T.C. Boyle in The New Yorker

Let me switch over to my literary fiction hat for a moment, literary fiction being shorthand for things harder to classify.

"Birnam Wood" by T. Coraghessan Boyle sets a near perfect emotional tone as its first-person narrator describes a relationship on the precipice.

A struggling young, but not quite married, couple try to make ends meet as they move through a series of challenging and chilly residencies until they stumble upon a great housesitting opportunity in a mansion with a pool table.

Of course, things aren't perfect even with great digs, and Boyle makes relationship woes and their roots all new.

It reminds me a bit, in a remote way, of Raymond Carver's "Chef's House." It's a great read for anyone interested in crafting realistic characters in the midst of realistic travails.

Check it out while it's free in its entirety. 

Mrs. Bates

I'm not sure I'm 100 percent enthusiastic about a  Hannibal  or a Bates Motel television series, but the announcement Vera Farmiga of The Departed and Up in the Air will be take the role of Mrs. Bates in the latter suggests the level of the game for the A&E Series.

I know, I know, a branded property is a probably easier to launch than something unknown in today's busy landscape of entertainment options. So, if this gives Carlton Cuse of Lost an opportunity to tell great stories, I understand.

I suppose the casting hints at the point at which the story will drop into the lives of Mrs. Bates and her son and future Psycho, Norman.

Unless the plan is to have Farmiga in heavy aging makeup--and really, why would you?--we'll be dropping in on a young Norman and a youngish mom.

I remember the old NBC pilot called Bates Motel. Hey, we had like three channels in those days, OK?There wasn't much on.  That would have had  Bud Cort of Harold and Maude as Norman's buddy from the mental health facility taking over as hotel proprietor. Each week he would have played host, Love Boat and Fantasy Island style to different quirky guests.

Sounds like the new series will be a little different, with interesting character and event territory to explore. Norman's taxidermy training?

With A-list actors, it doesn't sound like it's going to be allowed to be low rent.

How to Write a Short Story - A Review

I periodically stop by Joe Bunting's Write Practice blog, which as the title suggests, is a spot designed to  keep writers churning out words. I was, thus,  pleased to receive a review copy of his new e-book Let's Write A Short Story, which is just hitting the downloadable realm.

Flipping through the electronic pages I could quickly see it's a great and concise guide for understanding what a short story is, how to craft one, and how to fight writer's block. Who could ask for more?

Beginners need the first two, and seasoned keyboardmeisters sometimes need help with the third.

Bunting also offers an interesting argument in his opening for the short story as laboratory. That's what I found most interesting, and he substantiates his ideas with compelling evidence. Chiefly, Hemingway.

In the Nick Adams stories, Bunting contends Hemingway explored character territory that later turned up in many of his lead characters including Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea. That suggests a short story can be a place to develop ideas and themes for whatever longer work you have the burner.

As mentioned, the book is not short on writing advice. Bunting breaks down the role of plot, character and length in the short story and looks at when it's possible to break the rules. He also throws in a generous offering of writing prompts to explore themes such as death and more.

It's a great guide for writing with an inspirational tone, so it's well worth a look.

Additionally, Bunting is planning a Let's Write A Short Story community, so this effort looks like an interesting experiment in numerous ways.

Settling In

I think I'm settling into the whole creative writing instructor gig, and I'm finding I like working with student writers to polish their fiction quite a bit

I'm sure I'll get tougher, but at the moment, I'm working to deliver criticism with a gentle touch. I've had times when criticism was needlessly brutal. I've also heard stories from friends of brutal feedback.

I suppose it has its place, but when I was on the receiving end, I didn't care for it as a pedagogical approach.

If I can achieve improvement without turning into a curmudgeon, or more of a curmudgeon, I'll continue the gentle approach.

Life's still a little in flux beyond the teaching. We've found a Florida house, and I'm in it, but I'm feeling a little like a squatter. I'm sitting on cardboard on the floor to read, standing up to eat and sleeping on a cot. The guy at the wilderness store was right. It's a pretty nice cot, but I'm still a stiff in the morning.

