Word Whore.

If I am not posting on here that often, it is probably because I am all over the place. We'll be holding Thanksgiving dinner for eight in our apartment on Thursday and much like my father, I plan on going overboard. I've had both of his cookbooks open, trying to figure out how to make some of the stuff my parents make every year: the Praline Pumpkin Pie, my grandmother's meat stuffed pumpkin recipe and so on. I'll probably let Alton Brown and Good Eats tell me how to cook the turkey. He'll be so anal about that turkey that it will just HAVE to come out perfectly. Even if I have to cook it in a water bath with electric diodes in all of the orifices to monitor the progress--even then, I will have to trust Alton. He is the only Food Network personality left to trust.

In my written world. Progress is more than steady in my book, The After Fat. (That would be the current working title.) I've written over 10,000 words (or 40 pages) in the past three weeks and surpassed what was my original word goal for the book as a whole. Still, there are three chapters to be written, a few more to be tied together and then the epilogue and appendix which is tentatively titled, A Glossary of Food Truths, Conspiracies and Other Things You May Wish That You’d Never Read.

Ribcage: Volume 1 is now officially entered into the Lulu Blooker Prize and the Ribcage site has even been linked from the official Lulu Blooker Blog.

I did a new round of story submissions, something I haven't done full tilt since I was accepted into Facets and Look-Look Magazine. Hit up McSweeney's, Small Spiral Notebook, Pif and Fail Better, but the Ribcage stories are getting very tight knit--much harder to submit as something that stands alone.

Finally, I've been writing an original essay in the vain of my book for this Random House contest. Up to twenty-nine essays will be featured in a book out next year, titled, Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers: The Best New Voices of 2006.

According to the contest's site...

We are seeking essays about, but not limited to, the following subjects: Family, Career, Sex, Society, and Self. Be specific. Be unique. We want you to tell us—and, by extension, the entire world—something we haven’t heard before, something that defines you as a member of this burgeoning generation. Make us laugh, make us think, make us mad—just don’t make us yawn.

My essay is tentatively titled, Killing the Fat Boy.

It’s maybe in the make-up chair that I realize what I’ve done. I’ve come as close to killing someone as you can come without the blood or the evidence or the body. My body vanished and no one will ever find it. It’s hard enough to convince someone that it happened. Save photographs, there is very little proof.

I don’t keep the photographs in my back pocket, but I should. I don’t carry the evidence on my person. I don’t carry it at all.