Catching Up

November has been a strange, strange month, but not without its joys.  We started in darkness, powerless after the October 29th storm.  It became an 8-day outage at my house and everyone in my town is still dealing with the aftereffects.  A few days after the power came back I led a Cub Scout group on an overnight trip to Battleship Cove.  A few days after that I flew to Oklahoma for a visit with my brother and his family.  A few days after that I went to the Cape for the Thanksgiving holiday and then zipped back home so we could attend a large town festival. And now November is over in two hours.  A few notes before it disappears into history:

• My poem “Rope Tricks” is mentioned in a brief review of A Sea of Alone: Poems for Alfred Hitchcock that is included in a roundup of poetry books at Scene4Magazine.
• I went and saw The Muppet Movie with my wife, sons, and mother and give it two fuzzy thumbs up.  Ignore the hecklers in the balcony.  Tons of fun, especially if you grew up watching “The Muppet Show”, which I did.
• I inhaled Graham Joyce’s most recent novel, The Silent Land.  A few years back I was grabbing people by the lapels and telling them they had to read The Facts of Life (and you should).  I loved The Silent Land just as much, although it is a very different book.  Haunting and beautiful and scary and sad and wonderful.  If I someday, somehow manage to write a novel like one of those two I will be very pleased.
• I saw the preview for The Hunger Games and am intrigued.  I haven’t read the books, but will now track down the first one before the film opens in March.
• Along those same lines, I’ve just cracked The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  I feel like I should have already read this book via osmosis, given the number of people I’ve seen carrying or reading it.  I’m planning to read the book, see the Dutch film adaptation, and then see the David Fincher version.
• I’m also starting to read a couple of the dried out, falling apart Tintin graphic novels that my wife has from her childhood.  Yes, trying to get some feel for the material before I see what Spielberg has done with (to?) it.
• I just finished overseeing the installation of a bunch of radiant energy barrier insulation in our attic and walls as well as 10 new construction windows and a new glass patio door.  Our house was built in the 50s, when no one thought twice about the cost of energy.  An extension was put on in the 90s and done on the cheap.  So we finally took the plunge to make the place more comfortable and less expensive to heat.
• I paused on writing the novel to work on a couple of short stories that I’m planning to submit after the first of the year to markets that are currently closed.  One story was an existing one that has drawn a couple of pretty strong nibbles.  The editors were kind enough to provide specific feedback, which I’ve now followed to the best of my ability.  The other story is a new one I wrote mostly on planes to and from Oklahoma.  It’s not about planes.  Or Oklahoma.  And I’m about to redraft it since there were too many things wrong with it on the first try.  I feel like I have a much better sense of it now, which is not an uncommon thing leading into the second draft.
• I am about to start rehearsing the kids at my church for this year’s Christmas play.  We’re back to the beginning of the three-year cycle of material I’ve created.  It’s an adaptation of Hisako Aoki’s Santa’s Favorite Story. I made a few changes, putting to use what I’ve learned writing and staging two more pieces since then.
• And now there are only 90 minutes left in November and I have to sign off.  Dirty dishes and other tasks await.  I’ll try to do better about posting in December.

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Notes From A Blackout

Hello world.

I vanished last Saturday, October 29th because the historic Nor’easter that rolled in that day knocked out the power and phone service took out my DSL service with it. And we’re still waiting for service to be restored. I’m posting this from my wife’s office at the church. They are in one of the few areas that is back up.  Here are my quick notes from the past week, chronicling our experience.

• We went apple picking in the morning after retrieving the boys from a sleepover and my wife came back from a meeting. Fun time under cold, gray skies. Bulging bags of mutsu, rubinette, and an applesauce mix. 10 sugar pumpkins at a buck each. On the way home it started to snow.

• The boys had been invited to attend a Halloween party at a friend’s that afternoon. We had a glorious time. My younger son lost a tooth bobbing for apples. His brother retrieved it so he could bring it home, only to lose it again before he could show it to mom. Kids were having snowball fights. There was a fire as the snow fell and collected on our heads. The kids were giddy with excitement. The adults were alternating between shaking our heads at the craziness of it all and concern about how bad it was going to get. As I pointed out, they had originally forecast rain until sometime in the PM and then change over to snow.  We’d gone straight to snow. Which meant it was colder than forecast. Which meant whatever the maximum projection was, we were getting it.

