Thanks to everyone who chipped in to the Frogdonut Alliance Indiegogo campaign, we raised enough funds for me to drive over 1900 miles, going from
90 F to 40 F in three days. So, I’ll undoubtedly be blogging with a sniffle
next time, but I’ll be OUT of the horrendous Tucson oven and in beautiful,
cloudy Cheeseland! Presumably Richard Cheese hails from there, or is at least a
big tourism promoter.
No comment is necessary.
My brain has been crazed for a few weeks, organizing every
possible detail of the trip and forgetting to sleep, but they tell me the
swelling in the left temporal lobe definitely looks a little less puffy today,
so here I am. Most of my belongings are packed, the car is repaired and
spiffyclean, motel reservations are confirmed, and today I learned that the
very Santa-paradey store where I work is approving my job transfer, so I’ll
have cash coming in almost immediately. w00t!
Yes, dear, there IS a job opening! But try to take mine and I WILL cut a bitch.
I’ll be driving through territory unfamiliar to me. I
promise to stay off the goddamned moors, and not to feed the inmates. Sadly, I
won’t have time to stop for giant fiberglass chicken statues or the Hair Museum, but I promise to take pics along the way. Maybe I’ll document how many
items of clothing I’m forced to don as the trip progresses and the ambient
temperature drops. Departure date is a week from today!
For anyone reading my steampunk serial novel, I WILL resume
storytelling as soon as I’m settled in with my gorgeous, brilliant, lusty
fiance...well, as soon as I have time! For anyone who just wants steampunk
cereal, a word of advice: don’t add those cute little gear-and-sprocket beads
to your Lucky Charms. Not even encased in marshmallows. Too crunchy.
See you on the other side, Ray!
Happy Halloween, and may the full power of an unlicensed nuclear accelerator be with you!
Nearly Halloween! I’ve begun wearing my googly-eyed
skeleton earrings and grinning-pumpkin socks...nah, I lie: I wear those all
year. Still, the impending festivities have me giddy despite the stupendous and
continued misery of the Arizona Easy-Bake Oven weather. Spooky props and
pumpkin-spiced-meats in all the stores! Fake leaves decorating shelves of
corporate-sponsored sugary cholesterol builders! Trees and bulbs and...what the
utter FUCK who put their Yule in my Halloween?!
Just a couple of points here today. First, if you’re
participating in All Hallows' Read, check out these FREE, deliciously
morbid and creepifying posters by Sabrina Zbasnik! She makes new designs every
year, and they’re killer. Why not hang a few over the mantel with your dirty
socks, so that He Who Walks Behind the Gourds will leave extra candy for you
this year?
BOW DOWN TO YOUR DARK LORD, CHARLIE BROWN! (art from http://www.darkhallmansionstore.com/)
You DID remember to say your prayers to the Great Pumpkin, yes? He Who Must Not Be Seeded? No? Heathens. You’re all
heathens, and I wash my bloody smock of you.
The other item I wish to hold up for inspection like a
freshly severed spinal column is also the reason why I’m extra giddy about
Halloween this year: ROAD TRIP!!
You can view all the steps through the link above, but here's a general idea of my route.
Before the snows drench all of Cheeseland in cold curds,
I intend to journey from Tucson to Appleton to be with my soulmate. This is the
route I’m planning to take. There’s a slightly shorter one, but that travels
through more barren wastelands, which I dislike; IF anything should go wrong,
I’d rather it was within reach of a town than in the middle of East BFE. If any
of you know parts of this route well and have any tips, suggestions, etc,
please let me know: comment here, tweet at me, or email. Planning on stopping
overnight in La Junta, CO and West Des Moines; don’t want to have more than 12
hours drive time on any one day.
Our fundraising campaign, the Frogdonut Alliance,
still needs your help, and let me emphasize that even small contributions
really DO make a difference in this case! Five bucks? You just bought me lunch
on the road one day. Ten? Change of oil before I go. The more we can raise, the
better off we’ll begin our Cohabitation of Excellence! And please keep
spreading the word. Two weeks left to chip in!
THE COUNTDOWN TO SEXYTI--HALLOWEEN, I mean Halloween, HAS BEGUN! WOOOOO!
We are finally LIVE with our
fundraiser! The FROGDONUT ALLIANCE is up and running, and needs support at
every level! No, it’s not charity: we’re giving away cool perks aplenty, from
Scott’s awesome kitbash mech sculptures and my jewelry to our pro skillz at a
slight discount. Everything we raise goes toward moving me to Cheeseland, where
my fiance and I can collaborate in person, raise the dead, bring about the
zombie apocaly--- er. I mean, make cool
art together. Yeah.
We understand many of our friends
and family are in the same financial suck-it-in position as we are. But hey,
please pass on the link, and talk up the cause for us, huh? It’s good karma.
Plus, you’ll get to see us create wonderful weirdness together. It’s hella
better building skeleton props, freaky collages, and writing songs and stories
together when you’re RIGHT THERE to bounce ideas back and forth.
Not to mention, you really do
need more than two tentacles to perform the Elder God Raising Ceremony...
So please, spread the word! Chip
in a buck or five! Snigger at how goofy we look on camera! (No, we’re not
buying you popcorn to rewatch it again.)
More regular weirdness and
updates soon. Excuse me. Something’s banging on the walled-over well in the
basement again...have to go get some tuna from the store...
I’ve been wondering a great deal lately about the
intertwined concepts of time and happiness. I know folks who fill their
schedules with all kinds of activity, work or classes, things they believe they
need to do and, all too often, very
little they want to do. Until a few
months ago, I was in that rank. And believe me, it is pretty rank, that feeling of being trapped in your own life.
"And who told you to screw over all your contributors? Could it be, I don't know...SATAN?"
Aw, fuck, you say: don’t tell me she went and became born-again!
HELL NO. However, my outlook has changed. I’ve written very little this summer, partly due to
the lack of an air-conditioned, noncrowded environment (I am not one of those lucky souls who can
write on a bus, or really anywhere populated by loud, moving distractions), but
partly because I’ve been engrossed in other pursuits. This isn’t a bad thing.
