The latest issue of Bards and Sages Quarterly is out, and with it my story “From the Mountain, Fury”. You can pick it up at Amazon in paperback or Kindle format.

Ravens cawed just out of rifle range, and dishes clanked from behind walls. Stoltz and Bishop woke to the smell of pancakes and bacon wafting from the camp lodge. The men dressed, bolting out the tent flap while buttoning their pants, work boots kicking gravel.

They gobbled the food, washing it down with generous amounts of coffee. Everyone was in better spirits, the golden morning light working its magic spell. Graham stood in front of the mess hall. He didn’t seem to be enjoying himself all that much.

“Can I have your immediate attention?” Graham shouted to the room.

The men grew silent, forks and spoons letting up on the plates.

“Has anyone seen Robert Novek?”

The end of Thor marks the end of an era for me. I still feel like I’ve been kicked in the head with a steel-toed work boot. I guess that’s how it goes. Life is a blend of all the ups and downs, as Mike Cooley of the Drive By Truckers sings on “Carl Perkin’s Cadillac”.

For as long as I can remember I’ve been a writer, or a creative person. My earliest memories of such things were me sitting on the living room carpet, copying and pasting art paper into a haunted house, complete with sliding paper ghosts and spooks. Through junior high and high school while teachers gave their lessons, ideas would pop into my head. Scenarios. Situations. Quotes. Characters. I’d jot these down in my notebooks. Sometimes I’d put them into a short story or screen play, or I’d just let them be. Gripped in my hand, between my school books was always a copy of a Stephen King or John Steinbeck novel. Most of the teachers hated it, told me I should only bring the work books into the classroom. A few English teachers loved it, but most did not. I’d blow off classes and sit on a bench in a nature preserve, writing short stories and essays. This was my education: elbow room, creativity, things that I could touch and feel and see all around me. Real things.

In my early twenties I decided to get serious and try to get published. My first short story (a ghost story) was accepted for an anthology in a now defunct press that was sold into a children’s book division. The story never got published. My interest turned to girls, and more girls, and all the social and career craziness of your 20’s. I stopped writing short stories and screenplays. But I never stopped writing down scenes, quotes, characters and other ideas. They went into Windows Notepad, year after year, piling up. Several years ago I opened this folder, wondering why in the hell I was doing it. It was then I realized I needed to make a decision, and make it fast. Either I’d pursue what seemed to be a natural tendency towards crafting fiction, or I’d stop the note taking, stop wasting my time. I made the decision to move forward. A certain cat was at my feet on that cold January night…a certain aquamarine-eyed Russian Blue by the name of Thor. I looked at him, said “can I do this?” and he made his infamous “gnar!!!!” sound and went back to sleep.

I returned to that short story that never got published. It was as good a starting point as any… a twenty-something male who’d found himself trapped by a mysterious creature in the wilds of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

And then I started to write the novel. And wow the writing was shit for the first thirty pages. Then something happened: it all came back. The writing improved with each chapter. Each page was exhilarating, a revelation. I felt better in mind and body than in quite some time. I worked on it through the winter, not letting myself skip a day, as Stephen King so rightfully suggests in “On Writing”. Thor was at my feet every night, keeping them warm, purring, cheering me on. There were self-inflicted questions concerning my ability. But the people around me believed, and they way I was feeling, I started to believe, too. Winter thawed to spring and burned to early summer, and it was at this point my first short story acceptance came to be: an anthology with New York Times best-selling author Steve Alten, the legendary Ramsey Campbell, and The Flock author James Robert Smith (Warner Brothers is set to make the film soon). To say I was shocked would be an understatement.

Thor was at my feet almost every time I wrote fiction the last several years. He was my writing cat. He cheered me on, kept my feet warm on those chilly nights. He’d also take the brunt when I’d get excited by a scene. I hated when that happened. I’d get so into the work, I’d stretch out and inadvertently put my foot into his rump or belly (and he did have a belly).

It’s another cold, windy January in Chicago. Only this time there is no Thor at my feet. He was right when he responded “gnar!!!!” when asked if I could do this. This year, I became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for best new science fiction and fantasy writer. Another shock. The list includes insanely talented writers all across the world. I also qualified as an associate member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. What does this mean to the reader? Not much, and it is the reader I will always prioritize. But for the writer, these are good things. Trust me. Like the reader needs to be buoyed by the prose, sometimes the writer needs to be buoyed by recognition of his or her work.

