Tales from The House of Hot Beverage

At The House of Hot Beverage, my roommate Larry and I had a room in the back wherewe'd entirely covered the walls with butcher paper.  There were two small, mismatched couches sitting in the shape of an L and by the legs of one of them was a basket. In this basket were an assortment of chalks, crayons, colored pencils, and every type of marker conceivable:  standard office supply black markers, highlighters, a rainbow of Sharpies, black light markers… we even had 3D markers and the glasses with which to view them.  I stood against one wall with my arms spread wide and had Larry trace around my body.  Then I used the outline to create a lifesize self portrait of me crucified upon a cross.  Above the door I’d done a landscape with gently rolling hills rising above a forest;  a mushroom cloud billowed in the background with it’s fireball streaked with 3D oranges, yellows, and reds.  Toy soldiers were lined atop the door frame and with the 3D glasses and strobe light on, it actually looked as though the entire scene was flickering with distant fires.  The rest of the room was covered with jotted bits of prose, scraps of poetry, drawings, scientific formulas, spiritual symbols, and just about anything else you can think of.  If it was your first time visiting what we referred to as The Drawing Room, you were expected and encouraged  to add something to these walls.

It was in this room that Larry, his girlfriend Erin, and I dropped acid.  We added to the wall for a bit, but after awhile it all became a bit too much.  My crucified self seemed to accuse with his unblinking stare and I could have sworn some snippets of rogue poetry were shifting positions when I wasn’t looking.  So we took the chalk and went elsewhere.  Of the nine couches within The House of Hot Beverage, two of them were positioned on the front porch.  Sometimes we’d sit there and watch speeding cars approach a curve that was as deceiving as it was dangerously sharp.  We’d then rate them on scorecards like a pair of Olympic judges as condensation beaded on our beers.  On this night however, we began drawing on the porch with the aforementioned chalk.  The screen door suddenly had a decorative border and the banisters were coiled with two dimensional serpents which bled over onto the sidewalk,  Drawing out way up the walkway, we hit the main road and scribbled all the way to Sean and Mary’s house.  They’d already settled down for the evening and declined the offer of joining our chalk festival, so we sketched our way back to our place.

At some point, Larry and Erin went inside, leaving me to my own devices.   Finding an unmolested patch of floor, I sat down on the porch and began drawing a Tibetan mandala.  I took my time with it, ensuring that every line was as precise as it could be when drawn with chunky, colored chalk;  concentric circles and squares, interlocking geometric patterns which seemed to grow ever smaller, eventually disappearing in the corridors of infinity.   It felt like I spent hours pouring my soul into this ridiculously complex drawing and during that time, thunderstorms had rolled across the valley.  As I stood, admiring my handiwork, the first fat drops of rain began splattering on the roof and ground.  Within minutes the tentative rain grew confident and gathered muster while booming thunder echoed back and forth between the hills like a battle roar.  The darkened sky flickered electric blue and sheets of rain cut through the night with diagonal slashes.  Water quickly pooled on the porch floor and I saw this drawing I’d worked so hard on washed away by forces of nature.

"There’s gotta be a lesson there somewhere."  I thought.  Then I went back inside The House of Hot Beverage, nodded at the Dead Kennedys poster in our living room, and sat down at my word processor to write.  That’s kind of the way it was there.

Undead Press & Anthony G: My take

A few years back, I released a collection of short stories called Sex in the Time of Zombies as a free download to help promote my other work.  Overall, the collection was a success:  it drove people to my website, garnered favorable reviews, increased sales, and introduced me to thousands of readers around the globe.  Around the time when downloads of the collection had died down a bit, I was contacted by Anthony Giagregorio who wanted to publish a print version through Living Dead Press.  Yes, that Anthony Giagregorio.  If you don’t understand what I mean by that statement, then you’ve obviously been sequestered from the firestorm burning through the indie author community over the last couple days.  It’s not my intent to rehash everything that’s transpired, so if you don’t know what I’m talking about, Google Tony’s name and/or Undead Press to get brought up to speed.

