John D. MacDonald - The Crossroads

Anyone who's ever read a Travis McGee paperback has seen the long list of other John D. MacDonald novels that usually take up two tightly-spaced columns in the front. I read a lot of the McGee novels in my teens. They're action-packed mysteries with a cerebral touch, and they provided a slam-bang parallel reading experience as I also devoured Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer novels.

I wanted to read more of the non-series novels from those single-spaced columns in the front of the books, but they were hard to find. This was before Amazon or even Prodigy.

Weren't at the Waldenbooks, had often been published in paperback and weren't at the library, and they didn't even turn up at used book stores that much.

I found A Bullet for Cinderella on a paperback rack while visiting my mother's relatives in Camden, AR, as a rare exception. A first-person crime novel, it resembled a McGee and was a nice addition to my reading.

A discovery and a re-discovery
I thought of all that recently when I was browsing a local used shop that displays mostly nice used hardcovers. On one of the paperback spinners, I spotted some battered John D. MacDonalds. Took me back, and I grabbed a couple in spite of their tattered shape, excited to get the reminder of an author I hadn't experienced in a while.

The Crossroads is the first I cracked open, and it proved to be a rewarding excursion. It really anticipates those lauded literary novels that add a touch of crime to an otherwise character driven exploration.

There's a crime at the novel's core, but it's really a fascinating slice-of-life in one mid-fifties summer of an entrepreneurial family. It was great to imagine the characters in fifties fashions, occupying spaces decorated in mid-century modern.

The crossroads of the title is an intersection of well-traveled thoroughfares where the small business empire of the Drovek family has grown from the real estate acquisitions of their Polish-immigrant patriarch.

It's a son, Chip, who's the head of the business now, a cluster of leased gift shops, hotels, truck stops and restaurants. Chip's deteriorating marriage to a woman hopelessly mired in depression and alcoholism has driven him into the arms of one of the crossroads shopkeepers.

Others in the family are equally unhappy, including the irresponsible Pete, who's accidently entangled with Sylvia, former true crime magazine cover model. A Bettie Page perhaps?

A family so successful is not without enemies, and once the players and the playing field is established, MacDonald focuses on the revenge scheme of a fired employee. It's a seedy, brutal and realistic plan, and it unfolds at the novel's core.

Yet MacDonald keeps the family and their triumphs and foibles in the sharpest focus.

A few touches, that would be spoilers if revealed, suggest this might be a book that influenced Stephen King, who I believe is an acknowledge MacDonald fan. This book certainly weaves crime and character together much the way King has always melded domestic drama with supernatural incursions.

The Crossroads has reminded me what a joy a John D. MacDonald read can be, and it's a kick in the pants to find more used titles since the books are regrettably not available electronically. Except for one title that has perhaps slipped somehow into the public domain. Care to venture a guess which one that is? Yep, A Bullet for Cinderella. Get it in e-format here.


What writers should watch for:

• MacDonald's flare for making the routine seem fascinating. 
• The nuanced characters which suggest a keen eye for the human condition.
• The slow-burn crime plot, a devilish strong arm crime enhanced by the dark players. 

The Frightened Man - A Victorian Mystery

The ties to Jack the Ripper are peripheral in Kenneth Cameron's The Frightened Man, despite its iconic cover, but it's still a compelling Victorian thriller with many Ripper trappings. Denton, the hero, spends a lot of time prowling foggy streets, clashing with wrong-headed Scotland Yard detectives and digging for answers in the darkest corners of poverty-ridden 1900 London.

The Ripper case is in the past, but the frightened man of the title--who draws former U.S. sheriff Denton into the twisting, violent investigation of a new killing--believes he's seen a man who might be Springheel Jack. 

He calls on Denton, who's given up the military and law enforcement for a career as a Poe-esque author and has growing reputation on multiple fronts. The request wraps Denton into the case so tightly he can't escape.

The Cast
Denton is a wonderful creation, tough yet reeling from a broken heart and driven toward the truth even at great personal cost. Cameron, author of numerous books, backs his central character up with some great supporting players:

Atkins: his humorous but tough and pragmatic butler who's as given to get-rich-quick schemes as Ralph Kramden.

