Wednesday Reads Fool's Run YouTube Review

Should have shared this a while back. It's a nice review of Fool's Run by E.G. Stone at QuillandPen.com.

Revisiting The Midnight Hour

I'm pretty sure I watched The Midnight Hour when it first aired in 1985. I don't remember much about that first viewing except an okay-fine reaction. I wouldn't have been watching for deep analysis then, and everything other than a vague notion of its plot pretty much got tucked away in my memory.

I decided to revisit it via YouTube. Because: October. And because the Pure Cinema podcast spoke highly of it fairly recently in an assessment of solid TV movies.

So, what a pleasant surprise a re-watch proved to be.  

In retrospect, it's heavily influenced by the Thriller video, coming down the pike just a couple of years after that event. It even has some of the same creative team involved in makeup and costumes.

But it's otherwise quite a bit of fun with a touch of camp and a sweet love story woven through its undead storyline with interspersed musical numbers and a comic performance by Fridays' Mark Blankfield as a zombie out to grab what he can of past life pleasures.

It also features LeVar Burton, Shari Belafonte, Lee Montgomery of Ben with Jonna Lee as a fifties teen returned to get one more chance at things she missed. Oh, and Kevin McCarthy of Invasion of the Body Snatchers on the flip side.  

There's one great musical number fronted by Shari Belafonte and one great horror set piece with a vintage '50s auto overrun by the undead. A few other flourishes including Jonelle Allen as a colonial vampire shore it all up. 

Wikipedia reports it received mostly negative reviews in the day. They're wrong or at least not taking everything it is now into full account.

It's not a fully satisfying feature experience for horror fans, but it's still worth a look for the intriguing package that it is. 

Check it out on YouTube here.

A Big Hand for the Little Lady and an Old Household Movie Viewing Mystery Solved

My wife, Christine, loves The Odd Couple original film, something about the combo of Neil Simon's humor and Jack Lemmon's performance as Felix. Anyway, it was streaming on Pluto the other day. I pointed it out, and she settled in to watch the what was left.

And Walter Matthau on screen suddenly reminded me of a conversation with my dad years and years ago. The, I guess, mostly forgotten comedy western A Big Hand for the Little Lady with Henry Fonda, Joanne Woodward as the the "little lady" and Jason Robards came on TV, probably on NBC. This would have been the very early '70s.

As the show neared its conclusion, my dad said he'd seen it before. "But it wasn't with Henry Fonda."

An ad for the upcoming broadcast of Cactus Flower popped on the screen about that moment with a tight shot of Walter Matthau's face. "It was that fellow there," he said. 

Seemed weird, but we chalked it up to an odd coincidence or something like that and moved on.

But Walter Matthau--busy with a different set of poker buddies--was on my screen again all these years later via the Internet, which we didn't have in 1971. I thought, why not check it out? Maybe my dad had a point.  

The IMDB entry simply credits Sidney Carroll as the screenwriter, though there are mentions in the trivia of it originally being written for TV along with allusions to an alternate title or two. Big Deal in Laredo et al.

 

Let's Go the the Wiki
I moved on to Wikipedia, and gained clarity. In 1962, Big Deal in Laredo was produced for television as an installment of an anthology called The Dupont Show of the Week. It earned Emmy nominations including one for Matthau. There's even a press photo of him in character out there for purchase.  

Son of a bitch, my old man was right. It's a little thing, but that brought me a bit of joy. The TV show would have aired a month after I was born. 

My old man was a route salesman for a wholesale grocery company. When he came home from work after driving all day from mom-and-pop grocery to mom-and-pop grocery in rural Louisiana, he still had an hour or two of making changes to his price book, a heavy, leather bound thing with semi-circle holes punched for easy removal and replacement.

He would have been working on those changes or pricing order tickets from his customers as we watched anything. That was probably how he watched The Dupont Show years earlier and with a newborn in the house, more focused on the storyline than the brand umbrella. 

It's nice to have little things mined out of the memory, reconnecting with little moments from life flowing along. You never know what's going to matter. 

Some triggers on a quiet Sunday afternoon are good ones. 

The Strong Women in Science Fiction Event

 

Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse, which includes my story "The Witch of Washington Pari," is part of the Strong Women in Science Fiction Event for August 2021.

Check out all there is to see. 

Short Film Based on My Flash Fiction Decoherence

 A few years back, a request came in to the writers Meet Up group Owl Goingback was running in the Orlando area. 

A student up in Gainesville needed a short mystery piece to shoot for a film class. I'd spent a bit of time teaching creative writing by then, gradually emerging from a creative coma induced by 12 years in a marketing job plus one damaging semester in an MFA program with a writing professor who'd go on to break the internet with a column on his harsh outlook on students. (I graduated with an MFA, but I still refer to that semester as The Lost Semester.)

A short time before, I'd written a bit of flash that landed at a webzine called DM du Jour.

To help out a student, I though sure, I can adapt that into a quick script, and I did. 

It was fun to do, but, as happens in the collaborative process, some adaptation of my script transpired for shooting. One character became two, and, partly for logistics I suspect, a moment in the story was reinterpreted. 

It didn't quite do what I'd envisioned in musing about timelines and mysterious visitors. 

I didn't say much about the product, which was mainly for a class anyway. The student got an A for her effort. I didn't think much about it. 

But literally as I was walking this morning, in my current timeline, I thought, maybe the reinterpretation played even more with timelines and many-worlds interpretation. 

