Happy about these books we are.

So this is what happens when you let Michael J. Seidlinger take over your blog for the day during his epic, and dare we say, life changing My Pet blog tour. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Alias/Known As: “Psych”

Real name: Ben Tanzer

Number of victims: 7

Description:

~Estimated to operate between the hours of 7PM and 11PM.
~Cold-called from a pay card various local residences.
~Spoke to receptive individuals, often for hours at a time, discussing the ups and downs of their life choices.
~Gave advice and proceeded to ensnare victims with a truth that kept them on the phone waiting for his every command.
~After providing advice, reportedly used influence to command victims.
~Stated to have told victims, “This is how I will change your life.”
~Told victims how to stabilize/improve life.
~Victims resist or desist.
~Victims that resisted resulted in self-induced suicide.

Be Mine

“I’m picturing a rainy day like any other day and a woman dripping wet...
“I’m picturing the night I returned to my apartment, soaked, and there he was, Victor Hent, a normal attractive male, turning one body into two. I’m picturing it split down the middle because it sounds so much better that way.
“I’m picturing what I said and what I didn’t say...I’m picturing his face when he realized I was serious.My offer, serious and true...I’m picturing our kiss.I’m picturing everything you can’t picture, and it makes it so much better knowing that it’s mine and mine alone.
“But see how I’m not really telling you the whole story?”

My Pet Serial Killer. More here. For real. Enjoy. It just might change your life.

These Books Will Change Your Life, Part I - The Sky Conducting by Michael J. Seidlinger and Creamsicle Blue by Mike DeCapite.

Travel. Read. Fly. Read. Lie on couch as kid sleeps. Or claims his own row on empty plane.  And we are read and talking The Sky Conducting by Michael J. Seidlinger and Creamsicle Blue by Mike DeCapite, books that came to us to be consumed, and books that read as rumination. In The Sky Conducting, Seidlinger weaves a web of post-apocalypse, though it is also more than that, because while there are so many ways the world can end, this is different, it is rumination by way of commentary, and it is not the end of the world as much as the death of America, hollowed-out by consumerism and misplaced direction.

It's also about the flow of words adding up to something and seeking to capture the sense of terror and dread that accompanies this death, psychic and otherwise. Which is not a bad way at all to talk of Creamsicle Blue. More rumination, more words, more hollow, and more death, though more focused on how we all die, always moving forward, yet looking back as well on what is lost along the way, love, youth, opportunities, and decisions made and not made. It is all told smaller too, the story of an individual in mid-, and possibly ongoing, wander. And while it's true that we don't really know these authors personally, we were struck that maybe there's something generational going on here, with Seidlinger representing the new generation, one certainly focused on self, but also part of a world that feels like it's rapidly deteriorating even as so much lies ahead, and DeCapite reflecting a generation just removed, more individually focused, with less to come. And maybe, just maybe this is all projection, but it is the state of the world, if not literature, we look back, we look forward, we are where we are, and things fall a part even as they sometimes fall together.