Category: horror

De Do Do Do, Da Da Da Da

Ah, Monday.

I was shameless yesterday; I blew off not only going to make groceries, but didn’t revise or write a damned thing. But I also started reading Lisa Unger’s Ink and Bone, which is wonderful; I’ve quickly become a fan of la Unger. Like Dan Chaon, her work straddles the line between crime and horror; and also like Chaon, her use of language is exceptional and mind-blowing, which of course makes me feel like a rank amateur.

On the other hand, I don’t mind that feeling; it certainly keeps one humble.

But I am now further behind on the revision than I originally intended, and I have a lot of original writing/revising of short stories to do now; I found (while filing) my folder full of submission calls and so forth for short stories–this is how I miss deadlines; I print them out and make notes–even noting on the print out what story is right for that submission call–and then put them in that file and never look at it again for months.

Clearly, my system is flawed. And as I glanced through the folder yesterday, I noted what stories need revising for submission purposes: “Death and the Handmaidens,” “The Scent of Lilacs in the Rain”, “Fireflies”, “The Ditch”, and “The Terrortorium.”

Heavy heaving sigh. I also need to write a new one for another call–for romance short stories; although I won’t mind so much if I miss that one. I’m not very good at romance, as I have repeatedly proven over and over again. But I keep trying.

Last night, we officially gave up on The Magicians. I just didn’t care about any of the characters, nor did I care about the growing conflict between different types of magic that was clearly coming. We started watching a Netflix original called Between, which is set in a small town in Canada called Pretty Lake (how do I know it was Canada? The gang of bully-ish high school jocks are hockey players!), where some strange ailment strikes the town suddenly, and everyone over the age of twenty-two dies quickly and painfully, without showing any symptoms. The town is immediately quarantined by the government, fenced off and guarded by armed soldiers–no one in or out–and while some of the conflict between characters seems a bit forced, and some of the characters aren’t particularly likable..we’re hoping the series picks up as it goes, like that weird mishmash show that combined The Walking Dead and The Breakfast Club that we enjoyed and whose name I can’t think of right now. I will keep you posted, Constant Reader–although I keep forgetting that we also have Amazon Prime streaming on the television and never look for things there very often. #madness

So, that’s where I am on this fine Monday morning; reading Lisa Unger and worrying about how I am going to get all the writing and revising done that I need to.

And as I head back into the spice mines, here’s a hunk to get your week started off properly:

todd sanfield

 

Message in a Bottle

Monday morning, you gave me no warning–oh, please. I don’t have to go in to the office until around noon this morning, which gives me ample time to finish reading Dan Chaon’s Ill Will before I have to head in; I have less than a hundred pages to go, was prepared to finish it last night before watching television–but that was not to be. Instead, we watched the first episode of Season 5 (and the last) of Orphan Black, and then rented Get Out, which I absolutely loved; and was definitely one of the most original horror films I’ve seen in years. Props to everyone involved–and if you haven’t seen it, you really should–at least, if you enjoy scary/horror films.

I’m also torn as to what to read after I finish the Chaon this morning. I have so many fantastic books to get through–seriously, the TBR pile is like a pirate treasure chest–and I have to work two late nights of bar testing this week; which means going into the office later than usual four days this week, and hopefully means that I’ll be able to get some reading done. As I suspected would happen, I didn’t get nearly as much revising done this weekend as I’d hoped, so I am still behind schedule. But with a bit of focus, I am confident I can get caught up by this weekend. One can hope, at any rate.

I also, as I was reading yesterday, figured out how to write two new short stories–so I need to get writing and rewriting so I can get those two stories done as first drafts, at least.

Note to self: make some notes on both of these stories.

Done. *whew*

And now, back to the spice mines. Here’s a hunk to start your week off correctly:

Screen Shot 2017-03-23 at 1.18.42 PM

1, 2, 3, Red Light

Friday morning in the midst of an unusual cold spell for New Orleans. It’s the second weekend of Jazz Fest, and the high today–and yesterday– was merely seventy one degrees. It’s in the frigid low sixties right now; but it’s going to be sunny and clear and lovely all day; no rain in the forecast for the weekend. I have some appointments tomorrow, but am going to stop for groceries on my way home from work tonight so I don’t have to deal with that tomorrow. I’d like to make some further progress on the WIP tomorrow, as well; hope to do so today, too.

