Election Day in Virginia

 

It’s Election Day in Virginia. I voted early so today’s been spent on more trivial things. Hoping for the best for the state, and as I noted on the socials, it’s Election Day from California to the New York Island. 

Hoping for the best.

Coming Dec. 2 - A Disturbance of Shadows

 

A Disturbance of Shadows, a short haunted-house-slasher-cosmic horror blend of mine is coming Dec. 2 from Crossroad Press.

It's a return to Louisiana for me and to the realm of Aismley where many of my early books are set.

Hopefully it's an intense little burst for readers as events unfold at an old Louisiana mansion where a reporter and videographer seek refuge during a storm. Dark secrets are housed in the house, of course, and details about a peripheral character of mine come into more focus in and around sightings of a couple of local ghosts.

Pre-order now for a nice price here. (Amazon is offering a Pre-order price guarantee.)

A Carnival of Robert Bloch Stories

I recently spent some time reading or re-reading some Robert Bloch stories because some friends and I were chatting about his work.

I have a number of his anthologies tucked away, and I'm gradually picking up the new releases from Valancourt. 

I guess I'd failed to notice how many carnival stories Bloch produced, and if we stretch it to amusement parks, there's an interesting cycle. 

Reading now brought back a few memories and generated a few Bloch chills as well. 

The parish fair when I was a kid still included remnants of the side shows of earlier years. My parents skewed me toward the rides, and we bought Cokes from the Shriners booth and avoiding the more salacious attractions. I suspect even then the Wild Man of Borneo was watered down from the geek shows of  prior decades. I have a very vague recollection of a peripheral glimpse of the "wild man" huddled in small cage as we passed an attraction. I believe he was draped in hair and just growling.

I recall some of the carnival art as well, and a few snippets of a barker over a PA, but that's about all I can summon to the surface. 

I think I recalled that first after reading and gaining more understanding from Harlan Ellison's essay "The Gopher in the Gilly" in Stalking the Nightmare about his being left behind in jail by a carnival with a true geek who sweated pure alcohol. It's a pretty chilling true tale.

Bloch's "Double Whammy" incorporates the grotesque exploitation of a carnival geek into its mix. It's like a variant on Nightmare Alley but finds a new fate for it's protagonist/cad in EC Comics/karmic destiny fashion. 

Despite some familiar strokes, it delivers a Bloch twist that fits while making the skin crawl. It first appeared in Fantastic Stories in February 1970. The cover on that doesn't hint at the style of horror in store.

The Animal Fair's maybe the best of the carnival tales, that one a recent re-read for me and even more chilling than when I was a kid.

It's Manson Family inspired and captures some of the same dark chills of "Double Whammy" from a little different character perspective. The final chill  

"Freak Show" from 1979 presents almost a walk-through of a sideshow attractions, the freak show as it was known in the day, with a little different turning of the tables as the story progresses. Bloch could aways find a new spint.

 "The Girl From Mars,"  is also a carnival story despite that sci-fi sounding title. It visits similar territory, serves up another cad, also deserving of karma's wry justice. It's original magazine appearance in Fantastic Adventures with art by Rod Ruth. 

Amid the Lovecraftian tales, his realistic crime thrillers and other Bloch brilliance, Bloch's carnival stories serve a grotesque little subset worth seeking out. 

On Heritage and Identity

Family lore’s always held the Williams clan stretched back to Ireland. I’ve visited the Emerald Isle, and

“Danny Boy,” along with Warren Zevon’s “Keep Me In Your Heart” from his album The Wind that came out not long before my old man died, always played a part in mourning his passing. 

I always had a feeling in visiting Ireland, and even the western shores of Scotland, that I was walking where progenitors had strolled, farmed and fished. 

So I was talking to my wife Christine’s aunt on a recent visit, and she mentioned the free FamilySearch website. 

I used up free Ancestry searches long ago, dabbling to extent my interest stretched past family lore. A general knowledge seemed enough. 

But I dabbled a little more with FamilySearch and opened up a gateway stretching further than I’d imagined on my father’s side. (Ireland seemed to be a branch on his mother’s tree.)

Adjacent footnotes and records seem to confirm the path. The Williamses branch back from my grandfather Sidney Glover Williams Sr. (I’m technically Sidney III) to his father William Milton Williams to David Crockett Williams and his pop Bird and eventually back to Virginia not far from where I live now but then on to England and the merchant and tailor Sydrach Williams. Apparently that Syd visited Italy and ran afoul of the Inquisition at one point.  

Before him? It’s back to Wales. 

Wales!?

A customs officer said as we showed our passports on the way to Scotland once upon a time that since we’d seen Ireland and were headed for the Highlands, we’d need next to visit Wales to have a complete picture of the UK.

I’m having to rethink homeland a bit because the “Son of Williams” line stretches back to Griffiths and Gruffydds in what was once the county of Caernarvonshire in the Northwest region of Wales. 

Maybe some people sailed over from Ireland, but the Gruffydd son of Gwilyms of Penrhyn folk have pretty deep roots in The Land of the Dragon and were involved in moments like the resistance to the Norman Conquest.

All of it brings a bit of awe even as my thinking recalibrates. A little more interest is piqued, at least to explore the history of Wales we didn’t get into that much when I took upper level British history classes in college, thinking I might need that in my writing. I’ll have to do a bit more thinking on identity and heritage than I ever have. 

