Reading – CB’s 313 Gallery

This is going to sound more like a Livejournal entry than a proper post, because I’m really sleepy. Please bear with.

But needless to say, Paulette Powell (our hostess for the evening, I believe) and Mariah Aguilar certainly know how to throw a party benefit. It felt like the proverbial good time was had by all – at least I hope it was.

Readers included Fly, Neil Swaab, John Holmstrom (who has a Bosko character who is quite different from the Harman & Ising one, as you’ll see), and Kyle Baker (who was dead on both with his New Yorker parody and his explanations of how we market things now).

Neil read The Hidden Chamber, a Bluebeard-ish sort of poem to be included in a new anthology called Outsiders due out in October, and How to Talk to Girls at Parties, a short story that doesn’t have a home as of yet. Like Closing Time in McSweeney’s Mammouth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, it feels semi-autobiographical to a point, but at some point midway in it veers off to points unknown. There’s always enough inklings of reality there to keep the narrative grounded – that’s a hallmark of most of the stories – but you are certainly not any place familiar by the end. It will be interesting to see where the piece lands, and if it changes by the end.