As I have said lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Alabama, primarily due to events I’ve done in that state this year (the first time I’ve ever done anything there). I have written short stories (full disclosure: only two have been published) set in Alabama, and only one book set there. Many years ago, I thought about doing a whole series of books set in Alabama, and all connected (what can I say? I was reading Faulkner) in one way or the other. I created a fictional town and county (thank you, Mr. Faulkner) and families and connections and the whole ball of wax, but never wrote any of them, of course. (I was always big on the ideas phase, not so much on the writing phase.) The town was Corinth, Alabama, and the county had the same name. Recently, as I’ve been doing research into Alabama history (when I’m between clients at work), those ideas have come back to me. Taylor, Frank’s nephew in the Scotty series, is from Corinth; Frank’s mother was from there and that’s the Sobieski connection to Alabama. My favorite short story of all the ones I’ve published, “Small Town Boy,” is also set there, and of course, when I started writing Dark Tide, my main character, Ricky Hackworth, was from Corinth–and somehow related to characters in the short story; we never know what the main character’s name is in the story, but the story focuses on his relationship with a Hackworth whose mother has just shot his father–“those trashy Hackworths.”

Dark Tide is one of my personal favorites of my books, and I think it’s partly because it was a return to Corinth. The book wasn’t set there–Ricky leaves Corinth for a summer job on the Gulf Coast of Alabama as a lifeguard–but Ricky was from there, and I was able to draw on the rich background I’d created for the town in my twenties as backstory for the book. I also tried to do something with the writing style that I’d never done before, which was mimic the pacing of swimming strokes with the pacing of the book. I don’t know if I succeeded, but I know some of the best work I’ve done is contained inside the pages of that book–there’s one particularly creepy scene where Ricky is swimming in the bay and he has this feeling that there are carnivorous mermen down in the depths of the bay beneath him as he swims, and then imagines it as he strokes through the calm morning waters. I also really liked the character of Ricky; he’s grown up relatively poor and motherless (the reader never knows what happened to his mother), and thinks back to how he is treated by the richer kids, how he is picked on for his suspected sexuality, how deeply closeted he is, and how he met, at a swimming camp his father could barely afford to send him to at the University of Alabama, he met and fell in love with someone who basically changed his life and helped him see that he wasn’t a freak. I loved the character of Ricky, and Dark Tide also is one of few novels I ever wrote that has a big twist that flips the story completely–there are hints, of course, I would never cheat–and I am very proud that I pulled it off.

The book was originally conceptualized and titled as Mermaid Inn. When I was a kid, I used to read comic books voraciously; I sometimes wonder how I found the money to buy as many comic books and kids’ series books as I did (I tend to suspect, now that I am in my fifties, that I was a great deal more spoiled as a child then I thought I was). DC Comics used to publish two comics that were more horror/mystery related than super hero oriented; House of Secrets and House of Mystery. EC Comics, which deeply influenced Stephen King, was no longer around by the time I was reading comics, so these two comics–with secret and mystery in their titles, which is what drew me in to them–were the first horror I read, and I loved how the stories always had a big twist at the end (and come to think of it, that’s the way I write horror, which is probably why I don’t sell any horror short stories). There was one issue that was completely devoted to a story called “Bloody Mermaids,” and I remember it to this day. It was an interesting tale; a scholar who was fascinated by the legend of the mermaid was determined to find one and thus prove they were real. He comes to an old inn along the seashore where mermaids have supposedly been sited over the years, only is horrified to discover that rather than beautiful and kind sea creatures, the ones who inhabit the sea at this place were monsters who feasted on human flesh and blood, and only come out at night; kind of like sea vampires. At the very end he finally finds one, he is horrified by the truth of what she is, and she knocks him out and is ready to drink his blood when the sun starts to rise and she has to flee back to the safety of the water. And the narrator–both comics had them–said something along the lines of ‘be careful what you wish for, the reality of what you seek may be something you don’t want to see.’ The story always fascinated me, and it inspired me to create a story of my own.

dark tide

 

The engine of my pickup truck made a weird coughing noise just as I came around a cruve in the highway on the Alabama Gulf Coast and I saw Mermaid Inn for the first time.