Transitions aren't always easy, but so far, I don't miss the corporate world as a day gig at all. 

Dark Night in Colorado

I always feel saddened more when tragedy strikes as people are in the midst of a happy time, when there's an accident on a boating excursion or a heart attack at a birthday dinner. Maybe I'm wrong, but somehow it seems to deepen the loss. It's fun interrupted, marred.

The acts of James Holmes in Aurora seem more horrific today as the stories of the victims emerge, as they always do, putting faces on the calamity. 

There were people together with high school friends for the first time in a while, people with other pals, people on dates.

Close to midnight

An air of excitement, energy and anticipation permeates midnight showings of Hollywood blockbusters. It's a chance to see a long-awaited film early, a chance to break your usual routine and a chance to participate in the carnival a little. 

Just before I left Texas, I met some friends for The Avengers opening. We managed to find each other in the lobby as other friends texted they were grabbing seats in different theaters in the multiplex. 

We blazed a trail into an already packed house of college kids and other geeks, some sporting Thor headgear or homemade tees with superhero emblems drawn on in marker.

It was my last chance to see some of my friends, and seeing a hyped film may have been part of Hollywood marketing, but it also gave us a sense of occasion. 

A sense of the occasion. So many quotes rush in at a moment like this. A silly one strikes me first on the heels of that last thought. A host at Millyways, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, says: "People like to get dressed up for the end of the universe. It gives them a sense of occasion."

This is not the end of the universe, but it strikes a significant blow to a piece of our culture, our shared dreaming, our good times.

We can never go to midnight showings again in quite the same way, with quite the same anticipation and energy.  We'll never look at geeked out kids in makeshift costumes the same way again. 

James Holmes robbed so many people of their special night, and he robbed people of their lives and struck all of us with a deeper horror. So did Jared Lee Loughner and countless others. 

That's tragic. 

That's terrorism. 

It's not the end of the universe, but it was another dark night for America. 

New Online Horror Series - The Unknown

Free episodes of a new online horror series, The Unknown, are now available. Episodes are short and twisty.

Seems like this came around quickly. I read a while back that it would be developed with Dominic Monaghan of Lost. 


Episode One can be watched on Crackle, Sony's online movie site.

Monaghan is sort of the framing device for an anthology format. He's a blogger stalking tales of the paranormal. He's working on an article on artificial intelligence as things kick off in "Yesterday," but the story focuses on a man's struggle to cope with reality.

William Atherton, who was responsible for unleashing all of the badness in Ghostbusters, also appears in the opener. Check it out at this link:

Watch The Unknown, Yesterday, Season 1, Episode 1 Online Free - Crackle

From Crackle: Yesterday

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - Better Than It Has A Right to Be

For a film that exists solely because of it's high concept, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is far better than it has any right to be.

I know it's based on a novel whose reason for being is the title as well, and I haven't had a chance to check it out yet. As a summer blockbuster, though, Abe proved a pleasant surprise.

Check back with me after I've mulled it over a little, but I may decide I like it better than Prometheus, which I liked quite a bit.

Benjamin Walker is one key, delivering a likable interpretation of the young Lincoln as well as the older version we're most familiar with from paintings, coins and monuments.

He's backed up by a cool-looking Dominic Cooper as his mentor and Rufus Sewel as the key vampire opponent, who's, well, Rufus Sewel.

The alternate history of vampires as a factor in the Civil War doesn't seemed as forced as I'd expected either, and what real events that wind up getting utilized weave nicely with the fabrication.

Escalating set pieces are really the focus, however, and they're well conceived and fun beginning with Abe's first attempt to off the vampire responsible for his mother's demise. That's how the whole vampire-hunting business gets injected.

When a pistol shot fails to defeat his opponent, deft action and visuals follow, especially when Cooper's  Henry Sturgess, who has vampire-hating cred of his own, begins to train Abe to wield a rail-splitting ax as a weapon.

That inspired touch and the fight choreography that goes with it keep things moving, and horse stampedes, vampire battles and more soon follow.