So, look above. The short student film from my tale Decoherence can be viewed, and the short-short tale can still be read online as well.  

Mothman and Something for the Dark Illustrations

 

As noted as an addendum on a recent post on Edward D. Hoch's story "Something for the Dark," the tale originally appeared in the June 1968 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. 

The original illustrations, in the style that appeared in AHMM for the better part of 20 years or more, further evoke the mothman allusions. 

Favorite Short Stories: Something for the Dark By Edward D. Hoch

To identify one sub-category of Edward D. Hoch's fiction is to spoil a bit, I suppose. Hoch excelled at
all varieties of mystery from the locked room to the procedural to the cozy and more. His cadre of sleuths included a cowboy, a spy, a country doctor and the representative of a bureau devoted to apprehensions of fugitives. 

The collection Ellery Queen's Grand Slam (Popular Library 1970) includes a Hoch trifecta divided by mystery technique, whodunit, howdunit, whydunit. 

But there's also a significant portion of Hoch's work that falls in the realm of the fantastic uncanny alongside The Hound of the Baskervilles or the the more recent Scooby Doo. The supernatural is seemingly present in the mystery, but the solution is rational with clues neatly placed along the way to look like phenomena.

Clearly Hoch read widely in probably scientific and technical journals, mining for tidbits to serve his ongoing, incredible output. Thumbprint scanners in their infancy might provide a reason for one of thief Nick Velvet's unique pilfers, for example, and all manner of devices or small details might serve Simon Ark tales and many others.

Ark, alleged to be a coptic priest thousands of years old, tended to be called in when high strangeness seemed at hand. Even with a bit of mysticism sometimes mixed in, Ark's cases always proved to have a logical explanation.

SEE ALSO: Favorite Short Stories - The Judges of Hades by Edward D. Hoch

That same style is on display in what's maybe a bit of an obscure Hoch tale, "Something for the Dark." From what I can tell it appeared only in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents collection Stories that Go Bump in the Night (Random House, 1977), though its roots seem to be the 1960s. That hints it may have been in a magazine earlier. 

The collection's one of a long series of anthologies spawned by the Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV series, offering tales in a similar vein. 

The hero's not Ark nor one of Hoch's many series characters but magazine writer Steve Foley, though he works for Neptune Magazine, which bears the same name as the publishing house for which Ark's unnamed friend and case-narrator works.

Maybe it started out as an Ark tale. (Occasional signs of Hoch's experimentation turn up in mining his cannon. The September, 1959 Double-Action Detective features a more traditional hardboiled private eye named Simon Ark narrating and solving "The Case of the Naked Niece.")

In "Dark," the human-interest angle on reports of a man's encounter with what might be called a strange cryptid piques Foley's interest. While on a camping trip with his wife, the man spied a winged creature sounding a lot like Mothman though described as similar to Lewis Carroll's Jabberwock.

Circulation's lagging at Neptune, and an October issue is coming up, so his editor dispatches Foley to Pennsylvania for details from Walter Wangard and his wife Lynn. 

Sounds maybe a little like Woodrow Derenberger, noted for encounters with alleged alien Indrid Cold in proximity to Mothman sights.

Turns out the creature may have winged away with the couple's dog.

SEE ALSO: Birds, Mice and Frozen Goldfish Bowls

Foley's skeptical, but a trip back to the woods and the spot of the initial sighting gets spooky, and Walt's overcome by something unseen not far from where their dog's found buried. 

For a magazine feature writer, Foley's as attuned to detail as any classic sleuth. As events seem to overwhelm Walt Wangard, Foley pieces together a different interpretation of events, drawing on a bit of science and an inconsistency or two that Sherlock himself might have noted.

It's not a terrifying tale, but it has a creepy factor and a satisfying solution. It shouldn't be overlooked by Hoch fans nor those who enjoy a tale with a few clever twists. 

ADDENDUM

Poking around a bit, I see that "Something for the Dark" appeared in the June, 1968 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. Mothman sightings and related incidents occurred in 1966 and 1967. See illustrations from that publication here. 

SEE ALSO: Favorite Short Stories: The Emissary by Ray Bradbury

Original Publication Sites: Scars and Blue Murder

I get periodic reminders my memory is not what it used to be. 

My story "Scars" originally appeared in the online magazine Blue Murder. It's in the ebook collection Scars and Candy from Crossroad Press. I read a few flash stories from that collection the other day at the Fantasy/Sci-Fi Focus Facebook group and was reminded. 

I'm not sure the issue number any longer, and shifts from one computer to the other over the years have lost any contributor's e-copy I had.

It's a good lesson on the need to keep good records, I guess. 

The story was first submitted to the Hot Blood series, and it resulted in a freak-out rejection from Michael Garrett, I believe, and not Jeff Gelb, over something implied but not implicitly stated in the story. 

It went to some other mag of the time where it chilled one editor but not the second reader it seemed, who took it in better stride than the HB editors at least.

I don't recall Blue Murder batting an eye. Shows what a crapshoot the whole submission process is, I guess.

Wish I still had a copy of the original. I found a few others around on Planet PDF and discovered several friends in the contents pages, but haven't run across myself.

Maybe it'll turn up. At least the story's preserved in Scars. 

