Back in the saddle

With all the other stuff on the burners, it's been a while since I sent anything out into the cold, cruel, world. Unfortunately, the world has not yet beaten its path to my door to throw money at me. Bummer. Guess I still have to pitch my stuff like everyone else.

So this week I've sent an old short story set in the Great Dustbowl to Burnt Offerings Books, and less than a minute ago I shot an angry little piece off to The Dark, a magazine that publishes dark fantasy. Both stories are ones that hit you in the heart, as well as all the nerves that run down your spine. Being in love doesn't stop you from needing to put food on the table, and anger can do a lot if you just focus. Fame and fortune can't be far behind, right?

Snicker.

Our new dog is slowly coming to grips with the fact that the cats are not going to ever be the sort to enjoy big, sloppy licks in their faces. The cats are absolutely refusing to accept the possibility that this big, funny-looking stranger with a cold nose is going to be around for the duration. Diamond keeps trying to give her new pact mates a friendly sniff, but one hiss and she runs away whimpering. Try to imagine a puppy with the awkwardness of a teenager who is terrified of two cats a quarter of her size, but who jumps between a stranger and my wife, barking and growling, when that stranger appears unannounced. Fortunately, the 'stranger' was a friend who had just changed clothes and her hair.

Still pounding on In The Dark, and still working on what I want my website to look like.

Still writing, now with a dog sleeping at my feet.

Another old gem

Recently I got another of those urges to to revisit one of the old movies that stuck in my head when I was younger. These are the films that I watched either lying in my bed with the lights off some night during the summer or the weekend when I could stay up as late as I wanted, or sitting on my mom's bed on a Saturday morning taking advantage of her larger TV while she was at work. During those years I probably watched hundreds of movies, ranging from the high-quality, professionally made ones to the films where you could see the actors standing there, waiting for their opponent to throw a punch or kick so they could scream 'Ugh!” with Shakespearean passion.

In that odd mix, a certain group has always had its own special place. They're not only horror movies, but they have a certain flavor and style that comes from being made in England by Hammer and other companies that knew what they were doing. This is where I got a lot of the images and situations that eventually gelled into the protoplasm that I pull my ideas from. This is the stuff that nightmares are made from.

'The blood on Satan's Claw,' from what I've read, came from trying to follow up on the success of 'Witchfinder General.' It takes place in an isolated country village, where an innocent/naive farmer plows up an inhuman set of bones. From there, the whole village is affected by something that we never get a good look at, and in ways that are more subtle than you will see in most other movies, past or present.

Not having seen it in many years, when I sat to down and watched it last week, it was all the details that made it stand out. Aside from good acting, there are subtleties that make it feel bigger and richer than its contemporaries. The evil corrupts the young people in the village, and they seem to take to their new lives with wicked enthusiasm, with passion that everyone else lacks. The local reverend loses control of the children in his Bible class, and ends up reviled and accused of murder. The only adults we see as part of the unrest are the truly old, part of an age that this bright, shining country worked hard to bury, and is working harder to forget. There are references to England splitting from Catholicism and creating their own church, as well as to generation gaps and the slow struggle out of the dark ages. We get the sense of larger events that overshadow the villagers and their problems. If they die, and darkness takes them and everything they know, it's doubtful anyone in the outside world would even notice.

All that in ninety-seven minutes, made back in nineteen seventy one. They didn't have CGI, or digital watches, or Pac Man. Star Wars had not yet come out, and Elvis was still alive. They just had film, actors, and a script.

That's writing.

The world's biggest marshmallow

So yesterday, my wife and I brought home a new addition to the household. She's named Diamond, is a boxer/retriever mix, and in the first hour she had established herself in the pecking order somewhere below our long-haired cat. A single paw-swipe at her nose sent her running away and hiding behind my wife, who was trying to be supportive while laughing so hard she had to sit down.

The book is coming along, slowly, but it's getting where I need it to be. I'm also looking at new markets where I can submit some of the stories I have sitting around on my hard drive. Also, I'll probably go through Roja at least one more time before I consider it ready to use as agent-bait. It's nice to have a plan of what to do. Now the only thing left is to follow through.

Some small part of my brain is also going back to The Red Man Burning. I haven't worked on it in a while, not since I missed getting In The Dark done on time (which still annoys the hell out of me). I'm having to go back to all those weird, awkward moments from when I was a kid. That's a time when you have to find your own way in a world where you have almost no say in what goes on in your own life, the people who have power of life and death over you have a set of priorities that they created long before you ever showed up, and everything from doorknobs to grocery shelves are designed for people who are six inches to a foot taller than you. Childhood has been romantisized in our culture into some magical, beautiful period in our lives when the world is fresh and beautiful and there's no lesson so hard that we can't get through it. I'm sure someone, somewhere, grew up in a place like that, but the more people I meet, the more I think that childhood is when spirits are broken and psychopaths learn just how well they're going to fit in. We all go through that period, and then we selectively scrub our memories of it until we're left with something we can tell ourselves and other people.

That's what I need to capture.

In the middle of writing this, Diamond started whining, which we've figured might be her signal for 'Could I step outside for a moment? I have some business to attend to.' I was only planning on taking her out into the backyard, but right now it's cool and misty out, with something that's not quite fog thickening up to the point where anything farther than a block away is hidden in soft gray clouds. I grabbed her leash and we both took a tour of the neighborhood while her toe nails clicked on the sidewalk, and every other sound was muted by the mist. Beautiful.

To end this on a cheery note, if I can get this to work right, I'll be posting a picture of our new dog right here. She's a big, furry lump of woof, and she's dozing in front of my desk while I'm writing this.

Still writing.

Getting better, and getting back to work

Well, after laying in bed for three weeks or so, it actually felt good to get out and hit my day job Thursday and Friday. Exhausting, but good. Coming home Friday I felt like I had worked forty hours straight, and was ready for another three weeks of recuperation.

It's slow getting back into 'In the Dark.' There are parts where I can see what it needs, but the words are coming out in a gradual trickle. I reread scenes that I've considered part of the foundation, and now I'm not as sure of them as I used to be. Worse, some parts do nothing, absolutely nothing. They don't grab me, advance the story, or even flow. What they feel like is damp paper that's been lying out in the rain because they fell out of a folder while I was thinking about something else. Yet you know what? I wouldn't trade one bit of it for pages of the same thing pressed in gold leaf, because they're mine, and because even if I end up plowing all of it up and starting over, it'll be the soil that the book grows from.

My wife and I were able to get out of the house over the weekend, despite a sudden drop in temperature and some rain. She hauled me out to go see 'I, Frankenstein,' which is not an intellectual movie, but was a heck of a lot of fun. I had read some reviews of it that were less than kind about the fact that the flick seems to recycle the plot from 'Underworld,' and it also sort of recycles Bill Nighy in a role similar to the one he played in that movie. But you know what? It was still a good watch. Sometimes it's nice to just let the higher parts of your brain relax and enjoy, as a friend of mine puts it, some “kicks and 'splodes.”

Still writing.