• Back home, I tried to download the 1938 edition of Frankenstein from iTunes to watch that evening, but the power kept flickering and interrupting the DSL. Then it was gone altogether.  It’s still sitting out there for me.

• I cooked scrambled eggs for dinner that first night after scrambling to get set up, find flashlights, candles, etc. And my wife performed a wedding by candlelight just prior and then went out to shovel the handicapped ramp one last time because it was still unclear whether we’d have church the next day. The 8:30am service was cancelled that evening.

• We tucked the kids into bed in their room, which still felt comfortable. They had their crank flashlights and headlamps. My wife and I choose to sleep in the guest room because our bedroom is one of the coldest rooms in a house that leaks like a sieve.

• You could hear trees and branches popping during the night. But it didn’t prepare us for what we found in the morning.

• While still in bed in the morning, we received a call letting us know everything was cancelled at the church. Word was that the senior minister  had been out walking and it was “bad.”

• The first thing I noticed was the snow. A foot or more of it on the back patio. I was focused on getting the driveway cleared so we could get out. That meant using my new (donated) snow blower for the first time. Which meant learning to use it. Which proved a bit of a chore. The choke is temperamental, but we reached an understanding by the end. Such a blessing to have it, especially when dealing with such heavy, wet snow. I would have been at it for over an hour and risked back injury, otherwise.

• Then I saw the neighbors’ trees. We ourselves don’t really have any. A prior owner cut them all down to get maximum sunshine for her rose bushes. This is the first time I’ve been grateful for that fact. Branches down or damaged everywhere. Big branches. Small branches. Some trunks snapped off. I didn’t see any downed wires, although there were plenty of trees sagged onto the wires leading to the houses and the branches in the big maple next door are tangled with the wires there. The maple between our house and the other neighbor had a bunch of limbs down, but nothing catastrophic, at first glance.

• We found catastrophic later, when we walked the neighborhood. Trees split down the center, looking like a mostly eaten banana with strips of peel flopped in different directions. Wires dangling over the road. Trees against houses. The neighborhood looked…gnawed on. As if some massive creature had grazed on the trees, snapping off parts here and there as it went. A messy eater, this creature, since the yards and roads were covered with debris.

• We talked to neighbors as we went. My wife had made it her mission to care for our elderly neighbor and huddled with a woman who lives on our street who is a former co-worker and friend of hers. I talked to others and learned that one was “evacuating to Vermont to get away from the snow” (har-har-har). There was pessimism that we would be able to do any Trick-or-Treating the following night. I had taken it into my head that people could just, you know, work around the houses with downed wires and that the community would want to celebrate anyway. I was wrong. Way wrong.

• The temperature had soared into the 60s and the snow was melting very rapidly. Streams coursed down tire tracks left in the snow.

• I went grocery shopping when we got home and that was when the penny dropped that things were pretty serious. I went up 189 toward Granby and had to be very careful. There were trees jutting into the road. There were trees lying IN the road. There was a horrible 2-car accident being cleared. There was a car abandoned in front of a downed tree with a police cruiser keeping it company. The traffic lights were out and we drivers were still figuring out what the rules were around that. My primary grocery store was closed. The hardware stores were closed. The gas station was closed. Stop n’ Shop was open. Inside, there was a big line at the deli, which closed soon after “due to inclement weather.” All of the “D” batteries were gone. But, more startlingly, most of the refrigerated sections were empty. All of the shelves that had held hot dogs and sausages and other processed meats were empty. The trays for yogurt and cheese were empty. I thought it was because they’d sold out. Instead, I learned it was because the evening shift had not been there to rotate the stock. They had food to sell, it was just waaaaay in the back in storage. It was bizarre, looking at these long , empty displays. But I got enough of the things I needed and made my way carefully home.

• I’ve gotten better each day at camping in our home. I have our 2-burner propane camp stove set up on a card table in the garage with windows open. I have the teak serving tray on its stand beside that as an extra surface. I have the grill in its usual position. Between the two spots, the cooler sits in the snow. I also carved out a snow cave from the mound to store additional items once the refrigerator became nothing more than an extra pantry closet. Beer bottles also just from the snow. I’ve grilled more this week already than I have in the past several months. I even did tortillas on the grill, which went great, branding them with perpendicular marks. “That’s how you can tell they’re fancy,” I told my older son. “That’s how you can tell you grilled them,” he answered with a knowing smirk.

