Fiends by Torchlight by Wayne Allen Sallee

You should buy this book, and I don't usually say that about things I haven't read yet.

But I have no doubt it's a collection of top quality short fiction of the wry and twisted variety. Wayne, a Chicago-based writer frequenly found on the "L" Train, has been my friend for many years now, and he has consistently produced out-of-the-ordinary tales that frequently landed in "Years Best Horror" collections.

I will give more specifics about Fiends by Torchlight, but trust me, don't wait for that. Find a copy now and look for other stuff by Wayne including the chapbook "For You, The Living," one of the finest zombie stories ever, and his novel The Holy Terror, a piece of urban literature in the guise of a serial-killer thriller.

It features a character known as The American Dream, and you should also look for short stories by Wayne about TAD in any guise.

The Spot Across the Bay

I know there have been a ton of movies and TV shows set on Alcatraz.

I saw The Birdman of Alcatraz when I was a tiny lad and Escape from Alcatraz when it was in theaters when I was a little less callow. And of course I saw The Rock as well as and Point Blank with Lee Marvin.

But I knew the movies based on true stories were not particularly accurate, and I'd never developed more than a passing interest in Alcatraz history until I took the cellblock tour.

Strolling history
Strolling the prison's Michigan Avenue and Broadway quickly transported me back in time, and I was quickly fascinated and imagining the men housed and the guards.

The occasional photo exhibits and the faces evoked a feeling of the era, the tension and the desperation.

The Battle of Alcatraz
I had only peripheral knowledge of the Alcatraz siege, but the tale of Bernard Coy and his accomplicies, Joe Cretzer, Marvin Hubbard and Sam Shockley, told in the cage that once housed the library really nabbed my attention.

I was excited when I returned home to discover emusic featured an audio dramatization of Kentucky bred Coy's 1946 escape attempt from Actors Scene Unseen.

It turns the facts into an interesting and compact program in two parts that captures some of the frustration that must have fueled the convicts' actions. Coy, who worked in the library and took reading materials to prisoners who'd earned the priviledge, plotted the escape which involved getting guns from the gun gallery with a makeshift bar spreader and obtaining a key to the recreation yard.

They got the guns but not the key and the battle that ensued resulted in guards being shot and required the U.S. Marines.

I'm sorry now I missed Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story when it aired on NBC back in the day. How can that have been 1980? I can still remember the on-air promos, God as my witness.

I've asked my local library to track down Clark Howard's out-of-print Six Against the Rock, a novel about the Coy escape that was also adapted for TV. I've read his short stories forever in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and never been disappointed.

More

Parks Service Official Alcatraz Site

Bernard Coy's Last Words

Escapes from Alcatraz


Tags: Alcatraz, Bernard Coy, Gangster Era

"Where Bush Street Roofed Stockton"

Christine picked the City by the Bay for a getaway, and for me that meant looking up a few noir locations. She should have known that was coming.

Hard boiled detective fiction provided some of my earliest reading enthusiasm.

It was with a little help from San Francisco Noir by Nathaniel Rich that I found the plaque identifying the location of Miles Archer's death from The Maltese Falcon.

(I guess it has a bit of a spoiler so don't look if you're planning to read the book.)

I can remember reading about the monument's placement in the '70s in one mystery mag or another but for some reason I've never made it to San Francisco until now.

I can't say why it took so long, but I was glad for an opportunity to travel in the footsteps of Sam Spade.

At Hotel Rex
We were staying at the very cool Hotel Rex, which has a Maltese Falcon passage mixed in among literary quotes that decorate various floors. We were actually about a block and a half from the spot "Where Bush Street roofed Stockton before slipping downhill to Chinatown."

So of course it was the last night in town I actually found Burritt Alley, even though I'd spotted Dashiell Hammett Street on our first night, when we were heading to Chinatown for a festival and dinner.

Finding noir
It's not hard to find, but earlier in the week I'd managed to pass on the wrong side of the street almost every time.

