The Quiet One

This is kinda-sorta an "author's notes" post but without the spoilers. After a few months of quiet, I have a flurry of writing news. Horror d'oeurves features my flash piece, "Slips of Yew," a title I lifted from Shakespeare's "Scottish play." Okay, Macbeth. I guess it isn't bad luck to reference Macbeth in writing, just theater. Or is it theatre?

When I used to teach Macbeth, I'd show the rather grim and bloody Roman Polanski version. Yes, some moments are silly (e.g., a sleepwalking (in the nude) Lady Macbeth). Thanks for that, executive producer Hugh Hefner. Like anyone slept in the buff in a drafty Scottish castle, but I digress (again). The third of three witches in the film was younger than the others and Polanski/his writers chose to make her mute and assign her lines to the other two. "Slips of Yew" was born as I imagined her voice.

Imagine the excitement when I warned a room full of high school seniors (mostly boys) that we'd see nudity when I showed them the "something wicked this way comes" scene. Now imagine the shock and revulsion when the nudity was a cave full of old hags. Awesome. Those were the days...

Anyway, "Slips of Yew" to Horror d'ouerves marks my third official professional sale (5 cents a word or better)--fourth overall if you count a contest I won a few years ago. Unfortunately, it, added to my other professional sales, runs 1,000 words short of the ascribed 7500 word count/3 pieces threshold to be an active member of the HWA. So be it. I'll keep writing. Thanks to editor Shane Staley for picking up my little bit of darkness.

There's more, too, like "Lucky Numbers" in Dark Moon Digest #16. What's the skinny behind "Lucky Numbers"? Let's just say it might not be a good idea to cast a mask of your recently deceased loved one (post burial, even). And because everyone loves cover art:

The issue isn't officially out yet, but will be soon. Speaking of soon... I'm up at Every Day Fiction again on Wednesday. More soon.

Author's Notes: "The Summer I Fell in Love"

So... May has come and gone without a single blog post. Bad writer.

But June brings a few new publications, including "The Summer I Fell in Love" in Niteblade #28. I've had a few other stories in Niteblade in the past, including "Bait Worms" way back in Niteblade #6... nearly six years ago.

"The Summer I Fell in Love" is a personal favorite of mine, originally written for an anthology of southern zombie tales. Yes, I wrote the "z" word. Dirty, dirty "z" word. Only this story is different. (We--meaning writers--all say that, don't we?)

Spoilers ahead. Please Read "The Summer I Fell in Love" before moving forward (if you are so inclined).

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Still here?

My story is more about a small town's hate and the irrational ends to which people will go in the face of horrible situations thank the "z" word. The narrator, a teenage girl, falls in love with another girl. Some of the details, lipstick tasting of soap, are fragments from my own memory. I dated a girl whose lipstick tasted like soap, but I was a teenage boy. My small town accepted such things (boys and girls together--not the soap-flavored lipstick). Fictional Connelly, somewhat modeled after my own as every other town I imagine, does not accept two girls falling in love.

When things turn sour, when the zombies show up, the town's angry voices need a target. Julie, the narrator's first love, is an outsider, not from "'round here" and therefore an easy mark. The memories and feelings of falling in love are there, even if the words and point of view aren't mine. The narrator's ache is my own.

This story earned one of my favorite titles--a title even more meaningful because the story is easily about the year of the zombie outbreak, the undead plague. But for the narrator, the real story was Julie--falling in love and Julie's sad fate at the hands of the real monsters. It will always be "the summer I fell in love."

I said there would be spoilers, didn't I?

Thanks for reading and thanks to editor Rhonda Parrish for another chance to have my words read. Please consider supporting Niteblade so they can continue to share fiction with the world. You'll find a "donate" button the right side of the site (scroll down a bit).

Have a beautiful summer.  I hope it brings you much love but none of the "z" word.

Author's Notes: "Saint Max"

What do I do with these silly stories I write?

Try to have them published, somewhere, so readers can see them. Why would I write silly stories and then sell them for the price of a beer (as I did with "Saint Max" to Phantasmacore)? Because, dear readers, the process of submission makes us all better. I could post this stuff on the blog, but no story will be it's best if it doesn't pass at least some publication muster.

Maybe that's what "Saint Max" is about. Becoming better. As always, there will be spoilers. Please read "Saint Max" if you'd like--it won't even cost you a beer--and head back for the story behind the story.