• I think the coldest it has gotten in the house is about 43. Low-to-mid-50s for a high, most days. The low outside was in the mid-20s on Sunday night. Right around freezing since.

• It’s very quiet, except for the hum of generators. I had expected a lot of chainsaws during the day, but that didn’t start to happen until day 5.  Recovery in general is going verrrrrryyyy slowwwwwlllyyyy.

• I got out there Wednesday with my hand saw to start clearing the debris from the maple in our elderly neighbor’s yard. There  was more of it than I thought. And there’s a bonus: firewood. Quite a pile of thick stuff, I think, by the time I’ll be done. It has to “season,” of course (a strange term for drying out) but perhaps by next winter we’ll have some firewood awaiting the next blackout or some other occasion.

• I have had two showers in seven days. Laundry is…don’t ask.

• I find it very satisfying to get to the early evening and be standing out there on the patio grilling, feeling like I’ve got things relatively under control. Life is very different right now, but we’re ok. And I’m putting some darned good meals on the table if I do say so myself.  Thursday, we finished clearing the maple debris.  I have enough propane and charcoal to last another week.  The snow cave cooler is melting fast, so we’ll need to buy ice soon.

• Our elderly neighbor was evacuated to NYC by her son. A very good thing. This is no place for an 84-year old, legally blind person right now.

• This is the longest stretch I’ve been somewhere without power since the Blizzard of 1978. I think we got it back on the fourth day. Wednesday was the first day I actually saw a crew working on anything. There have been trucks going around assessing things, but no workers at all until today. And then it was just the two guys and just for a while and then they left.  Connecticut Light & Power says they’ll have 99% of customers up by Sunday night.  That will be 8 days since the storm.  And there’s a growing assumption many of us in my town are in the 1%.

• School was cancelled for the week and resumption on Monday is contingent on the power situation.

• The Connecticut National Guard has been deployed to our town to try and speed up the recovery.

• The town rescheduled Halloween to November 10^th. That’s just wrong, but the kids will appreciate it.

• Because postponing Halloween is wrong, I did everything in my power to prevent it from happening. I bought orange and green glowsticks at Home Depot and hung them in the windows. I bought candy. I finished assembling my giant spider out of branches (with bicycle reflectors for eyes) and put it on the driveway awaiting helpless children with flashlights. I bought candy. I encouraged my wife to carve a Jack-o-Lantern with our sons. They did a two-faced one. My older son did a “Barfkin” on one side (It has pumpkin strings and seeds pouring out of the mouth. I think he picked up the idea from Calvin & Hobbes) and my wife did a more traditional face on the other. We took pictures. We ate dinner. We (or perhaps just I) waited for Trick-or-Treaters who never came. So we did it ourselves in the house. At the children’s request, I went upstairs into our cold, dark second floor and sat in a corner with the plastic cauldron of candy on my lap. Then they had to come upstairs and fine me. Without flashlights. I was strenuously warned not to make any moaning sounds or try to freak them out any more than they already would be. I found a dark spot in what felt like an out-of-the-way-spot in front of my closet and waited. It took them a long time to find me. The hilarious part was listening to them put the six-year-old in front because he was the least afraid. At one point he leaped into a pitch black closet and threw a bunch of karate moves, flailing with his treat bag in case I was in there.  After the kids were in bed I took my traditional late-Halloween stroll up the street. One house had a single lit decoration in a window, but that was it. Otherwise, it looked like a ghost town. Which was appropriate in one way and different in another and inspirational regardless. There are stories in all of this, of course.  They need to be written. And so I shall.

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Neil Gaiman Reads The Graveyard Book (Again)

Now, here’s a Halloween treat.  You can listen to (and watch) Neil Gaiman read his Newbery Medal-winning novel, The Graveyard Book over at Mr. Bobo’s Remarkable Mouse Circus.  The segments were recorded during his book tour supporting the novel, along with a question and answer session.

Why would you do such a thing?

…?

Um. Well, if you don’t know who Neil Gaiman is, your reading life is the poorer for it. And if you enjoy audiobooks or author readings and you’ve never heard him, your listening life is the poorer for it. So why not go over and improve those areas of your life for free?

Exactly. Ghosts and other supernatural entities aplenty await, all given life by the imagination and voice of a master. Enjoy while you can.