Everything that has happened the last several years goes right back to that cold January night, before I started the first word of my first novel. There’s something about occupying a room through the night, navigating those hours of silence, with another living, breathing thing, human or not. Everyone’s minds, furry or not interlace in those hours-a great spiritual melding as the world sleeps. Well, at least most of it.

For me, it all goes back to “gnar!!!!”. Indeed, my old friend. Indeed.

There wasn’t enough fur in my writing office since Thor’s passing, so I decided to grow a beard in his honor. Already, the ideas are brewing for a new novel, even as I mourn. That is life, snow melting over the decay. Soon flowers will grow, each petal more bittersweet than the last.

When I first met Thor, I knew a few basic things. He hated thunderstorms. So much so he’d race to the nearest bed or couch and hunker underneath for the duration. I remember his striking aquamarine eyes, how they reflected lightning glow as I’d lift the bedspread and console him.

He also was a bit snooty. Many times, during his prime, I’d reach down to pet him, and he’d go “gnarr!” and trot off, tail held high in the air.

Over time he got used to me, while over time I fell in love with him.

Several years ago, while preparing dinner, I turned to grab silverware. He ran off with an entire chicken breast, dragging it along the floor. Why in the heck did he ever think he’d get away with that? Such a blatant grab, that squishy chicken breast twice the size of his head. And how fast did he think he could eat it? Well, it was Thor, after all. His nickname was “Tank”. I’d seen him devour lunch meat without even chewing, making weird huffing noises that seemed to enable the process. Several years ago we used to have people come over for Thanksgiving. These were not animal people. I took great delight in watching Thor as he snatched an olive from the dining room table and run off. Damn he loved olives. Once he got them on the floor, he’d rub and roll on them, his grey fur spiking up in a series of overlapping ridges.

During his prime, he was more independent and liked to cuddle up in his beds. And if they were in the sunlight, even better. I’d rotate the beds for him during writing breaks, just so he could always be in prime real estate. This is when I think he fell for me.

Yesterday, Sarah and I ended Thor’s life. Thor had a track record of literally coming back to life after seeming like he was dead. One morning a couple years ago, I pulled him out from underneath the bed, his head lolling, body limp. As I drove him to the emergency clinic, he made a terrible gasping noise and began breathing again. After several hours of IV and a few days of home rest, he was in fantastic shape. Then there was the time after that he wouldn’t move at all, and we were able to revive him at the same ER clinic. Veterinarians were amazed at how he’d kept his weight at 11 pounds despite raging kidney disease. They said they’d never seen that before.

Because of this track record, we gave Thor every opportunity to fight back after that Monday afternoon, when I woke and heard him wheezing, and watched him falling over as he tried to walk. He’d spent the previous night playing with string, eating, running around, humping his stuffed toy bison girlfriend (giving new meaning to “going out with a bang”), and jumping three feet onto the bed. He had an amazing quality of life, but I guess it was just time.

Sarah and I held him as he died. We were of course in tears. You’d have to be cold and heartless not to be. As I stroked Thor, minutes before he was going to die, I told him that we all were going to go through this, and that he was just going a little earlier than Sarah and I, so it was no big thing.

Sarah used to tell me about a cat she had named Boo. This was before Sarah came into my life. Thor had been with her then, too. And I think Boo and Thor’s friendships defined the kind of critter Thor turned out to be. Boo was a gigantic beast of a cat…perhaps a manatee of a feline, with a similar disposition (no aggression at all). As Boo aged, he had been bullied by her cat Sam, who was an alpha. From what I was told, Thor, despite his gentle disposition would get between Boo and Sam, holding his head high and chest out, putting a stop to it.

That was Thor. In any book or play or film, the Good King. The kind of cat who clung to Sarah’s mother’s lap while she recuperated from a stroke.

I’m sure a few would read this and say, “a bit dramatic, eh? he was just an animal”. And I’d say, “so the fuck are you”. You can’t run from what you are. But we try, don’t we?

