Oo! Look, you can get an anthology I’m in for cheap. Jason Sizemore, proprietor of Apex Books says:

For one week only, the following Apex Book Company titles are on sale for $10.00:

Unwelcome Bodies
The Next Fix
HebrewPunk
Aegri Somnia
Gratia Placenti
Orgy of Souls
Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales
Beauty & Dynamite

Make Alexander Hamilton proud. Spend ten bucks and buy a book!

Now, I do have to warn you, just in case you don’t know, that Gratia Placenti is horror. This is not safe for parents — and by that I mean my parents. But the rest of you, have at it. Here’s the teaser from my story, “Tomorrow and Tomorrow.”

The moment Tuyet walked into the Dagenais’s compartment, she knew something was different. The usual pack of dogs swarmed around her, distracting her, before she figured out that the compartment smelled different. Not bad–not like the times they had left everything piled in the sink for her as if they were having a contest to see who could goad the other into doing the dishes. Nor the time they’d fired the dog walker and didn’t bother to walk the hoard of dogs that Hélène kept. But they paid her to come once a week to wipe their counters, load the dishwasher and tidy the compartment. So she’d kept her head down, asked herself what Kant would have done, then said screw the philosophy and wiped up the dog shit and urine.

Kant would not have done that.

Getting a long-arms permit in NYC feels a bit like time-travel. You walk into this building built in 1948, which is in beautiful condition. A guard directs you down the stairs to a sub-lobby, which is all gleaming granite and with lightwells letting in the sun. Then you go down another set of stairs and suddenly you are in a 1940s horror film basement. Everything is institutional brown. The corridor twists suddenly and randomly, so that if someone is following you, it would be easy for them to hide. Exposed pipes snake across the ceiling.

Eventually, you find your way back to a wood door with “Rifle/Shotguns Permit Division.” Inside, are shiny new computers sitting on desks unchanged since 1950. There’s also a ledger book, which the clerk swears is new. I just wonder which year it belongs to.

You get finger-printed, have your picture made — despite having brought four passport photos as requested — and eventually get a shiny new permit.

Now to get the guns.

Weapons Specialists is a fantastic organization. The folks who run it are incredibly knowledgeable and willing to spend time with you to make certain that you are comfortable with the weapon. I loaded and test-fired three shotguns today with 1/4 charge ammunition.

I have learned some things that might be helpful in fiction.

• When putting down an animal, don’t put the muzzle directly on it or you risk creating a closed system which could blow the shell back up at you. That would be bad.
• Deer can’t see orange but they can see blue. Blue jeans stand out like neon.
• Birds can see orange.

Plus just the nuances of loading, dealing with the safety, and such. I got the guns safely dropped at the theater, introduced the cast to them and then ran away.