The Dark Flibbertigibbet

J.K. Rowling's Writing a Book for Adults!

2012-02-24T07:12:00.002-08:00

Publisher's Marketplace announced it yesterday: J.K. Rowling, the genius behind Harry Potter, has arranged for Little, Brown to publish her next novel. Beyond this publishing arrangement, little is known about the book... other than it will be aimed at adults and what little she's Tweeted on the subject: “As you may have heard, I have a new book out later this year. Very different to Harry, although I’ve enjoyed writing it every bit as much."

As a huge fan of the Potter books, I don't care what the new book's about -- I'll pre-order as soon as that's an option. Coming from J.K. Rowling, it's sure to be great.

Publishing News: The Anthology from Hell

2012-02-21T11:09:00.000-08:00

Hot -- and I mean hot -- off the presses: The Anthology from Hell, a collection of humorous stories set in hell, including my "One Helluva Job" and stories from heavy-hitters like Mike Resnick, Spider Robinson, Esther Friesner, and the late Robert Sheckley, whom Alan Dean Foster called, "the best short-story writer the field has produced."

I'm waaaay happy at finding myself in their company. (*side note: Resnick's REDBEARD was one my favorite books during childhood, one of the ones that made me feel like writing in the first place. Know it?*)

Making things even sweeter: the cover art, which you see above and below, created by Brad Foster, winner of eight Hugo awards. Nice!

Editor Julia S. Mandala reports great opening sales at the con where The Anthology from Hell debuted. If you'd like to pick up a copy, they're available now at Yard Dog Press and will be available in the relatively near future in e-book format.

Check THIS out! Random House's Snazzy STARTERS Page!

2012-01-20T07:24:00.000-08:00

When you get a moment, check out the amazing new page on the Random House site. Dedicated to Lissa Price's Starters, the much anticipated sci fi teen thriller launching this March, the page offers news, updated images, pre-ordering links, a free sample (!), and great trailer. I can't wait for this book!

I stole the following description of Starters from Lissa Price's site, lissaprice.com, where you can find all sorts of cool info, contests, and regular updates: "In a world ravaged by war and genocide, becoming someone else is now possible. Sixteen-year-old Callie discovers the Body Bank where teens rent their bodies to seniors who want to be young again. When her neurochip malfunctions, she wakes up in the mansion of her rich renter and finds she is going out with a senator’s grandson. It’s a fairy-tale new life, until she discovers her renter’s deadly plan."

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

2011-12-24T15:23:00.001-08:00

Ghostbusters!

2011-12-07T14:50:00.000-08:00

So I just watched Ghostbusters for the first time in a quarter century. Weird. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been around that long, let alone that so much time could have already passed since I first sat in the bat-infested theater of my childhood, munching popcorn and laughing my head off at Bill Murray and company. Here’s another surprise: Ghostbusters holds up. It really does.

Ghostbusters is a fun movie. Everything works. From the premise, to the cast, to the dialogue, to the special effects, to the spooky stuff, to costumes, and the jokes – especially the jokes – it all works. Even the music, which probably sounds fairly corny to younger viewers today, works perfectly. Ghostbusters set out to be Ghostbusters, if that makes any sense at all, and it succeeded brilliantly.

I struggled with this topic. How do I review a solid movie almost everyone’s seen and enjoyed? I struggled in earlier semesters with other films – particularly Alien and The Thing, both of which I loved, but ultimately cooked up something to say about each – and earlier this semester with The Others, where I was relegated to a discussion of trick endings the second time around. Ghostbusters presents even less obvious fare. It’s funny. It’s a little creepy. It’s actually really well-made. Umm…

I confessed to my wife that I was having a hard time cooking up a topic, and she saved me with her own reflection. “That was the first time I ever heard of ghost hunting,” she said, and an idea was born… because I realized that outside of H.P. Lovecraft’s paranormal investigator types, this was my first exposure to ghost hunters, too. I remember liking the idea, liking their paramilitary jumpsuits, and liking most of all the blending of science and the supernatural, the way these guys were going to tackle the age-old problem of ghosts using science and technology. Great stuff.

So now I wonder… just what was the impact of this fun, funny movie? Did most of you hear about ghost hunting before you saw Ghostbusters, or was this your first exposure, too? Were my wife and I sheltered as children, or was Ghostbusters the first big ghost-hunter movie? If it was the first, how responsible is it for all that has followed? It occurs to me now that I’d love to ask Jason and Grant and the rest of the TAPS team of Ghostbusters where they stand on the Ghostbusters question. While most of them might have been too young to have experienced Ghostbusters in a world devoid (or relatively devoid) of ghost hunting references, I would be genuinely interested to know if Jay and Grant knew anything about ghost hunting before seeing Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson suit up and slip into their ghost-blasting back packs.

One way or the other, it’s a great movie, and if you’re one the four people on the planet who still haven’t seen Ghostbusters, do yourself a favor and see it right away. It won’t disappoint.

Stakes of the Staves: Charles Dickens's A CHRISTMAS CAROL

2011-12-01T15:05:00.000-08:00

I love this little book. Always have. Dickens is the master storyteller, the wellspring of some of the greatest characters of all time, including some of the most memorable ghosts in literature. Dickens even creates ghosts among the living, as Adam Browne posits in the comments to my post about Ghost Story; with her interior room, ancient wedding dress, and dusty world of stopped clocks, old Miss Haversham from Great Expectations is, as Adam puts it, “almost, but not quite, a ghost -- still corporeal, but effectively… in a horrible afterlife.”

On the subject of literal ghosts, I’ve read A Christmas Carol several times – perhaps more than several, actually – and it never grows stale. Dickens has been called the Shakespeare of the novel, and I find myself leap-frogging into the present to call J.K. Rowling the Dickens of our time. Sitting down to these authors, we’re guaranteed a rich experience: fine stories inhabited with vivid characters relayed through a joyful rush of language and seasoned with a deep understanding of and genuine concern for humanity.

This time around, viewing the novella through the lens of my thriller obsession, I thought a lot about the “stakes” of A Christmas Carol. In his unparalleled Writing the Breakout Novel, Donald Maass dedicates an entire chapter to “stakes”, beginning in his refreshingly straightforward way, “If there is one single principle that is central to making any story more powerful, it is simply this: Raise the stakes” (59). By “stakes,” Maass is talking what’s “on the line,” what stands to be lost. High stakes, he explains, must begin with high human worth; and if the author in some way touches truth, stakes can reveal to us who we really are. The biggest books, Maass says, provide high personal stakes and high public stakes, and are ultimately rooted in the author’s stakes, his or her view of the world and the human condition.

Thinking in these terms, it’s interesting to consider the stakes in A Christmas Carol, which is the story of one man’s transformation from miserable miser to extroverted philanthropist. The personal stakes are unquestionably high. In most ghost stories, we worry that the protagonist might be injured, driven insane, or even killed; how much higher the stakes here! For Scrooge, whose spiritual encumbrance equaled that of Marley seven years past, and has grown ever since, nothing short of eternity is at stake. Still, why should we care? Scrooge is hard-hearted and tight-fisted. When given the opportunity to help those in desperate need, he suggests they should die and reduce the surplus population. Why should we care about such a villain’s eternal fate?

Initially, perhaps, we do not; but Scrooge is so realistic, we can’t help but follow along, and we soon see not only Scrooge’s past, which explains in some part his present self, but also his vulnerability. Early in his travels into the past, he weeps for what was and what might have been. By the time he returns to the present, he views his world from a new perspective. His hard heart has softened; his tight fist has relaxed. He is much moved by what he has ignored in the world, most particularly the chirpy Tiny Tim, who must be acknowledged as one of the most sympathetic minor characters in the history of storytelling. By this time, we care about Scrooge. We see that he’s redeemable, and we want him to mend his ways and save his eternity.

But what about those pesky public stakes that Maass so reveres? How can we explain the wide appeal of A Christmas Carol if it concerns only the personal stakes of a man we can’t even like at the outset of the story? Because Scrooge’s stakes are public stakes, not because his eventual fate has much bearing of the state of things – we get a pretty good snapshot of that non-event when he glimpses the future – but because his stakes are our stakes. It’s impossible to read this story without questioning one’s own place in the world, impossible, if you’re given to Scrooge-y moments, not to swear them off in a pledge of genuine self-improvement. This is a book that makes you feel like being good, and in that curious way, Dickens makes Scrooge the least likely of “everyman” characters.

By starting with such an “other”, such a hard-hearted non-everyman, Dickens tricks us into participating. We identify with the minor characters and their suffering, but we stand at a distance from the protagonist, Scrooge, whose fate is on the line. It’s only later that Dickens begins to redeem Scrooge, to make him more like us, the readers, and to initiate the inevitable reader reflection that results in nearly universal appeal and reader-side public stakes. Had Dickens started with a sympathetic character, we’d have been much more likely to write off A Christmas Carol as a heavy-handed morality play. As is, however, we’re eased in with the comfortable superiority we feel toward Scrooge – after all, haven’t we all heard since birth that money can’t buy happiness? – and by the time we start to question our own lives, it’s too late to think in terms of any didactic intentions on the part of the author; we’re hooked. Modern dogma cautions against moralistic storytelling, and I reckon that’s generally good advice, not because we writers shouldn’t have morals –like Maass, I believe writers should care very deeply about something and that virtually all stories are moralistic on some level – but because most readers want the story to come first.

The best stories do, however, make us feel. This grows out of stakes: personal, public, and those of the author. Dickens obviously cared about people and wanted us to be good and kind and happy. If, as he almost suggests in-text, he still lingers as a ghost at readers’ elbows, he must be a very happy spirit, then. In its many forms, A Christmas Carol has made readers and viewers happier, kinder, and better for a century and a half, and shows no signs of slowing down.

Great News: Joe Veltre to Represent the Film Rights of Dissident

2011-11-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

My absolutely excellent agent, Christina Hogrebe of the Jane Rotrosen Agency, just emailed with great news. Joseph Veltre, head of the Books Department at The Gersh Agency, will be representing the film rights of my YA thriller Dissident.

Mr. Veltre owns quite a resume. According to Publishers Marketplace, “Previously, he served as director of development for Miramax Films, and held senior editorial positions at HarperCollins and St. Martin’s Press. He joined Gersh after running his own successful literary agency.”

I knew Mr. Veltre had read the manuscript and expressed interest in working with us, but now the relationship is official. Last week, two movie producers contacted Christina after hearing about Dissident through “scout chatter”. She referred them to Mr. Veltre, and I couldn’t be happier.

Paranormal Activity Surprises

2011-11-18T01:20:00.000-08:00

When Paranormal Activity first hit theaters, it generated a lot of buzz. The trailer was scary. Early viewers raved, saying it was the scariest movie ever made.

I avoided it. For me to avoid a movie in the theaters isn’t saying much. Over the last decade, I’ve caught fewer than ten movies in the theater. But I avoided Paranormal Activity even after it hit DVD, even after it showed up on television. Why? Because I believed the hype. I thought this was going to be a really, really scary movie, and I just wasn’t in the mood. As I’ve confessed on this blog before, while I still love horror (obviously), I’ve been less drawn to horror films over recent years. So I trudged along, not really planning to watch Paranormal Activity anytime soon… if ever.

Then I saw it on the syllabus for this class. There was no gnashing of teeth, not wide-flaring eyes, just a shrug and, I must admit, a twinge of the old interest… well, now I’d see if this was really the scariest movie of all time.

It wasn’t. In fact, that was a surprise – just how un-scary Paranormal Activity was. With that surprise, however, came another: I enjoyed Paranormal Activity a lot more than I thought I would.

I won’t argue that Paranormal Activity is a great movie, but it was fun, and while I never expected its slow, patient build, I definitely appreciated it. I expected creepy visual after creepy visual, lots and lots of in-your-face horror going for the scream. What I got instead was a tense, minimalistic movie that reminded me more of The Blair Witch Project than either a scream-a-minute scare-fest or the most genuinely frightening movie I’ve ever seen, Session 9. Paranormal Activity does a really nice job of establishing the limited situation of two realistic and mildly annoying characters. Because the film took its time, there were some good mildly creepy parts, like the first time that the girl gets up and stands there for an hour or so, staring at the guy. Against a field of aggressively scary stuff, that sort of quieter moment would have paled, but with the surprisingly slow build of Paranormal Activity, these subtler moments worked well.

Another thing I liked about the film was its take on the isolation factor. In my last couple of class-related posts, I’ve talked about ghost stories’ need to effectively isolate their characters. The bigger the menace, the bigger the reason a character should have to stay. In an extreme story like The Shining, the Torrances needed a blizzard to cage them in the Overlook. In a quieter story like Grave's End, financial difficulties and a lack of real-world alternatives were believable enough obstacles. Paranormal Activity short-circuited the question altogether. It isn’t that the house is haunted; it’s the resident herself. No matter where she goes, the haunting follows. What a frightening idea!

I also liked the abruptness and brutality of the ending, which worked particularly well in light of the slow build. With five minutes or so remaining, I was still wondering why people found the movie so scary. Things were getting worse, sure, but nothing felt super-duper bad. Then she was standing there again. Next, she left and started screaming… and all of a sudden – whamo! – horror movie! I loved the unceremonious off-stage destruction of that final scene, and the whole throwing-the-guy-at-the-camera thing worked really well. I loved, too, that her footsteps had become so heavy, and best of all, the terrific speed with which the whole scene played out.

So after years of holding back, I’m glad I finally saw Paranormal Activity. It was simultaneously less scary and more enjoyable than I’d expected. What really resonates, however, is that little twinge of anticipation I felt when preparing to watch the movie. I really did have such fun watching scary movies in my younger days. Does this unexpected twinge mean that it’s time to start watching again? And, if so, suggestions, anyone? It’s been a while…

Grave's End

2011-11-09T15:09:00.000-08:00

In ghost stories of menace, we writers do well to remember that our characters are people and that people, as Robert McKee points out in his excellent Story, tend to take the simplest paths toward their goals. The least effort, the least risk, the least fuss… these are the stuff of first efforts. Whether that means we’re lazy or smart or just pragmatic doesn’t matter so much; it’s simply the way we humans – and our character counterparts, hopefully – tend to act and react to new situations, opportunities, and challenges.

In fictional ghost stories, then, an author should keep in mind that any character with the choice to leave a haunted location needs a good reason not to do so once the ghosts start getting their creep on. The bigger the menace, the bigger the reason any character will need to stay. That’s why, in stories of profound menace, like The Shining and Ghost Story, the authors trapped their characters in the haunted location. Can you imagine The Shining without the snowstorm or some equivalent? Short book, right? Pretty early on, Wendy would have grabbed Danny and went packing for Sidewinder. This menace-to-motivation dynamic is why The Amityville Horror didn’t work for me; I just can’t imagine sticking around that place, not with all of that seriously malicious stuff happening, especially with the well-being of my spouse and children at stake. No way.

Elaine Mercado’s Grave's End – another reportedly true story (and I should say that the truthfulness of this story is much easier to believe than that of The Amityville Horror) – does a much better job balancing the menace and the characters’ reactions. I appreciate that Mercado tackles readers’ natural question – “Why didn’t you move?” – throughout the book and in a straightforward manner.

Early on, Mercado, who, despite dealing with some scary stuff, isn’t dealing with anything like the overwhelming menace reported in The Amityville Horror, goes to her husband and demands they move. “We’ve got to move,” she tells him (Mercado 66). “I don’t care about the investment. We could sell the house and get another one. We could move into my parents’ house, or maybe even an apartment, if we can’t sell the house.” He refuses.

With no money and no real place to run, she is trapped. On page 67, Mercado writes, “I knew, for sure, that I could no longer go to one of the scary movies and scream for inhabitants to run out of their house. I could no longer criticize the plot for having the actors behave so stupidly.” While I appreciate Mercado’s head-on handling of the question, I do continue to criticize some plots for just that reason. It’s a matter of proportion. Let’s face it: there’s a big difference between water mysteriously splashing on your daughter’s back and seeing a giant pig with gleaming red eyes standing behind your daughter. Seeing your spouse floating toward a window should be a bigger catalyst to move than seeing occasional “orbs” of light in your house.

It’s all about matching menace and response, then, and any writer of ghost stories should recognize that the rational response to menacing paranormal activity is to leave the haunted location, even if that’s inconvenient for the writer’s plot plans. Characters need a reason to stay. The bigger the problem, the bigger the reason. In Grave's End, the menace-to-reason-not-to-flee ratio is spot-on. Again and again, Mercado tends to this question, and the book’s stronger and more believable for it. As her dreams get worse, she looks into selling the house, but she’s told repeatedly that it’s a buyers’ market, and the offers on her home are desperately low. “I knew that now, as a single mother, and a nurse, I would simply not be able to afford another home unless I got a reasonable price for this one.” (Mercado 92) After things get even worse – though still nowhere near as bad as even the milder of the menaces of 112 Ocean Avenue – she finally decides to sell, even at a loss. On page 97, while separated from her husband, Mercado learns the house wouldn’t be hers to legally sell until the divorce is final. On page 98, Mercado writes, “There I was, financially and legally trapped. Emotionally trapped by wanting to fulfill my children’s wishes, my parents’ wishes, and my own. And now I had the realization that I was morally and ethically trapped as well.”

Trapped, indeed… though if things had grown more menacing, I have no doubt that Mercado, who consistently worries about the welfare of her children throughout the book, would have moved, even if it meant utter financial ruin. Luckily, things never do get that bad. The stress of the situation does finally push them toward a breaking point. “We were camping out at my parents’ house or sleeping in the living room, on the same blanket, lights and clothes on, all the time. We couldn’t live like this much longer.” (Mercado 128) By the time the paranormal investigators arrive, Mercado seldom sleeps in the house. Why? Banging, breathing, and balls of light. That’s believable. If I had stuff like that going on in my house, I’d look for other accommodations, too.