A girl in a chef's jacket was talking on a cell at the mouth of the alley when I located it--something you wouldn't have seen in Spade's day--but otherwise it looked about like it's described in the novel.

She offered to take a picture of Christine and me together, but I opted for us to do separate poses.

The sun was still a little high, I guess, for the perfect experience which would have called for night and fog, but it was still nice to be there, almost inside a great literary work.
Tags: Sam Spade, San Francisco, Film Noir, hard boiled fiction, Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett

What's on the iPod? - A Real Mix

iSkin gave me free downloads on emusic as a thank you for buying skins for the SidPod from them a while back, so I've been perusing the MP3 offerings and trying to put together a quality playlist or, failing that, a pile of guilty pleasures.

The selection doesn't rival iTunes, but I've found a reasonable mixture of indie and classic, kind of across the board.

Favorite Discoveries via emusic
Alexi Murdoch is my favorite "new to me" indie artist from emusic. Apparently "Orange Sky" caused a bit of a stir that I missed out on when his EP was released, but now I'm board. Cool song.

Mediaeval Baebes - OK, I'm a little naive about the Classical charts but I've been to a Renaissance Festival or two. I love tunes in the middle ages tradition, and I found several tunes from their Mirabilis album including their take on "Scarborough Fayre. "

Favorite filling in the gaps in my collection
I love the music of the late Warren Zevon, and I found several tunes I didn't have including ironically his recording of "My Ride's Here," one of my favorites.

It's sad and cynical and I really like Bruce Springsteen's version on the Warren Zevon tribute album, "Enjoy Every Sandwich," but it's nice to have the original to carry with me. (Usually--aforementioned excepted--I hate tribute albums , and that's one thing you have to watch out for on emusic. They have lots o' songs recorded by someone other than the original artist.)

Another great Zevon tune I found was "I Was in the House When the House Burned Down," also featuring his dark, cynical humor.

Guilty pleasure of the lot
The Archices - "Sugar, Sugar" that's really all I have to say about that isn't it?

Favorite PBS star recordings
Picked up a couple of Roger McGuinn tunes from "Roger McGuinn Live at the XM Studios" album including "Mr. Tambourine Man."

Rounding things out
I've never owned enough Jazz or been Jazz literate enough so I also grabbed several classics from John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk.

Songs I'm pissed off I downloaded
"Rocket Man" and "A Word in Spanish" speaking of tunes not recorded by the original artist. I'm sure there were ASCAP payments involved but I really thought I was getting the Elton John versions. You start listening to a cover, and you just get that feeling something ain't right.

All in all though, I've a good emusic experience, and you've probably read the benefits - you buy you own, you're not just renting tunes until the next device sync.

Tags: music, iPod, music downloads, emusic.com

What's on the iPod? - They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore

Because it's important to know the truth and not the smear tactics being spread by those running against Kinky Friedman, the next Texas Governor.

I'm offended most of all as a fiction writer, because if you read the lyrics to "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore" it's clear the negative remarks come not from the Kinkster's first person persona in the song but from a:

"...redneck nerd in a bowling shirt..."

Trying to brand Kinky as a racist with those remarks is like attributing Darth Vader's remarks to George Lucas and saying he favored the Empire over Luke Skywalker's forces.

If traditional politicians misrepresent the truth in their ads, can we trust them on anything?

Wow, is that the queen mother of dumb questions?

Charles L. Grant - The Last Call of Mourning

Messages from a couple of directions are telling me Charles L. Grant has passed away after a long illness, and I'm, of course, saddened by the news.

I once heard him called a writer's writer, admired by those enraptured by words for his mastery of the language. His opening paragraphs are always fabulous passages to read, and his tales wonderful evocations of dread. He long championed "quiet horror."

The OxRun Station cycle includes my favorites of his books, but all of his novels under his own name were worthy, atmospheric reads.

