Features fourteen tales of intergenerational sex, including one brand-new previously-unpublished story, “Chuck and Skippy,” plus an entertaining preface and quasi-entertaining story annotations. Will be available on Smashwords and Amazon. Cover design by Johnny Murdoc.

I exercised my constitutional right to disable my Facebook profile yesterday. I’m on Twitter so if you want to follow me feel free to do so: @nattysoltesz. Though I almost never post on Twitter because I don’t understand its purpose, beyond attempts to get the attention of people more famous than me. Am I missing something?

I’m feeling focused lately, which is one of the reasons I’m trying to minimize my distractions. Man, I read this great book yesterday – and I mean I really did read the entire thing in one day. Dream School by Blake Nelson. I got it from the library and I was holding off on reading it, because I knew it was going to be good. Finally I picked it up yesterday morning and I read it all day. It was so wonderful. I’d do something, take a break, then come right back into that world because I never wanted to leave.

Anyway it was inspiring because it’s about this college girl discovering that she’s a writer. And the voice is just effortless, and Nelson doesn’t waste any time on events, he just plows right through this girl’s life and goes on to the next thing that happens, then the next thing, then the next thing… It’s rare for me to get inspired by a book I admire, usually I just feel crippled by greatness that I’ll never live up to – bad books are typically more motivating.

I’m inspired to finish this novel I’m working on which – fuck it – is a sequel to 428 College St, and it’s called 691 Suburban Dr. I’m also working on a new ebook called Daddy/Boy, which is going to be a collection of my intergenerational/incest stories, most of which have already been published but I’m going to include at least one new story, plus an introduction, plus a section of annotations and notes on the stories which is painfully self-indulgent but fuck it, it’s my ebook and I can do whatevah I want.

So those are my two main projects at the moment. Daddy/Boy should be out around the beginning of February. ‘Suburban Dr,’ who knows, but I know I’ve found myself drawing out the process of writing it because I’m so happy to be working consistently on something, but I think it’s to the detriment of the book. So I don’t want to say too much about this but I am determined to tell the story a little faster and not worry about length so much and just tell the damn story and get it out. So hopefully that’s good news.

What else? By the way I should be leaving for work right now but I’m putting it off, because it’s my Monday (I work Tues-Sat) and I’m not looking forward to it. Basically, I’m trying to become a full-time writer. I haven’t mentioned it extensively on this blog, but Str8 but Curious has been successful beyond my wildest dreams, and it’s made me believe that I could actually support myself solely through writing, and that is an incredibly exciting prospect to me. So I’m optimistic about the future, and also pretty damn scared because there is so much to consider.

I dreamt last night that President Obama and I were in my backyard and he smoked me up with this incredible weed, and I was so stoked because I’d get to tell my grandchildren that President Obama got me high. Plus he was so cool and chill and we were just hanging out. I was disappointed when I woke up. He’s totally getting my vote this year.

Two interviews that I did with local media were added to the web today:

1) A Q&A with my old friend Laurie for her blog Yinz R Readin.

2) A similar type interview that I did with my good buddy (and acclaimed author) Mack Friedman for Pittsburgh’s Out Newspaper (it’s toward the end of the issue).

Here’s some things that have happened since I last posted:

1) Backwoods was submitted to the Lambda Literary Awards in the ‘gay erotica’ category, which doesn’t really mean anything as there’s a bunch of books submitted. They’ll announce five or so finalists eventually, so we’ll see.

2) Dennis Cooper, one of my literary heroes, listed Backwoods as one of his favorite LGBTQ books of 2011.

3) Backwoods got its first Amazon review.

4) I’m working on another book, slow and steady, but it’s coming. Not to say too much about (I don’t want to jinx it) but it’s a novel (a real novel, not a novel-in-stories like Backwoods), it’s erotic and it features characters I’ve written about before.

**One that I forgot to add: I did a short piece on Point horror books for my good friend Laurie’s blog, Yinzr Readin.

I know I don’t give this blog a lot of love and attention lately, but I really do love it. Case in point: I’m currently working on my application for an artist fellowship, and while looking through the story files on my computer today (I was updating my resume and including my writing experience for the first time) I came across this one: Upwardly Mobile.

It was never submitted anywhere, never published, but it’s totally finished and (I realized as I read through it) not all that bad.

So it’s times like this that I’m glad to have this website as a venue for stuff that I’d otherwise have no purpose for. Like I said, it’s not a bad story – a little sexual socioeconomic fantasy (that was actually inspired by an episode of “Mad Men”) that does what it does.

And all of this helped me to put off writing my resume a little longer, which is a good thing.

MOVIES

1) Meek’s Cutoff
A slow-motion picture by anybody’s estimation, with lots of long takes where nothing much happens, that is nevertheless filled with tension. Reichardt gives the audience choices. Do you care about these people enough to feel anxious about what will happen to them? Does the hubris of the whole American enterprise render them unsympathetic? Are strangers to be generally trusted or feared? The final scene offers a conundrum that is as politically relevant as anything I’ve seen this year.

2) Drive
Stylized to within an inch of its life. Every element in harmony. That the soundtrack and the costumes already have a life of their own says something about the potency of the vision here – this is one that’s going to stick around for a while, one that will instantly garner a cult.

3) Tree of Life
Saw this one in the front row of a packed movie theater. Near the end of the film I was closing my eyes frequently because it was all too much, I was overwhelmed with emotion. Staggered out of the theater 2+ hours later feeling like a veil had been put over my eyes, or maybe lifted from them – the world looked different for a good while, my perception had been altered.

4) Weekend

5) Cedar Rapids

Good not great: Melancholia, Tabloid, The Skin I Live In, Take Shelter, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, Bridesmaids

Need to see: Margaret, The Future, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Carnage, Win Win, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, We Need To Talk About Kevin, Young Adult, Fright Night, Our Idiot Brother, Another Earth, Kaboom!, We Were Here

MUSIC
(in no particular order)

Smith Westerns, Dye It Blonde: Listened to this one maybe more than any of the others this year. Every single song is good.

Black Lips, Arabia Mountain

Dum Dum Girls, Only in Dreams

Papercuts, Fading Parade

Crystal Stilts, In Love With Oblivion

R.E.M., Collapse Into Now

Real Estate, Days: I resisted this band for as long as I could, cause every time I tried them out it sounded so bland. But I think the blandness is sort of the point. This is easy-listening music for ***sters, and it doesn’t come much lovelier (and it sounds a lot like Felt).

Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Belong: Mostly for this song.

Cults, s/t

So you can now order Backwoods, the print version, on Amazon for $9.04. That’s only some cents over the price of the ebook version on Amazon. Why is it so cheap? I have no idea!

Furthermore, I have yet to see a copy of it. I can’t believe it. How is it that I could conceivably order a copy off of fucking Amazon and see it in two or three days, yet I haven’t seen it?

YES I’M FRUSTRATED.

Every day I come home and hope to see it on my doorstep, and every day I’m disappointed. It’s passed the point where I’m even going to be excited about it. I’m just going to be relieved and a little less annoyed.

ARRRGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGH

It’s right here.

Also, here is the Smashwords edition. Smashwords lets you download the book in a bunch of different formats, such as HTML or PDF, for people who don’t have a Kindle or an ebook reader.

Apparently Amazon gets the copies of Rebel Satori’s physical books before anywhere else gets them, so while I still haven’t seen the book yet, I’m thinking it’s gonna be any day now.

“It’s at the printer. Slight hang up with a formatting glitch but copies will start shipping in a few days.”

I’m glad to know, at least, what’s going on. Yesterday totally blew – my big “book release” day and I had no fucking clue where my book was.