Again, it’s all about the balance. This is a matter of believable characters and believable plotting. Characters’ actions should be fueled by clear goals and believable motivations. Just as a character needs the promise of a big pile of gold to tackle a fire-breathing dragon (or chicken monster), characters in a haunted house need a good reason not to leave. The same holds true, of course, for any menace, and I’ll do my best, when writing horror or thrillers to make sure my characters always have a believable reason for hanging around in whatever awful place I drop them.

WORKS CITED

Mercado, Elaine. Grave's End. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2001. Print.

Philadelphia Boxing Loses Its Greatest Legend: RIP, Smokin' Joe Frazier

2011-11-08T09:12:00.000-08:00

Shaking Joe Frazier’s hand was like shaking a brick. His powerful presence was unlike any other I’ve ever encountered. The massive hands, the square jaw, the predator eyes… these things all melted away when Smokin’ Joe smiled. That’s who he was: a killer in the ring but a top-notch guy out in the world.

Now he’s gone. And I, like millions of others, feel like I’ve taken a hard hook to the liver.

When, in my early twenties, I decided to move to the Philadelphia area, it was for one reason and one reason only: Philly was the best boxing town in the world. And Joe Frazier was its king.

Most experts’ lists crown him the greatest fighter in Philadelphia history. Most put him in the top ten heavyweights of all time. Lists aside, Joe had legendary heart and courage. If you want proof, watch the third fight with Ali. If you can watch that fight, listen to both fighters and their corner men all the way up to the last round, and not get a lump in your throat, well, you’re a lot cooler cat than I am.

For a snapshot of Joe’s past and personality, check out “What I’ve Learned”, his interview on Esquire.com, that discusses “Ali, race, how to be a man, and why there's nothing wrong with an ass whuppin'.”

I’m sorry Joe’s gone. He won’t be forgotten. Rocky might raise his hands at the Art Museum, but the true face of Philadelphia boxing will always forever remain Smokin’ Joe Frazier.

Angry Robot Overlord Snags World Fantasy Award!

2011-11-07T11:35:00.000-08:00

That's right... Angry Robot takes one more unsettling heavy step toward world domination.

As reported on the AR website: "HUGE congratulations to the Angry Robot Overlord himself, Marc Gascoigne, who has just walked away with the World Fantasy Special Award (Professional) “for Angry Robot”. We’re absolutely thrilled for Marc, who has put in an enormous amount of work in setting up the company, and not only steering it along the right tracks, but also expanding it, at a time when many imprints are reducing their lists, or closing altogether. This really could not be a more appropriate award for a man who lives to create great genre books- and his plans are only beginning!"

Huge congratulations, indeed!

For the full article, take this wormhole.

The Amityville Horror: Stranger (and Stupider) than Fiction

2011-11-03T15:06:00.000-07:00

The Amityville Horror claims to be true. If so… wow, that’s pretty scary. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not, but one thing’s for certain: if The Amityville Horror were presented as fiction, it wouldn’t work. Fictional characters need motivation and must act in credible ways. No self-respecting fiction writer would ever ask readers to believe a fictional family would hang around 112 Ocean Avenue under these circumstances for this long.

I’m reminded of Eddie Murphy in Delirious, asking why white people don’t leave when they find a ghost in the house. The skit’s hilarious, if you don’t mind the explicit language, and I do have to echo some of Eddie Murphy’s confusion. If a ghost or demon or dark entity or whatever tells you to get out of a house, why stay? And that was only the beginning. George Lutz must at least be nominated for the Worst-Dad-Since-Saturn Award. I mean, it’s one thing to hang in there after your boys start laughing as they beat the crap out of each other – and I think that, combined with all the other weird menacing stuff would have been enough to scare away most loving parents – but what kind of a parent sees a giant pig standing in the window behind his daughter and still stays in the house? He should be up for Worst Husband, too, of course. If you wake up in your clearly possessed home to find your wife floating toward the window, and your response is anything less than immediate evacuation, you’re homicidally negligent.George Lutz doesn’t even tell Kathy it happened. It’s almost like he wanted her dead.

Someone might argue that we can’t judge the Lutzes for staying because they were possessed by the house. This takes me back to my original point. If this is a true story, okay… they were possessed. But as fiction writers, we drop the ball if our characters’ choices and actions are explained away as the result of possession, right? The whole point of a story, really, is to learn about characters by watching a plot unfold as a result of their choices and actions. If those choices and actions are out of the characters’ control, we learn nothing about the characters, and the book becomes a character study of some force of evil, not to mention a big, fat slice of who-cares? Wake me when it’s over. I – and I think most readers would agree – want likeable characters given tough situations and tough choices, and I want their decisions and actions to reveal their true selves. That’s interesting.

On the likeability point, the Lutzes fail again. Because of their unbelievable stupidity or stubbornness – you say tomato, I say tomato (a phrase, it occurs to me now, that works better spoken than written) – it’s impossible to like this pair of wing nuts, who subject themselves, each other, and worst of all, their children to seriously malicious stuff: the pig, the demon, the door-wrenching force, not to mention the marching band, which would have put a real cramp on the recommended eight hours of sleep a night recommended for children. I (almost) rooted for the house to swallow them whole. Of course it’s time to wrap back to the old disclaimer again. Since this is supposed to be true, I’m obviously glad the house didn’t eat them, but if they were fictional characters… nom-nom-nom-nom.

If The Amityville Horror were fictional, then, the author would do well to take some lessons from Stephen King, Peter Straub, Ronald Malfi’s excellent supernatural thriller Snow and films like The Thing and Alien. In those stories, flight was not an option. The characters were trapped with their tormentors. In some cases, possession occurred, but you always had some non-possessed character to root for, like, and identify with, the “you” in the story whose choices and actions became increasingly important and revealing as things got worse and worse. If fictional, The Amityville Horror would create an opposite effect; as things got worse and worse, we would care less and less about the choices, actions, and fates of these characters who were too stupid, too stubborn, or too selfish to flee.

But The Amityville Horror isn’t fictional, right? Or at least that’s what we’re told. I’m left to ponder a seeming paradox: Is it possible that we demand more realistic behavior from fictional folk than from real people?

Relegated to Heaven: The Lovely Bones Transcends My Personal Dogma

2011-10-24T11:30:00.000-07:00

Like most writers, I’ve always enjoyed making up stories. Somewhere along the line, I came to believe that some ways of writing were superior to others and, more specifically, that certain styles of writing worked better in telling specific kinds of stories.

My earliest recurring character, created during second or third grade, was the Fire-breathing Chicken Monster. A “good guy,” oddly enough, given his name, the Fire-breathing Chicken Monster towered over forests and buildings, wore a crown, wielded a flaming sword, and, yes, breathed fire. Mostly, I just drew and talked about him, but I do remember one long, illustrated story wherein he fought the Devil. It was a tough fight, but our hero won, settling the Devil’s hash once and for all by throwing him into an erupting volcano. I know, I know – it makes no sense to beat the Devil with fire, but cut me a break. I was seven or eight years old.

Since those (very) early days, I’ve read a ton of books and written a ton of pages, and over the years, I’ve really tried to figure out just what it is I most want to write, and all along, I’ve tried to analyze my style in an attempt to adopt appropriate techniques. Granted, when I’m actually sitting down, writing, I try not to think about how to write; but in those in-between periods, when I’m reading and when I’m revising, I’m always thinking about the craft. Over recent years, I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on story structure, plotting, and pacing. I’ve come to hold up Elmore Leonard as my ideal stylist, because he does such an unbelievable job developing incredible characters without slowing the story, and his dialogue’s so real, and he always makes me laugh, and reading him is as natural and enjoyable as listening to good music. I try to pay attention to people who tell stories that are both fast-paced and character-driven.

With my own stuff, I hope for economy. I try to develop characters through their actions and dialogue, knowing in my heart of hearts that for me, at least, story trumps all. The first revised draft of my most recent manuscript came out at 121,000 words. Hefty. A few months later, thanks both to tireless dedication to my personal dogma – story, story, story – and the wise advice of readers, I’d trimmed it down to a positively svelte 80,000 words. Nothing made me happier than when my agent, Christina Hogrebe, pronounced the revision a “lean, mean, thriller machine”.

The Lovely Bones cannot be given the same label. It breaks almost all the “rules” I try to follow. Sebold’s haunting story of a deceased girl looking down on the world without her doesn’t seem to concern itself at all with pacing, and it certainly honors character over action, and at points even seems to honor language over character, and yet, it’s a brilliant, gripping story, a genuine page-turner that packs one heck of an emotional punch.

From my admittedly myopic view of writing, The Lovely Bones sounds like a recipe for failure. I mean, imagine if a friend approached you and asked your opinion about a story he or she was thinking of writing. “I’m thinking of writing a non-linear novel with literary aspirations from the point of view of an omniscient narrator who’s dead before the book starts and whose choices and actions have very little bearing on the story. Mystery? No, I’ll tell them in the first few pages who did it. I’m not worried about pacing at all. I figure I’ll just bounce around and watch all these different characters do different stuff. I’ll follow them for years, and somewhere in the middle, I’ll probably drop the killer’s thread almost completely for a while. I’m more interested in the murder victim’s mother’s reminiscence of how some guy who scraped mold out of wine casks told her he was plagued with fruit flies.” I don’t know about you, but if a friend told me that, I’d wish him or her luck but also suggest he or she spend some time reading Elmore Leonard, Stephen King, and last year’s top earner, James Patterson. For good measure, I’d also suggest Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass. Then I’d start plotting a polite way to turn down any eventual requests for me to read the thing.

But the joke’s on me. I loved The Lovely Bones. I’m glad Anne Sebold cared more about character and language than action. I’m glad she used Susie as the narrator. Sebold broke all “the rules” – my rules, anyway – and she was right to do so. She had a great story to tell, and she told it in just the right way. The Lovely Bones is a full book. The characters are incredibly well developed, the language is gorgeous, and the whole story trembles with an achingly beautiful sense of loss countered by sweetness and vulnerability and the terrible physics of grief and the human heart. Despite Sebold’s seemingly counter-intuitive craft choices, the book is both riveting and haunting, and I’m certain it will resonate with me for years to come.

What’s the lesson? To each his or her own, I guess; or, to put it a little more pointedly, pick the right tool for the job. Employ the proper form, even if you have to break some rules along the way. For my own work, I’ll remain dedicated to the chop, chop, chop / story, story, story method, but that won’t stop me, as a reader, from enjoying the occasional exception to my rules.

Cover Reveal: Starters by Lissa Price

2011-10-23T14:27:00.001-07:00

What a cover, huh? I can't wait to get my hands on this book. The author is award-winning screenwriter and all-around cool person Lissa Price.

Starters is going to be a very big deal, by the way. Though it's Lissa's debut novel, it's one of Random House's lead books for 2012. Tweets from the recent Frankfurt Book Fair -- which is the largest literature-based convention in the world, I believe -- showed Starters on the cover of Random House's young readers rights guide. How cool is that?

I stole the following blurb from Lissa's blog:

"The first in a YA futuristic thriller series featuring a society where youth is coveted at an impossible price, and one girl’s ability to bring it all crumbling down.

Random House Children’s Books, Delacorte, is publishing my debut, March 2012. It will be released in a beautiful hardback (see the cover in the blog posts) and a Kindle/ebook version, as well as an audiobook done by the same people who did Harry Potter, Twilight and Eragon. It will also come out in Germany, Italy, U.K., Taiwan, Korea, Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Turkey, France, Hungary, and Holland. Hopefully more territories soon. I can’t wait to see these covers!"

It's still early in the game, so anyone reading this, please help spread the word about Starters and later be hailed as a visionary. For more info on Lissa, check her blog, look for her on Twitter, or find her on Goodreads, where Starters is climbing multiple polls (that could of course use your votes). Know, too, that Starters is available for pre-order here, there, and everywhere.

Three cheers for Lissa!

THE OTHERS

2011-10-20T15:03:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, when I first saw THE OTHERS, I really dug it. Slow pacing? No problem. The film was atmospheric and patient, dimly simmering and mysterious. I wanted to know what was going on, and dim bulb that I am, I tumbled, joyfully ignorant, into the séance scene, which remains one of my favorite movie twists of all time. Such a cool idea, such well-done scene.

Watching it again all these years later, was a much more mechanical exercise. Because I knew the ending, because I understood what had happened, the mystery fled, and I was left to sort out how the film pulled off its little trick. After a second viewing, I still had no problems with the narrative withholding, and I still loved the séance scene. It was only after the séance that the movie stumbled a bit for me.

I wish it had ended when the creepy old medium came out of her trance, asking if she’d really made contact and the guy who reminded me of Rudyard Kipling said yes, she had made contact with the mother and the children. Maybe that sort of truncated ending would have needed a little something more, but I don’t think it needed everything that followed. It seemed to stretch on and on after that, almost as if the creator, pleased with himself or herself and more than a little anxious that we viewers might not be able to put it all together on our own, hung around for ten minutes too long in an effort to make sure that we all “got it”.

I have to be fair to THE OTHERS and repeat a few of the basics: I really loved this movie when I first saw it, and I think its final twist is absolutely top-notch. I know very little about film, so I can’t throw around a bunch of convincing film-y jargon, but everything looked nice and spooky, and the acting was solid, and there were some genuinely creepy parts, like the old woman in the communion dress and, best of all, the picture of the dead housekeepers on the love seat. I also have to admit that the first time I saw it, I didn’t have any trouble with the drawn out ending. I just watched the movie and raved about it for a while after seeing it.

So now I’m left with a few questions. Was the ending as distended as I thought? Should the film have ended with the séance? If so, why didn’t this bother me the first time around? Was some of that tacked-on stuff actually important the first time through? Without it, would I have been less satisfied? I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. Maybe this is essentially a one-trick pony of a film; maybe after spending the better part of two hours waiting for the (admittedly cool) twist I knew to be the point of the movie, I was in a state of exaggerated impatience once the actual séance had concluded.

Anyone else feel the same way?

Point of view and Pacing in THE SHINING

2011-10-14T01:50:00.000-07:00

Like Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, Stephen King’s The Shining is an old favorite. I’ve read it a few times, and like any great book, it’s given me new stuff every time I’ve read it. The first time, when I a snowbound teenager in the Endless Mountains of upstate Pennsylvania, it gave me fear. I’d never read such a scary book, and I’ll never forget the delicious terror I felt when Danny entered Room 217.

Of course, reading a story a few times dulls the immediacy of fear. Don’t get me wrong… I can still see all the scary stuff, and I’m still convinced this is one of the most frightening books ever written, but this time around, I spent less time bulging my eyes and more time thinking about how King built his clockwork masterpiece.

At Seton Hill, those entering the Writing Popular Fiction MFA program must declare a genre of choice. I signed on as a horror writer. I love horror, and I’ve spent a lot of time reading and writing it. Early on in my studies, however, I realized I wanted to try writing in another of my favorite genres: thriller. Since that time, I’ve read a bunch of thrillers, studied the form, attended ThrillerFest, talked to thriller writers, and written my first thriller novel. Now I’m planning the sequel and developing a series overview. It’s been a lot of fun, diving feet-first into a new genre… particularly because I’ve realized it’s not exactly new to me after all.

Horror stories and thrillers have a lot in common. Frequently, the protagonist struggles against the forces of evil. Suspense is key. Physical danger is common. Readers of both genres expect pockets of lightning pacing. The genres are so close, in fact, that novels like Red Dragon and The Shining earn both labels.

At ThrillerFest VI, Steve Barry taught an excellent class on point-of-view, pacing, and structure. One of the most interesting parts of Mr. Barry’s class was his explanation of how he uses point of view “stages” to control pacing. Switching from one stage to another means moving from one character’s point of view to another’s, and in his thrillers – at least until the slam-bang climax, where all stages collide – this shift usually suggests a switch of setting, as well. Using point-of-view shifts, Mr. Barry provides readers with multiple flows of information, letting them know not only what the hero is doing but also what the villain is planning, etc…

Along the way, he uses these point-of-view stage-shifts to control the story’s pacing. For example, he might follow an “up” scene – one thrumming with tension and soaked in blood, for example – with a “down” scene, perhaps an investigation or a sort-it-out scene. This modulation creates rhythm and helps readers avoid “adrenal fatigue”. In other places, he uses shifting points of view and settings to generate adrenaline. Marrying the setting of adversaries can obviously up the tension, as can the timing of information delivered through a specific point of view. One of those normally quiet investigative or sorting-it-out scenes might not be very tense if it’s just a couple good guys in a greenhouse full of bright flowers; unless, of course, the previous scene also visited the greenhouse and showed the villain packing the petunia pots with C-4 plastic explosives. Then all of a sudden, it’s the Hitchcock suspense thing, right? Some people sit in a room; they don’t know there’s a bomb under the coffee table, but YOU do.

With this stuff in mind as I reread The Shining, I realized how masterfully Stephen King shifts stages to control pacing and tension. The horrors of the Overlook are all the scarier for this stage-shifting. If they’d been revealed to everyone simultaneously, straight from the get-go, they would have been scary, but revealed piecemeal as they are, to different characters at different times, they’re much, much more frightening. To Jack, the supernatural forces cajole and seduce, drawing him in over time, preying on his insecurities and desires until they essentially possess him. To Danny, the horrors are far more overtly menacing, from the hungry hedge animals to the horrifying dead woman in Room 217. In a quiet way, Wendy’s collision with the supernatural is most frightening of all. She believes in Danny’s claims of clairvoyance but mostly fears neither these nor ghosts, but her husband’s temper and insanity. By withholding the full “reveal” to Wendy, King ups the terror again. She serves as the semi-skeptical voice of reason through most of the book, until finally the supernatural manifests all around her: the mask and confetti, the disembodied voices shouting, “Unmask! Unmask!” She doesn’t know the significance of everything she sees and hears, but WE do. We were privy to all of it in Jack’s point of view, and the marriage of these two streams in our consciousness is waaaaaay scary.

