NEW ORLEANS SF/FANTASY/HORROR CONVENTION

Been a while since I've posted here, but I guess I've finally got some news worth sharing. I'll be a guest this coming weekend at the CONtraflow Con in the Greater New Orleans area. It'll actually be at the Airport Hilton, which is in Kenner, a suburb of New Orleans. I'll be doing panels on pulp fiction, forgotten writers, dark fantasy, and dreams and creativity, among others. Check out the link for more information. If you're around, come see  us. We always have fun!

CONtraflow:

Nick Carter: Web of Spies

Nick Carter: Web of Spies: Award Books, 1966. I picked up this early incarnation of the long-running Nick Carter series years ago but only now got around to reading it. This is volume 11 in a series that broke 260 volumes. The standard cover is below but my cover is different. It's purple for one thing. 

The header gives this away as essentially a James Bond knock-off. It’s “A Killmaster Spy Chiller.” The character is definitely a James Bond type, a lady-magnet with incredible skills but dapper good looks—when he wants to show them. In this particularly tale, Carter is supposed to save an English woman scientist who has knowledge crucial to all sides in the Cold War. The woman is a lesbian and the Russians have sent in a beautiful female spy to seduce her and bring her over to their side. There’s a lot of action and a considerable amount of sex, which is quite tame by modern standards but was probably pretty risqué for the times. The sex definitely puts this into the “Men’s Adventure” category.

This series didn’t list the authors but simply used “Nick Carter” as the house name. A little research revealed that this particular volume was written by ManningLee Stokes. Stokes was an accomplished pulp writer who wrote for many series, including the Jeffrey Lord series, of which I’m a fan. I’ve got half a dozen of his books in that series and have generally enjoyed them. Stokes wrote a number of other Nick Carter books as well.

Although competently written, this story didn’t do a lot for me and I don’t see myself grabbing another dozen of these for future rainy days. It’s just not my genre of reading choice. If you like this sort of book, though, then I’m sure you’d like this particular one quite well.

Skelos: The Journal of Weird Fiction and Dark Fantasy.

Skelos: The Journal of WeirdFiction and Dark Fantasy. Volume 1, Issue 1. Magazine: Summer 2016: 158 pages, Skelos Press.

 

How nice to once more hold in my hands a thick, meaty magazine in print form. The new Skelos Journal makes a solid debut on the scene, and I’m happy to know that more issues are to come. If the editors can keep up the quality of issue #1, we fans of pulp and fantasy fiction will have something to be proud of.

There are three managing editors for the new magazine, Mark Finn, Chris Gruber, and Jeffrey Shanks. All are known for their interest in and commitment to the work of Robert E. Howard, but Skelos is not a Howard journal, of which there are several out there.  Howard is represented in the first issue, but Skelos is a “weird fiction” magazine, and all that entails. This means it can’t be pigeonholed into one genre.

For one thing, the new magazine contains fiction of various lengths alongside scholarly—but not dry academic—articles. It contains poetry and even an illustrated comic-style story. The fiction and poetry is an interesting mix of heroic fantasy, pulp horror, and even science fiction. There are plenty of illustrations but the emphasis is on words and I, for one, am glad to see it.  Most magazines I pick up these days can be quickly scanned in an afternoon. I spent several days perusing Skelos and each trip into its pages brought new surprises and ideas.

Since there is a lot of meat on these bones, I’m not going to go over every piece in the mag. Scott Cupp and Keith Taylor are probably the biggest writer names here, but there are stories by Scott Hannan, David Hardy, Matt Sullivan, Ethan Nahté, Jason Ray Carney, and myself. David Hardy’s “The Yellow Death” was my favorite, although only by a slim margin over the other excellent offerings.

The nonfiction was uniformly good, with material from Jeffrey Shanks, Karen Joan Kohoutek, and Nicole Emmelhainz. Emmelhainz’s “A Sword-Edged Beauty as Keen as Blades:” was really a fascinating read and my favorite. This is an exploration of the gender dynamics in sword and sorcery, using C. L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry as an illustration.  While sword and sorcery is usually described as a very masculine and even anti-feminine genre,  Emmelhainz finds this to be far too simple of a description. I’m still studying on her ideas to see if I agree with them all, but it was fine and provocative reading.

