Category: Fiction

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Fiction Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers

Long Distance Bromance: Ken MacGregor on Collaboration

I first met Ken MacGregor when his film “The Quirk and the Dead” was under consideration for the 2013 Impy Award. (Watch it on YouTube.) Ken wrote, directed and acted in that short, oddly sweet zombie movie, based on one of his short stories. But I really got know Ken by carpooling to monthly meetings of the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers. Ken’s relentless drive to keep writing and keep submitting is a source of great personal encouragement. Though he started writing professionally only a couple years ago, Ken’s work has appeared in over 50 publications. His first collection of creepy tales, An Aberrant Mind, came out last year on Siren’s Call Press. I grin whenever I even *think* of his character Gavin the werewolf. I asked Ken to write a bit about the experience of writing a series of novels with Kerry Lipp, a collaboration that was productive long before the two met face to face.
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Long Distance Bromance
Ken MacGregor

Writing has been called one of the loneliest jobs in the world. Sometimes, it really is. But, once in a while, if you find the right person, it can kinda be a party.

I write a lot of horror, among other things, and I’ve been picked up by several anthologies. Some of the same names come up over and over in the tables of contents and you start to get to know people. This one writer, Kerry Lipp (middle initials G.S. for Giant Squid – you’ll have to ask him why) wrote in a style I found very entertaining. His characters were people I could imagine drinking beer with. His sense of humor was remarkably similar to mine. His story-telling resonated with me.

So, around the end of 2012, I shot him a note asking if he wanted to try something together. He asked if I had anything in mind. I did.

I sent Kerry the opening to a short story I had started in which a man wakes up one morning physically dead, but still mentally sharp. He liked it, picked up where I left off and sent it back. We went back and forth like that until we had over 4,000 words and a complete story. It was called “Stiffed” and appears in an anthology called “Life of the Dead.” (This is a shameless plug.)

We had so much fun writing together, I asked if he wanted to do it again.

“Sure,” he said, cheerfully (at least, I assume so. It’s hard to tell tone in a Facebook message). So, I sent him another beginning I had. He liked this one, too, and we did the Ping-Pong thing with the words.
Somehow, though, this one got away from us. The story just kept going. Before we know what was happening, we had written a novel.

How cool is that?

So, from a chance meeting of two writers who liked each other’s work came the first of what will likely prove to be a series of books (we’re already 9,000 words into the sequel and have written a 4,000-word origin story of one of the characters).

Kerry and I have become pretty good friends through this process, which is great. The weird thing, though is that I’ve only ever met him once, at ConText in Columbus, Ohio.

I’ll tell you one thing, however: if we manage to sell this novel, we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other. In the meantime, we’ll keep writing, making each other laugh, leaving our characters in the lurch for the other one to deal with and having a hell of a good time doing it.

We’ll keep our long-distance bromance going as long as it keeps working. Though, to tell you the truth, I have been thinking about seeing other writers…

Categories
Book Fiction

Books from Raw Dog Screaming

RDSPhaulDig this haul from Raw Dog Screaming Press! RDSP is a quality publisher of strange literature and they recently ran a deliciously strange promotion: buy one of their titles and get 2 additional books. Those ride-along titles could be books from other publishers or other RDSP titles. I’d been meaning to pick up more of their books ever since I saw a display at Context 27.

I ordered Michael Arnzen’s Grave Markings (the 20th Anniversary edition,) Donna Lynch’s Isabel Burning and Jeff VanderMeer’s Monstrous Creatures: Explorations of Fantasy Through Essays, Articles and Reviews… and in addition to a Raw Dog sticker and a Raw Dog guitar pick, I got a half dozen other books. In fact, the pick of the litter, so to speak, the first volume I grabbed to read was a bonus title, namely Stephanie Wytovich’s Hysteria: A Collection of Madness. It’s a collection of a hundred bluntly brutal poems about sexuality and mental illness, wrapped in a gorgeously expressionist cover. They contributed, I’m sure, to last night’s nightmares.

Categories
Book Doktor Fiction

“The River Through the Trees” by David Peak

The-River-Through-the-Trees-by-David-Peak

Cold?

Good.

Snowing?

Even better.

Settle in for a creepy, literate ride through rural Michigan with “The River Through the Trees,” a novella by David Peak (Blood Bound Books, 2013) I’m a sucker for tales set in my home state and this one gets the little details right, like the chapter headings that set a time of day and the amount of snow that is falling. There are times of the year around here when that’s all that matters. The book also nails the acrid desperation of folks stuck in towns where nothing is going on, folks who lack the means or motivation to leave. In small towns, everyone knows everyone else’s business while simultaneously being blind to other, darker endeavors and mysteries. Peak’s book gets that sense right too. Ardor, Mi surely feels like a real place, but one made a bit truer than real, like Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, or more to the point, Lovecraft’s Arkham–other reviewers brood on the similarity to HP’s place-bound cosmic horror. Personally, I could stand to see a mythos spawned from “The River Through the Trees.” Certainly there’s a vibrant cast of weirdness set out… and I can’t say much more than that for risking spoilers. It’s a quick read, maybe 50,000 words perfect for a winter’s night when you unplug the cable, switch off your celphone and remember what rural Michigan felt like in 1993.