Ready?

Ready.

"Saint Max" started with a man digging holes in his backyard. He didn't know why. I didn't either when I started the story. He just dug. He did what he felt he needed to do. His son, Max, watches him. It's a strange thing which only grows stranger as every morning the yard looks normal.

Max grows in the story. He has to confront a bully named Caleb, and does so with violence. But nothing is solved for Max. His parents are dead when he goes home after confronting his bully. Why? You, dear reader, must decide. Maybe it was domestic violence (they do fight a lot). Maybe they just died. That's how death works. It simply happens.

And that's the hard part of this story. That's what might keep some readers at bay: sometimes life doesn't offer easy solutions. Sometimes bad stuff happens with no explanation. We want that explanation; we want to "know"--especially in fiction. But the real horror is not knowing. The real horror is the unknown, just like good ol' H.P. Lovecraft said. If a monster killed Max's parents, then the monster is the enemy. Max certainly believes in the monster, but it isn't a real thing. It isn't tangible.

I love this story and Max (both the fictional Max and my son), but it won't be accessible to everyone. Some people like the thrill of chase and death and everything else. But this is about Max surviving after his parents have died. This is about Max trying to figure out what to do with death. And... "A horror story cannot simply be about death."

Read "Saint Max" if you would--and if you do, please let me know what you think. Thanks to editor Jason Block for the future beer and giving my story a home.

Author's Notes: "Silas"

When I was a senior in high school, I dropped Physics at semester to take Forensics. No, not forensic science, but forensics: the art and study of argumentation and debate. This is also known as speech and drama competition, a place where kids recite poetry and prose, preform monologues, or deliver original speeches in front of a judge.

One of the requirements of the class involved attending at least two meets. My coach/teacher provided me with Robert Frost's "The Death of the Hired Man" to read in the oral interpretation of poetry division. I performed one time and tied for fourth (I lost the coin flip and received a fifth place medal--wah wah). It was my only performance of that poem and the only medal I received in forensics. I went on to coach for 12 years as a teacher.

Okay, what does this have to do with "Silas"? Well, the story is available in the Winter/Spring 2014 issue of The Rampallian, and it is one of those odd, hard-to-place pieces. It is, in part, inspired by "The Death of the Hired Man" and features an old hired-hand named Silas, just like the poem. While horrrific in subject matter, it isn't "horror" in the commercial sense.

This is your spoiler alert. So please read "Silas" or continue with the spoilers. I'm afraid it is one of those tales you'll need to shell out a few bucks to buy the issue, but 50% of the issue's proceeds go to benefit Reading is Fundamental.


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My story implies Silas has molested young Rose, the protagonist. I wasn't sure I wanted to tackle such challenging subject matter, but after reading Peter Straub's masterful "The Juniper Tree" I understood the power of challenging subject matter. (I almost put Straub's story down before finishing it--but it's so damn good in the end.) While "Silas" does not touch the hem of Straub's coat, it is born of "The Juniper Tree" and "The Death of the Hired Man" with a good deal of Aaron Polson imagery tossed in the mix. The original title: "The Hired Man is Made of Worms"--I'll let that conjure an image or two without explanation.

Rose is a brave girl in the face of a horrible, harsh reality. In the story, you'll find Silas is the least of her problems. Thanks to The Rampallian and editor Rebecca McKeown, I have the chance to tell her story.

Author's Notes: "The Thing About Ray's Smile"

I often find myself writing a story without any idea where it will land.

(I really wanted to type "end up" but the dangling preposition really burns my eyes.)

"The Thing About Ray's Smile," recently published at Black Heart Magazine, is one of those stories. I had the idea for an image, a really cheeky teenager, and one of my favorite stories, T. Coraghessan Boyle's "Greasy Lake," blended together to tell the very short story of--

Okay, spoiler alert. Read "The Thing About Ray's Smile" first, please.

Ready?

--a teenager who makes  a really dumb decision and it costs him his life. The bad decision? To throw an empty beer bottle at a boat full of what he thinks at the time are kids from the local junior college. That image--the bottle arcing through the air in slow motion--comes from a moment in high school when a buddy of mine tossed an empty glass bottle (only root beer in our case) against the side of a building as we cruised past a police car. I feared we'd be pulled over, but weren't. In Ray's case, the result was worse.

