My old friend Owen Wyke from Gone Lawn has given me an interview in honor of Divine In Essence, and there are some good things to learn in there, I dare say. Many thanks to you, Owen! It was a sure pleasure to mull over these questions for as long as I did. Some of the answers surprised even me. That’s Gone Lawn, Number 60, by the way. Holy shit! How many online journals last for THAT many issues?

You know what, while I’m here, I might as well plug Joey Truman’s new book You Will Know, which I finished reading a few minutes ago. Joey is a fellow Whiskey Tit author, albeit this book is being published under another umbrella called Marine Press. I take it he will be releasing a series of nine books called Crisis Etc, “a series that chronicles the fragility of the human body and spirit as the elements do their work.” Judging by this first entry, I’m guessing the theme of the venture is that LIFE SUCKS, but you have to keep doing it anyway, so maybe MAKE SOME ART while you’re at it…or, failing that, get drunk and trash your hotel room. We’ll see, eight more books to go, after all!

You Will Know presents a fun, deceptively simple story with a great Shaggy Crow ending that I won’t spoil for you. It all takes place in a snowed-in mountain cabin, the writer’s retreat of an asshole novelist named Full Glue and his wife/groupie Pronto (“always fast upon him”). I pictured this guy as a mashup of Charles Bukowski and Captain Beefheart—a raging drunk, deranged, manic, depraved, and yet also unwaveringly disciplined in his work ethic, devoting himself relentlessly every single day to the manufacture of words on paper (like Bukowski tapping out his drunken ravings into poems every night while the Classical Music Station behind him whispered uncanny sweetnesses upon his suffering), but also essentially enslaving Pronto to the task of gussying up the gonzo inspiration in his manuscripts into a publishable condition (very much akin to Beefheart’s treatment of his Magic Band).

I won’t say more than that because I don’t want to ruin the experience for anyone, but this book definitely has some surprises in store for you, Brave Reader! Joey Truman is a special trip of an author, as those who know know, and he doesn’t disappoint with this one. I have a lot of thoughts about what I just read, and I’m tempted to launch into something here, but like I said, I don’t want to ruin the book, it just came out! Give peeps a chance!