By giving us access to different parts of the story at different times, King builds mystery, dread, and page-turning speed. Nowhere is this tactic of manipulation more effective than the switch, around three-quarters of the way through, to a completely different stage: Dick Holloran in Florida. Back in the Overlook, things are bad. They’re snowed in; Jack’s gone ‘round the bend; and Danny’s finally figured out REDRUM and everything it implies. In Dick’s point of view, we slide back to good old Americana, and he’s joking around at the store, giving us a bit of comic relief. But the joke’s on us, of course, because for as much as we recognize Dick’s world and for as funny as his interaction is, we can’t really laugh. We’ve been at the Overlook, where the crap is officially about to hit the fan. We want Dick to get there fast.

Then Danny puts voice to our cry and calls to Dick from across all those miles. What follows, Dick’s desperate and heroic attempt to save the Torrance family, buries the pacing pedal, cranking things up to Cadillac speed. This is the stuff of thrillers, played to perfection.

The Shining reminded me why I love horror and why I love thrillers, and reminded me, too, something I’m learning again and again at Seton Hill: genres have their tropes and fans, but good storytelling is good storytelling.

We Are You: The Terrifyingly Plural Ghosts of Peter Straub's GHOST STORY

2011-09-29T11:42:00.000-07:00

Ghost Story is one of my favorite books. There’s so much to love about it: the writing, the characters, the incredible fullness of the tale, and Straub’s gift for using crystal clarity in some places and gauzy ambiguity in others. More than anything else, however, what really strikes me about Ghost Story is its overall effectiveness as a work within specific forms. It’s either the best ghost story I’ve ever read or the second best, depending on whether I’m in a Shining mood or a Ghost Story mood. As far as supernatural books go, it’s also the second scariest I’ve ever read, edging out The Shining and losing by a small margin to Pet Sematary.

(Unnecessary aside: When, in my late teens or early twenties, I first read Ghost Story, I instantly declared the scariest book I’d ever read. At that point, I’d read and enjoyed Pet Sematary, but it wasn’t until I reread King’s take on “The Monkey’s Paw” that it really unsettled me. That second read came after the death of my mother, whom I loved very much and who passed away far too early in life; rereading Louis’s decision to rebury his lost child in the Micmac burial ground, I knew I would make the same horrible decision, given the opportunity, even if I, like Louis, knew just how bad an idea it was. The awful power of grief…)

This time around, I was struck again by the brilliance and richness of Ghost Story, but the reread brought something new, as well, an idea that grew out of having recently read a stack of ghost stories back-to-back. Straub’s ghost scenes, treatment of the past-sins-come-around-again theme, and the Eva-Alma-Lynx-Woman-Wendigo- Thing pitched me back to questions Scott Johnson posed at the beginning of this course: Why ghost stories? Why are they so popular, so enduring? Why are we fascinated? What is purpose of a ghost story? Why are we frightened? Ghost Story made me wonder if identity is at the center of much of this.

Perhaps ghost stories fascinate and scare us because they suggest a corruptibility of time and a permeability of the definite. Straub horrifies through creepy, classic campfire stories – how great was Sears James’s Gregory Bate flashback story? – top-notch imagery, and by isolating well-developed characters in a town erupting with nightmares. Even more effectively, however, he unsettles me with the shifting plurality of his supernatural entities. Ricky’s nightmare about the giant spider would have been scary enough if it had actually been a giant spider; the fact that the “spider” was actually made up of the combined corpses of his dead (or soon to be dead friends) made this terrifying. The Eva-Galli-thing would have been scary enough in any of her single forms; but she was all the scarier for her different and far-reaching manifestations, her occasional lapses in individuality, as if not just her appearance but any given personality were merely a mask to some unseen, spiritual oligarchy. During the climax, past and present overlap and ghosts go wholly plural. Different spirits appear and disappear, and individual entities shift voices, cycling through multiple but united personalities, Lewis one minute, Sears James the next, who-knows-who after that. Finally, the ghosts, when asked who they are, drive it home: We are you.

*Shudders*

What an uncomfortable idea. The thought that we might linger after death is strange enough, but the idea that we might exist in multiple places – and no place wholly, pardon the pun – with fragments of our identities even blending together in some kaleidoscopic entity is genuinely unsettling. And Straub’s ghosts and shape shifters and whatever-they-are take this even further to suggest that living people are somehow plugged into these entities. I’m hoping for life after death, but I’d like to keep it simple while I’m still breathing. I don’t want a ghost becoming part of me, and I don’t feel like becoming a part of a ghost, either, even less so a collage of ghosts; and if I do persist after my mortal life has ceased, I hope I can keep some degree of autonomy. Emerson’s oversoul struck me as a pretty cool idea when I was in high school. Straub’s making me rethink that whole notion. Call me an egotist, label me a control freak, charge me as anti-social, but I don’t think it would be cool spending eternity cycling in and out of four or ten or fifty thousand other personalities without even my entire consciousness as a filter. To limp back to Pet Sematary, sometimes dead is better…

If I cart out my kindergartner’s understanding of existentialism, I’m made both comfortable and uncomfortable: if I’m alone in an uncaring universe, it’s kind of cold and scary and lonely and everything, but it does play up the individuality thing, and it lends a refreshing degree of importance to an individual’s choices in life. Straub’s nightmare blurring of ghosts and suggestion that the living are in some way a part of the ghost troupe conjure up a genuinely horrible idea: that we are indeed in an uncaring universe but that we’re never alone. Taking a step back from Ghost Story, how much of the fear generated by ghost stories is actually fueled by concerns for our identities, selves, and souls? At their most basic level, what are ghosts, other than leaks left behind the living?

Are we in some part frightened by ghost stories because they suggest the borders of our individual selves might not be secure? If ghosts exist, where do we begin and end? Not birth and death, it would seem. And what about the middle – the now, if you’re reading this – are we whole? Are we clearly defined? Are we autonomous? Or are we leaking? And how would we know the difference?

Angry Robot Author Anne Lyle: Web presence 101

2011-09-28T16:13:00.001-07:00

Hot off the presses: Anne Lyle, whose novel The Alchemist of Souls is due out from Angry Robot in March 2012, recently blogged a pragmatic post on the basics of building web presence for writers.

I used to resist the notion of building a web presence. I've come to realize, however -- and partly because this was explained to me directly by my agent -- that creating and maintaining a presence online is an important part of building a successful writing career.

I like the way Anne Lyle starts her post: "Nowadays it’s generally considered vital for an author to have a web presence, and yet a lot of writers don’t really know where to start." Check out the rest of her nuts-and-bolts post here.

So let's hear it, writers... what do you think about the web presence thing? What are you doing? What do you plan to do? Any shortcuts? Advice? Fears?

Mayweather Vs. Ortiz: Protect Yourself at All Times

2011-09-26T07:02:00.000-07:00

Let's get something straight: I'm no fan of Floyd Mayweather, Jr. His constant smack-talking and stunts like burning hundred-dollar bills drive me insane. But in the recent uproar concerning Mayweather's controversial victory over Victor Ortiz, I find myself firmly in the corner of Mayweather.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're not a boxing fan. In short: Ortiz flagrantly headbutted Mayweather then hugged him in apology. Referee Joe Cortez stopped the action and rightly deducted a point -- this was one of the most obvious headbutts I've ever seen, with Ortiz leaping to land it -- and then called time-in. Once a ref calls time-in, it's on. Ortiz, however, possibly because he felt embarrassed and guilty for the foul, and probably because he was overwhelmed by finding himself on a stage of this size, initiated another hug. Weird. And not too bright.

Mayweather, who was BOXING, stepped back from the weird hug and delivered a legal and crushing left hook - straight right combination and ended the fight.

Ortiz had a meltdown. That's it. He came out hard and fast, and after a round that saw Mayweather making adjustments and nailing him with crisp shots, flat-out lost it. The headbutt, the double-hug, and worst of all... he forgot the most basic rule of boxing: protect yourself at all times.

That's my two cents on the big controversy. Love him or hate him, Mayweather did nothing wrong.

Now that I've publicly supported my least favorite fighter, I'm hoping Karma will repay me in bringing together the fight everyone wants to see: Mayweather vs. Pacquiao.

Hell House Hath No Fury Like a Woman Well-Drawn

2011-09-14T15:02:00.000-07:00

Reacting to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Meatpunker Chris Shearer recently wrote a brilliant post, in which he admitted he favors “quiet” horror. It’s an old question in horror: do you like your horror served up hot and steaming or subtle and creaking? Blood or mumbles? Bright-white-shock-fear or unsettling whispers that linger?

I’ve never given much energy to the argument. I like good stories, good characters, good writing. I like stuff that resonates. Historically, I’ve claimed no preference.

Then I read The Haunting of Hill House and Hell House back-to-back and had to rethink my stance – or lack thereof – on the quiet horror / loud horror argument.

Going directly from The Haunting of Hill House to Hell House was like eating a sun-warmed heirloom tomato fresh from the garden – just a dash of salt on top, if you please – and then eating a bag and half of Starburst candies. (And I’m not talking little bags. I’m talking those great big warehouse-club-sized bags, the ones you need either a donkey or a Sherpa to pack home.) By the time I’d finished the first bag, I was sick of all that over-the-top flavor, all those bright-bright-bright colors.

The set-up was pretty good, and early on, I was interested in the characters, particularly Fischer, with his dark past. There was plenty of conflict. The writing was solid – I should pause to qualify that I do like Richard Matheson, by the way; I loved I Am Legend and several of his short stories – and there was lots of high-stakes bad stuff going on. So what went wrong?

The horror in Hell House was loud. It didn’t rely so much on buckets of blood as it did rapid-fire physical menace, lots of sexual dread, and characters losing control of their minds and bodies. It kept coming and coming and coming, but rather than building unease in the manner of The Haunting of Hill House, it just made me feel impatient. In the end, I just gutted it out, eating the last third of the book with all the enthusiasm I would’ve felt for that hypothetical last half-bag of Starbursts. I was sick of the book way before I finished it.

The characters were problematic, a weakness all the clearer in juxtaposition to Shirley Jackson’s character-driven masterpiece. Where The Haunting of Hill House had original, dazzlingly well-developed characters, Hell House featured a cast of underdeveloped characters, none of them likeable and all of them with huge motivation problems. Barrett was a stereotype – the stubborn science zealot. Edith was weak and boring, pretty much defined only by the house’s efforts to turn her into a sexually aggressive person. Florence might have been likeable – she was nice and self-sacrificing, anyway – but she felt less like a real person and more like a device. She spent so little time in control of her own self that she fell apart as a character. Fischer was the most interesting, but still… beyond his psychic abilities, what do you say about him? Again, he didn’t feel real. And he waited around way too long to get back in the game. Yeah, I know Matheson showed him “sip” the menace, making his reluctance on-the-page believable, but why go that route? This book needed an active, likeable character doing battle throughout the novel. To me, Fischer was kind of like Hamlet – all that hesitation even as bodies piled up around him – if Hamlet never did or said anything particularly interesting. Since I didn’t like these characters, it was difficult to care when bad stuff started happening to them.

None of the horror scared me. When the characters were menaced, I didn’t care because I didn’t like them. When Matheson tried to use sex as menace – and he dwelled way too long and way too frequently on the sex thing, I thought – I didn’t share the revulsion or titillation of the characters (except for the corpse thing… that was pretty good). Belasco, the malevolent force behind Hell House, like the novel itself, seemed to try too hard. There was lots of stuff going on – a semi-secret history shrouded in mystery and streaked in pain, physical manifestations all over the place, the frequent taking over of the main characters, even the grand twist with Belasco’s remains, the prosthetic limbs and death by thirst, all of it… but it was too much. And because there was so much, because it tried too hard, nothing really stood out. Not to overwork the simile, but it did lack the orchestration of flavor you find in a really good tomato. This was just one bright Starburst after another. It was a book full of sneers.

The worst thing for me, though, was what I would call the puppety-ness of the characters. Frequently, I didn’t believe them or their motivations. I didn’t believe they would stay. I didn’t believe Barrett’s stubbornness or his relationship with his wife. I didn’t believe in Florence’s love for Daniel. I didn’t believe Fischer would return to Hell House in the first place, not after what happened during his first trip. This would have been bad enough, but then the possessions began. Over and over again, characters lost control. It was really, really overdone. They spent so little time in their own minds, it was impossible to care what happened. None of them were able to actually do anything interesting or work at any kind of sustained plan. Where the unreliability of Eleanor in The Haunting of Hill House was deeply interesting, one more piece of a beautiful puzzle, the puppety-ness of these characters was just distancing and annoying. Hell House put on the trappings of a mysterious puzzle but ended up feeling like a “and-now-THIS-happened!” novel.

What does my discontent mean? Have I rethought my neutral stance on the old quiet horror versus loud horror debate? No. Though Hell House’s “loudness” played into my discontent and The Haunting of Hill House’s subtle delivery delighted me, I still think it comes down to good book / bad book, not quiet book / loud book. I remain just as likely to pick up a book by Ketchum or Laymon as a collection of Algernon Blackwood stories.

I am left with a new and interesting question, though. In terms of ghost stories in particular, is quiet better than loud? What do you think?

The Anthology from Hell

2011-09-04T19:19:00.001-07:00

Good news! Julia Mandala, editor of The Anthology from Hell: Humorous Tales from WAY Down Under, just announced a winter 2012 release from Yard Dog Press. The anthology, which features humorous stories set in hell, includes my "One Helluva Job", along with stories from a bunch of heavy-hitters, like Mike Resnick and Spider Robinson.

Woo-hoo!

My Cup of Stars: The Haunting of Hill House

2011-09-02T13:59:00.000-07:00

Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House reminds me of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, in that both are books I’d love to hand any highbrow thumb-knuckle who bashes genre fiction wholesale. “Here you go, Stockton, old chap,” I’d tell him in that weird, almost-English-but-not-quite accent so many pinheaded American elitists affect. “Have a gander.”

Then I’d wait, probably for quite a while – ever notice that book snobs don’t actually read that much or that quickly? – and once I was relatively sure he’d read it, I’d ask him what he thought, forgoing all put-on accents, and settle in to watch him writhe in pain.

No fan of literature could dismiss The Haunting of Hill House, even if it is – gasp – horror.

What a great book, huh? The writing, the characters, the menace, the sheer brilliance humming along behind it all, connecting all the dots – and “all” is the operative word here; The Haunting of Hill House is tightly crafted as a Poe story. The thing blew me away.

In terms of the writing, the book’s loaded with beautiful sentences and wonderful descriptions of both the internal and external worlds of the characters. When recently asked by an evil overlord to list some of my favorite first lines, I’m not sure how I overlooked the opening to this novel: “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.” As a writer, I just want to scream, “Get the *expletive deleted* out of here, Shirley Jackson!” It’s too good, too good, this opening line. It’s beautifully phrased and structured; it’s wholly unexpected; and it manages to encapsulate the entire novel. Not too shabby for a lowly genre novel, right? Truth be told, the whole book’s packed full of beautiful writing, much of which slurs back and forth between Eleanor’s internal and external worlds.

The characterization here is absolutely top-notch. I read a lot of thrillers, and while many fast-paced stories manage to develop full characters, none dedicate the time and space to character development that Jackson dedicated here. It was a true pleasure to sink in and get a full picture of Eleanor before she even arrived at Hill House. It’s rare in our fast-paced publishing climate to come across a book that commits so large a chunk of space to what reads like pre-story – and for good reason, of course; most of us aren’t within shouting distance of Jackson’s writing prowess, and if we spent thirty-some pages getting our main character to the setting of the story, it would bore readers into comas of self-defense. Not so with The Haunting of Hill House. I loved every bit of the slow start – Eleanor’s trouble with her overbearing sister; the perfect little house with its cat and curtains; the David Lynch-esque diner scene; the coveted cup of stars; and even the boys lounging about in elaborate silence. Perhaps it seems I’m leaving the topic of characterization and verging into setting, but oh no, no, no… Jackson’s too good to compartmentalize. Very little of this book comes to us without some significant attachment to – and quite often the direct filtering through – Eleanor. What she notices, how she views it, the weird far-ranging spectrum of inner thoughts these settings trigger… it all fleshes out the incredibly full, completely original, and strangely credible psychology of Eleanor, and this, in turn, makes The Haunting of Hill House an excellent story.

When fully-realized characters are menaced, it’s hard not to care. I didn’t find The Haunting of Hill House SCARY, exactly; but it was definitely unsettling. I loved the subdued nature of the haunting, the way Hill House singled out Eleanor, the fact that its attacks dovetailed neatly into her weaknesses and past, and most of all the wonderful full-circle nature of the climax, which even lends a duality to the title: We see not only examples of the things haunting Hill House; we see as well a re-haunting of Hill House. The story between these pages documents the ghost story future ghostbusters will someday tell in the squeaky-chaired parlor… the story of Eleanor Vance, who will, no doubt “walk alone” in Hill House.

I will read this book again… and again… and again. While on the surface, everything’s gauzy as a water-color, Jackson’s creation is mind-bogglingly layered, as intricate as a Faberge egg. I’ve reread No Country for Old Men seven or eight times, and every read’s a delight, revealing additional brilliance. No matter how many times I return to The Haunting of Hill House, I’m sure I’ll glimpse additional brilliance on the part of Jackson, for whom character, setting, mood, theme, and story are all one. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Stockton the Genre-Poo-Pooing Highbrow…

Exciting News from ANGRY ROBOT!

2011-08-23T11:10:00.001-07:00

BREW forges on!

I just received the good news from Angry Robot editor Amanda that BREW has moved on to the editorial board. I entered it in Angry Robot's Open Door Submission Month, a first-time experiment where, for one month, they opened their door to unagented submissions. I was excited to get the request for the full manuscript some time ago, and I'm overjoyed to have progressed to the final stage.

I just discovered Amanda's amazing website / blog, Floor to Ceiling Books, where on August 18th, she posted this note:

"Well, 'tis done.