A scary little town
The OxRun books explore a strange little town in both the modern era and in its distant past with a trilogy of novels that also paid homage to the black-and-white horror movies of the thirties. He also wrote comic science fiction and much more and edited some of the most respected horror anthologies of the current era.

I remember one of the first times I ever saw him.

It was when World Fantasy was in Nashville-- I think I'm remembering the place correctly-- in the eighties. He was hosting a late evening panel called "Charles L. Grant's Dark Corner of the Shop."

Sharing the dais was the late Karl Edward Wagner.

While they waited outside the hotel meeting room where their panel was to convene, they donned wrestler's masks and hurled boasts and insults at each other in a wild and fun impromptu exchange.

Hard to believe they're both gone now.

Tags: Charles L. Grant; horror, writer, Ox Run Station

Great Horror Short Stories - A Psychical Invasion by Algernon Blackwood

I love pyschic investigator stories, forerunners to the X-Files and Kolchak, many penned in an era of spiritualism and mysticism around the turn of the 20th century.

One of my favorites is "A Psychical Invasion" (1908) by Algernon Blackwood. It features Fox Mulder's spiritual grandfather, John Silence. (Read it online here.)

Silence is one of those physicians who stretches his intellect beyond the challenges of his medical practice, and "Psychial Invasion" is one of his most exciting cases.

Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds
Silence is called on to help a haunted writer who, following essentially a psychidelic drug experience, is hearing colors and having conversations with inanimate objects not to mention being opressed by an unseen presence who compells him to draw her likeness.

Silence sets out to dehaunt the young writer's house using a collie named Flame and cat named Smoke, animals being highly attuned to spiritual activity.

The dehaunting is a task as challenging as just about any besides Shirley Jackson's Hill House.

Kinkyads are here

Kinky for Governor television spots are now available for viewing online at Kinky Friedman's website- www.kinkyfriedman.com:

Good Shepherd - featuring animals from Utopia Animal Rescue founded by the Kinkster

Clean Energy, Clean Government - focusing on Texas' need to import energy

Check them out - both do a good job of image building and stressing Kinky's stand against political business as usual.

If you're not from Texas, tell somebody who is.

What's on the iPod? - A Song for 9/11

I first heard Loudon Wainwright III's "No Sure Way" on NPR's Fresh Air in October 2001, when we were all still in shock.

The singer/songwriter's account of a subway trip into Manhattan days after 9/11 remains as deep and affecting as the first time I heard it -- blending mythological references (...there beneath the East River it felt like the River Styxx...) with the stark, painful reality.

Five years gone
I attended a charity function the other day, and a speaker noted that the cool autumn morning made it impossible for him not to think of that other September, now five years ago.

Five years? I've lost touch with the guy I was on the phone with that morning when I heard, but not how I felt.

"No Sure Way's" lyrics capture it well:

I saw the three initials
W, T and then C
I'd survived/somehow was living
But somewhere I shouldn't be
At the next stop the doors opened
And I emerged up above ground
I was in another country.
Elysian Fields? No Chinatown.

I think I'll have to listen a few more times over the next couple of days. To the memory of the innocent...

Further reading

Esquire: "The Falling Man"



Tags: 9/11, Loudon Wainwright III,songs, music, iPod

At the Table of Free Voices

(Note: Since writing this I've read coverage that there were streaming problems from The Table of Free Voices. What I saw Saturday morning seems to have been a real time feed toward the end of the day so apparently it was corrected.)

Watching the discussions at The Table of Free Voices was a little overwhelming in more ways than one. If you haven't heard via droppingknowledge.org, it was a gathering of 112 participants from around the globe.

They were prompted by 100 questions posed by people from everywhere and read by Nigerian activist Hafsat Abiola and actor Willem Dafoe.

The corners of the wind
Ideas were coming in many languages and from literally many directions yesterday morning, but it was fascinating to watch and listen--not to agree with every viewpoint-- but to be stimulated by the minds and nations represented.

I came to the table a little late since things started at 9 a.m. Berlin time, but I caught many interesting snippets.

