Snake Girl at 3:AM

I’ve been clicking over to 3:AM Magazine for quite a while now. I can’t remember where I first heard about it (probably from Dogmatika, where I hear about most every great thing in the underground lit scene), so I can’t place praise with full accuracy. However, I can pass on the good word. And what better way to do so than via the news of my own story, “Snake Girl at Scab,” getting some page space.

Some author notes on the story:

During my first visit to Portland, Oregon (USA), some locals took us to an event called First Thursdays, a neighborhood art gallery orgy (artgy, if you will) with booths, food, music, and lives to be changed. Most cities have these types of events, but due to a strange encounter involving an emotionless girl carrying a snake, this artgy impacted more than normal.

The snake girl depicted in this story is accurately described, with absolutely no fiction license taken. When she approached us at First Thursdays, pink lipstick, barefooted, snake in hand, and arm outstretched with requests for money, I was stunned. Granted this is isn’t the strangest thing to have ever happed to me, not by a long shot, but the combination of unfamiliar territory with such a displaced character stayed with me. I want to do more with the snake girl. I’m sure she will turn up in future projects.

Also, “Snake Girl at Scab” is, in a way, my own sort of scab, patching over a weakness that had been slowly compromising my stories for a while. At the time I wrote this story I had been writing a lot of grotesque stories, forcing visceral imagery and dark situations where perhaps they didn’t belong. Luckily, I’ve aborted these stories so they will never see print. “Snake Girl at Scab” was my way of reconnecting with tried-and-true storytelling.

Click the link above. Read the story. Then stick around for a bit and check out the rest of the site. I’m serious when I say that 3:AM is an asylum for some of the best underground writers around.