One thing’s for sure. I’m going to have Christine retool the outline for my obituary to include descendant of Welsh kings!

An Old Blog and A Look Back

 My creativity waned when I was in my corporate marketing job. The environment was toxic for me. I worked a while in the aughts on a novel that didn't come to pass. Ironically, long before Christine would divine our current cat would be named Zoë, the book was to be called Zoë's Missing. 

I'd read an article about a young woman in Dallas being abducted, and the diligent efforts of her circle of friends in an artsy and techy area of the city helped keep up awareness until she was rescued. They used the communication tools of the moment in the process. 

I thought a novel focused on a circle of tech-savvy friends deploying their skills to save a lost pal might be exciting. 

I came up with a backstory that would explain the reason for the kidnapping of the fictional Zoë, things involving her parents and laundered money and things that were not her fault.

I had a couple of slightly older characters in the mix, divorced guy living among the younger people and a widow who'd become friends with the missing girl.  By older, then, I mean they were in their '40s. 

There was a bit of a love story for them as they worked with young coders and web designers.

Phones with cameras were new and blogs were a thing, and there was one young guy who held movie screenings of obscure flicks he found on DVD. Spider Baby had just been resurrected around then, so that was one he'd shown for its novelty.

I was working with the web by day and navigating how it would be deployed for business and constantly dealing with new developments. I was kind of excited by the elements that were burgeoning, and I was often off to tech conferences in Seattle and hither and yon. 

I started reading blogs via an aggregator, many of them created by tech-oriented people in startups and the like. 

I followed one young lady's blog for a while because she had a tech degree and was struggling through early jobs, all while planning her wedding, caring for a new cat and shopping. 

That blog's long gone, of course, but I ran across it not long ago via the Wayback Machine and read a few passages, some sad moments about the loss of a cat friend. A few other ups and downs with work and family were recounted in short passages as well.

All this was 20 years ago. Made me think as many things do about how fast time flies. Also made me empathize anew a bit, feel the pain of ups and downs for the young lady, now all memory.

Checked around the socials but couldn't really find the blogger nor her husband in the usual places. The zeal of documenting life must have been overtaken by the challenges of life and other concerns. 

Helped make me get back to this blog I started around the same time, though. 

I'll catch a few more snapshots, for myself or someone else to check somewhere on the other side of here and now.  

Story Progress

 It's Sunday. I plan to take it a little easy though I've been working a while, focusing on a short story this morning. 

I know where it ends and I'm concentrating on making the "getting there" meaningful for the characters.

I read Joyce Carol Oates's novelette "Night-Gaunts" yesterday in a collection of the same name. It's her focus on the path of a fictionalized Lovecraft.

I have often described discovery writing, which I prefer to "pantsing" to finding my away along in the dark with a flashlight gradually illuminating a little more and a little more. 

Oates uses POV to describe the writing process of the Lovecraft character, Horace Love, this way:

"For the (now-adult) survivor the experience of writing is like making his way along a path by the light of a quarter-moon: he can see enough of the path before him to make his way safely though in fact he is surrounded by shadows on all sides.

"The gift of `weird sight' is that you see just as much as it is required for you to see. Beyond that, you have no need."      

It's a bit more eloquent in the words that fit a Lovecraft character. 

I often writing from an outline or at least a mental outline, but that's still about how it goes. Almost uncanny to have it crop up in a story that way.

I continue editing A Disturbance of Shadows, polishing details but really trying to ferret out any misplaced words or small errors that my brain has glossed over in previous drafts.

I had hoped to be finished with this short novel much sooner but I know I'll thank myself later for being meticulous. 

Some Words Written on A New Short Story

I'm working on a piece for a themed anthology. Won't say a lot more than that. 

It is interesting to work sort of between worlds, with some parameters provided by the theme and the rest open to your work and ideas.

I have the basic concept down, and I've been kind of working with the characters. 

I put some more words on the page this morning, introduced a new bit of information and a new bit of character reaction.

I know basically where it's going, but there's still wiggle room.

Wiggle room means also there's a bit of finding your way as well. 

Oh well, trying to post a little more just because capturing the snapshots of the process and the day-to-day is handy at times.

Movies and Minions

It's hard not to be down these days, given the headlines. I've been going to the movies on Tuesdays to take advantage of the discounts on tickets and meals. 

I went to see Maxxxine yesterday. I thought it was good and nicely created the '80s cinematic feel. I'm not the first to say it reminded me of Angel. 

I saw X when going to the movies still seemed a little more dangerous and thought Ti West really did a lot to revamp and invert slasher tropes. Pearl was pretty interesting too and really did its own thing.

I didn't love Maxxine as much, but it was interesting and had some surprises and a lot of fun touches like the Psycho house. 

The theater's been a little more active of late with families taking in Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4. Glad to see the place getting some business, and they've been doing fun things like setting up photo op spots.

Yesterday they had a Minion on hand, bouncing around the halls as well. 

Before Maxxxine started, the Minion bopped into our theater to look around and give a big wave.

I gave a big wave back, and there was quite a bit of joy in that little bit of goofiness. 

Bolstered me to sit back and enjoy the film more than I might have. 

Thought this was an interesting poster, channeling maybe more '70s giallos like Torso maybe. The film's got a masked menace part of the time, so I guess that all fits.