In fact, this is the first time in my life that I haven’t sensed the Reaper
standing behind me, looking at his watch and then at my (lack of) personal
publication credits. I’ve done a little editing for others, some reading, some
art...and this is the first time in years I’ve been inspired to DO and to MAKE
stuff, and have done so. So, I haven’t been creatively idle, and I’m happy with
that, even though my writing has lagged.
Also, much of my time has been involved in dreaming and
planning for a future with my fiance. As he’s fantastically creative in ways I’ve
never considered before, he’s a marvelous inspiration; we toss ideas back and
forth like a deranged game of badminton every day. A great deal of time and
creative effort has gone into our Indiegogo campaign (which, fingers crossed,
launches later this week). So again: productive and enjoyable.
That’s nice, you say. Now what does that have to do with
the price of slaves in corporate America? Well...everything. The point is, I’m
not worried about meeting self-imposed deadlines anymore. I’ll get to it all.
And I’ll enjoy it. Even if I never
hit the bestseller lists, even if we have to scrounge for bill money, even if
we hold several odd jobs simultaneously. Because the majority of my and my
fiance’s time will be spent making art, exploring the world around us, and
enjoying each other. And this is what life should
be...for everyone.
Yeah, right, you say. That’s sweet and all. But some of
us have to live in the REAL WORLD.
What makes you think the real world has to be full of Mostly Shit You Don’t Want to Do But Have To?
But...job security! Retirement! Bills! Success!
The asshole of Success. Wait. Face of. I get those confused.
Yeah...fuck that. I’m not saying some of that isn’t
important. I’m saying people place far
too much emphasis on things they honestly hate. Whatever your spiritual
beliefs, we only have one shot at this
life. So many years between gaining some education and watching our bodies
decay. Decades are nothing. WHY ARE
YOU WASTING SO MUCH TIME DOING THINGS YOU DISLIKE? Why take classes you don’t
enjoy, just to “pad out” your schedule? Why toil at a job where your work isn’t
appreciated – or worse, is largely meaningless? Why fill up a day with so many
things that you have “no time” for stuff you actually enjoy? That’s madness. It’s
a madness that sucks us all in. The great lie of our society, for centuries,
has been driven like concrete pilings into the once-fertile swamps of our
imaginations: DO WORK YOU HATE BECAUSE OTHERWISE YOU WILL STARVE. (Variations:
Work Hard No Matter What Because if You Don’t You’ll Go to Hell; and If You Don’t
Have Tons of Money You’re a Failure.)
A truth, which I realize is far from new, but which only
hit me recently: it’s far better to be happy than wealthy. I barely get by. But
this is the happiest I’ve ever been. I’m able to let bullshit dealt by others
mostly slide off, whereas before I would’ve brooded for weeks. I’m impatient to
move, but not worried. It will happen, and soon. Oh sure, I’m in
love; the endorphins in my brain blah blah yakety schmackety blah blah. You
know what? That’s not what this newfound contentment is about. Love is
certainly part of that, but the overarching theme here, guys, is possibility. My misanthropy, twisted
imagination, and weirdness is of such a particular curve that I believed a “soulmate”
impossible for me. Yet we found each other, and within two days of talking,
knew we’d found The One. Odds were so against this, that it’s made me reevaluate
my beliefs about everything.
Except this. This still sucks ass.
It’s made me realize I don’t need to slave at anything I hate. I don’t need to get this creative project done like yesterday what the hell is wrong with you lazy cow. I have
perhaps 30 years of health left to me. Why
the fuck would I waste them doing things that don’t make me happy?
Why does anyone? What's that? You have REASONS, you say?
So, from a neophyte neoVictorian writer and happily
creative weirdo, take this and chew on it a good long while, peoples: Stop thinking you HAVE to do ANYTHING.
You ALWAYS have the option of not doing
it. Are there consequences? Sure. Now weigh those against how fucking
miserable you’re making yourself.
Is misery really the sane choice? How many years do you
have left? Forty, twenty, ten? Tomorrow?
Stop that shit right now. Do what makes you happy.
Wicked cool announcement coming soon about the fundraiser my
fiance and I have been determinedly crafting for several weeks! Yes, that’s
where I’ve been: mired in uncooperative WinDoze programs, discussing plans with
my love, and realizing my tonguetip still sticks out of my mouth when I’m
coloring intently.
I had hoped to have this campaign running a couple of weeks
ago...but things have repeatedly proven trickier than anticipated. However, we
WILL persevere! We will edit on the beaches! We will mix them in the towns! We
have nothing to pumpkin spice but PUMPKIN SPICE ITSELF!
Sabrina Zbasnik, author of scifi/fantasy/humor novels Terrafae and Dwarves in Space, has niftily invited me to participate in a
bloghop about my fiction. (Yes. Niftily. All this woman does is fucking nifty!)
I’ve chosen to focus on my steampunk work-in-progress. If anything you read
below intrigues you, please do hop over to my storyblog to read more!
Constructive criticism always welcomed.
1. What is the name of
your main character? Is she a fictional or historical person?
Holly Autumnson, last member of a formerly well-off merchant
family. Though she is clearly fictional, I’ve read a fair amount of Victorian
social history (American in particular) to get a feel for the society which has
shaped her existence before the story began. She’s been raised as a proper
young lady, although her father allowed considerably more scholarly education
than is typical for a Victorian girl, delving into the natural sciences,
languages, and philosophy where her peers would stop at arithmetic, grammar,
and crochet. At a bit over twenty years of age, she is well on her way to
spinsterhood, according to those peers...
2. When and where is
the story set?
In the fictional city of Concordia, State of Columbia Pacifica,
1899. Concordia stands where the prior city of Portland, Oregon, was wiped out
in a firestorm similar to the Great Quake and Fire in San Francisco. After a
deadly rain of meteorites over the earth, progress in steam engineering and
electricity has been superseded by technology based on “Dust” deposited in the Cataclysm.