Like the other authors coming forward, I also never received galleys for the finished product.  There were changes made to the stories in the collection that I would have argued against until I was blue in the face, but they weren’t nearly as dramatic as the incidents being reported by other authors.  Most of the changes may have seemed inconsequential to most:  changing a whispered bit of dialogue to something that was shouted, replacing the word courage with strength … that sort of thing.  But to me, those words were important.  They were stylistic decisions I’d made when drafting the stories, specifically chosen to add a little something to the atmosphere and character development.  While I was less than thrilled with the revisions, I chalked it up as a learning experience.  After all, I had signed a contract giving them the right to edit the collection. (In the spirit of fairness, however, I should mention that there were a few changes that I actually did agree with and which we’d discussed over the phone.  Tony, for example, was the first person to point out I overused the word that.    Now, every time I write I reread the sentence to see if it still makes sense with that taken out.  If it does, I strike it and move on.)

That being said, I want to go on record as stating that Mandy DeGeit and the other authors have my full support in this controversy.  Regardless of whether Tony was within his legal rights to do what he did to their stories, there is no excuse for the way he treated them in the resulting fallout.  If he truly believed he did no wrong, he could have made the exact same points in a tactful manner instead of belittling and mocking someone who was simply trying to get her story published.  

While I deeply love the stories and characters contained within Sex in the Time of Zombies, I am just as deeply embarrassed to have them represented by a press which has so little regard for professionalism and common decency.   What Tony needs to remember is that authors are just as important to the success of a press as readers;  regardless of whether that author is submitting a novel or a short story for inclusion in an anthology, they thought enough of that imprint to want their work placed there.  To degrade and humiliate them when concerns are expressed is not only unconscionable, but also the height of arrogance.  Show a little appreciation.  Show a little modesty.

Dance of the Rattlesnake: A True Story

It was Memorial Day, I think. Definitely somewhere toward the end of summer because I distinctly remembering the sound of cicadas: miles of forest in all directions, God knows how many of those little buggers in each tree. Individually, the tymbals on their bellies make a rapid buzzing sound. The series of staccato bursts rise in pitch and volume before going back down through the spectrum like a wave. When you’ve got hundreds of thousands of these little bugs all cycling through their song, it almost creates a single sound. Sounding strange and alien, it’s all too easy to imagine some primordial creature lumbering just over the next ridge and bellowing out its call. But I digress.

I think it was Memorial Day because we’d come to tend a graveyard. This was one of those old, family cemeteries nestled way back in the hollows. Remembered only by people who had kin buried there, trips usually involved a pickup rattling and bouncing over dirt roads so rutted that even at a snail’s pace you still ran the risk of being tossed from the bed. This particular graveyard was bordered by rusted barbed wire stretched between wooden posts, most of which were askew. Three strands, one gate. Inside the fence, the grass had grown so tall that the rounded tips of the weathered markers looked like lion ears poking up from a savanna. Outside the fence, it was just as bad, the only real path being where the grass had been parted, barbershop quartet style" a thin strip of trampled earth surrounded by walls of bent grass.

We’d come here to make it presentable again and my uncles were armed with scythes, sickles, and the like. My mom made me stay very close to her side because rattlesnakes were a real danger in these type of conditions and I clutched a forked stick in my little fist in case I stumbled across one.

At some point, my Uncle Bobby did. It was coiled in the graveyard, its tail shaking furiously as its head reared back and exposed those two, curved fangs. As I watched, Bobby lopped off its head with a machete. I don’t really remember any blood. The image which stuck with me most was this headless body, twisting and turning on the ground as if possessed. My uncle took the forked stick from me and slid one of the prongs under the snake’s belly. Holding it at arms length, he walked to the edge of the cemetery with my close by his side and tossed the carcass as if he were throwing an underhand pitch.