For poets, we have Ashley Dioses, K. A. Opperman, Jason Hardy, Frank Coffman, Pat Calhoun, and Kenneth Bykerk. I was glad to see poetry in the mix here. Certainly this is something Howard included in his work and so it falls into the tradition.  I liked all of these pieces.

There are also reviews, and plenty of other gems hidden in these pages, including the excellent illustrated tale, “Grettir and the Draugr,” by Samuel Dillon and Jeffrey Shanks.  I highly recommend it all.

How About that Weather?

I was reading a piece of writing advice the other day about five clichés that ruin openings. I agreed with four of them, but either I don’t understand the fifth cliché the author was describing, or it’s simple wrong advice. The gist was, “don’t begin with the weather because no one gives a crap about the weather.”

First, I’m not sure that weather can actually be a cliché in the way “it was all a dream” is. I mean, weather is only a cliché in the sense that it’s always there. It’s reality rather than cliché. Second, maybe it’s because I grew up on a farm but I do indeed give a crap about the weather. In fact, almost everyone does and that would explain why it’s one of the major topics of conversation. Third, unless your story takes place fully inside a place with complete environmental controls and no windows, such as a spaceship, weather will be a part of a realistic story. Fifth, quite a few of my favorite opening sequences in literature incorporate weather. Give a listen:

“In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.” Hemingway—A Farewell to Arms.

“October Country . . . that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and mid-nights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain. . . .” Ray Bradbury—The October Country.

Or: “Heat beat down on my shoulders, my face cloth. My armor dragged at the riding sores underneath. Little sparkles danced behind my eyelids, and the strain in my joints were cramping to knots in my muscles. It had been a long ride. A grating call made my shoulders twitch. The carrion crows, who glided after us day after day, were waiting.” Heather Gladney—Teot’s War.

I stopped with these three in order to keep this post to a manageable length. There are many other examples I could give. Now, if the opening were ‘only’ a lengthy description of the weather, I would want the writer to move on. But, what I need from a story is to be immediately, or at least very quickly, “grounded.” I want to know “who” and “where.” If the story is taking place outside, a huge part of “where” is likely to involve weather.

As a reader, the surest way for a writer to lose me is to open with talking heads in a vacuum. Now there is truly something I don’t give a crap about. I’d rather it were all a dream.

Forgotten Books Friday: The Barbarian Swordsmen

The Barbarian Swordsmen, Edited by Sean Richards, 1981, Star Books, 172 pages.

This is another collection of sword and sorcery tales that I somehow missed over the years. It was a British only publication so that’s probably the reason. Not a lot of such books made it to Arkansas when I was living there. It’s a fine collection, though, and well worth picking up.

The editor of the work is Sean Richards, and there’s an introduction by him that talks about the stories. Some of this would have been new to me in 1981. Not anymore. I wasn’t able to find anything more about Mr. Richards.

The stories including are:

The War of Fire, by J. H. Rosny. This is an exciting excerpt from The Quest for Fire, which was also made into a fine movie. J. H. Rosny was actually a pseudonym, often used by two brothers, Joseph Henri Boex, and Justin Boex. However, from what I understand, Quest for Fire was written solely by the elder brother, Joseph. I’ve read the whole book and the movie does a good job of distilling it, but the book is enjoyable.  We have a primitive cave man named Naoh, probably what we’d call a Cro-magnon, whose tribe loses its fire. Since they can’t make fire, only maintain it, they have to seek out fire from some other tribe, and Naoh and his companions have many adventures in doing so, including a battle with Neanderthals. It is that piece which is featured in this book.

The Sword of Welleran, by Lord Dunsany.  Lord Dunsany, an Irishman, is well known to fans of sword and sorcery. His fantasy work certainly skated the edge of that genre and he helped develop some of the tropes that later became important. He is said to have influenced Tolkien. His work is rather slowly pace and turgid for modern readers but I find it enjoyable. “The Sword of Welleran” is one of his most approachable tales. 

The Tower of the Elephant, by Robert E. Howard.  I consider this the strangest of the Conan stories. It certainly breaks ranks with most of the other tales of the Cimmerian in that there is a strong SF element at its core. I was much taken with it when I first read it, years ago.