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Along the Path to Halloween

Ray Bradbury's original painting for his classic book, "The Halloween Tree."

A few postcards.

Having wandered off to other types of stories for awhile, I’m having great fun reading straight-on horror and dark fantasy again. I read Frankenstein for the first time and now want to go off and learn about how Hollywood turned Shelley’s creation into a big, green dude with electrodes for accessories who kinda lumbers along.  The original is much scarier. Faster. Smarter. Impervious to the elements. Able to seemingly appear out of the ether.  I’ve never seen the 1931 Boris Karloff film, only the 1994 Kenneth Branagh one with Robert De Niro as the monster.  That one certainly delivers something fairly faithful to the book in plot and, especially, the appearance of the monster.  I’ll try to catch the Karloff one before Halloween.

Next I read The Haunted Forest Tour, by James A. Moore and Jeff Strand. It’s book #3 in the Halloween Series from Earthling Publications, a marvelous small press.  The Haunted Forest Tour is sort of Jurassic Park with monsters instead of dinosaurs.  A dark and forbidding forest erupts in rural New Mexico, destroying a town in the process. It is quickly discovered that the forest is filled with all manner of truly nasty creatures – some familiar, but most not. But, for reasons revealed later, they cannot leave the boundary of the forest. This being America, an entreprenuer quickly seizes on the opportunity to make some dough and starts running tours around the periphery and then into the forest itself. They have a 100% safety record. Until…. Easily the most violent book I’ve read in some time, it’s out to entertain by way of taking the reader on a real rollercoaster of a ride that only pauses to let you catch your breath once or twice. I liked it most when the larger plot starts to be revealed and the ubervillain starts testing a few of the characters who have survived that long.

And now I’ve just started reading Ray Bradbury’s The Halloween Tree, which is probably as far from The Haunted Forest Tour as you can get. I haven’t read it before and have high expectations.  I’m hoping it becomes a book like A Christmas Carol for me, one that I’ll want to read aloud in season to my kids each year.  Eight friends out for trick-or-treating discover that another friend has been swept away. With the aid of the hilariously (in a good way) named Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud, they try to save him and learn all about Halloween along the way.

Once I’m done with Bradbury, I’ll return to ghost stories.  I’ll reread some of Glen Hirshberg’s work, while eagerly awaiting his new collection.  I’ll reread some James and Blackwood.  I’ll start in on the second issue of Shadows & Tall Trees.  And sometime not too long after that I’ll start reading Ghosts by Gaslight – Stories of Steampunk and Supernatural Suspense, which I’m completely intrigued by.

We’ve started decorating.  Barely. Really, we just have some ideas.  Which is what happens every October.  The boys and I kick around concepts, which we then partially follow through on, and then my wife and I whip together some additional stuff at the last minute. This year we’re going to try and build a very large spider by lashing together branches we haul out of the woods. Tomorrow is a half-day at school, so it may be the perfect time to get them to focus on actually helping me do it.  I may also have them build smaller ones, both to occupy them and also as test models before I try to do something larger.  In the meantime, this is all we have outside:

More to come.  And, as another October treat, I hereby pass along another installment of One-Minute Weird Tales.  Weird Tales is changing hands again, so who knows what will happen to this format, but I hope it continues.  This one is called “Expiration Date” and is by Carlie St. George.  Enjoy.

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More Aftershocks (of a completely good kind)

I received the happy news today from Angel Leigh McCoy that she has selected my short story “Aftershocks” to include in The Best of Wily Writers, Volume 2.  “Aftershocks” was originally published on Wily Writers in May of 2010 and I’m both honored and delighted that Angel picked it since they have lots and lots of good stories to choose from.

The book is scheduled for publication in late 2011.  More news here as events warrant.  In the meantime, you can still purchase Night-Mantled: The Best of Wily Writers (Volume 1).

Happy summer reading everyone.

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Current and Recent Reading

Along with everything else in my creative life, reading suffered a bit during the spring.  I’m picking up speed again, now, which always leads to better and more productive writing sessions.  Here’s a flyby of what I’ve been reading.

Pretty Birds, by Scott Simon – A devastating, enthralling depiction of the hell that Sarajevo became in the 90s and the journey of a teenage girl from basketball star to sniper.