So picture mutations, bizarre new engines of destruction, people trying to
impose Victorian social mores on a world gone freakish...oh, and flying kraken.
With pilots who bond with them.
No kraken, and the hats are wrong, but yeah, pretty much.
3. What should we know
about her?
Holly refuses to
conform to the placid, submissive role which polite society insists she
ought to assume. She doesn’t believe she’s inferior of mind to the men around
her. And she resents every attempt by allegedly well-meaning men to shield her
from the awful things happening. Horrible
things are going on below the civilized surface of Concordia, and although
Holly was dragged into it unwittingly, she’s now determined to expose the
truth.
4. What is the main
conflict? What messes up her life?
Her grief for the recent loss of her explorer-scientist
brother is interrupted by the brusque, enigmatic Dr Vonken, who barges into her
home and insists Holly is in danger from the founder and patron of Concordia,
Henry Villard. This sets off a series of frightening new experiences for her,
with powerful intrigues exposed, freakish abilities uncovered, and strange
friendships forged. Suddenly Holly sees that people she formerly regarded as
pillars of the community are more akin to monsters in the cellar, and no one is
what she thought they were...including Holly herself.
5. What is her
personal goal?
To learn everything she can about the power of the Dust: how
it’s used, how dangerous is truly is, why a benevolent politician would kill
for it...and what it’s done to her!
No no no. DUST, not Spice.
6. Is there a working
title for this novel and can we read more about it?
This will likely change, but at present the title is Autumnheart Stories, available for free
and in progress on my storyblog. Please
do read AND comment! I welcome feedback to improve successive drafts.
7. When can we expect
the book to be published?
Frog only knows. Summer heat trying to fry my laptop at home
(and repeatedly broiling my brain) has led to an hiatus in my writing and
posting chapters, but as soon as the whole tale is complete online (and yes, it
is all in my head), I’ll be revising,
editing, rewriting, and epublishing. My goal is to have it available in toto within a year.
Hmmm...whom to afflict next? *waves rubber voodoo snake
around threateningly*
I'm picking three, not five. Because it's fucking hot, goddammit. I tag Andy Click (of American Werechaun fame), from whom I’ve heard mutterings of sequeldom; Sophie Coulombeau, avid 18th century traveler and award-winning YA scribe; Marty Ketola,
screenwriter, podcaster, and fellow MSTie! Check back here for updates and
links to their responses.
Now...slogging into the heat... *takes two steps, melts into gooey wax*
Sorry for the long delay in posting...it’s been a chaotic
few weeks, with changes in the household, job changes, and other projects
taking precedence. But at last I give you: Fun with Dead People!
No, not quite THAT much fun. On the other hand, you don’t
have to worry about never being able to get the stench out of your Members Only
jacket.
During my college years, I lived in Montgomery, Alabama,
a city in the sweltering armpit of that fine regressive state. Though it does
have a good art museum and the Shakespeare Festival theatre – and AUM, my alma
mater – the coolest thing, by far, is the antebellum graveyard right in the
heart of the city, Oakwood Cemetery. Burials date from before the Civil War
through modern years, including the grave of Hank Williams, Sr., and a sobering
299 “unknown” soldiers from the south’s most bloody conflict. (I know. I
personally counted them.) Kind of strange to think of that many unidentifiable
bodies each given a headstone. I always wonder if their ghosts were pissed off
at the irony of being reburied with honors, but anonymously.
Among the park-sized grounds which sprawl over two very
full hillsides one may also discover a crowded, old-world-style Jewish burial
section; imposing mausoleums; and more Victorian sentimentality than you can
shake a mourning hair-ring at.
This was my absolute favorite hangout. I would frequently
take a book there to read for hours, or explore the seemingly endless
headstones on foot...the best way to “collect” a graveyard, as very little of
it will ever be accessible by hearse-roads. I preferred to roam among the
Victorian burials, as they often have the most elaborate memorials. Not for
nothing did Ambrose Bierce label mausoleums “the final and funniest folly of
the rich.” Certainly, the amount of marble, personalized statuary,
wrought-iron, and stained glass which make up whole neighborhoods of the
snootily deceased at Oakwood stagger the mind and the wallet. And yet I felt an
affinity for these crumbled husks, most of them forgotten in their family plots
as later generations married off and moved away. I’d scatter wildflower seeds,
take photos of the most elaborate (or most bizarre) statuary, and talk to them.
What? Yes, I enjoyed
being alone in a fine and private place, thank you. Hmf.
A Weeping Angel surveys her favorite magnolia tree
One March, a freak snowstorm blanketed the city...well,
okay. Drew a soft fluffy knit throw over the city and made it some cocoa. It
was only a couple of inches. But SNOW! In the DEEP SOUTH! While most denizens
ran around seeking firewood, s’mores, and condoms, I had one purpose: to see
how my beloved cemetery appeared in the clear air and whispering snowdrifts.
And it was stunning.
The wind had crafted beautiful paintwork with the snow
all night, and in the grey daylight, all was still, cool, and delicately iced.
Headstones bore caps like petit-fours. Wrought iron fencework boasted new
fretworking of purest white. Angels beseeched heaven for some gloves and
scarves, is it too much to ask since they have to keep watch over some schlep’s
grave forever until the acid rain
eats them, for crying out loud. Everywhere, snow coated trees, graves,
monuments...and the hillsides.
The really, startlingly steep hillsides, terminating in a ravine you’d have trouble
climbing back out of if you missed the footbridge, assuming you didn’t trip and
hit your head on one of the granite stones on your way down and solve the
problem of ever getting up the hill again. And on these scary-steep
hills...kids were sledding. I have no
idea who the hell in Montgomery, AL even had the prescience to own a sled, but there they were, dodging
graves, whooping and laughing. Despite my love of the overblown artifice of the
Victorians, this use of the graveyard
was the best I’ve ever seen.
