My essay, “Two Hundred Years,” from my non-fiction book The Israeli Trail, was picked as a finalist.

A new story, “The Moore Common Cold,” is up at Failbetter. The story’s about a scientist who tries to reinvent the common cold. It’s also about wikipedia. And the end of the world.

Failbetter is a great journal, and has published stories and had interviews with people like Michael Chabon, Sherman Alexie, Josip Novakovich, T.C. Boyle, Richard Baucsh, Mary Gaitskill, Elizabeth Strout, Paul Auster, and more.

So, check out the story here, and if you enjoy it, be sure to let the magazine editors know.Become a  facebook page.

Just approved the proofs for “The Moore Common Cold,” up at Fail Better tomorrow. Then, went to read the news, and found this interesting article on wikipedia. What a strange world.

My story, Epitaphs, is now up at Word Riot. It’s about a couple who goes to the graveyard at night. Check it out!!! You can also  hear me reading the story. Enjoy! If you like it, let the editors know.

“Epitaphs” will appear in the Spring at Word Riot.

“The Moore Common Cold,” a strange wikipedia entry story about a scientist’s quest to reinvent the common cold, will appear in failbetter.com!

La Florida 1516

The words you now read were written by a dead man. I don’t suppose that is of any comfort.

My name is Armando Calditchi, but by birth I am a Spaniard. Without a doubt, my name will be left out of the history books, but this does not matter. Most men’s lives are no grander than a word, or a mere letter, even a period, the punctuation of death. But I found a greater treasure than any of the other explorers. I discovered something in La Florida. A way to live forever.

The Timucan wise men say all men seek the fountain of eternal youth for the same reason: Man is mortal, God is dubious, Life is short.
I entered this world in a shack outside Valladolid, in the province of the same name, nary a hundred miles from Palencia, where Juan Ponce de León plopped out of his mother’s ugly crevice. King Fernando and Queen Isabel were married in Valladolid. Columbus, a man I would travel to the end of the known world with and come to love more dearly than my father, died there, in 1506.

I was born in 1476, not that it matters. My life would surely have been a mere smudge mark on the scroll of history had I not, at fourteen, fought in the conquest of Granada alongside Columbus and that villain de León, who left me marooned in this godforsaken island. In Granada I met my angelic infidel Catalina. There I took my first life, pike in hand, the glory of country swelling in my heart. Oh sweet war! Boys scarcely older than I dressed the black earth with blood to purge the Moslems, and finally we forced a surrender. At first, in the treaty that followed, the Moors could remain in the city so long as they declared loyalty to our esteemed King and Queen. But there are no idealists in war, only pragmatists and illusionists. My countrymen might have seen the Jews as a cancer, but the Moslems were the plague. I will admit, the outcome of this treaty did not displease me, as I was a devout Catholic. We are a peaceful people. We spill blood and then mop up with rosary. We pray for the souls of those we have butchered. We love all of God’s creatures. We ask only that they be relegated to the dungeons and alleyways that befit stray dogs.

Such is the black death of my gallows humor. Forgive me, Catalina, but travel takes from a man more than time.

Of course, if you are a student of history like me, you no doubt learned that soon those Moslems who would not convert were deported to Africa or rounded up and sent to secret prisons or murdered. Then again, I suppose that those who fight and die for the glory of God do not readily hand out consolation prizes to the loser. Finally rid of the Moors, the Jews expelled, Lady Spain become whole again, and would send Columbus and the conquistadors to drape the rest of the undiscovered world in our flag of duel red crossed stripes lined with barb. And that, I believe, is where we went wrong–where I went wrong. One man alone cannot fight a country that desires, above all else, wealth. It happened to Columbus, to De León, and now, to me.