Brachan the Kelt, by Robert E. Howard. Howard wrote a number of stories involving reincarnation, and several of these featured the character James Allison, who is a modern man capable of remembering his past lives. He then relates these tales from his memories. This is a short piece and definitely not fully developed, but it shows the power of Howard’s prose. Allison remembers being a wandering warrior from a time before history was recorded, when the first white-skinned tribes were entering Europe. As Brachan, he must defeat a beast that makes one think of the yeti.

Jirel Meets Magic, by C. L. Moore. Catherine Moore was just a superb writer and her stories of Jirel of Joiry are outstanding tales of sword and sorcery. They are beautifully written and emotionally charged. Jirel is one of the very first fire-tressed female warriors of fantasy fiction. This is not my favorite of the Jirel stories but it’s close. Moore was influenced by Howard, although it seems to me that most of the influence was in subject matter rather than story effects.

Spawn of Dagon, by Henry Kuttner. Kuttner married C. L. Moore and after that they mostly wrote as a team. I think that Moore was the better writer but Kuttner was more prolific and very professional. Kuttner alone wrote a series of tales about Elak, a prince of Atlantis, and this is one of the best of those tales. Elak was certainly influenced by Howard’s Conan, but is his own character.

The Thief of Forthe, by Clifford Ball. Ball was another writer who was strongly influenced by Howard. That influence can be clearly seen in this story, but I thought it was well written and enjoyable. Apparently, Ball created an earlier character who was essentially a pastiche Conan, but “Rald,” the “Thief of Forthe” shows some originality. I haven't read much of Ball's work but am gong to seek out more.

The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar, by Fritz Leiber. Leiber is another writer who was influenced by Howard as to subject matter, but who in no way appears to be a clone of Howard. His characters and settings are unique and there is a lot more humor in Leiber’s tales than in the Conan stories of Howard. Leiber’s characters are Fafhrd, a giant of a man, a barbarian warrior, and the Gray Mouser, a dark and slender thief. They are unlikely friends but friends they are. All of these stories are enjoyable.

Appendix is: The Man Who Influenced Robert E. Howard. This is an excerpt from a letter written from Robert Howard to H. P. Lovecraft in which Howard indicates his admiration for the poetry of Alfred Noyes. 

How Social Media has Shrunk My Reading List

I’m hoping this post won’t lose me any readers but it’s about something that has been bothering me lately. It’s about how social media causes some writers to forfeit potential places on my reading list.  In the past two days, for example, I’ve discovered two writers, new to me, whose books and stories will almost certainly never have a chance to make it onto my TBR pile. These two are only the latest in what is becoming a fairly long “unlikely to read” list by now. I’m sorry to see it happen. One of my great joys has always been to find new writers whose work I can fall in love with.

The first of the two I’m talking about here posted the details of an interaction he had with a female literary agent at a conference. He didn’t get the contract he was clearly hoping for, and proceeded to trash the agent, by name, and insult her physical appearance in the process. This is in spite of the fact that his own description of the interaction indicated that the woman was just not interested in his project. It happens, you know. Not everyone will be wowed by an idea that you love. And there simply is no place in this kind of interaction for personal attacks, on physical appearance, no less. It makes me wonder, too, what kind of female characters this author creates. Will his women characters be people I can empathize with  or nothing but window dressing and plot contrivances?

The second of the two was a female author who described all “Bernie or Bust” people as folks who got awarded trophies for just participating when they were kids, meaning, I took it, that such folks don’t know what it’s like to have it tough. The author, of course, indicated how her life had been different. She went on to suggest that it was white males who were the main issue in the Bernie or Bust crowd. I’m not a Bernie or Buster and this individual’s opinion on the political process itself isn’t my issue. My question is whether or not a writer who throws out such sweeping generalizations understands enough of the nuances of human interaction to be able to create realistic characters in fiction. Without such characters, I’m not likely to find myself emotionally involved in a story.

Some of the previous folks who have made my “unlikely to read” list include a woman who stated publically that all men are supporters of rape culture, a man who offered an ad hominem attack on my political views and then proceeded to tell me what his IQ was and how many books he’d written as evidence of his correctness, and a fellow who made mean-spirited fun of gay people.

Don’t get me wrong, I read plenty of work by people who have said things I disagree with. My “do read” list is much, much longer than my “unlikely to read” one. What bothers me is the “one size fits all” approach to interacting with and categorizing people. All liberals are this way. All Republicans are another way. Gay people are this. White males are that. Women are….

