Hey!  Look what I got!

Or, uh, if you prefer a cover photo without my ghastly giant head peeking out from behind…

Featuring my story, “Her Father’s Collection,” inspired by Sunrise Mansion in Charleston, which I urge you to go see if you ever get a chance.  It’s pretty creepy.

I’m lucky enough this go-round to share the covers with Elizabeth Massie, Michael West, Scott Nicholson, Brian Hatcher, Kelli Dunlap, Steve Vernon, Fran Friel, Mark Justice, and few other folks with whom I am less familiar. It is edited by Michael Knost, whose Writer’s Workshop of Horror recently got a brilliant little write-up in Rue Morgue Magazine.

You can (and should, and are expected to) preorder LOTMS3 here.

Wow.  That may have been the most link-heavy blog post I’ve ever written.

A few notes about the changes I’ve been through over the last year:

1. I made less money than you might think as a strip club DJ.  And it was the most heartbreaking job I’ve ever had.  The patience and kindness of the few girls to whom I could relate on a personal level was the only thing keeping me sane.  For about 6 months, I hated myself and everyone around me.  Working at a midwestern titty bar is an endless funeral procession.  The people you see are by turns loathsome, lonely, beaten, and ethically bankrupt.  The men (almost without exception, the people in positions of power here are swinging-dick new haircuts who are old enough to know better) who are making money from this sort of gig are little more than slumlords, gangsters living on the hairline border of legality.  More on this in a future blog entry.
2. Unemployment makes you feel like the worst person in the world, especially when people are depending upon you to pull your economic weight.  As though I didn’t already owe enough to Wife-Face.
3. Nothing makes you appreciate retail management as a day job like coming back to it after a year of sex-industry demoralization and unemployment.
4. My father is doing something terrifying.  He’s rebuilding his life.  Check out The Trifling Blog to track his progress.

More coming.  Autumn just fell hard on Ohio, and my life feels strangely exhilerating.  I’m going to the Halloween store now.  Smell you jerks later.

TIme to update this thing.  It’s come to my attention that I have several new readers from my place of work (hi, gals; how’s the sunlight/real name world treating you?).

My story, Come to My Arms, My Beamish Boy is live at Pseudopod.  Comments appreciated.

And for all my very patient contributors…  if you haven’t heard from me, you will soon.  If you have, and you are waiting on something from me, you will receive it soon.  I have been abysmally busy, the reasons for which a future blog entry will hopefully elucidate.

In the mean time, I offer you this Pogues quote, which has been bashing through my head all week, as I find myself sitting on a sudden born-into-the-world-whole fuck-ton of reasons to celebrate and to commiserate.  

“The years passed by the times had changed I grew to be a man.  I learned to love the virtues of sweet Sally MacLennane.  I took the jeers and drank the beers and crawled back home at dawn.  And ended up a barman in the morning.  I played the pump and took the hump and watered whisky down.  I talked of whores and horses to the men who drank the brown.  I heard ‘em say that Jimmy’s making money far away.  Some people left for heaven without warning!”

As we all lift our beers and do our best Shane MacGowan impressions (uniformly awful, as is the rule for MacGowan impressions)…

“Sad to say, I must be on me way.  So buy me beer and whisky ‘cuz I’m going far away.  I’d like to think I’ll be returning when I can to the greatest little boozer and to Sally MacLennane.”

Thanks, internets.  You’ve been a great audience.

The hero, having returned from the wars, is happy to report that all is well, all is well, and all manner of things are well in the great state of Indiana. The second year that the Indiana Horror Writers have thrown their shindig, and the second year I’ve attended. I’m old news.

We cracked open some absinthe, poured a little in the dirt for our dearly missed homies (or,y’know, for Dr. K-Paff, who is not dead, but with whom I normally drink absinthe), and split the rest amongst ourselves. The immortal John Hay is an expert in the ritual preparation of the delicious stuff.

Gary Braunbeck and Lucy Snyder schooled us all in the ways of writing. They beat us about the head and neck with talent. We all hope the bruises will translate into some kind of transsubstantiative talent-transfer.

Matt Fucking Wallace. Was. There. Fuck yes.

Last year, very little writing or craft-workshop actually got done. Which was fine, because the weekend was really about hanging out, having fun, being with your own species. This year, the IHW shindig seemed to have evolved into something closer to an actual WRITER’S RETREAT. Which was excellent. We actually wrote. We actually workshopped. We read our stories in the round and applauded. Several people remarked that another day could have been tacked on and everyone would have stuck around.

I like panels. I hope to be on one some day. I would like to see them at the IHW retreat. I also like workshops. I bet we could fit in one more of those.

Now the wait begins… Mo*Con approaches. Slowly. See you suckers then.

Up at 5:30 in the morning? Watching television? NBC, maybe? You, like me, may have witnessed the anchor of Early Today scoffing in disbelief at Mickey Rourke’s proposed match at Wrestlemania. The upshot being that Rourke, who’s chops have been pretty roundly recognized in his comeback movie, The Wrestler, is risking his Oscar win by participating in actual professional wrestling. The anchor goes on to say, “You remember Roddy Piper? THAT’S the guy Rourke is getting his career advice from. Remember him? From the old WWF?”

