Hi, I’m Hank and I’m getting
ready to release a black bucket of snakes called Pancreatic Carburetor, my fourth collection of short stories. It’s
strange, I always considered myself a “novel guy” and didn’t start writing
stories until relatively later in life.
I had written ten unpublished novels when, on
little more than a lark, I moved to New Hampshire in 2005 and embarked on a
thrilling (but eventually disastrous) three year binge of drunken insanity and
turmoil. I was consuming superhuman amounts of booze. I didn’t write a word at
this time. I didn’t read either. I just
drank and somehow worked a job. It was dangerous and foolhardy and it
eventually landed me in the hospital with a case of delirium tremens and an unhealthy interest in suicide. I wound up
psychologically depleted. I thought it was over. I eventually stopped drinking
and moved back to Massachusetts in 2008. It was then that I started writing
short stories. They seemed to come from nowhere. My abused, busted brain was
repairing itself.
I moved again and got two laborious
jobs. Around this time I started contributing to Paraphilia Magazine and
Antique Children. The good folks at Paraphilia published my first book of short
stories, The Membranous Lounge. Several
of the stories were written while I was “pink clouding” following stints in
rehab. I continued to drink off and on with dire, disastrous consequences. It
pains me to reflect on the circumstances so I won’t. I also don’t want to romanticize
my behavior. There was nothing glamorous about it.
I consider The Membranous Lounge my “LSD” book. A
lot of the stories use acid as a metaphor to convey my state of mind at the
time. More the overwhelming weirdness than any sense of an expanded
consciousness. At around this time Antique Children published a novel of mine, Conservatory of Death. It is an angry
novel about snuff films and death as pornography. I don’t know where this stuff
comes from. Sometimes I hate my proclivities.
The stories I wrote around
this time were eventually collected in Bleak
Holiday, published by the Paraphilia imprint, Apophenia. Bleak Holiday is uneven but contains
some of my favorite stories. I continued to toil at two jobs, carry on a
back-and-forth drinking career and write. I don’t know how I did it. I wasn’t a
kid anymore either...
Then I got laid off from
both jobs and was diagnosed with cancer. A lot of the stories I wrote at this
time were about facing death and losing my mind. I could feel my sanity
slipping away. My anxiety reached fever-pitch. I welcomed death.
Sadly, both Paraphilia and
Antique Children had folded their tents so I published my third collection of
stories myself under the title Leaves
from the Smorgasbord. Stories about death and insanity (more than usual)
and recovery. In some ways it’s my
darkest book. One story, Parole, is
based on the life of “coed killer” Edmund Kemper. I wrote it for an anthology
called Sick as Fuck that never
materialized.
This leads me to Pancreatic Carburetor, the final book in
my mental health saga. There’s one story, Umbilical
Berries, that I wrote years ago (and you can tell) but everything else was
written recently. My concerns are still the same. I try to use humor to combat
my nihilistic tendencies, which is a difficult endeavor for me.
I no longer consider myself
an “aspiring” writer or an “underground” writer or whatever euphemism I can
come up with to make me feel better about myself here in the dead of night.
This is my hobby. That’s all. I write because I want to. I release this stuff
because otherwise it would just turn yellow and rot. A few people like what I
do and I find that immensely gratifying. I try my best.
Pancreatic
Carburetor will be available in June.
