Thresher - A Mind-blowing Lovecraftian tale

I read about this short film over at the Lovecraft eZine and was blown away. It builds slowly, but it's, well, kinda mind blowing. If you're interested in Lovecraft or horror at all, you really should check it out.



Trust me.

Miss Daisy's Eyes

Facebook served up a memory recently. Miss Daisy Kittycat rested in a spot we call the Crow's Nest on the cat fort. The photo was posted shortly after we purchased the cat condo in 2009.

That was about a year after her diagnosis with chronic renal failure. We'd thought the end was near for her at age 10. But I learned to administer subcutaneous fluids from our vet, a bit like kitty dialysis, and she stayed around.

She's done well for much of the time since.

Years catch up, however. This year we've seen a bit more decline with perhaps some hyperthyroidism that's cost her a few pounds.

Related or not, recently she showed some signs of not feeling well. I feared a urinary tract infection and took her to vet. Vital signs seemed generally OK at that point, and an antibiotic was prescribed.

A couple of weeks after that, Christine thought her pupils looked enlarged.

I realized that night she wasn't seeing things like cat treats or my fingers. At least she refused to say how many fingers I was holding up. Cats can be stubborn.

Another visit to the vet determined her blood pressure had spiked, causing a retinal detachment in the right eye and probably damaging the left.

We've added a blood pressure medication and a downward BP trend seems to have developed.

I pretty much need a jeweler's glass to cut the pill down for a tiny cat dosage, but treatment seems to have perked her up. She navigates our house with ease. It's hard to tell there's a vision issue.

Time marches on. "Days dwindle down" as the September Song puts it, but for the moment, we abide.

Pilgrim: A Brief Noir Tale

"Pilgrim," a brief little noir tale, appears in the new issue of Heater magazine. It's available in multiple ebook formats including Kindle.

I'm kind of proud of the story that looks into the mind of a weary police detective as he visits a brutal crime scene.

Get purchase info here.

Or for Kindle here.

Christopher Lee RIP

Seemed like Christopher Lee would be with us forever. His departure spurs random memories.

I was always glad to see Lee in new roles. It was exciting to see him as part of the Lord of the Rings, which had captured my imagination in my teen years as novels around the same time I came to appreciate Lee as an actor.

Perhaps a few years before I discovered Rings, I read a cool interview with Lee in The Monster Times, a great horror newspaper in the early '70s. He spoke of his work on Dracula and in other horror fare. I was impressed with his statement that he read a book a day.

I couldn't manage that then, and I can't now.

The horror short story collection From the Archives of Evil still rests on my bookshelf. It features Lee's face in a spooky all-red photo and includes great introductions at least attributed to him.

In the early '90s, he hosted a Halloween horror fest on the Sci Fi Channel, as it was known in those days. It was great to see him leading into to all of the Universal Fright Flicks over multiple nights. I got to see some of the Universal Films for the first time since my childhood days that week.

Adieu, Dracula, Mr. Holmes, Frankenstein's creature, Lord Summerisle, Saruman, Count Dooku, Scaramanga and all the rest.