Basically more classist bullshit from the anti-wrestling crowd, but this I actually find a little astounding. As an actor, you will be praised for training with professional wrestlers, for learning how to wrestle, for getting into the head of a wrestler, for sculpting your physicality in order to more convincingly appear to be a wrestler, if and only if you ARE ONLY PLAYING A WRESTLER. Actually wrestle (and what, precisely, is the difference between “pretending” to wrestle and actually wrestling?), and you’ve blown your shot to get the big gold statue.

I guess I’m most bewildered by how willing people are to like the things they’ve been given permission to like, and to dislike the things for which permission hasn’t been granted. It is okay for upper-middle to upper-class individuals to like an independent film about a professional wrestler, because they have been told that it is smart and hip to like independent films, especially if they are nominated for Oscars. It is not okay to like professional wrestling, because that is a form of entertainment solely patronized by poor, stupid people. And even though the independent film is ABOUT professional wrestling, indeed contains several sequences in which pro wrestling factor in big ways, and while watching and (presumably) enjoying it, they were at least in part watching and enjoying pro wrestling, that disconnect simply doesn’t occur to them. You are allowed to like this because it is marketed to you. You are not allowed to like this, because it is marketed to someone else.

P.S. Rowdy Roddy Piper will destroy you, NBC. Just when you think you’ve got the answers, he changes the questions.

See that right there? Yeah. He's still got it.

Folks? Listen up. When you spend an evening getting shitfaced and scarfing White Castle in a Microtel with with a doctor of religion, certain things are… expected of you. Namely, you should prepare to participate in silly internet memes which, despite how much you pretend to dislike them, you actually have a great deal of fun doing. Because, let’s face it, everyone is looking for a chance to talk about themselves. Hence the blog-culture.

The gateway drug...

All of which is a wordy preamble to my announcing that I have been “tagged” by the esteemed Dr. Kim Paffenroth. Be prepared, intarwebz. Ask not for whom the meme tolls. It tolls for thee.

THE RULES (for this game of tag):
1) LINK TO THE PERSON WHO TAGGED YOU.
2) POST THE RULES ON YOUR BLOG.
3) WRITE SIX RANDOM THINGS ABOUT YOURSELF.
4) TAG SIX PEOPLE AT THE END OF YOUR POST AND LINK TO THEM.
5) LET EACH PERSON KNOW THEY ARE TAGGED AND LEAVE A COMMENT ON THEIR BLOG.
6) LET THE TAGGER KNOW WHEN YOUR ENTRY IS UP.
7) DON’T BREAK THE CHAIN (not actually a rule).

1.) I am a Zen buddhist, although self-identifying as a Zen buddhist is in and of itself not Zen, so (to revise) I am a very shitty Zen buddhist.

2.) I was a theatre nerd in high school. Inexplicably, I was invariably cast in lead rolls, despite being short, awkward, weird-looking, paunchy, and having the least cool haircut in the history of mankind. My favorite roll? Lawrence “Guts” Regan, the gangster love-interest in Ayn Rand’s “Night of January 16th,” a roll I was abysmally ill-suited to play, since no one has ever been, nor will ever be, afraid of me.

3.) My wife and I got married on October 13th at the Dayton Art Institute in Dayton, Ohio. She was magnificent, absolutely and shockingly beautiful from head to toe. We held the reception at the Dayton Packard Museum, and rode from the Art Institute in a vintage convertable Packard. In the pictures from that day, we look dangerous and opulent and romantic, fictional renderings of a near-benevolent Columbian dictator who never existed, and the beautiful, clever bride he never took. We danced to “You’re my Best Friend,” by Queen.

4.) My dog’s name is Henry Winkler. Like the Fonz. Ayyyyyyy.

5.) I can’t fucking STAND that book, House of Leaves. Taco Bell is to mexican food what House of Leaves is to slipstream fiction. It seems tailored to impress a whole generation of twenty-somethings with nothing on their bookshelves but Chuck Palahniuk and a few textbooks they forgot to sell back. There are some really brilliant novels out there that play with the way a story is told through the format of the physical book, but this is not one of them. There are NO CHARACTERS OF ANY LASTING DEPTH in this book, and I am therefor expected to be carried through on novelty alone. Well, novelty does shit for me, so thanks but no thanks.

6.) When I was thirteen, and caught up in the RAH-RAH SCARE YOUR PARENTS MARILYN MANSON GRRR!!! craze of the mid to late nineties, I owned a fishnet shirt, a pair of platform boots with buckles up the front, several t-shirts of the kind which only seem offensive to the tragically sheltered and those who wish them to be offensive, the Vampire: The Masquerade player’s guide, and three different colors of eyeliner pencil. I ultimately failed to scare anyone’s parents, least of which my own, who happily helped me dye my hair any variety of ill-advised colors. I did, however, have to sneak around to watch professional wrestling, which was the smelliest of all subhuman entertainments to my folks.

