A Pulp Solemnity

The Wolfman

2012-03-15T23:08:00.000-04:00

This is the one selection that scared me this semester (and not the story--it was more action than horror), but the idea of reading it. Why? Because I didn't understand why we were reading an adaptation of an adaptation, and because I did not want to trash it. I so didn't want to trash it (and I assumed it would be horrible).

Now, luckily, I was wrong. It was a good book, easily the best novel we've read this semester, and I'm glad to have read it (the one I was looking forward to was Breeding Ground, and we know how that turned out). I don't hold back when I don't like something (as you've seen), and (ironically) both John Dixon and Jon Maberry have talked to me about that, about how being too harsh could get me in trouble (as Gina found out). Well, this was especially troubling, since I knew this book would suck, since I'm friends with both Jon and Andrew Kevin Walker (Andy's actually, with me and Brian Freeman, one of the three horror writers to go to my high school, and Nikki Hopeman went to one just a few miles away. Now, we didn't all go at the same time. Andy was there long before me, but I heard about him, and then he also went to two of the colleges I ended up at, so I heard about him more; Nikki would have been around after that; then Brian; and then little old me coming in just long enough to try to sell Brian a comic book I'd written--oh, and Andy, Brian, and I all worked at the same bookstore. Small world of horror writers).

I hadn't seen the movie, but I'd heard it was awful. Actually, Andy had rented out the Camp Hill theater to do a private pre-release viewing of it, but a snowstorm cancelled that; and I never bothered to see it after that (and after reading the reviews). Surprisingly, the novelization worked. It had strong, well-drawn characters, a solid, action-based plot, and some nice echoes throughout, but that may have all been Jon, as he's good at that stuff--and great at action. His background as a competitive martial artist shows. He knows how to make a fight realistic. The story wasn't horror, really. There were very few moments of dread or fear, but it had a lot of action. Yes, Gwen was a bit too willing, and Lawrence was kind of a dick, but I didn't care--he wasn't all bad, and I liked him. And Sir John was a villain with nothing redeemable, a bit simplistic, but for an action story, it worked well.

Really enjoyed this one.

Alien

2012-03-08T18:03:00.000-05:00

I've seen Alien probably 7 dozen times. It's one of my favorite movies (and I watch it regularly the way Jenn Loring watches Ghostbusters). As many people have pointed out, it's a slasher in space. "Hey," said Ridley Scott, "let's mix these two things up. Both are making money. Bet we'll make some. Oh yeah, and have Sigourney Weaver in her underwear. That'll help too. And some cool monsters. Yeah, that's the ticket." It really is those two things, the space-set sci-fi story (probably going for the Star Wars crowd, but Star Wars isn't sci-fi), and a slasher. But it's more. There's a conspiracy subplot to it that adds depth, and for me (a lover of the conspiracy) interest. And there's a note of female empowerment and sexual dynamics (the crew's disregard of Ripley despite her rank--and then later her ability to fight off the alien, when none of the men could). But what gets me, what sets it apart for me, is the understanding of fear, and what creates fear, because slasher films don't do it for me. Alien does.

Scott understands that people fear isolation (a perfectly normal reaction for pack animals), and so he sets the story in space, years from any other human life. People fear the dark, most of the scenes are set in dark areas of the ship (and space is dark). People fear losing control of their own bodies, and he exploits that by having the aliens lay eggs in the stomachs (abdomen) of the victims. But more than anything, as Lovecraft said, people fear the unknown. And this is where the movie truly works. Think about it. You see the alien when it is birthed, but then not again until near the end of the film. It picks the crew off one at a time, but always in the shadows, when the head is turned. You don't see it, and that's why it's frightening. Yes, Geiger's design is great, and you aren't let down when you do finally see it, but it's not seeing it that makes it scary.

Like I said, Alien is one of my favorite films. I watch the sequels, but none of them even come close (even Aliens). When I was a kid, I played with Alien action figures and went on the Alien ride at Universal Studios. It's kinda my favorite move not named On the Waterfront.

World War Z

2012-02-29T19:35:00.000-05:00

OK. Let me begin with what I liked. Brooks created a very realistic novel. Everything that happened (except for the zombie apocalypse) was completely believable. And through that, he showed some aspects of humanity and society that we may not want to see. People readily turned their backs on one another, committed cannibalism (which is very ironic), used each other as bait, played up to the news media, did the bare minimum possible, blamed others, blamed based on race. All the worst of humanity was there, and yet there was good too. Heroes stood out, but they weren't heroes trying to be heroes. They were real heroes, people doing what they thought they had to do, and doing great things. This aspect, what he showed of humanity and society was amazing. This is, surprisingly, one of the best social commentaries I think I've ever read.

On the flip side, though, was everything else. First, I'll admit that I'm not a fan of zombies. I routinely turn down offers to review zombie novels because I don't like them. I don't find the monster interesting or worth my time. I don't understand why they need to eat (and it's never been explained), and they've never once excited me. I'm just not a fan. That said, however, I will admit to enjoying Brian Keene's The Rising, but for the story of the father searching for his son (and I enjoyed Brian's story behind that story even more). And, as my first paragraph shows, I liked aspects of this one, too, but I didn't think it worked as a novel. Stylistically, the interview didn't work for me, especially since they were interviews done after the war. There was no tension, no suspense. I knew the narrator would live, and the narrative tone was far too bland and telling (and I know there isn't much you can do to fix that with an interview, but still . . .). And that was enough to do it for me. Without tension, there wasn't a story for me. It was a lot of interesting statements about society and human nature, but no story.

The Yattering and Jack

2012-02-20T16:43:00.000-05:00

The thing I've always admired about Clive Barker is that the powers (long may they hold court, long may they shit light on the heads of the damned) blessed him with a mind. Cleverness. Clive Barker's clever. Clever like that shit-kid in the back of your second-grade classroom who knew all the answers but wouldn't give them. The one who later on refused to write a term paper just because, and who the teachers constantly tried to "reform." That kid's Barker. He's smarter than everyone else, and he knows it. And while sometimes that's worked, there are other times (Mister B Gone, Galilee) where that failed miserably. Sometimes (The Books of the Art) he's right on the border between self-indulgent pretentious bull-shit (GALILEE!!!!!!!) and works of unrestrained genius (The Books of Blood, Hellbound Heart, Weaveworld, The Damnation Game). "The Yattering and Jack" falls on the unrestrained genius side because it's parodic, and unlike every movie made by the Syfy (and don't get me started on that name) channel, it knows it.

Tell me who else could get away with having a roast turkey beating down a door?

The story's simple. The Yattering's been sent by Hell to destroy Jack's sanity. The problem, Jack knows it, and he's made it his mission to return the favor. No matter what the Yattering does, Jack doesn't respond. Che sera sera. Eventually, the Yattering grows desperate and breaks the rules of its mission (yes, even in hell there are rules of conduct) and enslaves itself to Jack.

This is a monster story, a haunting, a demon tale, but it's not horror. It's making fun of horror stories, and in doing so it's something that at the time was revolutionary. Barker changed horror because his stories always had something more--more gore and violence and sex, which has been talked about with him ad nauseum, sure, but more brains, and more humor. Sure, King is funny, but not Barker funny; and King's not as clever.

In his delivery and humor, Barker has always reminded me of the greatest Elizabethan and Jamesian (6 and 1) playwrights, Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Middleton and William Shakespeare. Everything is stretched to the limit, sometimes beyond the limit, but always with a wink and a nod. Always a challenge to the audience, an upset stomach, and a good laugh. And I hope that that's how Barker's remembered because there are few better, ever, and what he brought to literature, movies, theater, is unique and special.

30 Days of Night

2012-02-17T18:11:00.001-05:00

So 30 Days of Night. Um . . . not so impressed.

Now don't get me wrong here. It wasn't a bad book, but not a great one either. The story flew by, there was more tension than a six-year-old's slingshot aimed at his neighbor's backside, and the premise worked, and it worked in modernity, which is in itself impressive.

Much of what makes a story scary relies on isolation, but in today's world that's difficult. How is a person ever isolated when they've got computers and cell phones? Well, here all the phones were taken, and the power was destroyed (and the town was out in the middle of nowhere); so isolation gets a check. Now, why is isolation necessary? Because people are instinctually pack animals. We want to be with others. We feel safe with others (even if they're virtually retarded--yeah, I was in Hershey today. That whole high school should be euthanized for the good of mankind). You take us out of that. Instant fear.

Add to that that the sun wouldn't rise for 30 days--excellent way to make that tension last. There would be no reprieve. And the vampires were glutinous monsters, the way vampires used to be--before Stoker F'd it up, and then Anne Rice really F'd it up. And then Stephanie Meyer took the whole fucking thing, tossed it out the window, added some flowers and sparkles and gave us sexual care bears with fangs. Yeah, I'm not a fan.

So I liked the vampires, and then the internal battle about exposure and myth making. Clever Niles, very clever. That was a definite plus.

But what didn't I like, if the story didn't work?

Here it is. The end. I hated it. It didn't work. (Well, that and the story moving so quickly that you never got to know any of the characters--and don't tell me that it's a comic, Borrelli. The Sandman's a comic too, and you do--same with the 70's X-Men and the early 80's Daredevils--to name a few that I've read in their entirety)

Fine, the people were hiding out. Fine, one dude gets infected. Fine, he turns into a vampire, and they kill him. Fine, the sheriff takes his blood. Fine, the sheriff sees one vampire kill another. But then not fine, because it just doesn't make sense that he'd inject himself with the blood. Why wouldn't he? Because then he'd become just like them. Yeah, he'd be able to fight them, but he'd be one of them, so his only drive would be eating people.

Oh, but he does inject himself, and somehow--miraculously--he can control it, and he's a vampire, but one with humanity. Yeah, didn't buy that. Then it gets worse. The whole book it's been hinted that the vampires have a pecking order based on age (just like in Anne Rice), and none of them is strong enough to take on the big guy. But, the new vampire sheriff, freshly changed (and from the blood of another who had freshly changed), can. And he kicks the shit out of him. Then takes out the rest. WTF? So unbelievable.

So, it didn't work for me. I loved the premise and the vampires as monsters, but the story fell apart.

The Deer Crossing the Old Country Road: My Grandmother Remembered

2012-02-10T21:49:00.002-05:00

Tonight, as it spits half-formed snow outside my window, ticking the glass with the sound of a thousand lost flies, I sit here, at my computer—where else?—remembering my grandmother. It’s been just over a year since she died (and notice I didn’t say passed because people don’t pass, they die), and there hasn’t been one day that I haven’t thought about her. She was, for many reasons, my hero. The person whom I looked up to, the one I said, “If I could just be something like her, I think I’d be okay.” She was that one.

Grandma grew up in Dayton, OH. She told stories about her teenage years, her first car, a hearse, that she named “true love,” her best friend, Ellen Jane Lorenz, and the one-room schoolhouse she went to until she was 16. You see Grandma was smart. She was out of there that year and off to Harvard, one of the first women ever to go there. This was 1924. She’d recently been named “best young writer” by Atlantic Monthly for a story she wrote after watching a deer cross the road in front of her house, a small place outside the city, where the family made extra money by maintaining a garden and charging an entrance fee for people to walk through it (gardening was a lifelong passion of hers).

She was pretty too, if the stories she told about the three men who asked her to marry her are true. And the stuff about “true love.” Grandma never learned to drive.

She’d graduate in a few years and then go on to Ohio State for a Masters degree in Library Science, which, at the time, was unheard of for women. Women went to school to find someone to marry. Grandma didn’t. She went there to learn. Curiously, though, despite a growing reputation as a writer and an Ivy League background, she’d soon give up any aspirations as an author, claiming that it “wasn’t a woman’s place.” This is one of the few things that she did that I disagree with. Because she was good—damn, was she good. The kind of good you can feel radiating off a person. The kind of good where they don’t even have to tell you a story for you to know that they’re good. She was that.

Soon she took her first job at the Dayton Public Library. Then she moved back to Ohio State to be a librarian there. Why? Because this was the depression, and her father had lost his job. As a state employee she was paid, and she made sure her family was taken care of. For years she worked the fall and spring semesters in Columbus, living in a room provided for her on the condition that she acted as a sorority mother, and her summers in Dayton, living at home and working the library there.

But she also did something else at this time. She discovered a gift for storytelling. In the evenings, she’d travel around town (both towns), and people would pay her to tell them stories. She never went with anything planned. She’d just make something up on the spot. Sometimes she’d ask someone from the audience to give her a first line, and she’d go from there. If the representatives from the storytellers league at her funeral mean anything, she gained a reputation for this, one that took her all around the world. She told stories all over Europe, Russia (or the Soviet Union, then), Africa, South America, China, Australia. She told stories on every continent except Antarctica, and I think that’s pretty neat.

It was also during this time that she met the man who would be my grandfather, a skinny, geeky kid at Ohio State. He was 18, 10 years her junior, and a professor, having recently graduated from Ohio University (which he started at 15), and finishing up his PhD while teaching at Ohio State and studying at MIT in the summers.

Grandma was dating someone else at the time, but she said she liked my grandpa “because of his car. He had a cherry red one” (she always laughed when she said this). It would be another ten years before they’d date and marry.

She continued as she was, eventually earning a spot teaching English at Ohio State, in what must have been an early Creative Writing course (as those didn’t come into vogue until much later).

A few years later she had a young employee at the library named Rod Serling. He wanted to be a writer and asked her for advice, something many writers would do over the years (I know I did). Never one for selfishness, grandma gave the kid a break and looked over a few stories. He wrote science fiction, a genre much maligned, but one she devoured in her free time. For years she encouraged him and looked over the stories and scripts he sent her, and eventually it paid off (400 or so rejections later).

Time passed, she married grandpa, and they moved into an old house on the outskirts of Columbus, by Worthington. Their house was at the end of a long road, one the trees tunneled, something that, even as houses and the city sprung up around it, stayed the same. Going to their house was always like entering a fairy tale.

In one of her last years at the university (she left Dayton Public when she married and would leave Ohio State when my mother was born), she met another young writer in whom she saw potential. Now that potential part’s important, don’t let my glowing history fool you. Grandma was honest, always honest, and she didn’t mince words. If she thought you had talent and potential, she’d go out of her way to help you however she could, but if she didn’t see it, then she’d tell you to do something else. I watched her do it. I watched her over the years eviscerate people, call people out in public for being jerks or doing stupid things, and kindly tell people that they just didn’t have that in them. I admire that too. Maybe she lacked a little social grace, but at least she was honest, and in the end, I think that’s far more important.

Anyway, back to this new writer. As you’ll see, he’s one who shares that honest streak. In her second to last year she met Harlan Ellison, a small kid from northern Ohio, who liked the kinds of books she did, and though she wasn’t teaching at the time (just working in the library), gave her stories to read. Grandma saw something in him, and until her death she’d say that she’d been friends with the greatest writer of the 20^th century. I agree with her on that note.

After my mother’s birth, she continued to correspond with her two mentees, as well as a few more whom she thought showed ability, some of whom made it (Richard Matheson—introduced to her by Serling), and some who didn’t. And she continued to tell stories, taking her family around the world to libraries and concert halls.

My uncles came. Columbus expanded its borders, and the house outside of town was soon right in town. The 60s came, the 70s. Grandpa retired from the university. Her kids grew up and moved out. My mom to PA, my uncles to Florida and North Carolina. Soon she had grandchildren.

My happiest memories are the stories I shared with her. Each morning, either when she visited or I visited her, I’d run to her room with a book, and she’d read the first line and say to me, “and then what happened?” And I’d make up something and then say to her, “and then what happened?” And we’d go back and forth like that for hours (I’m sure my grandfather hated this). Truly, those are the happiest memories I have. Every one of those stories was, to me, perfect.

When I was two my parents divorced, and when I was four they moved out of the same house. Dad was a Vietnam vet, a publishing poet, and a psychologist, with a mean drug problem, and mom was just too immature for the situation. After they split, she met a new guy, who didn’t want kids, so she did what anyone would do in that situation (is the sarcasm showing?), and called my dad up to say, take the kids or I’m putting them in foster care. So we went to live with him and his new wife, a mean woman with an even worse drug problem.

Those weren’t happy times.

And I didn’t see grandma.

When I was 10, dad went to prison, and my brother and I went to a home in Harrisburg, run by my second mother, Minrosa. Soon, though, we were back with mom, and life became something it hadn’t been most of our lives. After years moving from place to place, sleeping in campgrounds and hotels and cars, going from relative to relative, school to school, we had a house, and one school, and I didn’t have to cook, if there was food, or go down to the corner store and take something if there wasn’t, because I didn’t want my brother to be hungry.

We had something, then, that we’d never had, and that was security. Family? No. Mom would never do that, not really. I think she tried. I think she meant well most of the time, but I don’t think she has it in her to be a parent.

And we got to see grandma.

That next year saw my first published story. I was paid $15 by a local paper (my teacher had sent it to them), and then it was picked up and reprinted by the high school’s literary magazine (edited by the now award-winning author Brian James Freeman). They did a news story on me, one of those local fluff pieces, and I didn’t look at the camera once. Grandma showed the story to Harlan, who actually read it (bless him—and those who know his reputation are cringing for me), and said to me over the phone, “You’re cursed, son; you hear the music.” So I, the genius that I am, said to myself, “hey, he must mean that I can be a musician.” And that’s what I did. For years and years, eventually working for Warner Chappell, and earning a much better living than I do now as a writer and editor, but I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t ever happy.

Grandma came back into the picture big time, then, and got me reading, which I’d never really done. And it clicked. It was like banging a huge fucking gong. I want to write. That’s what I want to do, and looking back I wonder how I didn’t know, because I always wrote. Always. It just never occurred to me that that was something someone could do. And, as she’d done with dozens of writers before, grandma helped me. She looked over my first (awful) stories and made comments. If it was bad, she told me. And I thank her for that. She also told me to write what I wanted, not what I thought would sell. She told me to “go for it” in everything I did. “If it’s scary, or something that makes you cry, or you’re uncomfortable to tell, that’s what you need to do,” she said. “Don’t ever hold back. Always give it everything you have. Always,” and I always have.

