Sane Magazine – Wombats Dig It

Resurrection Blues, by Michael Poore

Posted on July 3, 2017 by Head Wombat

If you’re one of my long-time readers who remember back to the Sane Magazine days, you will probably, without a doubt, love Michael Poore’s Resurrection Blues.

I got a copy of this book from NetGalley (free books, how can you go wrong!).

And Resurrection Blues blew my socks off. It blew them off, chewed them up, spat them out, and then stomped on them, kicked them around the house (which is a difficult thing to do, kicking socks), until my socks were laid to rest in the dirty clothes hamper in the back kitchen.

This was surprisingly aggressive for a novel to do, but this was a surprising novel. I was expecting a fun, lighthearted romp, but I got something that was fun, lighthearted and just so, so, so jealousy-inducingly good. It’s a love story, a parable, a shaggy dog story. I thought Milo and his ten thousand lives were a brilliant story, his love affair with Suzie touching and incandescent. Michael Poore dances along a tightrope of humor, weighty topics, and absurdity like the very best of Christopher Moore’s A-game, Tom Robbins, David Mitchell, or Kurt Vonnegut. He takes elements of the spiritual, science fiction, and good, old down and dirty humanity and smashes them all together in a brilliant book. I could have spent another couple lifetimes reading about Milo and his quest for Perfection.

It has that incongruous touch that Sane Magazine used to have in the horoscopes and main issue and it never, ever misses a beat (something which I don’t think can be said about Sane). At any rate, while you’re waiting (very patiently, at this stage) for Trip the the Quiet Room to come out, instead of twiddling your thumbs you can go pre-order your copy of Resurrection Blues and get it at the end of August! Not bad…

I Haven’t Died Yet

Posted on September 29, 2015September 30, 2015 by Head Wombat

I am still alive, and still kicking the old agent hunt down the road.

The scoreboard isn’t looking particularly good at the moment (who knew an empty, soul-sucking void could hit like that?), but, at the very least, I’m still at bat, still working on the next thing(s), so who knows?

I also don’t have anyone else in the batting order with me, so this baseball analogy, never minding the fact that there are three competitors in the game and I don’t seem to ever get any more balls or strikes pitched to me, is a little stretched, at this stage. So, so tempted to dig out the old Sane Magazine t-shirts (which you can still buy, by the way) and fire up the internet hamsters at SaneMagazine.com for old times’ sake.

Update: Score one for the agents!

My Constant Little Unheeded Reminder

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Head Wombat

Some of you know me from a little magazine I used to write and publish every Sunday (and then later every Monday).

Sane Magazine Write and Publish — Still bugging me after all these years

Well, you’ll be happy to know that, though I’ve given it up (never to return?), that I still get bugged every single Monday at a little after midday to write and publish that dear old friend.

Of course, the pairing of writing and publishing in one task may give you an idea, if you’ve never read it, of the sometimes uneven quality of the writing and stories.

Sane Magazine’s archives now live at http://www.sanemagazine.net (a highlight reel is available in my short fiction resumé so you don’t wade through too much muck), and who knows what will ever show up again at SaneMagazine.com?

“The Long Dark Voyage” for Your Reading Pleasure

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Head Wombat

All this talk of baseball writing and more got me on an archaeological kick the other day, through old Sane Magazine issues, and I found the original of “The Long, Dark Voyage.” So you can read the story that appeared in the excellent Fenway Fiction: Short Stories from the Red Sox Nation for FREE, at what used to be my (and horde of hundreds of employees) weekly creative workout.

I’m not going to lie, it’s a little fast and loose. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But it was that first Red Sox short story that started a very long relationship with a series of publishers who wanted to publish short fiction by members of Red Sox Nation, God help us all.

Whilst wearing my internet pith helmet and wielding a mean little pickaxe I was able to unearth some other baseball stories, including the sweet, short little ode to the 2003 Red Sox called, with apologies to Stephen King, “The Woman Who Loved Derek Lowe,” which was the other candidate for the first Fenway Fiction collection.

And no one can save you if you get sucked into the old horoscopes, oh no, no one can save you.