Current Reading: The Vorrh by B. Catling

I'm traveling home today, it's my birthday, and I've been reading The Vorrh by B. Catling.

It's about a forest no one has ever gone into and come out of alive, and a man who is determined to be the first to do it. It's about European colonization of the rest of the world, and the way the novel moves, turning from one character and scene to another without warning, keeping the reader on their toes at all times, reminds me of nothing less than Gravity's Rainbow.

Everybody loves a rainbow.

One of the interesting things about The Vorrh is that it's got blurbs from people like Tom Waits and Terry Gilliam. It never occurred to me to try to get those from people who don't write books.

Maybe, if/when I publish another book, I'll reach out, for a blurb, to Robbie Robertson, from The Band. Or Rory McIlroy, a golfer I just found out exists by googling golfers.

I know. It wouldn't be the same as Tom Waits.

Maybe I could ask Jon Glaser.

One thing I have been doing, you know, to raise my profile and make a name for myself, is leaving elaborate reviews of businesses on Google Maps that are full of plainly false information and aren't useful at all. I said my favorite thing at the cat shelter was when they had Cat Disco.

I said they played a lot of ABBA. I said the dogs would bark.

I am determined, now, to write things that are less absurd than what I've been writing. I have wanted to bring my work back down to earth.

I've been spending a lot of time looking at paintings, one at a time for close to an hour, at the art museum. It's changing everything. Or at least it seems pretty cool.

I may elaborate at some point. I might keep it to myself.