Sacrificial Nights, Bruce Boston, Alessandro Manzetti

Sacrificial Nights: By Bruce Boston and Alessandro Manzetti: Kipple Officina Libraria, 2016, 127 pages.

I always know I’m reading good work when I find myself both challenged and inspired. This is how I felt immediately upon opening Sacrificial Nights, a novella in poetry form, and an outstanding piece of work. The challenge came both intellectually and emotionally. Sacrificial Nights deals with tough subject matter, a city full of the wounded, the wondrous and the strange. It introduces us to several fascinating characters, a man in a coma who dreams of moths, a woman who believes only the rain can save her, a serial killer who senses that he will soon be caught, and a driven detective who is hunting that killer. There are others. Their paths cross and recross. Wounds, and worse, are left behind. Sometimes there is black and white, sometimes only the multi-colored sheen of oil on rain slicked streets. The challenge is to see if you can love these people, understand them. Or will you bury your own raw bones so deeply that the stories  merely pass over your head and leave you untouched. I could not remain untouched.

The inspiration in the work came from the beautiful and intricate word play within the pieces. I’ve often felt this way before while reading Bruce Boston’s work, but I found that Boston’s lines and Alessandro Manzetti’s lines melded almost seamlessly and were as sharp as a shiv. Here are some phrases:

“The python twists her thick / diamond-backed hide / down the dingy third floor / of a decrepit brownstone.

“The moths multiply, / continue to fly in a circle / around the head of the thief, / as if he were the only lighthouse / in thousands of miles of darkness.”

“She doesn’t like to be out this late, but nothing matters as long as it keeps raining. Her nightmare will be caged in the deep furrows of her minds as long as it keeps raining. The rain is her shield. Just the sound of it can wash her mind clean. He will not come for her as long as it keeps raining.”

“She is the ghost of the city’s / corruption made manifest, / a perverse little demon / with sharp young teeth.”

There is much more, and the use of language for effect makes me want to sit at my keyboard and hammer until something nearly as cool forms. I’m not sure it will ever happen but I’m inspired to keep trying.

Both Bruce Boston and Alessandro Manzetti are past Bram Stoker Award winners, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see this work up for 2016’s award. There are also some wonderful illustrations by Ben Baldwin, whose work I was not familiar with but who I will keeping an eye out for in the future. Overall, the book works as both art and as psychological study. I highly recommend it.

Never to Suffer

I’ve been listening to the band Never To Suffer quite a bit of late. This is a heavy metal band putting out very good music but without the wide recognition they deserve. For example, I quite likely would never have heard of them if it weren’t for being friends on facebook with their bassist, Deanna Visalle. (I’ve known her longer than just facebook actually.)

Their latest album is “This Darkness Flows.” It’s only five bucks so is very reasonably priced. Downright low priced, I’d say. There are 8 tracks on the CD—“Black Sheep,” “Spare a Dime,” “3,” “Love Story,” “Cthulhu’s Witness,” “Within,” “Renegade,” and “Don’t Let Go.” All are heavy; all put you to head banging, and I liked ‘em all. My favorite piece was track 5, “Cthulhu’s Witness.” The fact that they know about Cthulhu shows a bit where their inspirations come from. I thought the musical influences were pretty broad, though. It makes for a good listening experience.

 Never to Suffer has a webpage but it looks like it’s still mostly under construction so I’ll refer you to their facebook page, which has more information, including how to order their CD. You go through Paypal, to nevertosuffer@yahoo.com

I recommend ‘em, and you know I know metal. 

More Stories at Dead Man's Tome

Is the phrase, "When it rains, it pours," only good for when negative things happen? Maybe not. Yesterday I had a flash fiction piece published at Flash Fiction Press. Today I have two more pieces published by an online magazine called Dead Man's Tome. I might have preferred having them published a little further apart but they don't ask my opinion on that kind of thing.

The link above is to the magazine itself. The direct links for the stories are
 "I See Your Night, and Raise You Hell."
 "The Boxer."

If you get a chance, I'd love for you to check them out. This is especially the case since how much money I make on the pieces will depend on how many comments I get on the site. So if it's not too much of a hassle, I'd appreciate it.

These stories are a flash fiction horror piece called "I See Your Night, and Raise You Hell." This is also one of my dream stories. In fact, the whole thing came to me in a dream almost exactly as it happens in the written version, with one exception, which I'll have tell folks about once they've read it. Otherwise it gives too much away.

The second story is a bit longer, called "The Boxer." I wrote this originally at a time when I was feeling very low. It expresses a certain painful outlook on life that I don't generally have, but which can overwhelm me when "it rains and pours" in the negative way.

The story "Red Book" is still up too, in case you'd like to have a look and haven't done so yet. It's off the main page of Flash Fiction Press. Here's the direct link.

As always, thanks for the support.

Red Book: New Story Up

Flash Fiction Press has published one of my tales today. It's called "Red Book," and is both short and free to read. I hope you'll check it out. And if you like it, leave a comment. 

This story will eventually appear in a collection I'm working on of Dream Stories, stories that I've written based either partially or wholly off of dreams I had. This one didn't come as a complete dream to me. I had to add some "before" and "after" information. I actually keep a 'story notes' file that has information in it about the pieces I write. Below is my entry for "Red Book."

Red Book: I was looking through my dream journal on March 23, 2016 and saw a dream I’d had about writing a book in the blood of my victims. Starting fiddling with a rough draft and the title just popped into my head. Finished the draft the first day and polished it a bit the next day but didn’t make too many changes.

As always, thanks for reading!

SHOT IN DETROIT, Patricia Abbott

Razored Zen Hosts a Guest today: 

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Violet?