Favorite Short Stories - The Judges of Hades by Edward D. Hoch

I first turned to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine in the late '70s. They were in the mix and progression of interesting and eclectic things to which I was drawn once the comic books were taken away by the Eckerd Drugs powers that were of the day. 

I met Micahel Morbius on those magazine racks and Doc Savage on the nearby paperback display, so those old Eckerd bean counters nudged my reading tastes, I suppose.

I was unaware of Simon Ark's legacy in that moment. I just started to notice the contributions of Edward D. Hoch in every issue of EQMM and frequently in AHMM. I came to like police detective Captain Leopold and thief-of-obscure-and-worthless-objects Nick Velvet among Hoch's wide mix of characters. 

When Ark came to the pages of EQMM and AHMM a while after, I started reading of him as well. An introduction noted Hoch had written of him for some time, but I just picked up with the newly arriving tales. 

I sadly never ran across the 1971 paperback edition in my used book store dives. I would have snatched it up, of course. Paperbacks sold for half their cover price back then, not collector's prices. I would have snatched up a 1973 re-introduced Weird Tales too that included an Ark story too. It never made it to Eckerd's that I noticed. 

Ark might almost have fit in the original Weird Tales alongside Seabury Quinn's Jules de Grandin, I suppose. As explained by Ark's nameless Watsonesque first-person narrator from the publishing industry,  Ark was a Coptic priest, thousands of years old. But his mysteries, while hinting at the bizarre or the mystical, were of the "fantastic uncanny" school. Like The Hound of the Baskervilles or Scooby Doo, while things might seem ghostly or otherwise supernatural, the explanation was rational.

I enjoyed the Ark stories. My old man, who'd take a turn toward less fantastic tastes later in life, read them as well along with other Hoch stories. "Anything by Edward Hoch is good," he declared. 

 SEE ALSO: Favorite Short Stories: The Hospice by Robert Aickman

He liked the clever twists and turns of Hoch's plots, frequently locked rooms with Dr. Sam Hawthorne and more violent crimes with Leopold.  Often, they'd hinge on technology of some sort. I decided Hoch must read a lot about new developments as well as the inner workings of older devices. He was no stranger to minute details in other realms such as myth and folklore either. 

That hint of the arcane in Ark stories probably appealed to me more as my interest in Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft grew. The delight when Hoch revealed how a man trapped in a revolving door all alone could perish at another's hand grabbed both my dad and me, however.

Things weren't as accessible in those days as they are now. I had to wait for ebooks to bring back early Ark tales including Hoch's first published story, I believe, "Village of the Dead." In that one an entire village plunges lemming-like over a cliff. 

SEE ALSO: Ray Bradbury's October Game

"The Judges of Hades," probably novelette length, is in the Mysterious Press/Open Road ebook of The Quests of Simon Ark as well. It's nice to backtrack a bit now that so much is at our fingertips.

According to this handy list, the story first appeared in the February 1957 Crack Detective and Mystery. It's fun to have a sense at least of a tale's original trappings. 

The story takes Ark's publishing-industry friend plus wife Shelly back to his hometown, Maple Shades, Indiana. Kids are wont to strip Maple S from local welcome signs, but it seems to be one of those quiet picket-fences places, though the narrator's much happier in the canyons of New York. 

The friend's father, Richard, and sister Stella, have died in a head-on collision, each alone in a separate car. 

The narrator's strict father was a strict local judge as well. He and his brother, Uncle Phillip, also a judge, had been dubbed judges of hades by the local press, inspired by vase depicting the mythological Greek guardians of the underworld.

What made either the Stella or the Richard decide to ram the other? Dad had ruled against the sister's husband, but would that have triggered a dark impulse on her part?  

The narrator persuades Ark to look into the matter and his interest is piqued by the mythological reference. Was supernatural evil to blame? And what's up with the fact that there were three mythological judges of Hades?

Ark's interest grows as the potentially spookier side of things becomes evident.

The solution's wrapped up in fifties small town repression and more character texture than usual. All is revealed as the narrator contemplates choices and contrasts between life in Maple Shades with the glitzy life of the city. 

Are there a couple of stretches? Perhaps, but it's all clever enough and anticipates what's ahead for Ark who's a tall and heavy-set man not yet showing some of the signs of age mentioned in later tales. So is he really who he claims to be?

It should be enjoyable to fans for the likes of Carnacki, though he might have found a ghost or a logical explanation.

And, if we'd have run across it while he was alive, I'm pretty sure my old man would have liked it and held to his Hoch contention. We had our tiffs, but we got along better than Ark's narrator and his dad Richard. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Green Eyes of Bast by Sax Rohmer - Twenties Horror

Best known as the creator of Fu Manchu, Sax Rohmer, real name Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward, also produced a host of stand-alone novels. He also penned several other series, Gaston Max, Red Kerry, Paul Harly and Sumuru. 

Sumuru seems to have been an attempt to produce a slightly more enlightened series in the fifties even though his Fu Manchu series, which had generated controversy and charges of racism, continued on paper. 

He also wrote tales of Bazarada based on magician Harry Houdini. The Green Eyes of Bast is more in that vein, a horror thriller from 1920 with a focus on Egyptian magic. It feature psychic investigator Dr. Damar Greefe. This edition is February 1971 from Pyramid.