My heart sank.

That’s not good, I thought, gritting my teeth. I looked down at the control panel. None of the dummy lights had come on. I still had about a half tank of gas. I switched off the air conditioning and the stereo. I turned into the long sloping parking lot of the Inn, pulling into the first parking spot. I listened to the engine. Nothing odd. It was now running smooth like it had the entire drive down. I shut the car off and kept listening. There was nothing but the tick of the engine as it started cooling.

Maybe I just imagined it.

Hope springs eternal.

I took a deep breath while sitting there, listening closely to make sure.

The last thing I needed was to spend money on getting the stupid old truck fixed. Maybe it just needed a tune-up. I couldn’t remember the last time it had one.

Once Ricky arrives at the Inn and gets settled, he finds out the lifeguard from the summer before disappeared, and the longer he stays, the more he realizes that things in Mermaid Inn–and the nearby town of Latona–are not what they seem.

And now, back to the spice mines.

Love is Blue

Monday morning. I didn’t want to get up this morning, and in fact, hit snooze repeatedly for over an hour before finally dragging my sorry, lazy ass out of bed shortly after eight. But I do feel rested, which is a dramatic improvement over how I felt last Monday when I started out the week already tired. Which is fortunate, because this weekend is TWFest/Saints and Sinners. Paul will be abandoning me on Wednesday to check into the hotel, and I don’t have to go till late on Thursday. I took Friday off as well, and am coming in late on Monday as well. So, I trust I can survive the weekend in one piece and without being completely exhausted by the time I return to work on Monday. We shall see, I suppose.

The weekend wasn’t as productive as I would have liked–then again, when is it ever–but it did accomplish its primary purpose: getting rested for the new work week. I read some more of The Underground Railroad, which is slow going. Partly because the subject matter is so intense, partly because it’s written so simply yet beautifully I want to savor the experience, and I am constantly having to put the book aside to think. The best books always make me think. It really is quite extraordinary, but not a quick or easy read.

So, I made my weekly to-do list this morning, and am proud to say that I only had to transfer half of last week’s list to this week’s; which is always a good thing. I really need to get back into the habit of making the weekly to-do list. I don’t know when or why I stopped in the first place, because there is ever-so-much satisfaction in crossing things off the list; even when you don’t finish everything on it, you know? It felt really good this morning crossing off the things I got done last week, and even in adding the uncompleted tasks to this week’s list was, rather than ‘oh, you lazy bastard’, more of a ‘oh, this will be easy to get done.’ We’ll see how it goes, of course, but at least making the list this morning wasn’t daunting and didn’t make me feel even more tired, the way it did last week.

Last Monday, as I worked on my story “Happyland” for a submission deadline the very next day, I suddenly realized the reason–despite several rewrites already–the story kept getting rejected every time I submitted it anywhere was because the way the story was structured it simply didn’t work–and I hadn’t even gotten to the scary part yet. I realized that the entire story needed to be overhauled; I had developed a bad case of the ‘lazy edits.’ This happens to me from time to time; an attempt to make small tweaks to a story that doesn’t work rather than starting over again from scratch while retaining the best bits. “Happyland”, as originally envisioned and written, simply doesn’t work. It’s nothing new, it’s nothing original, it’s nothing fresh, it has nothing clever to say for itself. It’s based on something that happened to me as a kid–one summer when my immediate family, along with aunts, uncles and cousins on my father’s side–were staying for a week at a beach house in Panama City Beach, Florida, only about three blocks from the water. There used to be an amusement park, the Miracle Strip, that we used to go to every time we stayed at the beach, and one time I got stuck with my youngest cousin who wanted to ride the haunted house ride and was also too small to ride the rollercoaster–so every time we rode the coaster someone had to stay off and mind him. I was annoyed and angry, it was hot and humid, and the haunted house ride–which was, even to my eleven year old mind, lame–this time it was actually intense and scary. There was something different about the interior that time; and I’ve had nightmares about it ever since. That was why I wrote the story in the first place; to dislodge it from my subconscious as well as to follow Stephen King’s admonition to ‘write about what scares you.’ But the story as I wrote it doesn’t work, and on Tuesday I started, slowly but surely, to rebuild the story from the very first line. It may not work this time, either–but I want to get it done this time.