It was that advice that helped my first professional story see the light of day, because it’s not the stuff a writer holding anything back could write, and it went on to win one award and be nominated for another it didn’t win. I showed it to her, and she smiled. She said, “The music’s playing now. I know you hear it.” In that moment, and this was before it sold, and long before the award stuff, I felt like I’d done something, because she liked it. She really liked it, and she was proud of me. No one had ever been proud of me, that I knew of.

In my early twenties, before the writing, I got a place not far from my grandparents’ house to help them out. When they needed more help, I moved into a small room in the back of the house (it’s an old house, and that room was the “slave quarters”). I went back to school after they moved into a nursing home. And I think that’s the thing I’m most proud of myself for. When they needed me, I was there, and I got to know both of my grandparents in a way that my brother never will, in a way their own children didn’t really know them. And I’m glad I did.

Toward the end of her life, grandma lost the ability to talk. She’d long before that lost the ability to write. She’d still try to tell you something, and you’d have to get very close to hear what she said. A lot of times it didn’t make sense. Sometimes it would be snippets from a story you remembered. One time she told me that she would go get us pies. That they were just around the corner, down that path. We were sitting in the nursing home, looking out the window at the garden, and there was a path. I’d tell her about my life, and she’d smile. Maybe she knew what I was saying, and maybe she didn’t, but I hope she did. Because she, more than any other person, has made me who I am, and with everything I do, I hope to make her happy, and to make her proud.

Rawhead Rex

2012-02-07T22:53:00.000-05:00

Let me begin this post by saying that I'm happy that Clive Barker was released from the hospital today, and that I wish him ever-improving health.

Now to "Rawhead Rex."

I grew up . . . well, I grew up in about 40 different places, across a few countries, a handful of states, with relatives, parents, people whose job it was to watch kids . . . yeah. OK, but I spent about a year of that time in Hershey, PA (and I work there now). When I lived in Hershey (this was end of third grade, beginning of fourth), it was a smallish town. There was Chocolate World and the Park and Zoo, but the town centered on the factory, had a few restaurants, and one mom and pop grocery right in the middle by the only bank and across the street from the police station. We lived down the street from the library, which was also the middle school, and a block from the factory. Hershey was its own little world, with its own history. Its own way of life--I think you see where I'm going (and if not, re-read "Rawhead Rex"). Each summer the tourists would come in droves. The few hotels and bed and breakfasts would fill in, cars would back up the roads so that it took a half hour to get to that grocery, just 3 blocks from the house (if you drove). They'd drive the wrong way down one way streets and wander the streets at night, but the town was what it was; that was then. Hershey now is built on tourism. The few hotels have become massive hotels. The handful of restaurants, many, and most more expensive than I can afford. The factory's closed, moved to a new site out of town. The streets have been re-routed to stop the backlog. The center of town, once a small park (where I played my first concert), is now the Hershey Press Building, a high-end museum/shopping center/restaurant/office building. The mom and pop grocery is closed. There are bigger ones closer to the hotels. What the town was is gone, because that's what the tourists wanted. What the outsiders wanted.

That was "Rawhead Rex."

I've read some critiques complaining about the lack of a main character, or venting frustration at the reader's confusion over the main character. Well guess what, there wasn't one. And there didn't need to be one. "Rawhead's" not that kind of story. It's about an ancient monster, trapped in the ground for centuries, that gets free and wants to return his town to what it once was, run the way he ran it. Just as the people in the town are lamenting how it's changed because of the new people that have come, almost trapping them in a place they don't want to be either. "Rawhead's" about change, a fear of change, a longing for the past. A fear of the future. Yes there's a monster and gore (it is Clive Barker), but it's at its core an expression of that. It doesn't have a protagonist. Rawhead's not really an antagonist (monster, yes, but all bad, no--at least not in my reading). It doesn't have a plot, per se. Shit just happens. People get killed, stuff blows up (like a Michael Bay movie, but much better). Yes, there's a fight to destroy Rawhead, but that's not on anyone's mind until about the last 10 pages, and in killing him, they didn't fix the problem presented in the beginning of the story (the prologue-y section--the best written part of the story), which is the change. By killing him, they only ensure their destruction with his--though in a different way.

And, since this is for class, I could complain about Barker's head-hopping, which wasn't nearly as effective as Stephen King's and at times annoying, but I didn't care. I knew what was happening, and since very little in the story was internal, it frankly didn't matter.

So "Rawhead Rex" and the destruction of Hershey. Same thing, but Hershey replaced the cool monster with corporate greed.

Breeding Ground

2012-02-02T20:21:00.000-05:00

Sarah Pinborough's Breeding Ground was a strange experience for me. And let me begin by stating that I am a fan of Sarah's, but this book didn't quite make it. Her prose is crisp and quick, and besides a few quirks--the kind of stuff you see from first-time novelists (I believe this was her first novel, and if not, then she hadn't fixed them yet)--very good. The story moved quickly, all action, drew you in, but . . . that was all it did.

Now let me add that the most frightening thing for me is group thought, and this had that, but you didn't see much of it--as a matter of fact you didn't see much of the monsters other than to know that they were chasing the protagonists (not necessarily a bad thing, but I wanted to see more of them). Pinborough created a truly enthralling monster in this book with the "widows," group-thinking, human-birthed monsters, but her backstory for them and her exploration of them fell short.

Before going into that, however, I want to tackle the protagonists, a group of one-dimensional characters--ok, so this is an action-horror novel, not a big deal; but it was. Especially since she chose to write the novel in first person from Matt's point of view, but we never got to know Matt or Matt's thoughts. On top of that, Matt jumped from woman to woman without any thought. He impregnated 2 of the 3 he slept with in the novel, and he never really cared or mourned the loss of his wife or his first rebound. WTF? Guys might be dicks sometimes, but I think he would have cared.

OK, that out of the way, let's get back to the "widows." Excellent concept. Giant spiders that're smart, out to eat you, and have some kind of group-mind. But the problems. First, their origin. All I have to say is, seriously? These giant spiders were created by genetically enhanced food. Really? That's the best you could do? And let's say that's good enough, because in the right story it might be, then I would wonder why they all showed up at the same time. On top of that, these creatures that were born from a human body, ate human flesh, were killed by human blood? OK. That just doesn't make sense. How could they live in it, eat it, and yet it destroys them like some high-powered acid? These were big issues for me.

But there were plot holes, too. I have to wonder why the spiders didn't infect deaf creatures. That was never explained. Why did Katie become infested with what seems to be the male of the species, when she wasn't male? And why wasn't she infected when every other woman in England was? And what the fuck was going on with the weather? Hello, that should have been a bigger issue than it was. England's weather changed overnight, and no one espoused a theory. Yeah, they noticed; it would have been hard not to, but wouldn't you have wondered a little more than you did?

OK. So I loved the idea of the "widows," but they're execution was lacking. I loved the way the plot moved and most of the writing, but there were holes left and right. This was uneven, and that saddened me, as Sarah Pinborough is one of horror's best. Breeding Ground, however, did not show her talents.

The Funeral

2012-01-25T18:48:00.000-05:00

So what to say about Richard Matheson's "The Funeral"?

Well, I enjoyed it. It was funny, but morbidly funny like something by Martin McDonagh (and if you haven't read him--go out and get something now), the kind of funny I like.

It's all about a vampire, Ludwig Asper, who wants to have a funeral. A very reasonable request, I think. After this past year, in which I planned and attended funerals for both of my grandparents, I am starting to get a grasp on the custom. When I was younger, I went to my great grandmother's funeral and then my great aunt's, and my uncle's, and my other uncle's, and my aunt's, and I never saw the point. The people are dead, who cares, is what I thought. Well, it wasn't until this year that I realized it wasn't for the dead person. It's for everyone else.

But what if you were dead, and you could see what happened? I think I'd want a funeral. Why? Well because it's just something you do. It's a way for people to say goodbye (though none of this was happening in the story). It's a right of passage, so to speak, like birth, losing your virginity, prom, and graduation. Come to think of it, it's the only rite of passage after you're 21 (for most people). No wonder people think life gets boring. We've got nothing to look forward to except our funeral, which we don't even get to see. That's not fair.

On the list: brainstorming for new adult rites-of-passage.

Anyway, he and his friends, who include Dracula, a witch, a werewolf with a dinner date, and Ygor, make the best of it, but you can tell they're just humoring Ludwig. Meanwhile, Morton Silkline (the American-Dickensian named) is scared shitless and fainting every other scene.

In the end Ludwig's funeral is broken up by a fight between Dracula and the witch--shit happens.

It was enjoyable, fun, and worth a read, but not one of my favorite Matheson stories ("Prey" in this same collection is, however).

Just my thoughts.

January Updates

2012-01-20T20:11:00.000-05:00

Hey, everyone. I wanted to take this opportunity to pass along a few updates you may be interested in. My good friend, Lawrence C. Connolly, recently released a book of his "best" horror stories. If you're a fan of quiet horror, psychological horror, weird tales, basically anything that requires some thought, nuance, and sophistication, you'll want to pick this collection up.

Read a review here:

http://www.fearnet.com/news/reviews/b25004_Book_Review___Voices__Tales_of_Terror__by_Lawrence_C__Connolly.html?intcid=search_all_lawrence-c-connolly

Also on the pimpin' my friends' stuff front comes Rue Morgue #119, which features an article by Sheldon Higdon. Fans of George Romero will be interested here.

And on the pimpin' myself front, Cemetery Dance #65 is soon to hit the shelves, including selections from Graham Masterton, Glen Hirshberg, Lisa Tuttle, Michael Koryta, J. A. Konrath, Ray Bradbury, Ellen Datlow, Whitley Streiber, Maurice Broaddus, Peter Straub, Brian James Freeman, Tom Monteleone . . . and the one who doesn't really fit, me. Pick this up.

Finally, I just returned from my second SHU residency, which, like the first, was an unforgettable week. Places like SHU are exceedingly rare. The camaraderie between students and faculty is unlike anything I've ever experienced. There are people there that I know will play a major role in my life for years to come, and it's not everyday that you find a place or a program that makes you say that. I've made invaluable professional contacts there, but more than that I've made friends, and not the kind of friends that are here today and gone tomorrow. If you write speculative fiction, I cannot recommend SHU to you highly enough.

That's all for now.

I am Legend: The Habit of Living

2012-01-19T16:16:00.000-05:00

So let's begin with the general. Did I like I am Legend? Well, like just about everything else Richard Matheson's done, yes, but I wasn't blown away. Matheson's great at building tension. He's great at making the everyday something more, and he's great at creating damn awful situations. All that was there, and unlike Hell House or the screenplay to Hell House (which should be rereleased by Cemetery Dance sometime later this year--plug--I know because I worked on it), this was actually written well. Now, Matheson's not typically a bad writer, but he's no James Joyce. It's not uncommon to find POV shifts, tense issues, loads of unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, and weird sentence structures in his stories and novels, but when a story's good enough you don't care. And they were there in I am Legend, but who really cares?

The strength of this story was Robert Neville, and the dead-on accurate portrayal of human loneliness. All Neville wanted in the world was someone to share his world with. That's why he did so much for the dog. That's why he watched the vampires at night (think about it, he didn't need a peep hole, and even if you argue he did for safety, he didn't need to look out it every night); that's why he went around town. That's why he taught himself biology and chemistry to find a cure. He did it because he was lonely. The best scene of this was the section with the dog, because that's what people do. They want others around, but when they are, they don't know what to do with it (if they've been alone too long). Matheson shows both sides of this through Robert and the dog in a very realistic and compelling way. It was a need for others and for friendship and for family that drove Robert, and that's why I loved the story (but that's a theme I gravitate toward--hence my love of Gary Braunbeck's fiction).

But there were some big issues for me. First, how did he teach himself everything he did? Yes, he visited a library, but that's too simple. People spend decades learning that stuff from books and labs and professors, and he figured it all out in three years from the books that just happened to be at the public library. Really? But I could let that slide--a nod of the head to Andrew Carnegie and Teddy Roosevelt. The one that got me, though. The one that really got me was the "deus ex mercury." Whenever Matheson backed himself into a corner by doing something that didn't make sense with his characters, his world, or the mythology, there was some sort of science to explain it. Why don't crosses work--oh, it's psychology; what about wounds (I mean bullets cause no damage, but stakes anywhere kill)--oh, it's because of the way their bodies work; but the big one of these involved Ruth. She was a vampire, who looked alive, was awake during the day, and out in the sun. Yep, it was because of a pill her group of "vampires" had created. That was too easy, and much like the ending of Hell House, I expected more. This story was too good to finish up on such a "deus ex mercury."

Now, again, I liked this book a lot, and its portrayal of human loneliness and desperation are amazing, but some of the turns were too simple, explained away too easily and without the effort or care that not only I, but also the story and the world demanded.

But I'll read it again.

A Horror Anthology Everyone Should Own

2011-12-23T07:16:00.000-05:00

Shane Jiraiya Cummings just released an anthology called Rage Against the Night. All proceeds from the sale of this book will go to Rocky Wood, author/scholar/President of the HWA/all-around-great guy, to help him purchase an eye-gaze device that will allow him to continue communicating as his ALS progresses. This is a great anthology, and a great way to help out one of the finest people this world has ever known.

Contents:

Introduction—Shane Jiraiya Cummings

Foreword—Rocky Wood

The Gunner's Love Song—Joe McKinney

Keeping Watch—Nate Kenyon

Like Part of the Family—Jonathan Maberry

The Edge of Seventeen—Alexandra Sokoloff

The View from the Top—Bev Vincent

Afterward, There Will Be a Hallway—Gary A. Braunbeck

Following Marla—John R. Little

Magic Numbers—Gene O'Neill

Tail the Barney—Stephen M. Irwin

The Nightmare Dimension—David Conyers

Roadside Memorials—Joseph Nassise

Dat Tay Vao—F. Paul Wilson

Constitution—Scott Nicholson

Mr. Aickman's Air Rifle—Peter Straub

Agatha's Ghost—Ramsey Campbell

Blue Heeler—Weston Ochse

Sarah's Visions—Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

More Than Words—David Niall Wilson

Chillers—Lisa Morton

Changed—Nancy Holder

Dead Air—Gary Kemble

Two Fish to Feed the Masses—Daniel G. Keohane

Fenstad's End—Sarah Langan

Fair Extension—Stephen King

Rocky Wood, Skeleton Killer—Jeff Strand

Purchase here:

http://www.amazon.com/Rage-Against-the-Night-ebook/dp/B006P18LM2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324606263&sr=8-1

or here:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/116718

for only $3.99

Unpossible and Other Stories

2011-12-13T19:40:00.000-05:00

I've never made any secrets about where my loyalties lie in any way, and that goes for the writers I truly admire. While there are many whom I like, and many novels and stories I love, there are only a handful of writers whose work consistently does it for me. They are: China Mieville, Dan Simmons, Harlan Ellison, George R.R. Martin, Brian A. Hopkins, Peter Straub, Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Gary A. Braunbeck, and the subject of tonight's blog, Daryl Gregory.

Daryl's first novel, Pandemonium, fell into my lap back in 2007. I was working at Borders, and my boss gave me this advance because a blurb on the cover said, "Reminiscent of Philip K. Dick" or something like that. Well, it blew me away. Pandemonium's one of those novels that every writer wishes to write. It's got heart, big ideas, plot, pacing, mixes genres perfectly. I'm not the only one who felt that way, either. By the end of the year, Pandemonium was nominated for just about every award possible. Daryl followed that up with The Devil's Alphabet, equally good, though in a completely different way. And then this year he released Raising Stony Mayhall, which is, according to both me and Ellen Datlow, the greatest zombie novel ever written, and his first collection of short stories, Unpossible and Other Stories.

Daryl's a graduate of Clarion, and his stories can be traced all the way back to the early 1990s, though it wasn't until about 2004 that he began to publish them regularly. He's a regular in Fantasy & Science Fiction, and has appeared in Subterranean, Asimov's, and many more. His story, "Second Person, Present Tense," won the Asimov's Reader's Award. And this collection was recently named one of the top 5 science fiction releases of the year by Publisher's Weekly, an honor each of his releases has garnered.

Each and every story inside these covers is strong, but not in the way that you expect. Each is unique and different and original. If you look at my list above, you'll notice that each of those writers has one thing in common, and that's originality (well, maybe two, they also blend and mix genres and do something that no one else in the business is doing). These stories could be classified as science fiction, fantasy, horror, literary, and many times they're all of these things at once.

Reading them back to back, you pick up on Daryl's themes: things like the nature of consciousness and perception, superheroes, the working class, regret, friendship, and religion. And Daryl tackles each with a zeal and ability few of any era or genre possess.

The collection begins with his most famous story, "Second Person, Present Tense," about a teenage girl seeking an identity she's lost to the effects of a mind-altering drug, while fending off the identity her parents want to put on her. This one's becoming commonplace in middle and high school classrooms, and I'm glad because it's a story kids should read.

Then comes "Unpossible," a fantasy story that captures the very adult longing for the freedoms and fantasies of childhood that is both heartbreaking and beautiful.

"Damascus," my favorite of the collection, follows. It's a story that posits a simple question, What if religion is a mental illness? And it follows a devout cult through society's persecution, as they try to worship and spread their beliefs.

"The Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm" is the first of the superhero tales herein. It made me think of life in industrial London in the early 1940s, during the German bombing raids, but with superheroes, giant robots, and heat and laser weapons.

"Gardening at Night" is a story about artificial intelligence that would make Philip K. Dick proud.