Munro, a friendly police official who's helpful but not always able to override Denton's enemies. Think Rockford's Dennis Becker.

Janet Striker, a crusading advocate for downtrodden women with a complex past that's almost mythic. She's a strong and compelling match for the lead.

Denton struggles through some tough spots and endures dangerous attacks as he works toward the truth, even going to personal expense to track down minute details. A particularly rigorous scene involves him working through brutal obstacles to enter a locked dwelling.

A few personal facts from Denton's past seem to come a little late in the story, but that's a quibble, especially when the story reaches its action-packed climax.

If you like Victorian tales, The Frightened Man isn't a pure mystery puzzler, but it hangs together well and offers page-turning thrills. I've already added the sequel, The Bohemian Girl, to my to-read list and to my Kindle.

What writers should watch for: 

• The deft creation of characters.
• The blending of mainstream and thriller plotting

Movies Worth a Look: Dolan's Cadillac

I know everyone's probably way ahead of me, but if not, here's a flick to check out.

I haven't read the Stephen King short story Dolan's Cadilac from the Nightmares and Dreamscapes collection, but the title rang a bell a while back when the movie adaptation popped up as a Netflix recommendation. I added to my queue and settled in to watch it recently.

At first blush, the film looks like a standard issue crime drama. It centers on one of those happy middle class couples who run afoul of criminals. There's the intense Wes Bentley (Robinson), of American Beauty and Ghost Rider,  and Emmanuelle Vaugier, from the Saw movies and more. They're school teachers. She's trying to get pregnant.

Unfortunately, while horseback riding, Elizabeth (Vaugier) happens upon Dolan (Christian Slater) and his crime crew. They ride around in Dolan's black and ominous Caddy SUV.

Moving the plot
Dolan's chief criminal activity is smuggling young women for the sex trade. A failed ventilation system in a truck has caused deaths and leads to additional murders while Elizabeth is watching.

She's soon targeted by Dolan and his existential sidekick played by Greg Bryk, also of Saw films. Mild spoiler here: 

 They kill her, and the devastated husband sets out for revenge.

That's where the spoiling stops, and where the film, realizing what I suspect is the meat of the King source material takes off.

Soul searching, confrontation and the execution of an ingenious plan unfold with surprises and subtext that you don't find in routine crime dramas or many direct-to-video flicks.

Performances
Christian Slater is at his over-the-top best as Dolan, who's devilish and intelligent, and Bentley's capacity of deep darkness is perfectly utilized.

A couple of minor characters who play a role in Robinson's resurrection also add flavor, and Bryk's  complex lieutenant is much greater than a typical henchman walk-on.

Is it perfect? Meh. Is it without implausibility? Well no, but it's all well-executed and enriched by character and explorations of grief, torment and even spirituality.

If you're going in cold, it's particularly entertaining and probably worthwhile as a watch-instantly choice if you've read the story.

Watch the trailer below, but know it spoils some surprises before you click: 

What's On the iPod? - Last Call by Tim Powers

The strength in Last Call by Tim Powers, a contemporary fantasy or magic realism epic, is, first and foremost, in its fully realized fantasy universe. It is a world shaped by the Tarot and Arthurian legend, and it's the kind of immersive work that makes for a really fine audiobook experience.

As an aside: The App

I've begun using Audible's free iPhone app for its convenience, and because it's goal-oriented. It crosses foursquare badges, time tracking and sharing with friends. It's brilliantly or crassly commercial, depending on your point of view. It challenges you to listen more. It's also helpful, since I have an active imagination and have to exercise care to keep my mind wandering when listening to audio fiction. It's not the fiction's fault, just me.

The app provided perfect inducements for keeping me focused on Last Call, read brilliantly by Bronson Pinchot, most noted for comedic turns on film and TV. Yeah, it's Balki, but there's never a trace of over-the-top humor in his tone.

In the Last Call universe, where Bugsy Siegel was a wizard and Las Vegas swirls with subtle magic, Scott Crane is faced with a horror from his past.

Scott, who once worked as a gambler with his surrogate father, Ozzie, is the target of his real and powerfully magical father, a wounded king with multiple bodies and his disposal and a host of thugs as well.