That way it’s ready the next time a call I want to submit to comes around.

The new Scotty isn’t going as well as it should be either; again because I was trying to make it easy on myself rather than recognizing that the framework can stay but the story is new and different. Ugh, such an idiot, really. But every once in a while lightning strikes and I wake up.

Heavy heaving sigh. And I got started on my taxes!

And now back to the spice mines.

Hot Fun in the Summertime

I am not feeling particularly motivated today. Yesterday I cleaned the Lost Apartment thoroughly for the first time since before Carnival, and frankly, between that and the laundry, I got a bit overwhelmed. This morning I woke up feeling tired and not well-rested and slightly out of it; again, motivation is NOT there. And I need to make groceries. And it’s cold and gray outside. (Okay, okay, it isn’t snowing.)

But I do need to rewrite a story today that I am submitting tomorrow for a submissions call (of course, deadline is tomorrow) and I want to get Chapter One of the new Scotty finished today at some point. And I need to start getting to work on my taxes.

Shoot me now.

But at least the apartment is clean. I’ll have to clean again next weekend, of course, but now that the first clean is done the second, more thorough clean will be that much easier. At least, I certainly hope so. It’s just so hard to keep up, you know? I also understand that I have unrealistic cleanliness standards (thanks, Mom), and there is only so neat and tidy the always-under-construction apartment can ever look, but I really wish I could someday get past the stress of ‘my house is always so slovenly looking.’

God, I do not want to make a grocery run.

But it’s not getting done by me just sitting here. I’ll be back in a bit.

Okay, that wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought. Sunday mornings and early afternoons are the best times to hit the grocery store in New Orleans; I even had Doris Day parking in front of the house when I got back. I’m in the process of preparing food for the week (made a salad; sauteed some brussel sprouts; and now I am going to do the prep for tonight’s dinner), and also reorganizing and redoing the interior of the refrigerator. I really hate my fridge; one of my goals for the year is to buy a new one with the freezer on the bottom.

Wow, I am just incredibly exciting, aren’t I?

I’ve also been toying with the rewrite of the story I mentioned earlier. It’s for a horror call, so I kind of have to amp up the scary, which isn’t easy for me. This is why I am not good at horror; I’m not good at scares, and I am not inventive enough to come up with the proper backstory that creates great horror. But, taking Stephen King’s advice–‘write about what scares you’–I am going to give this story the old college try. It’s based on something that actually happened to me when I was young–maybe around eleven or twelve–and obviously, it was more about how I scared myself at an amusement park when I had to go on the haunted house ride with a younger cousin, to the point that when we finally finished and came back out into the light I had goosebumps and my teeth were chattering and I was shaking a little bit.

But it was all in my mind. In the story, not so much.

We’ll see how it goes.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines.

Here’s a Sunday hunk for you, Constant Reader.

Perfect Illusion

Hello, Monday.

I feel rested from a lovely weekend of sleeping late and reorganizing, which is absolutely lovely. The parades, of course, start this weekend, which means getting things done over the next two weekends is going to be complicated, to say the least. Friday night Oshun and Cleopatra roll, which means I’ll have to take a streetcar named St. Charles to work and walk home, and there are five parades Saturday (Pontchartrain, Choctaw, Freret, Sparta, Pygmalion) and four on Sunday: Femme Fatale, Carrollton, King Arthur, and Alla.

Madness.