Open ended
Sometimes the questions that came across as the most affecting were those less concrete.

And the one that resonated for me in the moment came from activist Julia Butterfly Hill--she who spent 700 plus days in a tree to save it from loggers and later founded Circle of Life Foundation:

"What is your tree? What is it in your life that calls you to be bigger than what you think is possible?"

Fear is the cheapest room in the house
I heard Anuradha Mittal's response Saturday morning and thought it was eloquent. Now it is available online in its entirety here :

"I would have to say it is a phrase by Hafez...who said, `Fear is the cheapest room in the house. My dear, you deserve better living conditions...' Every day I remind myself that it is about courage. That one can never be defeated until we give up hope, 'till we give up the courage, 'till we accept the fear that they want us to live in. Her phrase is my tree..."

And what a wonderful tree that is.

Amended and expanded 7:56 p.m. 9/11

Tags: Table of Free Voices, Willem Dafoe, Hafsat Abiola, Dropping Knowledge, world affairs, environment

Rolling to 44

Yesterday was my birthday. It was such a busy day I didn't have a lot of time to think about it. Then I checked in on my MySpace page.

The little profile box had automatically changed from 43 to 44. It was the first time I saw it in print and it was sobering.

I'd grown comfortable with 43. It's not 23 but it's not bad.

But 44?

The 4 somehow makes things different. I'd accepted 43.

44 is closer to 45! which is halfway between 40 and 50 and howthef**** did I get to 44 or even 40?and ohmigod where is the f***ing break lever?

I was recovering from minor--except surgery is major--on my last birthday and I blinked and it's a year later, a year since I stayed home two weeks recovering and watching movies until I felt good enough to read books again to pass the time--how much The Man Who Knew to Little --there's nothing but crap on can you stand?

And now it's a year later.

And there's a 4 at the end of my age.

Already.

Down in the Cellar

My review of the upcoming Gospel of the Living Dead by Kim Paffenroth is now available in the new webzine Down in the Cellar. Check out the book reviews section.

The book is an interesting examination of the "Dead" films that really delves into their deeper meaning.

The 'zine also features horror fiction, poetry and movie reviews. Drop over and have a look!


Tags:
Zombies, George Romero, Night of the Living Dead , horror

What's on the iPod? - The Last Man on Earth

I've always thought The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price must have provided a bit of inspiration for George A. Romero as he prepped Night of the Living Dead.

The two came out only a few years apart then went on to extensive late-night TV re-runs.

The Price film, the first movie adaptation of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, features scenes of shambling vampires menacing Price in a boarded up house, and they look a lot like the ghouls converging on the farmhouse in NOTLD.

The films diverge from there and NOTLD probably has a higher scare quotient, but I've always had a bit of affection for Last Man's moodiness.

I like it better than the other adaptation, The Omega Man with Charlton Heston, even though its take on the vampires is interesting, especially with Anthony Zerbe as their leader.

I'm looking forward to the next adaptation allegedly due in 2007. I've lost track of who it's allegedly starring now.

Free - Vampires - Free
Last Man is an essentially Italian film. Apparently it was going to be a Hammer Film and would have been shot, no doubt, in lurid color, but they passed. It is for one reason or another in the public domain and is thus available for free download at Archive.org. They have iPod ready versions . By the way, if you run an Mpeg4 through Videora, it really screws up the soundtrack. I don't recommend it.

Vincent the Vampire Slayer
As mentioned, the film involves Vincent Price as Robert Morgan--marginally an action hero!?- being menanced by vampires. He's the lone survivor of a plague that's turned everyone into bloodsucking freaks.

He hides out in his bachelor pad at night and spends his days staking vampires. He just can't seem to find his old friend who's turned and keeps coming back to get annoy him. He's that kind of friend.

There's a long, somewhat slow flashback at the center detailing the disease's course and Morgan's hopeless efforts to protect his family, but the beginning and the action-adventure ending make up for that.