Having once played a poker game with Tarot cards against his biological dad, Scott's primed to provide the old man a new body as the result of an assumption of a card hand.

The quest to prevent that loss of body and soul takes up most the novel's central action as Crane seeks the help and knowledge of the estranged Ozzie, who's steeped in gambling superstitions which have real validity in the universe of Last Call. He also has to cope with a ghostly ex-wife, an angry sister and a neighbor who's been given cancer by association with Scott's magical baggage. 

Chases, gun battles and intrigue keep the story moving, all while conveying more and more detail of the world and the rules in which it all takes place.

It's a fabulously consistent magical  landscape, shaped by myth and history, and it makes for several wonderful hours of listening. It's pretty much how I spent my January at the gym, and of course it's still available on paper or in e-book formats as well.

Look for On Stranger Tides by Powers as well, source for the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

Poe Returns

Note: This series didn't get picked up by ABC, but happily The Raven with John Cusak as Poe is coming to theaters in Fall 2011.

News that ABC's considering a series with Edgar Allan Poe as its detective lead is intriguing and exciting, especially with dark mystery investigations on the agenda.

 I'm sure the style, while the setting is historic, could resemble The X-Files and The Night Stalker revival with a little C. August Dupin-style ratiocination thrown in, but it's a little off-beat and innovative, and pays homage the father of many of the things I enjoy. I'll certainly sample it.

While it's to be written by Chistopher Hollier who's worked on Alias, the concept reminds me of a  novel I enjoyed as a kid, a time when the idea of  Poe and Poe's work were particularly thrilling.

I have mentioned it briefly here before though only in passing.

It's called Poe Must Die by the versatile Marc Olden who wrote thrillers of many stripes including a paperback series in the seventies, police procedurals and some wonderful Asian-themed thrillers including Dai-Sho, pitting a journalist against a Yukio Mishima-like adversary.

In Poe Must Die, the troubled Edgar Allan Poe is paired with boxer Pierce James Figg who's on the trail of a black magician. Said magician's in pursuit of an artifact known as the Throne of Solomon. It's legendary power is said to surpass Lucifer's, so its falling into the wrong hands could have dire consquences.

Poe's detective skills are utilized and ultimately Figg's pugilistic prowess comes into play, aided by a bit of mysticism. It's been years, but I remember it as a great, atmospheric adventure with mystical elements.

I suppose it's too much to hope that the pilot will be a 90-minute extravaganza based on the book. I'm sure it's possible to arrive at Poe as detective with paranormal cases independent of other sources, but it would be fun to see Poe Must Die brought to life.

Either way, Poe on TV is a good thing.

Genre Oscars

I've seen more of the Best Picture nominees this year than in some time. I've been making a point of getting off the sofa more and hustling out to the theater. I try to do my part to encourage the making of more movies.

It's interesting how many films have at least a drop of genre juice on them this year.

The King's Speech and The Kids are All Right are more likely Oscar contenders--human dramas with strong performances. I saw both, and I liked both.

Speech is the movie I'm rooting for, in fact. It is an emotional journey, finding drama as it deals with small, intense human strife against a backdrop of war and political crisis. It examines the toll of leadership on the individual and illustrates the importance and the power of words and symbolism on the world stage at a time when such consideration is particularly relevant. 

The genre side

The films that fit the notion of genre flicks are exceptional examples and not to be dismissed, however. I think they really are some of the best films of the 2010. In a year where safe, cookie-cutter fare was offered up, they stretched boundaries.

There are certainly lessons for all writers in this year's slate, opportunities to examine the development of character and the exploitation of cliche or previous works or myths.

The most obvious of the genre group is Black Swan with it's horrific elements, which surprised many people I've talked to, including Christine who hasn't gone to a real horror movie with me since walking out on Warlock a few weeks after we went to The Silence of the Lambs.

 Black Swan is definitely a study in how to enrich a thriller with character and a dose of subtext. Themes drawn from the ballet, to me, balance perfectly with the delusions of the central character.

Winter's Bone is set up on a mystery chassis with a few horrific touches. It does one of the best jobs ever of creating a realistic rural.
universe, in which the poor aren't caricatures and the accents seem real.