Train sequences are a cinematic corner stone, and ultimately a train battle delivers a fun, visual and energetic conclusion.

While it sounds a bit like a front office decision for a film, don't dismiss Abe too quickly. If you can allow yourself to slip into the right frame of mind, it's a blast.

New in Young Adult Horror Audio - Deadly Delivery

Deadly Delivery, the first young adult novel I wrote as Michael August, has just become available as an audiobook from Crossroad Press. It's read by actor Maxwell Glick, who also read New Year's Evil.

The Kindle edition has been the bestseller among my titles of late. It's always hard to tell what makes one title take off, but it's unseated Blood Hunter, longtime champion.

Deadly Delivery is the tale of a group of teens who decide to play a monster-making game one summer. It seems a little lame, but they're bored. Soon their monsters have come to life, and they have to be stopped.

The tale's release comes at an interesting time since I'm in the process of creating monster-building activities as an instructor.

I'm not imitating the novel for classroom activities, but the current effort does bring back memories.

RIP Cosmic Ray

I was chatting about Ray Bradbury with someone just the other day. When I mentioned that I was thinking of including discussion on his work in the horror section of my genre course, the inevitable question arose.

"I thought he was just a sci-fi guy."

"Well the Mars tales are famous," I said, "But then there's Something Wicked This Way Comes."

And The October Country and scores of tales that fall on the darker side plus the haunting The Foghorn, technically SF but poignant and chilling. 

Many of the Ray Bradbury Theater episodes reflected the chilling side, of course, but adaptations  came long before that. 

Some of my class prep is immersion, so I watched The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents version of "The Jar" the other night. It's on You Tube at the moment at least.

It recasts the original backwoods setting to the modern art world, an interesting re-tooling, though I think the original, which can be found adapted in black and white on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour is a bit more eerie. 

As I've mentioned here before, I was fortunate enough to meet and interview Mr. Bradbury for a newspaper article in the '90s. 

It was one of the highlights of my journalism days, and I'm very sad to see one of the world's true visionary talents passing.

Driving, Reading and Re-Reading Runes and Yellow Wallpaper

The last few days, I've been driving across the Southeast by day and continuing my reading and re-reading of mystery and weird fiction by night. Planning a creative writing class has its perks.

The drive
As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm going to be teaching in Florida. Christine and I decided not to red line the car trip from Texas. We broke it up over a few days, a few hotels along the Gulf Coast and quite a few chain restaurants.

A long car journey  took me on more than a geographic trip. I went back in time a little, to vacations of my youth, with my old man at the wheel of  a series of Fords.

Christine and I took a different tunnel under the Mobile River than my folks did in the sixties, but I recalled the thrill of the old days as we took the plunge then drove the bridge across Mobile Bay.

I kept thinking of my parents and their era as we drove. Destin was the destination in the old days, a vacation spot with beaches and Western ghost towns as well. How did that get to be so long ago?

Christine and I drove further, through some of the mid-week storms in fact. The Florida panhandle sure is long, but overall we had fun.

The reading
I've been re-visiting, or in some cases visiting, some of the genre classics. I won't be using each and every one for class, but I wanted to make sure I was well versed in some of the seminal pieces.

Those took me back as well.

I don't remember when I first read "Casting the Runes" by M.R. James, but it was a great one to delve into again. Re-reading removed some of the blur from various old time radio adaptations I've listened to since we got the Internet, and since I first saw Curse of the Demon, Jacques Tourneur's tampered-with masterpiece.

The original tale makes clear how perfect the film would have been without the tacked-on creature, who always looked cross-eyed to me when I encountered his features in Famous Monsters of Filmland, long before I got to see the film.

I'm not sure I'd ever read "The Yellow Wallpaper," though I've listened to various audio versions over time.

Engaging with the words allows a  better immersion into the narrator's madness, I believe, and I picked up a bit of trivia. Character actor Silas Weir Mitchell of "My Name is Earl" and "Grimm" is apparently named after his ancestor -- the doctor whose treatment methods Charlotte Perkins Gilman was attempting to influence in penning "Yellow Wallpaper."

