Waiting for the Goon Squad

 Sick as a dog all day Tuesday, so no 3/6/9 for Sheila, no post here. Self care trumps my appeal to the Universe (which seems right to me). To make up for not posting, I highly recommend reading Is the populist right’s future ... democratic socialism? on Vox.

I'm working on a query (yay!). I quit more than a year ago, a lethal combination of multiple rejections then COVID-long COVID-COVID-long COVID. I haven't tried a query since 2021? That sounds right but my memory of the last few years is a fog.

My first query in years goes to Apocalypse Party because I just fell in love with their requests:  

We are seeking imaginative and challenging books that push boundaries. We are as interested in mood, sensation, and altered states of perception as we are in the story. We like stories with the ethereal quality of memory filtered through a psychedelic kaleidoscope. We want darkly peculiar narratives that are compelling and have a range of emotion. We want daring work that keeps us on edge, waiting for the next ghost to materialize. Surprise us. Most of all, we want books that take risks. Show us something we've never seen before.

Yeah, that's me... except I'm not metal in any way (other than my FUCKING WRITING!) and the work is Deadhead heavy but I'm taking a shot with this cover:

Summer of 1996, Deadhead Emma and Dead-hater Gooch hike to the rim of a Canyon to smoke Powerball, a strongly hallucinogenic strain of cannabis. In the midst of Gooch’s hallucination, he sees Emma dive into the chasm below—and that’s where the mystery of the novel begins.

As that premise unwinds, the reader is taken through the history of Pogo Springs, an old mining camp with a tawdry past and present. In late 1994, lottery money infused the small mountain town with more drama than it could handle. While Deadheads made big plans for their winnings (Powerball being one result), neo-Nazis ran amok in the foothills just outside town, plotting a race war. Behind the scenes, magic is manipulated with the Fibonacci Sequence, quantum physics, the Universal Resonator… hate, love and the Grateful Dead.

POWERBALL (the novel) is largely character-driven but is definitely not short on plot. It is a little big for a first-time novelist but it has a potentially gigantic audience with Deadheads, punks, the literate subset of people living in tiny rooms close to downtown, the libertarian left and right, and plenty of intelligent randos digging deep for the myriad jokes I buried in the narrative.

“Was that Emma’s trip, Gooch’s trip, or did I just trip?” 

I'm going with it and not caring what any of you say about it in my head,