He went back to work but I stayed behind, watching through the dappled sunlight as this headless body thrashed on strands of barbed wire.

Bad day for the snake. Good day for me.

True story.

CHARACTER INTERVIEW: Bosley Coughlin

This evening a character of mine dropped by Six Demon Bag for a little chat. Please welcome to this page Bosley Coughlin, protagonist from my soon-to-be-released Permuted Press novel The 7 Habits of Highly Infective People

Hi, Bosley. Welcome back to my head. We’ll start off with the usual Six Demon Bag opening question, which you can interpret and answer however you please: if you were in possession of a Six Demon Bag, what would yours contain?

Now that’s a good question, man. What the hell is in this bag? Hmmmm, let me see. Rollin’ papers…. Dime bag… red crayon, half a tab of blotter, some Vitamin C drops, a pen-style mini-microscope. Library card. One coupon good for a free order of fries at Meat World, expired. Some fuzzy little crunchy thing that may have once been a Cheeto, and a single Tarot card: The Queen of Cups.

Now Bosley, you and I know each other pretty damn well but some of my readers might not be that familiar with you. What can you tell my readers about the man behind the myth?

What’s there to tell? Like Zaphod, I’m just this guy, ya know? I like gettin’ a little mellow in the evenings, if ya get my drift. And mornings. Afternoons, too. I flushed my system out just long enough to land a cushy little job doing data conversion for the post office. I keep to myself, for the most part. Me, my books, and my telescope. I guess the biggest thing that makes me who I am though is that I’m dimensionally unstable. I was fuckin’ around with some mystical-type shit while riding out a killer acid buzz, see. And that’s when I accidentally opened the Eye of Aeons. Now I just kind of drift like metaphysical pollen through the dimensions. Every now and then, I’ll get all tangled up in someone else’s consciousness and be able to see the world through their eyes for a while.

What’s the hardest thing about being dimensionally unstable?

Definitely lack of control, dude. I mean, I’m a naturally curious person, ya know? Things catch my eye and I want to investigate. To take a closer look. But if I ain’t in my own body, man, there’s nothin’ I can do. Shit, I can’t even cast a sideways glance unless my host does. Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a conscious puppet? Imagine if Pinnochio turned into a real boy, but Geppetto never cut the fuckin’ strings. He just wants to go outside and run and play; but that old cat’s havin’ none of it. Dance, little puppet, dance.

Here’s the next in our series of Six Demon standard questions: there’s a train rocketing through the night with nearly a hundred people looking out the windows. The only person actually sitting in a seat is a small child who gazes unwaveringly at the floor. What is going on with these people?

Okay, the little girl? She knows that outside of that train is nothin’ but a vast expanse of nothingness, man. No stars. Nor horizon, no up or down. It’s like someone turned out all the lights in the corridors of infinity. And she can feel that shit squeezing in on the little coffin she’s zippin’ along in. Not quite enough to make the ceiling buckle and sides crunch. Not enough to shatter the windows. But she can still feel that pressure bearin’ down, threatening to squeeze the air from her lungs like the coils of a python. The other folks on the train have the option of helping her, ya know? They could sing soft songs to her, pet her hair, and tell her every little thing is gonna be all right. But instead, one by one they’ve turned away and shown her their backs. If you stand at the very end of the car and tilt your head just so, you can even see the progression of these sorry bastards’ soul. The sin of inhospitality personified by their corporeal flesh. Their reflections in the glass, staring back at the people they’d once been. And then nothing but darkness, man. That’s what’s goin’ down on that train.

If I were to look on your bookshelf, what books would I find there?

Let’s see, there would be Theories for Everything: An Illustrated History of Science. A bunch of shit by Jack Kerouac. The Encyclopedia of Symbolism. Aleister Crowley’s Book of the Law. I dig on some Lovecraft too, man. Oh and there’s what looks like a book, but when you open it up there’s actually a planisphere and some star charts inside.