Hey you dadgum kids! Keep it down up there! We're tryin' to discuss the War of Northern Aggression!
My advice to any of you within reach of an amazing cemetery,
be it on sacred grounds or secular forty-five-degree slopes: become familiar
with the place. Walk its paths, learn its names. Sow flowers, and take photos,
and know every weird statue and tragic lamb by heart. Make it yours.
That way, you’ll know exactly which spots to drag your
sled to when it snows. Not to mention the best escape routes when the dead claw
their way up to express their annoyance with all that dadgum laughing.
Ah, summer. The time every year when my thoughts
naturally turn to cooler weather, changing leaves, and
pumpkin-flavored-everything. Unfortunately, for over a decade now, I haven’t
been able to enjoy the first two items on that list without traveling; Tucson
doesn’t have autumn. (It doesn’t have seasons, either. Sorry, “hot/dry,
warm/dry, hot with occasional showers” don’t count as “seasons,” sandpeople.)
I’ve always loved Halloween, but every summer I obsess over it even more, as a
means of temporary mental escape from Arrakis. (And not a wormsign for months.)
I collect books and magazines featuring Halloween
projects, but not the cutesy 2.5-Kid-Family Surburban-Dweller crap. Weird shit is what grabs my attention
and whips it around like a nightgaunt with a new chew toy. Today I’m sharing a
bit of that with you, Lucky Readers. We’ll start with old-timey crap which must
have been quaint in the day, but now comes off more like wtf were these people even thinking.
Silly hats optional.
Halloween Merrymaking:
an Illustrated Celebration of Fun, Food, & Frolics from Halloweens Past by
Diane C. Arkins is valuable not only for the tons of photos of old-school
decorations crammed into it for the wonderment of any Halloween ephemera
collector, but also because it features a number of photos which prompt
thoughtful reveries on just how stoned our grandparents must have been every
October. This features chapters on home decor (think more corn than Children of, and enough pumpkins to
stock your trebuchet for a week’s siege), costumes (who knew crépe paper could
be made to look so ridiculous?), teacup fortunes and more. Covering the period
from the late Victorian era through the turn of the century and into the 1930s,
the cards, decorations and paper goods reproduced in the book’s many
illustrations prove once and for all that our ancestors’ celebrations were
indeed as cheesy as we thought and then some.
I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for this brand of cheese. I love
that vintage-style decorations are back in vogue (á la Martha) simply because I
find them adorably strange. A popular party help text from the 1910s through
the ‘30s, Dennison’s “Bogie Book,” showed hausfraus of middle America how to
use its crépe paper products to make their own honeycomb-tissue pumpkins, pipe-cleaner-armed
goblins, and cutouts of black cats and witches to haunt their laundry rooms and
dinner tables. Much of the festivities shown have a decidedly amateur-crafty
flair, like a precocious but not-yet-skilled four-year-old exhibiting on Etsy. Especially
fun when you realize that extant items from the period sell for fantastic
prices to collectors. Not that I would ever buy them. (I can’t afford any...)
Scariest Fact: this party was BOOZE FREE!
Honestly, the only gripe I have about this book is that
although there are hundreds of great photos, many of them are reproduced in tiny size on page sidebars. What’s up
with that? Sure, the history lessons in each chapter are informative and cool,
but really, what we wanna see are big goofy photos of our great-gramps
frolicking with pretty gals, all of them dressed as rejects from a Halloween
taping of The Price Is Right. MOAR
PIKSURES!
The next two books are both by marvellous sicko Tom
Nardone: Extreme Pumpkins and Extreme Halloween. Yeah, get those lame
Mountain Dew X-Games analogies outta your heads: this stuff is fun. You’ve undoubtedly seen the
cannibal pumpkin and the puking pumpkin by now, as these have been around a few
years. Nardone’s the guy who invented them, as well as a host of other
screwed-up projects designed to freak the hell out of the Jehovah’s Witnesses
who stop by your house during October. The projects he presents are creatively
twisted, and best of all, he outlines steps and materials needed with a sense
of humor and even a nod to OSHA. (Though only a passing nod, like, Hey, bro, gonna douse this pumpkin in
kerosene and light it up like a Tiki torch, cool?)
All the jack-o’lanterns in this book are worthy of
sitting on your doorstep (or maybe the front yard...some are pretty gooey,
watch your step through the guts there), but my faves are the “Property
Defender Pumpkin” (who stands like Mad Max over the corpses of those he’s slain
to emerge the bloody champion of all pumpkinkind), and the “Moldy Beard
Pumpkin.” The latter is simple but gruesomely effective: half-carve it, and let
parts of it grow mold. Display proudly! Each of these spawns numerous other
ideas, as all good creative weirdness ought to. (Ooo...rotted cannibal zombie
pumpkin...)
In his followup book, Extreme
Halloween, Nardone shows off more creepyfun pumpkin designs, many of them
on a grand scale (pumpkin yard Nessie! Scorpion pumpkin!) and also shares
time-honored pranks great for creeping the hell out of neighborhood kids (or
adults with harvest corn too far up their butts). At least two of these involve
a jump-out-n-scare, but they’re inventive and well-presented. There are
instructions for making a pulley-operated yard ghost and a block-party-sized
BBQ’d dead body (formed of enough meats to make your local butcher love you).
Party food more disgusting-looking than anything you’ll find in cutesy
grocery-store magazines. And, again, inspiration for your own creepdom on every
page.
Nardone has a site with more of this freakshow stuff.
Great for haunters on a budget and those who like to dream big but don’t want
to simply buy pre-made stuff from Fright Catalog. (Yes, I’ll do a post on home
haunt sites soon! This one’s about books.
Deal.) I personally would love a big glossy coffeetablebook full of pics of
home haunt projects from hundreds of artists; if anyone knows of such a book,
please drop a comment to let me know!