Okay, so now I have to tag 6 people? Fuck, Doc, I don’t think I KNOW 6 people…

Well, there’s Kyle Johnson. Hi Kyle…

Aaaaand…

Kealan Patrick Burke
Andersen Prunty
Matt Fucking Wallace
Brady Allen
Maurice Broaddus

Okay, that should do it! Internet meme completed.

The following is a piece of satire.  You guys remember satire, right?

Up late tonight, watching basic cable, which has more or less relegated me to The Steve Wilkos Show (bad, but fascinating… Shocklines of television talk shows), then Conan O’Brien (always pleasant, even when the abysmally bad 50 Cent is a guest), then Carson Daly.  This is what I’m watching now.  Carson Daly.  Carson… fucking… Daly.

Like a possum drunk on shooters, caught in the headlights of the Party-Bus.

I believe Daly may need to be euthanized.  I’m not advocating the assassination of any public figure here.  I’m just suggesting that you call your governor.  Write a letter to your local congressman.  I am suggesting that, together, we may have the collective strength to get this on the ballot.  Proposition 1:30 AM.

A rough draft, if you please:

The following proposal would lift the ban on human euthanasia in the singular case of Mr. Carson Daly.  The proposal would furthermore make human euthanasia compulsory in the singular case of Mr. Carson Daly.  If this proposal is passed into federal law, Mr. Carson Daly will be humanely euthanized via information overload.  This process will be accomplished by repeatedly speaking out loud words with more than two syllables within earshot of Mr. Carson Daly.  It is estimated that Mr. Carson Daly’s cognitive functions would seize up and shut down within twenty-three minutes.

If you vote YES on this initiative, you are proposing that Mr. Carson Daly be euthanized.

If you vote NO on this initiative, you have clearly never heard his… opening monologue… urp… and your vote will not be counted.

HYPNO-TOOL!

What do you think, intarwebz?  Had enough supposedly funny “Dude, they got $3.50 Jello-shots tonight at Soupy’s, bra!” witticism?  Tired of sitting through the ever-charming Conan just to have Daly’s smug brosef face leering at you and joking, “Hurr, durr, I don’t read books, I pay someone else to read for me,”?  Are you sick of being so depressed after Daly’s pathetic attempts at interview etiquette that you actually watch Poker After Dark due to some sort of Daly-induced catatonia?

Yes we can, intarwebz.  Yes we can.  Yes we can.

…of teh intarwebz.  I’m Twittering now.  Come follow me, and I will keep you updated whenever I take even the least consequential of actions.

What are “things I never thought I’d be alive to enjoy,” Alex.

Chinese Democracy is currently streaming on MySpace. But who knows how long that’s gonna last.  I like it, I think.  I can’t decide if I like it because it’s legitimately good or if I just expected it to be much worse and am in like a musical state of hypothermic shock.  I’ll listen to it again tomorrow and see how I like it then.

I spend a huge amount of time and money every October on haunted attractions.  Normally, Kyle and I ride out into the deep hairy midwestern wilderness every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in the month and drop down five to fifteen bucks on the opportunity to be the target of nebulously threatening performers with harmless chainsaws and rubber masks.  It’s fun.  It’s not something you have to think too much about.  You wander through dark corridors and appreciate the decor and occasionally leap to one side and mutter an expletive when some actor or other pops out of the wall.

Haunted attractions are fun like Richard Laymon novels are fun.

They’re fun like Evil Dead is fun.

They’re fun like hating the Saw movies is fun.

But, since I am needlessly thoughtful and contemplative and often find myself constructing superfluously elaborate imaginary scenarios, here’s a thought:  Is it possible to construct a haunted attraction that is fun and frightening and aspires to something higher?  Can haunted attractions be literary in scope? Cinematic in presentation?  Dare I even say it, for risk of becoming forever the world’s least favorite pretentious ass-hat… can haunted attractions be art?

It would be a balancing act, wouldn’t it.  You ain’t gonna win any friends with some overstuffed piece of performance art puffery dressed up like a haunt.  So the scares have to be there.  The chainsaws, the sliding panels, the gore, the guys shouting monosyllables.  But let’s say this… let’s say that the haunt in question thinks of their trappings as less of an excuse to make sixteen-year-old blonde girls piss themselves, and more of an interactive theater experience.  Let’s say they adopt as their cornerstone, the phrase “Experiential Narrative.” 

So what does that actually mean?  Broken into the tiniest pieces possible, it basically means that the ticket-holders are paying to have themselves immersed in a fiction for a period of time, to experience a horror story as a character instead of as a passive member of a readership or an audience.

Whether this approach would be practical or financially successful is not something I’m prepared to argue one way or another.  But the industry seems to be headed this direction.  The phenomenal success of haunts like Dead Acres/Haunted Hoochie in Columbus Ohio (a hyper-violent, effects-heavy thematically-solid romp through a bizarre realm of filthy, homicidal freaks) seems to point toward a desire for more cohesion.  But cohesion is only the first step.  Can haunted attractions be theatrical art?

I open the floor to discussion.