All in all, it's been an interesting few days, and the journey continues.

Lovecraft Is Missing - A Web Comic I'm Reading

I've  been reading, re-reading and seeking out new things as I prepare for my teaching gig. I'm thinking of  a Serverus Snape wardrobe too, but that's a different discussion.

Lovecraft is Missing is an interesting web comic I ran across via the io9 blog. If you haven't discovered it ahead of me, it's an intriguing, ongoing tale, and it's perfect for tablet reading. Check it out.

It's written and illustrated by Larry Latham, who posts status updates about new pages in his production schedule.

That may generate some cliffhanger suspense for you down the road because he's running a little behind, but there are hours of happy reading in store before you get as far as having to wait for new content.

The story focuses on a Brown University Scholar, a pulp writer and a priest. When Lovecraft goes missing, possibly with illustrations from an occult volume, the protagonists become embroiled in occult battles and investigations.

So far I see hints of Innsmouth and other familiar Lovecraftian tropes, so I'm anxious to keep reading.

Start here, at the beginning, in Boston's North End, 1926.

Third Act

Long ago, my freshman English comp teacher told me if I decided to pursue teaching, I should look at a special focus. He didn't use the marketing term differential advantage, but that's what he was suggesting.

I'd written a paper on the American detective and Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan in particular, springboarding from ideas in The Great American Detectives edited by William Kittred and Steven M Krauzer. Their acknowledgements had led me also to Saint with a Gun: The Unlawful American Private Eye by William Ruehlmann. For my paper, all appropriate footnotes were copiously indicated and formatted in MLA style with the help of Liquid Paper.

A specialty such as detective fiction, my prof noted, might make me more viable in the halls of ivy. I cataloged that notion, and went off to be a writer, with day gigs as newspaper reporter, librarian and  corporate communications specialist and webmonkey.

Now I find myself rewinding that old conversation, as I contemplate whether to include Raymond Chandler's "Red Wind" in reading assignments for my new teaching job.

I'm taking a position teaching creative writing at Full Sail University in Orlando. My emphasis is mystery, suspense and horror.

I guess since freshman English, I've been subconsciously heeding that advice indirectly and shaping myself, impulsively and intuitively following interests and opportunities as they've come along.

I corresponded with Vance Bourjaily in the late eighties about pursuing an MFA at LSU, but that never came about. I told myself I'd try to sell a novel, and if that didn't work out then I'd pursue a higher degree. I sold Azarius, a mixture of the mystery tale and horror, and that afforded me a lot of opportunity to write and meet people and move in different directions.

I didn't know until it was mentioned at the AWP conference last year that Raymond Carver wanted to study with Bourjaily. Oops.

I was on vacation in Portland in 2007 when I learned of Goddard College's low residency MFA program. I was staying in a boutique hotel with Bogart photos in the hallways, and we went to a literary festival called Wordstock where I found the brochure. That finally led me to a graduate degree, and a fresh perspective on writing.

Now, how can I help but think about that Green Day tune "Good Riddance"? Since the Seinfeld finale, it has become a standard in the American songbook, pop culture edition, category: transition tunes.

"Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go..." 

Roland Mann, who edited a lot of the comic book work I've done over the years, e-mailed me last September to tell me he'd taken a position at Full Sail. I think we both completed MFAs around the same time, but I was only in the thinking stages about whether or not I wanted to teach.

Then came word of an opportunity in their creative writing program to shape and teach a bachelor's course on mystery, suspense and horror.

It's an interesting challenge, an interesting opportunity to dissect and contemplate great genre works and pass on elements to students who've been struck with that infectious blood disease of all those cursed with the need to put pen to paper.

I could quote another line or two from Green Day, but that would be cliched.

I'll just note that at the moment it feels right, and it seems a better fit for me than my current day gig.
There are details to work out, but I start June 4 if all goes well.  

The Dusk Society on BlackBerry

I can't really testify as to the reading experience. Christine is the BlackBerry user in our household, but Campfire has released the graphic novel I created, The Dusk Society for BlackBerry devices.