I was asked to read the submissions for Angry Robot Books Open Door Month in March.

944 came in and I read maybe half of these partial submissions (maybe a little less than half).

I called forward 60 full manuscripts.

Out of those I have put forward 9 manuscripts and I dearly hope that they ALL get picked up - all these authors should be exceptionally proud of what they've achieved. The manuscript titles of those novels I adored are:

1) Channel Zilch
2) The Lives of Tao
3) The Mad Scientist's Daughter
4) Grayspace
5) The Further Adventures of Cyrano de Bergerac
6) The Dead of Winter
7) Pantomime
8) Brew
9) The Corpse-Rat King

Intriguing titles, non? Based simply on the titles, are there any that you would pick up to glance at the blurb?"

A final note: THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF CYRANO DE BERGERAC is from my good friend and frequent coauthor, Adam Browne. Wish us both luck!

A SCARY GOOD BOOK

2011-08-08T10:27:00.000-07:00

Looking for a good, scary book fit for both kids and adults?

You're in luck!

Good friend and fellow Seton Hill student Anita Laydon Miller released her newest novel, A SCARY GOOD BOOK in e-book format today.

Amazon's description reads, "Twelve-year-old Hannah Stone tells everyone she’s “okay,” but that’s a total lie. Two years ago her dad was killed by a hit-and-run driver. The detective in charge of the case never found the driver, but he somehow managed to get Hannah’s mom to fall in love with him. The jerk. And speaking of love, Hannah’s developed a major crush on Ollie Ortega—he’s her best friend and the only one she can talk to—a crush on Ollie is so not a good idea.

Also not a good idea? Searching for a missing person with no help from the police. But that’s exactly what Hannah does when she finds messages in library books—underlined words that point her in the direction of someone who needs her.

And, suddenly, Hannah’s even further from okay. She breaks into a library, gets caught in a kidnapper’s web, and is stalked by her dad’s killer, all in an effort to save a life…but can she save herself, too?"

All for 99 cents!

For more information, including sample chapters, check out http://www.anitalaydonmiller.com/, or head straight to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or smashwords to pick up your copy.

Best News Ever!!!

2011-07-29T16:06:00.000-07:00

Woooo-hooooo! I landed a literary agent!

And not just any agent... I signed with the most excellent Christina Hogrebe, of the esteemed Jane Rotrosen Agency.

We met at ThrillerFest, where I pitched my YA thriller, Phoenix Island. Several agents offered to read the manuscript, and I ended up with four offers of representation. The agents were great, one and all, brilliant and charismatic and generous with their time and patience; but in the end, I knew the right choice for me: Christina Hogrebe.

Christina read the first half of Phoenix Island in one night and e-mailed the next morning to let me know she was soliciting further readers within the agency. The next day, we had a nice phone conversation, and she invited me to visit the agency and meet "the team". A few days later, when I rode the train into Manhattan, at least four people at the agency had already read my manuscript. Four people in just a few days' time -- talk about an advocate!

The meeting was great. The agency, which has been in business since the 70's, occupies a four-story Victorian on East 51st Street in Manhattan. Books and dog art abound. We sat in beautiful room in comfy furniture across from built-in bookshelves displaying the books of JRA clients, past and present, including heavy-hitters like Tess Gerritsen, Lisa Gardner, Iris Johansen, Michael Palmer, Tami Hoag, and Douglas Clegg. Christina was wonderful. We talked about the book, my plans, her experiences and thoughts, and the agency. In the end, she offered representation. I was delighted.

Now it's work time. We're hammering out a series overview. Next week, she'll reread the manuscript and prepare a full editorial letter. Then it's my turn to return to Phoenix Island, which is a pretty rough place for the orphans who end up there, but with Christina at my side, I'm certain everything will work out just fine!

First Fruit!

2011-07-19T03:42:00.000-07:00

Well, not really first...

For weeks, we've been enjoying cucumbers, squash, radishes, peppers, herbs, and grape tomatoes -- I highly recommend the Supersweet 100 variety to anyone looking to produce loads and loads of tiny, tasty tomatoes -- but now we've hit that magical moment of the growing year... the first full-sized tomatoes are ripe!

This lovely specimen -- measured for your convenience, of course, against the standard for garden sizing, a pack of candy cigarettes -- was our first of the season, an "Early Goliath". We picked and ate it Friday, rendering it to slices for my father-in-law's birthday hamburger. A grand time...

To those of you growing food, any surprises this year? Anything coming on particularly well?

NECon Looms!

2011-07-15T10:07:00.000-07:00

In just under a week, I'll head to Rhode Island for the Northeastern Writers' Conference -- NECon.

Held every July on the campus of Roger Williams University, NECon boasts a long tradition -- over thirty years -- of good people and good times. This will be my ninth consecutive NECon, and I'm more excited than ever.

This year's Guests of Honor are Sarah Langan and Jonathan Maberry; the Legends are Jack Ketchum and Elizabeth Massie; and the Guest Artist is none other than the genuinely fabulous Steven Gilberts, who did the cover art for my short story collection.

In less frequently publicized news, Nick Cato will receive this year's coveted Petting Zoo Award.

I can't wait to see everybody!

Home from Thrillerfest

2011-07-11T08:58:00.000-07:00

Spent the week in New York, attending ThrillerFest VI at the Grand Hyatt -- what a blast!

The con was unlike any I'd previously attended. Very professional, highly organized, everything intense and pragmatic and buzzing with good energy. The highlight, of course, was the people. It was great, getting to hang out with old friends like Matt Schwartz and Douglas Clegg -- two of the nicest and smartest guys I know -- fun to see others I'd met in the past, and a real joy to make new friends.

Another highlight: pitching Phoenix Island. It went really, really well. I was nervous, of course, having never pitched before, but by the end of the whirlwind session, several rock-solid agents had asked to see the book. I couldn't be happier.

Thanks again to all of you who wished me luck, here and elsewhere. Hopefully I'll see some of you at ThrillerFest VII next year!

Angry Robot Authors Kicking Butt!

2011-07-01T09:22:00.000-07:00

In a recent post, Lee from Angry Robot writes, "It’s an absolute joy to be able to announce that Gary McMahon’s superior horror novel, Pretty Little Dead Things, is shortlisted for the British Fantasy Society’s Best Novel award. Congratulations to Gary, and to the 4 other nominees.

You can read a sample, below, and pick up a copy from all good bookshops.

In other news, Zinzi December, the troubled protagonist in the Arthur C Clarke Award-winning Zoo City by Lauren Beukes, has been named by SFX Magazine as one of The 20 Greatest Heroes of SF Literature."

Way to go, Gary and Lauren!

MEATPUNK!

2011-07-01T07:56:00.000-07:00

When we declared a new genre they laughed, but then they heard the stories...

That's right: there's a new genre in town -- meatpunk!

Embracing horror, sci fi, fantasy, and practically every other mode of literature and artistic expression, meatpunk thrums along on an irresistibly simple premise: machines made of living meat.

Picture filet mignon laced up in a corset. Now set it to shuddering, add a smokestack, and let fly with a chirpy "Toot! Toot!"

Picture meaty conduits packed with intestinal coaxial; great heart furnaces, huffing and hissing and heating homes; dialysis machines in the form of vast kidneys, saving lives...

Meatpunk stories will feature these meat machines in any number of ways, from basement experiments gone wrong in horror to sleek and steaming meat-scapes in sci fi to groaning catapults of living meat in fantasy. The possibilities are endless...

Thanks to all those at Seton Hill who plugged into Meatpunk mania last week, most notably Chris Shearer and Sheldon Higdon. A big thanks also to Coe McIninch, Gie Eldredge, Victoria Thompson (a.k.a. "Chuck Burger"), and all of those who shared ideas, added enthusiasm, and expressed interest in contributing meatpunk stories and artwork to the hypothetical Meatpunk Manifesto anthology.

I look forward to sharing meatpunk with uber-creative fun-machines like Adam Browne and Nick Cato, and getting the word out to the wonderful spec fic crowd in Australia, as well as the always twisted crowd at NECon, which I'll be attending later this month.

More to the point, I look forward to hearing from YOU -- whoever you might be, even if you've just stumbled randomly on this page during a carnivorous stupor... especially if you came here randomly, in fact. I want your questions, your ideas, your stories, your images... a deluge of grassroots meaty goodness until the steaming, pulsing giant that is meatpunk rips forth fully birthed and splits the air with an ear-shattering "TOOT! TOOT!"

Back from Residency

2011-06-29T18:08:00.000-07:00

I just returned from summer residency at Seton Hill University, where I'm pursuing an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction. It's a great program, and I had a blast hanging out with way too many people to name right now.

More details later on what was undoubtedly the best residency so far, but right now all free time is being sucked straight into the black hole that is preparation for Thrillerfest, which kicks off a week from today.

Wish me luck!

Angry Robot Open Submissions

2011-06-18T03:35:00.000-07:00

A big thanks to editor, writer, and all around swell guy, Mark Farrugia, who just sent me a link to Angry Robot's statistical breakdown concerning their open submissions month, during which they received nearly 1000 submissions.

Wish me luck. My novel Brew is one of the ten horror novels still under consideration.

Lee from Angry Robot writes:

"We reported in April that we’d had just under 1,000 submissions during our Open Door month in March. After accounting for duplicated and recalled submissions, the final tally is 944*.

Of those 944:

131 were described by the authors as horror.
318 as science fiction
423 as fantasy
72 had no genre attached (despite the submission guidelines stating a genre should be chosen. Ah, well).

Of the 131 horror submissions, 120 were rejected without calling in a full MS. 11 full manuscripts were called in, of which 1 has been rejected so far, and 10 still under consideration.**

Of the 423 fantasy submissions, 246 were rejected without calling in a full MS, 14 were rejected after calling in a full MS, 150 are still in the reading list, and 13 have been escalated to the Angry Robot editorial team.

Of the 318 SF submissions, 130 were rejected without calling in a full MS, none have yet been rejected after calling in a full MS, 186 are still in the reading list, and 2 have been escalated to the editors.

Of the “other” 72, 64 were rejected without calling in a full submission, 6 were rejected after calling in the full MS and 2 have been escalated.

So, altogether:

336 still to read.
570 rejected at partial stage.
21 rejected after calling in the full MS.
17 have so far reached the editors’ desks (that’s 2.8% of the submissions read so far).

If the remaining submissions follow the same pattern, then around 26 manuscripts will be read by the AR editorial team.

Of the 17 that have been passed up so far, 15 are still under consideration. 2 have been read and rejected. One was very good, one was exceptionally good, but not a good fit for Angry Robot."

To read the entire article, including follow-up comments, or to check out Angry Robot's impressive line-up, go here.

Capped!

2011-06-18T03:19:00.001-07:00

With the help of my friend Kevin, I finally capped the wall. We used 18 x 30 flagstone pieces, cutting them to fit and setting them on a bed of mortar. We also fixed three lights along the wall. The toads seem happy about this.

The patio and wall were Christina's Christmas present. Here, she enjoys them even as the tomato plants tower menacingly and a nuclear explosion detonates beyond the hedgerow.

Good News from Angry Robot!

2011-06-09T12:46:00.000-07:00

After a bumper crop of garden posts, I have good writing news to share.

During March, very cool publisher Angry Robot opened their doors to unagented submissions, and on the advice of Adam Browne and Tim Waggoner, I sent AR the first five chapters of my Laymon-esque horror novel, Brew. Amanda from AR emailed today, requesting the full manuscript.

It's funny. I've been so focused on Phoenix Island that I haven't even been thinking about Brew... but looking it over today, I remembered what fun it was, writing it.

Anyway, wanted to share the good news. We now return to our regularly scheduled garden posts...

First Fire!

2011-06-07T18:52:00.000-07:00

I picked the first peppers of the season today. These cayenne peppers -- measured here against the universal standard of candy cigarettes -- would have turned red, had I left them on the vine a bit longer, but the plant will apparently produce heavier yields if I take them while they're still green. Chopped one up raw and put it on a burrito tonight... a nice flavor, but not as hot as I expected.

Bring on the habaneros!

Garden Surges as Wall Reaches Capping Height

2011-06-01T16:10:00.000-07:00

At last! I finished the wall in two marathon sessions, battling through heat indexes of something like one hundred degrees. Needless to say, I'm very happy. All that remains is the flagstone cap.

Here's another view (note the dog's characteristic obsessiveness):

Two more, closer, showing the opposite side:

Two more, closer again, but showing the patio side:

One standing against the house:

And finally, a shot of Christina sitting on the garden, just to show how much the tomatoes have grown over the last two weeks (sharp-eyed viewers, can you spot the cat?).

Happy Belated Memorial Day

2011-05-31T16:50:00.000-07:00

This weekend was great... spent most of it with the family, including my niece Ashley, whom I call "Plo-Plo", and who keeps my heart in her back pocket.

Did any of you do anything fun for Memorial Day?

Thrillerfest!

2011-05-23T17:05:00.001-07:00

Having finished my first thriller, I'm super stoked to be heading to Thrillerfest this July. Anyone else going?

One Hundred Great Short Stories

2011-05-20T11:12:00.000-07:00

Last summer at NECon, John Skipp asked me a simple question that sparked an animated hour or so of conversation: "What are some of your favorite short stories?"

It's not a question I hear often. Maybe I need to start asking it myself.

Here's a list of 100 of my favorite short stories. They're not in any real order... just 100 great reads. The list has holes in it -- big holes, I'm sure -- and I encourage any short story fans out there to remind me of some I should have included.

100 Great Short Stories

1. “Revelation” by Flannery O’Connor
2. “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
3. “Friends” by Tim O’Brien
4. “Enemies” by Tim O’Brien
5. “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” by Tim O’Brien
6. “Rawhead Rex” by Clive Barker
7. “Paycheck” by Philip K. Dick
8. “Second Variety” by Philip K. Dick
9. “Minority Report” by Philip K. Dick
10. “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick
11. “The Emissary” by Ray Bradbury
12. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates
13. “The Box” by Jack Ketchum
14. “When the Women Come Out to Dance” by Elmore Leonard
15. “Tenkiller” by Elmore Leonard
16. “In the Penal Colony” by Franz Kafka
17. “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe
18. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce
19. “Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler
20. “White Angel” by Michael Cunninham
21. “The Prophet from Jupiter” by Tony Early
22. “Greasy Lake” by T.C. Boyle
23. “My First Goose” by Isaac Babel
24. “Straw” by Gene Wolfe
25. “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks” by Joe Lansdale
26. “Rikki Tiki Tavi” by Rudyard Kipling
27. “The Raft” by Stephen King
28. “The Golden Man” by Philip K. Dick
29. “Dark They Were, and Golden-eyed” by Ray Bradbury
30. “Quitters, Inc.” by Stephen King
31. “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut
32. “Jerry’s Kids Meet Wormboy” by David Schow
33. “The Rabbit” by Jack Pavey
34. “The Short, Happy Life of Francis McComber” by Ernest Hemingway
35. “The Outsider” by H.P. Lovecraft
36. “Leiningen Versus the Ants” by Carl Stephenson
37. “The Country of the Blind” by H.G. Wells
38. “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell
39. “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs
40. “’Smee” by A.M. Burrage
41. “Sredni Vashtar” by Saki
42. “A Retrieved Reformation” by O. Henry
43. “The Ransom of Red Chief” by O. Henry
44. “A Mother in Manville” by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
45. “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes
46. “Love of Life” by Jack London
47. “To Build a Fire” by Jack London
48. “The Blue Hotel” by Stephen Crane
49. “Arena” by Frederic Brown
50. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor
51. “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury
52. “Zero Hour” by Ray Bradbury
53. “Weatherboard Spaceship” by Adam Browne
54. “Ad Nauseum” by Adam Browne
55. “Heart of Saturday Night” by Adam Browne
56. “Space Operetta” by Adam Browne
57. “Beware of the Dog” by Roald Dahl
58. “The Hanged Man” by Philip K. Dick
59. “Nightfall” by Isaac Asimov
60. “The Nine Billion Names of God” by Arthur C. Clark
61. “The Roads Must Roll” by Robert Heinlein
62. “The Specialist’s Hat” by Kelly Link
63. “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
64. “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
65. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson
66. “Beyond the Black River” by Robert E. Howard
67. “The Guest” by Albert Camus
68. “Too Many Crooks” by Donald Westlake
69. “Strays” by Mark Richard Richard
70. “Gold Coast” by James Alan McPherson
71. “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” by Katherine Anne Porter
72. “Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Melville
73. “Red” by Hugh B. Cave
74. “Two Were Left” by Hugh B. Cave
75. “Parker’s Back” by Flannery O’Connor
76. “The Rifle” by Jack Ketchum
77. “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” by Rod Serling
78. “The Man Who Would Be King” Rudyard Kipling
79. “Bimi” by Rudyard Kipling
80. “I Am Infinite, I Contain Multitudes” by Douglas Clegg
81. “Everything That Rises Must Converge” by Flannery O’Connor
82. “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry
83. “The Squaw” by Bram Stoker
84. “Blows the Night Wind” by Gene-Michael Higney
85. “Ligeia” by Edgar Allan Poe
86. “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe
87. “William Wilson” by Edgar Allan Poe
88. “The Pit and the Pendulum” by Edgar Allan Poe
89. “Who Goes There?" John W. Campbell
90. “The Tomb” by H.P. Lovecraft
91. “The Colour out of Space” by H.P. Lovecraft
92. “Gramma” by Stephen King
93. “Lunch at the Gotham Café” by Stephen King
94. “The Ten O’Clock People” by Stephen King
95. “All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury
96. “Come into my Cellar” by Ray Bradbury
97. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
98. “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner
99. “The Outstation” by W. Somerset Maugham
100. “The Song of the Slaves” by Manly Wade Wellman

So that's my list... for now. How about you? What are some of your favorite short stories?

