By Kat Harlander from Blood and Pudding

     Holly took me to a quiet place where we could think.  It looked like a nature preserve but there were people fishing in the ponds and rivers. It was a large area and we drove past everyone until she found her spot.  We took our journals to a secluded spot and made our way down to the water.           
     Holly stopped right in her tracks and pointed at something in the water. On a large rock in the middle of the river there were about thirty rubber ducks.  
     “We must have them!”  I said, jumping up and down clapping my hands.
     “ Okay, so let’s get in the water and we’ll start walking towards the rock,” Holly said to me as she took off her sandals.
     “No, keep those on.  It may be slippery or there might be sharp objects in there.”
     “Good idea.”  She put her sandals back on and stepped into the water.
     I followed and halfway through she slipped and I hit a deep patch.  We were both drenched and made our way to the edge of the river to sit on the grass.
     “Okay, so I have an idea. There are fishermen all over the place here and I’m sure one of them could help us get the rubber ducks.  I mean, they have big rubber boots and they’re probably used to the river.”
     “I say we find fishermen, then.”  
     We ran to the car and drove around for a while until we saw two motorcycles parked by a small pond.  Two men in fishing boots were casting lines into the water.  We stopped the car and ran towards them.

Artwork by Katelan Foisy

     “Excuse me! Can you help us?” I yelled as we ran.
     They turned around and made their way out of the pond.  “What’s wrong?” the bearded one asked.
     “There’s some rubber ducks in the middle of the river and they’re sitting perfectly on a rock but every time we get in the water we end up slipping and falling,” I complained.
     “So you need our help getting rubber ducks?” the one in the plaid shirt asked.
     “Precisely.”
     “Okay, let’s go.” The men hopped on their bikes and followed us back to the river.  We led them down the path and showed them where the ducks were.  The bearded man took my hand and led me into the water.  He guided my movements so I would only step on certain stones.  I was trying hard to hold my dress up out of the water but I did not succeed.  
     “You have nice legs,” He said to me as we got closer to the rock.  
     “Um, thanks,” I answered.  I started to get really nervous.  There didn’t seem to be anyone around and these men were twice our size.  We got to the rock and I sat down and loaded ducks into my skirt.
     “So what do you do?” Holly asked.
     “We actually just got out of jail, so right now we’re just relaxing until we can find jobs.”
     I shot Holly a Look.  “ That’s so cool,” she replied, smiling.
     The bearded one kept looking at my face, like he was trying to see deep into my soul or, at least, check if I was scared.
     “You have eyes like my daughter.” He smiled at me.
     “And what exactly were you in jail for?”  I asked.
     “ Nothing worth talking about.”
     “Holly, don’t we have to meet up with Jim and Sally in a little bit?  We should go so we can get there on time.”
     “Oh yeah, I totally forgot about that.”
     The guys took their sweet time getting us back to the grass. I tried to hold all the rubber ducks in my dress.  When we got back on dry land, the one in the plaid shirt asked Holly for our phone numbers.  She wrote down some random number and gave it to him.  
     “We should all get together once a week, go someplace secluded and have wet t-shirt contests.”
     “Sounds like a plan,” she said, and smiled again.
     “So are we going to get kisses?” the bearded one asked.
     “No.  We’re gay,” I said to him politely.
     “Show us then that you’re really into women.  Kiss each other.”
     “That is an insult to women everywhere,” I replied angrily. “  I will kiss no one for the pleasure of a man.”
     The bearded one pointed to me.  “She’s a feisty one.”
     “Let’s go!” I said to Holly.  She waved to them as we drove off, the rubber ducks still in my lap.

As soon as we were out of sight we start screaming.  “Virginia? I don’t want these ducks anymore.  I feel really dirty just holding them.  And why the fuck did you agree to meet up with them?”
“I just figured it was easier to agree and say we would than get raped and murdered on the spot.”
“Okay true.”
“Who the fuck are ‘Jim and Sally’?”  She asked me.
“I don’t know.  I made them up so we could get the fuck out of there.  What are we going to do with these ducks?”
“Hmmm.  Good question.”
“Oh I got it.  Let’s get some duct tape and tape them to the car.”
“I love it.”
Holly drove to the store and we bought the tape.  In the parking lot we taped the ducks to the car and I snapped a picture.  As we drove around the town, we stopped at random telephone poles to tape a duck to them or placed them gently on people’s porches or in their mailboxes.  By the end of the ride all the ducks had fallen off the car and we were both over the whole incident.  Holly later pointed out to me that the house in the picture was one where she used to by drugs at.  “That’s good to know.” I said to her sarcastically.

I am completely intrigued by your book even though I’ve never read a single word of it. You sent me a copy and I really wanted to read it, but because I write also, have 4 year old boy who I adore, and because I need to work a full time to make ends meet, I never read. Well, not never. I do read my own stuff, but mostly for errors and typos, and to make sure the originally intended flow of the words, has somehow survived the rewrites.

The cover art of your book, could only have been chosen by someone whose words, were equal to its imagery. The description of the book, which I picked up from several sources on the Internet, gave a tasty glimpse into a magically odd story. Sadly the glimpse has faded, with the time that’s slipped away since I first peeked at it. Now the only memory left of Eve, is the hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, from never having read it.

I hope I do get a chance to read Eve .  It'll mean I've finally founds some free time.  It'll mean I'll be sitting on a beach somewhere sipping cocktails through a rolled up hundred dollar bill.  I'll devour the pages while my kin cooks under the sun, and in between dips into the coll, clear water.  If its any consolation, Eve sits with a short stack of must reads, I know I may never get to.  So the book is in good company.  That alone makes it one of my favorite books I've never read.  Geek Love and Bukowski's latest, something from Roald Dahl, and a collection of shorts by Jonathan Lethem, and now of course Eve, wait to be read.  The lis is just short enough to delude myslef that I may be abl to finish in a binge of booze, sun and surf, but too long t ever geta started on.  So instaed I scan interesting looking book jackets for intelligent life, and hope that the essence of the story slips into my subconscious. And then I ask the author why I'd like his book, and trust that his book's story is even half as good as his answer.

