Category — James Frederick Leach

To be honest, very little is nightmarish about the repairs we’re making to the bathroom. The buddy of mine who’s helping is scary efficient and competent, though he occasionally sings along with the radio which I’m attributing to that irresistable urge to sing while in the proximity of a shower.

The real horror show was the condition of the place before we started: spongy floor, tiles that stuck to your feet (i.e. not to the subfloor) and hidden terrors like load bearing walls with large gaps in the joists.

And one secret tenant.

We found a mummified rodent encased in the wall. It’s clearly not the remains of Poe’s Black Cat, which is good, I suppose for several reasons, one of which is that I rather like cats. I really can’t convince myself that it’s a rat – though again that would pump up the goth factor of the Ye Old Homestead a bit. It was, in fact, a squirrel – a kind of creature I have no spare love for – and in its current condition, it’s cool as hell. See for yourself:

So the stinger to this tale is what my daughter said when we broke the news to her.

Me: “Eric found something in the walls”

Grown daughter: “Was it a dead baby?”

It’s the chance exchange like this that reminds me she’s my kin, that there was no mix-up at the hospital, no abandoned basket on the doorstep. Where my first thought was a dead rat, like a nice and proper piece of Nosferatu set dressing, Dear Daughter’s imagination shot straight to an essential gothic plot device: a buried child.

The kind folks from Hollywood have come to our tiny ‘burg, this time to make a horror movie, namely Scream 4. It’s not the first horror movie made in the environs and it’s not the first movie shot in Ann Arbor but it’s worth mentioning because I have a fair bit of affection for the Scream franchise. The Scream movies were a serious attempt to do horror in an era drenched with ironic self-referentiality. Irony creates distance and it’s tough to appreciate ironic layering and have the bejebes scared out of you at the same time. There are other approaches, like Rob Zombie’s loving pastiche of 70′s horror, a time when we could fear boogiemyn without smirking but the Scream movies were a serious attempt to create contemporary, “postmodern” fright.

Like a jump scare: I knew that “they” were among us again on some level but I was entirely unprepared last night when David Arquette burst from the doors of a local restaurant and nearly ran into me. I was so unprepared I didn’t have any succinct fanboy comment to offer.

First observation: he looked fantastic. He was wearing a reddish-purplish suit with a reddish-purplish shirt and a necktie that was pulled down rakishly. The ensemble made him look relaxed and informal, yet composed. You just can’t get clothes like that around here.

And he was short.

Much shorter than I expected. The camera adds 20 pounds and perhaps a good 5 inches or so.

I’ve had some time to think about it and I know what I wish I had said to him. So on the extremely slim chance that David Arquette is reading this blog – or for that matter any of the folks involved with the production – what I really want to say is that I hope you’re enjoying your stay in my town even half as much as I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve spent in your movies.

-J f L

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(James Frederick Leach writes:) “My extremely short story Bent appears in the Summer Issue of Alien Skin Magazine. It’s a touching tale of young love that is also seriously twisted. Literally twisted. Oh, and it’s also exactly 150 words long.”

CORRECTED AUGUST 2009 – Summer’s over, evidently because the new issue of AlienSkin is live and my story is no longer on-line. I’ll see about posting it soon.

“We knew not a soul and frankly, didn’t know what to expect from such a convention but the other attendees made us feel right at home”

James Frederick Leach (the Grim Gnome’s alter-ego) says: Mrs Gnome and I are just back from MoConIV in Indianapolis. It was a friendly horror writer’s convention held in a church basement, jointly sponsored by the Indiana Horror Writers and The Dwelling Place, a local church. We knew not a soul and frankly, didn’t know what to expect from such a convention but the other attendees made us feel right at home. “Google-goggle one of us. We accept you. We accept you. One of us!” I read some of my shorter pieces at the Friday night poetry reading and no one booed me off the stage. I also got a chance to sip absinthe… from a Spongebob dixie cup! I left with an armful of books and a lot of good memories.

I wrote a 550-word article about the convention that appears over at Read The Spirit today if you’re curious.

These are the sites of as many of the folks I met at MoCon as I can remember:

• Tom Piccirilli (http://www.tompiccirilli.com/)
Tom’s work has been nominated for several Stoker awards and an Edgar. My favorite line from him this weekend was “Easy reading is damn hard writing.” Amen to that, brother. He inscribed my copy Welcome to Hell: A Working Guide for the Beginning Writer (Fairwood Press, 200) – his friendly but candid introduction to the writing life – with the immensely encouraging note “Your stories kick ass.” Another good book by him, this one fiction, is A Choir of Ill Children (Bantam, 2004)
Welcome to Hell : A Working Guide for the Beginning Writer
A Choir of Ill Children

• Linda Addison (http://www.cith.org/linda/)
Linda organized the poetry reading on Friday night and she most recently published Being Full of Light, Insubstantial (Space and Time, 2007) Her work has won the Stoker award.
Being Full of Light, Insubstantial

• Gerard Houarner (http://www.cith.org/gerard/)
In addition to being an accomplished fiction writer, Gerard also is the fiction editor for Space and Time Magazine (http://spaceandtimemagazine.com/wp/)

• Wrath James White (http://wordsofwrath.blogspot.com/)
Wrath is an unforgettable person from both his magnetic personality and formidable physical presence. Oh, and he’s quite a writer too. His most recent work Succulent Prey (Leisure, 2008) marks his mass market debut. Succulent Prey (Leisure Fiction)

• Maurice Broaddus (http://mauricebroaddus.com/)
Maurice put the “Mo” in MoCon. His most recent novella, The Devil’s Marionette (Shroud, 2009) debuted at the convention
Devil’s Marionette

• Steven Gilberts (http://stevengilberts.com/)
For a couple decades, Steven’s illustrations have graced the covers of various works of speculative fiction. I bought a very reasonably priced print of his that depicts a slightly open door with a mob of sharp toothed, swollen headed beasties swarming out. Seemed like a good metaphor for artistic inspiration cause when one of those little buggers bit into you, there’d be no getting it off until it’s finished.

Other folks I met include:
• Jason Sizemore (http://www.apexbookcompany.com/)

• Alethea Kontis (http://aletheakontis.com/)

• Kelli Dunlap (http://kellidunlap.com/)

• Bob Freeman (http://authorbobfreeman.wordpress.com/)

And wow, lots of other folks whose names are eluding me at this moment. Good times. Good people.

James Frederick Leach (The Grim Gnome’s alter-ego) reports: I received word last night that Necrotic Tissue accepted my 100 word story “Pisser.” It will appear in the October 2009 issue. Necrotic Tissue also published my piece “A Public Relations Nightmare” in January of this year, which testifies to the good taste and sensible judgment of their editorial staff.

Check out Necrotic Tissue at: http://www.necrotictissue.com/ Their tagline is “Dark is not enough” which also happens to sum up my own personal perspective on the genre quite nicely. For me, even the most preposterously speculative piece has to tell me something about the human condition, even if there are no humans involved in the story at all. But I digress. Necrotic Tissue is becoming a print publication with the July issue after a six issues of publishing as a downloadable .pdf. What this means is that, for the moment at least, a year’s worth of reading is online and available. Check it out. And if you like what you read, consider supporting the magazine through a subscription.