"What We Take When We Take What We Need" is the germ from which his novel the Devil's Alphabet grew. A horror/thriller/sci-fi mix.

"Dead Horse Point" is the story of one woman's last night in this world, her brother's heartbreak, and the love of her best friend. It's a story that will take your heart and twist it. One of the greatest short stories I have ever read.

"In the Wheels" is a post-apocalyptic horror story where a boy drag races a demon for his best friend's soul.

And "The Continuing Adventures of Rocket Boy" follows a man as he attempts to recreate the most important moment of his childhood.

Now, I didn't list every story in this collection, but I mentioned quite a few.

I don't know what else to say about it or Daryl. If you haven't read him, you should. If you're a fan of any type of speculative fiction, Daryl Gregory should be on your radar. He is the best science fiction writer we have, one of the best ever. Give him a read and find out why for yourself.

Updates

2011-12-09T19:12:00.001-05:00

Here's a few things I haven't mentioned here recently. Why haven't I mentioned them, you may ask yourself? Well, I've been busy. Busy with the auction and the holidays, a promotion at the day job, deadlines with Cemetery Dance and FEARnet, and my grandfather died. Those of you on Facebook saw my post, but for those who didn't, here it is again:

My grandfather died this morning. The world lost a great person, one who made quiet contributions that have changed the way we live forever. At 16, he was a full professor at Ohio State and an adjunct at MIT. He held many patents and worked with the Department of Defense and many private engineering firms. He won many IEEE awards, many awards from Ohio State for his teaching and dedication to his students, and is a former president of IEEE. Without him, we wouldn't have microwaves, radios, computers, televisions, sound systems, and cameras like we do, and I'm sure that's what people will remember, but I'll remember something more. I'll remember the man who acted as my father when my own never did, the man who took me in when my mother abandoned me, the person who never judged me, although he had every right to, and the man who taught me how to work. He gave a lot to this world, but he gave me more than that, and more than I ever deserved. I will miss him always.

I don't know how well that captures how much I admired and respected him or how great a loss this is to me, but it's what I wrote when the feelings were strongest.

In other news, the auction for Sheldon Higdon ended. We more than made our goal (it actually eared about 5x what I thought it would. Sheldon's a great guy, and I'm glad everyone was able to come together to help him out. Here I need to thank those who did (sorry, this is a longish list):

Rio Youers, Chet Williamson, John Everson, Jack Ketchum, Brian Hodge, Mike Resnick, Benjamin Kane Etheridge, Kim Paffenroth, Brett Alexander Savory, Lawrence C. Connolly, Tom Monteleone, Maria Snyder, Rocky Wood, Shawn Riddle, Tim Waggoner, Laird Barron, Steve Rasnic Tem, Tim

Deal, Jonathan Maberry, Ronald Malfi, and David Day.

Thank you all, and thank you to everyone who donated and bid and everyone who spread the word.

And in more news,

Here are two new book reviews on FEARnet:

Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem

http://www.fearnet.com/news/reviews/b24689_Book_Review___Deadfall_Hotel__by_Steve_Rasnic_Tem.html?intcid=search_all_christopher-shearer

and

Kin by Kealan Patrick Burke

http://www.fearnet.com/news/reviews/b24776_Book_Review___lsquo_Kin__by_Kealan_Patrick_Burke.html?intcid=search_all_christopher-shearer

And in a final piece of news:

Big Pulp's Winter 2011 issue hit the newsstands this week. It contains my story, "Saturday Station," which I'll be reading this weekend in Big Pulp's Virtual Read (that's not the name, but it's something similar). That'll take place on Sunday evening from 7-9 online, and will be recorded for those people who want to listen to me rasp my way through a novelette in the future.

That's all the news for now.

Come back tomorrow when I should have a review of Daryl Gregory's Unpossible and Other Stories. I've made no secret that Daryl is one of my very favorite authors, and this collection has only strengthened that sentiment. A phenomenal, phenomenal book.

Ghostbusters

2011-12-04T16:21:00.001-05:00

Ghostbusters brings back a lot of memories. Though I hadn't watched the movie in probably 15 years, I found myself quoting each line. Growing up, my dad and brother and I watched the series (and the cartoon) every few months (along with the Indiana Jones movies and Star Wars). My brother and I had the toys, the action figures, the Ecto 1 car. We had halloween costumes that we wore all year round, and we talked about the ghosts we saw in our closet at night. Once we even trapped one (we thought) in the toy Ghostbusters' trap our dad got us for Christmas (it opened when you stepped on the pedal and had wheels). Steve carried it downstairs to the basement of our house in Lebanon and we put the ghost in our containment unit (the furnace).

Ghostbusters is one of the key ingredients of my childhood (others being Star Wars, Monstervision on TBS, Marvel comics, G.I. Joe, and my family). I've watched this film so many times it almost feels like a part of me. I knew every line, every scene. Everything.

It was nice to revisit it.

As for the movie, it's a classic. To me, Ghostbusters is the epitome of film from the 1980s. It had ghosts. It made me laugh. It had action, love, a story, science. It had everything, and my dad liked it. It was the perfect movie. Now, still perfect.

I think I need to pry my brother's nose from his law school studies and have a movie marathon.

Tim Waggoner's Murdering His Fans

2011-12-03T11:15:00.000-05:00

The winner of Tim Waggoner's donation to the auction for Sheldon Higdon is guaranteed to die a horrible death in his next novel. A neat idea, at least to me, but apparently I'm not the only one.

Ebay wrote an article about Tim's donation and the auction. Read it here:

http://ebay-stories.com/die-a-horrible-death-in-a-novel

And then check out the auction here:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/717shearer44/m.html?hash=item3cbefc4277&item=260902240887&pt=US_Fiction_Books&_trksid=p4340.l2562

There're just two days left to bid.

Donations are also welcome, just ask me where to send them.

This auction is to benefit author Sheldon Higdon, who earlier this year underwent two emergency spinal surgeries. The horror community has banded together to help Sheldon with his medical bills and to give him and his family the Christmas they deserve.

I'm Back!

2011-12-02T18:48:00.000-05:00

Thanks to a series of gentle nudges from Sheldon Higdon, Rocky Wood, and Lawrence Connolly, I've rejoined the HWA after three years away. Glad to be back.

A Christmas Carol

2011-11-28T22:15:00.000-05:00

Reading A Christmas Carol made me remember (Surprise! Surprise!) Christmases past. Now, I’m not going to claim that my Christmases were any more or less special or eventful than anyone else’s, but they were mine and I hold their memories closely. Christmas was always my favorite time of the year. My first memory is sitting in a playpen with my brother (a baby at the time, and I’m only a year older) watching the lights flash on our tree, while my dad watched Star Wars. This was in our house in Palmyra. My first house, the one where my family lived. When I was two, my parents divorced, and I moved with my mom and then with my dad (and then with my aunt, uncle, grandparents, other grandparents, foster family, other uncle, . . . ).

The story specifically brings back a Christmas when I must have been six or seven. Reading it, I see the house I lived in at the time in Lebanon, PA, with my dad, stepmother, and brother. It’s sometime before Christmas, as my stepmother’s stringing popcorn (which the dog’s eating). The lights are already on the tree, but not the ornaments. The radio is tuned to some Christmas station, and my dad’s watching A Christmas Carol (the George C. Scott one) and drinking what is probably a heavily alcoholic eggnog. My brother and I are singing along with the radio and putting things on the tree, which is on a riser in the front room of the house. We lived in that house for two years. That was the longest I spent in one place as a child.

My dad was always poor. We moved around a lot because he couldn’t pay the rent. Sometimes we lived in his van, until the bank took it, and then in his truck, until the bank took that too, or on relatives’ and friends’ couches or spare rooms. But dad always made Christmas special. You’d wake up, and he’d always manage to get you something, which was always just what you wanted. And he loved that time of year. He’d make a big deal out of everything, make it a production. And he’d smile and laugh in ways that he didn’t any other time of year. My mom never did that. Christmas to her was just another day, but one when she had to cook, which put her in a bad mood. I didn’t see her those Christmases. I discovered that later.

My dad was something special around Christmas time. It was like everything good that he was magnified somehow and came out for everyone to see. I miss that. I miss him, the man he was. When I was ten my dad went to prison, he wasn’t the same afterward. Drugs, which had always been a thing with him, took over his life. It’s hard for me to see him now, because it’s not really him anymore.

I was always the kid who woke up at 4 am and rushed downstairs. Or later, the teenager, who didn’t sleep and spent the night watching Christmas sci-fi on the Sci Fi Channel (yes, it was once spelled properly), my favorite being Santa Claus versus the Martians. But those Christmases weren’t the same as the ones I’d spent with my dad. Besides mom’s attitude, my brother never really cared about the holiday, which left me as the only one even slightly excited. When I moved in with my grandparents as a teenager, they traveled through November and December, so I was always alone on Christmas.

Wow, I miss my dad’s Christmases.

Then came 2007 and the illness. I was told shortly after Thanksgiving, that I most likely wouldn’t live till the end of the year. I did, but I was too tired and weak to really do anything for the holiday, no matter how much I wanted to. Now, it’ll be my fifth Christmas since then. I’m better, but I don’t know for how long. My diagnosis changes all the time. If I have what my uncles had, the average is 2-5 years. I’m going to beat that by a lot. My one uncle lived almost 40 years. Stephen Hawking’s lived a damn long time too, but I want my family at Christmas. I want just a taste of what I had when I was six or seven just one more time, but it never happens. My mom’s too busy. My brother just doesn’t want to be around, and dad’s not dad anymore. So I need to find a new way, a better way. And I try, but I still remember. And though I cry when I do, I also smile, because those are good memories. Those are the things that make a life worth living, and I’m glad I had them.

As for the story itself, it’s a classic for a reason (and for all the reasons I rambled about already). Dickens was a great writer, and his stature is earned. His prose is at times wordy, at times overly adjectival, at times he has too many exclamation points, but who cares? He shows humanity in this story, in every paragraph, every sentence, every word. It lasts because it shows the best of us and the worst, and shows that they can be and are in each of us. We choose, and we base our choices on our points of view. English teachers like to talk about a character changing, but Scrooge didn’t change, because who he was at the end is who he was at the beginning, but his point of view changed. That’s how it happens. That’s real. A Christmas Carol is real. It’s human, and that’s why it’s been read for the past 150 years and will be for centuries to come.

Auction for Sheldon Higdon

2011-11-26T07:15:00.000-05:00

Earlier this year horror author Sheldon Higdon underwent two back surgeries to repair a condition that had left him unable to walk or sit. Now the horror community has banded together to help him and his family out.

With donations from some of the biggest names in the industry, we've already doubled our goal. Now the last round of items is up on ebay, and this one's big, with some of horror's best and brightest (Tim Waggoner, Laird Barron, and Jonathan Maberry) auctioning off spots in future books.

Give it a look

here

and if that link doesn't work, copy and paste this:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/717shearer44/m.html?hash=item3cbefc4277&item=260902240887&pt=US_Fiction_Books&_trksid=p4340.l2562

The auction will run the next nine days, and if it continues at this pace, we may quadruple our goal by then.

Please take a look and help us support one of the true gentlemen of the genre.

Happy bidding!

Saturday Station in Big Pulp

2011-11-15T07:00:00.000-05:00

So the Winter 2011 issue of Big Pulp is almost here, and what's this? They've decided to advertise the issue by pre-releasing my sci-fi story, "Saturday Station," online. Click here to give it a read, but only if you hate corporations and greed and homophobia, and if you're into body-snatching, gun battles, trains, floating cities, and newspapers.

You've been warned.

Paranormal Activity

2011-11-13T15:32:00.002-05:00

Paranormal Activity worked for me overall. I enjoyed it, which is something I don’t often say with horror movies, at least current ones. I’d been told repeatedly by friends and my brother that I’d hate it. Steve, my brother, said that it was just like The Blair Witch Project, which I just didn’t get. I didn’t understand that hoopla surrounding it because it was, simply, a bad movie. But this was different. Paranormal Activity used the same presentation, the hand-held camera of people filming themselves, but the similarities ended there. Where Blair Witch was plodding, PA was tense. You got to know the characters, and their relationship was palpably real. They reacted as people would, which is always good because that makes it believable. And the scares built throughout, slowly getting worse, which created a nice sense of foreboding and increased the tension as the film went along. All in all, a nice piece of work.

But it had a drawback, and a big one. The ending. If the movie hadn’t been so well done before the last few seconds, I would have written it off as another bad modern horror film. It just didn’t fit. Yes, the story surrounded a haunting. Yes, it was pointed out that it was demonic, and that it surrounded the one character. And yes, she showed signs of abnormal behavior and forgetfulness, which hinted at possession, but the end didn’t work. The feel of the movie was one of slowly mounting tension and mystery. The ending was gore and a cheap shock. It was a let down.

Now how could it have been better? I have my ideas, and I know that if employed, my ending would have resulted in less success for the movie at the box office (because it’s not what America wants in their films), but a better overall film. America wants everything wrapped up neatly, happily preferably, but not always. The only ways to wrap PA up were either to have it end as it did or to have an exorcism. Of the two options, I believe the producers picked the right one, an exorcism would have made it too religious, something that the film seemed to avoid throughout. The ending I would have liked, however, would have just cut out that last scene. One where you heard the scream, the thud, and the silence, and then it was over. I think this would have fit the mystery and mood of the movie better, but would have left a lot of people feeling dissatisfied.

As I said, overall this was a movie I really enjoyed, but that ending. How stupid, trite, and out of place. This movie worked, and worked really well, and the next time I watch it, I’ll just press stop when I think it should have ended and save myself from the faux pas that nearly ruined what was otherwise a great modern horror film.

Grave's End

2011-11-09T21:53:00.000-05:00

This is the first book I’ve read in a long time that scared me. More than once, while reading, I found myself out of breath or afraid to be alone. I thought about it at night and in the car and in the shower. I thought about it a lot. Why? Because I believed it. Every single word. This wasn’t like The Amityville Horror that just screamed BULLSHIT! at you (exclamation point intentional). No. Mercado had nothing to gain by writing this, it wasn’t over the top. It was real. That’s all I can say. I truly believe this was real.

Why? Oh, now I’m going to spill the beans I refused to spill earlier in the semester. I live in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, which is a suburb of Harrisburg, nestled between the Susquehanna River and the Yellow Breeches Creek. More specifically, I live on Beacon Hill, which overlooks most of the town and the surrounding areas. I moved to this area with my family when I was four, shortly after my parents’ divorce (we moved from a farmhouse in Palmyra, where they, aptly for the last name, raised sheep). As we were moving in my mother says that I asked her, “Why are there so many Indians?” I don’t remember this, but she swears it.

Years later I learned that the town is built on a Susquehannoc Indian graveyard. Not the hill where I live, but the town. It has also been investigated repeatedly by ghost hunters, and a restaurant downtown is known for its strange occurrences (flying dishes, music, voices), and no one goes into the basement there. It just doesn’t feel right.

New Cumberland shows up in my fiction a lot as Maplewood (though sometimes Maplewood is Columbus, OH, too), and in Brian James Freeman’s, also a native of New Cumberland, as Black Hills, PA.

Over the years here, I’ve seen and heard strange things, been in places that just didn’t feel right, strange smells. Everything that Mercado talked about (well not the suffocating dreams), and that’s why I believed it, because it rang true to my experiences growing up in a “haunted” town.

But there’s more. There’s always more, isn’t there? And that’s in Columbus, OH, where I spent about six years of my life. My grandparents lived there in an old (1800s) house, built by Columbus’s first “hatter” next to what at that time was a zoo and is now a shopping mart. Their house was in Old Beechwold, a historic section of the city. To get there you have to pass through a stone gate and drive down a road tunneled by trees. It’s like entering another world. Now their house isn’t haunted, not all of it, but there’s one room that neither my brother nor I will enter (which has always annoyed my mother and uncles, but Grandma never seemed to mind). Grandma called it “Grandpa’s” room because it’s where she kept her grandfather’s bed, a giant thing that I needed a step stool to get into the few times I did sleep there.

That room never felt right, and I never wanted to enter it. The couple of times we took our dogs out there, they wouldn’t go in it either. One night, while sleeping in “Grandpa’s” bed, with my brother in a bed across the room, I awoke feeling watched. I looked around, and sitting on a chair facing me was a boy, maybe 13, dressed in depression-era clothes and wearing a page-boy cap. He smiled at me, and I covered myself with the blankets. He didn’t frighten me himself, but the experience did. I told my mom about it, and of course she didn’t believe me. I told Grandma, and she said it was her brother who’d died as a teenager in the ’30’s. She said he checked up on her every now and then, and he was nothing to be afraid of.

I never slept in that room again.

I used that experience and my grandparents’ house in a story I published in the literary journal Tarnhelm called “Gold Watch, Gold Chain,” which won a Penn State University short story award.

So, saying all of that, I’ll tell you that I do have an active imagination, and maybe I’ve dreamed up a lot of this stuff (but that doesn’t account for my Grandmother or Brian Freeman or the ghost hunters in New Cumberland), but basing my perception on my own experiences, I believed every single word Elaine Mercado wrote.

Everything that happened in the book was small. Everything that happened was something that could have been written off as something else if one really wanted to, and I think that’s what made it so believable. There were no red-eyed pigs staring in a second-story window. No, just noises and feeling and lights (and the dreams, which would have freaked me out). And it was understandable why she stayed, and her reactions and her girls’ reactions. Even after the “cleaning” when her oldest was angry. I understood it all, where it came from.

As I said earlier, this was the first book in a long time to scare me, and it’s because it came very close to home (both my homes), and I couldn’t ever write it off as fiction or put it into a tidy little box that I could objectify. No, this was real, all of it.

FEARnet Review and a Big Congrats

2011-11-07T20:09:00.000-05:00

First, here's a link to my FEARnet review of Rio Youers's Dark Dreams, Pale Horses, which is simply one of the best and most important collections I've ever had the privilege to read.