Garden Wall Heat-seeking Cat Dog

2011-05-19T04:07:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure, but I think that title might be a complete sentence...

Over the last couple of weeks, rain and garden-planting have taken a bite of rock-piling time, but the wall is coming along. I love this time of year, planning and planting the garden, watering stuff, watching it grow, plucking fat hornworms off the tomato plants...

Here's a panoramic shot that shows the planted garden and some of the wall and -- the real bonus! -- our neighbor's cat and one of my best pals, Fat Matt.

Here's the dog guarding the garden.

This year, we've planted nine tomato plants -- an early Goliath, a jet star, a supersonic, two beefmasters, a Rutgers, a Brandywine heirloom, a big beef, and our old standby, the supersweet 100 -- along with cucumbers, lettuce, zucchini, herbs, and two dozen peppers, half of them hot varieties: four jalapenos, a lemon drop, four habaneros, a serrano, a cayenne, two poblanos, and a Caribbean red hot that's supposed to be ten times hotter than a habanero. Here's a pic of the hottest one of them all...

And finally, here's a shot that focuses in on Fat Matt and shows the other side of the wall.

The New Wall, Take Three

2011-05-09T02:35:00.000-07:00

With the book finished, I'm back to work on the wall. At one end, it's reached capping height.

The dog, who this day shook things up, opting to obsess over his tennis ball rather than his frisbee, managed to interject himself into two of the photos.

On a perhaps more interesting note, Milo, the larger of our two fourteen-year-old cats, is visible in this final picture. It's obvious that he's contemplating a little demo work.

How Do You Celebrate?

2011-05-04T08:07:00.000-07:00

When I finished writing the book yesterday, my always wonderful wife, Christina, suggested we celebrate by going out to eat.

As I live in the suburbs of Philadelphia, a region known for amazing restaurants, it might seem like I would be overwhelmed by choices.

No way.

I drove straight to the greatest restaurant in the universe: Jimmy John's Hot Dogs!

So that's what I did... how do you celebrate your big moments?

Finished Writing My Book Today!

2011-05-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

Not to trump the dog's birthday or anything, but I finished writing PHOENIX ISLAND today.

A lot of work lies ahead -- adding scenes, gutting others -- but it feels great, after ten months of hard work, to have typed "THE END".

Happy Birthday to Scout

2011-05-03T12:28:00.000-07:00

Bust out the pointy hats and noisemakers! My frisbee-obsessed border collie, Scout, turned eight today. He's a good dog and funny, too. When people stop by, he wrinkles his lips in a "smile" that looks like he's snarling if you don't notice his wiggling, his happy sneezing, and his wagging tail. The UPS guy refuses to believe me...

Anyway, the old boy is eight now. I'd better get back to the festivities: a long walk, lots of frisbee-tossing, and maybe a cake made of meat...

Guest Blogging at Kristindearborn.com

2011-04-30T15:25:00.000-07:00

This week, I'm the guest blogger over at kristindearborn.com, where I'll again defend -- and give my take on the relevance of -- zombies.

If you get a second, please drop by and leave your take on zombies -- love 'em, hate 'em, or otherwise -- and we'll build a discussion... or, if that melts down, an argument. Woo hoo!

The New Wall, Take 2

2011-04-15T15:18:00.000-07:00

The wall is growing, slowly but surely. After laying the first course, filling the middle with junk rock, and locking it all together with half a dozen bags of mortar, I started piling more rocks. So far, the tallest section is twenty inches high, on its way to around twenty-five, leaving two inches for the flagstone cap and its mortar bed.

If the patio looks shockingly monochromatic, that's because we just swept "Gator Dust" into the joints between the flagstones. Cool name, Gator Dust. Once that stuff sets up, I'll hose it all down and -- if necessary -- scrub the stones with masonry cleaner. For now, it's all kinda white-gray, like its chiseled moon rock.

Here's a closeup:

Another...

Here's a shot that shows the center, where gravel has joined the fight. I need to hit it again with mortar.

Finally, here's one more, just in case you were wondering about the dog...

Mad, Mad World

2011-04-14T09:42:00.000-07:00

In a post dated April 9th, 2011, on his always entertaining, eclectic, and extreme Horror, Sleaze, and Trash blog (beware, link-clickers; this site, like so many others on the web, is sure to offend some of you, so proceed at your own risk, if you must), Ben John Smith quoted real-life serial killer Aileen Wuornos, who said, “All I want to do is go back to the prison, wait for the chair, and get the hell off this planet that is full of evil.”

Ha, ha, ha, right? A serial killer calling our planet “evil”? Pretty ironic…

And yet one of the most enjoyable aspects of this course on psychos has been its evolving dialogue on insanity and the notion that we “normal” people aren’t all that far removed from the human monsters bloodying the pages of the books we’ve read. Our most recent read, Batman, The Killing Joke, suggests the barrier between sanity and insanity might be so thin, in fact, that something so simple as “one bad night” might kick it down forever.

Batman, The Killing Joke is the story of two powerful characters whose fates are inextricably intertwined. One is the face of good and order. The other is the face of evil and chaos. And yet if we listen carefully to the Joker, we can see that he and Batman aren’t all that different. If we look closely enough at their similarities, we might even draw some disturbing conclusions about ourselves.

The story begins in an insane asylum, where Batman clearly states his driving motivation, which develops into the central conflict of the story. To him, it’s clear. He and the Joker are going to kill each other. Perhaps he’ll kill the Joker, and perhaps the Joker will kill him. He spends the story trying to avert this collision. The “Joker” to whom he originally makes this plea, however, is merely an imposter, an interesting twist that seems to suggest the fallibility of identity and the difficulty of reliably labeling the insane. The rest of the graphic novel is largely concerned with giving us an in-depth picture of the real Joker and giving him the opportunity to make his statement about the nature of insanity.

By providing the Joker’s back story, Batman, The Killing Joke gives us a clearer understanding of this famous psycho. Bringing to mind that excellent Rolling Stones song “Sympathy for the Devil”, Batman, The Killing Joke tells the sad story of the man the Joker had been. Unable to provide for his family, driven nearly mad by fear and desperation, he fell in with criminals for “one bad night” that he hoped would change his life forever. It did… but of course not in the way he had hoped. After bad luck, betrayal, and the appearance of Batman, he leapt into a vat of chemicals and became the Joker. Even if we don’t feel sympathy for the Joker himself, we feel a degree of empathy for him and real sympathy for the man he once was. This connection with the Joker makes us more receptive not only to the character but also to his ideas, and this is definitely an idea-driven book.

During the “front” story of the graphic novel, as Batman tries to defuse the ticking bomb of his union with the Joker, the Joker is busy making his statement about insanity. He tries to drive Commissioner Gordon insane to highlight the point of his excellent “one bad night” speech, which argues that our “harsh and irrational world” can drive anyone stark raving mad, that all it takes is one bad night for any of us to become a psycho like the Joker.

To the Joker, we “normal” people are all too smug in our sense of sanity and security. From personal experience, he knows that a combination of misfortunes can wear away one’s sanity like waves eroding a shoreline. He first explains this to Gordon and then, in the final scene, to Batman. “You had a bad day once. Am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed. Why else would you dress up like a flying rat? You had a bad day and it drove you as crazy as everybody else… only you won’t admit it! You have to keep pretending that life makes sense, that there’s some point to all this struggling.” I’d say the Joker has a pretty good argument. Batman’s bad day came long ago, when he was just a child and his parents were murdered, leaving him with an unquenchable thirst for justice. He is a zealot of the first order, a man so consumed by his need to punish criminals that he regularly risks everything in a seemingly endless struggle. Noble as that might be, it’s also a far cry from “normal”.

On to the uncomfortable part… it’s not just Gordon and Batman to whom the Joker is speaking, of course. It's always easier to imagine psychos as "crazy", as completely different than us. That sort of order gives us comfort and provides a tangible scapegoat for the woes of the world. As Charles Manson said -- and again, I must give credit to Ben John Smith, who posted this Manson-ism on Horror, Sleaze, and Trash on April 15th -- ""You know, every body's looking for something to blame because they dont want to look inside themselves." If we can follow the Joker's logic concerning law-and-justice-obsessed extremists like Gordon and Batman, we’re admitting on some level the validity of the rest of what the Joker is saying. Life makes little if any sense, and if fate decides to sucker punch any one of us during any given day – one bad day, that is – we might end up crazier than a soup-sandwich, too. What might that look like? Who knows? Maybe you’d paint your face and kill a bunch of people. Maybe you’d rig up a costume and risk your life in the name of justice. Or maybe you’d spend seventy hours a week at the office while the seasons pass and your children age. Any of those options might be more comfortable than looking inside yourself.

If the Joker’s argument has any validity whatsoever, maybe Aileen Wournos’s estimation of our “evil” planet wasn’t so far off the mark as it originally seemed. Speaking of those who do succumb to insanity, the Joker echoes her sentiments, saying, “Who can blame them? In a world as psychotic as this… any other response would be crazy.”

The New Wall, Take One

2011-04-08T12:23:00.001-07:00

I've started building a new stone wall. In the past, I've done almost exclusively dry stacks, but this time around, I'm trying a hybrid. It's a two-sided fence, basically a dry stack with cement in the middle. I'm going with this option for a couple of reasons. It's running alongside a flagstone patio, so straighter lines will look better, and it's going to be a sitting wall and will therefore need a little extra strength.

I should have taken a picture of the footer, but alas, I didn't think of it. Here's where I am now, halted by rain. I faced out both sides, creating a "box", and filled the center with "junk rock". Next move: add cement and do the next level. I'll post again if anyone's interested in this.

The wall's about twenty-five feet long. I'm aiming for a little over two feet of height and a width of twenty-eight inches tapering to around twenty-seven, where I'll cap it in flagstone to tie it into the patio. The patio was done by my friend Kevin McClathchey, by the way. I hate flat work, and he's really good at it.

Here's another picture, a close up of the inside to which I'll soon add cement:

And one more, this one including my primary distraction as I work, my faithful, frisbee-obsessed border collie, Scout, who honestly thinks all of work is just some clever game centered around my throwing the thing for him over and over and over...

Scout's standing beside a raised bed garden I built three summers ago. If any of you like to grow vegetables and haven't tried raised beds, do it this year. They're great. And the stones hold heat during the early season, making for happy tomato plants.

Jack Ketchum Provides Another JOYRIDE

2011-04-07T14:44:00.000-07:00

“Who’s the scariest guy in America? Probably Jack Ketchum.” – Stephen King

Jack Ketchum’s my favorite horror writer this side of Stephen King. In books like Off Season and Offspring, he shocked me; other tales, like The Girl Next Door and “The Box”, unsettled me; still other stories, such as The Lost and “The Rifle”, plunged me deep – and rather convincingly – into the minds of psychotic killers; then Red came along and trumped them all, breaking my heart.

King’s right – Ketchum’s really, really scary – but he doesn’t simply scare us. He makes us think, makes us feel, and forces us to look truth dead in the eyes.

In Joyride, a mean little book of fewer than 250 pages, Ketchum again delivers the goods through his signature blend of fantastic storytelling, breakneck pacing, and language both pragmatic and poetic. His thematic concerns, which illustrate keen insight into the human condition, come to light as Ketchum unflinchingly tosses realistic characters into the cosmic meat grinder.

Ketchum’s strengths, interests, and powerful language remind me of another of my favorite authors, Cormac McCarthy, whose Blood Meridian Ketchum employs as an epigram that opens Joyride rather aptly: “By and by the judge rose and moved away on some obscure mission and after a while someone asked the ex-priest if it were true that at one time there had been two moons in the sky and the ex-priest eyed the false moon above them and said that it may well have been so. But certainly the wise high God in his dismay at the proliferation of lunacy on this earth must have wetted a thumb and leaned down out of the abyss and pinched it hissing into extinction. And could he find some alter means by which the birds could mend their paths in the darkness he might have done with this one too.” This brief passage goes a fair distance in mapping the territory Joyride will cross, suggesting themes of judgment and punishment and lunacy; the intertwining natures of fate and free will; and the puzzling and inescapable insanity of mankind and the sense that its overarching, inescapable universality might have some simpler explanation independent of our design and incongruous to our desires.

These themes marry character and story on the very next page of text, a brief preface that shows Rule speeding like a bullet down the highway. That summer has arrived – an announcement as pagan in nature as McCarthy’s moon – is evidenced by the glaze of death upon his windshield, hundreds, maybe thousands, of insects smashed to paste as Rule speeds through the living air. Their remains trigger in him a thought which expresses perhaps the major theme of the novel: “You can’t even move in the world without hurting something.” (Ketchum 3) Despite our various temperaments and circumstances, we all carve holes in the living world. In an existence where hurting others is unavoidable, the idea of “goodness” is lost to an existentialist haze that smothers any attempts at static morality.

Joyride spares no one. The introspective policeman, the abused spouse, the heroic-minded lover, the psychotic bartender… despite their divergent rationales, they’re all killers. In Ketchum’s world, the potential for violence, for murder, runs like a dark stream through us all, and from time to time, it touches all of our hearts. Most of us do our best to avoid its flow. Others, like Rule, dip in from time to time, out of professional necessity. Others, like Carole and Lee, plot brief rides on its dark currents, spurred on by fear. A few, like Wayne, jump in and fly away laughing in a flash flood of mass murder. Over the course of Joyride, this river of violence connects Wayne, Carole, Lee, and Rule, and we get to see each of these characters ponder their actions.

For Wayne, who leaps headfirst into the river of violence, his murderous trajectory is a long-held dream come true. After years of fantasizing, he’s finally “at peace”, finally happy, finally whole. He had a rough childhood – for me, the scariest scene in the book is Rule’s visit with Wayne’s mother – but I love that Ketchum never explains it all away, relieving Wayne of responsibility. Wayne’s the product of both nature and nurture. The guy’s bad all the way the through, and absolutely grooving on the bloodshed.

Carole and Lee are murderers of a different stripe. After murdering Carole’s abusive ex-husband, they swiftly tumble into the confluence of their actions and the intentions of Wayne. Getting a handle on these intentions, Carole observes Wayne, thinking, “The ... soulless zombie. Amazing. That they really existed. Walked, talked, brushed their teeth and went to the toilet just like all the rest of us.” (Ketchum 138) She realizes she’s face-to-face with a full-blown psychopath, someone who looks to kill not out of last-ditch necessity but for the pure joy of it. She already regrets murdering Howard, but it’s too late. Like a pair of bugs seeking the brightest light in the darkness, she and Lee have already smashed their fates into the speeding windshield of Wayne.

Rule is able to justify killing Wayne, but the book hands him no pat answers concerning his own nature or what his capacity for violence means for his relationship with Ann and Chrissie. The closest he comes to an understanding is through the words of his friend and psychiatrist, Marty, whose commentary on the next-to-last page, combined with the parting image of the dollhouse-in-progress, conclude the thematic concern introduced through Rule’s observation in the preface. Marty says, “It’s a damn rough piece of business living in the world. Nothing’s ever enough. The point is not to give up on it. To do what you can do.” (Ketchum 244)

In the end, just as Marty offers no pat answer to Rule, Joyride offers no simple answers to us, forcing us instead to face what Ketchum himself calls “all those pesky shades of gray in life”. We’re all flawed, all crazy, all speeding like bullets through the living air. The best we can do is to do what we can do. Like Rule, we must struggle on, committing our time and work and hope to the fragile dollhouses of our lives, those sad and seldom-finished altars built of love.

Work cited

Ketchum, Jack. Joyride. New York, NY: Berkley Books, 1995. Print.

Sucker-punched by SEVEN!

2011-03-31T14:19:00.000-07:00

The movie Seven surprised me. The surprise had nothing to do with the high quality of the film -- for years, people had all but demanded that I see it, calling it one of the best thrillers ever made -- but rather with my gut level emotional response to the ending and what that response made me realize about myself.

Yes, my friends were right. Seven was good. Very, very good. Right from the opening scene, everything is darkly atmospheric and gritty, and the tension never lets up. All this atmosphere and tension combines with comfortable pacing, perfect setting, top-notch acting, gruesome murders, solid twists, two great detectives, and an excellent serial killer to create a dark thrill ride.

Since this is a class on psychos, I should talk a little bit about the film’s memorable villain. In John Doe, we have another serial killer on a mission, another psycho who believes he's operating on a higher plane than the rest of us, that he is doing nothing less than the work of God. This reminds me, of course, of Gregory Funaro’s The Sculptor. The difference is that John Doe is far more effective in his role than was The Sculptor. John Doe’s mission “sticks” a lot more effectively than does the sculptor's. His mission is clearly defined. There are exactly seven murders that need to occur. The mission is easily understood. Each of the murders will highlight one of the seven deadly sins. The mission is shocking. Each of the murders is creatively gruesome and sickly sweet with irony, especially in the case of sloth, where John Doe keeps his slothful victim alive for a year of torturous inertia. Finally, his mission raises the stakes by involving the detectives personally.

This is where my surprise came in.

Up to this point, I loved the movie. Then came the final scene, when John Doe unveils his master stroke, the old 2-for-1 special, Gwyneth Paltrow's head in a box sparking the requisite rage for Brad Pitt to kill John Doe in an act defining wrath.

It was a really clever ending, perfect for the film. I hated it.

Maybe I'm getting old. I’m reminded of Logan's Run, a favorite of mine when I was a kid, the idea being that old people aren’t cool enough to keep around. Many times while I was growing up, it seemed to me that old age was primarily an affliction of the mind especially noticeable in the area of artistic appreciation. My parents liked honky-tonk country music and Hee Haw, but failed to recognize the staggering beauty of Iron Maiden or the brilliance of movies like Star Wars, Scarface, Conan the Barbarian, and The Thing. Clearly, time had destroyed the parts of their minds that accounted for taste.

Or perhaps my life experiences have softened me. Over the course of the last fifteen months, I lost my father and my dog, and I experienced my first genuinely life-threatening health problem. My wonderful mother -- and she really was wonderful, even given her musical and television tastes -- has been gone for over fifteen years. Maybe these losses and others have made my heart a bigger target than it once was.