"The Thing About Ray's Smile" is unclassifiable. Yes, the end is horrific, but it isn't horror. It's not a crime story, either, even though a crime happens. Literary? Okay. Maybe. It's definitely dark and I enjoy the word play. It's the kind of story I enjoyed writing even without a clear landing in mind.

Thanks to Laura Roberts and Black Heart Magazine for given "Ray" life...

Irony?

Author's Notes: "13 Pieces, Also the Dark"

Friday was one of those strange days in which two stories of mine were made available on the same day after months of nothing. If you missed "13 Pieces, Also the Dark," don't be surprised. I pimped "Digging Deep" with more gusto because it was the featured story at Every Day Fiction.

Today, I want to tell you about "13 Pieces, Also the Dark" which is available to read as a free PDF download from Black Frost Media. Please read it--it costs you nothing more than a few minutes of your time, and I am forever grateful for each reader.

And now, the obligatory spoiler alert...

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The title of this piece, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit, is an un-abashed knock-off of Kij Johnson's "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss". Please know the story, other than an experiment in style and the titular hack, has nothing to do with Johnson's. I like to experiment, and that's how this piece started.

The narrator is a voyeur, at first describing the slow death of his neighbor and the comings and goings of said neighbor's children. If any of you dear readers remember Gary Sump, you'll note this isn't the first time I've written from the POV of a voyeuristic narrator. As the story progresses, however, the reader learns the narrator's past and what he suspects happened in the house across the street.

As a guidance counselor (and English teacher when I wrote "13 Pieces, Also the Dark"), I see into the lives of my students--tiny little peeks--and construct their realities from these fragments. Maybe that's what bubbled to the surface with this story; the "pieces" are the bits from which one can fashion a whole life story.

Of course, in my tale, the pieces are also, quite literaly, the parts of the dying man our narrator helps carry away in the end.

I wrote this one before my self-imposed hiatus, and upon re-reading it a year+ later, still felt a good amount of discomfort. More maybe than "a good amount". And that, dear readers, is what indicates, to me, a fine story.

Please give "13 Pieces, Also the Dark" a read if you have the chance. I'd love to hear what you think.

My Notes on "Digging Deep"

"Digging Deep" is up at Every Day Fiction today. I think they're switching servers tomorrow, so it's only appropriate the last story before blackout is about death. Sort of.

Let me tell you about "Digging Deep". 

Here be spoilers.

Read the story first, if you would.


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I wrote "Digging Deep" shortly before Aimee died and submitted it one time before my hiatus and return to writing. It is a story about death as I mentioned above, but more. It is a horror story, but not a Horror story. "Digging Deep" talks about Truth like I hope most of my work does. Although I've capitalized it, this Truth is human-truth, not God-truth. I'll leave that for the theologians.

I want readers to understand what moves the narrator. This is a story of big revelation rather than big events. It's not about what happened to the mummified remains the narrator helps to exhume or the horrors which might lurk on the English countryside near his home. No, it's about real horror--horror any of us can feel.

On one level, there's the horror of losing a child (or any loved one). You see, the narrator feels the connection between his daughter, Ellen, and the awful things they dig from under the standing stones. The braided hair sets him off.  My grandmother buried both of her children--my Aunt Norma Jean (who I never met because she died at 21, decades before my birth) and my father (brain cancer shortened his life). I look at my own kids, those with whom I share genes and my stepchildren, and can't imagine--don't want to imagine--such terrible ends for them. I fiercely love Kim, and the thought of anything, anything happening to her abhors me. Anyone who loves so fiercely can feel the inevitable pang of death. So yes, death stalks the narrator as it does all of us.

But that, dear readers, is only a bit of the story--even for a tale just shy of 1,000 words, there's more.

"Digging Deep" is also about the horror which comes when people become little more than objects. The mummified bodies, once living, breathing people (again, the braids), are now objects for the university men. Waxy broadens the theme when he talks about the barmaid, saying, "Wouldn't mind a roll with that one," making her little more than a sexual object. For the poor narrator, Ellen becomes a thing--both an object for the "university men" and, by extension, a sexual object for men like Waxy--as he connects the dots between the three. In the end, especially in the end, death leaves each of us nothing more than objects.

Yes, that latter bit is implied. It's what the story means to me, now, nearly two years after originally writing it. But the truth--and the truth of all fiction--is that any reader's reality is just as valid as mine.

I've written the story and now it's time to share.