GlubDub :
What can I say. Can you believe I’m going to try and interview you without reading your book? What can you tell me about Eve, right here and right now, that will make me feel like I’ve read it even just a little? Is there something about the book that could make me feel any worse about not reading it? If there is, I want you to make me feel miserable!

Aurelio O'Brien
Wow, this is by far the strangest interview I've been asked to do, but I'll give it a shot, what the heck... First, if you want a quick overall impression of my novel, EVE, the best place to start is my website:
www.evethenovel.com

Be absolutely sure to click on all the creatures that appear on the cover and the site page, including the robot. I did the cover art myself, the animation myself, the character voices myself, and designed the site myself. I am proudest of the actual words I wrote though, the NOVEL itself, so my hope is to intrigue people enough with all these bells and whistles and the world I portend to actually read EVE. (It is also my hope to get a splashy blurb on Glubdub leading people to experience my site and buy my book too.)

I did a radio interview you might enjoy, which is linked on my site. The interview is pretty interesting, because I talk about what inspired me to write EVE and why I really believe we will end up in some version of this wackier future rather than the now stereotypical nihilistic, Blade Runner-y, dark, and foreboding one most other scifi writers predict.

GD:
Can you describe to me what the book is about? What is it about EVE that makes its so special to you, and others for that matter? What’s the story about the book’s cover art. How do the images from the cover, illustrate the story? Or doesn’t it?

AB:
If you can picture a world without technology, where all the small tasks our machines do for us are handled instead by biological Creature Comforts™, a kind of futuristic Flintstones, if you will, then you are close to visualizing EVE's general milieu.
When most people speak or write of the future designer DNA, they either talk of the dangers or the medical marvels it offers, but my sense is that reality doesn't travel such clear and simple paths.

If you look at computers as a parallel, when they first came into existence, people were either fearful or awed. The two schools of thought were that computers were going to organize our lives and make everything wonderfully easy, or that they would become smarter than us and take over the world. In truth, they have done neither. Currently the two top uses of home computers is to view porno and play computer games. When computers were being made, I doubt if anyone even thought to say, "Hey, these will be great for sex and amusements!"

So it will be when we can reconfigure life however we see fit. One can only imagine... so that's what I did.
What gets lost in all of this, of course, is the norm. But what is the norm in a world that offers endless possibilities? Maybe average becomes the rarity, and therefore far more intriguing? And is perfect everything it is cracked up to be?

These are the questions my characters, Pentser, Govil and Eve face, as they seeks to deal with their own desires to make sense out of life.

Hope this helps. Let me know what else I can do to get you to crack my book.

To see more about Aurelio O'Brien's book Eve, come visit www.evethenovel.com  

By Derek Rinaldi

I think the year was 1988 and my friend Jerry and I were taking a trip out to Rockford, Illinois for a skateboard contest.  We knew a bunch of other friends were already on tour of the mid-west and were stopping there on the way back east to New York.  Our flight arrived late in the evening and it was still a bus and a cab ride from Chicago O’Hare Airport to this somewhat remote part of Illinios.
 
 
Once the contest was over, we decided that we’d forgo our return flight home and hop in the van.  The plan was to hit a few other skate spots and hit Six Flags in Ohio on the trip home.
 
Well as they say, they best laid plans are,,,,blah blah blah
 
Bad idea #1
 
The van breaks down and in a town call Des Plaines, Illinios somewhere about 1 am.  Yes Des Plaines, the thriving metropolis that produces some of the auto industries’ finest fuses.  The same hot spot that shuts it’s tired eyes about 9 pm each evening, yes the entire town, and all 58, 989 of it’s residents.  Needless to say, that getting towed to a gas station that would have a repair shop that just may open in the morning was a challenge indeed.
 
The part we needed to get the van running was something simple.  My lack of any mechanic skill or knowledge, whatsoever, prevents me from having a name for this part.  But, if we could find one, we’d be golden.  So, the new plan was to break up into groups and comb the surrounding neighborhoods for a van like ours and ‘acquire’ this part.

 
Bad idea #2.
 
Des Plaines sits adjacent to Chicago.  But unlike it metro brethren, there is no wind.  So in mid august on a good night, you may be lucky that the temp cools to a chilly 90 degrees with 100 percent humidity.  Not exactly pristine conditions for a van full of 11 sweaty, smelly skateboarders who are at least 12 hours away from the shot at a truck stop sink, let alone a shower.
 
Most of us decided it would be much more comfortable sleeping on the sidewalk than inside the van, at least there was a chance for a slight breeze.
 
Then it dawned on us.  Jerry and I still had our return flight that we hadn’t missed yet.  So, somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, we called a cab.  We gathered our things hopped in a 10 minute cab ride to Chicago O’Hare airport.  We arrived just in time for the flight
 
If you looked close enough from the plane’s windows you could almost see the van, still parked in that lot.  With a crew of sleeping skateboarders scattered amidst the open doors and sidewalk.  Like kids on Christmas Eve waiting for Santa, they hoped a mechanic would arrive the following day and would be baring the gift of repair to send them on their way.  Ahh, the dreams of children.
 
 
Within 4 hours we were back in New Jersey, sleeping in air-condition homes.
 
The tour van made it back to New York 2 days later…
 
…We’re all still friends.