If I’ve been reading a writer’s books for a long time and he or she says something that  crosses the line, I’ll generally give that author the benefit of the doubt. I know from their work that they are nuanced. But imagine that I’ve just recently friended a writer on facebook. I think that I might want to try something by them. And then I see a post like the ones I’ve described above. Will I pull the trigger on purchasing one of their books when it goes on sale? Or will I click past that sale to another new writer? For me, it’ll be the latter.

I know that writers are people too. I’m both myself, a writer and people. We have opinions. We get angry. But anyone who has made a study of how people act knows that no one can be absolutely categorized by a single characteristic such as gender, skin color, ethnicity, etc. Humans are walking, talking contradictions. Seems to me that an author, in particular, should be aware of this.  And those authors are the most likely to make my “definitely read” list. Since I love reading, that's where I hope every new writer I meet ends up. 

From Yellow Flag Press.

Over the past few years, Yellow Flag Press has been quietly going about their business. That business is poetry. I recently picked up a packet of material from them and intend to do my reviews below. Suffice to say, there is excellent work afoot.

The first collection I read from Yellow Flag was: Katy E. Ellis’s Gravity, 2015. This is a very brief collection consisting of five poems, but it punches above its weight. Each poem deals with the topic of the title. Some lovely lines here: “between the beggar’s cool water and the rich man’s blistered tongue.” There’s a fine sense of heart in these poems. They make you feel.

The pieces arrived in a package with the thinnest work on top, thickest on bottom. For a lark, I read them that way. Next up came In Memoriam, 2015, by Kevin Dwyer. This is also a short work, actually a single long poem. It’s very powerful. Each page was a jewel, with the single exception of page 6, which seemed a bit repetitive. I’m sure there was a reason for the repetition but I didn’t quite understand it. The poem as a whole, though, is highly charged emotionally and left me with a deep sense of the many ways one person can be affected by loss.

Next up came Sleeping with Animals by Ashley Mace Havird, 2013. Particularly beautiful language here. For the emotions they portray, the first two poems, “Sleeping with Animals” and “Daughter 14, With Scissors,” were almost more than I could handle. After that the pieces seemed to take a step back from that level of soul baring and I really fell in love with many of these pieces. “Hurricane: The Brac,” “The Garden of the Fugitives.” These were my favorites. However, there’s not a single piece here without some memorable line: “cicadas sing themselves out of body, slit their own backs, escape with wings of glass.”

 The next collection is Elliptic, by Jack B. Bedell, 2016. This collection perfectly combines pieces that are full of humanity, and pieces full of nature. The very first poem, “First Kiss,” enchanted me. A young girl discovers frogs, becomes entranced. The human captivated by nature’s magic. Later we have the title piece, “Elliptic,” which is about erosion, and yet about more. Nature and humanity are in this thing together. “if we were to lay our dead / here to guard this shore / against new storms / we could not / pile bones quickly enough / to outpace this loss.”

Then I came to Learning to Love Louisiana by Elizabeth Burk, 2012. A very fine collection that resonated very strongly with me. The author is a “city girl,” I believe, who is now married to a Louisiana native and who spends a lot of time here. Here we have appreciations of the local environments but not a blind appreciation. As a whole, the work made me think of my own relationship. My wife is originally from New York City, but moved down here when we married. She too has learned to love the fecund nature of this place. My favorite was “Hush Over Atchafalaya.” “Silvery cypress stumps poke through stagnant waters / like fixed bayonets, ghosts of a forgotten war.” Many of the landscapes and people I know well are reflected beautifully here.

Finally we have Chorus Frog by William Kelley Woolfitt, 2014. My first read through of this collection identified it as nature poems. But it isn’t, strictly speaking—although there is much lovely imagery of nature within it. It was hard to establish a favorite here. Perhaps “Psalm with Sheet-web Spiders as Temple Singers,” or “Flat-Spired Three-Toothed Snail.” “I found more speech pouring from fragments / of sunlight on the ground, from the lichens, / rotting limbs in the leaf litter, and stones / shattered and upheaved…” I even had to learn a new word for this collection, “orogeny.” That’s always cool.