And second, a big congratulations to my good friend, Daryl Gregory, whose collection, Unpossible and Other Stories, has just been named one of Publishers Weekly's 5 best sci-fi books of 2011. Link here.

The Amityville Horror

2011-10-30T14:36:00.000-04:00

What’s with all the exclamation points? Seriously, find me a chapter that doesn’t end with one; a page; a paragraph. Jay Anson is in love with them, and his love of the overly excited statement made The Amityville Horror really hard to read for me. I found myself reciting sentences out loud to my brother, just so he could hear their inflections, which in most cases bristled with unrestrained excitement in places where the tension or energy wasn’t even that high. For example:

As Kathy looked at it now, her eyes widened in horror. She began to gag at the sour smell, but couldn’t retreat from the sight of the crucifix—now hanging upside down! (53)

Or:

George bent down. He heard slow canine snoring. It was only six in the evening and Harry was fast asleep! (87)

Besides Kathy’s superhuman ability to see her own eyes, there’s nothing in the first statement requiring an exclamation mark, and the second—well I guess I can’t argue, a sleeping dog is pretty damn exhilarating.

(Yay!)

(Maybe two: Yay!!)

and talk about the book. I’m a big fan of the movie. For my money, The Amityville Horror is one of the greatest horror movies ever made (please, the original), but the book . . . not so much. Besides that which I’m trying not to mention (again), it had too much. Especially sad since this is supposed to be based on a true story, but because of everything happening, I didn’t believe it. I watch the movie, and I think . . . yeah, that could happen. I read the book with its never ending parade of haunted house scares happening every minute of every day, and I think . . . not so much.

I came away saying to myself, George Lutz sunk all his money into a house he couldn’t afford, hadn’t paid back taxes for his business, and was stealing from his business’s saving. All this at a time when the “horror boom” was just starting to take off. I know what he did. He said to Kathy, “this is how we can make money. This place has a history, what with the last guy. I’m reading a book on hauntings and the devil. Lets make our own haunted house story.” And that’s what I think happened. Why? Because there was just too much. It wasn’t enough to have a demonic possession or a ghost or for the house to have been built on a graveyard or for there to have been an Indian asylum on the land or for the daughter to have an imaginary friend who seemed too real or for there to be ectoplasm or for the dog to act strangely or for there to be a hidden room or for people to behave differently in the house or for the priest to get sick and hear voices or for the phone not to work or for his wife to be touched or for her to levitate or for there to have been a mass murder on the property or for there to be a spooky well or for the last owners, besides murder victims, to have been strange or for there to be flies or for the plumbing to back up . . . I think you get it. It pulled out every stop, and that’s just too much, and unbelievable.

Add to that the (!) poorly written prose, and it just didn’t work for me. The movie: I’ll watch it every year. GREAT film. The book . . . well, I’d like to forget it.

The Lovely Bones

2011-10-25T19:15:00.000-04:00

Where to begin? I suppose I’ll start with a blanket statement. Did I like The Lovely Bones? Not really. Did I enjoy the story? Yes. Did I enjoy the writing? At times. And this is a strange reaction, because I should have liked the book more than I did. I’m a sucker for coming-of-age stories (and that’s what I think this was). I’m a sucker for character driven stories (no doubt that’s what this was). I love a sense of nostalgia in fiction (it was there), but it had its issues too. The biggest of those, for me, was the writing, which though at times beautiful, was inconsistent. There were too many similes that didn’t quite work, and the POV absolutely infuriated me. I didn’t mind it at first. Fine, she’s dead, she can see everyone and she can even tell what they’re thinking and feeling (this was a stretch for me, as I tend to think that not knowing is much more important than knowing), but when she started to know everyone’s past, and was able to experience that, it jumped the shark. POV is a key aspect of literature (a key aspect of anything really), and this was like putting a camera up—not even a person because she didn’t really have any of her own opinions on what others did, Susie just watched—and having it tell you every little thing, even what people hid. And that, I think, is what bothered me most.

Good stories, believable stories, are filled with believable people. But what do people do? People lie, they leave things out, they misdirect, they twist facts, and they’re sarcastic. Besides the mother, no one in this novel was “real.” And I will admit right now to having a soft spot for the mother, because she reminded me of my own (who, yes, did leave my family when I was four, but came back when my dad went to prison—I was ten at the time). Susie was a good character stretched out over the course of the book—which without the possession scene would have been mindless wandering—but taken chapter by chapter, she was weak and passive. Same with her father, whose heart attack saved him from being a bore. Ray was window dressing. Her sister wasn’t bad, because she didn’t talk, but she also played a minor role. Mom and bro—window dressing.

I enjoyed the flow of the narrative, going from one thing to another almost at random, and I liked the pace, which it had, something rare for novels of this type. There were genuinely touching moments, and at times I found myself caught up in the story—but those times were far too infrequent for me (but when they came, boy did they come. There were some powerful moments in this novel). Had the writing been more consistent, the characters a little more “real” and less passive, and the POV something other than, well I’ll call it what I think it was, a suspended, television inspired, camera, I would have loved this book. All the pieces were there, but they weren’t put together in a way that worked for me—at least not consistently.

Starve Better

2011-10-22T15:37:00.000-04:00

Let’s get one thing straight from the beginning, Nick Mamatas’s Starve Better is the kind of book that writers need to read. It cuts through all the crap and gives you the truth (usually in a humorous, yet direct way), and he doesn’t pull any punches. He lays it all out there. What makes a story good? What’s an effective ending? How do you make money? It’s all there, but don’t expect the usual crap you get from writer’s guides or from well-meaning but misinformed want-to-be writers at your writer’s group or workshop. No. Expect the truth, and though it may destroy your idea of what writing is, what writers do, it’s what you need to read if this is what you’re going to do. And if it turns you off. Well then maybe it’s time to face the fact that this just isn’t for you. The world is full of other professions, many much more important than writing—and better paying—and many more (such as lawyers) much less important—and MUCH better paying.

The first section in the book, “The Book of Lies,” concentrates on what makes a great short story (something Mamatas has mastered in his own writing, on top of his deserved reputation as one of the world’s finest editors of the form). But, as I said, don’t expect the crap you’re used to because this isn’t it. He doesn’t want “perfection,” and explains how that hurts a story. He doesn’t want mini-novels (don’t know how many times I’ve said that writing is writing, but novels and short stories are not the same thing, not even close). And he ends it with an essay, “Why Bother?” explaining why, in an age where very few people read the form and when you’ll make just this side of nothing from their sale, you should even bother writing them. Throughout are interesting anecdotes from his time as fiction editor for Clarkesworld and his teaching experiences, and always a deep love and appreciation for the form—done well.

He follows “The Book of Lies” with “The Book of Life,” a section on making a living as a writer. He sets aside the notion of overnight success and riches (because if that’s what you want, you might as well do something useless—like be a lawyer), and gives you the facts, the numbers. And the strategies to make some cash. Whether that’s selling non-fiction, writing for content mills (though he is not a fan of these), or writing term papers for lazy MBA’s or Elementary Ed. majors too stupid to identify a thesis statement, he gives you the ins and outs of queries and solicitations, the money you can expect to make, what not to do. Oh, what not to do. I have two big ones (and thankfully Mamatas agrees): work for free and self publish. Tell me why would you ever let someone else profit off of your work when you get nothing for it? If that story you wrote isn’t selling to a paying market, then guess what, it isn’t good enough to sell to a paying market. Write another one, and make it better. That’s what writers do, they don’t send out a package or an email to a vanity outfit like XLibris or Publish America or one of the hundreds of e-zines on the net who don’t pay (or worse yet make you pay). No one you want reading your work will see it on that free-zine (if anyone reads it at all) or in the “Local” section at B&N or Books a Million (assuming they’d even carry it—which most likely they won’t), and you will have allowed some criminal to make a buck off of you. If slavery’s your choice of profession, I can’t stop you. But come on people, think about what you’re doing.

He finishes the book with an appendix made up of essays ranging from how to be a great writer (not the advice you’re used to, but in my assessment the most honest essay written on the subject I’ve ever read), getting the most out of an MFA, and genre fiction in the academy (a hot button issue for me).

(For my friends from Seton Hill reading this, our program is discussed and praised, and Mike Arnzen is quoted heavily)

Throughout, Mamatas is funny, sarcastic, pithy, prone to wonderful and entertaining asides, and honest. Many of the essays bristle with Marxist undertones and class is a big issue, especially in the second section and appendix, which may turn some people off, but it IS a big issue in America (and, since I’ve never hidden the fact that I am a communist myself, it only added to my enjoyment), and it IS a big issue for writers who by and large scrape the barrel with the lower class or sit just north of the middle class line. And for genre fiction’s role in the academy (I’m sure you can figure this one out, but if not, Mamatas explains it beautifully).

While certainly not the book I’d give to a beginning writer or a student just learning their craft, feeling their way around, it’s a book I think all writers—all serious writers—should read, whether they agree or not (I know for a fact from recent talks that both Mike Resnick and David Hartwell—and if you’re a writer and don’t know who these two are then you should be taken out back and beaten with a two-by-four—disagree completely with Mamatas’s strategy for building a reputation). And you know what? You don’t have to agree. Like any other book on the subject, Mamatas’s isn’t the be-all and end-all. It isn’t a “sermon from the mount.” But what it is, is an honest assessment of the way he sees it, without the crap, the “you can do it” patronization, without the all inclusive rhetoric that allows the talentless and (worse) motivation-less wannabes out there (and the lawyers), with ten pages of a “novel” sitting on their desktops, to call themselves writers (or more pretentiously, artists). It’s that book. Take it or leave it, but if you want the truth, give it a read.

The Others

2011-10-18T18:59:00.000-04:00

This may come as a shock to some of you, but others, I think, will just say, “Yeah. Saw that coming.” I’m not a big horror movie fan. Sure, I’ve seen many of the classics. I routinely tune in to AMC during October, and when I have a night where I feel like doing nothing, I’ll watch something on FEARnet (usually the movie that has the most outlandish blurb. I’m going for the cheese factor). But by and large, I’m not much of a fan. Now the question I have to pose to myself is why? I love horror. I love well written, character driven horror. I love subtlety. Wait—that may be it. How many horror movies have you seen, especially in the last 30 years that have any degree of subtlety? How many have real characters and not just cardboard stereotypes? How many? I bet you can count them on one, maybe two hands (definitely won’t need your toes for this exercise). I know I can. Lets see: The Omen (original, obviously), Poltergeist, A Nightmare on Elm Street (the first), Friday the Thirteenth (the first), Rob Zombie’s Halloween (yeah, go ahead, argue with those last three), the first Saw (now really argue with me about subtlety), The Fog (original), and not too many more.

So if I’m not looking for gore or shock or “terror,” then why do I like horror? Because horror is more than that. As Mary SanGiovanni said in her essay, “Dark and Story Nights,” “[H]orror is not a genre so much as a pervasive emotion,” and that’s what I love. Horror is the only medium that looks at what (I imagine for all of us, but at least) for me is a pervasive feeling. That anxiety, fear, insecurity, sadness, regret, failure, the what ifs, the worst-case scenarios. This is what makes Gary Braunbeck’s writing so powerful. And Brian James Freeman’s. And Peter Straub’s. And . . .

So about now, or maybe a few sentences back, I’m sure you asked yourself, “What does this have to do with The Others?” I’ll tell you. It has to do with The Others because it’s one I left off my list of horror movies I like. It is subtle. It is character driven. Nicole Kidman’s character is amazingly deep. She loves her children, but in a fanatical, overprotective way that poses a threat to them. She lives in a house that has no power. Why? Because it went off and on during the War so much that she just chose to keep it off. She is abusive to her children, but because she believes that she’s protecting them (abusive to her housekeepers to protect her children as well). That’s real. No one—I repeat, NO ONE—ever does anything because they want to be evil. They do evil in the name of doing good. That’s her.

It’s great how the darkness, largeness, emptiness, of the house is enough to make you uncomfortable (and then there’s the never-ending fog). Add to that the seemingly throwaway lines of the housekeeper, the ones that don’t fit the conversation quite right, and you’re sure something’s off, which sets you on edge (this is the feeling I find in good horror—something’s wrong. What? How? You don’t know, but it’s unmistakable that something’s not right.). It’s even subtle when the graves are shown. The first time they’re covered by leaves. The second they’re at a distance. Things are revealed (or uncovered slowly). The husband makes an unlikely and strange return and then leaves, only intensifying the isolation, the estrangement, of the family. It builds and builds until everything is revealed.

The children wander the night, the fog. Mom finds a photograph of the housekeepers, dead (this was a common practice in the 1800s—seriously, look it up). A child reads the grave. The other doesn’t believe. They run. The séance. It’s all beautiful, and beautifully done. Even the score (which is amazing) fits the mood perfectly. So many horror scores are full of bombastic lows or screechily pointed highs. Dissonance upon dissonance. This isn’t. It’s dynamic. It’s right, like everything else (well, I do have to admit here that the “twist” may be a little predictable, but who cares? It’s a minor flaw to a film so well executed).

So am I a fan of the average horror movie? No, but they’re good for a laugh. But am I a fan of horror? No doubt. And when I find what I love about horror fiction in a film (as rare as that is), I love it too, and I watch and watch and watch and hope for another with those qualities, that skill, because I know it’ll come. I just may have to wait for a while.

The Shining

2011-10-14T16:42:00.000-04:00

It was 2005, what time of year I couldn’t say for sure, but probably spring—that seems to fit my memory—when I first read The Shining. It was my fourth King book. I’d started with Bag of Bones and then gone back to the beginning, reading first Carrie and then ’Salem’s Lot. This was shortly after I’d discovered reading (though I’d always written) and had decided to dedicate myself to writing (see my Ghost Story post for that story). I’d also about that time kicked a pretty nifty drug habit that had left me functional (most people I doubt even knew the severity of it), but also sick all the time and weighing roughly 120 lbs (I’m 6-feet tall to give you a picture of what that looked like). And when I read The Shining, I thought it was an amazing portrayal of withdrawal—that ever-pleasant bag of goodies. Now I’m not saying that I partied with a slew of ghosts who couldn’t keep their clothes on at a fancy hotel, but the actions, the longings, they were all there. And the depression, which I’ve heard is fairly common, that hit me like a ton of bricks (full disclosure here. My father has clinical depression, which means besides the usual down-in-the-dumps symptoms, the pain, the . . . well you know depression, he also sees and hears things when he’s bad). I have a genetic predisposition to depression, and withdrawal was like opening a door to it and saying, “Come on in!” Now did I hallucinate like my dad (I’ll never forget the first time I realized something wasn’t right with him. I went downstairs in the middle of the night—dad rarely sleeps—and he was sitting in front of the TV in his underwear. The TV was showing snow. The sound was off, and he was talking to it. And he was crying. He had his civil war era pistol in his hand, and he kept saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” over and over again to the set.)? Maybe. I heard things. Nasty things. I saw shadows and other stuff out of the corner of my eye, but did I ever think they were real? No. I wrote them off to being sick, sweaty, cold, and downright miserable with the worst withdrawal of my life (I stopped cold turkey without any medication or supervision—not the wisest way to do it, but I was determined). But all of that was fresh in my memory when I read The Shining, and I knew that King knew what I’d been through, that he’d been through it himself. That that’s what the book was about, and I’ve told people for years that that’s what The Shining’s about, but this read my opinion changed.

Withdrawal and depression play a role in the story, a motivating role, but they are far from the center of it. The Shining’s about family. It’s about sacrifice and struggles, and the main character, much to my surprise this time around, is not Jack, but is instead Danny (guess a sequel makes a little more sense to me now—though I still don’t like the idea). But I think my first reading illustrates what makes King special. He takes the time to really explore the people he’s writing about in a way that no one else I’ve read does. Sure, other writers have flashbacks or get you into a character, but no one does it like King. He really puts you in them. He gives you their memories, their feelings, their hopes, everything. At his best, such as in The Shining, this is amazing. At his worst it comes off as wordy and off topic. Maybe it’s a bit of both, but I like it either way. I’d honestly forgotten how much of the book is dedicated to letting you know the characters. Very little happens overtly—King is a master of subtlety when he wants to be, and he is in the first half of this novel—but a lot is going on. You know everyone. You inhabit them. You are them. There are hints of what’s to come, but you don’t know it at the time. I think if this were submitted today publishers would want more action in the early going, but screw them. It’s perfect the way it is. And someone would undoubtedly complain about the head-hopping, which is rampant, but you want to know what the other person’s thinking. And King gives it to you. You want to know, and it’s there, right away. Is that so wrong? Maybe it would have been better for him to wait until he started another chapter to do it instead of flipping back and forth (he has that patience now), but he was young, and even though it’s technically a flaw, it works. He gets away with it. And maybe it’s even a strength in this novel because the constant flipping gives it an almost schizophrenic feel that only pulls you into the insanity of the situation (of Jack). Maybe if he’d waited—if he’d written it technically better—it wouldn’t have worked as well. Maybe.

At any rate, the novel took on a whole new meaning to me this time. It touched me in new ways, and though I still remember my first read—still felt some of the same things—I could see how much my mindset at the time had altered the text for me. It was neat to read it again, something I’m sure I’ll do at least once more in my life. King and Bradbury (and maybe throw in Kealan Patrick Burke as well) are masters of the nostalgic feeling. Everything by them feels like a memory, something you’re happy to see again, to relive, no matter how horrifying it may be. And The Shining is nostalgic for me, always will be. And I’ll be happy to relive it again on my next read.

