The house smelled (and still does a little) like someone died here. I had to get up at 4 to let the dog out because some dumbass shared her gyro with her. Then I got so mad at the dog whining to be picked up and put in my bed that I yelled at her and banished her to the Butcher’s room, which got my adrenaline going, which made it very hard to get to sleep. It would have been easier to get to sleep with the white noise of dog snores in the background, but… well, she was not talking to me after I yelled at her.
As I have already reported to Twitter and Facebook, I realized just as I was refalling asleep that the smell in the house was carcass-like which made me remember earlier in the week throwing a chicken-carcass in the kitchen garbage, at the bottom of a fresh bag, meaning to take it out after I filled the bag cleaning the kitchen. Which I then promptly forgot, because the bag looked to be filled with normal garbage. I thought about getting up and taking it out then, but I was so tired.
So, my grouchy, headache-from-the-bad-smell, not-on-speaking-terms-with-the-dog self, fell asleep and woke only to the sound of the new kitty trying to break into the house.
But I did finish reading Devil Said Bang, and though I don’t believe the Devil actually said “bang” anywhere in the book, it was, like all of Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim books, a delightful romp of what-the-fuck-ery. Nothing makes any sense. There are things treated as established facts in this book that I don’t remember going down that way in the other books–did he lose his whole arm? I thought it was just his hand. Did he have sex with the zombie chick in the bathroom? I thought they didn’t have a chance to seal the deal. When did the angel part of him get a name?
But, you just have to roll with those things. From the first page, you just grab Kadrey’s hand and let him pull you through a wonderland of shit. It’s honestly not worth it to check and see if you’re misremembering. Not worth it to ask yourself why shit is happening. Just accept that things–awesome, strange things–are rushing by you and try to see as many as possible.
I honestly would be hard-pressed to say that Kadrey is a good writer. I don’t know, if you sat down to try to figure out how thing work, if he would be, just on a technical level. But he is undeniably a great writer. And that I remain really curious about. How does he catch you up and whirl you through and set you down at the end with the feeling you’ve just really read the fuck out of something? I don’t know, but it’s something to see it at work.
Tiny Cat Pants 