ZERO BUENO

I snapped the above shot with my iPhone a couple of days ago. It's the San Pedro sunrise as seen through our bedroom window. I had been lying in bed for hours staring at walls, words loud inside my head. I knew it was time to finish my latest novel, Zero Bueno.

Technically it's a novella. The word count is about 33K. The page count is 111. I do not recall when the title came to me but it's my favorite title of any book I've written. Pictured below (I know writers are obsessed with such things) is one of the scribbled pages of the rough draft and my favorite pen (the only pen I use, I order it in bulk each year), the Pilot Precise V5 Extra Fine Rolling Ball. 

The words have been loud inside my head for quite some time. I put off writing the book for years because...life. Running a business and a household were my top priorities. Then somewhere along the way, I do not recall the exact year, I became obsessed with audio. I'm still obsessed with audio. Audio is easier (and more fun) to access. I create noise to drown out the words so crowded and incessant in my head. Also. Art. Space is limited in this upstairs flat I share with David so I just arrange pieces of paper on the coffee table and snap shots, which I edit using CanvaPro. I'll soon have 3K designs uploaded at Redbubble.

Before Zero Bueno there was Fuckerbutt Happy Time, a novel I described as "field research disguised as fiction." I remember scribbling the rough draft in various notebooks in my studio apartment in San Antonio and in the guest cabin on my mother's ranch wearing footed Tinkerbell pajamas. I love the ending. It was a relief.

And before Fuckerbutt Happy Time there was Bullshit Rodeo, which was born in a butterfly journal in the Albuquerque Sunport in July of 2010. You can read the words but you will never see all the bones. You will never see all the blood. Spoiler alert: The dead butterfly did not make it to Heaven.

With Zero Bueno I am finally done with the blood and the bones. The restless ghosts of Texas and California can find some other bitch to haunt. Some other bitch can scribble it all down then type it up, tear her hair out strand by strand over the formatting and the uploading process, revise it a few times and promote the hell out of it on YouTube/Twitter/Blogger/Facebook/Instagram. Good luck and godspeed.

Muchas gracias and an infinity of love to David for believing in me, encouraging me, bullying me, reminding me, loving me, feeding me, finding me, fucking me...and for being my first reader, editor, publisher, reviewer, promoter. Yesterday he showed me the review he wrote for the poetry anthology (Sirens: Five Femme Fatale Poets) in 2008 when he was just a guy I was talking to on MySpace.

None of this seems real but I assure you it is. Someday a movie will be made if this planet lasts long enough. Vaya con dios, muchachos.

xxx Misti xxx

WIN SOMETHING EXCITING

 what i eat in a day

get ready with me

fuckerbutt happy time

clown gravy

super cherry extra

sponsored by venus

sniff my pages

MANIFESTO

It's a manifesto without words. There's a brief introduction but the rest of the book is comprised of my bleeding insanely saturated full color trash artwork. I published a similar book with the same title years ago (before Covid & the accelerating decline of the USA) but it was no bueno. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. So here's this new improved version, a record of my manic DIY aesthetic. 

Perfection is a lie but I've got Virgo rising, Mars in Capricorn and a tenth house Saturn and David has Capricorn rising and Saturn in Capricorn. We endeavor. I presented David with the files then got the hell out of his way. He worked his magic and I am so grateful. 

Buy it, bitches. Gracias.

 

MAJESTIC as FUCK

my favorite bird

must be the lunar eclipse in piSceS

MISTI LOVES DAVID

 

SIMPLE PLEASURES

"I'm not a complicated man. I like cinema. In particular, I like to see people fucking on film. I like simple pleasures, like butter in my ass and lollipops in my mouth."

("Boogie Nights"/Floyd Gondolli)

My heart has been heavier than usual lately, what with the death of Dolly Parton, power outages on the island and trouble receiving books from lulu.com. A bitch cannot catch a break. I'd been putting off watching "Little House on The Prairie" with David for quite some time as I knew it would make me emotional. But finally I said, "Fuck it. If I watch another episode of 'Cheaters' I'm going to stab my eyes out with a fork. Little House it is."