Overall, I thought this grouping was outstanding and it really put Yellow Flag Press on my radar. Of course, now, I think they should be on everyone’s radar.

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Warlocks and Warriors, Two Different Ones

Warlocks and Warriors, Edited by Douglas Hill. Mayflower Books, 1971, 159 pages.

I own and have read just about every anthology of heroic fantasy published in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. But I didn’t have this one up until July of 2016, and I wouldn’t have gotten it then if not for a webpage list put out by the writer G. W. Thomas called “A Reader’s Guide to Sword & SorceryAnthologies.”  Thanks to him for the heads up. 

I guess I missed this book until now for two primary reasons. One, it was published only in England as near as I can tell. Second, there is another book entitled Warlocks and Warriors, which was published in 1970 by Berkley in the US. That probably helped me overlook this one. In addition, the cover is remarkably ugly compared to the cover of the other collection, which I've pasted below.

The 1970s Warlocks and Warriors was edited by L. Sprague De Camp, who did quite a few anthologies around this time while he was also busy editing and rewriting Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales. It’s certainly a good collection, and quite varied, with stories by Ray Capella, Lin Carter, Robert E. Howard, Henry Kuttner, Fritz Leiber, C. L. Moore, Lord Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, H. G. Wells, and Roger Zelazny. I’ve already reviewed this book on Goodreads, however so I won’t say more about it here. 

The 1971 Warlocks and Warriors was edited by Douglas Hill, whose name I was not familiar with until after I posted this on Goodreads, whereupon a short biography of Hill appeared on my page. That was rather cool, and revealed to me that he also wrote stuff under the name Martin Hillman, who is included in this anthology. After a short and to the point introduction by Hill, the following stories appeared:

“The Sleeping Sorceress” by Michael Moorcock.

“The Curse of the Monolith” by Lin Carter and L. Sprague De Camp.

The Ogyr of the Snows” by Martin Hillman.

“The Wages Lost by Winning,” by John Brunner.

“The Wreck of the Kissing Bitch” by Keith Roberts.

“The Unholy Grail,” by Fritz Leiber.

I’d read “The Sleeping Sorceress” before. This is an early Elric story by Moorcock and is quite good. I’d also read “The Curse of the Monolith,” which is a Conan pastiche by Carter and De Camp. Not quite Howard’s Conan but it was an OK tale. I also had previously read “The Unholy Grail” by Leiber. This tale recounts the earliest adventure of the Gray Mouser, of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser fame. Not my favorite of the series, probably because I like the Fafhrd character better than the Mouser character.

What were new to me were the tales by Hillman, Brunner, and Roberts, and all three were quite good. Brunner, I know, of course. I’ve read a lot of his SF. This is a story of the “Traveller in Black,” definitely fantasy though not sword and sorcery. The “Traveller” is a kind of mixed angel/devil character, who has the power to grant people’s desires. I’d not previously read these tales. It was beautifully written but meandered a bit initially until it got to the main plot.

Martin Hillman’s “The Ogyr of the Snows” is definitely sword and sorcery, and a well written piece. The hero is Conanesque but it’s to be noted in this tale that he wins the day mostly by wit. According to the introduction, this tale was extracted from a “novel in progress” by Hillman, and I would certainly be interested in reading it. I've found since this post went up originally that Hillman was actually the editor, Douglas Hill, and he has written quite a few books. I'm trying to track down now which of these might feature the character of "Ogyr." 

The greatest treasure in this collection to my way of thinking, though, is “The Wreck of the Kissing Bitch” by Keith Roberts. This is a tale set in the world created by Michael Moorcock for his Ice Schooner book.  The world was already beautifully conceived and Roberts does a fine job of playing in the same universe. This was my favorite tale in the collection, concluding with a tense and exciting chase scene of sailed ships across the great ice seas. It sure made me want to go write some heroic fantasy.

Corona Obscura, By Michael R. Collings

Corona Obscura: SonnetsDark and Elemental: By Michael R. Collings, 2016, 78 pages.

I’ve been reading a lot of poetry lately. After reviewing the wonderful work Sacrificial Nights by Bruce Boston and Alessandro Manzetti, I received a kindle version of another ambitious poetry collection—Corona Obscura, by Michael R. Collings. This is a series of linked sonnets, all of which fall into the category of horror and dark fantasy.