A Manifesto for the Acceptance of Genre Literature in my Response to Alexander Nazaryan

2011-10-03T23:04:00.000-04:00

MONDAY, OCT 3, 2011 12:04 PM CDTWhy American novelists don't deserve the Nobel PrizeAn American hasn't won in 20 years. The Academy finds our writers insular and self-involved -- and they're right

BY ALEXANDER NAZARYAN

TOPICS:FICTION

America wants a Nobel Prize in literature. America demands it! America doesn’t understand why those superannuated Swedes haven’t given one to an American since Toni Morrison in 1993. America wonders what they’re waiting for with Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon. America wonders how you say “clueless” in Swedish.

Okay, enough. But the literature Nobel will be announced this Thursday and if an American doesn’t win yet again, there will be the usual entitled whining — the sound of which has been especially piercing since 2008, when Nobel Academy permanent secretary Horace Engdahl deemed American fiction “too isolated, too insular” and declared Europe “the centre of the literary world.”

Boy, were we upset. Over at Slate, Adam Kirsch penned a scathing essay declaring that “the Nobel committee has no clue about American literature,” arguing that Philip Roth should have won the prize. New Yorker editor David Remnick said, “You would think that the permanent secretary of an academy that pretends to wisdom but has historically overlooked Proust, Joyce and Nabokov, to name just a few non-Nobelists, would spare us the categorical lecture.” He added John Updike (then living) and Don DeLillo to the mix of worthy laureates.

It’s true that the Academy, like any body of judges, has made some ill-informed decisions. And they’ve not done themselves any favors with some George W. Bush-era selections that plainly had more to do with politics than literature.

In 2005, British playwright Harold Pinter fulminated during his Nobel lecture about “the crimes of the United States” with all the embarrassing authority of a college freshman who just discovered Howard Zinn. In 2007, the prize was given to South African novelist Doris Lessing, who called 9/11 “neither as terrible nor extraordinary as [Americans] think.”

That only fed the vitriol directed at Stockholm, obscuring a valid point about American letters: we’ve become an Oldsmobile in a world yearning for a Prius. Our paint is flaking. Nobody wants our clunkers.

Stockholm has been trying to tell us this for a long while, and we would do well to listen. Between 1950 and 1959, every one of the 10 Nobel winners was a European male. Between 2000 and 2009, three women won the prize, as well as five non-Europeans. They have given it to Caribbean poets and Chinese absurdists. An American-born male hasn’t won since John Steinbeck in 1962. The last white American male to win the prize was Joseph Brodsky in 1987 — and though he wrote in English, his poetic training and intellectual sensibility are purely those of the Soviet émigré he was. Saul Bellow was born in Canada.

And yet here are the American who could win it this year, according to online oddsmakers Ladbrokes (in order order of decreasing likelihood): Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, Joyce Carol Oates and Don DeLillo. Ladbrokes suggests they will most likely lose to front-runner Adonis, the Syrian poet who has the favorable breeze of the Arab Spring behind him. Swedish author Tomas Transtromer follows at 6-1, with Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami third, at 8-1.

But if we don’t win yet again, we are at fault. America needs an Obama des letters, a writer for the 21st century, not the 20th — or even the 19th. One who is not stuck in the Cold War or the gun-slinging West or the bygone Jewish precincts of Newark — or mired in the claustrophobia of familial dramas. What relevance does our solipsism have to a reader in Bombay? For that matter, what relevance does it have in Brooklyn?

The critical establishment was split on the award to Toni Morrison, but the Nobel Academy knew precisely what it was doing when it cited her “visionary force, [which] gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.” You struggle through “Beloved,” but you reach an understanding you didn’t have before. Can you honestly say that about Oates’ “We Were the Mulvaneys”?

Of the Americans thought to be on the long-list, only Pynchon has written a big novel of big ideas — but it’s been 38 years since “Gravity’s Rainbow,” and his career since then has been a chiaroscuro patchwork of brilliance (“Mason & Dixon”) and frustrating arcana (“Against The Day”).

Four years after Morrison won the Nobel, David Foster Wallace predicted the current rut in which our literature finds itself in a New York Observer evisceration of John Updike’s “Toward the End of Time.” Though he took particular issue with Updike’s autumnal output, Wallace parceled blame to all of the Great Male Narcissists, with their hermetic concerns and insular little fictions. The following is Wallace’s estimation of Updike, but it could just as easily be said about anyone else in the postwar American pantheon: “The very world around them, as beautifully as they see and describe it, seems to exist for them only insofar as it evokes impressions and associations and emotions inside the self.”

Our great writers choose this self-enforced isolation. Worse yet, they have inculcated younger generations of American novelists with the write-what-you-know mantra through their direct and indirect influence on creative programs. Go small, writing students are urged, and stay interior. Avoid inhabiting the lives of those unlike you — never dream of doing what William Styron did in “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” putting himself inside the impregnable skin of a Southern slave. Avoid, too, making the kinds of vatic pronouncements about Truth and Beauty that enticed all those 19th-century blowhards.

As Bret Anthony Johnson, the director of the creative writing program at Harvard, noted in a recent Atlantic essay, our focus on the self will be our literary downfall, depriving literature of the oxygen on which it thrives: “Fiction brings with it an obligation to rise past the base level, to transcend the limitations of fact and history, and proceed skyward.” This sentiment is a sibling to Wallace’s anger — and both have a predecessor in T.S. Eliot’s 1919 essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” where he called art “a continual extinction of personality.”

The rising generation of writers behind Oates, Roth and DeLillo are dominated by Great Male Narcissists — even the writers who aren’t male (or white). Jhumpa Lahiri is a Great Male Narcissist whose characters tend to be upper-middle-class Indian-Americans living in the comfortable precincts of Boston or New York. Swap the identity to Chinese-American, move the story a couple of generations back on the immigrant’s well-trod saga, and you have Amy Tan. Colson Whitehead started promisingly with “The Intuitionist” and “John Henry Days” but his last novel, “Sag Harbor,” was little more than the bourgeoisie life made gently problematic by the issue of race. Jonathan Safran Foer is a narcissist disguised as a humanist. To his credit, Jonathan Franzen doesn’t even pretend.

That makes for a small literature, indeed. The following are words from citations from recent winners and runners-up of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, inarguably our most prominent commendation for a novelist: tender, warmth, heartbreaking, celebration, polished and sensuous. It’s all small-bore stuff, lack of imagination disguised as artistic humility.

Just look back to 2008, when the slight “Olive Kitteridge” won the Pulitzer, but the Irish-Turkish writer Joseph O’Neill told the story of America in “Netherland” with far more eloquence, insight and humor than an American writer had in more than a decade.

That’s not say our literature is barren. Dave Eggers has written a novel about the Lost Boys of Sudan, “What is the What,” and a fine “nonfiction novel” about Hurricane Katrina, “Zeitoun.” Best of all, his 826 reading centers have been a wholly selfless bid to get poor children reading and writing in eight cities. Then there is Aleksandar Hemon, son of Chicago and Sarajevo, who writes the kind of fiction that still seeks to span worlds. Johnston quotes him in The Atlantic: “I reserve the right to get engaged with any aspect of human experience, and so that means that I can — indeed I must — go beyond my experience to engage. That’s non-negotiable.”

Maybe it’s the same story as in politics and industry: America, once great, has been laid low. The difference is that great art needs no tariffs, no financial stimuli, no elections or military campaigns. It only requires courage — though a courage of a special kind — to see beyond oneself, to speak across both space and time via what Ralph Ellison once called “the lower frequencies.”

Indeed, compare the Pulitzer-winning descriptions with these words pulled from the citations of recent Nobel Prize winners: Revolt, visionary, clash, oppression, subjugating, outsider, barbaric, suppressed. And lastly, the one word that seems most elusive to our writers today, so much so that I fear we’ve become afraid of it: universal.

Alexander Nazaryan, a member of the editorial board of the N.Y. Daily News, has written about culture for The New York Times, The New Republic and the Village Voice, among other publications.

Alexander Nazaryan is a writer and teacher living in Brooklyn. He is writing a novel about Russian immigrants in New York. More Alexander Nazaryan

My Response

I think this is true--for the most part--but what is left out is that Nazaryan is only discussing American "literary" fiction, which is a genre based around the "epiphany." Genre fiction (the other 80% of a book store's Fiction section) is completely ignored, and that's where you find what he claims is lacking in our literature. Not in everything, of course--but in the best of it.

If we take a wider view and look at everything America is producing, I see no difference between the science fiction of Ray Bradbury and the surrealism of Hakuri Murakami, who our odds makers put in contention for this award. Or Stephen King for that matter (especially his post 1998 novels and stories), and let's not forget Joe R. Lansdale, who won the Italian Grinzane Cavour Prize (won by many a Nobel Laureate in the past), but is completely ignored by the literary establishment of his own country. Or T.C. Boyle, who is American and original and daring.

The problem is that the American academy has eschewed writers of great worth simply because they are popular or--in Boyle's case--because they admit to writing for an audience, which for some reason is frowned upon. It's snobbery, bigotry, and pretentiousness that has "killed" American letters, not the literature itself. There are good things out there, but they are ignored by us, because we're taught in school that they are not worth our time, simply because they don't strive for "art" and instead strive for what they are, "literature" and "entertainment” (is there any statement more pretentious than someone saying, “I’m making art”? “Art” is decided by time, not intention, and not the critical views of its time. “Art” is what lasts. Remember, literary types, Shakespeare was a hack who wrote for the masses, as was Dickens. Emily Dickinson didn’t have enough talent to be published more than once in an amateur magazine. Poe wasn’t worth our attention. Melville ruined his career with a POS book called Moby Dick. We don’t know what will become “art,” and it’s ludicrous that we claim to know what’s great and what isn’t. We, as an American literary culture, spend too much time speculating about what’s “art,” when we should be reading what we like, and what we, individually, think is good. What is “art” will be told in the decades and centuries to come. It’s a waste of our time and effort, and damaging to our culture and aesthetics, to try to determine it now.) This attitude has also turned away readers, especially kids who want to read something "fun" not something "serious," but I'll tell you something that the Ivy Towers haven't noticed, there's a lot of "seriousness" and "depth" and "insight" in those "fun" stories and novels. But they've never given them the chance to know that.

So does America deserve a Nobel? Yes, but does it deserve a Nobel for what it recognizes as worthy? No. We need to get our heads out of our asses and look at what's really there, not parrot the pretentious prattling of our critics and professors, and then we'll see the goldmine we actually have in writers like Boyle and Bradbury, King and Straub and Martin and Simmons and Haldeman, and Ellison (if there's an American author who truly defines America without being too insular, it is Harlan Ellison), and of course Lansdale.

Will this happen? Sadly, without major changes in the attitudes of our universities and school districts, no. But that doesn't mean I can't say this, and maybe get a few people to look at things differently, and maybe that'll help. Maybe they'll change a few more minds, and eventually, our great authors will get the respect they deserve.

Cold Hand in Mine

2011-10-02T10:47:00.002-04:00

“In the end it is the mystery that lasts and not the explanation.” (Sacheverell Sitwell from “For Want of the Golden City”)

Trying to explain a Robert Aickman story may be pointless. On one level they are “about” something, but on another level each is “about” something else. And sometimes the stories contain dozens of levels. And sometimes the reader isn’t sure what any of the “abouts” are exactly anyway, but yet they’re moved just the same.

Robert Aickman is unique in all of literature, an enigmatic figure noted for not only his unwillingness to compromise his particular vision but also a surly temper and a standoffishness that caused many to label him in very unflattering ways (though Ramsey Campbell disputes this in his book Ramsey Campbell, Probably, claiming that Robert Aickman was none of these, and in fact a kind, decent, and caring man), who wrote equally if not more enigmatic stories, which he labeled “Strange Stories.” And the title’s fitting because that’s what they are. His stories aren’t literary—they contain too many genre elements for that label, but they aren’t genre either, as they are based around the “epiphany” moment so commonly used in “literary” fiction (itself a genre—though the pretentious reading this will surely disagree).

His most famous collection is Cold Hand in Mine (1975). I venture a guess that this is because it contains his most anthologized and easily accessible story, “Pages from a Young Girl’s Journal,” but that’s merely speculation. Like all of his collections, the sense of place and setting, setting as a character is unmatched by any before or since, as is the sense of “strangeness,” that feeling that something’s not quite right, whether what that something is, is ever known or not.

Aickman’s stories work on feeling and in ways that are hard, if not impossible, to explain. His characterization at times is cardboard, at others brilliant. His descriptions and prose style can at times be monotonous and long-winded, and at others beautifully concise and evocative, and his plots are—most times—non-existent, or very, very subtle—as are his scares (subtle).

As with each of his collections, the reader comes away overwhelmed by emotion, but not sure why, and not sure how. The stories linger long after reading, both because of the intensity in which one feels them, but also because of the confusion one feels when trying to understand why they feel the way they do.

Stories in this collection include:

“The Swords,” maybe about sexual insecurity, but involving magic and a woman who lets men pierce her each night with swords, though she does not bleed, feel pain, or die (though she’s a side character). The main character is a bookish boy, sexually inexperienced, who may have set up an evening with her via prostitution, but one is never truly sure. At any rate it all goes wrong, but in a way that is both supremely subtle and unexpected.

“The Real Road to the Church,” a woman moves into a house on an island on a road used to carry the dead to the church. Her house is a place where they always stopped (according to the local stories), but the haunting she begins to feel is her own, and has noting—or maybe everything—to do with her new home.

“Niemandswasser,” a suicidal prince, morning the loss of his wife, moves to a home by a lake, discovers that the middle of it is not claimed as his or any of the neighboring countries territory. He sails out there, and meets something he’d never imagined.

“Pages from a Young Girl’s Journal,” the most anthologized and accessible of Aickman’s stories. The tale of a young girl’s transformation from gypsy to vampire. Very well done.

“The Hospice,” a man’s car breaks down and he spends the night at the titular hospice, where an overly friendly owner tries to help, but this, as with most of Aickman’s plot creating characters, is strange, not right, and possible dangerous. His final solution, the owner sends the man away in a hearse (alive or dead is up to the reader).

“The Same Dog,” a school teacher runs across a strangely acting dog while passing a haunted house. It stares at her, doesn’t bark. Doesn’t approach the fence. The next day she dies. No one will tell the children why. There is speculation. The teacher’s best friend sees the same dog in her yard.

“Meeting Mr. Millar,” the story of a young pornographer who moves into an apartment and begins an awkward affair with a married neighbor, and the enigmatic Mr. Millar, who wanders in and out of others apartments as he chooses, and may be a murderer. The story follows the relationships of these three until the concerns and desires for family become everything for each (excluding Mr. Millar).

And “The Clock Watcher,” where an unhappy couple move in together. She brings many clocks and a strange man dressed in clocks comes by every so often. One day the clocks and the woman disappear. Why?

As I stated earlier, explanation and my attempted synopses, is pointless and captures so little of the stories that it’s laughable. If you’re a fan of Laird Barron or Thomas Ligotti, give Aickman a try. While they aren’t like him (arguably, are they “like” anyone?), they’re the closest you’re going to find. If you like stories that make you think, make you feel, and will unsettle you for months to come, you won’t find anyone better than Aickman.

Pump Six and Other Stories

2011-10-01T00:22:00.000-04:00

Paolo Bacigalupi is one of sci-fi’s up-and-comers, or possibly now simply one of its brightest stars, having won the Hugo, Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, John W. Campbell, Compton Crook, and the Locus Award (and if you don’t know what those are, wikipedia’s a click away, look them up, you’ll find a lot of great books there—shitty books don’t typically win awards). His Pump Six collection contains ten stories, two set in the world of his novel The Windup Girl, and one original to the collection.

His style is straightforward, even simple at times, but brilliant at others. The technical aspect was inconsistent throughout the collection—most likely a side effect of culling stories from as far back as 1999, but it’s good too. It’s interesting. It lets you see him develop into the writer he is now. And, reading it, it is obvious that the writing in the most recent story is clearly leaner, more self assured, and stronger than the earliest—what every writer would hope for.

Bacigalupi, though maybe not a virtuoso wordsmith like T.C. Boyle or—in his genre—Joe Haldeman or Harlan Ellison or James Morrow, is one of the finest world builders I’ve read. And, aside from Philip K. Dick, the greatest “idea” man I’ve read. He builds worlds with just enough info to put you there, enough to know exactly where you are and exactly what’s happening and has happened, but without making the world the focus of the story. Much too often sci-fi writers spend far too much time on what has been in the world, what created it, what it is, instead of focusing on the story, which makes for long-winded, dreary fictions of other worlds with no characters and stick-thin plots. Bacigalupi doesn’t do this. His world-building is second to only China Mieville amongst those I’ve read (and I will admit here that sometimes China tends to under explain—but his worlds are more diverse and complex than Bacigalupi’s). Paolo keeps the focus where it belongs—the characters and the plot—but, man, are his worlds cool too.

As for the ideas. Wow! Post apocalyptic worlds, but not what you’re used to. Worlds where the apocalypse was caused by us, by greed, by corporations, by the government. Worlds where corrupt officials decide who should get water. Worlds where cities are built on the bones of living creatures. Worlds where corporations create mass starvations to drive-up prices and demand and increase their profit margins. Worlds where television, entertainment, and novelty are the only currency, and worlds where living forever means never having children.

“Pocketful of Dharma” seems like a typical thriller, though set in a strange and unique world, until you discover that a man’s soul (an important man’s, a religious man’s, a Godly man’s soul) is held on a computer disk.

“The Fluted Girl” pits fame against life and freedom in a world—much like ours—where fame is the driving force of so many (precisely the reason I abhor reality TV. If all you want is fame then make a sex tape. It’s worked for Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian and requires little effort, which seems to be the amount that fame whores want to put in anyway. Great people do great things because they want to do great things, because they’re driven to do great things, not because they want fame or recognition or money. Oh! One of my pet peeves with society.).

In “The People of Sand and Slag,” a group of soldiers find the world’s last dog, but science has taken away their humanity and in an effort to create better soldiers and longer lives, destroyed all life on Earth, except this one, sickly beast.