But I love Carnival. I just hope this lovely weather maintains all the way through.

We started watching Santa Clarita Diet on Netflix last night; as always, Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant are appealing and likable; they have the sort of charisma that shines off the screen. The concept of the show is also funny, not to mention how they try to accept and rationalize their new normal. The conceit of the show is they are a married couple with a daughter living in a suburban cul-de-sac when something happens to the Drew Barrymore character in the first episode and she becomes what we, as a culture, wrongly call a zombie; no longer alive but still living somehow, and in need of first, raw meat, and then human flesh. It’s funny, but it’s also satire–how very American that her need for human flesh to stay alive means they have to rationalize killing people; their need for her to stay alive justifies them crossing a line. Very sly and clever there, Netflix!

Because, as I so often say, you can rationalize anything if you try hard enough.

I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do next, which is kind of fun. I’ve been note-taking a cozy series which I think would be a fun thing to write–not to mention an enormous challenge– and I also have a stand alone idea I’m looking at, and of course I intend on doing another Scotty at some point this year. But right now I get to play around with things, maybe work on some of my short stories, write an essay, figure out what the hell I want to do next.

Maybe I’ll take some more time off. Who knows? SO many options.

Here’s a hunk for today:

Knowing Me Knowing You

Monday, of a three day weekend. I sincerely hope everyone has a lovely day, and takes a least a minute or two to think about the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement in this country. It still boggles the mind, doesn’t it, to think that just sixty years ago (and less) segregation and Jim Crow were still the law of the land…we’ve made some progress since then, but we still have a long way to go.

Today will be spent finishing, at long last, the Book That Would Not Be Finished; I promised it (late) to be turned in today. It doesn’t suck nearly as much as I thought it did last week, which is something, but I am not overly fond of this manuscript. I’m sure no small part of that is being utterly sick of it and the desire to be finished with it once and for all; it can be quite a relief to finish something and turn it over to an editor for a final go over once and for all. I have two essays and some short stories to work on the rest of this month; and then, once all of that is finished, I am going back to another couple of projects that have been lying fallow and waiting for me to get back to them. I do think 2017 is going to be a very good year. I also have another book idea I’d like to start messing around with; a noir with a gay main character. The working title for it is Muscles, but that may change as it gets worked on. I’ve had the idea since the early 1990’s, and perhaps it is time to get to serious work on making that book happen.

I also am hoping to get the brake tag for the new car today. The Shell station on Magazine Street, where I’d been getting brake tags since we moved back here after The Lost Year in Washington in 2001, is no longer at that location! It was still open when we went to Pat’s Christmas party last month, but it has since moved to Claiborne Avenue. I wasn’t exactly sure where it was located–and I didn’t take my phone with me on Saturday so I could look it up–so I just went on to the grocery store and figured I would check it out once I got home. They may be open today; I am going to call them in a moment to find out. If they aren’t, I’ll have to go on Wednesday morning on my way to work. Woo-hoo!

But at least I don’t mind driving any more, so there’s that. It should count for something, right?

I still haven’t finished reading “Grail”, either. I spent most of yesterday working on the manuscript, and then last night when I was burned out and tired, we watched another episode of Slasher–which we decided we may not continue watching, because it progressively gets worse and worse with each episode–and then started watching Westworld on the HBO app. I’m not really sure what to think of the show, after only watching one episode…I know I’ve seen some critiques of it that made me stop and think about it a bit, but the show is extremely well done, and is extremely well cast. The concept behind it is interesting. I barely remember the original film, with Yul Brynner, from the early 1970’s, but I do remember thinking it was exceptionally clever. Michael Crichton, the mind behind The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, and Sphere, wrote the original screenplay for the original film. (I don’t remember if I ever read Jurassic Park; obviously, I saw the movie, but I do remember reading a lot of his other work. You’d think I’d remember reading it, especially since I remember the other novels of his I read. Interesting….but now that I think about it, I did read it; I remember the ending. At any rate, we will continue watching for now.