If I could bridge the gap between present and future and transport a gift from you to Ocean, what would it be and why?

It’d be a big fuckin’ box, man. Some automatic weapons inside and plenty of ammo. She’s smart. She’d figure out how to use it. A bunch of rugged clothes for all seasons. Good pair of combat boots. Topographical maps of the area. Basically anything I could think of that would make her life a little bit easier.

This isn’t really the first time we’ve talked, but is there anything you’ve never told me that you’d like to get off your chest?

Damn right there is. You’re an asshole, man. I couldn’t give a flyin’ fuck what you choose to do to me, dig? Send me back in time and let the Mayans play soccer with me head. Let the Romans tack me to a giant T. Shit, send the most ravenous organ fiend you can find from that horde of undead fucks and let ‘em tear into me like a pig rootin’ up a truffle. But leave Ocean alone, man. I mean, come on. She’s just a little girl, ya know? Yet you plop her right down in the middle of that shit hole and continually mess with her world? Fuck you, man … fuck … you. Maybe I was goin’ after the wrong damn person all along. Maybe I shoulda set my sights on you.

Well, Bosley, thanks for stopping in. I wish we could talk longer, but I have some other imaginary people demanding my attention. So it’s up to you to wrap this interview up. Anything at all you want to talk about or promote is fair game; the forum is yours. Ready … GO!

If people are sleeping’ you’ve gotta be an alarm clock. You need to make a stand when it’d be so much easier and more convenient to simply look away. You’ve gotta be willin’ to love somebody you’ve never met so damn much that their tears are your tears. And don’t go dismissing all this as a bunch of hippie bullshit, either. Fuck hippies, man. Sometimes peace and love just don’t cut it. Fuckin’ sit-ins don’t mean shit to Fate. A body in motion tends to stay in motion and a body at rest dies. Plain and simple. Don’t let yourself die, people. Not without a fight. Learn the seven fuckin’ symptoms and for God’s sake don’t let humanity have been in vain. Show ‘em what you’ve got….

Corruption and Balance

Recently, a short story I wrote was accepted into an anthology which will be published by Damnation Books in March. Entitled Corrupts Absolutely? and edited by Lincoln Crisler , the concept was just too awesome to pass up. Based on the famous quote from Lord Acton concerning absolute power corrupting absolutely, the stories in this book explore what would happen if every day people found themselves in possession of superhuman abilities. The characters in these stories aren’t necessarily altruistic souls inspired by an unswerving belief in write and wrong; these characters are haunted and damaged, beautiful losers who struggle with the same dilemmas many of us do in our daily lives. It was meant to show a more realistic view, in my opinion, of metahumans and exactly what they might do with their powers.

It was also the perfect avenue for an idea that had been rolling around in my head since six months or so prior to the call for submissions. Life in comics is usually pretty balanced with things coming in pairs: you have your hero and their secret identity, a power offset by a weakness… and, of course, you have your supervillains. In the real world, there’s really no such thing as a supervillain. People rob gas stations, they rape and mug, and some really do see crime as a viable way to make a living. Yet even with organized crime, the mastermind at the top of the food chain is just some guy trying to turn a buck. He doesn’t give a damn about world domination and is content with the power associated with his position.

This is one of the themes I explored in my short story, Mental Man. In a lot of ways, media dictates how people live their lives. A celebrity wears a dress from a previously unheard of designer and suddenly that line is all the rage; advertisements tell us what’s "cool", what we can’t possibly live without, and the public responds accordingly. Book, film, and restaurant reviews influence what people read, watch, and even eat. In light of this, I thought, someone would superhuman powers might look for guidance in the only place they really could: comic books. And comic books dictate the world follows Newton’s third law of motion: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every superhero, there is a supervillain.