Sorry for the long delay in posting, guys... I recently
took on a second job, so now I work two
with completely irregular schedules. But it’ll all be worth it to get up north,
where I can indulge my fetish for falling leaves and cool winds for real instead of having to rely on my
imagination! Now... *turns fan on high and eats a cinnamon donut* back to the
pumpkin orgy...
*************
UPDATE: Rick Gualtieri has a new Bill the Vampire book
out! Goddamned Freaky Monstersis now
available for purchase! WTF are you doing here still? Go BUY IT AND SUCK IT
DRY!
Next time on Victorian Zombies: fun with dead peeps!
Last week, Sue London generously invited me to participate
in a bloghop about my writing. I know I’ve fallen behind on everything the past
couple of weeks, but I was determined to apply the crop smartly, tuck and roll, and lurch back
into gear in a bold melange of happy mixed metaphors! So here goes.
1. what am I working
on?
Currently, I am heading into the second act on my serial
steampunk novel, Autumnheart (which I’ve been offering on my storyblog as I
write it, in an experiment to see if I can stay far enough ahead of myself);
also a dark-comedic horror novel, Wendigogo. One or the other of them (dare I
hope both?) WILL be finished this year, no matter what!
Also, editing The Haberdashers series more...when Sue finishes Robert’s
book! And my new association with the insanely brilliant (and possibly,
delightfully insane) love of my life, Scott, promises a burst of
creativity and very likely collaboration, as he’s an astounding author among
other things. No, you haven’t heard of him (unless you've recorded music in Hotlanta). You will. Ohhh... *evil chortle*
you will.
2. how does my work
differ from others of its genre?
Autumnheart is steampunk less reliant on mechanical marvels
(though there are a few coming in, especially once the war factory really gets
rolling) than character relationships. Sure, there are a few conventions
strolling through its pages: mad science, Victorian social mores, actual
history woven into sheer fiction. There’s also a healthy mongrelizing dose of
dark fantasy, political corruption and rebellion, sexism and prejudice of the
era tempered by protagonists rising above these smog-laden clouds.
Wendigogo started out as comic horror but is veering into
darker territory...funny, but in the way that the original “American Werewolf
in London” is funny. Although it's bloody, it's unpretentious, a bit silly in premise, and it certainly doesn't feel like either straightforward shock-horror or comedy-forward work. Ultimately, it may be compared to the old saw about life
handing you lemons...except the hero may decide the best way to deal with that
is to be the blender.
3. why do I write
what I do?
It amuses me. It lifts me. It’s goddamn fun! Granted, I hope it's commercially successful, once it’s
polished. (Insert .gif of Sam Sykes mouthing BUY MY BOOK here...) But I
wouldn’t even be bothering with these genres if I didn’t enjoy reading them as
much as writing them. I grew up feeding voraciously on darker tomes. Then my
parents took “The King in Yellow” away and banished the Undergrubs, and
although my life was substantially less entertaining, at least the neighborhood
fauna was safe to come out of hiding again. However, my gaping soul was then
free to be filled with the likes of Bradbury, Poe, Bierce, and Shel
Silverstein. I have no illusions about matching the masters. I’m just having
fun writing what I want to write.
4. how does my
writing process work?
Ideally, well after dark, I set up my laptop on my bed, with
a drink at hand and usually a nom of some kind. (Rarely alcohol; my drunk
writing is for shit. Screw you,
Hemingway.) I pull up notes and photo references, and start my playlist over my
headphones. I reread the last chapter at least; if it’s been more than a couple
of days, I’ll skim back through the story, especially scenes pertinent to what
I’ll be tackling next. Then it’s crack the knuckles, pet the badger skull for
luck, zone out in the music and off to the races!
Ungh. Erk. Edits. Grammar. BWAAAHHHH!
I dislike formal outlines, but I do make extensive plot
notes, which helps me keep track of the cast as I begin moving them around the
board more. I have ultimate motivations and objectives of the major players in
mind at all times, but remembering just how
I intended them to clash or resolve is easier with notes! Right now, for
Autumnheart, I have several files of tidbits of Victorian history
from the 1860s-1880s, a ton of Oregon and Portland-specific history, research on several real persons of the
era in the Pacific Northwest, and photos, photos, photos. Oh, also notes on
giant squid, planetary catastrophe on an extinction-level scale, steam and
early electrical technology, and lolcats. Because F.U. I like lolcats.
Bloghop RSVP
Continuing the chain letter to the next four people who must write a blog post using these
questions or suffer a rain of frogs for the next forty days (and believe
me, though that sounds cool, after
day twelve you’re thinking Fuck, there just really aren’t enough ways to cook frogs), I hereby pass the torch to:
1. Troy Blackford: author of "Booster & Reeves: Night of the Revenants", an insanely good
zombie story AND Jeeves & Wooster parody; Strange Way Out; and numerous other novels and short stories. I
once traded him a signed copy of his novel Critical
Incident (and a gruesome fictional death in another book) for some Joe Hill
ephemera.
2. Sabrina Zbasnik: talented comic fantasy author ("Terrafae"; Dwarves in Space) and gifted
painter of haunted trees. If you’re not following her on Twitter, you are seriously
missing out. The snark levels in her everyday commentary have destroyed three
Soviet Geiger counters already.
3. Rick Gualtieri: he of Bill the Vampire fame (Sunset Strip;
Hunting Bigfoot; et alias). Recently, also has proven his mettle in single
combat versus the Deep Ones in his cellar plumbing.
Their entries to be up before or on the following Monday
(the 19th). I’ll post links to theirs in the comments for this entry
once they’re up. *readies batches of Colorado river toads for delivery*
As a kid, I watched the UHF station channel 44 in Tampa many
a summer afternoon and evening, and the highlight for me was a show called Creature Feature. A dapper older gent, made up like Bela Lugosi trying really
hard to be a Cure-loving goth with slicked-back hair and an opera cape, hosted
it under the name Dr Paul Bearer. I loved this guy, and this show, well before
I grasped the joke. He played piano, sang Tom Lehrer songs, and made painful
puns about the movies he showed. But the best part was that the featured film
almost always involved horrific giant somethings, often in the cheesiest
possible black and white. I was enraptured.