I’ve also started thinking about what books to take along with me on my trip; I am leaning toward a Michael Koryta, an Ace Atkins, Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King, and a Laura Lippman novel I came across the other day while organizing that I never read (I know, right? Madness), The Most Dangerous Thing. It’s always fun to suddenly realize you’ve not read something by one of your favorite authors; it’s also kind of exciting.

So, as I prepare to head back into the spice mines for the day, here’s your hunk for today.

Rock a Little (Go Ahead Lily)

Happy Twelfth Night!

It rained all night, the temperature (as threatened by meteorologists) dropped, and it looks grim and dreary outside today. I got another good night’s sleep last night, and feel rested this morning. I am about to get my second cup of coffee, and cut into our first King Cake of the season. Woo-hoo! I do love me some king cake! Tomorrow I am on a panel about villains at New Orleans Comic Con, which should be a lot of fun; and yesterday I finished editing, and turned in, the next J. M. Redmann Micky Knight novel, The Girl on the Edge of Summer. Now, I have some more things to get done this weekend, and then I am sort of free from the constraints of deadlines; I have to write a piece for the Sisters in Crime newsletter, and I have an essay due by the end of the month for another book. I am also heading to Kentucky at the end of the month. Yikes! Oh, January.

Last night, before watching another episode of the oddly compelling Ray Donovan, I read a Daphne du Maurier short story I hadn’t read before; “Escort,”, from the Don’t Look Now and Other Stories collection. I recently got a copy when I realized that this collection had several stories in it I hadn’t read; her collection Echoes from the Macabre is my usual go-to for her short fiction. The problem has always been, for me–and I could be wrong–but her short story collections seem to all be named for stories that were also in Echoes from the Macabre, and in fact, several of the stories in this collection are also in that one. But there are some stories I’ve not read–which is why I decided to go ahead and get this one.

There is nothing remarkable about the Ravenswing, I can promise you that. She is between six and seven thousand tons, was built in 1926, and belongs to the Condor Line, port of register Hull. You can look her up in Lloyd’s, if you have a mind. There is little to distinguish her from hundreds of other tramp steamers of her particular tonnage. She had sailed that same route and traveled these same waters for the three years I had served in her, and she was on the job some time before that. No doubt she will continue to do so for many years more, and will eventually end her days peacefully on the mud as her predecessor, the old Gullswing, did before her; unless the U-boats get her first.

She has escaped them once, but next time we may not have our escort. Perhaps I had better make it clear, too, that I am myself not a fanciful man. My name is William Blunt, and I have the reputation of living up to it. I never have stood for nonsense of any sort, and have no time for superstition. My father was a Non-conformist minister, and maybe that had something to do with it. I tell you this to prove my reliability, but, for that matter, you can ask anyone in Hull. And now, having introduced myself and my ship, I can get on with my story.

We were homeward bound from a Scandinavian port in the early part of the autumn.

I’ve talked before about how, when I was a kid, I not only was an avid reader of mysteries for kids and novels and history but comic books as well. The EC Comics that Stephen King read and was influenced by when he was a kid were no longer around, but I read DC’s House of Secrets and House of Mystery, and Gold Key comics used to produce Mystery Comics Digest bimonthly; collections of stories from three different comic books they used to produce, and the digests rotated between the three titles–and they also included new stories, too. The three titles were The Twilight Zone, Ripley’s Believe It or Not (which I loved to read in the daily paper, too), and Boris Karloff’s Tales of Mystery. These stories were creepy and had elements of horror in them; there were almost always big surprise twists at the end. I loved these, and read them over and over and over again.

“Escort” reminded me very much of those digests. I also love du Maurier–she’s one of my favorites, as Constant Reader is already aware–and she also specialized in twists in her grim and dark short fiction. This story is set in the early days of World War II, and the captain of the ship falls ill–probably appendicitis–and Blunt has to take over control of the ship. A German u-boat shows up, and they play cat-and-mouse for a while…until a freezing cold fog drops down over the sea, and an escort ship shows up–and that’s when things get strange.