No matter what the cause, I’ve changed. It's something I've known was happening. Horror fiction used to make up the bulk of my reading, but over recent years -- at least until I started taking these horror classes -- I've read fewer and fewer horror novels. In fact, a survey of the last one hundred and seventy-one books I read prior to starting last semester’s monster class reveals only six horror stories. Weird.

I've also been drifting away from horror movies. I used to be a big fan of scary movies. Not so much anymore. I've never gotten into torture type movies -- stuff like Saw and Hostel and Turistas -- and on some level, I guess I was blaming the cinematic move in that direction for my lack of interest in horror films in general.

But the end of Seven upended any comfortable notion on my part that horror had devolved. Personal tastes aside, I recognize that Seven’s final scene really was the “right” ending. It was shocking, pulled no punches, and fit the rest of the film. And yet I hated it. I didn't want Tracy Mills to be dead, and I couldn't help but think of my own wife. I didn't like the feeling, imagining that sort of loss. So my dissatisfaction left me in a weird place. There I was at the end of two hours of “yeah-yeah-yeah”, suddenly shaking my head and saying, “no-no-no”… but also knowing Seven had nailed it. What does this mean for me?

I'll probably always read and watch scary stories, but the ending of Seven has helped me to recognize that I really have been going through a significant “sea change” over recent years. Even if I can't pinpoint the reason for this big, slow transformation, it's real. My writing shows it, too. For years, I wrote mostly horror stories, but lately, I haven't been drawn to write the really dark stuff. I entered Seton Hill as a horror writer, but now I’m writing a thriller instead. It's pretty dark, and some chapters could definitely be called horrific, but it's not a horror novel, and what's more, I don't think I'll be writing a horror novel next time out, either. I've started a crime thriller, and so far, it's been fun.

I guess that's what it comes down to, really: fun. Seven was a lot of fun to watch... right up until the end, which left me feeling disturbed. I’ve largely enjoyed the horror novels from the last two semesters -- they're still fun -- but given free choice, I’ll generally read sci-fi, crime, a thriller, or even a good nonfiction book.

I suppose the thing to do is to just keep having fun, to keep reading, watching, and writing the things I genuinely want to read, watch, and write rather than trying to force myself into less natural directions, even if in those directions lie old friends.

What about you? Have your tastes changed over the years? If so, do you know the cause? When did you realize you weren’t the same? And what, if anything, do you plan to do about it?

For those of you whose tastes remain unchanged, have you discovered any "buttons" over the years? I know Jack Ketchum has a thing for cats -- feline characters appear frequently in his books and always seem to find a way to survive, regardless of the human body count -- so my guess is he wouldn't enjoy a story about some maniac stalking tabbies. How about you? Buttons, anyone?

Shake off Your Slumber, O Son of Jupiter

2011-03-24T04:18:00.000-07:00

The best definition of art I’ve ever heard hinges on the idea that we’re all living automaton lives, shuffling along like robots, zombies, or whatever, defaulting to habit and ritual and mindless activity whenever possible. If you can buy that, art is whatever shakes us out of that state. If you read a great book or see a stunning painting or hear a tremendous song, it temporarily shocks you out of your automated self, “waking” you long enough to give you the opportunity to blink hard and reconsider the world from a fresh perspective. It’s a cool definition of art because it’s easy to understand and apply, across all preferences and artistic forms, and because it goes some distance, in its reliance on individual tastes, to explain how so much of what seems like crap to me gets labeled art in the first place. It’s also cool because it comes in so handy when trying to discuss Gregory Funaro’s The Sculptor.

The titular psychopath cares about art. A lot. Especially Michelangelo. In fact, he cares only about two things: art and waking up the general population, which he views as a slumbering mass of devolved lowbrows. With his deep reverence toward art and his equally deep commitment to waking up the rest of us, The Sculptor takes utilitarianism to extremes. An ethical reductionist, he is wholly convinced by his narrow yet pragmatic view of the world. Armored in this conviction, he cooks up what to him seems an absolutely rational plan: he’ll just kill a bunch of people, use their corpses to recreate the masterpieces of Michelangelo, put his statues on public display, and shake the public out of its cultural hibernation. Simple!

This plan is so important to the Sculptor, in fact, that it defines him. Formerly a man named “Christian”, he views himself now solely in light of his task. He is a tool of fate, and as such, he’s careful to avoid inappropriate actions of free will. “Yes, perhaps more than anything The Sculptor understood the delicate workings of fate – understood how to recognize the signs of divine providence and negotiate the razor-thin line between predestination and free will.” (Funaro 334) In his perfectly psychotic view of things, he murders people not because he wants to kill them – he considers his victims not as corpses but as “material” – but because he sees this course of action as the most efficient way to achieve his defining goals. “No, of supreme importance was the public’s interest in the murders, for only through that interest could they be drawn closer to Michelangelo; only then could The Sculptor begin – without them even knowing it – to chisel away at the marble of confusion and misguided values that had become their prison. Yes, only The Sculptor’s hand could free them from their slumber in the stone.” (Funaro 143). The Sculptor clearly feels no guilt. Why should he? Heck, in his view of the world, he’s a good guy… a hero, really, a man heaven-sent to awaken the rest of us from our sleepwalking states of half-existence. What’s the big deal if a couple dozen people get rendered into “material” along the way? This is some epic stuff we’re talking about, after all!

Funaro does a good job extrapolating this mindset to create a villain who views himself as a messiah above the temptations and diversions of “normal” people. Like Sir Isaac Newton, who “invented” calculus as a tool to help him with his “real” work, The Sculptor, en route to his “real” objectives, has made serious advances in the field of “plastination”, an involved process he uses to preserve his victims. Needless to say, he doesn’t bother to share these advances. Like Newton’s calculus, they’re utilitarian, one more tool of his trade. “Yes, The Sculptor could have made quite a bit of money patenting the improvements on Van Hagens’s Plastination process if he wished. But then again, The Sculptor was not concerned with such base matters as money.” (Funaro 247) When The Sculptor out of necessity steals a statue of special marble from a church, he leaves twenty-five thousand dollars in cash, more than enough money to cover a new statue and any shipping costs. This guy doesn’t care about money; he has the human population to save.

Villain-on-a-misguided-mission isn’t exactly a new idea. A common trait of fictional serial killers is rigid adherence to a strict personal code of ethics that defies the common morality, and in many instances, this disparity between ethical visions leads the psychopath to believe that he or she is operating on a higher plane of existence or at very least doling out much-needed medicine to a bunch of unappreciative brats. With this tradition in mind, I won’t argue that The Sculptor is a great book – it didn’t manage to shake me out of my automaton state the way psycho stories like Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, Misery, or No Country for Old Men did – but it was a still a good read starring a gruesome murderer bound by a consistent world view. As writers, we should remember, if we’re going to write psycho stories of our own, that fans of the genre will expect our villains to hold singular world views structured along consistent – if uncomfortable – logic.

Work cited
Funaro, Gregory.The Sculptor. New York, NY: Pinnacle Books, 2010. Print.

Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow's BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR 2010

2011-03-16T09:52:00.001-07:00

I'm over-the-top happy about this. "The Laughing Girl of Bora Fanong", which appeared in ANDROMEDA SPACEWAYS #46, earned an honorable mention from Ellen Datlow for her BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR 2010 anthology. I wrote the story with friend and frequent coauthor, Adam Browne, who lives in Melbourne, where he writes staggering prose and spends an inordinate amount of time playing "blossom tree".

Mark Farrugia, editor of Issue #46, deserves not one, but two congratulations, as his story "A Bag Full of Arrows" also earned an honorable mention. It is unclear whether or not Mark plays "blossom tree".

MISERY Delights!

2011-03-16T09:48:00.000-07:00

This was my first read of Misery. I’d seen the film in the theater back in 1990 or so, and I generally avoid books when I already know the story. With such a simple set-up and such memorable “high points”, I didn’t think this story would grip me. I was wrong.

Two people in a room: that’s what Misery pretty much boils down to. Sure, other characters come and go, and Paul and Annie travel to different rooms, but the bulk of the story is really no more complicated than two people in a room.

And yet it’s one of the most gripping books I’ve ever read.

How does King do it? How does he take such a simple set-up and turn it into a fully realized novel? Well, he’s King, that’s how he does it, of course, but that doesn’t do us would-be Kings much good.

Imagine trying to write 338 pages of riveting fiction involving a physically disabled protagonist and his keeper. The physical disablement would make it tough to keep your protagonist active and interesting, and the near total reliance on a single setting would limit movement and variety. Perhaps most difficult of all, however, would be keeping Annie Wilkes frightening. Here King excels.

It would be easier to build an ever scarier character arc if the psycho seemed normal at first, but King doesn’t take the easy way out. Annie Wilkes’s menace is revealed early. By the seventh page of actual text, Paul knows Annie is not just imbalanced but dangerously crazy. Again, imagine trying to write this… and without the blueprint of Misery. You’ve introduced Paul and his problem. He’s in the room, coming out of the haze, and you’ve introduced Annie Wilkes. Paul has come to realize that she’s dangerously insane. Okay… now go ahead and write the remaining three hundred pages. Oh – and make sure that the tension keeps rising and rising, the story moves forward, and the psycho gets scarier and scarier.

King manages all these things. How?

King does a great job of developing and detailing his characters and keeping them consistent and realistic. Because Paul is realistic, we care about him. Because Annie is realistic, she’s much more frightening.

It would be easy, in trying to write a simple story like this one, to rely too early and too heavily on the basic survival equation: will Annie kill Paul or will he survive? That’s a big part of the tension here, but there’s a lot more than that. Because Annie does so many horrible things to Paul – from making him drink mop water to forcing him to burn his novel to smacking his broken leg to cutting off his foot to cutting off his thumb to locking him in with the rats – and because Paul continues to take risks, the tension swells and swells. Annie could do anything to Paul. Death, as Paul comes to realize, would in some ways be a relief. Annie is capable of much worse than simple murder, and that makes her very, very scary. Through the conflict of Paul’s attempts at saving himself and Annie’s escalating brutalities, King manages to inflate his psycho with ever increasing menace.

King also uses back story to move the story forward and to keep Annie fresh and frightening. By the time Paul discovers the scrapbook, we already know Annie quite well. We know that she was a nurse and that they had her up on the stand in Denver. We’re fairly certain that she’s killed before, but we don’t have all the details. Paul finds the scrapbook on page 185. Fifteen pages later, with the revelation of her past fully upon him, Paul finds what he thinks of as his own obituary, the Newsweek article announcing his disappearance. At that point, Annie is scarier than ever, and the impact of the scrapbook is exacerbated by the fact that Paul has only discovered it through breaking the rules and leaving his room. Tension screams skyward. The experience all but snaps Paul, leaving him with the thought that he’ll never escape.

And yet things get worse.

Paul has a chapter to consider ways of killing her. Then she comes back. And during that chapter, she drugs him, confesses to killing Pomeroy, tells Paul she’s known that he’s been slipping out, and prepares to cut off his foot. After she “hobbles” him, it doesn’t seem like it could get much worse… but it does, of course.

Chapter by chapter, King removes all hope. Escape seems impossible. The car is gone. Perhaps policemen will show up, as Paul hopes they might, and discover him there. A policeman does; Annie kills him. By the time “David and Goliath” appear, Paul is so spirit-broken and so far under the thumb of Annie’s terrible reign, he can’t even call out to them. Besides, by that time, he’s committed to a new course of action. He wants to hurt her – and, if possible, kill her – and he believes he can use her one vulnerability: his novel-in-progress.

Tension’s at an all-time high. We know Annie plans on killing him that very day, even if the book is good, and he bets everything on one, desperate, last-ditch effort to kill her. Because the attempt is surprising and innovative and makes sense, given what we know about Annie, it draws everything together in a suspenseful and satisfying way.

Like most writers, I’m in awe of King. Misery renewed my longstanding awe. It seemed impossible that such a simple set-up, especially with my having seen the movie, could generate a consistently frightening psycho and a relentlessly thrilling story, but it did. King did. It occurs to me now that all these years I’ve avoided reading another of King’s books, Gerald's Game, because its premise seemed too simple to generate a rewarding novel. Perhaps I need to read that one next.

How Would You Least Like to Die?

2011-03-07T11:52:00.000-08:00

When playing that age old favorite game, “How would you least like to die?”, I generally try to avoid looking like a wishy-washy half-stepper by shouting with false certainty, “being eaten alive by a pack African wild dogs!” There is some truth to this statement – African wild dogs really do eat their prey alive, exhibiting a kind of savannah multitasking by ripping you limb from limb and gobbling up big bites of hamstring and intestine, all at the same time – but honestly, I’d rather end up as lunch for a pack of four-legged nightmares than wink out quietly after a couple years of battling cancer. The thing is, though, shouting “being eaten alive by a pack of African wild dogs!” plays a lot better than yelling “cancer!” It’s more fun. Strange but true.

Here’s the good news: THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS provided me with a new thing to shout whenever a party lurches into another round of “How would you least like to die?” And now, the best news: you can use it, too!

Question: How would you least like to die?

New and improved answer: being eaten by a highly-educated cannibal with slicked-back hair and a genius-level I.Q.!

Our fear of ending up as something’s lunch goes all the way back to the Stone Age, I reckon, back to when it probably happened at a much higher frequency. In most of us, there’s a marrow-deep aversion to the idea of getting chewed, swallowed, and digested that goes beyond the purely rational. To the absolutely rational fellow, dead is dead, I suppose, and whether his corpse is buried, burned, or eaten might not matter a wit to him. But for most of us, there’s something deep down in us, something older even than language, that screams at the thought of ending up in a stir fry.

Cannibalism is perhaps our oldest bugaboo. As far as Western civilization goes, cannibalism’s been scaring the crap out of us since Cronos gobbled Zues’s siblings – if you don’t believe me, just have a look at the Goya painting – and as far as history goes, I’m assuming cannibalism goes all the way back to earliest humans. Of course, it’s hung around pervasively in fiction since that time, which is entirely understandable, right? I mean, it doesn’t get much scarier than cannibalism, even if most of us have a better chance of hitting the lottery and getting struck by lightning twice than we do of feeding a family of four.

Mostly gone, after all, are the bad old days of institutionalized cannibalism. I’ve heard the practice continues in ancient rituals, and a few cannibals might still be hanging around in remote corners of the world, places like the jungles of Papua, New Guinea, or the Solomon Islands, but in general, we can breathe a sigh of relief on the cannibalism front. When Junior’s travel soccer team loses the championship, he and his teammates are most likely not going to end up on the opposing team’s menu.

And yet real-world cannibalism does persist. It shouldn’t, but it does. It never quite leaves us, no matter how far we like to think we’ve traveled from our caves. From the Donner Party to the Andean rugby players in ALIVE, from the horror stories of the Russian experience during World War II to the absolutely terrifying reports currently coming out of war-torn countries like Liberia and Congo, cannibalism insists on reminding us of the bad old days. Like cancer, this most savage of practices resists all efforts at eradication, and also like cancer, this sort of real-world cannibalism is really, really scary and not a lot of fun.

How does one make cannibalism fun again, you ask? (Okay, so maybe you don’t ask that, but just go with me on this one.) Simple: use a fictional character. Notice I say “fictional”. Real-life cannibals like Jeffrey Dahmer and Gary Heidnik are just as creepy and un-fun as a cut-rate trail guide in Vanuatu. Fictional cannibals, however, can be both scary AND fun, and in that way aren’t all that different from piñatas and temperamental cats.

Cannibals are scary (and fun) enough in tales from the South Seas or stories of rediscovered primitives in our midst, like Jack Ketchum’s brilliant and over-the-top OFF SEASON or Richard Laymon’s gruesome and pretty darn good THE WOODS ARE DARK, but the king of all fictional cannibals has to be Hannibal Lecter – a.k.a. “Hannibal the Cannibal” – from THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.

By pairing the highly civilized with the glaringly primitive, Thomas Harris nailed that unsettling brand of horror known as the uncanny. It just doesn’t seem right, a guy that smart, that cultured, that finely tuned, eating the postman’s liver… with or without a nice Chianti. This dichotomy jars and clangs. It’s incongruity on wheels… the surest stuff of nightmares. And nobody does it better than Hannibal.

Even before we meet him, he’s scary as hell. Crawford’s briefing, Chilton’s warnings – how great was the part when he shows Clarice Starling the photo of Hannibal’s victim without letting us see it? – the implications of the protocol and the anxiety with which it’s reviewed, the descent into the stony bowels of the institution and the hurried way in which Chilton and Starling walk, Barnie’s well-meaning assurances, the separation of Starling from the others, the dungeon-like setting itself, Miggs’s leering commentary, the ominous music, even the simple fact that Lecter’s cell is all the way at the very end of the hall … it all cranks the tension higher, building almost overwhelming menace. We expect the most horrible of monsters… and there is Dr. Lecter, a compact man standing stock still at the center of his glass-faced cell, a polite smile on his calm, welcoming face. “Good morning.”

WTF?

That’s Hannibal Lecter, WTF personified: a neatly groomed, well-mannered genius who might, if you give him half a chance, stew you up with some fava beans. This incongruous duality surprises and delights us, making him both scary and fun, creating not only the heavyweight champ of all fictional serial killers but also the ultimate wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing that gives THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS its enduring bite.

So now you have it, my answer for the next round of How Would You Least Like to Die? How about you? What's your answer?

A Chair Made of Antlers

2011-02-25T07:21:00.000-08:00

RED DRAGON is one of my favorite books of all time. The story is perfectly told, the characters are original and fully developed, and the writing – with lines like “He viewed his own mentality as grotesque but useful, like a chair made of antlers” is just so, so good. Not to go all superlative on you, but I really do think Thomas Harris is one of our most capable writers, able in a single novel to frighten like King, thrill like Grisham, and word-craft like the most respected literary darlings. The trouble with all this adoration on my part and brilliance on his is that it makes writing a brief, focused essay about RED DRAGON a real chore. Considering this is a class for writers and the subject matter is “psychos”, I settled on an aspect of the book that interests me personally: Will Graham’s enhancement of the effectiveness of Francis Dolarhyde.