Hellboy: The Chained Coffin & Others, by Mike Mignola – A collection of short pieces (some stories and some, even the author admits, not) featuring the hulking demon turned paranormal strike force agent.  The art is amazing and the stories dip deep into folklore.

A Stir of Bones, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman – A YA ghost/haunted house story that I expected a lot more from, based on the jacket copy and accolades it has received.  I found its treatment of the human horrors in the story to be too superficial for my taste and there were a number of occasions where dialogue or decisions just rang false to my ear.

Superman for All Seasons, by Jeph Loeb, Bjarne Hansen, Tim Sale – A marvelous, beautiful treatment of Superman’s early years and his struggles to define his purpose and the extent of his power and responsibility.

Pet Sematary, by Stephen King – Split reaction here.  The writing is amazing.  A clinic in the craft.  But I just could not sympathize with poor Louis Creed after a while.  He knows what will happen.  He has been shown and reacted in revulsion and horror.  There is no evidence anything good could possibly happen.  And yet he goes through with it anyway (twice!), leaving me to believe that either The Big Cosmic Force in the Woods has him in its thrall or he’s just gone plain crazy with grief.  Neither is interesting (to me) because there’s no struggle he can possibly win.  We just watch the ship sink, with the decisions and effort feeling far more foolish than noble (again, to me).

The Sunset Limited, by Cormac McCarthy – A one-act play that I listened to as an audiobook and can’t recommend strongly enough.  Two men, “Black,” and “White,” in a room debating the nature of God and existence after a startling encounter on a subway platform.

I’m also working my way through Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, by David Sedaris, smiling and giggling as I go.

And you?

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Play Ball! (As in, read a story involving baseball.)

Just received the happy news that Shroud #11 is available for purchase over at Amazon and direct from the publisher.  Within its shadowy pages you will find lots of “Horrifying Fiction and Frightful Facts,” including my story, “Side Retired.”  It involves Little League baseball.  And Halloween.  And, thankfully, none of the major plot points in the story are based on my direct experience, although too much of it is inspired by true events, some of which I’ve observed and some of which I’ve read or heard about.

Thanks, as always, to Timothy Deal and Kevin Lucia for their interest in my work as well as to everyone else who makes Shroud happen and all of those who read it!

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Joe Hill Says AutoCorrect Will Start the Apocalypse

TIME has a piece on their site about What Scares the People Who Scare Us? One of the people asked is Joe Hill, who says, in part:

“AutoCorrect. AutoCorrect is the first phase in the war between the machines and mankind. There’s something so very, very wrong about sending a text to your mother that you thought said ‘nothing but cumulus clouds today’ but which AutoCorrect fixes to read ‘nothing but cunnilingus loud today.’

And the all too plausible hilarity goes on from there.  One of the things I enjoy the most about Joe Hill’s writing, actually, is the humor.  He’s a funny man in addition to a super talented writer.

 

Most of the other people in the article (Stephen King, Eli Roth, R.L. Stine, Elvira (?) and others) aren’t nearly as entertaining.  A few of the answers are outright dull, and you wonder if the person was bored by the question.  It is, after all, a bit of a cliche to ask those who create horror what scares them and why.  As if any of us are any different from the person asking and the person reading our response.  Everyone has things they are absolutely terrified of.  Personal boogeymen that follow them around.  There’s an assumption that people who write horror stories or make horror films must have even scarier nightmares and phobias than the average person.  I don’t think that’s true, and the responses show it.

 

That’s why I think it’s great that Joe Hill took the question and turned it into something else – an opportunity to entertain the audience.  Kelly Link, not so surprisingly, also comes through with something better.  A tiny, true ghost story.

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“Side Retired” Warming Up for Shroud Magazine #11

Just learned from the good folks at Shroud Publishing that “Side Retired”, my Halloween night Little League baseball story, will be published in Shroud Magazine #11. 

The story was originally accepted for a Shroud DE Hallowen issue that would have coincided with the print edition Halloween Extravaganza (as the cover at left proclaims).  But, plans changed and here it comes now instead.  I’m told it is headed to the printer “soon”, so it should be available this spring.  That means the parents of my Little League players can all read it during the season and wonder just what sort of person they are exposing their child to.

Um….  Yea?

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“Ghost”, by Samantha Sterner – One-Minute Weird Tales

Ah, the pressures of keeping up with the Joneses.

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