I Can Taste the Blood by Malerman Josh & Taff John F.D. & Johnson Erik T. & Stone J. Daniel & Schwartz Joe

Author:Malerman, Josh & Taff, John F.D. & Johnson, Erik T. & Stone, J. Daniel & Schwartz, Joe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grey Matter Press
Published: 2016-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

When I was thirteen years old, I had three distinct stories that moved me in ways that most certainly shaped me to be the writer I am today. The first was Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. It was the first time I had read anything that had produced such an emotional response from me. That is to say, when George gently murders his best friend Lenny, I cried like a girl with a skinned knee.

The next is not so lofty but was wonderful when I first discovered it: The Savage Sword of Conan the Barbarian, or TSSOC for the cool kids. These were the graphic novels of my world. Each edition was black-and-white and published in this over-sized style with a full-color front basically dripping blood, macho as macho gets for a kid just getting hair under his pits. Lastly, was a very cool Dirty Harry series of books by various hired-gun authors that filled an entire summer. I still get a real thrill thinking of those stories, of the ultimate good guy, loner-vigilante that character represented. Stir those three themes for a story in a pot and you have “I Can Taste the Blood.”

When John Taff and I first met we hit if off like we had known each other for years. Somehow we were connected, picking literary fruit from the same tree. We regularly began to schedule coffee dates during which we would share our most intimate writing ideas. And this is not common. Writers, like many artists, are very territorial when it comes to letting anyone into the studio of our thoughts. Somehow, though, we weren’t the slightest bit intimidated by each other. Rather, I’d like to think each other’s passion and commitment to the craft impressed us rather than intimidated.

It was upon one of these regular meetings, in early 2014, that he shared a personal story with me. He had gone to dinner with his then fiancée, now the happy Mrs. Taff, at a low-key restaurant in St. Louis. On a trip to the men’s room, John described to me how the bathroom wasn’t much more than a hole in the floor with Sharpie graffiti scrawled on the walls. While doing his business, he read the phrase “I can taste the blood” that some anonymous, angst-stricken wonderful weirdo had felt compelled to write inside that otherwise, and literal, shit hole. He told me all this while saying he thought it might be the title for a good book, one he might hope to write. I instantly felt like a real asshole because I liked it a hell of a lot, too, and wanted it for myself.

After about forty minutes of shooting the shit, describing works in progress, what we had coming up with book signings that I was scheduling for John and I to attend in tandem, an idea occurred to me. “Why don’t we both write it?” John looked at me a bit suspiciously and asked, “How can we do that?” The idea that spontaneously

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