 

SEE ALSO: Biblioholic's Bookshelf: To The Devil A Daughter - Fifties Horror  

 

Cover Stories - Ali Larter was apparently the model for my novel Blood Hunter's Original Cover

Apparently even if I read reviews, I'm guilty of not reading them carefully. A gentleman named Mark Louis Baumgart was kind enough to write a thoughtful review of my novel Blood Hunter some time back. It was a meticulous piece on Amazon that sought to put the book in perspective on the horror paperback fiction landscape.

I noted it there somewhere along the way, happy to have it, of course, but I only noticed today that he included a bit of trivia several paragraphs deep.

SEE ALSO: THE RETURN OF BLOOD HUNTER

Apparently the cover painting artist on the original Pinnacle Books edition was done by E. T. Broeck Steadman, and a 17-year-old Ali Larter of Heroes was the model for his work. It was before she became an actress. Checking her bio, she must have been a Ford model at the time and just shy of heading to Italy, Japan and a few other places. 

I honestly never knew that. A little googling located the author's website with his note on the work. 

The character in the painting is a little younger than the character she more or less represents in the book, but it's still kind of fun to know.

I can't recall my original title for the book. Blood Hunter was the publisher's choice from a later list I submitted. 

SEE ALSO: WHEN DARKNESS FALLS - THE NEW COVER 

My original cover idea was a clawed hand and forearm raking its way across the cover, back of said hand and the forearm covered with mud, leaves and Spanish moss as the human creatures in the tale used to form pelts for themselves.

Something similar had been done recently, so the editor asked for another idea. 

I suggested a swamp.

"What's a swamp look like?" she asked from her New York City desk.

I had a Louisiana cypress swamp in mind. By the time notes were conveyed, the swamp took on a more lush look and the character most-closely aligned to the one on the cover lost a few years. 

So it goes, it's still a catchy image for one of my favorites of my early works. 

Order Blood Hunter here

Biblioholic's Bookshelf: Donovan's Brain and Hauser's Memory by Curt Siodmak

Curt Siodmak made significant contributions to the Universal horror canon with screenplays for The Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Son of Dracula and others. 

His novels add dimension to the horror and science fiction realm. This handy edition brings together a couple of his greatest works, both of which were made into films. Hauser kind of expands on ideas in Donovan's Brain, so this makes for a nice package. This twofer is from November 1992 from Leisure Books. 

Noel Carroll examines Donovan's Brain in The Philosophy of Horror in contemplating the overreacher plot, the structure/paradigm in the Frankenstein mold. 

SEE ALSO: Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Six Great Science Fiction Novels

Here's an interesting interview with Siodmak.

 

Godzilla vs. Kong Review

I occasionally write reviews and other articles for the nice folks at Wicked Horror. 

I did a quick take on Godzilla vs. Kong. You can check it out here. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Death Trap - John D. MacDonald with a Gothic Adjacent Look

When the paperback gothics were hot in the women running from houses era, many other paperbacks got similar looks, even tales from crime novelists like John D. MacDonald, creator of the Travis McGee series and tough tales with gritty covers earlier from Gold Medal. 

This stand-alone originally released in 1956 has a distinct gothic look with trees that resemble castle-stone and a flowing overcoat for the woman resembling the Victorian dresses on historical gothics. 

SEE ALSO: Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Dark of the Moon by Dan Ross

SEE ALSO: John D. MacDonald, The Crossroads

In the Arm

I was able to get my first vaccine shot this past week. I have to keep reminding myself I've taken a step. 

I'll feel better after the second shot and the wait for immunity to kick in is up, but I do feel a bit more upbeat, maybe lighter than I realized I wasn't. 

I had grown numb to the sense of existential dread we've been enduring for a year. 

I felt some anxiety leading up to the shot. It was never about the stick. I think I feared the appointment wouldn't hold, that somehow there'd been a mistake and a kink in the supply chain would force a further wait.

I'd been qualified for a while to receive in Virginia, but it was feeling like the day and the opportunity would never come. 

It all went smoothly, though. The pharmacy I went to had things planned well, and I had only a three-minute wait for software to allow me to check in precisely 15-minutes before. Even with Siri's assist, it's hard to calculate drive time. I damn sure didn't want to be late, either.

The guy giving injections asked which arm. 

"My left is to you," I said. 

"It can be in either."

I told him left was fine. I had no side effects on this first one other than the sore arm everyone reports.

I'm not sure how we--all of us--will remember the day as time passes, but it will perhaps be one of those moments we look back on as this long slog becomes a blur somewhere behind us.

My list of things to do after is limited and infinite. 

I'd always had the notion seeing the next Bond movie in the theater might be something to look forward to. I realized if all goes well with the second shot and a two-week wait, the planned release of Black Widow would come just as my immunity should kick in.

Then the date of Black Widow was moved to July, so almost certainly that will be a possibility if local theaters open.

Beyond that, dinner out, visits here or there with less concern, the grocery story. Christine and I have been doing curbside pickup. Browsing in the store and planning meals accordingly seems like something that will be fun. 

Beyond that, what will normal be? I'll have to see. But one step closer's not too bad. 

The Nigh Forgotten Private Eye Film P.J.

Apparently I'd never seen the film P.J. (Universal, 1968). I missed the NBC debut, but watched on late-night TV as a kid in the seventies. Word on the 'net--and the new Kino Lorber Blu-Ray commentary track from Howard S. Berger and Steve Mitchell--is that's only a sanitized version with omissions and alternate scenes. Far less gritty.

