Apparently, they have “the World’s Largest Bloody Mary Bar” and it certainly looked larger than average, with a dizzying array of accoutrements, including picked veggies, Guava Lava, salsas, hot sauces, etc.

This is what we got. Note the liberal use of the simply divine Inner Beauty Hot Sauce (and this is not one of those tourist-spicy “hot” sauces; it is the real deal, made with copious amounts of scotch bonnet peppers).

Banana Rellena (Muy Caliente!)…Smoked Pork Stuffed Banana

Grilled Corn on the Cob with Cumin-Lime Mayo, Queso Fresco and Chile

Wicked Spicy Smoked Pork Rib with Guava Lava Glaze and Inner Beauty Hot Sauce…

Amilcar’s Guacamole with Fresh Corn Tortilla Chips and Tomato Salsa

It was a phenomenal brunch. I recommend you get there as soon as you can.

I am going to be on a few panels, including one on experimental & psychedelic fiction (I fully expect to roped on benzedrine and toad venom) and one on writing workshops (yep, I suspect the toad venom will work here, too).

I will probably be reading, too, and signing books.

Check out the site for more info on guests, including Catherynne Valente, Brian Keene, Jonathan Maberry, Jennifer Pelland, and many more.

Well,  if you like zombies (and who doesn’t?) you may want to pick up Hiram Grange and the Digital Eucharist, which features a plethora of zombies. It is jam-packed with Jodie Foster zombies (Yes, that’s right, plural–as in more than one Jodie Foster zombie) and ravenous hordes of zombie chimpanzees (Oh, fuck yeah! Way more than one!)

It also features sex, drugs, and pigeons. (This is true.)

Awesome artwork by Malcolm McClinton and Danny Evarts. (This is really true.)

Printed in hallucinogenic ink mixed up in Scott Carr’s secret shadow government bunker. (This may not be true.)

Every 100 copies comes with a rare golden ticket that will get you a special heated seat on the Magic Space Rapture Ark. (This is probably not true.)

Buy it and find out.

For more Hiram Grange, check out this free story, “Hiram Grange and the Ghosts of Marrakech.”

A legless Jodie Foster zombie rudely inconveniences our paragon of virtue. Pray tell, what happens next?!

Enough with the zombies. We have wild demons up in here.

In which our intrepid hero is confronted by not one, not two, but three Jodie Foster zombies

“Bruise for Bruise”. This story, which originally appeared in Weird Tales #353 , was just released in audio at Pseudopod. Read by Elizabeth Green Musselman. You can download it there or through iTunes Podcasts. If you want a copy in print, the story is available in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror and as a bonus short story at the end of Hiram Grange and the Digital Eucharist.

“The Harvesting of Jackson Cade” This story was the  winner of the World Horror Convention 2011 Short Story Contest. It was printed in the souvenir book for the convention and was recently released in Black Static #23, along with a brief interview wherein I reveal the secret of the universe.

“Hiram Grange and the Ghosts of Marrakech” (Shroud Digital Edition 1.02) This is a free short story featuring one of Hiram Grange’s myriad bizarre adventures, this time in beautiful Marrakech.

“Juggling Glass Globes at the Hemophiliac’s Zoo” (Murky Depths #15)  This is one of my favorite stories, featuring the intrepid chimpanzee Porno, who works at a zoo for sinners. Porno is going to be a major character in The Clockwork Heart of Heaven, so you will want this to know where his story begins.

Check it out, plus these other great stories and articles.

TRAP, Adam Blomquist

VAMPIRIC NIGHTS, Alan Meyrowitz

Scott Christian Carr’s SOMEONE OUGHTA SELL TICKETS …! DOWN & OUT IN RACHEL, NEVADA Part 2

DIE WASSERGEIST, Kris St. James

GRIMOIRES & TOMES, Book Reviews

CRAVEN PLACE, Chapter 2 of a Serialized Novel from Richard Wright

DEMENTIS MORTUUS, Word Games for the Worst of Us

The raised walkway reminds me of Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder.”

This photo of Cotton Tree Lodge is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Severance package = Belize.

Why Belize? Several reasons, but, of course, there are the monkeys and the Mayans.

It started as a joke: Apparently, I end up with a lot of monkeys in my stories. I don’t know why. (For the record, I am aware that I use “monkey” very broadly: I call chimps, apes, orangutans, bonobos, etc., “monkeys” for the sake of how cool the word “monkey” is. I bow to no other authority.) Then I began to realize there was a deeper truth beneath it all. A dark truth.

Something clicked into place. And I had an entire novel unfold in my head in a few IPA-addled moments. Now I am in the process of trying to remember everything I thought of and to write it down in the right order.

The novel I am working on, The Clockwork Heart of Heaven, features ancient Mayan ruins, futuristic robotic gods, and (oddly enough) simians with a thorough appreciation of Romantic poetry, Dylan, and whisky. I am at 30,000 words so far.

Here are the draft opening lines:

Any cogent telling of the life of Jesus Crake will of necessity concern his appetites. His hungers were the engine that drove the revolution, and it can be said, with little exaggeration, that they burn still to this day, as does the magma that gestates in the belly of this world. From the petty hungers that fixed him to the sore breasts of a coterie of dark-skinned wet nurses to the slow, casual burn of greed that saw him buy up three-quarters of the island before his third decade, to the final, grasping, relentless hoarding of oxygen when he, to the shock of none, bent the seams of his iron lung and caused rivets to pop before he finally decided to die (screaming like an enraged infant, as he was wont to do in moments of stress).

To understand him and his life, clearly you must first understand these appetites.

But one cannot forget the monkeys; for their strange, preternatural allure must be explicated, as well.

Hunger and his damn monkeys should give an adequate window into Crake’s enigmatic soul.

It must be enough, for it is all I have to work with.

The affair of the oranges and the blind mistress will be absent from this account, for that is a promise that I made to him.

It is the only such promise I intend to keep.

But yours is a kind that enjoys murder, so let us start there.

Obviously, there is more to come…