Actually Christine uses a Storm, and I'm sure this is targeted more to tablets, but if you're a digital comics reader you now have one more option. It's also in the iBooks store, if you're among the few who happen to own iPads.

Someday, I may do a post detailing editorial changes made to my original script. For example, I didn't telegraph the monster on the first page, and some of the more "expository" dialogue isn't mine.

Still, my core story is in the pages, however you get to the tale, and I particularly like the way one of the young heroines gets chemistry class dismissed, before focusing her intelligence on more meaningful pursuits like monster hunting.

The BlackBerry version is here. 

77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz - Spooky Slight of Hand

(Disclosure: I received a review copy of the British edition of 77 Shadow Street. This look inside includes mild spoilers, though no more than the Amazon entry on The House of Thunder.)


Things are always incredible, but an ah-ha is usually in store somewhere in the pages of a Dean Koontz thriller. A slow reveal often twists and explains seemingly supernatural events in a rational or scientific manor, or there's an inversion you weren't expecting.

77 Shadow Street, his latest novel, features many Koontz hallmarks juggled into new alignment. It's a standout among his recent offerings, though Koontz novels never fail to entertain.

When the book opens, odd things are going on at the luxury apartment building known as the Pembleton, conveniently located at the title address. Could you expect less than strangeness if you were living on Shadow Street?

In the opening, a drunken ex-Senator boards an elevator for his floor only to be whisked to a basement of terror. We're talking Buffy-style hell mouth.

Then Bailey Hawks, one of the protagonists, is menaced by a strange creature in the swimming pool, and retired attorney and Pembleton expert Silas Kinsley is awakened by a building tremor.

Odd voices are heard in apartments and hallways, and soon an assemblage of distinct Koontz characters are seeing Victorian-era people appearing from nowhere, more odd creepy crawlies and shimmers of blue electricity pulsing from ceilings and floors.

The Characters
Bailey, a financial advisor with a military background to give him heroic cred, almost takes a back seat to Shadow Street's eccentrics.

Mickey Dime is among the most notable, an assassin who's psychologically scarred by his upbringing. His mom was a rigid and stoic intellectual more focused on self aggrandizing than true philosophizing. You can speculate on who she might be based on. He's a bit like the villain from Koontz's The Husband, whose inspiration can also be a fun speculation game.

A novelist, a country songwriter, elderly female entrepreneurs, an autistic girl who communicates using the novel Bambi and a precocious young introvert round things out.

Their paces
Koontz keeps his band busy once the set-up is complete, and about mid-book answers begin to come as more devilish doings unfold.

To say more would really be unfair if you're going to pick this up, but I will note what you probably think's going on ain't what's going on. But then, if you're a Koontz reader, you'll know that.

With rumblings of Crichton and Vonnegut, the author delivers a page-turning and thrilling tale with a mask-off scene in the final pages that delivers the payoff. That makes up for perhaps just a bit of a fizzle in the climactic action. 

Overall, this is my favorite Koontz book since Life Expectancy. Koontz is a master story craftsman, and it's always fun to experience his latest effort.

Tagged: 7-7-7

(I actually got tagged twice - drop by the blog of Robin Ashe also)

Jalisa Blackman (@J_M_Blackman) hit me with an interesting meme arrow on Twitter a little while ago. You've seen them before they're always interesting little experiments.

Here are the rules as I was given them:

1.) Go to page 77 of your current MS.
2.) Go to line 7.
3.) Copy down the next 7 lines/sentences, and post them as they're written. No cheating.
4. Tag 7 other victims ...er, authors.

So, no cheating means no editing or tweaking, eh. OK, here goes. This is from a work in progress that's been in progress for a while, and I'm doing more research than writing on it at the moment. Still, it's what's at the forefront in the middle of here and now.

Those 7-7-7 coordinates within the 24,000 words I've written lead to a bit of dialogue that hopefully works as a snippet, though perhaps a little cryptically. This is roughly seven lines from Word:

“You could have stood up fa’ me a little more, couldn’t ya?”