So what exactly would happen if that variable were removed? If there was no yin to the hero’s yang, so to speak. In our daily lives, many of us already feel as though our talents are being wasted or that we’re not living up to our full potential. To someone with metahuman powers, solving common crimes would be like completing a search-a-word puzzle in Highlights for Children when what was really craved was the New York Time’s crossword puzzle.

Corrupts Absolutely? will be available in March and I, for one, cannot wait. With contributing authors consisting of Joe McKinney, Cat Rambo, Weston Ochse, and Tim Marquitz (among others), I am in really good company with this book and am excited to see what dark avenues these other writers take their stories down.

Watch for this one, people. You won’t be disappointed.

Season of the Witch: A True Story.

This is not my oldest memory. That honor belongs to an extremely young Todd in front of the small stream cutting across our front yard and needing to pee very badly. I knew I wasn’t supposed to pee in my diapers anymore, but the toilet was so far away and I had to go so badly I cupped my groin in my hand as I bounced from foot to foot. I remember being torn by indecision, of wanting to be a good boy and not soak my diaper but also knowing I would never make it to the bathroom in time. So I did what any good country boy would do. I pulled down the front of my diaper, whipped it out, and relieved myself in the stream. But that is neither here nor there; for what I’ve actually set out to tell you about is my second oldest memory.

Every summer for as long as I can remember, the carnival came to town. I remember watching the trucks drive along 119 with disassembled equipment and shuttered concession stands in tow, knowing that overnight the parking lot of the nearby high school would be transformed into a wonderland of sights and smells. Caramel apples, corn dogs hot and golden and still sizzling from the fryers, the sweet allure of cotton candy, and barbecue wafting from the converted kitchen the Band Boosters had set up in the band room. Buffeted by winds from passing rides that clacked and whooshed while a myriad of bells and whistles rang out from booths along the midway: it was a young boy’s Shangri-La wrapped up in flashing, colored lights and the bustle of people.

But this memory stems from a time before I’d developed a true appreciation of the spectacle. With kindergarten an unthought of inevitability, I was young enough to still hold my mother’s hand. Young enough that everything seemed to tower above me and every stray dog rooting for dropped popcorn had to be friendly. It also means I was young enough not to remember anything before or after, only the event itself.

In those days, you didn’t ride through the haunted house. You walked. I remember clutching my mom’s hand in complete and utter darkness. They let you through in small groups and I could hear the people around us, giggling and cracking jokes. Sometimes they’d bump up against me, but even that close they remained cloaked by the dark.

I don’t remember how it happened, but somehow I slipped away from my mother’s hand. I slipped away from the reassuring sounds of other people and stood, alone in the dark. I was scared, but determined, positive that I could catch up and find my mom. With my hands feeling the way before me, I pressed on.

At some point I entered a room bathed in electric blue. Directly across from me sat a bevy of equipment. Sprouting from the top of one box was something that looked like the rabbit ears we used for our television and a spark traveled between the rods. Starting at the bottom, it raced upwards in a jittery arc, just like in cartoons. It was accompanied by a sound like my neighbor’s bug zapper and a long table was set beside it. Draped by a white sheet, I could see the contours of a bulky man hidden below. Seeming more angular than rounded, this shape called forth images of Boris Karloff as Frankenstein, heavily lidded and plodding forward with outstretched hands.

As I watched, the figure beneath the sheet started to slowly raise, bending at the waist as the legs swung around. The sheet never shifted or slipped, never revealed even the smallest detail of what was hidden under it. And I didn't stick around to find out.

I ran through the darkness with no regard for personal safety, bumping off obscured walls and tripping over my own clumsy feet. Literally and figuratively running blind, dreading the cold touch I expected to grip the back of my neck at any moment.