Violet Hart is the protagonist of Shot in Detroit. She's an almost forty photographer eeking out an existence in Detroit. As I am sure Charles Gramlich will tell you, writers are not always completely in charge of their characters. Characters are likely to take off and misbehave given the slightest opportunity. And from the very first with writing Shot in Detroit, Violet Hart, wanted to be an edgy, somewhat promiscuous, loner.  A pain in the ass to her friends and her creator. I could delete the stray sexual encounter in a gymnasium locker room, but darn if she didn't invite the guy home. I could write about her friend warning her about the dangers in meddling in gang warfare, but she was sure she had the situation in hand as she sped down to southwest Detroit. Drugs-I cut her down to one purchase. Enough to put the idea in a reader's head without suggesting addiction.

An agent wanted me to 1) change her name to something younger (little did he know that Violet would soon become a popular name  2) give her a female pal to hang around with 3) get rid of all mention of drugs 4) make her monogamous, 5) tone down her male friend's character traits (he's a gay, Latino, drug-dealing chef). "Surely, he doesn't need to be so...vivacious," he told me. "Who finds chefs interesting anyway?" Tell that to the fans of the Cooking Channel, buddy.

So what's wrong with Violet? Why does she have to be drawn to dark places and dark things? The reasons emerge over the course of the novel. Or some of them at least. But do we too often equate dark with evil? And especially in the case of women. Do we set a higher standard for them? You only need to watch the current political campaign to find the answer to that one.

Although Violet may make some questionable choices, none are evil ones. When push comes to shove as the cliché goes, she does the right thing. Like Weegree, the famous crime photographer, she is pulled toward the subjects that define her city. And in Detroit they are dark ones. Anything else would be hypocrisy.  Thanks for listening.

A Little Touch about Mass Extinctions

Life on earth has been plagued with mass extinctions throughout its history. Many scholars cite five, well documented mass extinctions, where between 50% and 90% of all species alive at the time died out. However, at least fifteen other large scale extinction events have been documented. The most famous such event occurred around 65 million years ago and did in the dinosaurs—as well as many other species.

Mass extinctions are due to world-wide (or nearly so) environmental catastrophes that result in drastic alterations to the global climate. An asteroid impact or wide-spread volcanic eruptions can not only directly destroy local environments, but they can throw so much dust and debris into the upper atmosphere that sunlight is greatly diminished. This can cause drastic cooling of the climate and wreck the process of photosynthesis. Once the photosynthetic plants die, everything that feeds on them dies. The carnivores are the next to go.

In 1883, the volcanic island called Krakatoa, which lies in Indonesia near Java, erupted, producing what is generally considered to be the loudest sound ever recorded in modern history. In a series of explosions, roughly two-thirds of the island disintegrated. At least a thousand people were killed immediately, and over 35,000 more died in the tidal waves that followed. (Many believe the death toll to be considerably higher.) Lower temperatures were recorded world-wide in the year after this single event, a little over 2 degrees Fahrenheit on average. It took almost five years for world weather patterns to return to normal.

Krakatoa is not actually the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history, however. First place goes to the earlier 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, another Indonesian volcano. Over 10,000 people died from the eruption itself, and the deaths of over 70,000 are blamed on the volcano, although many died from starvation. The following year, 1816, is known historically as “the year without a summer.” World-wide effects were detected, but the British Isles and America’s New England states were among the hardest hit. Ice lingered long. Crops failed. People struggled to survive. 

If such single eruption events could have this kind of impact, imagine what the simultaneous or near simultaneous eruptions of many volcanoes could do. It wouldn’t even have to be a great dramatic event. The signs of large scale and long-term volcanism are clearly seen in the geological history of earth. Several of these periods have been correlated in time with mass extinctions. For example, most of Siberia was covered with lava flows around 250 million years ago. The increased volcanic activity in Siberia at that time may have lasted nearly a million years and certainly would have had major impacts on earth’s climate, setting off a cascade of events that collectively shocked the planet’s biosphere. This great volcanic conflagration corresponds with the biggest of the known mass extinctions, the so called “Permian-Triassic event.” Almost 90% of all life on earth perished at that time.

Epigenetics

I've been writing every day and making good progress, but haven't had much time to put up blog posts along with that. I decided today what I'll start doing is putting up snippets of what I've been working on. Kill two birds with one stone, as they say. Yesterday I was writing about the phenomenon called "epigenetics." Here's a short introduction to it.

Epigenetics: Earlier, I said that even if two people ended up with exactly the same genes, that wouldn’t guarantee that those genes would work exactly the same way inside of them. How can that be? Well, it turns out that there is more interaction between your environment and your genetics than previously thought. The environment can change the way genes act, and once these changes occur, they can sometimes be passed on to offspring in the next generation. If that happens, it affects more than just the individual, it affects evolution.  

Epigenetics is not what Jean-Baptiste Lamarck considered “the inheritance of acquired characteristics,” although it may seem like it at first. For Lamarck’s idea to work, mutations would be needed in the DNA. Epigenetics—the “epi” means from outside—doesn’t cause a mutation in a gene. It doesn’t alter the way the DNA manuscript is written; it alters the way it is read. To say it another way, epigenetic events don’t add new information to our genome. They change the way that genome is expressed in a person. 

A number of epigenetic phenomena have been identified now. For example, in the “Hunger Winter,” the “Dutch Famine” at the end of World War II, thousands of people in the Netherlands starved as a result of Nazi occupation. Children born to pregnant mothers who suffered through this famine and lived have, as adults, shown higher rates of obesity and coronary heart disease than comparative control groups who did not experience starvation. How could this happen?

Well, to simplify, you have a lot of genes and not all of these are active at every given moment. Genes have, for want of a better term, “switches” that tell them when to turn on and when to turn off. Some genes are active during the fetal period but get turned off later. Other genes are inactive until they are turned on during the various stages of growing up and aging. In the normal course of a life, some genes may never be turned on. However, stressful events, such as the starvation people experienced during the Hunger Winter, can sometimes activate switches that wouldn’t normally be activated. This turns genes on or off, thus changing the way a person’s genome builds the structure of their bodies.

Summer

I like teaching. But when summer comes I enjoy not teaching for a while. I enjoy getting enough sleep, being able to read a little, write a lot, sit and look out the window, listen to some music, take a walk, handle chores that I have to fight to get to during the school year. Here's been a typical day for me.