After the flasshback, he befriends a poodle, meets a woman--not a swinging '70s African American woman like Charlton Heston--but a woman who's not a vampire yet.

There are visually interesting scenes of black clad pursuers--fortunate that they color-cooridnated--tracking Vincent/Morgan through a church as the climax arrives right along with the thematic meditations on morality in a world turned upside down.

It's made darker and thus scarier by its black-and-white stock.

Check it out if you have a few gigabytes free. It's got its scares, and it's got Vincent Price.

Tags: Vampires, iPod, movies, horror, Vincent Price

Deadwood - "I Was Going to Tell Him Something Pretty"

Nobody I work with watches Deadwood first run. Well except for one guy in upper management, and we don't chat casually about television shows. Hmm, in fact we don't chat casually at all. I don't think he's speaking to me. Do you think it was something I said?

Anyway, I was hoping to talk to someone about the episode because it was disturbing in a horror sort of way - Deadwood's not horror but it certainly has horror fiction's grim, take no prisoner's attitude.

To deflect a gunbattle and save Trixie, his former prostitute "lover" who's left the trade, Al Swearengen had to kill an innocent hooker from his brothel to appease season-long villain George Hearst (almost as casually as say, Hearst Magazines recently killed off underperforming mags Shop Etc. and Weekend.)

When told that wasn't fair, Al--who's had some actually heroic moments this season--asked: "Since when did that enter into it?" (Thanks to Entertainment Weekly's review for that quote.)

Of course we've known all along that historically the real George Hearst not only secured mining interests in South Dakota as he's been seeking all fictional season but also went on to hold higher office. Yet the hope still lingered for some satisfying resolution within that arc.

'twas not to be and what remained was a grim slice -- take that however you want.

Hearst rigged an election, a girl died and even stalwart and perpetually pissed-off lawman Seth Bullock barely batted an eye, though he noted he would lose sleep over the death.

Yep, that's what horror fiction often says. Good guys and bad lose in horror fiction all the time and the only message from the usual omnipresent narrator is pretty much what the average counselor says every day:

"Life's a bitch, learn to live with it."

Counselors and psychologists just put a little more glitz on it.

Kind of like Al apparently meant to do when he told his barkeeper, Johnny, that killing the prostitute had been a necessity.

Only later does the episode's title come into play when he sadly mutters: "I was going to tell him something pretty."

Tags:
Deadwood television, horror

Favorite Short Stories: The Lonesome Place by August Derleth

"The Lonesome Place" is a classic horror short story that's always stayed with me. It's about fear breeding fear essentially, and it really leaves the horror to your imagination.

It's from the pen of August Derleth, who's a recognizable name to most serious horror fans but may not be to casual readers of today. If you have not read him, catch up.

He became the custodian of the Cthulhu Mythos after H.P. Lovecraft's death and carried it on, founding Arkham House. He also penned stories about Solar Pons, a Sherlock Holmes-like detective. Then there are also Sac Prairie tales of the Midwest and much more.

I read "The Lonesome Place" first in the great horror collection I've mentioned before "Horror Times Ten." It originally appeared in a1948 issue of the pulp magazine Famous Fantastic Mysteries.

Once upon a time, I read a story from Horror Times Ten every Sunday afternoon, or from the collection Gooseflesh I bought along with it. Guess that went on for 20 weeks at most but it seems like a whole chunk of my early teen years.

Reading for a lonely October
"The Lonesome Place" is chilling even for afternoon reading, but it's perfect for any midnight and perhaps well suited for a chilly autumn night -- the kind of night describe in the story or at least that I think of when I read it.

It's set sometime in the early mid-20th century, when kids might still be sent to a corner grocery for a loaf of bread after dark and where monsters of supernatual origin fueled fears more than say John Mark Karr.

The first-person narrator's opening line explains:

"You who sit in your houses of nights, you who sit in the theaters, you who are gay at dances and parties--all you who are enclosed by four wall--you have no conception of what goes on outside in the dark. In the lonesome places."