Under the employ of Juan Ponce, the charlatan, I would go to La Florida in search of the fabled fountain. Then De León tossed me to the savages. He broke my dreams like a fat woman standing on a moldy board. He left me marooned with nothing more than a dagger, some parchment, a quill, and a moldy biscuit. Students of history, you might know him as Señor Juan Ponce de León, famed explorer, founder of La Florida, discoverer of the Fountain of Youth, but I will always know him as La Puta Fortunada, and by God’s ankle he was a lucky whore.

But of course, my life has only gone astray because of a woman. Oh Catalina, I tried to bring it back for you. But this was a cup I alone could not carry.

In my final days I will set the record straight. Ponce de León did not discover the springs. It was I, Armando Calditchi. I was starving, and delirious, and oddly aroused when I emerged from the frothy afternoon tide and climbed the dunes of a fair beach and stumbled, half-drunk, out into a dark, crooking forest of hunching elms. There I found the path, as the Timucan wise men had foretold. After urinating in the bushes nearby the pool, I jumped in, broke my leg, and have been waiting in the forest ever since. The Timuca believe I am a ghost. On occasion they come munching their burnt brown hard breads. Apparently they do not believe that ghosts are in need of snacks. At the crest of death, and all I want is a Sevillian orange marmalade cookie. That and to gut De León like a pig.

My leg is mossy and infection spreads to my groin. And even if I survive, it will be only for my words, for the completion of my history, the grand end-stop. And De León, that evil, brave, beautiful, arrogant, miserable, cheating, lying, beautiful bearded bastard never came.

Most men’s lives do not run on parallel tracks. If they did, we should always have peace. Sadly, one need only unfold a map of the world and spit at random to find a parcel of war-torn land, for man is always at war with himself. Even if the fountain is discovered, we will persist to fight and die and muddy its majestic waters. Perhaps there is some small hope of being rescued, but I’m no longer a hopeful man. The last thing Columbus ever said to me was, “Dear boy, I pity your dreams. This fair land was meant to lie beyond war. Now we have led the Devil himself to the gates of Heaven.”

Dear reader, if you discover my body, please take my hand out of my trousers. There is a reason the crew used to call me “lefty.”

Now look behind you.

Boo.

The Blue Hit is such a beautiful, haunting band, please check them out. I saw them at Trophy’s in Austin after a Halloween burlesque show, “Everybody Dies,” which was also great.

Cello, acoustic guitar, and the most gorgeous, vivacious, unbelievable singer. Honestly I was floored. In love. Just that amazing. Chills…

For those of you who haven’t yet read it, Oryx and Crake is an amazing novel by Margaret Atwood and deserves the love and attention of any science-fiction/literary readers. Honestly, I’ve still reeling from the beauty of her prose, her characters. The book is centered around “Snowman” who is one of the last humans on Earth, and his recollection of his childhood, how the world changed, and how humanity eventually expired–although the “extintion” of humankind isn’t totally accurate.

For me, it’s so rare that I find a book that finds such a gorgous balance of science-fiction and literary fiction, but Atwood’s characters are complete and flawed, and her imagination is reallly unparralleled. I’ve also read The Handmaid’s Tale and Blind Assassion, which are both wonderful, but Oryx and Crake has had been up the last few nights just thinking about it. Go read it.

Oh Margaret Atwood, you are so wonderful.

I just read the following story about a novel pulled from Random House, The Jewel of Medina. I don’t know anything about the author, but it’s really ridiculous that a publisher would bend to such pressures. They cite safety concerns for the author and those distributing as their main reason for not publishing the book, which is understandable, but even so, if we allow every group offended by a book or movie or cartoon to determine what we see, where will it end? South Park actually argues this point much more eloquently in their “Cartoon Wars” two-part episode, so go see that.

But, this latest controversy got me thinking about my book, which is about the fall of a dictatorship in a fear-driven country, Qarash, which is inspired by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Although the book isn’t principally concerned with religious zealotry, there is a group, The Blanks, who represent them in some ways. And, in the next book, tentatively titled “Ashkareve,” they play a greater role. Ah, but no worries–it’s only a fantasy novel.