Bed at 2:00 to 2:15. Up with Lana at 8:00 or 8:15. 

Feed the birds, visit blogs, a little facebook time while listening to a little music.

Either fix breakfast of eggs and bacon for Lana, or if time gets away, eat some instafood.

Read over the previous days writing, make corrections if needed. (always needed)

Do some thinking about what comes next.

Take a nap, usually an hour and a half to two hours.

Get up from the nap and hit the writing hard. 2 to 3 hours straight. 

then take a reading break, chores if need be, then back at it.

Lana gets home. We have a walk maybe, or fix supper. Watch some Babylon 5.

Back to writing. Mind is overfull of thoughts and ideas now. 

Running out of steam on the main project now, so fiddle with something new.

Give it up for the evening, play some Skyrim. 

Not a bad way to spend some days.

Nonfiction Summer

So far this summer I've been working on something unusual for me in summer writing. I've been revising a nonfiction manuscript on evolution that I first completed about five years ago. My original plan had been to write a far reaching treatise on evolution versus creationism. The science part of that book came relatively easily.Oh, there was a lot of research to do, but I already had a pretty good grounding in the field and the information was straightforward.

The religious side of this discussion, though, proved to be a nightmare that I struggled for a couple of years to wade through. There were certainly disagreements to discuss on the scientific side, but there is so much more variability on the religious side. I read widely and learned a lot, and a good section of that part of the book is done. There's still a lot more to cover though.

In the meantime, I've been teaching a class called Comparative and Evolutionary psychology at Xavier for the past ten years. A few years back, I started using the scientific part of my book as a supplemental text in the class. It has gone over pretty well.

This year, I've essentially decided to cut my original book idea in half. I'm now working on turning the scientific section into a complete, standalone work discussing the history of evolutionary theory and what exactly the theory says. And then I'll seek a publisher for it. There will still be discussion of the creationist viewpoint in the book because some of it is tied up with the history of evolutionary theory. It's been there since the beginning. But the focus of the work is no longer on a compare and contrast of these two approaches.

My working title for the book is: Evolution: A Work in Progress. Here's the chapter outlines for the first two chapters. There will be 7 in all, and I'm doing the expansion on chapter 5 now.

Chapter 1. A Man and an Idea  ..........………………………….……   P.     

     A Book that Changed the World

     The Faithful React

     An Idea Whose Time had Come

     Darwin the Man

Chapter 2. Darwin’s Concept .............................................................    P.     

     Natural Selection

     Natural Selection in Action

     Natural Selection on the Galapagos Islands

     But Finches are Still Finches

     Addendum - The Age of Things

Harmland in Print

I originally did the ebook version of Harmland: dark tales, back in 2012. It was over 21,000 words but I didn’t feel—at the time—that was long enough for a print version. However, David Cranmer, over at Beat to a Pulp has shown what can be done with some really nice packaging at shorter lengths using a smaller size paperback format. I finally decided to go for it and Harmland is now available as a print book on Amazon for $6.99.

I used CreateSpace for the book and was a bit frustrated because they had changed everything since the last time I put up a book. I found the previous time very easy but this one was a pain. Still, Harlmand is up now, and while I’m not overly thrilled with the cover and cover fonts, I still think it’s pretty cool. I hope you’ll check it out.

This is a collection of noir and horror stories. Some of the contents are: "Whiskey, Guns, and Sin," "The Finest Cut," "The Grey Inside," "The Toad," and a modern Cthulhu Mythos tale called "The Vivarium."

Next up will be a print version of Killing Trail, my western collection. Coming soon.

What Went Wrong: Release Day

A new speculative fiction anthology is out today from Lit Select. It's called What Went Wrong, and is available at Smashwords in all kinds of formats for epub and Kindle. It is supposed to be up on Amazon itself soon. The stories run the gamut from SF to horror. I have a story in it called "Electric Love 'N Blue," which is primarily SF. The underlying concept of the collection is: "well-laid plans that go awry." This kind of broad concept led to a lot of variety in the tales, which I think is a pretty cool thing.

Here's the first paragraph of mine:

"Mistakes. Always mistakes, Ray Grant thought as he reviewed the Hollister file one more time with his Cerebral Symbot. If people were more like this Symbot, more like machines. If they just did what they were supposed to."

Of course, you know no one ever does what they are supposed to. Well, hardly ever. And in my story, even the ones who try to do so don't necessarily succeed. 

Below are the authors:
Jan Flynn,
Bryan Nickelberry,
Holly Riordan,
Matthew Harrison,
N.O.A. Rawle,
Dan Szczesny,
Ben Howels,
Gregory Norris,
Larry Lefkowitz,
Jonathan Shipley,
Edward Ahern,
Eric J. Guignard,
Charles Gramlich,
TS Alan,
T.R. North

There are some other blogs around announcing this today as well, and doing a far more creative job than I have. Here's Jan M. Flynn, with samples and an interview with her, and the humorous (or is it) take of N.O.A. Rawles. Also see Gloria Weber.

Hope you get a chance to check them out.

Talons of the American Falcon

American Falcon: Quadrillion, is in the house, and its steel talons are firmly embedded in my skull. The first American Falcon CD is still in heavy rotation at my place, but now the new one will join it. We’re looking at more of the same kind of heavy rock as on CD #1. Solid, rhythmical, raise your T levels, straight-ahead rock and roll.  

From the opening riffs of the opening song, “Quadrillion,” I was throwing the horns.  Then there’s “Blood and Thunder,” which immediately calls up my favorite kind of pulp fiction, followed by the timely and hilarious “Dickhead Mountain.” Add “John Tanner,” “Strung,” “The Mountain,” and “Mexicus, which appears to be about a Mexican gladiator fighting in the Roman Coliseum. (I’d like to read that story.) There’s not a weak sister in the bunch.  I haven’t been through it enough yet to settle on a favorite but I’m sure that will come.