That must be true. I remember a couple of cool set pieces and George Peppard's turn as down-on-his-luck private investigator P.J. Detweiler, but in re-watching, I see there's more blood and a few steamy scenes including a credits sequence that didn't ring any bells.

On the down side in rewatching, location filming mixes with sound stage footage, diminishing the set pieces a bit.

For much of the film, P.J.'s guarding Maureen Preble (Gayle Hunnicutt), mistress of Raymond Burr's eccentric millionaire William Orbison.

When a car's cut break line sends it speeding out of control as cut break lines were wont to do in P.I. films and TV shows of the era, P.J. has to stop it by side swiping a rock wall with sparks flying. The stunt still impresses, but this is all while he's pressing Maureen behind him. It's 1968 and not every car has seatbelts.

Things get exciting, but George and Gayle are obviously in a simulator if you're watching in 2K. That didn't detract for me in rewatching the out-of-control car in Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot a while back. Here I found the seams a distraction. 

The other great set piece comes when Orbison carts family and mistress alike to the Cayman Islands. Some exteriors look authentic, but the jungle chase and gun battle fixed in my memory was clearly on a well-designed set as well.

That's all a matter of watching with 2021 eyes in HD and not on an old black and white portable TV, I suppose. 

That's not to say the film's isn't a fun watch. It's surprisingly whimsical early on with an upbeat score and loopy behavior by skinflint Orbison. When not flaunting his mistress, he saves cigar stubs and worries about wasted office paper. 

SEE ALSO: Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Tony Rome AKA Miami Miami Mayhem - Early Sixties Private Eye

The film turns gritty and arguably gets better as a thriller at the midpoint. I don't remember a few flourishes from the tough side of the run time. 

In what today seems a non-PC turn, P.J.'s lured to a gay bar by Preble's stereotypically gay assistant (Severn Darden). It must have been viewed as a edgy variation on the requisite private eye beating in 1968. It definitely reveals American film's attitude toward LGBT characters at the time. Blake Edwards updating of Craig Stevens' hero Gunn (1967) featured a trans character, and Tony Rome (1967) and They Only Kill Their Masters (1972) would include lesbian characters, the latter's not too charitably treated.

The bar here is peopled with more gay stereotypes plus Anthony James, behind the counter once again following 1967's In the Heat of the Night. Everyone in the bar has sharp nails, heavy jewelry or belts with big buckles. All the better to pummel P.J. with, and they do in bloody fashion.

The other steam's delivered in a tame but risqué turn with P.J. and Preble on a pile of cash. 

Still more grit's served up in a subway battle, happily on location with no seams showing. It's a yikes even today.

A final confrontation is also shot on location with blazing guns, interesting angles, twists turns and other surprises. It ends things well.

By the way, you should watch for Susan St. James and Arte Johnson in small roles. 

Really P.J. is like watching two films, and as mentioned it gets better as the murderous conspiracy swirls. Don't except too much of the mystery plot. 

Remember it's not Tony Rome. It's definitely not Harper, but it's worth a look for private eye aficionados. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Watchdog by Faith Sullivan

Faith Sullivan is a versatile author who has written a number of novels sometimes harnessing genre elements or myth. This signet edition is dated February, 1983.

SEE ALSO: Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Scarf by Robert Bloch

I picked it up in a shop I often remember fondly here, The Book Nook, operated by a very cordial lady named Lena Cortello in Alexandria, LA.

It was a go-to spot for me, tucked in a corner shop off a major thoroughfare. It was a corner crammed with paperbacks of all varieties and comics too. 

I miss it and the era of shops like it, when there were more obscure gems than multiple copies of week-old bestsellers, but time marches on. 

I picked up some titles for 5 cents each when The Book Nook closed and inventory when to another, short-lived used book store in the '90s. I was glad for the bargains in the moment, but I should have paused to mourn. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Markham The Case of the Pornographic Photos by Lawrence Block

I've probably mentioned on this blog before that I read Lawrence Block's fiction writing column in Writer's Digest in my formative years. His blog today still gives a taste of what that used to be like. 

I segued to Evan Tanner, Matt Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbarr from mentions in the column or in the "about" section at the bottom of the page. I also read his stories in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and picked up Ariel in hardcover from Arbor House. 

Some things were harder to find. He mentioned once how he'd come to write a novel about a private eye named Ed London because he'd been commissioned for a TV tie-in for a show called Markham with Ray Milland. 

He began with the detective being asked to solve the murder of a woman found on a friend's living room floor. The detective rolled the body in a Persian rug, moved it to a park then set off to solve the crime. There was even a John Caldwell cartoon to illustrate the stroll with the carpet over the shoulder in the WD column. 

Block and his agent ultimately decided the book was a better stand alone novel than a TV tie-in, so it became Death Pulls a Double Cross aka Coward's Kiss featuring a detective named Ed London. I eventually got to read that when a slim paperback was reissued while I was working at a library. 

Block still had to turn in a Markham novel, so he sat down and wrote another.  That became The Case of the Pornographic Photos (Belmont, 1961). Since then, it has been reissued as You Could Call it Murder.

The book was not to be found in The Book Nook used book store of my youth, but I picked it up for just a couple of bucks a few years ago in a pretty nice edition.

SEE ALSO: Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Ed Noon and The Flower-Covered Corpse

A few Ed London short stories, along with many more short tales can be found in Block's One Night Stands and Lost Weekends. You'll also find a more detailed account of the transformation of a Roy Markham novel into an Ed London novel via meetings with Knox Burger of Gold Medal Books. Burger is also the guy who talked John D. MacDonald into writing Travis McGee books. 

