It is once again that time to highlight an author who appears in the upcoming Burrow book, 15 Views of Orlando. This time, we’ve got an author who used to live in Orlando, moved to Seattle to resurrect the dream of the 90s, and now lives in an undisclosed liberal elitist haven in the Northeast. Amid all this ping-ponging, we hope he will visit Orlando again soon, and perhaps, grace us with a reading…

Too quick across the face of this earth, Tom DeBeauchamp has never watched a puppy grow up to a dog and die. His stories and reviews have appeared here and there, online and in print. He waits for mail that never comes. He attracts sometimes the inverse of moths and jars them and stores them in cool, damp, dark places where they batter the glass with their bodies, desperate to touch the unity for which inverse moths despair. He reminds you we are all closer always to the molten central fire than we’ll ever be to the distant radiations of space.

Tom’s 15 Views of Orlando story culminates in Lake Keogh, a man-made lake near the Red Lobster in Waterford. Tom also appears in the 15 Views bonus features, where he has this to say, among other things, about Orlando:

It’s been years since I moved away, and most of what I remember is vague and hazy, the feel of driving in the heat with the air off, the sprawl west of Alafaya and the forgotten scrublands between Bithlo and the beach. I remember it being an unformed place, or a place with a sudden form, like everyone there was confused about how they’d ended up there, uncertain about how they’d leave. It had a transitory skin. But there were others, other transients who’d been there longer. I remember it as one of the strangest places I’ve ever lived…

Tom has reviewed books for HTML Giant, The Collagist, and others. His fiction has appeared (mysteriously and sometimes ordinarily) in Hobart, Smalldoggies, in Burrow’s first anthology, and elsewhere. Click, read, enjoy.

15 Views of Orlando: Part 6 (of 15)

Location: Lake Keogh and environs

Perkin sat in the mud on the bank of the retention pond across the street from Jim “Maddog” Maddox’s McMansion, wearing the Baywatch-red bikini bottoms Maddog had leant him. Regardless of the sulfurous smell, Perkin wagged his flippered feet through the water and the cattails. His shoulders were strapped with Maddog’s twin oxygen tanks, his forehead creased by Maddog’s hard plastic mask. To the tsk-tsking of the neighborhood’s sprinkler systems, and the roaring of mowers, blowers, weed-eaters and edgers, Perkin prepared himself mentally to start earning big time.

15 Views of Orlando has been stolen from the tubes of the Internet and is now in book form, due out on 1/31/12.
Pre-order it here.

About the Author:

Too quick across the face of this earth, Tom DeBeauchamp has never watched a puppy grow up to a dog and die. His stories and reviews have appeared here and there, online and in print. He waits for mail that never comes. He attracts sometimes the inverse of moths and jars them and stores them in cool, damp, dark places where they batter the glass with their bodies, desperate to touch the unity for which inverse moths despair. He reminds you we are all closer always to the molten central fire than we’ll ever be to the distant radiations of space. His most recent attempt at a web site is the following: http://softsolids.tumblr.com/