[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA.]

THE THING ABOUT BUS STOPS

Hello, All! Melanie here.

If you haven’t been following along recently, Tryxy the demon’s band DemonKitty had a gig at the bus stop this week! Yes, you read that right: bus stop. We all have to start somewhere. Probably even at the beginning!

Last week, Tryxy was worried that he didn’t have enough original songs to fill the hour long set he was contracted to pay. Alas and alack, this is the common plight of the rookie rock n’ roller. You’ve got talent, you’ve got ambition, but you’ve got no songs!

…This is also the common plight of the rookie writer; talent, ambition, a magic system, but no pages. Funny how those pages don’t magically write themselves.

Without further ado…

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Subject: Walpiskiddy Springs!!!!!!!

Dear Gladys,

Once upon a time, I took a bus in Boston. Like everything else in Boston, it was the strangest thing!!! First of all, there were multiple buses, each going to different parts of the city with multiple stops between. And they ran on Time instead of Whim!!!! Some people have no imagination. Regular transportation that takes you to where you want to go????? It fill me with a cold and desperate shudder!!! Who would want that????

Fortunately, bus stops in New Hampshire are much better and better still in Cradensburg. First of all, you don’t have to worry about something as restricting as a regular bus schedule with pick ups every fifteen minutes to half hour!!!!! I know that people THINK they want to get from Farm Hill down to Mr. Morgan’s for groceries and not spend all day waiting for a bus that may never come, but think about all the GRIT they’re missing out on gladys!!!!!

Writers need grit. We are gritty gritty people. We grit our gritty teeth down to smooth mounds and grit our way through a short story that we know may never see the light of day, even if we ARE the next big epic fantasy writer of all time. And for some stupid reason, when we write it, it has to actually be GOOD, even if we KNOW it will never see the light of day!!!!!!

Then we send our story off to an editor to be fed to spam wolves for nineteen months, and when the spam wolves are done tearing the encryptions to shreds, the editor sends a form rejection by email that STILL MANAGES TO BE COVERED IN COFFEE STAINS AND KETCHUP!!!!!

HOW DO YOU EMAIL KETCHUP, GLAYDS??????

Anyhoo, what was I saying??? Oh yeah, you need grit if you’re going to sit down and write ANOTHER SHORT STORY that may or may not see the light of day. Sheer grit. And you’ll need grit to eat the congealed ketchup off your emails because it’s just disgusting.

No really, what was I saying??? I thought I was talking about something else when I started this email. Let’s see, we’ve covered ketchup…grit… OH RIGHT THE BUSES!!!!!

Come to think of it, Cradensburg bus routes have a lot in common with being a writer, too. When you go to Boston, you get on THIS number bus at one particular time to get to THAT particular location by another particular time. BUT THAT DOESN’T PREPARE YOU FOR YOUR WRITING CAREER, DOES IT GLADYS?????

Here in Cradensburg, our bus stops emerge out of thin air. They tap you on your shoulder and then clothesline you when you turn around. They moon you when you’re minding your own business. They may wipe boogers on your shirt, Galdsy, but they’re the only thing around. That means that when they appear like a shimmering oasis on the horizon, you break a sweat running for it!!!!!!

Sometimes, a bus stop appears—and there’s even a bus!!!! And you get on it!!!!! And four days later you realize that it’s never going to stop going circles around that new statue they put up of the Mayor and his husband discovering pulled pork sandwiches for the first time this summer at the town barbecue.

And sometimes, you end up on a bus that says it’s taking you to Walpiskiddy Springs and the bus driver is an angry Djinn, but that’s not really why I’m writing you. Well, it is, but there are other things, too!!!

It all began last week when I discovered churros. Now, I know that you think you’ve eaten churros, Gladys, but you haven’t eaten churros until you’ve eaten parking lot churros sold by a tiny old lady with a one-eyed dog and a cooler full of hot heaven!!!!!! One bite of those churros and you will have churro brain!!! And if you don’t have churro brain after one bite, YOU HAVEN’T EATEN CHURROS. And if you don’t know what churro brain is. YOU HAVEN’T EATEN CHURROS!!!!!

As you know, Tryxy has been very anxious about his gig at the bus stop. After the fiasco playing all DemonKitty’s songs just 19 minutes at the tractor haul show, Tryxy was really worried that he and #bestkitten wouldn’t be able to write enough new music before the big bus stop show to fill the HOUR he’d been booked for. The anxiety was killing him!!

(Between you and me, I caught him with a voodoo doll of himself, sticking himself in the thigh so that he would get a charley horse and wouldn’t have to play drums and could back out of the gig. But don’t tell him I told you!!!!!)

Then, when my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, dropped us off at the spot that LOOKED like a bus stop but turned out to be an atm machine, Tryxy was giddy at the thought that there wasn’t a bus stop after all, and hence he wouldn’t have to play his 19 minutes of music.

But it was not to be!!! I realized that I had mistaken a tall skinny man flipping me the bird for the bus stop!!!! We gathered up the drums and #bestkitten’s cat carrier and microphone and marched across the street to the ACTUAL bus stop that was wearing fishnets and showing a little leg.

No sooner had Tryxy and #bestkitten started playing their show, a flaming #666 bus came to a screeching halt in front of them and—you’ll never believe this Galdsy—but off the bus fell a singed and bewildered A & R rep who had been riding circles around the statue of our mayor. He’d been trapped in a bus full of tipsy fire dancers for three weeks straight!!!!

He was so overcome with joy at his escape, he invited DemonKitty to come down and play for him in Boston next week!!!!!!

GLADYS!!!! It’s Tryxy and #bestkitten’s first big break!!!!!!

We needed to celebrate right away AND impress the A & R rep, so I told Tryxy and Arnold Rolfson (that’s what A & R stands for) to talk amongst themselves and of course I went looking for the churro lady in the parking lot but there was a line!!!! Wouldn’t you know, no sooner had I gotten to the churro lady, a bus pulled up and I thought I saw Tryxy, #bestkitten, and Arnold Rolfson get on the bus!!! SO I Threw a hundred dollars at the churro lady and stole her cooler and broke for it.

She immediately tackled me and her one-eyed dog bit my shoe off my foot.

Sure enough, the bus was pulling away!!!

I threw another fifty dollars at the old lady and she and One-Eyed Rover laid off me. I started running after the bus, dragging the cooler behind me, but my speed was hampered since I was running with one shoe!!! Fortunately for me, ANOTHER bus pulled up beside me. I looked at it long enough to see that it was heading for Walpiskiddy Springs.

“AFter that bus!!” I yelled to the Djinn bus driver and threw a handful of churros at him (I had given the churro lady all my money.)

It’s now been three days. I finally picked all the churros out of my ears thanks to Mr. Temper Temper (that’s the bus driver) and I’m all out of food.

Here’s what I need you to do Gladys. Get in your car and follow the churro crumb trail out of town. I’ll need a ride home from Walpiskiddy Springs!!!!!

And then we can throw a party for Tryxy and #bestkitten!!!!

Pages next week!!!

xox,

X

THIS IS

INCREDIBLE.

SO LUCKY.

STILL HAVE

ONE

PROBLEM.

WE ONLY

HAVE

FIVE

SONGS.

HOW ARE

WE

SUPPOSED

TO IMPRESS

ARNOLD

ROLFSON

WITH

JUST

FIVE

SONGS?