The Mind of Bryan Lee Peterson

I have entered a short story into Indiehorror.org’s Cannibal Cookoff short story contest. My entry is called “Control Group.” I’d incourage you to visit the forums here to read all of the entries. You have to join to vote, and you can vote for three. I’m not a big rah-rah kind of guy when it comes to this, vote for the best ones. That’s how it works.

That being said, this is a synchronicities post, and two of them happened in writing this post. I got a direct tweet which probably a few hundred people got asking for a submission to this, and the rules said the story had to be written after Jan. 22nd (I think, mine was actually written this week after grinding on the initial idea for a week). So I came up with this idea about lab-grown meat, and the next day, on one of my regular news sites, there was an article about how one man was working on lab-grown meat as a food alternative, and how he went about it. I thought great, the universe is helping me out again.

Let me explain what I mean by that. This isn’t like when I wrote about the University of Illinois Chicago linguistics professor who transplanted a group of Guatemalan abuelitas to Chicago to learn their Mayan dialect, and then a month later found out about a real life University of Illinois Chicago linguistics professor who transplanted a group of Guatemalan abuelitas to Chicago to learn their Mayan dialect. This was more like when I was in college, writing my senior thesis novel about a group of men made immortal by Anunnaki in ancient times, and during the break before I began writing it, a copy of Archeology Magazine arrived at my house, addressed to me, with a relief carving of an Anunnaki photographed on the cover. I didn’t have a subscription, never asked for a free trial, and another issue never arrived. That’s what I mean. The world provided me with research material, poked the story on.

During the writing, I used a number of articles I’d read in the past to guide the conversation in the story, and mentioned the creation of skin in the lab. I didn’t have anything to go by. The day after I wrote that, an article on making skin in that lab came up on Fark.

I know. Strange. Go visit the contest. Vote. Maybe for me if you like it.

So, adding evidence to my case of everything I write comes true. Currently working on a wolf story. The original script was written some time ago, but I’m novel(la)izing it. The climax of act 3 involves a pulled together massive pack of wolves terrorizing a town.

Two days ago, this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1354445/Super-pack-400-wolves-kill-30-horses-just-days-remote-Russian-village.html

On some of the projects, this might be good news, at least personally. In some very bad for all of us. You know what I write.

Next trend to replace steampunk will be pre-hard sf adventure style stories. Think Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars series. Pulp. It will be a lot of fun, and hit some erudite moments in retrospective comparison. It’ll hit in about a year, last for 2-3. Let’s see if I’m right.

Synchronicity plays a big role in my life. Those of you who know me know this to be incredibly true. I’m having one of those synchronous weeks. Let me describe it.

First, the escaped bank robber. This week, a guy was being transported to his sentencing in Rolling Meadows when he managed to overpower two federal agents, steal their guns and get away despite being handcuffed and shackled. This led to a standoff situation across the street from where I work. The next day, he robbed a bank across from where my wife goes to the gym, which was on lock-down. We joked that he was following us around. When they caught him, I found the facebook status of a writer I was following who said that his work was right by where he was holed up, and I have a history with this guy, we now realized we worked a block away from each other. I also jammed with him a few times in a band. So we’ve reconnected over an escaped bank robber.

Next, We rented a new house. We move out of 700 sq. feet of ghetto-ized hell, and into an 1841 one-room schoolhouse with an Indian burial ground behind.  The owner is a really cool guy who plays guitar and shops at Guitar Center, where I work. Never met him before this and we found the house on Craigslist, but he’s a very cool guy. We started moving in yesterday. The first day of moving, we emptied our cars and mentioned it on facebook. Suddenly we had two extra minivans to pack full and a handful of helpers that allowed us to get practically half the move done in one shot.

We found out the guy who rents the back room is named Bryan Peters. and his girlfriend is Carrie, very similar to my wife’s name. We met them this morning. She’s a photographer whose eyes bugged out of her head when we said we wanted to have art and craft nights and have a kiln and do steampunk stuff. Then I found out that Brian recorded an album with Paul Wertico, who happens to be related to my best friend from high school. Then I mentioned that he must know John Moulder. His jaw dropped. John has been a customer of mine for eight years at Guitar Center. He just finished recording an album with Brian and is over at the house all the time. And they were just hoping the place would get rented by somebody they could get along with. Now they have collaborators and supporters.

We have added friends on Facebook, and we found out Brian knows our friend Tim as well. Tim is a college kid studying art we met at one of Dirk Tiede’s art nights, and we’ve been friends/mentors with him for a couple years. It’s just a whole other side channel to our connections around this house.

Friday night, a new art studio and gallery opened in Batavia. One of my friends, Todd Johnson had a small piece in the opening showing. So I went. Found Todd right away, hung out for about two minutes when I look up and see….my violin player’s roommate looking down at me from the window above. His mother had a piece in the same show. Right next to Todd’s.

That’s the coincidences of this week.