It has the well-woven strands of a mystery plot, enriched by its snapshot of a culture and its strong heroine.

 The Move Westward
True Grit's a Western, of course, though one built from a literary novel. It really is a perfect adventure story, enhanced both by its use of arch types and its skewering of them. Mattie Ross is the precocious teen capable of outwitting adults, though she breaks the boundaries of Disney heroines easily, and Rooster Cogburn inverts the stalwart Western hero without sacrificing mythic acts.

Inception is the other genre entry, deceptively looking more like an epic thriller yet with a mind-bending labyrinth at it's core. It's still the more traditional in this mix, yet it stands out against the well-crafted but safe summer blockbusters that surrounded it last July. It was the one of the mix that made me want to go to the theater vs.waiting for the disk.

I enjoyed the set pieces including Joseph Gordon-Levitt's floating challenge more than the opportunities to interpret and re-interpret dream-within-a-dream possibilities, though I know those have been fun for some. I'm a Lost fan and apologist, but I'm not really up for multiple rehashes of  Inception. That's just me.

For a while, it looked like 2010 wasn't a great movie year, but, you know, looking back, maybe it was OK.

Blood Hunter Sample

Blood Hunter proved to be my most popular ebook of 2010, so here's a sample to kick of the New Year.

Happy Holidays!

Wishing All A Happy Holiday Season!

Upcoming Movies I'd Rather Be Seeing

You ever go to the movies, and see trailers for flicks you'd rather be seeing than the show you just paid for?

I saw a perfectly fine holiday movie yesterday, but the trailers, always look better. They're the "what else is on?" of the theater experience, a couple of compressed minutes of pure imagination, revealing the best of a two-hour movie while sparking your imagination about possibilities as well:






And a Sci-Fi turn based on the novel from James Frey of "A Million Little Pieces" fame. The next Harry Potter?




Who's to say how these will pan out, but what a seven minute ride.

Doctor Who Christmas Wallpaper

I know I haven't written a Doctor Who post in a while, but I'm a Whovian of a few years now and looking forward to having the Christmas special actually air in the U.S. on Christmas Day this year on BBC America.

That it's a Doctor Who look at "A Christmas Carroll" is an added bonus, because that Dickens classic is another of my holiday-season passions. For Harry Potter fans, there's that guy who replaced Richard Harris as well. OK, I know he's Michael Gambon.

Happily, to help decorate computers for the holiday season and to help with the wait, the BBC has released some Doctor Who wallpaper from the installment here.

My desktop's now decked for the holidays.

Also fun: Ferguson's lost Doctor Who Cold Open

Doctor Who Halloween Wallpaper From the Tennant era

The Young Adult Paranormal Thriller Novel Interview

Crossroad Press is posting videos about its e-book offerings. Here, I talk about the two of my young adult paranormal novels currently available in digital editions. These were originally written under my young adult pseudonym Michael August, which indicates a book suitable for younger readers. Adults can enjoy these as well, of course.

I had a lot of fun writing the YA's, which as I mention are a great opportunity to do  horror where the tension and suspense rely on atmosphere and mood more than visceral scenes. I particularly enjoyed re-editing The Gift for the e-edition.

These books are available from the publisher, Crossroad Press

Or most other e-book outlets and platforms including smart phones or as .pdfs:

Amazon
Deadly Delivery
The Gift

Smashwords
Deadly Delivery
The Gift

Or search Sidney Williams on iBooks, where The Gift is available.

Her Fearful Symmetry - A Disturbing Literary Ghost Story

(May contain mild spoilers)
It's not, hopefully, giving away too much to say that the most disturbing elements of Her Fearful Symmetry, by The Time Traveler's Wife's Audrey Niffenegger, come late in the novel. That's an essential note to make for horror readers, just to keep expectations realistic.

This is not a haunted house tale, not a tale of rattling chains, cackling spirits or creaking doors. No visceral horror creeps into the mix.

It's a rich, character-driven narrative with a supernatural component that builds its disturbing storyline carefully, allowing the reader to realize what's ahead with a growing sense of tension and dread.