American Falcon is a power trio! Is that phrase still used? It fits, although there’s enough sound here to suggest a dozen players. Check out their page on Facebook. Their email address is there and I believe there’s a link where you can order the CD. I don’t think it’s available on Amazon yet, but the first album sure is and you couldn’t go wrong with that one.

Now it’s time for another listen!

A Poem in Progress

In a story recently I used the phrase "black shine," and most members of my writing group didn't like it because they had no idea what it meant or how to visualize it. But for me, the phrase is evocative and sensuous. It creates plenty of clear images for me. Anyway, I decided to try to capture the meaning of it for me in a poem, and below is a piece of that. It's not done yet. Who knows when it will be.

Black Shine

In the black shine

she waited with Wendigo eyes

and a pillow smile.

Wind had curled her hair,

had rouged her cheeks.

Gin had painted her lips.

The fingernails that scraped

her silks

spelled my name in Braille.

Black shine, dark soul

I am lost

Just When I Think I'm Out

I never watched much of the Sopranos but I do remember one character who was always saying, "Just when I think I'm out, they drag me back in." School often seems like that for faculty members. Classes were over on April 25th. I turned in my grades on Saturday, April 30th. I had a nice leisurely day on Sunday, May 1st. And it seemed to me that I should be able to start my summer writing on May 2nd. That didn't happen.

I'm the outside member on the Business Division's job search this spring and we had a candidate in on Monday to interview. Then I had a lingering research proposal to deal with. Tuesday was a writing day and I got a lot of stuff done, including requested revisions to a story, which was accepted that evening.

Wednesday, though, was another job candidate interview, this time for a position in psychology. We also had registration for new freshmen for next year. And another last minute research proposal came in. I was up by 6:00 and by the time I got home and helped Lana get groceries, it was time to go to bed for work the next day.

Today is Thursday, and I was up at 5:30 to make the trek into work. We've got another job candidate interview today. That will be most of the day. In the evening, though, I have a writing group meeting, which should be fun. And Friday I'm off so more writing will be done.

Saturday is actual graduation and that will take most of the day. Sunday begins my summer writing in earnest! And if anyone tries to "drag me back in" after that they'll get what's coming to them.

Grades are in.

I turned in all my grades late yesterday evening. There are still a bunch of meetings scheduled for next week. I’m on two late job search committees. There’s graduation and a few lingering research proposals to evaluate. But after May 10 I should be largely free for a couple of months to do my own thing.

I have a lot of writing plans and even though I’ll be officially out of school, I’ll still have to zealously protect my writing time.  Very few respect it. Everyone seems to think that since you’re off of your day job that you won’t mind giving up a morning for this, or an afternoon for that. I do mind. I have a second job. That’s how I treat it. A summer job that I take just as seriously as my other one, even though it doesn’t pay nearly as well.

Although I write a little bit most days all year around, summers and Christmas break are where 75% of my most productive writing gets done. These are the times when books are finished, collections put together, and materials are finalized into what I hope are publishable forms.

Those days are finally coming for me, and it’s time to seize them. 

What Fresh Grading Hell is This

I've been pretty much of a recluse since Friday, grading, grading, grading. Final papers in my writing class, exams in all my other classes. That's why I've been out of touch. I finally got the senior grades turned in today and promptly had a nap. Taking an hour or two off this evening, although work will begin again tomorrow. By this coming weekend, however, I should have the majority of the school work behind me and can begin to think about living again, and perhaps even some--dare I say it--writing!

Speaking of writing, Wayne Dundee over at Dundee's Desk has a great review of Mage, Maze, Demon up. There are some other good reviews on the site as well. Check it out. And thanks to Wayne!

I'm hoping to get back to visiting some blogs in the next couple of days, and dealing with a lot of other things that have piled up while I was in grading hell. 

Reviews: Torn and Frayed, and, HWA Poetry Showcase Vol. II

Here's a couple of reviews I put up on Goodreads lately. I also posted these on Amazon but they took off the HWA one, probably because I have a poem in that collection. Because of that, I thought I'd go ahead and run it here, in addition to my review of David Cranmer's latest: Torn and Frayed.

Torn and Frayed, by David Cranmer . Drifter Detective Series, Number 7. Beat to a Pulp Publishers.

Torn and Frayed is the seventh offering in Beat to a Pulp’s Drifter Detective series. It’s a novella length piece. This is the first in the series written by Cranmer. Previous installments have been written by Garnett Elliott: 1. The Drifter Detective, 2. Hell Up in Houston, 3. The Girls of Bunker Pines, by Wayne D. Dundee, 4. Wide Spot in the Road, Elliott again 5. Dinero Del Mar, and by Alec Cizak, 6. Between Juarez and El Paso.

The main character in this series is Jack Laramie, who is the grandson of Legendary US marshal Cash Laramie, created by Edward Grainger. Jack Laramie is a WWII vet who roams post WWII Texas in a rickety DeSoto with a horse trailer hitched on the back. He is an occasional PI. Jack Laramie has many of the characteristics of his grandfather,  although perhaps a bit less of a total bad ass. He takes on a case, gets into a mess, and somehow extricates himself, although it is seldom pretty. Along the way, he gets beat on and does some beating back, and the series seldom ends with a clear cut: “good guys win” scenario.

Torn and Frayed follows this general pattern. Jack decides to take a break from the road and PI work and takes a job as a ranch hand. Turns out the rancher has a past that is coming back to haunt him, most specifically in the form of a daughter who is not what her father thinks she is. A lot of unpleasant history gets revealed along the way.

Like most in the Drifter Detective series, Torn and Frayed does not tie the story up in a nice pretty package at the end. There’s messiness and ugliness and it’s hard to say that anyone really wins. They survive, at a cost. But this series has real sense of realism running through it and Torn and Frayed fits well into this pattern. I much enjoyed it. There is, in addition, a bonus story at the end, “Missing,” which features Cash Laramie himself.

HWA Poetry Showcase, Volume II, Edited by Peter Adam Salomon, Published by Horror Writers Association.

