Originally published at The Mossy Skull. Please leave any comments there.

The newest entry in my occasional blog series on homebrewing is live on the Small Beer Press site.

In this one, I go on a pine-needle eating spree, brew some beer with spruce tips in place of hops, and then proceed to party like an 1830s New England housewife.

And by the way, just in case anyone is actually syndicating these, the location of the Literary Beer RSS feed has changed to the following:

http://www.smallbeerpress.com/?tag=literary-beer&feed=rss2

Originally published at The Mossy Skull. Please leave any comments there.

Heh.

I was so busy arranging my weekend of Readercon and chapbook and family reunion running about that I forgot to come on here and mention in advance the fact that I got to participate in two readings while at Readercon, not to mention stand about at the Small Beer table chatting up the fancy folk.

One of the readings was for Interfictions 2, which I am not in, but for which they were nice enough to let me read anyway for some inexplicable reason.

The other was for Beneath Ceaseless Skies, wherein when I preambled the bordello scene from “Of Thinking Being and Beast” with the fact that it was set in a world where centaurs had conquered the American West, the people in the seats actually applauded. Who would have thought? Not I… even though I must confess the seats were somewhat packed with ringers.

Also: the hotel pub had Sam Adams Brick Red on tap. Mmm.

Originally published at The Mossy Skull. Please leave any comments there.

My newest Literary Beer article just went online over at the Small Beer Press blog, in which I suggest hops might not be all they’re cracked up to be, and consider some truly medieval alternatives. The story of how hops came to be used in beer is actually pretty cool—and a worthwhile thing to know for all you fantasists interested in medieval settings.

Originally published at The Mossy Skull. Please leave any comments there.

I took the Mythological Profile Test and found out that I am a Kirin. Which is like a magic flying deer/unicorn with dragon-scales that brings good luck. And beer.

If it weren’t for the beer, I believe I would be mildly annoyed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at The Mossy Skull. Please leave any comments there.

Just wanted to take a moment to bask in the joys of summer. The spirit of the season hadn’t fully hit me at Solstice, though I celebrated in due style. And I tell you: it was hard times that brought it on at last. Away from my garden for a week at TNEO. It rained and rained. Ripping thunder while we sat around the critique table. The skies clear one moment, drenching the next. We’d watch the sky out of the classroom windows all day, make a snap judgment when the time came and run for it. And inevitably get deluged.

I got home and the same storms had knocked over a big old rotten birch right on my heirloom tomatoes. Everything was folded in half, all withering from rot. Now we’ve got a bunch of green tomatoes sitting on the windowsill–fruit from branches broken by the storm, slowly ripening by magic.

For dinner I had grilled kielbasa, rosemary potatoes and one roasted anaheim pepper. I made myself a sandwich with homemade rustic bread. Pint of cream ale on the side. Purple Cherokee tomatoes for appetizer, sun golds for dessert. And farm stand soft serve for second dessert.

Yeah.

Tonight I get to go out in the dew with my tripod and try to take pictures of fireflies.

There’s mosquitoes on the river.
Fish are rising up like birds.
It’s been hot for seven weeks now,
Too hot to even speak now.
Did you hear what I just heard?

–John Perry Barlow, “The Music Never Stopped”

I am in the middle of such a moment of bliss that I’m actually tempted to play against character and turn this into a meme. You there, consider yourself tagged. Give me 100 words on the small pleasures.

I’ll get back to the writing now, I promise.

Originally published at The Mossy Skull. Please leave any comments there.

‘Master,’ said the lion, looking at the boy with glowing eyes. ‘You who bear the emblem of the Childlike Empress, can you tell me this: Why must I always die at nightfall?’

‘So that Perilin, the Night Forest, can grow in the Desert of Colors,’ said Bastian.

‘Perilin?’ said the lion. ‘What’s that?’

Then Bastian told him about the miraculous jungle that consisted of living light. While Grograman listened in fascinated amazement, Bastian described the diversity and beauty of the glimmering phosphorescent plants, their silent, irresistible growth, their dream-like beauty and incredible size. His enthusiasm grew as he spoke and Grograman’s eyes glowed more and more brightly. ‘All that,’ Bastian concluded, ‘can happen only when you are turned to stone. But Perilin would swallow up everything else and stifle itself if it didn’t have to die and crumble into dust when you wake up. You and Perilin need each other.’

—Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

I visited Montreal for the first time this past weekend, on the event of my sister’s graduation. Had an enjoyable time drinking fine French Canadian beers, pretending to speak French and struggling valiantly to hold my own with idealistic, new-minted Canadian intellectuals. Also spent a fair amount of time wandering the streets presenting my country-boy fish-out-of-water colors to the absurdly thin and fashionable Quebecois in my unhip hick flannels and wool and silly aussie hat. It rained a lot. I stood under a lot of awnings in zen contemplation of clouds, hid out in bookstores (found a nice used copy of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler) and the Musee des Beaux Arts (viewed ghostly panoramic tintypes of the Bay of Havana, glorious hyperbolic propaganda posters of the Cuban revolution), stepped in a lot of puddles and got a lot of drenched. Like I said, an enjoyable time. But I am a simple man, and I have to admit, the best part of the weekend was last night at 11 after the long car ride home, standing in my garden with the stars and the seedlings and the dregs of a half-pint of homebrewed kolsch.

It’s the contrasts that make meaning.

Originally published at The Mossy Skull. Please leave any comments there.

Those Facebook status reports are always either too flip and pithy or too short.

I am sitting in my backyard watching the sun go down, drinking homebrew steam lager and taking scrawled marginal notes for revisions to my HomelessMoon chapbook story. For a hard surface, and occasional inspirational distraction, I’m using justinhowe’s copy of the mindblowingly awesome Art of the Maya Scribe. A gaggle of local kids swarm around me, full of irrational, unanswerable demands such as, if I’m drinking beer now, do I plan to throw up later? and, why would I assign homework to myself?

Eventually, the sun sets, the wind picks up, and I’m driven inside.

Originally published at The Mossy Skull. Please leave any comments there.

Well, this is some exciting news for me.

Gavin Grant of Small Beer Press (the publisher of INTERFICTIONS, with whom I have been volunteering the occasional day’s work for about two years now and learning a great deal), has invited me to do a guest author series on home brewing over at the SBP blog, Not a journal. Episode 0 is up now, in which I ramble a bit about the relationship between beer and literature. To be followed on an occasional basis whenever there are new developments to report on the brewing front.

Boy do I love rambling about beer.

I’m thinking I’ll syndicate some excerpts in the sidebar somewhere, rather than having to add new posts here everytime I add new ones there.