Categories
Fiction Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers

Borderlands Press Writers’ Boot Camp – Eye Witness Report

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Special Guest Blogger, Sean M. Davis just got back from the Borderlands Press Writer’s Boot Camp and the Doktor is green with envy. Borderlands Press has published several Stoker Award winning books and runs an intensive retreat for writers every year. Sean is a fellow member of the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers and the author of the novel Clean Freak published by Black Bed Sheet Books.

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This past weekend, I attended the Borderlands Press Writers’ Bootcamp. If you’re considering attending the Bootcamp or other retreat or seminar or six week course, I have two words for you:

Do it.

If you think that you don’t need to because you’re already a good writer, you’re wrong. You can always get better.

Here’s a basic rundown of the weekend. Friday night, we met with the instructors, Tom Monteleone, F. Paul Wilson, and Doug Winter. They talked about the rules of writing for a few hours, then we did an exercise as a group. Then, the instructors gave us an assignment due on Sunday. On Saturday, each grunt met with each instructor and three other grunts on a rotating basis and critiqued each other’s work based on specific criteria for each session. Saturday night, we had a guest speaker, Richard Chizmar, who talked about how he started Cemetery Dance, what writing and publishing means to him, then answered our questions. Then we had a chance to ask the three instructors questions about the art, rules, or business of writing. Sunday morning, we turned in our assignments, which another guest read aloud, not naming the author so we could critique the stories anonymously. Then, there was another Q&A. Then, we all checked out of the hotel and hung out in the lobby until our taxis arrived.

A little later, I am going to tell you the most important lesson that I took away from this weekend. But first, a concrete example of how this 41-hour experience has made me a better writer already.

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We all know the signs of bad writing. Among them is using the passive voice, constructing sentences backwards. For example:

Tom was shot by Paul.

“Tom” is the object of the verb “shot” and “Paul” is the subject. Sentences like these should be converted to active voice. For example:

Paul shot Tom.

It’s the same sentence, but simpler and stronger.

Yes, we know that’s passive voice. We all took sixth grade English. Well, let me give you a more complicated example from the piece that I took to the Bootcamp.

It was the smell of Siani-Grace Hospital that Jack Kensey hated the most.

Can you see it? Because I sure as hell didn’t. Well, here’s the active way of writing that sentence:

Jack Kensey hated the smell of Siani-Grace Hospital the most.

“Was” does nothing for a story other than take up space. The same goes for all conjugations and tenses of “to be” and all other linking verbs. Notice the other verb in that sentence? Know why it’s there? Because “was” isn’t enough substance to justify a sentence. It’s a verb of being. That’s an adjective. That’s passive voice. For example:

The teens were scared.

That’s not enough. Roll it into another sentence in which the teens do something. For example:

The scared teens ran away from the monster.

Then, you look at that sentence during the self-editing phase and decide that it’s pretty self-explanatory that the teens are scared. They’re running away from a monster. That renders “scared” superfluous. Cut it.

The teens ran away from the monster.

Not only have you eliminated the sentence in passive voice, you also showed a stronger image that involved your reader, forcing them to infer the teens’ emotional state by their action, thus eliminating the extraneous adjective and the entire reason that the passive sentence existed in the first place.

With this in mind, on a break from working on my assignment Saturday night, I decided to search my current WIP for “was.” Keep in mind, I only searched for that word, not any of the other conjugations or tenses. Out of a 1750 word story, I used “was” 21 times. You’re probably thinking that 21 times in a 1750 word, six page WIP isn’t bad.

But it is and I can prove it mathematically.

That’s 1.2%. The length doesn’t matter, because the law of averages dictates that when the story reaches the 3000 word mark, which is where I think I’ll land with this particular WIP, the percentage will likely stay the same. That means 1.2% of my story conveys no meaning, accomplishes nothing and exists only as an enemy to clarity.

That is unacceptable.

I won’t be able to cut them all. Several of them are in dialogue, which gets a pass on a lot of broken rules in the interest of verisimilitude. Others are in dependent clauses which can be either replaced by active verbs or cut completely, moving the predicate of “was” somewhere else.

Even if I still can’t get rid of all of them, here’s the rule which I live by:

Break the rule once, it’s art. Break it more than that, it’s ignorance.

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Everybody wants the quick fix. This seems especially true for writing. People want to know how to write, how to find that elusive chimera, their voice, and they want to know now.

Well, I know the secret now. I suppose you want me to tell you.

First, write something.

Then, make the passive sentences active. Cut those that can’t be.

Cut the adverbs.

Cut the words that do nothing. For a list, go here.

Cut clichés.

In short, cut everything that’s bad writing.

What’s left is your voice.

Practice writing in your voice.

That’s the “lather, rinse, repeat” of writing. “Write, edit, write.”