The story is very well done; du Maurier is quite the master at the slow build and the sudden burn, but this isn’t one of her better stories. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good story–it’s just that stories like “Don’t Look Now” and “The Blue Lenses” and “The Birds” and “Kiss Me Again, Stranger” have set the bar so high that it would be impossible for any writer to consistently match the brilliance of those stories. It is definitely worth the read, and there are other stories in this collection I’ve not yet read, either….which is really lovely.

Huzzah!

And in honor of the story, here’s a sailor:

Jesus To A Child

Yesterday was my second of two twelve hour days this week at work. I am so tired this morning. Yesterday, after working twelve hours on Tuesday, I got up at seven to meet Wacky Russian at eight, came home and answered emails and did the dishes and started laundry before heading to the office, where I had non-stop clients all day until it was time to walk to the Pub for bar-testing before walking back to the office and driving home.

Oy. Despite a good night’s sleep I am still tired, and my brain is a little fried. I don’t have to go to the office until 4:30, so I have a nice relaxing day of writing and editing and cleaning before I venture down there, but right now all I need is caffeine.

Lots and lots of caffeine.

Today’s short story is one of Stephen King’s that I read again recently. Stephen King is a great short story writer; I didn’t really read short stories when I was a kid other than the ones we were forced to read in classes until Night Shift came out. I also thought, at the time, “ugh, short stories” but I was a big King fan after the first three novels and so I thought, ah, what the hell, why not read his stories? I didn’t much care for the first story in the collection, “Jerusalem’s Lot,” which, because of the title, I thought was going to have something to do with the novel (which I loved, and still do love), but it didn’t. I put the book down after that, and it wasn’t until later that for some reason I idly picked it up and read the next story, “Graveyard Shift,” which creeped me the hell out…and I kept reading.

Burt turned the radio on too loud and didn’t turn it down because they were on the verge of another argument and he didn’t want it to happen. He was desperate for it not to happen.

Vicky said something.

“What?” he shouted.

“Turn it down! Do you want to break my eardrums?”

He bit down hard on what might have come through his mouth and turned it down.

Vicky was fanning herself with her scarf even though the T-Bird was air-conditioned. “Where are we, anyway?”

“Nebraska.”

She gave him a cold, neutral look. “Yes, Burt. I know we’re in Nebraska, Burt. But where the hell are we?”

“You’re got the road atlas. Look it up. Or can’t you read?”

And with that, the story “Children of the Corn” is off and running. The story, which is, indeed, a short story–in the collection it accounts for a whopping 29 pages–was originally published in Penthouse, back in the glory days when magazines not only published short stories, they also paid very well for them (sobs softly to self). It seems odd that a short story spawned a movie franchise (ten at last count; I am sure it’s due for a reboot soon), but there’s another story in this collection that was filmed as well–“Trucks” became Maximum Overdrive, directed by Stephen King himself and it had an awesome AC/DC soundtrack. I didn’t think the movie was that terrible, but it’s apparently considered one of the worst movies of all time. I haven’t, of course, watched it in years, and when I did see it I was stoned out of my gourd (which may have been why I liked it). But I digress.

“Children of the Corn” isn’t my favorite Stephen King story; it’s not even my favorite story in this particular collection (that would be “The Last Rung on the Ladder”), but it’s a damned good story, and what King manages to accomplish in those 29 or so pages is quite remarkable. Burt and Vicky are a couple whose marriage is falling apart, and in one last attempt to save their marriage, decide to drive across the country together to a family wedding on the west coast. (Which, of course, is a truly terrible idea; at least to me. Paul and I rarely argue, even more rarely get angry with each other–but going on a long drive together in a car definitely puts us both on edge and we end up bickering a bit. Nothing serious, nothing bad–but it still happens. If Paul and I were on the verge of breaking up, the worst thing I could think of to do was going on a long cross country drive together. I don’t know, maybe it would work for some couples; anything is possible. But…BAD IDEA.) They got lost somewhere in Nebraska, and as they try to figure out where they are in Nebraska, Burt turns his attention away from the road and hits something–something Vicky insists is a little boy. They stop the car…and the fun starts. They are near a small town called Gatlin–and as they examine the boy’s body they realize he was dead before they hit him.

