All posts by Matthew Callan

Literary Endeavors

Hang A Crooked Number, Now With Middleman Removed

Hi! Lately, I’ve been begging asking people to purchase my new novel, Hang A Crooked Number, at the ebook retailer of their choice. The reception thus far has been heartening and supportive, and the death threats have been kept to an acceptable minimum.

However, I’ve received some queries from folks who don’t own an e-reader of any kind yet would still like to read the book. And while there are no plans afoot to publish this book the traditional way (i.e., using dead trees), I did want to make some concessions to folks who are interested in Hang A Crooked Number but don’t have a Kindle or an iPad or what have you. It also occurred to me that there are many folks who’d rather not put dough in the pockets of Amazon and their ilk, an attitude for which I can hardly blame you.

If you fall into one or more of these categories, you’re in luck as of today. I’m now making Hang A Crooked Number available for purchase from Scratchbomb itself (via Gumroad) in both epub and PDF formats. This should satisfy the needs of both people who don’t have e-readers and people who hate Amazon for one reason or another. Plus, I get a bigger cut of the retail price when you buy it via Gumroad, if that does anything for ya. I know it does something for me. So, in summation, purchase away!

Buy the epub

Buy the PDF

NYC, Stories

Carmine Street, 7:52am

I’ve just exited the subway. Light rain is falling. Very light. One or two drops every minute. It’s the kind of rain you wouldn’t even notice unless you were bald and wearing no hat, like me, and each drop stung your scalp.

Coming around the corner ahead, by Father Demo Square, a chubby kid in a parochial school uniform. White shirt, khaki pants, black-rim glasses. Looks to be about 12. In junior high or almost there. I say chubby because it takes a lot of work to be fat at that age. He is simply trapped in a body that grew out before it grew up. In his left hand, he holds an enormous black umbrella, sheathed in a telescoping plastic holster. If he held it upright, you’d see the umbrella was more than half his height.

The boy looks uncomfortable walking. The umbrella is throwing off his balance. He walks like he’s not quite sure what to do with his legs. Like he doesn’t want to be where he is, but he wants to reach his destination even less.

He nears the point where the street straightens out and becomes 6th Avenue. There, by a sickly little tree sprouting bike locks, a pigeon is startled by his approach. The pigeon is near the boy’s eye level for a split second. During that split second, he raises his umbrella defensively, perpendicular to his body. Like this pigeon is a vampire and the umbrella is a half-finished crucifix.

The pigeon flutters away. The boy puts down his umbrella and looks defeated, utterly defeated. I can almost see a thought bubble above his head, I can’t believe I did that.

Something in me wants to stop the boy and give him some kind of It gets better spiel, but I know that would be a lie. He might outgrow this body, but the Scared Fat Kid stays within you forever. He lopes on his way past me, on his way to a place where is learning how to hate himself.

NYC, Stories

Borden Avenue, 7:18pm

hurlPost-work run down Borden Avenue. Almost done, tiring. I slow down near the ballfields across the street from the Hess station and Mt. Zion. On the field stand two off-the-boat Irish. They’re flaked with sheetrock dust from their day’s work. One stands near home plate, the other near the mound. Both of them have a hurling stick gripped in their hands, and they’re using them to lob a racquetball-sized sphere back and forth.

We had a hurling stick in our house when I was a kid. My dad brought it back from Ardee after he buried my grandfather. Hurling is Irish field hockey, basically. According to my dad, it was a deadly game, much like the brutish Gaelic football my grandfather used to play. Players would line the bottoms of their sticks with blunt metal strips held in place with nails, both to keep the wood from chipping against the turf and so the stick would do maximum damage in close-quarter scrums.

The hurling stick sat in a toy chest in the garage along with a Keith Hernandez Louisville slugger, cracked Wiffle Ball bats, and other blunt instruments, waiting to be unsheathed whenever me and my brothers made up some new game. These games would inevitably break down as we debated the rules, and the hurling stick would be used to avenge some slight, real or imagined. Crying and punishment would ensue, followed by parental threats to take that damn hurling stick away from us, resulting in more crying. No, mom, no, don’t take it away, we’ll be good.

I blamed the stick. It was such a perfectly designed implement of mayhem, it practically begged to be slammed against your brother’s calf. It surely was infused with some dark magic, the spirit that pervaded the sport for which it was intended.

And yet here I see these two men, surely exhausted from a day of work yet using their hurleys to relax, to lightly toss a little ball back and forth, back and forth, violence nowhere to be seen. I stop and look on for a moment while the sun sets behind me, and I feel I’m seeing some spell being snapped, some war being won.