Last semester, I spent a lot of time proclaiming the necessity of courageous protagonists in monster fiction. In my final paper, I argued that a monster hunter serves as a mirror to the monster. If a monster demands great courage of the protagonist, great fear is implied. Therefore, I claimed – over the course of eight doubtlessly dogmatic pages – that as horror writers, we should never forget that just as fully realized heroes need daunting tasks, fully realized monsters need three-dimensional, courageous opponents.

In Special Agent Will Graham, the “human monster” Francis Dolarhyde – a GREAT psycho, right? – certainly has a three-dimensional, courageous opponent. Graham is a formidable adversary. Cursed with almost supernatural empathy, fortified with tremendous intelligence and a tireless work ethic, and saddled with an almost unbearable set of professional experiences, Will Graham is the ultimate profiler. He “feels” a murder scene, sacrificing a part of himself as he gets to know the victims, the murderer, and the deepest natures of the tragedy. This intimacy comes at a steep price. Graham is physically and emotionally scarred and so haunted by his work that ghostlike hallucinations visit him.

Graham’s reluctance during the opening scene is therefore completely understandable. From personal experience, he knows the risks inherent to his style of investigation. Last time out, he was nearly killed, and THE TATTLER added insult to injury by running embarrassing pictures of him. Earlier in his career, he came face to face with another psycho, killed him, and spent time in a psychiatric ward to overcome his psychological trauma. By the time Crawford visits the retired Graham in Marathon, Graham doubts his own mind and has even more to lose: a wife, a stepson, a pack of ugly dogs, and, at last, a peaceful life that allows him to relax and live in the present. Nonetheless, after Crawford shows him the crime scene photographs, Graham puts his own desires aside and courageously agrees to hunt the monster.

Graham’s reluctance to hunt Dolarhyde makes Dolarhyde frightening, but it’s Graham’s believability, likeability, and amazing abilities that really enhance the terror.

One of the most impressive things about Thomas Harris is his ability to make extreme characters believable. Graham, Dolarhyde, and even Lecter are believable here. Out of context, it would seem that from a list of two serial killers and an FBI agent, the good guy would be the easiest by far to make “real”, but with nearly supernatural powers of empathy and investigative abilities rivaling those of Sherlock Holmes, Graham could have been a very difficult sell. That Thomas is able to make Graham and his skills so believable is a testament to the author’s originality and intelligence. Graham’s deductions, logic, hunches, and empathetic connections are simultaneously surprising and believable. At no point are they “easy” or questionable. Add to this Graham’s realistic emotions and on-the-page suffering, and he’s completely believable. Because we know Dolarhyde will come for him, Dolarhyde becomes even more frightening.

Dolarhyde’s “creep factor” – to borrow the terminology of classmate Miles Watson – is also enhanced by Graham’s likeability. Here’s a guy who’s been to hell and back – a couple of times – and wants nothing more than to enjoy a good quiet life with his wife, stepson, and some cuteness-challenged canines. What could be more likeable, right? But he does become even more likeable when he risks everything – his happiness, his sanity, his life, and the safety of his loved ones – to stop a madman. Then, as we watch him work and see not only how impressive he is but also how he struggles, always trying to do right by people – even the dead – we like him even more. When his life is in danger, we are unsettled. Kill Dr. Chilton if you must kill someone, Mr. D., but please don’t kill Will Graham. We like him.

Graham’s incredible professional abilities and uncanny powers of empathy are also important to the full realization of the villain. If Thomas Harris had slapped together a generic, just-as-impressive-as-all-the-other-fictional-FBI-agents character, RED DRAGON would still be a really good book, and Dolarhyde would still be scary, but it wouldn’t be one of my all-time favorites, and I don’t think Dolarhyde would carry the same dread. If a dragon moves into the local cave and starts eating virgins, you send out your best knight. If some nondescript part-timer with a dented helmet and a dull sword serves your purposes, there can be only one explanation: not much of a dragon. By deploying the formidable Will Graham, Thomas Harris from the first chapter suggests that Dolarhyde is a grade-A monster, a psycho so deadly that it will take the very best of the best to even stand a chance against him.

As a writer, I’m wary of blind spots, and when I read someone really, really good, like Thomas Harris at the top of his form, I always try to notice the not-so-obvious things he does that I might not think to do if I set out to write a similar story. The lesson I take from this reading of RED DRAGON is that fleshing out a great psycho isn’t enough; just as every Grendel needs its Beowulf, every Francis Dolarhyde needs his Will Graham.

Good News!

2011-02-17T15:38:00.000-08:00

It looks like "The Laughing Girl of Bora Fanong", a story I co-authored with pal Adam Browne (who will hopefully comment here to let you know he wrote all the good parts) and which appeared in ANDROMEDA SPACEWAYS INFLIGHT MAGAZINE, has been recommended for the Aurealis Award for best Australian science fiction story of 2010. It's a bit soon to break out the bubbly - there are dozens of recommended stories, and only four will make the ballot - but I'm still stoked to know we've earned consideration, and hopefully next month, when they announce the ballot, I'll be posting additional good news.

Keep your tentacles crossed!

Baby Moles Writhing in the Sunlight

2011-02-05T09:32:00.000-08:00

Warning: Here there be spoilers...

Stephen Dobyns’s The Church of Dead Girls is less and examination of a sociopathic individual and more an examination of the dutifully concealed abnormalities in the rest of us. During the hunt for the psycho terrorizing Aurelius, everyone becomes a suspect. The subsequent cataloguing and analysis of individual peculiarities fuels an unsettling theme: perhaps psychos aren’t all that different from you and me.

After a snapshot of the victims, Dobyns backs up and takes his time, going to great lengths to characterize the people of Aurelius. As the girls disappear and the townspeople hunt their monster, paranoia casts suspicion on everyone. “One thinks of any community as being crowded with secrets. Percy saw his job as peeling away the skin protecting those secrets, till at last he discovered the secret of the missing girls.” (Dobyns 326) And of course, it isn’t Captain Percy alone snooping into everyone’s life; the rest of the townspeople and most notably “the Friends” analyze the idiosyncrasies of all their friends and neighbors, creating a “witch hunt” culture.

This intrusion agitates the narrator, resulting in a great simile and a keen statement of philosophy. “It is dreadful not to be allowed to have secrets. Years ago I happened to uncover a nest of baby moles in the backyard and I watched them writhe miserably in the sunlight. We were like that. A private life is the buffer between the interior self and society.” (Dobyns 326 – 327) The narrator – and, in the final line at least, I suspect Dobyns himself might be speaking through the narrator – suggests that a private life is a necessity. Without that buffer, society would destroy us.

After the destruction of several innocent people, the consideration of this theme continues. Malloy is dead, yet a piece of mystery remains. How do we make sense of our private and public lives? To the narrator, private lives and public lives are wholly inconsistent. In the aftermath of the murders, he describes his soothing daily schedule, confesses to secret urges, then says, “If you could look to the bottom of a human being, what desires would you find? And what desires are concealed beneath my white shirt and bowtie, my civilized veneer?” (Dobyns 413)

On the next page, he continues his meditation, wondering first about Donald’s private urges then returning again to more universal questions. “How that sweetness must have sung to him and how insistent it must have grown as it led him to take more chances. Is it possible that voice exists in all of us but in most it is quiet? When I help a tenth grader with his biology assignment and I feel the heat of his body beside mine, the heat of his cheek, don’t I hear a sweetness calling to me? Of course, I do nothing. I move away or send the boy back to his desk, but sometimes I have fantasies. In my dreams I do things that I shouldn’t. But I am a good man. I have a respected position. I would never do anything wicked. But isn’t my fear one of the reasons I live alone? What do you do with your fear? And do you dream?” (Dobyns 414) The structure of this passage is interesting. Dobyns begins with the secret desires of the psycho, moves to a confession of secret desires by the narrator, then finishes by asking the reader to consider his or her own secret desires.

The final few paragraphs of the book really drive home Dobyns assertion that we “normal” folk aren’t so different from psychos. What could better symbolize a hidden perversion that keeping a severed hand in a jar of formaldehyde? The narrator’s confession is both shocking and believable, giving his philosophical ruminations on universal perversion and dark secrets. Outside a consideration of this theme, the final paragraph would seem terribly random. “Donald Malloy was very particular about his hands. I recall their pinkness when he waited on me at his pharmacy, the neatly pared cuticles, the buffed nails. At times he even wore clear nail polish. Now the fingers point downward, the wrist points up toward the top of the jar. Not many hairs on the back; a few dozen short red ones. The fingers are curled, the knuckles are swollen and thick in the liquid. The thumb extends outward as if planning its own departure. The wrist bone shines. And the nails, how carefully they had been trimmed.” (Dobyns 417 – 418) The novel concludes with the image of Donald Malloy’s left hand – his sinful hand, to follow his own logic – but what resonates is not some twisted deformity or telling defect but rather the great lengths to which the psycho went to keep up its appearance. His clean hands and manicured nails were his white shirt and bow tie. By finishing with these details, Dobyns seems to ask, “What are yours?”

WORKS CITED

Dobyns, Stephen. The Church of Dead Girls. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Print.

He'll Leave the Light on for You

2011-01-20T07:48:00.000-08:00

Warning: every post for class will contain spoilers.

Well, after a lifetime of horror fandom, I’ve finally read Psycho. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that it’s taken me this long to get to it – and further embarrassed to admit I still haven’t seen the movie – but this was one of those stories ruined for me by spoilers a long, long time ago, and with all the great, unspoiled stories out there, I never quite got around to reading the story of the murderous, cross-dressing mama’s boy from the Bates Motel. It was well worth the wait.

In the end, the spoilers didn’t matter. I was absolutely absorbed by the story straight out of the gates – a strong testament to Bloch’s writing ability – and enjoyed every page of the ride, even if I pretty much knew what was going on. I now understand why Psycho is such a revered classic in the genre: it’s a well-told, suspenseful story built around an excellent character, Norman Bates, and the mystery of his twisted past.

As a writer, I was particularly interested to see how Bloch unveiled Norman’s back story. I’ve been somewhat obsessed with the craft crossroads of back story and structure lately – when to put it in, how to do it, and how much to include. In Story, Robert McKee states that narratives move forward only through action or revelation. Of these two story-movers, action is clearly the more common, but McKee says that few stories can move on action alone. Big revelations –the dog is a Russian spy?! – can also move a story forward, and oftentimes, these revelations are saved for the biggest turning points because they have a bigger impact on the characters and the readers. McKee explains that many writers rush the back story, trying to get it out of the way so that the story can roll out unimpeded, but he considers this a mistake. Reduce back story, he recommends, and hold the important pieces in reserve. Time these, and use them as revelations to move the story forward. Psycho illustrated this technique perfectly.

We don’t get Norman’s past all up front. We could have. We start in Norman’s point of view, after all. Even if Bloch had made Norman’s history clear from the get-go, Psycho would have been suspenseful. But Norman’s twisted relationship with the voice of his dead mother instead establishes heavy duty conflict early, and that tension ratchets higher and higher as the book progresses through the murders and Norman’s tough-love move of forcing his mother into the fruit cellar. When the sheriff fills in Sam and Lila, explaining that Mrs. Bates had died and Norman had spent time in the asylum, it’s twisted and terrifying; but even then, Bloch holds back, leaving the truth in question. Is Mrs. Bates really dead? Did she somehow fake her death? Who was sitting in the window? What’s really going on at the Bates Motel? Bloch forms questions in our minds but doesn’t deliver the answers until the perfect moment, the climax not only of this particular story arc but also the climax of the entire novel. Everything comes together at once. Lila is in the fruit cellar. She’s discovered the mother. She hears the voice… but it’s not from the wasted thing on the floor; it’s coming from behind her, up the stairs… and there’s Norman, absolutely terrifying in makeup and his mother’s clothing…

It’s no wonder Psycho looms so large over this sub-genre of horror. It was one of the first, I believe, but its resonance has more to do with story and storytelling than antiquity. Bloch created a great character and put him at the center of a compelling situation, but most impressive to me was Bloch’s handling of Norman’s back story. In a perfect example of Robert McKee’s suggested technique, Bloch withheld the biggest revelations until we absolutely needed them, first moving the story powerfully forward, then drawing it all together into its powerful climax. Everything comes together in that dreadful fruit cellar, all at once, and I’ll always remember it… especially when I’m sitting down to plan and write my own stories.

Now Available: "Obituary Boy" in Best of ASIM 2 Horror

2011-01-19T10:47:00.001-08:00

I'm a little late in announcing this, but The Best of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Volume 2, Horror, is now available here. The anthology, which gathers " notable horror and dark fiction stories, as previously featured within the pages of ASIM issues 19 to 36", includes "Obituary Boy", a story I coauthored with good friend Adam Browne.

SNOW by Ronald Malfi

2010-11-08T03:42:00.000-08:00

Cold and snow can certainly be terrifying. Cold we all understand from the moment we’re dragged screaming into the harsh world outside the womb, and there is something incongruous and horrifying in the ability of snow, with its soft, whispering accumulation and blank, idiot face, to paralyze, bury, and erase the world. Our personal experiences and countless volumes of nonfiction validate these fears, and fictional stories, too, occasionally remind us of winter’s menace. For me, the opening paragraph to Jack London’s White Fang best captures the sinister nature of wintry conditions: “Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean toward each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness – a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life.” (1)

Still, I must confess, having grown up in the Endless Mountains region of upstate Pennsylvania – which, thanks to an unfortunate combination of geography and topography, ends up having a climate something like Siberia -- I wasn’t particularly daunted by the concept of Ronald Malfi’s monsters in Snow. Bloodthirsty flurries? Hmm… I wasn’t expecting much.

Boy, was I wrong.

Snow was my favorite book of the semester. Malfi – an absolutely terrific writer whose name, I’m a bit surprised to admit, I hadn’t even heard prior to this course – really delivered the goods, telling an unwaveringly gripping story about three-dimensional characters trapped in a grim setting and threatened by an original menace. My concerns about his monsters were completely off the mark. His animated snow creatures and their zombie-like servants struck more dread into this reader’s heart than any other monster this semester.

The monsters’ effectiveness is due largely to the high quality of Malfi’s writing – nothing is clumsy or distracting, detracting from the story or the monsters – and to a number of more pointed factors, including many things we’ve discussed in this class: otherness, the power of setting, isolation, an ability to invade people, paranoia, and the importance of likable, courageous characters.

Malfi’s snow monsters are completely alien. Though they can invade and control humans, there is nothing even vaguely human about them. This absolute “otherness” allows for zero reader-to-monster empathy, stoking our fears of the unknown and making these monsters more monstrous, just as otherness enhanced fear in Alien, The Thing, Breeding Ground, and “Rawhead Rex”.

The setting of Snow also increases the effectiveness of the monsters. From the first line of Chapter One, “The newscaster with the plastic-looking face and the electric yellow tie spoke of doom”, Malfi uses setting to create dread (7). Though the exact relationship between the overall storm and the monsters themselves is never clearly defined, the question is largely academic, at least to the characters. The snowstorm strands them in Woodson, isolates them from outside assistance, and conceals monsters lying in wait. This isolation and camouflaging give Malfi’s setting a power similar to that seen in I Am Legend, Alien, and The Thing. Cut off from the world, Todd and the others know any snowdrift might contain a monster just as any house might be packed with zombies. The result: tension on every page.

Like the monsters in Breeding Ground, Alien, and The Thing, the monsters in Snow are capable of invading and controlling human hosts. This makes for some genuinely creepy moments, including the faceless children, Shawna’s flashbacks, and the zombie-packed hallway Shawna discovers when she ventures upstairs. The monsters’ ability to hijack people also creates paranoia similar to that seen in The Thing, again cranking the tension levels page after page.

The single biggest factor in the success of Malfi’s monsters, however, was his excellent characterization. The people in Snow seemed more realistic than those in any other book we read for this class. They were well developed and interesting. I wanted them to make it. If the monsters had simply been knocking off cardboard characters, they wouldn’t have been scary. But Malfi was too smart for that. He first created a believable, likeable cast… then proceeded to kill them off, mercilessly, with no regard to age or level of development or likability. The result was big-time tension, in the face of which many of the characters displayed tremendous courage. This bravery, too, made the monsters scarier, not only because it made the characters more likeable, putting an even sweeter asset at risk, but also because the need for such remarkable courage conversely suggested enormous danger. Still, they died off, the brave and the not-so-brave, the men and the women, the old and the young. After Nan and Shawna died, I really didn’t know if anyone was going to make it… and I cared. At that point, Snow was beginning to feel like it might wrap up in one of those George Romero endings, where the horror wins out and everybody dies… Needless to say, this made the monsters much more frightening.

Ronald Malfi is an impressive writer, and I hope, as the final chapter of Snow suggests, that he’s hard at work on a sequel to this fine novel. With his talent, he’s sure to produce another top-notch page-turner, but beyond that, I believe his snow-stitched monsters, which I at first so vastly underestimated, have a lot more to show us. Like London’s frozen wilderness, these enigmatic monsters wait, ominous in their silence, promising desolation, and smiling sphinx-like at the warmth of the blood in our beating hearts.

Works cited

London, Jack. White Fang. New York, NY: Penguin Putnam, 1994. Print.

Malfi, Ronald. Snow. New York, NY: Dorcester Publishing, 2010. Print.

We're Not Getting Out of Here Alive...

