Mark Rigney's Blog, page 2
October 14, 2014
Horror-ific Prose for Halloween and Beyond
First, for those wondering about my first Goodreads giveaway of Check-Out Time, your copies are in the mail. Media mail, to be precise, so be patient––but they should arrive with you shortly, shortly, shortly. Enjoy! (And if you do, please consider posting a review; this site, and others, are highly interactive.)
Also, Ginger Nuts Of Horror just posted a nice long interview with me, which you can find here:
http://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/5/p...
Now then. Today's topic...
These past few days, as I drive around town, I’ve been entertaining myself with the audio book of John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I must say I was delighted to discover that le Carré had named one of his central characters Control.
Up until about the age of forty-five (and no, I’m not yet fifty), I was frightened of so many things that it was difficult, at times, to keep track. Monsters under the bed. Darkness. Tentacles. Other people’s opinion. The Wicked Witch Of the West. Deep water.
Now that I’m older and wiser and frightened of nothing, I look back and try to find commonalities. Perhaps, I tell myself, my fiction all springs from some discrete source, a point of origin that, if I could but pinpoint it, would reveal everything I’d ever want to know about both myself and what to write next.
So far, my best answer is “control.”
It’s a broad umbrella, that’s sure, the proverbial Big Tent, if I may borrow a political term. If one is afraid of losing control, then everything but everything comes replete with a barge-load of requisite terror.
My Renner & Quist tales bear out the hypothesis. My semi-dynamic duo begin each adventure by unwittingly surrendering control, or, as in Sleeping Bear especially, having it wrenched bodily away from them. Chaos ensues, and chaos, as any frightened soul can tell you, is profoundly terrifying.
Check-Out Time, the newest of my Renner & Quist tales, forces both my heroes into territory well beyond their usual stomping grounds. First, they wind up in a different city. Second, they have to cope with an entire building that’s long-demolished but semi-sentient. That kind of breakdown in reality signals clearly that just about anything can happen.
What could be more alarming than the idea that anything can happen?
Explicitly or implicitly, the past masters of horror have all understood that rules provide security, and that security tends to obviate drama in favor of comfort’s cozy, fireside slippers. How to add spice, drama, terror? Pull the rug out. Ship the mariners off to Cthulhu’s private island; plunge the exploring teens into a haunted house that really is haunted.
As I work on crafting the next Renner & Quist title, issues of control will be constantly on my mind––simmering, as it were. And if my characters find their feet before stories’ end, then I’ll know I’ve done it wrong. To push them to the brink, and to bring readers with them, the last thing I’ll want to do is to put Renner & Quist entirely, comfortably, in any given driver’s seat.
Finally, come visit my website, where you can find a snippet of this latest Renner & Quist, plus related links and excerpted (glowing) reviews.
http://www.markrigney.net/Rigney/Chec...
Back to work now.
Onward.
Also, Ginger Nuts Of Horror just posted a nice long interview with me, which you can find here:
http://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/5/p...
Now then. Today's topic...
These past few days, as I drive around town, I’ve been entertaining myself with the audio book of John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I must say I was delighted to discover that le Carré had named one of his central characters Control.
Up until about the age of forty-five (and no, I’m not yet fifty), I was frightened of so many things that it was difficult, at times, to keep track. Monsters under the bed. Darkness. Tentacles. Other people’s opinion. The Wicked Witch Of the West. Deep water.
Now that I’m older and wiser and frightened of nothing, I look back and try to find commonalities. Perhaps, I tell myself, my fiction all springs from some discrete source, a point of origin that, if I could but pinpoint it, would reveal everything I’d ever want to know about both myself and what to write next.
So far, my best answer is “control.”
It’s a broad umbrella, that’s sure, the proverbial Big Tent, if I may borrow a political term. If one is afraid of losing control, then everything but everything comes replete with a barge-load of requisite terror.
My Renner & Quist tales bear out the hypothesis. My semi-dynamic duo begin each adventure by unwittingly surrendering control, or, as in Sleeping Bear especially, having it wrenched bodily away from them. Chaos ensues, and chaos, as any frightened soul can tell you, is profoundly terrifying.
Check-Out Time, the newest of my Renner & Quist tales, forces both my heroes into territory well beyond their usual stomping grounds. First, they wind up in a different city. Second, they have to cope with an entire building that’s long-demolished but semi-sentient. That kind of breakdown in reality signals clearly that just about anything can happen.
What could be more alarming than the idea that anything can happen?
Explicitly or implicitly, the past masters of horror have all understood that rules provide security, and that security tends to obviate drama in favor of comfort’s cozy, fireside slippers. How to add spice, drama, terror? Pull the rug out. Ship the mariners off to Cthulhu’s private island; plunge the exploring teens into a haunted house that really is haunted.
As I work on crafting the next Renner & Quist title, issues of control will be constantly on my mind––simmering, as it were. And if my characters find their feet before stories’ end, then I’ll know I’ve done it wrong. To push them to the brink, and to bring readers with them, the last thing I’ll want to do is to put Renner & Quist entirely, comfortably, in any given driver’s seat.
Finally, come visit my website, where you can find a snippet of this latest Renner & Quist, plus related links and excerpted (glowing) reviews.
http://www.markrigney.net/Rigney/Chec...
Back to work now.
Onward.
October 9, 2014
The Arrival of Check-Out Time
Hello Book Lovers,
A very short entry this time, since I mostly want to mention that my novel, CHECK-OUT TIME, has indeed been released, and for those of you who won copies via my Goodreads giveaway, rest assured that your books will wend their way in your direction shortly. The shipment I'll be working from arrives with me on or before Oct. 15th; I'll have your copies in the mail next day.