This is a wonderful collection of dark poetry. It also contains tributes to two respected members of HWA who have passed away recently. The work begins with a tribute to Rocky Wood, long-term president of HWA. I didn't know him but have heard many great things about him. The work ends with a tribute to Tom Piccirilli, and with one of Tom's fine poems, "Protected," which was the last poem he completed before his death. I knew and respected Tom through his work.

The poems here are meaty and all of high quality, ranging from the creepy, to the gory, to the thoughtful, to the humorous. There are too many really good ones to mention individually. Some really nice efforts from the likes of Bruce Boston, Marge Simon, Kathryn Ptacek, and Corrine De Winter. Some others that particularly moved me were: The Cry of Autumn Stars by Mark Fuller Dillon, Fiend by Annie Neugebauer, Into Old Mill Creek by Ian A. Patton, The Tune by Lance Davis, Midnight at the Hub City Cafe by Lynette Mejia, and The Man Who Disappears by Robert Perez. I also have a poem in this collection, called R.O.A.D, which stands for The River of Angel’s Dreaming. I was very happy to be included in this collection.

A Collection of Dreams

My collection of dream based stories is moving closer to completion. I’ve now completed drafts of all the stories that I’m planning on including. Some more polishing is in order and then the cover and other materials. Most of the tales will be horror based, although there is one fantasy and one that sort of defies categorization. Here’s what I’m looking at:

Thump, Thump, Thump – A man take shelter from the rain in an abandoned shack and meets the wife he didn’t know he had.

She Fled, Laughing – Called to the scene of a brutal mass murder, a homicide detective finds a survivor who doesn’t want to be rescued.

Rainbow’s Fall – What happens when a rainbow shatters.

A Dream of Fire – Left behind with the baggage train, an aging warrior finds one last battle.

I See Your Night, and Raise You Hell:  What happens when two psychos meet?

Child Labor – If he’d only had more patience.

And the good news, for me at least, is I've got plenty of dreams to make a volume 2 if I want. 

The Genesis of Mage, Maze, Demon

        It's probably part of my OCD characteristics that I tend to keep fairly detailed notes about every story I write. When was it written? Where did the idea come from? Did it undergo major changes from the draft form or not? Where was it published?

        I usually include this information in books I publish through Razored Zen Press. However, the answers to my standard questions are a little different than normal for the story Mage, Maze, Demon, which was recently published by Beat to a Pulp. I thought I might share them here.

    First, the catalyst for writing Mage, Maze, Demon did not come from within but from without. A couple of years back, I got an intriguing email from David Cranmer, the editor at Beat to a Pulp. He was thinking about publishing some stories in honor of Kyle Knapp, his nephew who had died, and was looking for writers who might develop tales based on prompts from Kyle’s dream journal. The prompt he was considering me for was: “I was a barbarian warrior trying to escape a maze.” I liked the idea of developing such a piece and decided to give it a go.

David said there was no particular deadline so I worked on the story off and on during the fall of 2013 and showed it to my writing group in December. I put the finishing touches on it in early January of 2014. Often, stories spring into my head with many of the details already laid out, but that wasn’t the case with Mage, Maze, Demon. The plot underwent several alterations and title changes before I settled on the final version. The name of character also underwent some changes. Since the root of the story came from Kyle Knapp’s journal, I wanted a character name to evoke that, and finally settled on Bryle.

In early 2016, Mage, Maze, Demon was released as an ebook by Beat to a Pulp, and this was followed in April 2016 by a paperback release (Out Now). The print version has two excellent bonus stories included, “The Lizard’s Ardent Uniform” by Chris F. Holm, and “Babylon Heist” by Garnett Elliott.

I was very pleased to take part in this project and am happy with how the story turned out. Bryle became a character that I liked very much, and I wouldn’t be surprised if his adventures don’t continue somewhere down the line. 

A Fresh Review

David J. West has a great review of Mage, Maze, Demon over on his Nephite Blood, Spartan Heart. Hope you'll check it out. Thanks, David!

After Easter break, the final sprint to graduation began and I've had very little time for anything other than school work. So, so looking forward to summer. I've got all kinds of writing plans. Now I just need a bit of time.
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A Review and a Talk

Prashant, over at Chess, Comics, Crosswords, and more has a great review of Mage, Maze, Demon up on his blog. Thanks much to him. Check it out.

In other news, I’ll be at Mac’s on Boston Street in Covington today, April 3, from 4-6 PM, to give a talk entitled “A Few Words on Reading.” This is presented by the Northshore Literary Society for their “Sunday Salon.”  The address for Mac’s is 324 East Boston Street, Covington, Louisiana. I’m going to talk about why people read the kinds of fictional stories and books that they do. Thanks to Cheryl and all the Northshore folks for inviting me!

More Mage

Today, I'll just point you toward a great review of Mage, Maze, Demon by James Reasoner. Since I greatly admire James's writing, it's always nice to get a "well done" from him. 

The story is still only 99 cents on Amazon. Check it out.

Mage, Maze, Demon

Wow, it has been a tough three weeks. I’ve actually had no full days off since the beginning of March, including weekends. But finally we’ve made it to spring break. I’m off all next week and man am I looking forward to some sleep. And maybe some writing as well.

It was exciting that it was the last day of work before break today, but even more exciting was the publication of Mage, Maze, Demon, by David Cranmer’s Beat to a Pulp. This is book #3 in their Veridical Dreams series, which are tales inspired by the dream journals of Kyle J. Knapp. Being a fellow who keeps his own dream journal, I much enjoyed writing for this series.

The story is sword and sorcery, which, judging by the number of works I’ve written in that genre, is my favorite genre. I love to read it and write it. Although you could read the cover blurb for it on Amazon, I’ve copied it below.

