A song about the universe.

Sleepytime Cemetery is now available! In the words of Black Scat Books, “In this new collection of short stories by the author of The Doug Skinner Dossier, you’ll discover a world of ostensibly human specimens behaving in peculiar and unpredictable ways. However, they are often recognizable in a manner we dare not admit. Skinner’s dark humor is deceptively playful and childlike, and that makes our bursts of laughter all the more disturbing. These 40 tales are guaranteed to disconcert and astonish.”

Available from Black Scat Books, or from Amazon.

When I was a kid, I had a picture book of prehistoric animals, and was fascinated by the Paraceratherium (or Baluchitherium). It was the largest land mammal known, a long-necked ancestor of the rhinoceros that stood as high at eighteen feet at the shoulder. I finally made one into a cartoon character, named Papi. Here are some sketches from the sketchbook.

In this nine-page story, my characters Walter, Benny, and Beverly go to the Vibrato Grotto to watch their old friend, the Devil, do his nightclub act. He’s pretty good, but his audience participation bit bombs, as usual. Nobody wants to sign his name in blood. My old bandmate, Anne Shapiro, joined me in reading this story on Bob Sikoryak’s long-running series of comics slide shows, Carousel.

Black Scat Books has posted “A Funny Story,” from my upcoming collection of short stories, Sleepytime Cemetery. It can be found here.

This little verse can be found in The Doug Skinner Dossier, available from Black Scat Books. Poor Milt!

MILT

Milt wandered down the dusty street,
And felt his life was incomplete.
He lifted up his troubled gaze
From all the city’s bustling ways,
Its squalid fights and sordid trysts,
And saw a mountain in the mists.
And as he gazed upon the peak,
His mouth went dry; his knees went weak.
He knew then that he couldn’t stop
Until he’d scaled it to the top.
So, he procured an ax and rope
And started up the rocky slope.
Although his footing often slipped,
And ledges crumbled where he gripped,
Although the climb was steep and hard,
At last, exhausted, sore, and scarred,
He stood upon the summit, then
Gazed down upon his fellow men.
A group of them had gathered there
Around the base to stand and stare,
To laugh at Milt, and call out jeers,
And ridicule all mountaineers.
Milt didn’t know they’d come to mock,
That he was now a laughingstock,
The butt of all the jokes in town.
He learned that when he went back down.

I’ve written a number of pieces for viola and keyboard, mostly because the violist David Gold is willing to play them. I plan to write one for each letter of the alphabet (“A Grim Reckoning” doesn’t count). So far, these are the titles:

A Grim Reckoning
Doze
Kibosh
Lullabilious
Nocebo
Onus
Parget
Qualm
Respite
Stint
Tucket
Zibeline

This biological alphabet can be found in The Doug Skinner Dossier, available from Black Scat Books.

HYBRIDS

the alligator bones the crocodile
the dog enters the fox
the goat humps the ibex
the jaguar knows the lynx
the mongoose nails the otter
the pika quickies the rabbit
the starfish taps the urchin
the vole works the xerus
the yeti zygotes the ape

The thirteenth issue of Black Scat Review is out! It is, fittingly, devoted to the subject of superstition. It also contains my short story “Find a Penny,” which is also fittingly devoted to the same subject. And I am one of thirteen contributors; the other twelve are: Paulo Brito, Eckhard Gerdes, Harold Jaffe, Soren James, Rick Krieger, Terri Lloyd, Monika Mori, Alice Pulaski, Frank Pulaski, Mylene Viger, Dominic Ward, and Carla M. Wilson. It’s edited by Norman Conquest, and Alice Pulaski designed the cover. It is, of course, available from Black Scat Books.