“The Pasho” shows how when one sets out to do something with their life, leaves home, takes a chance, they are never truly able to go back to what they were, but they also never truly become what they set out to be.

In “Pop Squad” a man whose job it is to kill the children of illegal breeders (and take the offenders into custody), suddenly discovers that maybe life—real life—is worth more than living forever.

And in “Pump Six,” easily the best written story of the collection (though not my favorite. That would be “The Fluted Girl”), a sewer repair man living in a future New York, surrounded by sub-human beings who procreate constantly, ventures to Columbia to try to find an engineer, but there are none. There’s no use for them. And the library’s unused and empty. Students are simply reflections of the sub-humans on the streets, mindlessly fornicating on the quad. He takes a book, a pile of books, and he reads.

Though not my favorite of the “new” sci-fi writers—I’d put Bacigalupi behind Daryl Gregory—he is definitely one I will read again, and eagerly. Bacigalupi’s fiction earns him his reputation, his fame (Oh, that again), and his accolades. Read it, and think—all his futures are very real, very possible—and feel. Because that’s what he makes you do, like the best always have.

Ghost Story

2011-09-28T22:59:00.000-04:00

“What was the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

“I won’t tell you that, but I’ll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me . . . the most dreadful thing . . .” (Ghost Story, 1)

It was hard for me to bite my tongue a few weeks ago when my professor, Scott Johnson, asked for some examples of great opening lines. I rattled off a few by Norm Partridge, Ray Carver, T.C. Boyle, Harlan Ellison, but none of them were my favorite. These lines, the opening to Ghost Story, are my favorite in all of literature. They evoke so much in so few words. They create a mood, a feeling, that is at once powerful and subtle. They provoke questions, spark mystery. They do it all.

I’ve long called Ghost Story my second favorite novel (eclipsed only by A Game of Thrones), but this novel means more to me than the one I give the title of “favorite” because Ghost Story is the novel that made me a writer.

When I first read it, I was living in Columbus, Ohio, and working as a musician. I’d recently grown bored with my place in life, and I was restless, looking for something new. I’d written a good bit, even been published, but I rarely submitted, less often edited, and I considered writing to be something I did for myself and by myself that no one needed or really wanted to see. You see, at that time I wasn’t a reader.

I’d grown up very latchkey. By the time I entered high school, I’d lived in close to 40 different places, been raised by parents, aunts, uncles, friends of any of these, cousins, the head of a children’s shelter. Some of them read, but I was never with anyone long enough to know it. And in school we were only assigned “classics,” which, by and large, I found boring and stale.

Though I wrote, and I did—I wrote often, filling notebooks—I’d never thought of reading, much less reading fiction as something people did or as something that people would actually want to do. Sure I read occasionally. I’d drive over to the Media Play on Morse Road by the Guitar Center and pick up biographies and religious books and philosophy on the rare occasion that I longed for a book, but I didn’t read fiction. That was about to change.

My grandparents lived in Columbus, and those who know me have probably heard me tell about how grandma and I would spend hours at a time making up stories when I was a child. I tell them often because they’re my favorite memories. When I moved there, I got to know her better than I ever had, and just as she’d been the one to awaken my love of storytelling when I was younger (she was an award-winning author and professional storyteller and librarian) with the words, “Then what happened?,” she was the one who started me reading. She encouraged me to pick up the books in her three home libraries, even showed me her secret stash of horror, mystery, and sci-fi (she kept those books behind the more “proper” literature. Grandma was a very proper woman).

It was winter, and after a snow, the heat went out where I was living. And it stayed out. Days. Everything was freezing. I shut off the water and turned on the faucets in an attempt to keep the pipes from bursting. I spent nights at friends’ houses, with coworkers. One of these friends, Sylvia Weed, a friend of my grandparents and former German professor at Ohio State, took me to the Worthington library at my grandmother’s urging. She thought I needed to find something new, something more modern than the books she had.

Well, I didn’t know my way around a library at the time, so I wandered. As I said, I’d primarily read nonfiction up till this point, and that’s what I wanted to find, but I couldn’t (and silly me, I never thought to ask) (turned out that the non-fiction was in the library’s basement—didn’t make it down there that visit). Walking the stacks, I found the fiction section, and two books, Bag of Bones by Stephen King and Ghost Story by Peter Straub. The things I wrote always tended to be horror (and see my post about the difference between horror and terror to know what I mean by that term), so I thought why not? Why not give them a try? I’d heard of King (who hadn’t), and Ghost Story just leapt out at me (and here I will admit to having read Poe and Faulkner horror stories in school—though without much fondness for either—and Interview with the Vampire, which I liked quite a bit, but that was the extent of my horror reading at the time).

I took them back to the Weed’s house, and over the next few nights (the heat ended up being out for two weeks), I devoured both. Bag of Bones made me love horror, but Ghost Story blew my mind. It had a musicality to it and a structure that made me think, kept me on edge. The characters were real, not like the people in Poe. These were real people (King too, but it was Straub that really hit me with it), and these were the kinds of stories I was writing (Poe, Faulkner, and Rice weren’t. These were different.), devoting almost every morning and evening to, and these people were doing it, and people read it, and people—people like me—wanted to read it. All of these things came together that hadn’t before. That’s when I decided to be a writer. That’s when I discovered that something called “writer” existed, that a person could be a writer, and that what I did, what I was, wasn’t as useless and pointless as I’d once thought.

I went into reading Ghost Story again with these memories, and I was not disappointed. The characters and the structure of the story, the setting, the language, all of it is mind-alteringly great. But with experience and time came new insights too. This time I questioned Eva Galli’s motivation. Why did she want to hurt them? Why did she want to make them like her? Why were they special? Why did she wait all those years to get them? Why did she plan (and I think the text makes it clear that she planned for Don to join them) Don to be part of the “Chowder Society”? As great as the story is, these things came into question. Straub doesn’t adequately answer any of these, and part of me says he doesn’t have to—that Eva is a creature so above human that humans couldn’t understand her (at least she thinks so)—but the other part of me wants to know: Why?

Reading it now, I also noticed the similarities to King both thematically and structurally, as well as Henry James, whose explorations of POV and limited understanding and misunderstanding have passed onto Straub (I attribute the haunting that becomes a story about long-lived shapeshifters to this). I caught the Hawthorne, Poe, and Henry James references that had gone over my head before (either I read this or Peter told me, but he—I believe—read all of Poe, Lovecraft, James, and Hawthorne before writing Ghost Story). And I saw the tuggings of both modernist and postmodernist literary techniques (Straub fiddles with both, but completely plummets into neither, which I think helps the story. Playing with the structure too much would have made the story incomprehensible). I also noticed the very Jamesian way that he explored characters’ psychology, but he did it with his “hands-off,” where Henry James would have felt them up one side and then back down the other. Straub kept the melodrama to a minimum, where James would have played it up—and as great as Henry James was, this was his downfall. Straub took the best parts of James, King, Hawthorne, Poe, Lovecraft, and all of true “horror” literary history and threw it into a pot, melted it down, and took out the good stuff. Then he added a bit of himself—the music, the characters, the reality of them, the sense of place, the subtle dread, the heart—and came out with what was the first of his many, many masterpieces.

After all these years (5), I still love this book.

Postscript:

I have another book, Sides, by Peter Straub. It’s a collection of his non-fiction, and I went over it, quickly, before posting this. In it are the thoughts of Putney Tyson Ridge, PhD, Peter’s friend, nemesis, mentor, and alter ego. I wanted to share some of that:

“Straub begins with an enigmatic prologue in the style of Joyce Carol Oates, then resorts to the ancient cliché of old fogeys swapping ghost stories in an atmosphere redolent of a men’s club . . . when Peter wrote me that he was adapting ‘The Turn of the Screw’ . . . [and] intended to follow it with rewritten versions of stories by Poe and Hawthorne . . . I reminded him of the genre writer’s Fourth Commandment: Thou shalt not commit a literary allusion. Had I failed in any duty as a friend and mentor, this book would be bloated yet further with plagiaristic homages.

As if this pretentiousness were not bad enough, Peter had by this time fallen under the sway of Stephen King, not in itself a display of poor judgment, since King could have taught him the value of the straightforward narrative . . . . Instead what Peter absorbed was King’s one besetting sin, that of garrulousness . . . . Yet Kingish verbosity is hardly Ghost Story’s greatest flaw.” (Sides, 233-236)

It made me laugh. Excellent.

Revoir Vieil Ami: A Farewell to Facebook

2011-09-26T18:24:00.000-04:00

Let me start off by disclosing the fact that I am by nature a private person, one of those who tells you what you need to know and nothing more, someone who doesn’t believe their personal business is news, and that I was late to join Facebook (only a few months ago), never touched MySpace, and I have a very minimal presence on Google+. I, at one time, surprisingly, liked Facebook. Despite my reservations to join, I found an open community of friendly people, and a non-invasive forum in which to talk and meet new people seemingly without risk. Now that has changed. The recent moves by the company have taken away the visitor’s ability to choose which posts they want to look at—instead they are now chosen for you. And privacy, my hallmark, my reason for not dipping a toe into the social networks to begin with, is now a thing of the past. Until recently a visitor could post whatever they wanted about themselves comfortably, knowing that only those they allowed to see it would have that ability. But now, with subscriptions, the news ticker on the right, and soon the timelines, that ability is gone. Anyone can see what I write to a friend, whether I want them to or now; where I am; what I’m doing.

For someone who doesn’t believe that the world circles around them, this is too much. My business is my business. There’s a reason I don’t tell people everything. It’s because I don’t want them to know. Because of these changes I will be cutting back on my visits to Facebook and probably soon terminating my membership. My flirtation with social networks seems to be ending (as Google is a company I trust even less with my privacy), and that’s sad in a way. Facebook had something when I joined. It had a sense of community, a safety to it. Now it’s lost both. It’s become a kind of big brother, deciding which posts are worth your time, using your information to sell you products, and invading your privacy. It’s time to leave.

But with this realization, I started to think: Why Facebook? Why social networking? Why do we do it? What do we get from it? And this is what I’ve come up with: Social networks give people the ability to fulfill (to an extent) their need for socialization without the risk of rejection and the effort to get together, plan a party, go out to a bar, whatever. It’s a way of doing something that is supposed to require work with the absolute smallest amount of effort possible, and that is sadder still.

Let me again give full disclosure. I am a type-A personality. I was raised by many different members of my family, and I come from a family of type-A personalities. If I trace it back, my family includes one of America’s first doctors, powerful politicians in both Germany and South Africa, and the Queen of MGM. But if I look at only those I’ve grown up around I see my mom (one of the founders of the ASHT and the creator of hand therapy), my uncle (the head of Miami Dade Hospital), another uncle, a Buckley Prize winning physicist, who holds seats of distinction at both the University of Illinois and Berkeley (as well as being a Guggenheim fellow), an aunt who is one of the world’s most respected modern artists, a grandfather who held a full professorship at Ohio State from 18 until his retirement and is a former president of IEEE, and a grandmother who won the Atlantic Monthly Young Writer’s Award, made a living as a professional storyteller and librarian, and was a good friend and first reader for both Harlan Ellison and Rod Serling. The only thing all of these people have in common (besides a bloodline) is their work ethic. I never once saw any of them take a day off, most not even a minute. They worked, they tried, they did; and that’s what I try to do. Facebook and other social networking sites, it seems, may be a way of doing something we all need, but without any effort. And this, I believe, is the failure of the modern world, and contemporary America in particular. Everywhere I look, I see lazy people who do nothing, and are happy that way. And that, my friends, is the saddest.

As an existentialist, I believe that people are defined by one thing: their acts. You are only what you do, nothing else. So if you do nothing, you are nothing.

So maybe this is good. Maybe it’s good that others are feeling the same way about Facebook, and are jumping ship. Maybe it’s good because maybe they’ll do something with their time. Maybe, instead of meeting someone virtually, they’ll go out and meet someone face-to-face. They’ll actually interact. Actually try. And actually do.

I can only hope that people see this as an opportunity to break away from the malaise that has snared all of us and start to live again. And that means really living, not sitting at a computer and pretending to live. That means doing, and being. And that, doing and being and living, takes courage. But have hope, because that courage is in all of us. We just have to take a chance to show it. Maybe now people will. I can only hope.

Calling for a Middle Ground: Horror, Terror, and the Sexual Revolution in Richard Matheson's HELL HOUSE

2011-09-15T23:07:00.000-04:00

The Oxford English Dictionary defines horror as: (beginning in the Middle English) “A shuddering or shivering,” which evolved into, “ruffling of surface” in 1765, then to, “a painful emotion compounded of loathing and fear; a shuddering with terror and repugnance . . . “ then, “a feeling of awe or reverent fear,” and now, “the quality of exciting repugnance and dread.” Terror, on the other hand, is: “the state of being terrified or greatly frightened; intense fear, fright, or dread,” as well as the action or quality of the same.

Using these definitions, it must be stated that very few of today’s “horror” writers are writing “horror.” They instead write “terror” novels. The true contemporary “horror” authors can be counted off: Glen Hirshberg, Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Ligotti, Dennis Etchison, Steve Rasnic Tem, Graham Joyce, Gary Braunbeck, Sarah Langan, Brian A. Hopkins, Norman Prentiss, Brian James Freeman, Laird Barron, and others who successfully mix horror and terror: Stephen King, Peter Straub, Dan Simmons, Robert McCammon.

Is a “horror” writer greater than a “terror” writer? No. Both have their place. Few would argue the greatness of Jack Ketchum or Brian Keene or Bentley Little, but they are misclassified—if a classification is needed at all.

Reading Richard Matheson’s Hell House shortly after reading Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House made this point obvious. The novels are parallel to each other and begging comparison. Each takes place in an abandoned and secluded haunted house. Each haunted house was owned by a controlling and brutal man, each drives inhabitants insane (or kills them), each venturing party is made up of four people—2 men and 2 women—, and female sexuality plays a large role in the makeup of both novels.

But where Hill House was a “horror” novel, relying on anxiety (“shuddering or shivering”) and tension to drive its plot, Hell House relied on action and events and “terror.” Where Jackson hinted at something, gave the impression that things were “off,” Matheson shows the reader terrifying scenes. The ghosts in Hill House were always off the page. One was shown their effect (debatably—if you do not believe that Eleanor created the events herself), but never them. Hell Houses’s ghosts were in the reader’s face. Their effects more concrete (meaning they could not be written off as something else), and their “bodies” were shown. Where Hill House lived in ambiguity and “what if,” Hell House lives in definites.

It was a shame to read Hell House so soon after Hill House because I am a fan of Richard Matheson. I own and have read a good bit of his work, and have enjoyed his writing for both the big and small screens. But he is not the writer that Shirley Jackson was, and Hell House is not the story that Hill House was. Shirley Jackson, for me, was better in every way (but saying that, I must again admit my predilection for “horror” and “quiet horror”), but does that mean that I did not like Hell House? No. Contrarily, I liked it a great deal. The characters were strong, as was the plot (minus the explanation of events at the end), the writing very good (just not as good as Jackson), and the story compelling. In saying that I liked Hill House more than Hell House, I am not putting Hell House down in any way. It was a great novel.

Hell House was built around four characters (five—Belasco counts too). Four of whom were obvious foils—and their names made this even more overt. Belasco and Barrett, and Florence and Fischer. Where Belasco was a strong and powerful man, a giant, Barrett was an impotent cripple (roles did somewhat reverse at the end). And Fischer was a powerful psychic who had become scared and, again, impotent; while Florence gained power from the house, as well as confidence. This made the reader compare one foil to the other, making their extremes that much more obvious—and don’t think I’ve left out Edith, she was the balance of the extremes, swaying one way or another at various times, but always coming back, showing the reader how “polar” the other characters were. “Extremes and limits. Terminations and extremities,” as Florence said during her first reading in the house; that’s what Hell House was about.

And it is those extremes that kept popping out at me. This novel was released in 1971, during the sexual revolution, and it would be hard for one not to comment on the sexuality in Hell House. Where Hill House hinted at sexuality, especially female sexuality, as being a part of life, a way of bonding, Hell House showed it as something more corrupt, the way a Victorian novel would (though much less graphically). This was not the sexual horror of Anne Rice (where it is simply an extension of the characters’ excess) or Poppy Z. Brite (the same) or Clive Barker (where it is an extension of the beast within, and a cause for either loathing or punishment) or Robert Aickman and Ramsey Campbell (where sex is the source behind much of the anxiety and horror of life), this was a statement about the sexual revolution itself, especially the loosening mores of women, and the danger of those.

The men, as I stated, were both impotent, neither virile in the bedroom or their supposed roles as “leaders” of the group. The women filled those roles, but they succumbed (Florence completely) to the influence of the house, causing the party to collapse, ending in Florence’s death (in a sexual act), as well as Barrett’s. Where Florence gave into the sexual extremes of the house, Edith fought them, even remarking that she “felt safe” (206) when tied to the bedpost by her husband (sexual connotation not missed, but in the context this was an act of control: both self control and patriarchal control). The woman who gave in to her sexuality died. The one who clung to convention lived. As Barrett remarked about Florence, “’She’s not possessed by anyone—unless it’s by her inner self, her true self, her repressed self.’” (235) Here, Barrett is stating, again in a very Victorian way, that the wild sexual beast is woman, and that the woman is the beast. Florence died, Barrett says, because she gave in to what she was, and did not control herself.

But then Barrett dies, the man who controlled himself completely and constantly. Fischer had given in to the house when he was a teenager. Edith had given in and fought her way back. Barrett never had. “Extremes and limits.” Barrett was the other extreme, the actually repressed, and he died because of it.

The parallels to the time are undeniable, and maybe Matheson is commenting on the extremes of the two generations, one excessively repressed and one excessively open, and calling for a middle-ground. But, then again, maybe he is not. Only he would know. Still, it can be read that way.