Having narrowly survived a raging fire, the warrior, Bryle, finds himself caught in a labyrinth of treacherous caverns. It isn’t by accident. An eyeless sorcerer has summoned Bryle. He wants the barbarian to retrieve a talisman that will stop a demon of unfathomable power. To do so, Bryle must first face the challenges of the sorcerer’s maze: flooded tunnels, poisoned traps, and a monstrous beast that can heal its own wounds. The sorcerer promises the barbarian his freedom if he succeeds. But can Bryle trust the word of such a being? Can he trust anything other than the sword in his hand? 

Mage, Maze, Demon is only 99 cents on Amazon, so if you have a hankering for some Barbarian versus Mage versus Demon action, it’s affordable.

Cap Kennedy #15, and The Thing Connection

It’s always interesting to me to trace influences over time in Science Fiction and fantasy. I made an interesting discovery recently as I was reading Cap Kennedy #15, Mimics of Dephene (1975). This is a space opera series from the 1970s written by Gregory Kern, who was actually E. C. Tubb (1919 – 2010). The book would seem to be a relatively minor one in the series, but at the very top of page 62, (Daw Books, Inc. 1975, April), I found a fascinating paragraph.

To set it up, Cap and his colleague, a scientist named Jarl Luden, discover an alien mimic who is trying to pass as a human. Luden remarks: "'There is a certain test. Take some tissue, some blood, and touch it with a hot wire. Normal blood will not react, but that taken from a Mimic will incorporate an individual survival-pattern. It will recoil from the threat of heat.’”

My mind, and quite possibly yours, instantly leaped to the John Carpenter movie, The Thing, which opened June 25, 1982. Here’s the speech Macready gives in the movie just before running the blood test that reveals ‘The Thing.’ “You see, when a man bleeds. It’s just tissue. But blood from one of you things won’t obey when it’s attacked. It’ll try and survive. Crawl away from a hot needle…” In the movie they actually use a hot wire for the test.

I went back to the original novella that was the basis for John Carpenter’s The Thing. This is Who Goes There, by John W. Campbell Jr, which was published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1938. I’d read it a very long time ago but in checking it out I found that the hot wire test was used in that book. This is probably where Kern/Tubb got the idea for Kennedy #15, and would also seem the likely influence on Carpenter. Oddly, though, the wording in the movie is closer to that in Mimics of Dephene than in the novella. Coincidence? Probably.

However, a second tantalizing connection between the Cap Kennedy book and the “thing” is seen later. On page 93 of the Kennedy book, when a mimic is imitating Luden, Kennedy tells one of the forms to "Open your mouth." As soon as the being does so, Kennedy shoots him down. When the real Luden wants to know how Kennedy distinguished between the mimic and the real, Kennedy says: "...no Mimic could have known what was inside your mouth. Expensive dental work."

In the 2011 remake/prequel to The Thing, we find out that the creatures can't mimic dental implants and these get left behind when a human is taken over. This is one way to identify them. And this element did not appear in Who Goes There, or at least I couldn’t find it with a pretty close search. (I wonder if it might have been in the original script for that movie.)

Although certainly no proof of direct connection, the fact that Mimics of Dephene can be linked to both the 1982 and the 2011 movies, tantalizes me. I can’t find any evidence that Tubb himself had anything to do with either movie, so if there was an influence, it came from someone else. Were both links purely coincidental, or had someone who worked on these movies read Cap Kennedy #15? Could it have been John Carpenter himself? If anyone knows him, maybe you’ll ask him for me. I’d sure like to know.

Ideas for Independent Releases

Over the past couple of years, I’ve come up with numerous ideas for writing projects that I’d like to complete.  Progress has generally been slow, but some of these projects are starting to take shape and I think at least one or two of them will be completed by the end of 2016. Here’s what I’ve been thinking of.

1. Micro Weird 2: Another collection of short, weird, flash fiction. I’ve got three or four stories ready for this but, as you can imagine, the total word count is still pretty small.

2. Dream stories: I’ve been toying with the idea of putting together a short collection of horror stories that are basically straightforward retellings of some of my dreams. I’ve only got a couple such stories completed but I have another four or five outlined. I’m going to work on one of these tales next, as soon as I finish an anthology project. The new tale will be entitled “Thump, Thump, Thump.”

3. A literary collection. Contrary to popular conceptions, I don’t write all blood and gore. I have several literary stories that have been published that I’m thinking about putting into a small collection. The working title right now is “Down Home and Other Stories.”

4. A “lessons” from Classic Trek. Honestly, this is a longgggg way from being completed. I’ve outlined some ideas and rough drafted a paragraph or two but this will be a low priority project for me.

5. The Scarred One: This is a western novella, about halfway completed.

6. Title Tales: I’ve been toying with the idea for a collection of horror stories in which all the tales would be inspired by the titles of rock and metal music, such as “Fairies Wear Boots,” “Hell’s Bells,” “Immigrant Song,” and many others. I have several pieces of this completed in rough draft form. However, I need to find out if I have to get permissions to use these titles. If so, I probably won’t use them.

7. A series of three longish western stories featuring “The Man from Colt Creek.” Two of these are about halfway done. The third is just a basic outline.

So, no one can accuse me of not having enough writing plans. Now I’ve got to get the words down. 

Nominated for the Rhysling

Well, I got some exciting news this morning. I was thrilled to find out that a poem of mine called "Gaunt" has been nominated for the 2016 Rhysling Award, which is for poems published in 2015. This award is given by the Science Fiction Poetry Association. My piece was nominated for the "Short Poem" category, (under 50 lines). Here is how the SFPA describes the award:

"The winning works are regularly reprinted in the Nebula Awards Anthology from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., and are considered in the SF/F/H/Spec. field to be the equivalent in poetry of the awards given for "prose" work— achievement awards given to poets by the writing peers of their own field of literature."

I'm really happy to hear about this. Sometimes when you labor in the fields, someone comes along and says, "nice job!" It's always appreciated.

"Gaunt" was published in The Pedestal Magazine. It's still up in their archives. The link is here if you'd like to read it. 

Forgotten Book Friday: The Rat Bastards series: #4.

The Rat Bastards series: #4. Meat Grinder Hill, by John Mackie, Jove Books, 1984.