For those who didn't win in the giveaway, don't despair: the book, as a new release, is deeply discounted just about everywhere, except Siberia. In Siberia, nothing is discounted.
And as for despair, don't despair. Despair is just generally unattractive and never does well at parties.
Finally, the first (non-Goodreads) review has appeared, and it is GLOWING. Here's the link:
http://www.blackgate.com/2014/10/04/r...
No, I didn't write it. (Kind of wish I had...)
'Til next time.
Happy reading!
Onward.
A very short entry this time, since I mostly want to mention that my novel, CHECK-OUT TIME, has indeed been released, and for those of you who won copies via my Goodreads giveaway, rest assured that your books will wend their way in your direction shortly. The shipment I'll be working from arrives with me on or before Oct. 15th; I'll have your copies in the mail next day.
For those who didn't win in the giveaway, don't despair: the book, as a new release, is deeply discounted just about everywhere, except Siberia. In Siberia, nothing is discounted.
And as for despair, don't despair. Despair is just generally unattractive and never does well at parties.
Finally, the first (non-Goodreads) review has appeared, and it is GLOWING. Here's the link:
http://www.blackgate.com/2014/10/04/r...
No, I didn't write it. (Kind of wish I had...)
'Til next time.
Happy reading!
Onward.
September 3, 2014
A Traveler, Not a Tourist
After nearly seven months on the road, I’m back. Back home, that is. Home right smack dab in the bower of the nation’s flyover breadbasket, the Midwest. This is not where I intended to live, but as any writer will tell you (fledgling or otherwise), one can only control just so much.
Where was I? Living and working in the U.K., from January through April, and then traveling (footloose and fancy-free, or as footloose as one can be with family in tow) through Italy, Crete, and Turkey, with brief stops in the Lake Geneve corners of Switzerland and France.
My city, on returning, seems less of a city. It’s insufficiently dense, with too many lawns and very little traffic. Evansville may be typical of much of the U.S., but it’s a hybrid, as metropoli go, a sprawl more green than paved. No wonder we have such a lousy public transit system.
When one is away from the routines and comforts of home (the designed life that home implies), simple answers to questions like, “So, did you have a great trip?” do not signify. This trip was far too long to qualify as mere vacation. Perhaps my friend Michalis, on Crete, said it best, when we bemoaned being mistaken for “common” tourists. “You’re not tourists,” he said. “You’re travelers.”
Michalis really knows how to stroke my aging ego.
Writing-wise, my absence was not a total disaster.
To learn about where to find all of my current writing, please visit the Anti-Blog at my website by clicking on this link:
http://www.markrigney.net/Rigney/Blog...
If you’re in Santa Barbara, CA, this November (the 12th through the 22nd), fill a seat for Santa Monica City College’s production of Ten Red Kings. I’m thrilled to have a first college production in hand for this play, and with a little luck, I’ll be there myself to see it.
I’m also pleased to report that later this fall, I will have cracked the covers of The Bellevue Literary Review for the third time, this time with an ecology-minded piece, “From Utah To the Promised Land.” BLR isn’t an online publication any more than is The Beloit Fiction Journal, but if you have a mind (and a spare dollar) to support small presses, this fall would be a mighty fine time to pony up.
Did I mention my two reprints? The first is in Terror Train, which Goodreads folk seem to really like, and it’s disgusting and nasty and just about the attitudinal opposite of what I usually write. “Customs” first appeared in Day Terrors.
I will make an effort to update here on occasion, usually by bowdlerizing whatever updates and rants I post on my own site. A more complete and possibly riskier version of this blog will typically appear there (see the link, above).
Onward -- and peace to all.
Where was I? Living and working in the U.K., from January through April, and then traveling (footloose and fancy-free, or as footloose as one can be with family in tow) through Italy, Crete, and Turkey, with brief stops in the Lake Geneve corners of Switzerland and France.
My city, on returning, seems less of a city. It’s insufficiently dense, with too many lawns and very little traffic. Evansville may be typical of much of the U.S., but it’s a hybrid, as metropoli go, a sprawl more green than paved. No wonder we have such a lousy public transit system.
When one is away from the routines and comforts of home (the designed life that home implies), simple answers to questions like, “So, did you have a great trip?” do not signify. This trip was far too long to qualify as mere vacation. Perhaps my friend Michalis, on Crete, said it best, when we bemoaned being mistaken for “common” tourists. “You’re not tourists,” he said. “You’re travelers.”
Michalis really knows how to stroke my aging ego.
Writing-wise, my absence was not a total disaster.
To learn about where to find all of my current writing, please visit the Anti-Blog at my website by clicking on this link:
http://www.markrigney.net/Rigney/Blog...
If you’re in Santa Barbara, CA, this November (the 12th through the 22nd), fill a seat for Santa Monica City College’s production of Ten Red Kings. I’m thrilled to have a first college production in hand for this play, and with a little luck, I’ll be there myself to see it.
I’m also pleased to report that later this fall, I will have cracked the covers of The Bellevue Literary Review for the third time, this time with an ecology-minded piece, “From Utah To the Promised Land.” BLR isn’t an online publication any more than is The Beloit Fiction Journal, but if you have a mind (and a spare dollar) to support small presses, this fall would be a mighty fine time to pony up.
Did I mention my two reprints? The first is in Terror Train, which Goodreads folk seem to really like, and it’s disgusting and nasty and just about the attitudinal opposite of what I usually write. “Customs” first appeared in Day Terrors.
I will make an effort to update here on occasion, usually by bowdlerizing whatever updates and rants I post on my own site. A more complete and possibly riskier version of this blog will typically appear there (see the link, above).
Onward -- and peace to all.
