too many characters and subplots, I was taking a break. Like practicing crop rotation for the creative mind, I picked up another project that had been festering.

This project was tentatively titled “Butterfly,” and it began at 5:45am that morning.

“I work at the Magic Funtime Butterfly Ranch. I make dreams come true. Probably.”

 

First Reader Copy, Away!
First Reader Copy, Away!

It was the story of a man who is separated from his family and his friends, the story of their struggle to get back together, and the various paths people take to fulfill their desires.

And it still is. About three drafts later, I’m working on that final polishing draft. My first fifty pages have been handed over to my First Reader, who fled the country shortly after receiving them.

So that’s where I’ve been. And I’m still not technically allowed out. I mean, the first fifty pages out of, what, two hundred and fifty? More? Less, hopefully, after some judicious editing? That’s a lot of judicious editing to go, a lot of clean up, usually squeezed in in the wee hours of the morning.

 

But that’s where I’ve been, where I’m at, and I’m very excited to see it coming along, at long last.

“The Genie” by Teresa Milbrodt (on PANK Magazine)

I went scuba diving this morning for stories.

A crab playing with an urchin
A crab playing with an urchin, like “The Genie”

Usually I have a browser full of windows full of tabs open on my laptop, my working laptop. There are tabs with articles about time, about how our universe is a hologram, about the FBI’s organizational structure, about Marconi Beach (all of these are related). There are tabs for story or book submissions, prospective iPhone apps (we’re hanging a bunch of pictures right now, Hang-A-Pic is one I haven’t pulled the trigger on yet but may still). Neck and back exercises, teaching credentials sites. And, most optimistically, online fiction magazines with short stories queued up.

But I usually get to those last tabs, well, last, if ever, closing them or losing them in some browser crash and a tiny little flame inside me gets blown out. This is perhaps being a little dramatic.

So anyway, this morning I was reading Lyndsey Reese’s article on Ploughshares entitled “The Best Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “Entity” by Mira Mattar

I enjoyed “Entity,” it was fine. [Disclaimer: Not quite for kids.] But it prompted a browse around PANK, itself. Now, the last week or so I’ve been shopping around a series of short stories, trying to find a home for these quirky little vignettes. They’re about past lives, men living up people’s nostrils, people in graves with grudges, flying llamas. So I’ve been looking for the right outlets. While “Entity” wasn’t quite in the same vein, some of PANK’s books were, and then I found this little gem:

The Genie,” by Teresa Milbrodt

This is a really well-done, enjoyable story about a couple with different dreams going through a divorce, when one of them meets a Genie.

It’s like I found a tiger shark dancing with a sea urchin and a sea monkey on my morning dive.