I’d never seen any books from this series until I was in Maine and found a small bookstore that carried volume 4. Being a sucker for war series, especially WWII series, I snapped it up, and have finally read it. The story takes place on Guadalcanal as the American forces make a last push to take the island from a starving and undersupplied Japanese army.  Here are my thoughts:

First, John Mackie is a pseudonym of Len Levinson. Here is a link to a blog called “Glorious Trash,” where there is an interview with the author about the series.  Another discussion with Levinson can be found over at the Post Modern Pulp Blog. 

Though I’ve only read one volume, I think I can make some general deductions about the series, which runs to at least 16 books. What we have is a kind of “Dirty Dozen” tale. The “Recon Platoon” is made up of misfits, criminals, and barroom brawlers. They don’t like to follow orders but they’re tough as hell and good in a fight. There are a number of characters who fit fairly standard molds.  Longtree is descended from Apache warriors and great at stealth. Homer Gladley is a big but not terribly bright farm boy from Nebraska. Frankie La Barbara is a handsome Italian who has a way with the ladies. Then there’s sergeant Butsko, tough as nails and no nonsense. The characters are drawn broadly and behave mostly in expected ways.

I’d firmly place the series in the Men’s Adventure category. There’s a lot of action, a lot of rough talk, and quite a bit of sex, at least in volume 4. Most of the sex comes from Frankie seducing a variety of nurses while recovering from some injuries at the military hospital. The sex is the weakest element of the story and might have better been left out. It’s often a part of the Men’s Adventure package, though,  and I imagine that’s why it’s there. It’s hard for me to tell whether the sex scenes were meant to be funny or erotic. The slang used suggests humor, and I did get some laughs at phrases like: “…touches his fingers lightly against her precious love-starved little gazoo,” or “…pressing her hand against his hairy canary.”

The action sequences were much better done, and we do get to see some of the fear and self-doubt that the characters experience. A particularly nice touch to the book was how the Japanese enemy were  treated with quite a bit of respect. Their hardships, bravery, and loyalty to their leaders was well displayed, which I found somewhat unusual for WWII series, where often the enemy is virtually faceless. I found that this aspect of the story upped my enjoyment.

All in all, I liked “Meat Grinder Hill” fairly well. It was about what I expected.  I may try another volume. I see that most of the series has been released fairly recently for the Kindle and are available on Amazon under the author’s real name. 

What a Difference a Week (or two) Makes:

Just a week or so ago I was feeling very down about my writing. I’d written nothing for almost two weeks and had tried to work on a story and it just wasn’t flowing. There were, as well, the usual rejections and that sort of thing happening. Either bad or potentially bad news seemed to be attacking on every front.

Then I had a story published, “Woman in Dust,” and got a lot of very positive comments on it. I got potentially good news on an issue that I was particularly concerned about, although I’m not daring to mention it until it is a reality. I picked up a few comments in real life from folks who enjoyed my writing, and the story I was working on finally started to flow, although I’m still fighting with it every step of the way. This week I feel better about things, and am very glad for it.

I have prided myself in the past for writing on even in the face of no external validation. But I realize now that I was fooling myself a bit. Any writer who depends extensively on external validation isn’t going to be in the business for long. But I guess we all need to hear at least occasionally that what we are doing is worthwhile and appreciated.  There’s got to be some kind of payoff for all the hard work, and money has not been that payoff for me.

Woman in Dust

About the only thing I have to say today is that I have a new story up at The Flash Fiction Press. It's called "Woman in Dust." If you have a moment, check it out. It's a quick read. It's here.

As for the Super Bowl, I didn't have anything against either team. I actually like the Carolina Panthers. However, gotta admit I was hoping for a win for Peyton Manning. Although he certainly was not the MVP--the Denver defense was--I was happy to see someone from my adopted home (New Orleans) prove victorious. Plus, I've always had respect for Peyton's skills and for the fact that he seems genuinely like a decent fellow.

Only Yourself to Blame

Writing is a strange business. I’ve been doing it a long time and really date my life as a writer from the fall of 1988, when I committed myself to getting published. I’ve chocked up some successes, and plenty of failures. I’ve gotten plenty of rejection slips but have had over three hundred pieces published, if you count, books, stories, poems, and nonfiction articles. That’s not counting anything I’ve self published.

There have been years when I’ve done very well—2007, 2009, and plenty of years where I didn’t—2013 through 2015. There was a year, or at least most of a year, when I quit—1997. One thing I’ve realized about writing is that there’s no resting on one’s laurels. You slow down, you lose momentum. You lose momentum, your carefully nurtured career begins to fall apart. In board gaming parlance, you go back a few spaces, even if not quite all the way back to the beginning.

Unfortunately, losses of momentum seem inevitable if you have anything approximating a normal life with spouses and children. People get sick, have crises. Sometimes, one crisis runs into another and another in an almost seamless fashion, leaving little time for the recovering of energies between. And age brings the magic dust of tiredness along with it. Sometimes it gets easier and easier to let the writing slide while you try to keep your head above water against the vagaries of fortune. At least it has been that way for me.

Maybe if I’d had the courage to choose writing as my only career, things might have been different. But I always liked to know where my next meal was coming from. So, I chose an academic career with writing on the side. And when you do have a job that pays the bills, and you come home tired, and the stress of life is beating on you, it becomes a lot easier to say, “screw it, no writing tonight.” You’re still pretty sure you’re not going to starve.  Though maybe you starve in another sense.

Writing, for me, used to be play. I worked hard at my play but it was a helluva lot of fun. There was also an element of gambling that went into every story. Maybe this one would take off. Maybe this one would be the one that broke me through to a bigger audience. Maybe this one would get the nod from one of the biggest magazines, or maybe—even—attract the attention of a film group. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

They say that age brings wisdom. Maybe it just brings cynicism. At this stage of my life, the gambling odds get longer and longer against me. And I never quite reckoned with the truth that one often has to run faster and faster just to stay in one place. The death of Robert Reginald, my editor at Borgo Press, a man who loved my Talera series and supported my writing at every turn, showed me that. He’d issued me contracts for a couple of more books that I could have had out while he was alive. But I just kept thinking, “there’s time.” There wasn’t.  And that has led me to a kind of crisis of faith.