My dad obtained Bearer’s autograph for me at some local function they both
attended, which was cool, but the monsters were cooler. Not that I like giant spiders or hideous misshapen
Things lurching out of my closet –
HIDEOUS MISSHAPEN THING: Youuu raaaaannng?
Get back in there. Or at least take that muumuu off, it
doesn’t go with those heels!
Anyway. Being scared was delicious fun, but even better for
my eight-and-nine-year-old psyche? Being
able to laugh at the scary fuckers.
I don’t recall the exact circumstances, but I can tell you
that the first Mystery Science Theatre 3000 epsiode I watched was Earth vs the Spider, and I was immediately hooked. This was like
watching Creature Feature again, except with amazingly culturally literate best
buds who could make me laugh so hard I had to run to the bathroom. Often. While
sober.
Of course, only a portion of MST3K episodes involved hideous
monsters (unless you count Coleman Francis or Richard Kiel, who up the ante).
"Oh my god you're huge."
For those of you already devoted MSTies, you’ll have your
favorite eps, and unless one of them is Pod People you’re dead to me. But for
those of you who’ve never seen the show, it ran from 1988 (on public-access TV
in MN) until 1999 (dying a sad death on the channel formerly known as SciFi).
Many episodes are available on DVD; many more on Youboob. The premise: a
mild-mannered janitor with a knack for inventing odd devices works for some mad
scientists, who send him unwillingly into space on a satellite in order to
force him to watch horrible films and gauge his reactions. Joel Robinson (Joel
Hodgson, creator of the show) fights back by building some robot friends: Crow,
Tom Servo, Gypsy, and Cambot. They survive the horror of forgotten flicks like Hercules vs the Moon Men or Fugitive Alien by riffing on them
nonstop. Dr Forrester (Trace Beaulieu, who also plays Crow T. Robot) and TV’s
Frank (Frank Conniff) try to outdo their experiments every week with worse films, drawn from sewers full of
Japanese monsters, cheap bargain basements of Sandy Frank imports, and
justly-ignored “classics” by directors such as Bert I. Gordon. Joel (later Mike
Nelson, after Joel left to explore other projects), Servo (Kevin Murphy), and
Crow throw back every ounce of spunkiness that a guy and some robot puppets can
muster. While the contest between the Mads and the Satellite of Love crew was a
continual stalemate, the viewing audience always won. There were cast changes
as the years went on, for good or ill; me, I’m a Joel-and-the-Bots fan. Still
have my fan club mug and pins bought at the ConventioConExpoFest-o-Ramas (I
attended both...I got stories, yo).
Now, I know there’s folks who hate it when someone talks
over the film...even if the film smells so bad even the roaches have left the
room. If this is you, leave now. Go
watch The Notebook or some other
wussy, watered-down crap as punishment for being boring. If I’m bored, or very down, or even
gathered with close friends having a blast, there is no better time than now to watch me some MST. Because nobody else can, in the course of one
not-quite-two-hour episode, have me sprawled on the floor laughing several
pounds off my ass with a skit about death and ruin, the most creepyshit dogfood
commercial ever, a Gulf War joke, a pot joke, and a line about Tet (all in "Mighty Jack", one of the marvellously craptastic efforts dubbed and dragged into
the US from Japan by Sandy Frank). It also has one of my favorite songs:
"Slow the plot down, laddies, sloooow the plot down..."
That’s right, you little operetta-loving hairgelled monkeys:
songs. The guys came up with an
original song every few episodes. Even put ‘em on an album. You ain’t seen nothin’ til you’ve been in a group of
completely unrelated fans waiting for a bus at the convention who all
spontaneously break out singing: “This is the bus, to take us to the
hotel...This is the stop, to wait for the bus... He TRIED TO KILL US WITH A FORK LIFT...”
The con, you ask? How was it? Either of them? Oh, well,
apart from touring the Best Brains studio
and seeing This Island Earth as a LIVE
SHOW with the guys in an historic theatre and the PARADE OF TORGOS, I guess it was okay...
Smug? Me?? Huh huh huh...
I put the 'smug' in 'mugshot,' bubbe!
The best thing about MST3K was that, even now when I rewatch
it, it allows me to be a grown-up child. I can appreciate the truly awful SFX
in the films, the lackluster directing, the lack of plots or subtext or really
any redeeming storytelling feature. I snigger at obscure references to
literature or music or cult films of better quality. And I am still allowed to
feel utter joy at the lair of the giant spider (Carlsbad Caverns) full of
desiccated mummies of victims or a pack of rabid Giant Shrews gnawing through a
stockade wall, despite the just plain stupidity
of both. I can laugh at love again. I can be the best human I can be with this
show, and really, isn’t that what life’s all about?
"You're not my REAL father!"
For anyone curious, my all-time favorite eps are as follows(in
order as I jot them down here, because really, can you argue the merits of Richard Kiel in a sofa cover over, say,
Trumpy the Alf knockoff?). WATCH THEM. WATCH THEM ALL. For KICKS, man.
The MST guys went on to do some fantastic projects after the
show ended. Mike, Kevin, and Bill Corbett continue to make Rifftrax of movies
current and forgotten, and will have a LIVE RIFFING of SHARKNADO in July! (Hell
YES I plan to go!) Joel, Frank, Trace, Mary Jo Pehl and Josh Weinstein all
riffed under the banner of Cinematic Titanic. But for me, the best snark in the
universe remains in these cherished episodes. Watch them. Love them.
Think about it, won’t you? Thank you.
"Frank? Did you leave the tunnel hatch open again?"
Horror drinking games are easy: sip when the
teenagers/friends/soldiers split up to look around the creepy old
cabin/mansion/space station. Sip when someone goes outside to see what that
noise was. Cat jumps out at someone seconds before the actual Big Uggy grabs the frightened idiot? Finish your drink.