2010-10-25T04:25:00.000-07:00

The Thing is one of my favorite movies. I first saw the black-and-white version, The Thing from Another World, when I was eight or nine years old. My friend Kurt stayed over, and the movie came on late. My parents were asleep, so Kurt and I kept the volume low and sat close to the television. It was snowing outside. I lived in a tiny house way out in the country. Kurt and I were scared stiff. At any second, the thing was sure to break down the door and take care of business.

I wonder if John Carpenter had a similar experience. He did a great job with The Thing, which retained the older film’s ability to induce feelings of isolation and dread. Carpenter didn’t stop there, however. The Thing from Another World, with its hulking, murderous, seemingly indestructible monster, feels like a siege movie. Carpenter’s monster also invades an isolated station, but rather than stumping around after humans, it invades them. In the older film, the humans more or less unite against an external foe. Carpenter is much crueler. Infected people look just as they always have. The monster hides within them. Anyone could be the monster. In this way, Carpenter heaps paranoia onto the isolation and dread, making The Thing even more frightening than The Thing from Another World.

The Thing reminds me of Alien. Both movies feature a monster that can invade humans. Both monsters are extraterrestrial. Both monsters prey on small groups isolated in claustrophobic settings amidst uninhabitable backdrops. In both films, the monster hunts the humans as the humans hunt it. Both monsters have a decidedly alien and horrifying “pure” form outside a human host.

The thing’s unsettling ability to hide within the group creates understandable paranoia. I was reminded of another old favorite, the short story and Twilight Zone episode, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”. When electrical and mechanical devices cease working in a suburban neighborhood, formerly rational neighbors turn on one another, believing there’s an alien in their midst. As paranoia takes root, the most rational character, Steve Brand, jokes that they’d better run a test and determine which members of the street are really human. “His words were a release. Laughter broke out openly. But soon it died away. Only Charlie Farnsworth’s horse whinny persisted over the growing silence and then he too lapsed into a grim quietness, until fifteen people were looking at one another through changed eyes. A twelve-year-old boy had planted a seed. And something was growing out of the street with invisible branches that began to wrap themselves around the men and woman and pull them apart. Distrust lay heavy in the air.”(Serling, 82) This invisible tree of distrust continues to grow until the characters, torn away from one another, regroup as a deadly mob that ultimately destroys itself. The ending is ironic. Aliens really were present, watching from a hillside. They simply stopped the machines, knowing that human nature would take care of the rest. The story’s strong statement against paranoia-induced mob psychology must have rung especially true with its Cold War audience.

In The Thing, the paranoia that turns people against one another is absolutely justified, and MacReady’s test is no laughing matter. He presents it immediately after the CPR scene, which was even more horrifying than the chest bursting scene in Alien. The characters are terrified, and they know there really could be an alien inside anyone. In a scene that’s a true masterpiece of suspense, MacReady restrains the others and tests their blood one by one, ready to burn the monster alive. Everything in this scene builds tension, from the terror of the preceding scene to the slow pan over people’s mistrusting faces to the scalpel slicing through their thumbs to the slow, methodical pace of the testing to the low burning sound of the flame thrower. Then, just as the test begins to look faulty, singed blood leaps with a squeal from its Petri dish, and one of guys starts convulsing. As the convulsing man transforms, taking us back to the grotesque terror of the CPR scene, MacReady’s flame thrower malfunctions, leaving three others tied in chairs beside the monster. What a terrifying scene! It’s definitely one of my top ten horror movie moments.

As horror writers, we should note that fear works on many levels in The Thing. As a chomp-your-arms-off bogeyman, the thing is pretty scary. Its ability to get inside you and take over your mind and body taps into all those real world fears like cancer, Alzheimer’s, depression, addiction, and insanity. The movie also reminds us that at the worst of times, people can turn on one another. It plays on our fears of isolation. It stirs paranoia and xenophobia. And finally, it forces us to ask if we would have the nerve to do the right thing if we were in this situation.

With only a few minutes remaining in the movie, MacReady tells the others, “We’re not getting out of here alive… but neither is that thing.” They burn everything. Then he and Childs settle in and wait to freeze to death in a scene that has just enough grim, gallows humor to avoid being corny. How many of us, if we’re honest, would have the strength to make the choice they make? I’d love to think I would, but I have no idea how that would play out.

Even after nearly three decades, The Thing stands as an example of what’s possible in dark storytelling.

Work Cited

Serling, Rod. From the Twilight Zone. New York: Doubleday, 1960. Print.

The Past Is a Wilderness of Horrors

2010-10-20T20:07:00.000-07:00

I loved The Wolfman. It was a fun book fueled by powerful characterization, great suspense, strong conflict, and a top-notch monster.

I finished The Wolfman on the long flight from Australia to Philadelphia. The next day, reeling from jet lag, I lurched into the local bookstore, looking for The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker. I found it. On my way out, I noticed a sign announcing that Jonathan Maberry would be giving a talk and signing later that very night; so, fewer than twenty-four hours after finishing The Wolfman, I had the opportunity to meet the author, who turned out to be a very friendly, intelligent, charismatic guy.

Maberry talked a bit about The Wolfman. Ironically, he didn’t get a chance to see the movie until after he’d written his novelization. He worked off the screenplay, and the people at Universal encouraged him to the make The Wolfman his own, to turn it into a “real horror novel” rather than just a wordier version of the screenplay. To do this, he concentrated on character building. As a reader, I’m glad he did. The book wouldn’t have been such a fun read and the monster wouldn’t have been so effective without the great characterization of Lawrence Talbot.

Lawrence is a man so haunted by the past that he spends his life trying to forget it. He avoids Blackmoor, traveling the world as an actor, making his living by literally denying his own identity. Offstage, he escapes into a blur of alcohol, opium, and sex. Lawrence has obviously grown tired of this Bohemian lifestyle, but it’s a necessary defense, a fugue of sorts. When he is drawn back to Talbot House, he returns not only to his home but also his true self. His father hails him as the “prodigal son”, but it’s a dark take on the parable. Unlike the prodigal son of the Bible, Lawrence was never given an inheritance to squander. His only inheritance is the “fatted calf” his father offers: the family curse, lycanthropy. And Lawrence, much to his horror, will do the slaughtering.

It isn’t until page 108 that Lawrence comes face to face with his brother’s killer, the werewolf. By taking his time, Maberry established Lawrence as a courageous character who would stop at nothing to avenge his brother’s death and protect others from the savage beast ravaging Blackmoor. His fight with the werewolf creates the worst of all possible situations. Despite his own goodness and bravery, he’s saddled with a curse. He becomes everything he fears and hates. There is no way out.

Our deep understanding of Lawrence creates a delicious paradox. Our empathy makes the monster less monstrous, but it also makes the monster more monstrous. We understand Lawrence is not in control of his horrible actions. As he struggles in vain against the beast, begging others to stop him, even kill him, he’s anything but monstrous. Then, when the moon rises, we’re terrified for Lawrence. So, while our empathy for Lawrence makes him seem more vulnerable and human, it also makes the werewolf version of him more terrible. Because he loathes the beast and struggles against it so bravely, we come to fear and loathe the beast as well.

Maberry does a great job stepping into the Wolfman’s point-of-view. These bloody scenes might put off some readers, but for horror fans, they’re a treat, a chance to hitch a ride inside the head of a bloodthirsty monster on the rampage. “Its eyes narrowed as it studied the terrain and calculated the best point of attack. But its stomach rumbled with hunger and as it began stalking slowly forward the Wolfman bent and licked the glistening red gore that coated its arms from claws to elbow. The blood was sweet but it was already growing cold. Hot, fresh blood was so much more delicious… and there was so much of it before him, confined, contained within those glowing glass walls.” (Maberry 256) This intimate peek into its inner world is a dark joy. It reminds me of another great piece of point-of-view work, a scene in Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, where the protagonist, a dog named Buck, embraces the dominant primordial beast surging within him as he leads a large pack chasing a rabbit across a frozen wasteland. “He was ranging at the head of the pack, running the wild thing down, the living meat, to kill with his own teeth and wash his muzzle to the eyes in warm blood.” (London 37)

Buck is aware of his transformation, but I love that there is no shred of Lawrence during the Wolfman scenes, no shred of humanity. It’s all beast. This creates the driving conflict of the book. Lawrence’s external struggles are great, but his internal struggle is even more compelling. While Sir John may be the official antagonist, Lawrence becomes both protagonist and antagonist. His two halves are completely incompatible. For the nightmare to end, our protagonist must die. By the time this occurs, we have circled back to Lawrence’s first scene. Like Hamlet, Lawrence is drawn by a dead family member into a mystery that ends with many deaths, including his own.

The Wolfman is the first novelization I’ve read. I’d avoided them on principle, assuming they would be weak. With only one lifetime to read, why would I even bother to sample a book about a movie when there were whole vaults of unread books good enough to inspire movies of their own? The fact of the matter is, I never would have picked up The Wolfman if it hadn’t been required reading. What a shame that would have been. I would have gone on in ignorance, turning my back on an entire category of fiction, and missed not only one of the most enjoyable books of this semester but also a lesson in the power of characterization and monster-building.

Works Cited

Maberry, Jonathan. The Wolfman. New York: Tor, 2010. Print.

London, Jack. The Call of the Wild. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, Inc, 1988. Print.

Stranded Crew Menaced By Alien Life Form!

2010-10-14T03:48:00.000-07:00

Alien is a great movie anchored by a great monster.

In this class, we’ve talked a lot about how empathy and sympathy can play into the effectiveness of a monster. By letting us commiserate with the Yattering in “The Yattering and Jack”, Barker made the monster less frightening and more humorous. In “Rawhead Rex” and The Hellbound Heart, the same author went in the opposite direction, presenting monsters so far removed from us that it made them even more terrifying. Good writers employ a specific degree of empathy for a specific monster the way any craftsman chooses “the right tool for the job”.

The monster in Alien is just that: alien, a creature so different from us that it triggers all our xenophobia alarms. It is, as Ash explains, a perfectly evolved creature. Nearly invincible, it stalks the crew as a tiger stalks its prey, all-but-immune to every weapon they employ and absolutely impervious to pleas, threats, bartering, or reason. It lacks human emotion, and the crewmembers have nothing to offer it except their lives. This thing is the ultimate “other”.

This otherness really gets even scarier when the alien enters humans. The scene where the guy’s gut busts open to reveal the baby alien is one of the most famous moments in horror film. Visually, it’s scary as hell, this needle-toothed little monster popping out of his abdomen, but it’s the idea of the thing that really gets to us. It’s bad enough to be hunted by an inhuman predator; it’s far worse to have it inside you, growing and feeding. This uncomfortable notion reminds of the excellent Octavia Butler story, “Bloodchild”, where humans coexist with dominant aliens. The aliens are big and powerful, and they keep families like pets, periodically impregnating men or women with their alien spawn. In “Bloodchild”, the aliens coo and comfort and reason with their beloved pets, trying to make it all right. In Alien, there’s none of that. It’s pure collision. If the alien gets you, it’s going in, and you’re screwed. Period. This threat, added to its ability to bite your head off, makes it a great monster, kind of like Jaws and the alien from The Thing all rolled into one.

The alien looks the part, too. It’s the perfect symbol of menace. During its face-hugger stage, it looks prehistoric and aquatic, and latched to a face, snaking its tube down someone’s throat, it’s genuinely horrible. During its jack-in-the-box stage, it’s horrible in a whole new way, small yet fast and vicious as a rabid Doberman. The alien delivers its visual knockout punch when it reaches maturity. Huge and dark, it can both hide in shadows and rip someone limb from limb. Its oversized head implies intelligence, but its cranial shape is unmistakably predatory… even before it opens its mouths, which are filled with way too many needle teeth. Overall, it looks like a giant insect crossed with a machine made for killing. What makes this appearance even more disturbing is that we see it only in flashes through most of the film. It’s there and gone, and we’re left to wander the dark halls and dread its next appearance.

In this way, the film uses setting to enhance the monster. The ship is dark and ominous, the last place you’d like to be trapped. Steel is everywhere. Everything is industrial, hard, and uncomfortable. With the ship’s twisting corridors, pipes, and wiring, it’s almost as if the crew has been swallowed by a massive robot. The effect is one of claustrophobia, yet the scenes where people are chased down long hallways provide a kind of nightmarish agoraphobia, too. This unsettling setting just adds to the horror, making the monster even scarier. It could be hiding anywhere, ready to pounce. By the time bodies starts piling up, the Nostromo feels less like a ship and more like the alien’s lair, almost an extension of the monster itself.

I loved this movie and its monster. As a writer of dark fiction, I should remember the power of a monster’s physical appearance, the menace of otherness, the uncomfortable notion of having a monster invade humans, and the way setting can make a scary monster even scarier.

Out of the Deep!

2010-10-07T14:05:00.000-07:00

For years, my brother-in-law and I ran THE SQUID, a free online magazine publishing short stories by young writers from around the world. Across ten issues, we received several hundred submissions, published sixty-some excellent stories, and showcased young writers from England, Russia, Singapore, Australia, Canada, and all across the United States, giving readers worldwide such enduring classics as "Zombie Girlfriend" and "I Was Choked by an Ostrich". We sold nothing, pushed no agenda, and ran a variety of features, from author interviews to paying contests, to inspire (and amuse) young writers.

Sadly, hackers attacked us during a weak moment -- Andrew, the webmaster, was off at college and very busy; I was beset with increased responsibilities at work and a family medical problem -- and THE SQUID slipped into unofficial hiatus / rumored death.

I'm happy to report that THE SQUID has returned in all its tentacle-waggling glory. The first ten issues are now archived online, and we're currently putting together a brand spankin' new edition.

If you know any writers eighteen or younger, send 'em our way. Our guidelines reside here.

Yours truly,

Headfoot

www.the-squid.com

The Yattering and Jack

2010-09-30T15:03:00.000-07:00

It's official: I am a Clive Barker fan. Prior to taking this course, I hadn't read much of his stuff, so over recent weeks, it’s been a blast experiencing "Rawhead Rex", The Hellbound Heart, and, most recently, "The Yattering and Jack". I loved all three stories, and I’m somewhat dumbfounded by Barker’s range. Whereas “Rawhead Rex” is fast and loud, and The Hellbound Heart is chilling and mesmerizing, “The Yattering and Jack” is simply hilarious.

The Yattering is perfect for this story. Conceptually, he's pretty scary, an invisible demon dispatched to the home of Jack Polo with only one objective: to drive Polo to damnation. Working toward this solitary goal, the Yattering employs tactics he learned at the demon academy, trying his hardest to upset Polo’s propriety. The Yattering destroys possessions, boils fish, kills cats -- details later -- and even animates a turkey as it cooks in the oven. As Polo remains seemingly numb to these affronts, the Yattering boils with rage, finally soliciting the help of Beelzebub himself. What could be more frightening?

It's not frightening, though; it’s hilarious, because rather than fearing the Yattering’s potential, we relate to his frustration. We've all been saddled with unrealistic responsibilities, and we all know the pressure of completing tasks set by an Evil Overlord. Most of us have probably been driven nearly insane at one point or another by our own Jack Polos, people so contentedly dense they defy belief.

Oh yes, as a middle school teacher working in the age of standardized testing, I definitely felt the Yattering’s pain. Articles on the sad state of education frequently judge teachers by their students’ low test scores, but they rarely mention kids who stop working in the middle of a test to stare at the wall. “You still working?” the poor teacher-demon gently asks the still-staring child ten minutes later. “Huh?” the kid asks, snapping out of it. “Oh… yeah.” Reminded that he or she is taking a test – the test for which he or she has been practicing for months – the student goes back to work without so much as a “That was weird.” Che sera, sera indeed. Sometimes, this besieged teacher-demon wonders if there’s more going on than meets the eye, if these acts of seemingly impossible apathy are actually carefully calculated attacks.

The Yattering feels similar incredulity. Then, as Jack Polo's daughters show up for the holiday, Barker unleashes a masterful twist; Polo’s unshakable calm has more to do with strategy than stupidity. He knows all about the Yattering, and his che sera, sera attitude serves as both armor and shield as he waits for the desperate and disgruntled demon to overplay its hand. When the Yattering does overstep its bounds, the result is a classically comical moment, for even if Polo's enslavement of the Yattering denies him entrance into heaven, Barker softens the blow with a perfectly-timed return to Polo's defining attitude -- No heaven? Oh well -- only this time, Barker delivers the characteristic line not through Polo but through the conquered Yattering.

“The Yattering and Jack” reminded me of a very different story, the deeply unsettling C.S. Lewis masterpiece, The Screwtape Letters. Like the Yattering, Screwtape is a demon, only he's an ancient demon of great power. As its name implies, the book is a collection of letters, written by Screwtape to his young nephew, a field demon fresh out of tempter’s college going about the daily business of corrupting human souls. The similarities between Barker’s story and Lewis’s novel are obviously striking, so much so, in fact, that I have to wonder if there’s a touch of homage in Barker’s tale. Yet Screwtape is no Yattering. Despite outward similarities, he’s a different kind of monster for a different kind of story. When I started Lewis’s classic, I was amused by its premise and cleverness, but as Screwtape offered advice to his nephew, explaining human nature and nearly unavoidable pitfalls like pride, things seemed less and less amusing, then less and less comfortable, and finally, out and out frightening. This, I thought, this is how a corrupting demon would think. I paled to see so many of my behaviors reflected in Screwtape's analysis of humanity. I started second-guessing myself, changing my habits. Lewis’s quietly menacing demon had gone some distance in literally scaring the hell out of me.

Though Barker also excels at unsettling readers and engendering discomfort, those weren't his intentions with “The Yattering and Jack”. Screwtape, though perfect for Lewis’s powerful novel, would have destroyed this story. “The Yattering and Jack”, like Matheson’s “The Funeral”, is simply a horror writer at play, having fun and trying to make us laugh for a change. For this reader at least, Barker and his frustrated demon succeed.

P.S. If you haven't seen the dubious TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE episode, click on the Doris Day pic. If nothing else, fast forward to 12:30 and enjoy the animated turkey scene!