I ended up in another room, this one pulsing in an orange glow as if from fire. Thick fog crept over the ground and a gnarled tree stood like a leafless skeleton behind a large, black cauldron. The cauldron seemed to glow from within and wisps of steam curled from its top amid the sounds of crackling wood and bubbling goo. A witch hunched over the pot, churning its contents with an inverted broom. Draped in black, her hook-like nose was as bumpy as a pickle and wild tufts of white hair spilled out from beneath her conical hat. She cackled as she stirred, her menacing laugh seeming to slightly echo as one crooked finger pointed at me.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I just gave up. Vaguely aware of a warm stain spreading across my pants, I stood frozen to the spot and cried. There was no shame. There was nothing but the fear and it reigned supreme. Snot bubbled from my nose and my lips quivered as I sobbed; I remember my cheeks feeling warm and wet and the taste of saline dropping into my mouth with bursts of saltiness. The smell of my own urine, hot and acrid. I…just…cried.

The witch ran across the room with her arms reaching toward me and I pressed my hands over my face as I screamed and wailed and yet was still unable to run. Her fingers tried to pry my hands away but I fought with savage shakes of the head, still crying and blubbering and knowing I was going to end up in the bottom of that pot.

At some point the witch somehow managed to calm me down enough to see that the white hair was attached to the hat. I remember her tossing it to the side as she squatted by me and how lustrous, brown hair seemed to appear as if from nowhere. Her black, talon-like fingernails were pulled off one by one. I remember her constantly talking, her monologue generously peppered with repetitions of oh, honey; but I can’t remember exactly what she said. Just the general idea that it was all a costume, make believe and pretend. To drive the point home, she allowed me to rip off her twisted nose.

Once I was calmer the witch stood and took my little hand in hers. She led me through tight corridors of plywood and two-by-fours, dimly lit by strands of bare hanging bulbs. We came to a metal wall and she opened a door and helped me down a series of iron steps. We came out behind the haunted hose, with cables, hoses, and extension cords fanning out like the tentacles of some great beast.

She walked me around to the front and stood with me, holding my hand, as we watched for my mom to step through the exit. When I finally saw her I ran through the lines of departing people, pinging off the aluminum queue barriers like a pinball. I ran into her embrace was never so happy to be held in my mother’s arms as I was that day.

True story.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Robert R. Best

Robert R. Best, author of All Kinds of Things Kill and the zombie-themed Memorial trilogy, sat down with Six Demon Bag to discuss writing, characters, and why Demon Duct Tape is the best.

Hi Robert and thanks for stopping by 6 Demon Bag. We’ll be kicking off the festivities with our standard opening question, which you can interpret and answer however you please: if you were in possession of a 6 Demon Bag, what would yours contain?

Five demons and a big roll of Demon Duct Tape (tm) to keep them secure. It's pricey, but worth it because of all the sigils etched into the glue.

With that question out of the way, why don’t you tell our readers a little bit about yourself and your work?

Well let's see. Hi. My name is Robert R Best and I write books where horrible things happen to people. My current big project is the Memorial Trilogy, which is a zombie series. The focus is on Angie Land and her two kids. Her tough single-mom-ness and relationship with her kids is at the heart of the three books. But there's also lots of gore and zombie action. The first two books, titled Lakewood Memorial and Ashton Memorial, are available now. Book three, World Memorial ,should be out later this year.

You and I were on an author panel together at a convention back in 2010, which was an awesome experience. In this question, you’ve been invited to sit on a panel at the 6 Demon Bag World Horror Convention and Cupcake Drive. However, it is up to you to hand-pick the authors whom you’d like to share the panel with. Who would your selections be and why? (Also it should be noted that an author doesn’t necessarily have to be alive; a 6 Demon Bag is a powerful and useful tool, after all).