There are so many horror tropes and overused cliches in both horror film and fiction that for a long while the
genre went through a slump that became easy to mock. Then it was mocked (“Scary Movie” et al), then came roaring back with some damned
original writers. (e.g: Joe Hill, Dan Simmons, Chuck Wendig, Rick Gualtieri,
tons more I haven’t had the pleasure of being scared shitless by yet!)
Yeah, this is how I react to people bugging me
while I'm researching, too.
I wish I could say I’m one of those
writers. I have no such pretensions. But can I entertain you and keep it from
veering into shotglass-friendly territory? Prooooobably.
Inspired a couple of weeks ago by Rick Gualtieri, Chuck Wendig, and my uberlaidback friend Derek Springer, I launched into my first
horror novel: WENDIGOGO. (I'm still working on my steampunk story, but this idea captured my enthusiasm, tied it up, tossed it in the trunk of a Lincoln and drove like hell.) I’d originally intended more dark humor, perhaps equal to the
grue, but my characters have other ideas. I know where it’s heading, but not
precisely what route it will take. The damned thing’s a drunken badger and will
go where it wants to, thankyousoveryfuckingmuch. As the Wendigo myth hasn’t yet
been beat to death (and, yes, I couldn’t resist the pun since one of those
inspirations has also employed it a few times), I’m playing with it.
Cannibalism! Greed in a time of famine and want! A dick joke or two! (Are you happy,
Derek? Yes. There will be dick jokes.) And plenty of geektastic references and
humor. Some of that humor involves cannibalism. If you enjoy the series
“Hannibal,” you already know that eating humans can be hilarious. So hey! Let’s take a look, shall we?
I think I'd prefer to be served au jus, but to each their own.
Mild-mannered everygeek Dave...no. Screw that. Insecure, booknerd snark cannonof ineptitude Dave Wending accompanies
his wealthy girlfriend Darcy Mueller to an archaeological dig within a
prehistoric burial mound. He doesn’t want to be there due to his allergies to
rich assholes and oil company sponsorships, and general angst regarding his
relationship status. He’s not the most balletic goob ever to tromp around a
priceless Native American site. Oh, and it’s really fucking cold. This is what happens:
*****
Darcy gave her father a plaintive look, and he turned to the
archaeologist. “Is it possible we could take a peek?” Mueller asked Lightfoot.
“We’ll be careful not to touch anything.” His smile was that of a man who
believes himself entitled to anything he desires.
Lightfoot paused, silent, then gave one nod to the grad
student. A frown scrunched up the young man’s dark brows, but he grudgingly
peeled back the top sheet and turned on a large worklamp perched beside the
grave. Darcy started back as if slapped. “Ugh!”
That’s gotta be good, Dave
thought, and quickly moved to join her, Mueller and Lightfoot following more
slowly as they crossed the maze of rectangular holes in the dark earth. Dave
glanced up again at Darcy as he neared the grave; her expression was one of
disgust, and she seemed unable to look straight at whatever lay there. She saw
him, and suddenly cried, “David, be careful!”
His sneaker slid on what felt like a frozen slab of rock. Oh for fuck’s sake, way to go, Mr Graceful! Desperately
he thrust his hands out as the slide turned into a full stumble, his feet
unable to find a stopping point. Oh fuck
don’t land on anything don’t land on anything don’t—His knees and elbows
slammed onto the hard dirt. With a yelp of anger and pain, he scrabbled back
from the edge of the grave. He banged sideways into one of the tarp walls; it
gave, but not before bouncing him toward the hole again. Dave threw both hands
down, trying to brake, knowing it was going to shred his palms, but better that
than destroying a millennium-old set of bones. His right hand bore the brunt of
his weight; he grunted as the rough-packed earth cut into his skin. The lip of
the pit crumbled suddenly under his left hand, and as another jamming pain shot
up his arm from the elbow, something slashed his fingers. “Oww! Motherfucker!”
Hands went under his armpits and hefted him up immediately.
Dave blinked away tears, glasses askew, grimacing at the myriad of hurts
competing for his attention. He bit back more curses, trying to salvage some dignity, though he knew it was a
lost cause. “You all right?” Mueller asked. Dave sucked in a breath, trying to
take stock of himself. The grad student was on his other side. Together, he and
Mueller walked Dave back a few steps and sat him down on a trunk. Darcy
approached fearfully, her eyes flicking from his knees to his face.
“David, are you okay?” she asked. He settled his glasses on
his nose with smarting fingers, and looked at his left hand. Blood trickled
steadily from two fingers, and the palm was scraped red.
“No, I am not.” He
calmed his breathing, angry at himself. A
dirt floor full of holes, so of course, you just have to rubberneck at whatever
is making your chicken-little girlfriend go all squicky. “Please tell me I
didn’t just obliterate a priceless archaeological discovery.”
“I think both of you will live,” Lightfoot said, a tinge of
amusement in his gravelly voice.
Dave shot him a wry look; the poker face he saw in response
made his appreciation of the dry old archaeologist go up a notch or two.
Mueller appeared far more unhappy, and the grad student’s face said This is why we don’t let you cattle around
our priceless discoveries, moron. Dismissing the kid, Dave checked his
elbows and knees. His jeans had held up, though he was sure he had more scrapes
and definitely bruises on his shins; red gashes marked his forearms when he
gingerly rolled up his sleeves. Darcy paled, looking away.Dave squeezed his left fingers in his right hand to staunch the
flow of blood, and finally peered into the grave to see what the hell had cut
him.
The skull gaping sightlessly back wasn’t what he’d expected.
Instead of mummified remains, or a ceremonial mask, the mud-darkened skull of a
stag lay at the top of a humanoid figure. Animal-skin robes covered the stark
ribcage, and a necklace similar to the one Darcy had been admiring lay heavily
on its chest. More unnerving than the hybrid corpse, however, was the wet gleam
of red on a pointed antler-tip. He leaned forward, squinting. “Holy shit...”
from WENDIGOGO (work in progress, KA Silva 2014)
*****
Oh yes. There will be blood. Tasty,
slather-it-down-your-beard-like-BBQ-sauce blood. And Star Wars jokes. Possibly
together.