Giving The Lovecraft Investigations a Fair Listen

When I heard BBC radio was doing an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward," I was interested. Then I realized when episodes written by Julian Simpson became available that the storyline was being updated.

I found that notion a bit off-putting. I'm usually open to adaptation and reinterpretation. I love Stuart Gordon's Dagon, though I would have loved to have seen his original, period adaptation of The Shadow Over Innsmouth he wanted to make. Something just didn't quite seem right about contemporary-set stories when I sampled.

Then, after two full series of The Lovecraft Investigations unfurled, a friend mentioned he was really enjoying it. That prompted me to revisit, and especially since it could be downloaded as a convenient podcast, I dived back in.

And found it addictive. The premise for the updating is that the stories are part of an ongoing show within a show, a true crime-investigative podcast. When the focal characters, Kennedy Fisher and Matthew Heawood, begin to look into the disappearance of Charles Dexter Ward their focus turns toward the paranormal.

Familiar elements of the original Lovecraft story prove to be the tip of a weird iceberg that incorporates Lovecraftian plot and characters and modern urban myth such as, later, the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident. Dashes of Aleister Crowley and rocketeer-occultist Jack Parsons go in the mix as well.

Once I'd surrendered my thinking the approach, I was absorbed and along for the ride and ready to country hop and roll with the found-footage-on-audio approach. Kennedy rarely turns off her digital recorder, and she frequently manages to get material uploaded for Matthew to listen to even if she's disappeared for a while, down a dark cavern or somewhere in the Middle East.

Deeply immersed, listening in a dark room without distraction, some genuine Lovecraftian shivers creep into the mix as well, and there's the fun game of deciding what's incorporated where. 

In Innsmouth, for example, it's Kennedy who catches a bus to the mysterious coastal burg, though references to a similar visit by one Robert Olmstead get stirred in. 

I'm a few episodes from the conclusion, and the bonus. 

Check out BBC Radio's handy companion discussion links and The Guardian review.

All episodes are here or wherever you get your podcasts. 

ADDENDUM: TV Tropes on this series.

 

Playmate - A New Short Horror Mystery Story Now Available in Dark Dossier Magazine

Not long before I left Florida for my current home in Virginia, I went into my kitchen for my morning coffee. Some of you, especially if we're Facebook friends, may know how important that is to me. Let's call it a sacred rite. 

The previous evening, I'd poured out the remaining bird seeds from an old bag onto some paver stones for whoever wanted them, birds and beasts alike. I was in that "everything must go" stage of moving. The furniture was already gone, I was working on boxes for a desk and sitting in a lawn chair. I had one other lawn chair destined for Goodwill. That was for my cat Ollie in the moment.

Anything left in the house was going to have to fit into my car for the trip north, so I was purging.  

I hadn't thought about our friend the opossum as liking bird seeds. But who had pulled up a chair to the paver stones and tied a napkin around his neck but one pale grey marsupial. 

Fair enough, I thought. The seeds were for anyone.

But an eerie sensation crept over me as I sipped and did a partial turn from the window. Something struck me as strange. It was in that uncanny valley of not quite right.

I stared a little longer and realized two possums, as we say in the South, were enjoying a birdseed breakfast and angled so that they were hard to see and distinguish in early morning light.

That brief, eerie feeling of criss crossed bodies, visible limbs and pale faces made me wonder what I'd feel like if I looked out to see a disheveled person crouched among the elephant ears and other semi-tropical plants?

What if it was a person too frightened to communicate, but who would accept food left outside in a Playmate cooler?

A few elements from inside reality and out began to converge along with urban myth, and my story "Playmate" was born.

It's available in the new issue of Dark Dossier magazine, No. 56. You can order from Amazon if you want a Kindle or print copy, or you can read it free on the publication website. 

 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Most Deadly Game Novelization No. 2 - The One-Armed Murder by Richard Gallagher

As mentioned here before, I loved the brief series The Most Deadly Game when I was a kid. It's remembered less fondly on the Thrilling Detective website, so my youthful zeal may have been overrated. 

It seemed cool to me back in the day, anyway, and starred George Maharis of Route 66, Yvette Mimieux of The Time Machine and Ralph Bellamy of everything. 

This one has a different author than the first, possibly a pseudonym. It's copyright Aaron Spelling Productions, 1971. 

SEE ALSO THE MOST EDADLY GAME NOVELIZATION NO. 1 

Read a smidge more about the series here. 

5 Tips for adding noise to your comics script

Have you ever sat in a coffee shop making odd sounds? Then you might be a comics writer. 

Way back in the day, when my wife was still my girlfriend, and I used to sit at her kitchen table with my typewriter working on comics scripts, she’d give me funny looks as I tried to devise phonetic spellings for words.

It was part of the job, though. Sound effects, often written in comics scripts as SFX, are a useful part of the comics and graphic novel universe. They're a component to help your comics come to life. 

The 1960s Batman series harnessed them with humor in all of those episode-ending battles. Remember POW and TWOCK as Batman punched out The Joker and The Riddler? While they’re obvious and a part of pop-culture, many beginning writers don’t think about them as they script, but they’re important and they really are part of the writer’s job. 