Hmmm. My first pick would be Jack Ketchum. He's a genius of tight,visceral horror that also develops the characters. Second I would like Edward Lee. He is great at describing violence. I always feel unworthy when I read his violent scenes. Third, and here we're going off the reservation a little, would be Kurt Vonnegut. An absolute genius and the single biggest influence on my prose style. Quick and direct. I'm nowhere near as good at it as he was, not even in the same continent, but he's who I'm emulating. Last, and here we're going way off the reservation, is Mary Gaitskill. She's probably most well known for the short story the movie"Secretary" was based on. She's a master a writing people in horrible, sometimes depraved situations but with a real sense of warmth and empathy for her characters. Look for her short story collection"Because They Wanted To" and a novel called "Two Girls Fat and Thin." Both are really good.

And one more I should mention. David Dunwoody. He's the nicest and most clever writer I know. I envy every idea he ever has.

We interrupt this interview with another standard 6 Demon question: There’s a train rocketing through the night with nearly a hundredpeople looking out the windows. The only person actually sitting in their seat is a small child who gazes unwaveringly at the floor. What is going on with these people?

The child has been possessed by a malevolent something-or-other. All the people on the train are thralls to this force and are standing guard. All over the world people have stopped mid-whatever and are staring at nothing. These are thralls also. When the train reaches its destination the destruction will begin. Can they be stopped?

What is the single, most valuable thing you’ve learned about writing and was there a particular experience which really drove this lesson home?

That you can say a lot with very little. A simple detail can say as much about a character as a whole paragraph describing their feelings. And not only that, the simple detail will often be more powerful because it's purer and more concentrated. The more words you use to describe something, the more you're watering it down.

And there was an experience that drove this home. Years ago I was writing a story for a class I was in. And I'd read some advice in abook on non-fiction writing but it’s very valuable. It ran something like this: if there's a word you can cut from a sentence and the sentence still makes sense, cut it. I tried this out on my story before I submitted it and it got a much stronger response than anything I'd written up to that point. So I always keep that idea in mind, even if I don't always live up to it.

Have you ever created a character that you utterly despised? Or do you have a soft spot for all of your characters, regardless of their flaws?

I think I have a soft spot for all of them. Or at least the ones in the novels, because I have more space to develop them. I try to think out why a person has come to this state, and then write from there. And when you do that it's hard not to empathize with them. And I like to share this information with the reader right before a character dies.

If you had to pick one piece that you’ve written to serve as a reader’s "gateway drug" to Robert R. Best, what would it be and why?

I would say Lakewood Memorial. It's the start of my zombie trilogy butit's short, fast and to the point. I tried to focus on the characters and keep the action as lean and fast as possible.

You’re the Dungeon Master and a party of adventurers entering a dimly lit room that flickers in the glow of torch light. Mounds of bones are piled upon the floor and the stench of rotting meat is so thick that it’s even seeped into the stone walls. What would you have the adventurers discover in this room?

A fair maiden who is in peril and needs help. She would beg to come into the party and I would have an elaborate and convincing backstory. And the party takes her in and thinks they've discovered the impetus for the next part of the campaign. Then several rooms later she's revealed to be a monster and attacks the party when their guard is down. She goes for the Mage first.

Okay, I’ve got to ask and tell me the truth. How many times do you introduce yourself only to have some smart-ass reply, "No, that’s wrong … the correct conjugation would be Robert Is Best"?

At least twice but less than a thousand.

Just about done now. However, are there any questions you wish Iwould’ve asked but didn’t? And feel free to provide the answer.

Six. The answer is six.

Okay, I have to go downstairs and yell at the postman for continually putting our mail in the wrong box, despite the fact that it’s clearly numbered. There’s a good chance I’ll receive a healthy dose of pepper spray and may not be back. So it’s up to you to wrap this interview up. Anything at all you want to talk about or promote is fair game;the forum is yours. Ready … GO!

Well, first off let me just say that tacos are awesome. Even a really crappy taco is still tasty, you know? Also, did you know that the wombat was the first animal to travel to space? Probably not, becauseit's not true. But you know what is true? That you can find links toall my stuff on the intertubes at http://www.robertrbest.com/!

Thanks, Mr Rose, for the opportunity to speak to your readers and I hope the postman avoids the eyes.