“I tried to explain it was religious beliefs. My boss wouldn’t listen. Besides religious beliefs don’t justify theft.”

“I was going to get them blessed and bring them back, and besides it was for the good of the customers.”

“I told her that. I don’t know she doubted the `get them blessed’ part. It was the `bring them back’ she was questionin’.”

She stares at him for tense seconds, her eyes ablaze, her expression an angry mask. It melts in slow motion, like a time-lapse photograph, her shoulders and arms relaxing simultaneously.

“It’s a bygone,” she says. “I found a better job anyway.”

Now to try and tag some people who might be up for the game:
 
1. Natasha Oliver
2. Charles Gramlich
3. Icess Fernandez
4. Avery Debow
5. Stewart Sternberg
6. Kate Sterling
7. Larry Enright

What's on the iPod? - Gnelfs - A Dark Fantasy

My dark fantasy novel Gnelfs is now available as an audiobook. It's read by Derek Hames. If you have an Audible credit, spend it now.

For a taste of the tale of a single mother struggling to protect her daughter from spiritual attack, you can read the short story that grew into the novel here.

And, of course, the novel is available from Crossroad Press in ebook format wherever you buy ebooks.

E-reading

Got to talking e-book reading on different devices with a guy the other day.

Before the iPad or the Kindle, I used to read e-books using the Notes feature on my iPods. My iPod with video is still going, though the clock appears to be a little off.

There's a little more surface area for the text view on newer devices.

Miss D Abides

I haven't done an update on my cat, Miss Daisy, for a while now. She was diagnosed with kidney disease a few years back. Hard to believe how long its been.

Happily she's still hanging in and going strong. We do subcutaneous fluid treatments every night. Just takes a few minutes with an IV drip. She forgives that and sits on my lap afterwards. 

She's less forgiving of Oliver, the first rescue cat from the woods behind our home. Him, she keeps on a short leash. Infractions draw hisses. 

She's done far better than we expected when we first received the diagnosis. As I write this, she's strolling past me, headed back to help Christine work on the household budget. 

She has opinions about everything, and she's happy to express them.

Awake Early

I heard talk of "Awake" a few weeks back. It's an NBC series starring the great Jason Isaacs of Harry Potter etc. Until recently it didn't have a slot on the network's schedule.

That's changed. It's due now March 1, or you can watch the pilot ahead of time on Hulu.

Seems to have a cool if complicated premise. Isaacs is a cop who has the misfortune to crash his car. When he awakens after the wreck, he faces two realities, or perhaps a reality and a dream state that seems real.

In one, his wife is alive, his son a victim of the crash. In the other, his son lives, and his wife is gone.

Amid the confusion, he solves crimes.

Watching the opener, you start to see how it call all work, and how you can follow it. It's not as hard as it sounds.

The realities are just different enough, and there are enough cues to help you keep things straight.

Couple the slightly surreal set up with stunning visuals and Isaacs on the side of the angels, and it makes for interesting viewing.

Will it catch on? I'm afraid odds are against it, but it certainly would be fun to see it get a decent run. 

Claustrophobia and a Little Imagination

Years ago I was in St. Louis to cover a meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention as a reporter. I didn't make it to the arch because I stayed in neighboring Frontenac. It used to be hard to get a room in a town where they had a Southern Baptist Convention. 

Last week I had to go to a conference in St. Louis, and I stayed a short hike from the arch, so I finally got see it. And make the trip to the top. 

The small tram cars sure are tiny. With just a little imagination, it's possible to envision many things that could go wrong. I have more than a little imagination.

What if this gets stuck?

What if there were a nuclear strike while I'm locked in here?  

How long would it take to gnaw through the door and climb down the elaborate network of metal steps, ladders and spiral stair cases?

While I was at the top, something came up I hadn't thought of. "What was that?" a staffer asked when something sounding like a plane flew over.

Then they explained that the arch is a no-fly zone.

That gave me a whole new cause for sweating on the way down, but I'm glad I got to take the trip, plus get the view of the Mississippi and the City of St. Louis from above.