I have no projected finish date yet, but I’m determined and
charging at this thing like a blind rhino with a confused egret stuck up its
ass. It will be bloody, it will be funny, and with work and luck it will be fun.
Because, well, hell...life’s too short not to vicariously
savor human flesh.
Keep your shot glass out. I’ll tell you the rules. And I’ll tell you when it’s fucking soup!
{Note: a bit of a different post this time. This small glimpse of Hell is in response to a flash fiction challenge at Chuck Wendig's blog.}
Getting Old Is Hell
Richard couldn’t pinpoint the day the zombie took over
his body.
It was more of a gradual descent: he would be fine, just
unable to recall the name of the person who said hello to him at the
supermarket. Moments of uncertainty in the midst of a task he’d done a thousand
times. It seemed like after Millie died, these increased. Then one morning,
staring in the mirror, feeling groggy, he’d seen the zombie start picking at
his teeth with his finger. Richard started fully awake, and tried to still the
movement, but the thing in control of his body just kept staring with vacant
brown eyes, and obsessively scratching a bit of last night’s dinner from his
crooked teeth. Stop that, Richard
thought. The finger kept picking. He could hear
it, faintly, a bare branch on an eave: skritch
skritch. He tried to tear his gaze away, but he wasn’t in charge of his eyes
anymore.
And then suddenly he was fine. He jerked his hand out of
his mouth, gasping. He blinked, moved; his reflection paced him. Everything was
fine.
Except a few days later it happened again: in the middle
of driving, he felt frightened, lost. While he dithered over which turn to take,
the zombie blithely drove on. The zombie turned on the car radio. “I Only Have
Eyes for You.” Richard couldn’t make his hand switch it off again. That had
been his and Millie’s song and he couldn’t bear to hear it now. The zombie
nodded happily. “Yowza,” it said. Then it sang along, fumbling most of the words.
Two towns past his exit, the zombie went away and Richard was just Richard
again.
The zombie forgot to pick up milk. The zombie wandered
the house in the middle of the night, and once stood in the street yelling at
the dumpster until the cops showed up, leaving Richard unable to explain why he’d felt the need to disturb the
entire neighborhood cursing at “Phil.” “I don’t know any Phil,” he told the officer, and looked longingly at his
house. “Please, I just want to go back to bed.” The house belonged to a
neighbor. The cops walked him to a door he didn’t recognize, until he saw
framed photographs of himself and Millie inside.
He wasn’t happy about Jenny moving in. When she carefully
explained it would save them both some money, the zombie snapped at her to get
a job. She looked surprised. “But, Dad...I work downtown. At St Joe’s Hospital.
Remember?”
“Of course,” Richard said. He knew that. Of course he
did. He’d never been prouder than when she walked across that stage to receive
her medical school diploma. “That was a wonderful day,” he said aloud.
“Yowza,”
the zombie agreed.
Jenny laughed. “You always used to say that! How funny.”
She teased him with stories he could almost
recall, stories about a little girl and her parents at the beach, hunting the sand
for shells. They were good stories.
But Richard skulked about the house, peering around
corners, never knowing when he would be imprisoned while that Other pottered
off and left the soup burning on the stovetop, or carefully dressed in suit and
tie and walked out to a job Richard retired from twenty years ago.
Over months, the balance shifted in the zombie’s favor.
Jenny found them at the mall once. The zombie was arguing over an umbrella in a
department store which he insisted he’d brought today because of the rain.
Richard had never seen it before. He left it behind at Jenny’s coaxing, and
meekly went with her outside, where the summer sun burned his bare head. Fixing
dinner for them, he fell to weeping when Jenny insisted Mom wasn’t coming home
tonight, that Mom was dead.
He knew that. Of course he did. But the zombie sobbed and
had to be put to bed, where he became entranced by the sound of the ocean.
Richard knew it was a false sound, from a little box. After awhile, the
white-noise waves irritated him. The zombie let it drone all night, gazing
raptly at the closed curtains.
The doctor prescribed Aricept. Fish oil. Then catheters;
something about his bladder not emptying fully. Jenny had to help every time;
the zombie couldn’t remember how to use the damned thing. Richard watched
helplessly through his own eyes while the zombie hummed and swayed, frustrating
Jenny’s attempt to insert the catheter. When she barked finally, “Dad, hold still!” he let loose. Urine sprayed the
walls, the floor, his daughter. Richard keened, and strained to apologize. The
zombie snapped.
“You stupid bitch look what you did! Clean this up! You’re fired!” he howled. Jenny gaped, then
fled. The zombie resumed humming that damned song, that doo-wop. Richard
struggled to regain control, piss soaking his pants. Jenny shut her door; he
heard her crying softly. Then she spoke on the phone for a while in a low
voice.
Richard forced all his will into his right hand. He
picked up her shaving razor. His fingers shook, but he brought it slowly to his
throat. He could thwart the zombie. He could save his daughter this hell. Save them
all.
“Oh Jesus, Dad, what are you doing?”
“Shaving,” said the zombie. “When’s lunch?”
The nursing facility had a beautiful façade, wide shady
arcades with well-ordered gardens. The zombie tottered beside Jenny, serenely
greeting attendants in white shirts. The sunroom was all long thin windows and
quiet babbling. Jenny listened to the litany of activities: music therapy,
fingerpaints, sorting exercises. She nodded. She said goodbye and left. The orderlies
strapped Richard’s body in a chair. Mustn’t wander off. Isn’t it nice here? A
nurse offered him a drink of water, and a pill. The zombie took them.
The sunbeams stretched long across the wood floor.
Someone creaked and giggled as she drifted by. It was all lovely. Richard
begged, cried unheard, screamed inside his skull.
“Yowza,” said the zombie.
******
{Author's note: This is the worst hell I have personally witnessed.}