I’ve got to find a reason to keep on keeping on. And I understand pretty clearly that the reason can’t be one that comes from outside of me. In the end, there’s only yourself to blame. For the good or the bad.

The Sleep of the Weird

I had two sleep paralysis attacks last night. I've had them before but never two in one night. And it's been a while since I've had any. These two were actually pretty frightening, and given that I'm alone in the house at the moment with Lana gone for a few days, it didn't help me get a good night's sleep.

Sleep paralysis comes in two varieties. The most common type is when you wake up completely from a dream and find yourself still paralyzed from the neck down. You probably know that your body becomes paralyzed when you dream to keep you from acting out your dreams. In this type of sleep paralysis, your eyes are open and you are aware of the world around you as it normally exists. This type usually lasts only a few seconds to a few minutes, but it can go on longer. I've had it, but never for more than a few seconds. I don't know of any case where it has ever become permanent, but I'm sure it is frightening for those who experience it. It was for me, although I understood exactly what was happening and that helped.

I don't typically have that kind of sleep paralysis, though. In the kind that I have, you 'think' you are completely awake but there are still dreaming events taking place. However, you are aware that you are paralyzed, and you can't break the paralysis simply by willing it. You are unaware of exactly which experiences that are happening to you are real, and which ones are dreaming. And often the experiences are quite frightening. Being rational about the events can help but it doesn't completely eliminate the fear. At least for me.

I've had some doozies when it comes to sleep paralysis experiences. Last night's were neither the most frightening, nor the least. In the first experience, I "woke up" to find myself paralyzed and in complete blackness. An entity was present and it kept brushing against me. The feeling was kind of like being brushed by wings. I couldn't see it but had a sense of it being malevolent. My first terrifying thought was that something was trying to possess me. Then my mind cleared and I realized I was experiencing sleep paralysis. I tried to will myself to sit up and could not move more than a twitch. I then did what I've learned to do to break the experience. That is, instead of struggling, I will myself to completely relax. The paralysis broke almost immediately and I sat up. It took me a while to get back to sleep.

In the second experience, I again "woke up" in blackness and found that the "entity" had returned. It seemed to be all around me. The nearest I can come to describing it is that it felt like a strong breeze blowing against me. There was nothing rational about my initial response. I snarled at it, then shouted that it wouldn't get me. The paralysis immediately disappeared and I woke up for real. I knew the shouting had only been in my head. I think this is about the closest I've come to the experience that people have called "A Witch Riding Your Back."

Sleep paralysis occurs most frequently when people sleep on their backs, and this has been the case in just about every such experience I've had. The first attack last night I wasn't completely on my back. But I was the second time because I was still afraid from the first attack, even though my rational mind understood what had happened. Even though I didn't really want to turn on my side after these experiences, I made myself do so to minimize any further chance of attacks, and I managed to avoid any.

I did, however, have one other interesting dream experience last night. I actually had a deja vu experience within a dream. I dreamed I was talking to Lana and she was telling me about a bunch of ants in a big garbage bin, and I was thinking, 'we've had this conversation before,' and then I woke up. That one was good for a laugh, which was a welcome change from the other two experiences of the evening.

Short Story Published, and Other Things.

I've already been remiss in the new year about posting on my blog, and haven't even visited blogs as often as I used to. It's been hard to get untracked for a variety of reasons. However, a couple of good things have happened very recently. I thought they were worth sharing.

First, a story of mine called "Down Home" has just gone up online at Deep South Magazine. Check it out if you get the chance. It's free to read. This is more of a literary story than most tales that folks have seen from me, but I've always tried to write in all kinds of genres and don't want to be restricted to just one.

In other news, a student of mine, L. M. Labat, has just had a first novel published, called The Sanguinarian Id. I read this book in manuscript form and worked with L. M. on query letters and that sort of thing. There's a blurb from me on the back cover. I much enjoyed the book and I know the author has other works planned in what is likely to become a series. It's an enjoyable read so if you get a chance, check it out. L. M. is also an extremely talented artist and the book is liberally illustrated with wonderful sketches that give the piece a kind old timey feel. If you wanted to have a look at some of the illustrations, the author's website is here.

Online Training / Online Work

In the last couple of weeks I’ve spent almost four full work days doing nothing more than online training for various things. First, I went through an extensive online study program where I was required to make better than 85% on numerous quizzes in order to get my certificate, which I’m required to have in order to chair a big research committee at my work. It is, by the way, a committee that I have absolutely zero desire to chair. 

Next, all Xavier faculty are now required to go through an online training course on harassment and how to recognize and report it. Numerous quizzes are found along the way. This one included watching a lot of videos and “what would you do” scenarios.

Third, our Department is going to start using the Strong Interest Inventory to help with advising students on career goals. That meant more study. I ended up taking the test myself as part of this process, and found that my major interests seem to be artistic ones. If only that darn writing thing would earn me more than pennies on the hour. 

Fourth, the faculty were required to watch a rather lengthy video on what to do in an active shooter situation. The key guidelines appear to be, run if you can, hide if you can’t run, and fight if you have to. I’m thinking that’s probably good advice.

The above four things do not include the dozens of surveys I’ve been sent by either Xavier or other universities wanting my input on all manner of things. These things don’t just come once, mind you. If you don’t fill them out you get reminder, after reminder, after reminder.

Although all of these things are worthwhile at some level, I’m beginning to wonder when I’m supposed to get my regular work done. You know, that old fashioned thing they call “teaching.” And I’m starting to wonder if I shouldn’t be compensated for all the added activities that seem to have become part of my job of late. One of the surveys asked me about my work hours versus leisure hours. I'd have more leisure if it wasn't for all the extra work stuff I'm supposed to do.