Symmetry's Sphere
Her Fearful Symmetry is first, however, a novel of complicated people and complicated lives from deeply obsessive-compulsive Martin to focal twins Julia and Valentina Poole to ghostly Elspeth Noblin, who spends most of the novel dead though very much a part of the narrative.

Elspeth is sister to the twins's mother, Edwina, and upon her death the mirror twins inherit Elspeth's flat on the edge of London'a Highgate Cemetery, provided they live a year in the residence.

Much of the plot revolves around their stay and their interaction with Martin, a crossword puzzle author upstairs whose wife has decamped. Unable to leave his apartment or give up his ritualistic obsessions, he languishes and befriends Julia, while Valentina becomes infatuated with Robert, Elspeth's significant other who is obsessed in his own right with a never-ending thesis on Highgate.

I've been intrigued of late, as a reader, with the blurring of the lines between genre and literary fiction. In "Stranger Things" (The Writer's Chronicle, September 2009) author Debra Spark examines works with genre elements in which--in her point of view--merit creeps in. She looks at the Michael Chabon thriller The Yiddish Policeman's Union with its alternate history, for example, and Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link.

Symmetry does that beautifully, incorporating elements of the Victorian ghost story into a study of people, relationships and manipulation.

It is a literary drama in its depiction of the relationships mentioned, but from those interactions and personalities, Elspeth's ghostly presence and sinister plans begin to emerge. The title is accurate in spite of Elspeth's seeming benevolence, and, if strong plotting is the stuff of genre, then Niffenegger utilizes the genre tool well in tightening the knots formed by the various strands.

For those interested in horror that stretches mind and imagination, Symmetry is a great choice.

Symmetry for Kindle

Related Posts

• I Was Dora Suarez: Poignant, Brutal Thriller
• The Red Tree: A Study in Quiet Horror

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope everyone has a great day!

Enjoy the stuffing.

Sanctuary! Fantasy SF Paranormal Fun With Monsters

Is there a name for fans of Syfy/Canadia fantasy-thriller Sanctuary? You know like Trekker? I'm ready for my badge and membership card.

I glanced at the first episode when it aired on then Sci Fi, but didn't get to stay with the series, and I'll confess I was a little dismissive. Just another paranormal investigation show, I thought.

I returned for more sampling when the season became available on Netflix Watch Instantly. Episodes became a nice 45-minute break for the lazy part of Saturday afternoons just before time to start my grill for dinner while I was in school.

And I decided the premise was kind of fun and that Sanctuary wasn't just another X-Files. For the uninitiated, it's about Dr. Helen Magnus, Amanda Tapping, Stargate SG-1's Maj. Carter in a stunningly different persona. Dr. Magnus is immortal due to some Victorian magi-science, and she heads a network devoted to finding and protecting a generous supply of "abnormals" sprinkled around  the globe.

The mythology grows richer as the series moves along, even though there are obviously cost-conscious episodes in which Magnus and right-hand-man Dr. Will Zimmerman (Robin Dunn) are trapped in one-set confines such as the cabin of a crashed aircraft or the belly of an oil tanker. One ep was set entirely in a warehouse, viewed through the lens of a news crew's camera.

Myth, myth
Magnus is part of a circle that includes a misunderstood Jack The Ripper, Dr. John Watson and Tesla. The Sanctuary network is fraught with internecine political struggle, and there's a rival organization called Cabal. (Spoiler warning) One major character was killed off with stylish imagination.

The Season 2-ending, Season 3-beginning arc eschewed claustrophobic confines for a glob-spanning, world-threatening feature-like three-parter introducing Bollywood numbers and even more mythology, which seems headed in a Steampunk direction next. That's if an eye-candy holograph recently unlocked is any indication.

Happily with Netflix and Hulu, you can catch up quickly or just begin the series now and forge ahead at your own pace.

You never know what monster will crop up next.

The Night Oliver Littlechap Spent in Jail

My indoor-outdoor cat, Oliver Littlechap, wandered onto our doorstep five years ago, a thin Oliver Twist for whom we couldn't find an adoptive home. If he wasn't wild, he was close to it.

He lived on our patio for a while and was eventually granted inside privileges around the time Hurricane Rita's inland bluster reached our neighborhood.

Domestic dispute
Oliver's domesticity has always been a little in question. For ages he's liked to prowl the wooded area behind our house and has on occasion been given to staying out all night.