It’s a great set-up; a classic trope in horror stories–traveling strangers come across something unexpected and horrible, and then have to stop whatever it is/escape whatever it is/do something; the theme of course being survival. Usually in these types of stories, the author will have the disparate group–or couple–get past their differences in order to work together; what makes this story so genius is Burt and Vicky’s conflict, no matter what happens to them in Gatlin, Nebraska, never really goes very far away. They still annoy each other, are still annoyed with each other. For me, that makes the story resonate more and makes it more realistic; it was also the first time that a young Greg read such a story where the conflict between the characters wasn’t overcome by the need to survive.

One of the reasons I always loved Stephen King, and thought he was a great writer (long before the literati came around, if they ever did) was because he made his stories–and his characters–so real; the characters always seemed like people you actually knew, and he peeled back the layers and the facades so you could see their reality. It was a lot of fun to reread the story for Short Story Month; and I promise, Constant Reader, that as soon as I finish the two projects I am working on I will read some new stories to discuss with you.

In honor of “Children of the Corn”, here are some hunky farmers.

That’s Enough for Me

A grim, rainy Monday outside the Lost Apartment, and I can hear the wind roaring around the upper level of the house. It is pouring here right now; the leaves are glistening with wet in the gloom–and am I ever glad I got the windows in the car fixed!

Yesterday was a lovely day; I got some work done, went to Costco, and managed to finish reading Paul Tremblay’s wonderful A Head Full of Ghosts.

“This must be so difficult for you, Meredith.”

Best-selling author Rachel Neville wears a perfect fall ensemble: dark blue hat to match her sensible knee-length skirt and a beige wool jacket with buttons as large as kitten heads. She carefully attempts to keep to the uneven walkway. The slate stones have pitched up, their edges peeking out of the ground, and they wiggle under her feet like loose baby teeth. As a child I used to tie strings of red dental floss around a wiggly tooth and leave the floss dangling there for days and days until the tooth feel out on its own. Marjorie would call me a tease and chase me around the house trying to pull the wax string, and I would scream and cry because it was fun and because I was afraid if I let her pull one tooth she wouldn’t be able to help herself and she’d pull them all out.

How much has passed since we lived here? I’m only twenty-three but if anyone asks I tell them that I’m a quarter-century-minus-two years old. I like watching people struggle with the math in their heads.

Earlier this year, the book won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, and as I have mentioned previously, I’d started it before and got distracted and for some reason hadn’t finished it. I picked it up again last week and started at the beginning again, and this time read it all the way through. It’s an interesting book–well-written, certainly, and I also thought it was interesting the way Tremblay chose to deal with its subject matter: is Marjorie Barrett a mentally ill teenager, or is she possessed by a demon? Complicating matters is that her father is descending into religious mania, while her mother is quite rational and skeptical; and while all of this is going on the family, in need of money, has agreed to have it all filmed as a reality show, The Possession.

The point of view character is the younger daughter, Merry (Meredith), who is remembering it all as it happened in two ways; she is remembering it for the afore-mentioned novelist, who is writing a non-fiction book about what happened to the Barretts, and Merry herself is writing a blog about the television show AND the case under a pseudonym for Fangoria.

It’s an interesting book, and it reminded me a lot of Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle in the voice; an emotionally arrested young woman telling the story in a child-like way about what happened when she was a child, and does she have an adult voice?

I’d read somewhere recently about how horror novels and films are often attacked by religious groups when the books themselves actually are quite affirmative of religion; I’ve always thought that to be true–Anne Rice’s vampire novels are actually very much about affirming Catholicism; and doesn’t almost every vampire novel, really, confirm that the symbolism necessary to defeat or keep vampires at bay those of Roman Catholicism? (Particularly interesting in that in Dracula, a Transylvanian would have been Greek Orthodox not Roman Catholic.) I don’t know enough about the genre to write knowledgeably about this, but it is definitely interesting.

And now back to the spice mines.