While Hell House didn’t wow me the way Hill House did, it is a novel I am glad to have read (especially after recently editing its screenplay for a forthcoming CD book), and will read again. It is one of the finest “terror” stories I’ve come across, and but one of the many works of Richard Matheson that I hope to see others reading for many years to come.

With the Force of an Amtrak with its Brake Line Cut: Reading INVISIBLE FENCES

2011-09-03T18:24:00.000-04:00

So, as a pseudo-celebration of its release as an e-book, I re-read Norman Prentiss's Invisible Fences, the 2010 Bram Stoker Award winner for best long fiction. While Prentiss didn't blow me away with his writing the way Shirley Jackson did, or Peter Straub does, or Cormac McCarthy, or T.C. Boyle (the last hands down the best pure writer I've ever read), his story carried an emotional weight so often missing in contemporary fiction, movies, art, music--well, not just contemporary, ALL. Like Stephen King, another writer whose prose doesn't blow me away on its own, Prentiss expressed simply and straightforwardly a series of emotions and moods that all of us can tap into immediately, and that--more than great wordsmithing--is what makes great writing--and great art.

The way the story kept its place, restrained, while the protagonist dealt with the loss of his parents, his childhood, what he thought his life was, dealt with truths he'd long been avoiding, was simply breathtaking. Only the best writers can do that. Only the best can say something in a way that is so simple and straightforward that it seems almost insubstantial, only to then have it kick in with the force of an Amtrak at top speed with its brake line cut. This is good stuff.

Prentiss is one of the best working today, and Invisible Fences, his first book is available for only $4.99 in e-form. Pick it up, you won't be disappointed. It's the best of Stephen King, but in a new way, with a new focus. This is a book you shouldn't miss.

Shirley Jackson and the Turgid Glass Teat

2011-08-31T06:27:00.000-04:00

Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House is the kind of horror I like: quiet horror, where the “action” occurs off-stage and there is very-little to no gore (none in Hill House, save Theodora’s bloody bedroom, which is not dwelled upon). While certainly not the most popular branch of the genre, quiet horror is making a comeback with writers like Kealan Patrick Burke, Norman Prentiss, Glen Hirshberg, Sarah Langan, and Brian James Freeman, and it’s about time. After the collapse of the “horror boom” of the 1980’s it all but disappeared. Even Charles L. Grant, its most outspoken practitioner, and Ramsey Campbell, its best-selling, fell from popular view.

But why do I like quiet horror? Because it allows one to focus on what is truly frightening: dread, anticipation, the unknown. Most modern horror relies upon shock to frighten the reader, and that has its place, but that technique works better in movies than it does in literature. And I think that may be the reason for so few practitioners (and the dwindled popularity) of quiet horror. If one spends enough time at conventions, writers talk about books—of course they do—but inevitably they talk about movies more. It seems the modern horror writer has been weaned on the trenchant glass teat of the television screen instead of the musty classics hidden in the darkest corner of their local libraries. Instead of pulling out the works of LeFanu, Machen, Blackwood, James (M.R.), James (Henry), and Shakespeare (oh, yes, there is horror there), or even the modern masters like Steve Rasnic Tem, Cormac McCarthy, Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Dennis Etchison, King, Straub, Graham Joyce, Tim Lebbon, Brian A. Hopkins, Dan Simmons, Norman Partridge, Joe R. Lansdale, Jack Ketchum, and those mentioned above, they plop themselves mindlessly in front of the television, and the work has suffered for it. Why is much of modern horror so maligned? Maybe this is a reason.

But back to Hill House and off my soap box. Shirley Jackson did not have the distraction of television growing up, and her writing shows it. It moves effortlessly, like a pre-storm breeze. There is menace there, a palpable menace that pulls at, touches, and distorts everything, but it is always controlled and restrained. She knew how to make the reader wait, how to tease. Lines like :

“ . . . and Eleanor sensed, with a quick turn of apprehension, that flippant or critical talk about the house bothered Mrs. Dudley in some manner; maybe she thinks it can hear us, Eleanor thought, and then was sorry she had thought it. Perhaps she shivered . . .” (43)

build suspense and dread. The book is full of these personifications of the house, making it more than mere scenery. It is a character, a living, breathing character. Another example:

“Around them the house steadied and located them, above the hills slept watchfully, small eddies of air and sound and movement stirred and waited and whispered, and the center of consciousness was somehow the small space where they stood . . .” (58)

Here Jackson not only personifies the house, but the area around the house, making it “watchful” and “waiting” and “whispering” about the events that have not yet occurred. This technique builds tension for the reader. It’s as if the entire world knows this place is not safe, but those inside it—for various reasons—remain. Also in this passage, she repeatedly uses the word “and,” which is a technique most often credited to Ernest Hemingway. The repeated and slows the reader and makes them feel overwhelmed, another suspense and tension building tool.

And her descriptions, even without personification, work toward this effect:

“They were sitting in a small room . . . down a narrow corridor . . . It was not a cozy room, certainly. It had an unpleasantly high ceiling, and a narrow tiled fireplace which looked chill in spite of the fire which Luke had lighted at once; the chairs in which they sat were rounded and slippery, and the light coming through the colored beaded shades of the lamps sent shadows into the corners.” (59)

Words like “small” and “narrow” make the reader feel trapped, while things acting incorrectly, the “chill” of the fire and the “slippery” chairs and the lamps throwing “shadows into the corners,” give the reader a sense of “wrongness,” which alerts them and makes them uneasy. Jackson is a master of these.

In addition to physical descriptions, she uses the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Dudley to make the reader uneasy. Mr. Dudley is gruff and harsh in an unnatural way that makes the reader wonder about him, and Mrs. Dudley works on a schedule so strict and is so robotic in her machinations that she ceases to be human and becomes a creature to be feared herself, without empathy and understanding she is monstrous (a subdued monstrosity to be sure, but a monstrosity nonetheless). And Eleanor’s refrain of “journey’s end in lover’s meeting” makes no sense for someone to say in her situation (though it does fit the character’s childlike qualities) or for someone to say when she says it (or thinks it), which clues the reader in that she may not be all right either, which builds tension, as does the regression of all the characters to more childlike attitudes. As the story progresses, each loses their “adultness” and begins acting as a child would, Theodora becoming a petty and spoiled brat (the clues to this were there from the beginning, but it becomes more pronounced), Dr. Montague being bossed around and “mothered (not lovingly)” by his wife, and Luke, childish from the beginning, becoming more so. This serves two purposes. One, it makes the reader uneasy because it is unnatural. People don’t regress into childhood, they progress into adulthood, and two, it makes each of the characters more vulnerable, which makes the reader sympathetic to them and worry about them.

The Haunting of Hill House is a masterpiece of quiet horror. Jackson makes only one misstep (and even that is debatable), when she tells the reader about the angles in the house. This, on the one hand, helps solidify that something is “off” about Hill House, but I think everything else going on accomplished that and that telling this to the reader is too much. She could have done without the explanation of the angles, in my opinion.

And it is a clever homage to the greatest of ghost story writers, M.R., Montague Rhodes, James. When I began reading, I thought, “This doesn’t read like Shirley Jackson (though it became more her usual style as the book progressed). It reads like someone else.” And then when I came across the name of the Dr., Dr. Montague, I knew. M.R. James. It reads, especially in the beginning, like an M.R. James story, Victorian and creepy and florid. And appropriate. Shirley Jackson, not weaned on that turgid glass teat, would have known James’s writing and known that he was the king of the ghost story (though sadly forgotten by most now), and she honored him with her own.

And one of horror literature’s greatest closing lines:

“Hill House itself, not sane, stood against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, its walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.” (246)

El Dia De Los Muertos

2011-08-05T20:51:00.000-04:00

Brian A. Hopkins is one of the best. He published his first story over 20 years ago. Has published well over 100 since, won and been nominated for dozens of awards, and is still the only person to ever win 4 straight Bram Stoker awards. So why don't some of you reading this know the name? Because he's put very little out these last ten years, and these days that's like a lifetime. But he's back, and no, not with El Dia De Los Muertos. This novella came out in 2001 and won the 2002 Bram Stoker award in long fiction, was nominated for an International Horror Guild award, and was a Locus pick of the year. He's back with "Black Rider" in the anthology Boondocks Fantasy, and it may be his best story to date. Read it. You'll see.

Hopkins is an interesting writer. His stories usually deal with loss and regret, but in a very different way than let's say Gary Braunbeck's do. Where Gary gets inside the characters and emphasizes the "grey areas", blurring morality lines, Hopkins keeps you at a distance, showing what happens and has happened (history plays an important role in a lot of his writing), but with no less of an emotional impact (and with no less an understanding of the character). Hopkins's writing gives just enough to allow the reader to experience the emotions without directly showing them or going into explicit detail about their effect on the characters. He shows you what's going on and what has happened to lead up to it, every step from a purely authorial position the way a Hemingway or Carver did, though much less stoically.

And he spins one hell of a yarn.

Muertos is this type of loss story. In it the protagonist, Ricky, loses his family in an earthquake--his daughter is killed and his wife severely injured. In an attempt to reunite his family, he hires a gangster to help him perform a ritual that will call Coatlicue, the Aztec mother god, and offer her a trade for his daughter. But as you can imagine, things don't go as planned. And Ricky realizes that what he thought he wanted may not be what he wanted after all.

Hopkins structures the story in alternating timelines, allowing the reader to experience the plan coming to fruition (in a sense), while at the same time experiencing Ricky's loss. It's very effective. Both timelines are engrossing, and the writing is superb throughout, on every level. It is poetic and tight, while at the same time being expansive enough to give the reader all the Mexican history and Aztec mythology they need to understand what's going on. This is nothing short of amazing.

Muertos takes the reader on an emotion journey, the way all great literature should. It is immediate and tense in a way that only the best pull off, and it is a story that once read will not soon be forgotten.

If you haven't read Hopkins, go out now and get some. You won't be disappointed. This is as good as it gets in any genre and in any age.

Learning to be Yourself: Gary Braunbeck's TO EACH THEIR DARKNESS and What I Learned from It.

2011-07-29T11:18:00.000-04:00

A few years back, Tom Piccirilli told me to “listen to everything. Read everything. Take it all in, and then forget it and do it your way,” regarding other people’s advice on how to write. And that’s the plan I follow—the plan I followed before asking him, and the plan I follow now. I ask people questions. I read. I try—oh God, I’ll say this again because it’s important, I TRY—new things. I experiment. I push myself, and I look at everything from every angle I know, because I want to get better, because I want to learn.

And I want to be unique. I want to do it my way. I want to say things that only I can say in a way that only I can say them, and following someone else’s proscribed “way” will not accomplish that for me; but hearing or reading how they do it, what’s important to them, what they focus on, that can help me. That can point things out to me that maybe I hadn’t thought of before or give me new ideas or push me in a new direction of experimentation. And because of that I’m always reading new authors, asking others’ advice, trying new things, pushing boundaries.

. . . but enough of that. This isn’t a manifesto. I want to talk about Gary Braunbeck’s To Each Their Darkness, and what I learned from it.

Let me begin by telling you a little about Gary—for those who don’t know. Braunbeck’s been publishing for about 30 years now. He has over 200 short story sales, 11 (soon to be 12) novels, 9 (soon to be 10) short story collections, and 2 non-fiction books. His writing has won 6 Bram Stoker Awards, 3 Shocker Awards, an International Horror Guild Award, a Black Quill Award, and been nominated for countless other honors. But all of that is superfluous. What matters is the writing, not the awards it is given, and Braunbeck’s one of the best. His stories deal with loss, despair, grief, heartbreak, loneliness, fear, terror, redemption, and violence in a way completely his own. His prose is dense and multi-layered. His characters heartbreakingly real. And he understands “grey areas”. Some writers have clear-cut “good” and “bad” guys. Gary rarely does, because his characters aren’t types. They’re people, and people are hardly ever “good” or “bad”. And he—more than any other modern horror writer—understands that horror comes from within. It is not the terror you experience when a monster leaps from the dark or a killer comes for you, but something different, something internal, something that is part of and tied up in all that grief, loneliness, and heartbreak, because it comes from love. You can only ever fear losing something, and you only care enough to fear losing something that you love.

To Each Their Darkness is a kind-of catchall non-fiction book. It’s part autobiography, part literary and film critique, part writing guide, and it’s the last one of these that I’ll focus on as a writer, though I did find the autobiographical parts amazingly brave and revealing and the critiques perceptive and insightful. But what I want to put down here is what I learned from To Each Their Darkness, not what I thought of the book (loved it, if you were wondering).

The first major writing point that Gary makes comes in a review of “after the fact” stories, or stories that happen after the action has taken place. This is pretty common fare in “literary” fiction (quotations because I contend that all fiction is fiction and that “literary” is simply another genre label given to help bookstores place similar products together), but rather rare in horror fiction. He lists stories by T.E.D. Klein, Dennis Etchison, R.C. Matheson, Elizabeth Massie, Steve Tem, Peter Straub, and Jack Ketchum (and by the way, if you are unfamiliar with any of these writers, please go out and fix that now. These are some of the very, very best.) as examples of this type of story in horror fiction, and goes into detail about Ketchum’s story, “Gone,” to illustrate the concept. “Gone” is one of the finest stories I’ve ever read—and this is coming from someone whose tastes run the gamut of genre and type, and someone who, though respectful of Ketchum’s craft and skill, has trouble reading Jack Ketchum’s work. The traumatic event in “Gone,” a kidnapping, happened long before the story begins. The story itself takes place on a Halloween night when the mother of the kidnapped girl turns on the porch light and gets a big bowl of candy for the kids (she hasn’t done this for a long time, hasn’t been out of the house in a long time, and a reputation and stories have come from this). What makes this story great, besides the emotional impact, which is—at least for me—THE measurement of good fiction, is that Ketchum tells you none of that. He gives no backstory. Everything you learn, you learn through subtle details. And that’s the lesson Braunbeck is teaching here (because I knew you were wondering): subtlety, and as part of subtlety, subtext (the story within the story that is not outright stated). A story doesn’t have to beat you over the head with details or come out and say everything. Instead, a writer has to have a little faith in the readers to be able to piece it together from the clues given. That’s something I have always tried to do with my fiction—and I’ve been published in horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and literary genres. And it’s something I’d like to see more of because it gives the story more resonance, allows the reader to put more of him/herself into the story. I think the master of this was Charles L. Grant (in horror. For other great examples, read some Hemingway, Ray Carver, and John Cheever), especially in his short stories, but also in his phenomenal Oxrun Station novels. And Ramsey Campbell’s not too shabby, or more recently Kealan Patrick Burke, Steve Rasnic Tem (already mentioned by Braunbeck), and Brian James Freeman. This idea of subtlety in horror fiction lost momentum in the late 1980s and is virtually non-existent now, but it is at the core of what makes good fiction. As Stephen King once said, I think it was King—and this goes back to horror fiction specifically—and I’m paraphrasing—if you show a monster, let’s say a spider, you scare the people who are afraid of spiders, but if you keep the monster in the shadows, if you don’t show it, you scare everyone. People are afraid of what they don’t know more than anything else, and not showing is a useful tool for a horror writer, but beyond that, for any writer. Why? Because, as I said earlier, it allows the reader’s imagination to fill in the blanks, which makes the story more personal to them, which makes the story more immediate, which gives the story a greater impact.

The second major concept that jumped out at me was what Gary refers to as DOTS, or character’s Definition Of The Self. This is when a writer lets the character show themselves in tiny—and again subtle—actions. This is a key concept in fiction, but surprisingly few writers use it well, and I will admit that until reading this, I had never even thought about the power in tiny things. I’d done it. Yes, I can look at stories and see it, but I hadn’t ever thought about it. Gary illustrates this concept by talking about someone at a restaurant taking off their coat—a pretty petty and insubstantial thing, right? Well, when this person takes off their coat do they do it carefully or roughly? Do they drape it over the chair, fold it, throw it over the back? Do they let any part of the coat touch the ground? And with whatever they do, what does it tell you about them? Think about it. It tells you a lot doesn’t it? The person who removes their coat one sleeve at a time and folds it carefully and then sets it on the chair beside them, making sure that it doesn’t touch the ground, is completely different than the person who tosses it off and onto the chair, not caring what happens to it. They probably have different income levels. They obviously look at objects differently, probably people too. They probably treat themselves and others completely differently, and you can get all that. Show all that with just them taking off their coat. This is powerful stuff. Subtlety is magic, people. As I mentioned, I’ve used this, but I’d never thought about it. I think having it pointed out to me will help me to use it more and better, and make my fiction much better in the process.

He talked about cadence and dialogue, not surprising since most of Gary’s novels and stories are dialogue, and he’s one of the very best. He mentioned that fiction allows a writer to say things that people wouldn’t say. Allows the character to define themself with their words, which people do not do in life, and it does. To show this he talks a lot about The Twilight Zone and his admiration for Rod Serling.

(Brief aside. I don’t know if Gary realizes how much Ohio, where he’s from, influenced Serling. Serling spent more than a few years living in Ohio, working as a librarian. I know this because my grandmother was his boss and friend. He routinely came back to the area—Mom used to sell his cigarette butts at school—to get away. It’s always interesting to see where writers come from and what similarities they have in terms of that. Gary’s fiction deals with similar themes—though in a very different way—as Serling’s.)

He talks about how he reads everything he writes out loud. This is something I’ve done for the past few years, and it helps tremendously, because the sound and feel of the words is just as important as what they are (well, it is what they are). If something doesn’t sound right, it won’t read right, and it doesn’t work.

Going back to the concept of characters’ defining themselves in their dialogue, yes it happens. Yes, Gary does it. Yes, a lot of people do it, but it’s something I’ve always tried to stay away from, because it’s not how people talk. It’s a useful tool, and it’s liberating to know that a writer I admire as much as Gary says it’s all right to do, but I will still avoid it—and if I use it, use it sparingly, because when I read a passage where someone just comes out and says something that no person I’ve ever met would say, it strikes me as fake and forced, two things I hope never to be.