Sonnets are among the most popular and most widely recognizable traditional forms in poetry. I guess the most traditional form is fourteen lines with each line having ten syllables. Collings, who knows far, far more about such things than I do, has an appendix (two actually) at the end of his work that explains a sonnet in much more detail, and also explains how, where, and why he varied from the standard. There is also “A Note on the Form” at the beginning that explains the linked sonnet concept and refers to them as “Crowns of sonnets.” This information was all well and good, and was interesting, but I was personally much more concerned with the poetry itself, with the language, the rhythm, the emotion. It’s fine to have ambitions for a piece of work, but does the work live up to those? Well, let’s see.

After an introduction by the poet Linda D. Addison, and the opening “note,” we come to the first piece, “Obsession.” This really starts the collection off strongly. A good ‘story’ gives the reader an immediate sense of place and sets a mood and character. “Obsession” does this for Corona Obscura.  Listen: “Each time I stalk the valley’s graveled road, / Pause near the creek that slits the browning yard / In twisted ribbons, only to explode / White rage beyond the bridge I feel a shard / Of potent loss, as if my life has flowed /

I’m there, walking that road, seeing the creek and the bridge. Poetry is often not so grounding and I was glad to see it, especially for such a complex endeavor as this collection. The last line of “Obsession” is: “Each time I leave, I know I will return.” This is a place we all know, and it reflects the nature of the pieces within the collection, where each ending line becomes the opening line of the next poem. That dovetailing is quite extraordinary. I’ve seen it done before but it doesn’t usually work as well as here.

In a linked collection such as Corona Obscura, story is important, and there is a strong one running throughout, although it is not a simple straightforward tale and there are plenty of places where we slip into what I’d categorize as alternate or dream realities. We always have concrete touchstones, however—houses, tombs, soil, rain, ash. For me, however, the primary reason I read poetry is to see the naked power of language unleashed. Collings does not fail to deliver.

“My flawed blood throbs…”

“In the fragile mind where vampires bloom.”

“Western radiance knits wan clouds to shroud”

“Sheer hunger sated by a crimson mead.”

“Fade with night as sunbright knives invade.”

“Bone-white wolf-moon waits, weary and wary.”

“sable swans glide on lakes as flat as lead.”

These are powerful phrases. They sing. They intrigue. There is one phrase in the collection that I think categorizes it all—“Transfixed by darkness…” This fascination, delight, and fear of darkness in all its forms is why this collection exists. Here we have the transmutation of darkness into art. I highly recommend it. Here's the link on Amazon if you care to take a look.

The Raccoon Family Cruise

The baby raccoons first appeared with their mother one morning about a month ago.  They were just over cup-full sized and very shy. They seldom ventured into the yard but would hang out around or in a big tree at the corner, peaking out at the activity with brightly curious eyes. Mom would then come on in the yard, as has been her habit for a while, looking for some of the bird seed that I spread for our winged visitors every day.

Since the cooners’ visit tended to come around 9:00 or so every morning, I’d gotten in the habit of throwing out a few table scraps or some bits of bread for Mom. She’d come right up to the back door to eat, would, in fact, come running when she heard the door open. Lana had even enticed her in to taking bread from her hand.

Over time, the young ones started coming into the yard every morning with Mom but would run for a tree if I opened the back door. They mostly got over that but would run if I stepped out on the back porch with bird seed. Soon, one, and then two of the small ones, would come up to the back door with Mom looking for the bread I threw out. As of today, July 14, 2016, they all came up. One first, then a second, then the third and fourth. And when I stepped out to feed, only two of the little ones ran. The other two stayed right there with Mom while I moved around in the yard and put out seed. 

After I came back inside from feeding, I saw the cutest thing. The two bravest little ones, those who had stayed with Mom in the yard, ran for the tree in the corner where their two siblings had fled. They climbed up and, it seemed to me, ushered their shyer brothers/sisters down and back into the yard to take part in the largess. Right now they are all five (4 kits, 1 Mom) gathered in one spot, hovering up seed as fast as their paws can move.

I know lots of folks don’t like raccoons and they can indeed pose some dangers, but being able to look out at them, and interact with them, makes me feel a little bit a part of nature. And maybe, it seems, I’m giving a little back to the natural world that has given me so much pleasure and always been there for me during the sadder times.

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.