They’re fun too. For all of the bold colors and exciting visuals on the comic book page, the medium is a static, two-dimensional one. Sound effects are one element that makes a story more dynamic. So, what are some tricks for crafting good sound effects?

 1. Be aware of what’s being done out there. 

It’s about social scanning as I mentioned in my previous post on comics scripting. When you read comics, take note of how effects are being used. Take particular note of how they’re being used in comics similar to yours. Sound effects are word art, and letterers are artists. They have many new graphics tools they’re just waiting to put to work. Those transparent-letter sound effects that let us look through the word as action transpires are an innovation of a few years ago. 

Letterers keep coming up with new ways to make words visually interesting. You might even want to seek out and watch a few lettering tutorials. Seeing how letterers work and what they can do can inspire you. You can always drop in a note and suggestion to the letterer in a comics script if you see something you like. 

 2. Sound it out.

As I mentioned above, it really helps in creating SFX words to try making the sounds, even if it inspires funny looks at the coffee shop or from your pal or significant other. SFX actually allow you to create words. Though that might not make the most diligent English teacher’s happy, that’s how we got some words such as crunch. They’re considered “of imitative etymology” meaning they imitated natural sounds when they were devised back in the 19th century or so. 

3. Don’t just fall back on restating what’s happening,

It’s tempting to just use a verb for a sound effect or fall back on a crack or thump. It’s more interesting to be imaginative and strive for a word that’s really appropriate to the scene and that gives the reader a sense of the audible sound that’s transpiring. 

4. Don’t forget there are tools that can help you.
All of these sound effects are technically onomatopoeia. There are actually onomatopoeia dictionaries out there, and Written Sound is a fairly handy online version. Another handy one is Comic Book FX - The Comic Sound Effect Database.

If it doesn’t have exactly what you need, it may be handy guide to get you started. 

5. Work to develop a good ear for sound. 

Really listen as you walk through the world, and stop and think how you’d write various sounds. As the dryer tumbles your stuff, what is the combination of whir and rattle that transpires? How’s your car sound when you turn the ignition? Or what's the approach of your bus sound like? What about your electric toothbrush? 

Like all creation, sound effects work improves as you flex that creative muscle, and it’s something that will enhance the reader’s experience. That’s the goal after all. Give the reader a wow!

SEE ALSO: WHAT'S ON THE IPOD - THE TEN CENT PLAGUE

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Intruder by Thomas Altman AKA Campbell Black-Campbell Armstrong

Following the posts of the last couple of weeks on '80s domestic thrillers and Campbell Black's Thomas Altman books, here's The Intruder. It's from Bantam, October 1985. It brings a serial killer into the mix. It's, I believe, the last Altman title through a few more thrillers would be released under Campbell Black before Campbell Armstrong political and technical thrillers became the writer's major output. 

SEE ALSO: Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Kiss Daddy Goodbye by Thomas Altman

5 Things You're Doing Wrong in Your Comic Book or Graphic Novel Script

I've been doing some freelance comics script editing because it fits my schedule. The work coming my way varies. Some of it's very professional and complete. Often I get scripts that don't take even the comics world's not-particularly-set-in-stone formatting into account, however.

It seems to be happening organically. I see great storytelling and characterization in a shotgun blast of text. I'm not sure why that's so in a world where Google offers access to thousands of samples and examples including many provided by publishers. Regardless of that, almost every day I get submissions with very little distinction between elements. 

Description co-mingles with dialogue, quotation marks are used where they aren't needed and little regard to basic terminology is shown. Inevitably tacked to one of these polyglot scripts is a note. Do you think this will sell to a publisher? Short answer: "Uh, no." That's a different matter, but still, no. 

A little bit of formatting can offer the scriptwriter a lot more control, and it makes things easier on everyone else. A letterer doesn't have to extricate text from a shotgunned mass. An artist can get a clear vision, and it's easier to edit for errors as well. Tools that can make the two-dimensional world of comics more dynamic can also be deployed.

So what can be done to turn your great storytelling into a functional script? Here are a few thoughts that have come to my mind. Maybe instead of dwelling on what's wrong, we should say these are actually things you can do right.

1). Find some sort of format and use it 

Many are available, and if you do a bit of scanning, you'll find ways to convey your vision easily to an artist while making your work easy on the eye. 

Some easy resources include Dark Horse's sample script and many more on the Comics Script Archive. 

Check out a number of them, and try not to zero in on the worst, non-standard example you can find as an excuse to do your own thing. 

Here's a guide to basic comicbook terminology as well. 

2.) Be descriptive and keep in mind only one major event can occur in a panel. It's a still frame, a snapshot if you will.

A guy can't rush to the window, tear off his civilian clothes and jump out in one panel. Don't ask an artist to draw that. Artists will often interpret your words and develop a sequence, but you're the writer. Make it clear and precise and make the most of every panel.

3.) Sound effects (SFX) enhance a story. 

A comic's a flat page, but you're seeking to convey action and excitement. One of the tools you have to make the experience dynamic for the reader is sound effect text, and the writer can come up with those words.

Many great and innovative flourishes have developed in recent years, taking the comics world beyond the Pow! and Zaps! parodied in the old Batman series. Scan the comics you have on hand and take note of what's being done. 

Develop a good ear, and harness sites such as Written Sound, the onomatopoeia dictionary. 

4.) Lettering isn't just about words.