And the final big concept in To Each Their Darkness is getting out of your own way. This is aimed directly at the writer, and it’s summed up simply: A story doesn’t give a shit what really happened or what your political views are or what message you want to get across. All that shit doesn’t matter. All that matters is the story. So tell the story. Don’t try to tell what happened or what you wanted to happen or cleverly veil a message. Just tell the story. Glen Hirshberg (another great modern writer you should read, who does in fact understand and use subtlety amazingly) once told me that all the stuff professors look for in literature happens accidentally. It’s not planned, and that if you go into a story trying to say something, you’ll come out saying nothing. If the story works, people will take something away from it. Maybe not what you’d hope for them to take, but they’ll take what they do. Writing, he said, isn’t trying to teach or force your ideas on others, it’s telling stories and entertaining. Anything else is just pretension. That was some of the best advice I ever got, though it put me at odds with more than a few of my college lit professors. Gary’s saying the same thing: Just tell the story.

Now I’m sure, 2000 words later, that—if you’re paying close enough attention—you’re wondering why I started this with a “do it your way” manifesto. And how that comes in to Gary’s book, because after all, To Each Their Darkness is an instruction manual of sorts. That goes against the “do it your way” idea. Or maybe it doesn’t. You see Gary is very careful to make sure the reader knows that he is telling you his opinions and how he does it, and that he wants you to do it your way. In the very first section he mentions writers who just blindly parrot others (other writers or movies) and his distaste for it. That—besides my ongoing respect for Gary—gave this book its charm (and by “that” I don’t mean the bashing of others—who he does not name, thankfully. I mean the insistence on being yourself and doing it your way.). Because, think about it people, you are not someone else. Their stories are not yours. They never will be. All you can ever be, all you can ever write, is what you are, what’s in you, the stories that are yours to tell. So make those the best they can be. As Tom said, “Listen to everything. Read everything. Take it all in, and then forget it and do it your way.”

The Shapes of What Had Once Been There

2011-07-21T02:04:00.000-04:00

This is a VERY short story for all of you out in blogland, a treat for Thursday, because everyone gives you stuff on Friday.

I hadn’t noticed it until tonight. Not until the car passed.

I stared at it.

I lay there, waiting for the car to turn the corner.

Headlights moved from one side of the room to the other, tossing careless shadows.

I waited for the engine.

When everything was silent again, I got up and walked to the window.

Outside the street was still beneath a spill of stars.

Nothing moved.

I looked one way and then the other.

When I knew that I was alone, I went to the wall where the light had been.

I ran my hand over what I’d noticed.

And felt nothing.

I went back to bed.

The table on my side held a half-empty glass of Southern Comfort and a package of Ambien. And a scissor-cut hospital bracelet.

The prescriptions were on my dresser.

I took an Ambien and finished the glass.

Then I lay back.

A few hours later, I got up and rearranged the frames on the chair.

When I was done, I covered the frames with the same black shirt.

I lay down again.

It was almost morning.

I touched the other pillow. It was touching the other table.

The other table was empty. Dust outlined the shapes of what had once been there.

I reached for the empty glass.

Against the far wall leaned the bassinet my grandmother had given me, draped in dirty clothes.

All of the gifts and the few things we’d bought piled the floor beneath it.

Another car came.

I watched the wall where I’d seen it earlier.

When the light moved, I saw it again.

I went to the dresser and took a pill from each bottle. They were almost empty.

The bathroom was by the bassinet.

I dry swallowed and touched the fading scar on my stomach.

The phone rang, and I ignored it.

When the sky began to pale, I covered myself with the blanket and curled into a ball.

Another corner of the spread had come loose overnight, and the spread bunched beneath me.

Today would be different, I told myself. Today my life would change.

Goodbye Borders, My Thoughts

2011-07-19T15:39:00.000-04:00

As many of you know, I've worked at Borders off-and-on for the past five years. Now that will soon come to an end. Borders has been, over that time, not only my workplace, but in many instances, my refuge from the stresses of the world around me.

Back in 2006, I lost my job at The University Music House, then a world-renowned music store with ties to every aspect of the business--as part of my job there I not only sold sheet music and instruments, but I taught lessons, and did talent scouting, A&R work, and session work with Warner Chappell Music Group. The store was an older and better-known subsidiary of Stanton's Sheet Music in Columbus, OH. When Stanton's started having trouble, UMH was closed to free-up some cash. A year or so before that happened, I'd decided that the music business was not where I wanted to be, and I'd turned my attention to writing.

I took the store closure as an opportunity to move back to Pennsylvania and go to school, and a friend of mine helped me get a job at the Waldenbooks in the Capital City Mall. This was a small store, but it was a store known for its ties to the business and author visits. Run by Jim Munchel, the best manager, bookseller, and one of the best men I've ever known, that little store did more business and made a larger profit than the Camp Hill superstore just across the street. While there I met authors Joe Schreiber, Mariah Stewart, John Connolly, Brian Keene, Weston Ochse, J.F. Gonzalez, J.A. Konrath, John Skipp, and many more (the store had also once employed--at differing times--Brian James Freeman and Andrew Kevin Walker, as well). But when Borders began having financial trouble, it was the store to go (they figured, I found out later, that the business would simply go across the street--it didn't).

When that store closed, they moved me and Jim to the Camp Hill store (only to fire Jim three months later in a cost-cutting move that saw everyone sharing his job title eliminated company-wide). The Camp Hill store was run by a man who'd been a district manager for FYE only a few months before and knew nothing about books or the selling of books, and Borders' new CEO--at the time--came from Purdue (yes, the chicken place). It was obvious to everyone involved that both the store and the company were failing fast, not because of ebook business, as has been hinted, but because of mismanagement--no one making decisions knew or cared about the books. The focus changed from providing customer service and selling books to selling Borders Rewards memberships and Make Books (corporate chosen books employees were forced to hand sell--and there were quite a few simply BAD books in the lot). If an employee--no matter how knowledgeable--didn't meet a quota on each, they were fired. That was all that mattered.

When that store closed, I was moved to Harrisburg, where I've spent the last three months--with Jim, again (a public uproar resulted in his re-hire). Things only got worse. The Borders Rewards demands now became Borders Plus demands. The district managers flat-out told us that book knowledge and customer service were not a priority. And now they had a new focus, e-readers (Borders had carried e-readers since 2006, but not prioritized them). We were forced to sell these the same way we'd been forced to sell Make Books, and they were just as bad. Now don't get me wrong, the Sonys are great and the Kobo, especially the newer model, is nice, but we also had the Velocity Cruz Reader. That POS never worked . . . ever. The displays didn't even work, and yet we were forced to sell them. And what surprised me more was that people bought them, simply on our recommendations. We'd complain to our bosses about things they thought trivial, things like integrity and trust, and we were told to sell what they wanted or leave, our new CEO did come from Big Tobacco after all.

Now Borders is getting what it deserves, the company, the one who wanted nothing more out of the bankruptcy court than a guaranteed bonus for the CEO and his executives (which, poetically, they will not get). The people who worked there, the people who spent years dealing with hostile management and threats and no respect and no pay raises and cut benefits, they've never gotten what they deserved. And they won't now. So, if you should find yourself in the coming weeks near a Borders, now with a huge yellow STORE CLOSING sign out front, stop in and say thank you to the people who work there. Bring them some cookies or soda, if you should feel so inclined, because Borders won't do it. These are good people who care about their customers and the books they once sold, but haven't been allowed to show it for a long time. They deserve better now than they're going to get, but then, they always have, so nothing's changed.

A Rememberance from Gary Braunbeck's To Each Their Darkness

2011-07-13T01:53:00.000-04:00

Tonight I started reading Gary Braunbeck’s To Each Their Darkness, which recently won the Stoker for best non-fiction. It’s his second book on writing, with a little criticism, and a little autobiography thrown in.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge fan of Braunbeck’s work. He is what a horror writer should be, a mythologist who deals with demons both external and internal, especially internal. In a Braunbeck story or novel, the internal struggle is always the most captivating, most immediate, the most treacherous, and the most horrifying. He gets it, maybe more than anyone else in modern horror, and that’s what sets him apart, and makes him special. He understands that the greater struggle and the greater fear comes from within, from our own insecurities, our own issues, our own demons. It’s ourselves that we truly fear—or at the least, we fear what we could be or could become given the right circumstances and motivation.

And it’s this that he focuses on in the introduction and first chapter, knowing your own demons—which can be extended to knowing yourself, a tough task, but one essential for anyone trying to be the best themself they can be, and more specifically for Braunbeck, the best horror writer they can be.

To illustrate this he tells a story about his father, which I will not go into (if you want that, the book is for sale from Apex Publications for $18.95). Instead of retelling his story, I want to tell you the effect it had on me, because it had a major one.

It’s now 20 years since I published my first story—and yes, for those doing the math, that means I was 10 at the time—and looking back on my writing, I can see certain themes, none done intentionally but all there nonetheless. I tend to write about family, about its loss and the fear of its loss (and on the flip-side the strength it brings and the desire to have one), be that loss physical or emotional, and I have also written a good bit about sexual fears, and the fear of intimacy and attachment (and addiction). And more recently the body’s failure or betrayal has become a theme (betrayal in general and disappointment play a role in the previous two themes as well).

All of these come from me, from my experiences. Without going into too much detail (yet, that’ll come when I get to the specifics of my reaction to Braunbeck’s story), I grew up in a very unstable environment. My brother and I were shipped between relatives, and we moved constantly (at one point we both now believe we were homeless, but our father made it so it didn’t seem that way at the time). Our mother didn’t want us, and our father did, but he was drug and alcohol dependent, and we took care of him more than he took care of us (at least when he was using, which was most of the time). I think that background only naturally yields a fascination with what family is, how it works, how it fails, and what’s good and bad about it.

The other two themes, sexual fear and bodily failure, come from other experiences, ones I am not avoiding telling you (and ones I will probably discuss in the future), but due to the length of this already, ones I have chosen to excise in the interest of time, because it’s the family that’s important to this story.

Braunbeck’s story, which I suppose now I have to at least very briefly outline, recalled a memory in me, as what he described was so similar to something I lived. That brief outline: Gary’s dad, an alcoholic veteran with what would now be most likely defined as PTSD hallucinated and, in trying to protect his son and family, was arrested and humiliated, hurting himself and those he loved.

Before I begin this story, let me preface it by saying that my father is and always has been one of the kindest and most caring people on this planet, and that I respect and admire parts of him more than I could write here or in 1000 pages; but he has his dark side, as quite a few scars both internal and external can prove. Like Gary’s dad, mine is a veteran with a drug problem. He also, like Gary’s, has trouble sleeping, and I believe self-medicates.

My dad used to, when drinking, pull out a Civil-War-Era pistol and load it with blanks. He’d then point the gun at me and my brother and fire. Let me tell you, it’s not something you easily forget or come to terms with, watching your father point a gun at you and pull the trigger, especially when it makes the sound—the gun sound, not a click or a pop. He always did it with a smirk on his face. And once he said that he’d be doing us a favor, if he’d had the courage to actually load it. I don’t know if he believed that or if it was a drunken ramble, but he said it.

Dad was and is one of the most unhappy people I have ever known, and I feel sorry for him. He didn’t deserve what he got. He didn’t deserve to be an orphan. He didn’t deserve to be lied to his whole life by the people he trusted, but he let those things consume him and caused a lot of his own troubles later in life, though a good portion of it was also undeserved. As I said, despite his failures and the monster that drugs can make him, he is a man I admire.

Gary’s story brought back a particular day. On this day my dad and stepmother were fighting, which was nothing unusual. She, not one to turn aside the bottle or the smoke herself, was as messed up as him. My brother, Steve, was with my mother, and my other brother, Jason, 2-years-old, was upstairs crying. Neither dad nor my stepmother ever stopped their shouts and curses for even a second to take care of the balling toddler. I did that. I held him, while they fought. My shirt was damp with his tears.

I was holding him, when I heard a sound. It sounded like a ball hitting a bat, a good solid hit, one that would carry far (I was big into baseball at the time). I came out of the room, after sitting Jason down with some toys and telling him to stay where he was, and saw her. My stepmother stood at the top of the stairs, blood running down her face, the bright red stuff that comes from head wounds, and dad was at the bottom of the stairs. She’d slammed her own head into the stair’s railing, and she was saying that he was going to get it. She’d have him arrested for hitting her.

For all of the bad things my dad has done in his life, I’ve never seen him hit a woman, and my mom has told me that he never did in their ten years of marriage. He’d been adopted and raised by his own grandmother and her abusive and alcoholic second husband. He’d fought with that man for hitting her, stood up to him and taken horrible beatings that had landed him in the hospital quite a few times. He did a lot of things that day, but he didn’t hit her.

She came down the stairs, swaying, probably equally from the head injury and alcohol, and she called the police. He let her. He didn’t even argue. Instead, he came upstairs (when I saw him coming, I went back in the room with Jason and closed the door), and he got his gun.

He loaded it with bullets that time.

Before going downstairs, he came into the room with me and Jason, gun trailing at his side, and he told me to get dressed because I’d be going somewhere (I don’t remember what I was wearing, but apparently it wasn’t dressy enough to go out).

I did as I was told, and went downstairs, leaving Jason in the room. Dad had gotten a hand towel and filled it with ice for my stepmother. When he handed it to her, she threw it at him, and spat in his face. He then went to the window, looked outside, and then came back to where I was and ruffled my hair.

He set out his sneakers, and he put the gun in the right shoe.

My stepmother was yelling at him the whole time, and she said a lot of nasty things, but he never said anything back. He just paced back and forth between the window and his shoes, and he looked at me. Again and again he looked at me, and I could see something in his eyes. My dad has what you’d call frozen blue eyes. They are blue, but pale, like ice. He’d stare at me a few seconds and then look away. I thought I saw his lip tremble once, but I can’t be sure (the only time I ever saw him cry was when my brother and I refused to ride home with him after visiting my cousins because we thought he’d had too much to drink. He’d been ashamed of himself that day, and he’d apologized to everyone. He’d tried to stop drinking after that, but like all the other times, it didn’t stick).

After a few minutes of this, a few minutes that both stretched out into days and seemed like seconds, the sirens came. Then the police came to the door. Dad opened it for them, and told them that he had to get his shoes and that he’d come quietly.

My stepmother told them he had a gun, but only after he’d pulled it from the shoe.

The police rushed in, one of them, a burly guy with brown hair, flung me across the room, and I smacked my elbow on the radiator. I have a scar from that. Two of them hit my father, driving his face into the wall. A smear of blood marked it after they’d left. He fought back, twisting and kicking out with his feet, but they pushed him down. Down to his knees, and then they drove his face into the carpet—probably leaving a stain there too, but I didn’t notice it. They cuffed him, and then lifted him just enough to get him out of the house.

His bare feet drug on the carpet, and he said, “I need my shoes. Let me get my shoes.” And he looked at me, and then he said, “I was going to take my son with me. When you came. I wanted my boy to go with me.” Maybe he wanted me to go with him to the police station, but that seems unlikely. Only he knows for sure what he had planned at the time—if he even knows.

You can draw your own conclusions, they’re probably just as valid as mine.

I watched them take him, not to the car right out front, but to the car at the end of the block. The police had blocked off the road, and they drug him the length of it. All of the neighbors stood outside or on their porches. Everyone saw.

I can only imagine the shame my father felt then. He didn’t deserve that either.

A trail of blood followed them down the sidewalk. His toes scraped it. They couldn’t lift him that extra inch or let him take his own steps.

Afterward my stepmother went upstairs and got Jason. The police tried to get her to go to the hospital, but she didn’t.

My mom came to get me, and took me to her house.

My dad was put into a detox program and psychiatric care at Hershey Medical Center. He’d been a psychologist there, and he escaped. No one ever came after him.

Dad and my stepmother remained married for a few more years before she had him arrested for something I know he probably never did. She dated the man who brought charges against him, until she got her uncontested divorce while he was in jail awaiting trial.

Jason lived with her.

Steve and I moved in with our mom, but her boyfriend didn’t want kids; and we spent the next summer in a children’s center in Harrisburg.

Gary’s story was a lot worse than this, and it had a visceral effect on me.

And I relived everything I’ve just told you.

Braunbeck says in To Each Their Darkness that an author needs to know his/her demons in order to write important work. This story, the one Gary’s brought to mind, is just one of many, some worse, and not all involving my father. Do I know my demons? Yes, I do. And do I see them in my stories? Yes, I do. But I see them as themes, as issues that pop up again and again. In no story do I see an outright autobiographical retelling or even a reenactment, and that is something I am proud of, because I never want to write about me or about the people I love. I want to write stories, not autobiography. And my themes are an aspect of my voice, my unique voice, one that no one else has ever or will ever have; and that, that unique quality, is the greatest strength I have as a writer and as a person, because it enables me to write stories that no one else can write and to be the person that only I can be.

The Beginning/Meatpunk

2011-06-30T19:06:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my first blog post ever.

This blog will be used mainly for Seton Hill purposes, but I will also scatter in other stuff I find interesting. And my first order of business is Meatpunk. Meatpunk is a new subgenre of speculative fiction. Its premise is simple: living organic machines. It is the brainchild of John Dixon, Sheldon Higdon, me, and dozens of others from the Seton Hill University 2011 Fall Residency.

This simple idea can go a thousand ways.

Bizarro, Romance, SF, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Literary Fiction. Think of novels like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and The Windup Girl or stories like "Pocketful of Dharma" and "The Ballad of Road Mama and Daddy Bliss". Meatpunk.

I challenge you to write your own Meatpunk story. Get it out there. And maybe, just maybe, there may be an anthology coming your way.