Cats are just not that into doing what they're told.

He disappeared once around 8 p.m., didn't return the next morning and remained missing until Christine and I stood in the back yard calling him diligently in the early afternoon. The vocals finally disturbed him, and he came staggering, blinking and half-asleep, out of a flower bed.

With a little effort, Christine's curtailed some of his roaming, letting him out at night before mealtime. Usually he's been back in an hour, though more recently he's taken to going out the front door when we get home in the evenings.

Bolts out actually, allowing no time for greeting or discourse.

Tuesday was no different when we came home from the gym. An orange streak shot past us, and we went inside to shower and fix dinner.

The front mat remained empty a while later when I looked out. Usually Ollie plops down there after his rounds, waiting to be let in for dinner. Or perhaps for him its supper, the later meal, usually enjoyed after The Theater.

Call back
When he still hadn't shown up in another little while, I called for him. Front first. Then back yard. Nothing. I waited a few minutes and called again.

Still no sign. Shaking the Pounce bag didn't do any good either. Reluctantly, I went to bed without Ollie inside, though I took consolation in remembering he'd done this sort of thing before.

The next morning he still wasn't on the stoop. Christine and I walked up the street calling until we had to go to work, and we toured the neighborhood by car before driving in.

I was worried, but I kept consoling myself that he'd be OK. Maybe he had wandered into the woods again.

After a couple of hours at work, I realized I wasn't concentrating and decided to make a quick swing home.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Ollie in one of those cat huddles on the front lawn. He'd finally decided to come home.

We pause now for a message from our jailer
But when I got out of my car, I noticed something on his collar. It's murder to keep a collar on Ollie. He's lost two dozen in five years. We had one of those chips implanted so that if he ever wandered too far there'd be a chance of getting called, but recently I found one I could keep on him without being too constricting.

I went over to him and rubbed his head, thinking, "My god has someone had him tied up?"

It wasn't a cord but a note secured by a twist tie.

"Your cat spent the night in my armadillo trap," an anonymous neighbor had written. Threats began after that. If he--though the note writer said she--returned to his/her property Ollie would be turned over to animal control.

Neighborly.

Five years I've worried about him, but Ollie's done fine in our quiet little cul-de-sac, 'till what I suspect is a newish neighbor with a landscaping fetish shows up.

It took Ollie a day to get back to being himself. His nose was red and his face seemed a little swollen, probably from trying to push the trap door open to free himself. Luckily it was chilly but not that cold the other night.

He's adapting to being indoor only fairly well so far, though there have been a few requests for a word with the management this a.m.


More Ollie

• Cat's on the Baker's Rack
• A visit to the Cat Condo

Gnelfs And E-book Release Interview

David Burton, author of several fantasy thrillers, has an interview with me about Gnelfs posted on his Random Musings blog.

I got to talk a little about what I'm coming to think of as my "B-movies In Print" period of writing fast-paced thrillers.

Check it out and be sure to check out David's titles as well!

A Visit to Heroes Club The Art of Toys in San Francisco - Horror Collectibles

My buddy Clifford Brooks was showing me around San Francisco neighborhoods when he did an abrupt U-turn and grabbed a parking spot the other night. "You have to see this place," he said, nodding toward a showcase window with a giant blue robot: Heroes Club: The Art of Toys.

We could only stare in the windows at the shadowed array of collectibles since the shop had closed for the day.

But since we both grew up with Aurora model kits and Famous Monsters of Film Land, we returned the next day for a museum-like tour through an array of super heroes, soldiers, Bruce Lees, steampunk figures and a generous smattering of monsters including a full-sized Jason Voorhees looking down from a ceiling perch.  

Before the Icon

Smaller Jason replicas including a Friday the 13th Part 2 version in a pre-hockey mask burlap sack joined various iterations of Michael Myers, Freddy and a host of other vampires and creatures. An incredible life-size Nosferatu offered a sinister gaze from a rear showcase, and a wooden-frame 3-D replica of the Famous Monsters back page monster mask ad graced another shelf. 

"Are you guys collectors?" he asked.

"Just looking," Cliff said, observing a price tag. 

