While reading my spun-up word yarns at Death Rattle Writer’s Festival, I only felt my hands go numb once.

This is the effect of anxiety and nerves on my body.  I’m used to its arrival; whenever I tackle a new experience that necessitates some level of competence displayed in public or travel to a country and arrive after over a day of flying, these sensations occur.  They’re marked by a loss of feeling in my arms and hands or a prickling tingle on my skin.  My stomach churns. I fidget and sweat out a cold perspiration.

So getting in front of literary buffs at the Death Rattle Writer’s Festival held on October 9th and 10th in Nampa, Idaho, was no exception.  The pictures below are from the first night.  I read a short piece entitled “Dialectic of Hierophanies” at Track 13 Gallery.  This was the night that drummed up the fear in me.  While I’ve read my stories aloud in closed fiction workshops and to friends, this was my first foray into public reading.  And I went after Alan Heathcock, one of my former teachers and a local writer with a penchant for putting down quality work AND being adept at self-promotion.  Needless to say, I was a bit scared.  But I read the story about warring shaman and did not pee myself.  Not even a little.

The great thing about my nerves?  They tend to calm after I’ve done something at least once.  Flying into a new airport in the middle of the night in a third-world country will always be an uncomfortable experience for me.  But reading in public?  Hell, I’ve delivered a speech to eight hundred where my slideshow froze and I had to entertain with a spontaneous jig.  Now reading my work for an audience might elicit some slight panic, but it will engage my sense of joy and fun, too.

I must thank the lovely and ambitious team of Diana Forigone and Dig Reeder.  They are the young minds that put together Death Rattle Writer’s Festival.  For future news on readings and next year’s festival, like their Facebook page here.

How did I do the second night?  You tell me.  This video has zero editing.  I think the grittiness of it, the wafting smoke rings and my occasional verbal stumble as I read “Snapshot Fetishes” to a crowd of folks in an old speakeasy room is fascinating enough.

I chose to read my literary shorts at Death Rattle.  But you can read my novel, CHEMICALS, by purchasing it here.