—- Sean M. Davis blogs at http://seanmdavis.wordpress.com/

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Categories
"What We Fear" Bug du Jour Doktor Fiction

Bug du Jour: Battle Cricket

Cricket1

“When King Abimelech made war on the Martians, he based his strategy on the one liability these swollen-headed aliens possessed: their intellects. Instead of attacking supply lines as he had with the round-bellied Venusians, he targeted their libraries. The royal geneticists bred armored crickets as shock troops, ravenous creatures hungry for book tape, binding glue and paper. These tiny soldiers quietly emptied the bibliotechs, left dry husks, while the smug Martian guards patrolled the city domes. When the battle finally came, the aliens had forgotten even how to work their laser pistols. Worse, they no longer knew what was worth protecting.”

© 2013 James Frederick Leach

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"What We Fear" Bug du Jour Doktor Fiction

Bug du Jour: “Creepy Beetle”

ScreenBeetle

“Egmont woke from a dead sleep at the sound of a heavy thump. He bolted upright in bed. His ears hungry for sound detected just the normal night sounds of summer. Yet Egmont knew in his heart that something else lurked in the midnight. He quietly padded across the floor, switched on the flood lights, threw open the front door. A beetle the size of a dinner plate perched on the screen, hideous spots across its carapace, vicious pinchers eager for flesh worked open and closed. Egmont was overcome with emotion, but he stammered, “My Precious, you’ve finally come home!”

© 2013 James Frederick Leach

Categories
Fiction

MoCon V – Come and Gone

My psyche wasn’t crafted for conventions – too many actual humans, far too close and in the case of writer’s conventions, humans who are mostly ape-shit crazy.

Continue reading “MoCon V – Come and Gone”
Categories
Fiction Other Haunts This Just In

This Just In – Horror Themed Toilet Paper

And they say print media is dead! A new nine chapter novella by Koji Suzuki (author of Ring) has recently been published… on rolls of toilet paper. The novella is titled Drop and allegedly takes up about three feet of toilet paper in its entirety. What I found particularly interesting is that the AP story alleges that ghost in Japan traditionally hide in bathrooms.

Japanese Novella printed on Toilet Paper http://news.aol.com/article/scary-toilet-paper/496694#Comments

Categories
Events Fiction Other Haunts This Just In

MoCon IV

“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.

Categories
Book Fiction

Novels – The Bottoms by Joe R. Lansdale

Something roams the wild places down by the Sabine River, something mysterious, something murderous in Joe R. Landale’s novel The Bottoms. The book, a fictional memoir, is a joy to read, by turns suspenseful and horrific, wry and at times melancholic. It’s a well-crafted piece by an accomplished master every bit deserving of the Edgar Award it won in 2000.

In The Bottoms, Harry Collins recounts events that happened to him during his Depression-era boyhood in East Texas after he discovered the body of a woman murdered by a serial killer. One by one, more bodies are found, each bound and mutilated. Harry’s father is the constable to the area which allows him privileged access to information about the killer. Woven into this coming of age tale are local legends about a Goat Man who’s sold his soul, the curious wonders of sexuality as well as the dizzying terror of entrenched racial hatred.

The book is clearly the work of a craftsman. On every page there are one or two sentences that are simply and elegantly phrased. The pacing of the narrative is smooth and I was able to relax as I read, knowing that there would be no surface irritations to disturb the ride. If anything, the ride was a bit too smooth for my tastes, as if all the rough edges had been sanded flat even if some mysteries remain unsolved. This observation is hardly a criticism since the tone and scope perfectly fit the conceit that these are the well-considered reflections of a man late in life.

My only quibble really was a slight touch of what I’d call white-man’s-burden-ism. I’m a Yankee and we suffer from our own forms of entrenched racism so I don’t presume to speak from some morally superior position. I’m just left extremely curious about what the black community depicted in the novel would have done to protect itself from a serial killer. Lansdale does an admirable job of providing plausible insights into this world and granted, since Harry’s father is constable, the novel is weighted toward official (i.e. white) justice. Still, I’m left curious even though I realize that this curiosity is probably an unfair expectation to put on any memoir.

The Bottoms is well worth reading, especially if you enjoy tales of sex murders, satannic Goat men and hooded night riders. It deals rather intelligently with that time of life when we realize we’re living in a world of wonders and horrors and that people we respect sometimes respond to that world in less than respectable ways. Take it to the beach with you instead of that other cookie-cutter mystery novel.

Categories
Fiction Other Haunts

Other Haunts – Lovecraft’s “Lurking Fear” on the “Classic Tales Podcast”

Rush over to the Classic Tales Podcast and pick up the first part of H.P.Lovecraft’s “The Lurking Fear.” The reader and proprietor of the site, B.J.Harrison has a suitably dramatic style of presentation that works especially well with Lovecraft’s luridly over-written prose. You might also want to subscribe to the Classic Tales as well, since in past months several nightmarish titles have appeared. They include delicious chestnuts as “Berenice” by Poe, “The Vampyr” by Polidori and “The Horla” by deMaupassant, etc. If you miss them in the (free) feed, all of the audio books are available for purchase.