That didn't seem to bother him. He proceeded to show us a Count Dracula ring and a similar Mummy ring with, he noted, finer detail than some other versions. 

A Hong Kong native, he noted his favorite movie is The Exorcist and pointed to a wall where a bas-relief face of Pazuzu stared forward.

Stan's eye

A hand-eye-coordination statue, not for sale, peered from another case. "That was a gift from Stan Winston," he said. On yet another shelf stretched, a monster from a Twilight Zone-like series from Asia, never seen in the U.S. "Asian people know this," the proprietor said.  "U.S. people not so much." 

A Godzilla figure with an actor stepping out of it was a littl more more recognizable for U.S. audiences. 

Stake out

One of the most fascinating items was a hand-crafted vampire hunter's kit (seriously click the link and have a look) from Zom Bee Toys, maker of Frozen Dead figures as well. 

Moving it from a shelf to the counter, the proprietor offered a closer look. It looked Van Helsing-ready with bottles of holy water and a metal crucifix, plus a weighty wooden mallet and an array of stakes.

"These are hand crafted," the proprietor said, noting the handle-rings etched in the wood and the finely-honed points.

"They sharpen these by hand," he noted, demonstrating the twisting technique and stressing the whittling style of points would be much more jagged. "It takes a lot of time to do that right," he said.

I'll never convince Christine to adopt a collectibles decorating theme, but it was a nice spot to visit. 

Here's hoping the economy doesn't squeeze out this kind of coolness. 

A Universal Horror Writer Moment

Maybe it's not exactly a moment, but there's an experience shared by many writers of a certain age who've put pen to horror.

In Night Shift, Stephen King's fabulous first collection of short fiction, a glance at the copyright page notes many of the tales first appeared in, shall we say delicately, men's magazines. In the seventies, King found a steady outlet for his fiction in Cavalier and similar publications.

In those ancient of days, the '80s, when I was finishing college and discovering the horrors of general assignment reporting, I began to finish stories that I felt were worth sending out. Keep it down out there. I heard that.

I got Writer's Market like many other young, aspiring scribes  and perused magazines that accepted mystery and horror. Through a lag in editing or updates, Cavalier and other publications that had gone in new editorial directions by the eighties were still listed as outlets for horror fiction.

So, it was a.) where Stephen King was published a few years before and b.) it accepted horror. Seemed like a good idea for submission.

The results for everyone who went through those same paces, I suppose, confirm the writer advice adage that you must read the markets to which you're submitting. Reading stories from the same publication in anthologies isn't always quite the same, especially if there's been a lag of a few years.

When I sent a story to Cavalier, I got a form rejection with--the bright side--a personal note scribbled on it: "It's good, but we need strongly sex-oriented stories."

The world had begun to change. The specialization of newsstand publications and niches had begun. Scarcer were the er, well-rounded editorial styles that offered "readers" pictorials mixed with a couple of stories and relevant articles.

The only fictional narratives in Cavalier--once the publisher of King and tales such as Roald Dahl's über classic Man from the South--were now captions for pictorials of women fighting.

Happily, in this new era, writing marches on, and even as old venues for words die, new venues are born. I guess that's the good news.

And I've got to get back to re-editing some of those stories that were rejected by Cavalier but found other print homes.

Gnelfs Cover Art - October Horror

Especially since it's October, Halloween time etc. that I'd put up a nice-sized view of the new e-book cover art from Neil Jackson. The sad side of e-books is that covers are mostly thumbnail propositions.

The original mass market paperback's art was nice, but this really makes me shudder.

Get Gnelfs via the banner at right for the Kindle. It's a few pennies more but available in multiple formats at Smashwords.

It's about the title characters but also features dueling sorcerers, or OK one bad sorcerer and one mysterious occult investigator and dark trails.

An Interview about Blood Hunter and Gnelfs

Sonya Clark was kind enough to offer me an opportunity to discuss the e-book release of Blood Hunter and Gnelfs recently.

The interview is now posted on her site.

Sonya is the author of a fantasy novella called Bring on the Night that's now available as an e-book.

I really enjoyed recalling the origins of both novels and talking about writing even a little about my reporting days.

Drop by and see it if you can.