Good letterers can add special emphasis to key words, do interesting things with speech bubbles and add many more flourishes. Take note of that as well as you scan your favorite comics. Add a special note to the letterer if you have a phrase you really want to punch up in some way. Break up a character's long monologue in a couple of speech bubbles if it's a mouthful. 

Dave: Longwinded remark.

Dave: Longwinded remark continued.

Look for natural breaks in the dialogue to suggest a new bubble. 

5.) Use art references.

We all think about things a little differently. When I was in college, I asked an artist to draw a burglar with a mask. To me a domino mask like The Hamburglar wears. She drew a guy with a bag of loot over his shoulder wearing a bandanna tied around his face. To me, that's a train or bank robber's mask. If there's something specific or even something that sets a tone or a mood, find a reference via Google Images and paste a link into the script. 

You might even develop a private Pinterest board with a collection of images as a lookbook like filmmakers use and share that with the artist. That can go a long way toward developing a world that fits what's in your imagination while stimulating an artist's visual creativity. 

Conclusion
Think of these points as shortcuts. If a script's well formatted, an editor is free to focus on storyline, character and world-building details and offer meaningful suggestions that can guide you toward meaningful tweaks and revision that lead toward a satisfying experience for readers. 

Fool's Run - The Audiobook Thriller Narrated by Josh Brogadir

I realized I hadn't done a post about the audiobook version of my newest novel, the mystery-thriller Fool's Run. It actually rolled out at the same time as ebook and trade paper editions. 

It's always exciting to have the world that was once just inside your head take new form. Certainly it morphs from imagination to manuscript and then to published work. There's a bit of a feeling that your child has come into the world when a book's released and when you see it in paper form.

SEE ALSO: The Obligatory Holding Up the New Book Photo - Fool's Run

Audiobooks are maybe the purest form of adaptation of the written word beyond that. There's an element of interpretation, a bit of dramatization even with a single narrator, but the words stand. 

It's hard for me to look back on anything I've done. I think it's much like actors who don't like to watch their own TV shows. There's always a word you might have chosen better, a phrase that could have had more of a twist. That's the nature of the game and some writers forgive themselves more than others.

I'm not particularly forgiving of myself, yet it's still fun if paradoxical to have the work out there, and I'm very pleased with the Fool's Run audio and having Josh Brogadir give voice to my noir protagonist/narrator Si Reardon. 

He makes Si come alive in a meaningful way, and lets the other characters speak as well, setting a great tone for the narrative. 

I understand it's not always the case, but Josh and I were in contact during his recording work, and I was able to provide my take on a few Louisiana names, locations and words. 

We also discovered there's one New Orleans location that locals know by different names. It's the kind of little detail you hate to miss. Happily I was able to talk to several New Orleans friends settle on the nickname someone from a particular part of the city might use and change the manuscript since the trigger hadn't been pulled yet on publication to the various platforms.

Fool's Run is the first tale featuring Silas Reardon, an ex-cop fresh out of prison and faced with a brutal series of challenges and hardships that force him to take on a dirty job. That leads to complications and a brutal game with a powerful businessman. 

Take a look and listen to an audio sample here. 

 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - What About the Baby? by Clare McNally

A sub-genre of menaced brides, mothers and expectant mothers cropped up in the 1980s, perhaps an offshoot of the fading gothic surge. It seems to anticipate the current crop of domestic thrillers. 

Since Thomas Altman titles which fit in that vein have been mentioned in recent weeks, here's another in a similar style. What About the Baby by Clare McNally is from Bantam, September 1983.

View more of Clare McNally's titles here. 

SEE ALSO: KISS DADDY GOODBYE by THOMAS ALTMAN

 

The White Koi - A Poem Memoir in Free Verse

 

The White Koi 2007 

One of the koi 

Has all-white scales.

“He’s an albino,” an old woman says. 

She sits in a wheelchair 

Having found her way to the pond

On her own. 

“I think it’s just a white variety,” I say.

“The eyes are not pink.” 

Why does it matter? 

Why do I need to correct this 

Old woman I don’t know? 

She’s here just like I am 

Escaping the nursing home’s confines 

Where antiseptic smells

Fail to mask underlying odors. 

Defecation and death. 

Escaping the boredom 

And the waiting 

For one or the other

To catch up. 

I’ve brought my mother 

Pushed her wheelchair. 

Alone, she would not find the will or the way. 

She is indifferent to the 

Fresh air, sunlight, the koi pond. 

We might as well be in the place’s 

Unused Library, the shelves 

Lined with Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. 

Donated and warehoused because 

They don’t have further value. 

My mother’s decline was signaled by

Repeated questions 

And lost emotions. 

She showed no reaction 

At the news my father would die. 

Showed no interest In being by his side, 

Her husband of 49 years.

As he slipped away. 

Her memory has been edited. 

Condensed. 

I have no patience

With falsity. 

Not a good trait 

For this current role. 

Still, I correct genetic misinformation 

About the white koi. 

It’s not deficiency

But editing, called breeding. 

And tell my mother 

Her mother is not forgotten

Waiting in a hot car. 

She’s gone.

We remain. 

And I correct, though I can’t put back. 

I strive to make here 

More than a warehouse

At least.

For a person. 

If not for abandoned books. 

And a koi that the service 

Couldn’t place in ponds

Of more vocal customers 

In search of vibrant joy.

Photo by Stacey Gabrielle Koenitz Rozells from Pexels