There's one spooky spot by a grain elevator that all the kids have to pass, and everyone is convinced a monster lives there.

Derleth takes us running and terrified past that spot in the narrative, then recounts the later discussions amid friends about the thing that lives there.

Everyone adds a layer, a tail, scales and more.

And I won't say where it goes from there. I'll just say again it's, to me, one of the perfect chiller stories that focuses on the power of imagination.

I'm almost certain it was floating around somewhere in the back of Stephen King's mind or in his subconscious when he conceived It.

Seek it out if you like stories that make you shudder.

Further reading
August Derleth autobiography

August Derleth bibliography

Tags:

Horror, Short Stories, August Derleth, pulp fiction

Ponderables

Is anyone else sad that The Baha Men are considered a one-hit wonder?

Fort Worth Jammin' - Brad Hines at the White Elephant

Before my ongoing stream of consciousness ramble was interrupted by my Google glitch (see previous post), I was going to talk about my trip to Fort Worth and tell you about some music that's gonna be on my iPod soon.

Some friends introduced me to the White Elephant on open mike night, and we got to hear Brad Hines, who has an incredibly rich voice whether he's singing his own tunes or covering Tom Petty and others.

"Forever in His Debt" is a fine piece of personal, honest country poetry--spirtual and redemptive without being didactic.

Check it out here or listen to the whole song on Brad's Myspace page.

Login Craziness

I've been having HELL with logins - I guess related to Blogger Beta or Beta Blogger or whatever. It's really a beta blocker - yuk! yuk! yuk!

After several rounds of autoresponses referring me to forums for help, I think a human being actually did a little resetting.

Then I had to repeat several steps to get back in - it's a Google/Blogger merry go round.

Anyone else having this headache?

Hardboiled Horror

Seems in this electronic age I go through various stages of reconnecting and losing touch and reconnecting again with friends I've passed on the journey.

Ironically this week, I've touched base electronically with two pals from Coast Con Days.

Exchanging electronic missives with one of them, Christopher Mills, reminded me it had been a while since I had checked in on Femme Noir and other residents of his Supernatural Crime site.

I thought Femme Noir was fabulous the first time I read a few panels. It has a certain flavor and style that reminds me of Will Eisner's The Spirit, though it's all fresh. It's a great blend of dark noir mood, crime and horror.

If you're a horror comics fan, the site will keep you busy for hours.

We're talking dark, rainy streets, gats, shadows and that's just in Femm Noir. The site also features the adventures of a host of other grim figures and occult detectives.

Give it read.

Tags: horror, comics, mystery, private eyes, Film noir

Favorite Short Stories: The Ship That Saw A Ghost by Frank Norris

When I used to hang out at conventions more than I do now, horror writers were always arguing about quiet horror vs. I, don't know, noisy horror. That's horror achieved with a whisper vs. horror achived with a chainsaw.

I ran across a piece of quiet horror last summer, penned by an author not particularly noted for his ghost stories. The Ship That Saw a Ghost sails from the pen of Frank Norris, best known to me at least for McTeague, a novel my friend's class had to read in college. I didn't have to read it. I went to a different college.

On the good ship Glarus
The short story tells the tale of men aboard a tramp steamer named Glarus on a secret and nefarious mission off the coast of South America in 1902. A visit to a lost and dangerous island promises to make the crewmates rich.

Fate has other plans, however, and to give much away would spoil the story which is available free at the link above.

I suppose the relationships of the sailors including the key mates known as the Black Crows as well as the reports of their San Francisco port of call all mesh with other Norris work.

The sense of sea life and of sailors at home is captured, but the core premise and the chills provided the imaginative reader make it a great late night read.

Put on a candle, imagine the creak and moan of a ship topping constant waves, far away from anything, then imagine being stuck in the middle of nowhere in a dead calm.

It's quite horror but its chilling.

Tags: Horror, Ghosts , Literarture, Frank Norris, Sea Tales