I have no idea if I will see him again “on the other side”. I do not have those answers. If so, wonderful. I’d love that more than anything. But I can tell you with great certainty that I do know a few things:

I know his name was Thor, and that he was beautiful. I know he flew over from Russia as a kitten, traveling with Sarah’s brother Matt. I know that he did not have a mean bone in his body. I know that my time with him was joyous. He enriched my life beyond description, and I hope I enriched his as well.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to take a forty day camping trip to the Northern Rockies. There were many things I encountered in Montana during my visit. Does and fawns, smiling with their eyes in back-lit meadows. Families along roadways offering friendly waves. Tumbling creeks that make you shiver when you near them, rhythmic whispers from deep within their treed corridors. Some of these creeks were aquamarine, with steep rock shelves harboring finning trout. Other rivers were root beer, concealing their secrets like veils.

I saw eagles soar over pawing grizzly bears on flowered slopes. I watched the sun catch on Mt. Jackson in Glacier National Park, then launch off its furthermost spire like a raptor. I witnessed night skies brimming with stars that jostled like children for the gazer’s attention. Blizzards that numbed my cheeks and sun that warmed them. All of it treasure before my eyes. I took in more and more, and with each day I became richer.

It is true that Montana is the most stunning state in the U.S. The landscape is sweet then rugged, then sweet again. More than any other state Montana sculpts those who enter her boundaries. I wanted to stay forever. But something called me back from this cathedral of mine, called me from my religion. It tugged, ever so gently, even against all that magnificence.

In my mind I still see golden light ladled in curling aspen leaves, the ghost breath of elk beneath surrender sunsets, and weathered juniper trees thick with tiny birds that chitter when I approach too close. I recall the perceptible hush of a snowflake forest, my pulse slow and steady, matching the crunch of snow beneath my boots. I felt sadness, yet hope in a blizzard that pushed me out of Many Glacier. As the Ranger followed me out, I glimpsed a figure on a slope in the whiteout conditions. I squinted, and realized it was a sub-adult grizzly bear, clinging to the last bit of green.

Each night I laid upon the cold hard ground and my mind filled with the depths of rivers, where eons flow in the gloom. Images of windblown forests shedding their leaves beneath leaden skies, of frosted meadows lit afire by sunrise. Only the hardiest remained on this elevated landscape, and these birds and animals shivered in the cold, preparing for what was to come. In these nights I thought of why we are here, and what will happen to all of us. We are all warm souls, created by coincidence, and I stared in wonder up at the universe, coincidence-potentiator. I thought of other places, other scenes from a million light years away, of every river in every possible canyon, of every mountain or tree or ocean that existed. I felt a great connection, a destiny of landscape. I laid there on that frozen ground in awe of the people and creatures I know, and how I came to know them. I thought of Thor and his cute greeting when I’d show up at Sarah’s place (we shared him after the split), his little head cocking back as he went “yip!”. Just a warm hello from a long time friend. His eyes were so sparked in those moments, so shining with happiness to see his old buddy.

These scenes are what we are now, and these moments are what we will always be, forever defined by the landscape and creatures that surrounds us.

I went to Montana because its wild essence I cannot obtain in Illinois. What they have there will never be again here. It was so beautiful, and I witnessed so much.

None of it was as beautiful as what I saw radiating from within Thor.

Thank you, Thor. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

You can find the December 2012 issue of Penumbra Magazine at Magzter and Penumbra’s own site. Excerpt from “Seven Fish for Sarah”:

The mountains of Northern California are my home. Life is a rich bounty, but it is not a hoarding contest. I do not need, nor care for a Hummer or a yacht. I do not care to invest in the stock market. None of us really do post-Neutronin.

Sometimes, for the teacher to teach her lesson, she has to wipe the chalkboard clean.

Also, The Old Weird South Anthology has just been released. You can pick it up at Amazon, Smashwords, or Barnes and Noble.

Excerpt from my story “Storm Fronts”:

The morning air tingled with the promise of fresh venison. He rode his ATV to the deer stand pre-dawn, the engine puttering, one headlight searching in the silhouettes of trees. Bats ravaged insects above the canopy, and a flying squirrel made its last stunt before light, chortling as it glided. Billowing mist swallowed the forest, masking the trunks of older trees and obscuring young spruce. Jansen listened to the woods, the pileated woodpecker hammering for grubs, the ruffed grouse thumping its wings. To the west, a portentous black sky. Lightning flashed sideways from a monstrous thunderhead. Seventy yards behind him, chunks of hail rattled against branches and leaves, inching closer. The Birth-Mother. Sustenance. Fallen thousands of times before and a thousand times to come….

It’s been an extremely busy holiday season, but I’ll take it.