We watched a two part episode involving Adam and Mary, a happily married blind couple until Adam had the balls to regain his sight and fuck shit up. I was repulsed by Adam in the first part (season seven, cannot recall the number of the episodes). He was acting like an egomaniac simply because he could see again. I've been seeing for 53 years, big deal. So he gets the big idea he's going to become a lawyer. He stops paying attention to Mary, she gets hurt. Sad stuff but I could deal. Then in the second part Adam makes the trek to Minneapolis to take the bar exam. Returning to his hotel room one night after eating dinner with a rich friend he gets mugged and beaten unconscious. I said, "I can see where this is going. He's going to lose his sight again. God is punishing him for being a dick to Mary." Not exactly. Sure, Adam ends up in the hospital and has a hell of a headache but he can still see. However, he does miss the bar exam. When Mary comes to Minneapolis to visit Adam at his bedside and Adam starts expressing his vulnerability ("bitch is feeling sorry for himself," David muttered in disgust), I lost it. Tears streamed from my eyes. David asked if I was joking. I was not.

"He can't catch a break. I can relate," I said.

I was inspired enough to consult Wikipedia. No, Mary never actually got married. Adam was pure fiction. Still, I know there are people all over the world in similar situations and it breaks my goddamn heart.

So this morning during sex I decided to liven things up by pretending to be Mary. "Pa? Pa, is that you? I can't see. What are you doing to me, Pa? I wasnt expecting...this."

To my surprise, David lost his erection and the sex came to a screeching halt. I guess our days of roleplay are over. The bloom is OFF the rose, as they say.

 

FIND A BETTER COUNTRY

Back in the glorious MySpace days of 2008 I remember a cousin's husband at the time (she's on marriage #3...common in Texas) had this pithy quote on his page: 

"This is AMERICA. If you don't like it you can LEAVE."

I took umbrage. He lived in a brand-new brick house (thanks to his wealthy grandfather) and I was living on WIC and food stamps in a tiny trashy rent house I called The Crack Whore Shack in Nederland, Texas with my infant son and his father, my second husband. I remember thinking, "I would LEAVE if I COULD. Asshole."

I don't like The United States of America, the country of my birth. I don't like Texas, the state of my birth. I finally left at the age of 53. I live on this island in the Caribbean. I've been here with my fiance (David) since May. We still haven't been to Secret Beach but we aren't really beach people. We don't drink. We don't get stoned. We're boring as hell with our weights and resistance bands and yoga mat. We write books and fuck each other and take pictures of palm trees and iguanas and the moon.

There's no Walmart or McDonald's or Taco Bell or Ross Dress For Less on this island. How do I cope? Oh, the usual...eating JIF Extra Crunchy from the jar, watching "Cheaters" in bed with my man, reading the PDF of his novel until I sob.

I am not Taylor Swift. Jesus wept. Selah.

p.S. in a recent dream I purchased a FIFTH AVENUE candy bar, something I haven't done in many moons

 

BEST BOOK EVER PUBLISHED

It's subjective, of course, and I'm biased, but the best book ever published is not THE KING JAMES BIBLE or The Grapes of Wrath or The Great Gatsby or Sweet Valley High #1: DOUBLE LOVE. No ma'am. No sir. The best book ever published is RETARD PENIS. Here is an excerpt:

I was sitting in a booth at the McDonald’s on Fredericksburg Road slurping melted ice cream when Debbie began bombarding me with text messages. I didn’t have time for her bullshit so I turned off my piece of shit Samsung Galaxy and soaked in the bliss of the moment, slurping melted vanilla ice cream looking out the window at the Tower of The Americas hazy in the distance. Sometimes I love living in this city. I donated plasma three days ago so I can afford this treat.

Debbie writes poems about me, says she’s in love, but I just enjoy fucking her on occasion with my basic American five inch cock. I don’t delude myself. The best I can hope for is a mediocre sex life with a bat shit crazy poet covered in ugly tattoos and the occasional McDonald’s or Dairy Queen or Sonic treat. I work as a cashier at the Five Below on the upper level of Wonderland. I’ve never taken an IQ test but I’m probably a few points above retarded. Not severely retarded. Functioning retarded, like most Texan Americans.

(title of the piece is DUMPING DEBBIE)