Today is the long awaited publication day of my novel THE FIREBUG OF BALROG COUNTY. It is a novel about obsession, mourning the loss of a parent, and a zestful dog named Chompy. It is a novel about surreal small town life and the dangerous places that we take ourselves. It is also the funniest book I’ve ever written in a long career of being a smart mouth. It contains the most feels. Oh Jesus Dave don’t start getting all misty eyed now you fucker.

Please check it out! Please come to the reading on Sept. 18th so I can hug you. Thank you to Flux Books for making such a goddamn beautiful book.

Onyx Neon Shorts has published a great new review of my novella Breakneck Cove today. Check it out!

“A story of family drama and childhood innocence. Mixed with profound loss and a heavy dose of sci-fi fantasy, Breakneck Cove is a tale of the normal world crashing headlong into a world of the wild and the strange, one that, despite its obvious modern setting, put me very much in mind of the classic episodes of the Twilight Zone.”

I was feeling out of sorts today and not so engaged/enamored with writing so I said screw it and spent the warm, late July afternoon hiking around Fort Snelling and Pike Island here in St. Paul. I went alone, with my camera and some water for company, and spent three hours tromping around. I encountered only one human being the entire afternoon but did meet an entire family of turkeys (two adults and a dozen turkey kids-it was a true mutual surprise occasion), a deer, two woodpeckers, a squirrel, and four bad ass river geese. I read somewhere that being around trees is good for your health and it was nice to hear the wind whispering through the forest canopy. The summer wildflowers were amazing and smelled so sweet and fragrant.

Honestly I’m not feeling my usual writerly drive at the moment. I started and stopped a pair of novels and don’t feel inclined to edit the novel that needs editing. All my ideas seem…stupid? Yes, stupid. Stupid and not worth a whole novel treatment, that’s for sure. Maybe it’s the summer doldrums or maybe the doldrums are just in my heart. You can’t start a fire without a spark…right?

The Firebug of Balrog County

Reviewed on 07/01/2015
Gr 9 Up—Mack likes to start fires: the firebug is always in his ear encouraging him to find something else to burn. He feels in control when he commits arson, and late at night in his small prairie town, he can always find something to burn. Mack’s family is in pieces since his mother’s death, and each member is dealing with his or her grief alone. Mack himself pulls at the threads of the memories of his mother but never really deals with her death. Instead, he goes through the motions of a typical high school senior—working at the local hardware store, going to keg parties—but doesn’t connect with anyone. It’s just him and the whispering firebug, until he meets Katrina, who is so wonderfully different from everyone else. Like Mack, she is somewhat angsty and unconventional, and the two become friends and then lovers. Katrina seems to understand Mack, and she wholeheartedly supports the firebug within him. Things climax when Mack ignites the giant woodpile of an embittered veteran. The main character is a wholly likable, though tortured malefactor, and readers will root for the success and escape of the firebug as much as they hope for Mack’s family life to improve. References to sex and teenage drinking make this title appropriate for older readers, though they aren’t gratuitous. VERDICT An offbeat bildungsroman reminiscent of Libba Bray’s Going Bovine (Delacorte, 2009).—Patricia Feriano, Montgomery County Public Schools, MD

The Firebug of Balrog County is going to press today! Its publication date (Sept. 8) is now exactly two months out. Here’s some of the cover design images posted by Lisa Novak today, the book’s cover design artist. What a freaking great cover, right?

Oppegaard (And the Hills Opened Up) creates a believable portrayal of the different ways that loss affects a family, with small decisions building into far-reaching consequences. High school senior Mack Druneswald has been drifting since his mother’s death, working at the hardware store in his small town of Hickson and periodically feeding the “firebug” in his heart with non-targeted acts of arson. The narrative moves between Mack’s present life and his retelling of his mother’s five-year struggle with cancer, drawing subtle but strong parallels between Mack’s pyromania and his mother’s disease. While Mack and his family work through their grief, he runs more risks: involving his new girlfriend in his activities, writing anonymous letters to the newspaper claiming responsibility for the fires, and targeting the local curmudgeon’s property. As the cat-and-mouse game between Mack, as arsonist, and the mayor, his grandfather, escalates, so do the tensions between Mack, as family member, and his father and sister. A well-realized setting and Oppegaard’s resistance to tidily resolving the story’s conflicts both contribute to the novel’s solid sense of realism. Ages 12–up. Agent: Jonathan Lyons, Curtis Brown. (Sept.)

PW Review

Last night I attended my first Northern Spark, an all-night mega art festival that this year was held in six major “zones” of Minneapolis. I attended only the Minneapolis Convention Center/Peavy Plaza zones but I feel like a cherry picked pretty well.

I saw Cloud Cult perform an hour plus opening concert (for free!) after being a fan for probably a decade.

People lost their shit when a bunch of huge glowing white balloons were released into the crowd near the end of the show. One shithead teenage dude beside me purposefully popped the last one with his car key and grinned the grin of  a true future serial killer right at me. Other than feeling the strange urge to strangle someone while listening to beautiful Cloud Cult music, it was a great, great show and they played every song I could have thought to request and one brand new one.

Then I attended my old Pal Andy Sturdevant’s Foopath’s ’92 spiritual seminar with another old pal Shannon and her friend Sara (who were nice enough to let me bum around with them all night). Footpath’s ’92 was a humorous take on seminars and set in 1992 and has prepared me for the power of powerful energy in my own life. It also featured some familiar faces in the cast and some amazing power wigs. With the help of a rotating cast, Andy was going to recreate the energy packed seminar all night long, something only he could pull off.

Filled with a renewed sense of energy and purpose, we left the seminar and headed back out into the night, meandering our way past the model-sized wooden skyline of Minneapolis (decorated by all in chalk and lit with tiny interior lights) and went to Peavy Plaza, which was a hotbed of action. Among the events there was a video game you could log into with your phone (and play for about five seconds before you died), human-sized Foosball on a Foosball court (the Foosball was a Nerf-type soccer ball), and Write Fight, put on by Revolver magazine. In a single-elimination type tournament, writers battle each other by writing pieces while being distracted by outlandish distractions (I was part of an instant dance party encircling two writers) and then read their pieces aloud: whoever gets the loudest applause moves on. Think Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome without the Dome and more writing.

Going down into the plaza amid all these events was great. I expected to be down there for a minute or two but suddenly a half-hour had passed and I was still engaged. After I’d had my artsy fill, I ate a delicious pulled chicken corn patty type thing from a West Indies food truck and said goodnight-it was midnight and Cinderella was more than satisfied with the evening.

Total $ spent? Five dollars. Gotta love the Twin Cities.

Monster good lineup on the various stages this year at Grand Ole Days. I took in Charlie Parr, The Cactus Blossoms, Crankshaft, Dead Man Winter, and 4 X Floor wrapped it up (and covered Atlantic City!).

Now it is time to post this and hide from the evil evil sun, which has burned me to a crisp. Felt great to be outside and get thumped by five hours of amplified rock.