Doug Goodman's Blog, page 7

Wendigo Road Coming to Germany

Check out this crazy cover for the new German edition of Wendigo Road!

There are so many nice details in this cover, I have to talk about them. I think what everybody notices first is the giant wendigo. These wendigos are much taller than any other ones you’ve seen. They are the dominant badasses that control most of the pacific northwest. Like the original English cover, this wendigo has a skull face with antlers jutting out of its head, but this one is more massive, whereas the English cover is a gaunt, slender monster. (And I really like how this one is taking a swing at the soldier – it gives a lot of momentum to the cover.)

The giant wendigo, the wildfire on the mountains, and the soldier in the foreground – it all comes from the English cover. Both covers are done very well, but I wanted to create a side-by-side comparison to highlight some of the differences. Then I found out I can do one of those sliding comparison graphics, and it is way cooler…

Seeing them like this reminds me how much the moon was a feature in the English cover, and I still really dig that piece of the art. The way the antlers branch through the moonlight and the title is outstanding. Another difference is the road, which is much more in the forefront of the cover.

But something I didn’t do well in the first version, which is much better in the German, is the military apocalypse side of the story. Wendigo Road’s characters are soldiers, and the main character is Oran Old Chief, a wendigo slayer and celebrated Blackfeet soldier in the war against the “wendies.” So seeing Oran standing there in his BDU, a rifle in one hand and his lance in the other, just blows me away. If you look closely, his right arm is in the camouflage fatigue, but his left arm has a bracer on it. It’s a nice little asymmetrical detail. I love the story that this art is telling. Obviously military. Obviously apocalypse. Clearly Indigenous. The explosions and the helicopter firing on the wendigo add to the tone. I really like this one.

Luzifer Verlag should be releasing the German edition of Wendigo Road in July 2021.

Hey, thank you for reading and I hope you are enjoying my posts. I’m a writer from Texas who dreams of one day writing full-time. I write the Zombie Dog books, which you can find here both digitally and paperback. I also have a Patreon account here.

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What Training a Bad Search Dog Taught Me

It is getting to that time in Ryder’s life where the days behind her far outweigh the days ahead of her. She is an 11-year old German Shepherd Dog who has lived longer than the average lifespan of a GSD. Her hips give her pain when she jumps at Koda, and she is having a hard time controlling her bowels. All that to say, I don’t think she has 6 months with us. At this point, I find myself reflecting on this shy white shepherd I bought in Buda, Texas back when NASA was still flying space shuttles.

I’ve owned three dogs I trained for human remains work. Ryder is the third. She is also the only one I completely dropped from training because she didn’t have it in her. She had drive, and she is very smart. But she taught me that drive and intelligence can only take a dog and handler team so far.

With my first dog, Mojo, he had a lower drive. He was hyper-loyal in that blue heeler way, and he loved to be outdoors and playing with me, so as long as it was a game to him, and he had a food motivator (he was half retriever), he was ready for action. But if he wasn’t hungry or just wasn’t feeling it that day, he’d give me the paw quicker than anything and say “I’ll wait for you in the truck.”

Princess changed that mentality in him. Because I’m fiendish, I made her his motivator. Working her made him really jealous that I was daring to spend time with another dog, and he knew he had to work hard to spend more time with me. After Princess, Mojo rarely gave me the paw, and when he did, it was a half-hearted paw that I could work him out of.

Princess was a Labrador retriever who LOVED the smell of dead people almost as much as she LOVED food. Any kind of food. She wanted it all. She was an excellent working dog because of these two qualities, and I am sure I could have qualified her if she hadn’t died prematurely at the age of 3.

This led me to Ryder, who was to be my new HRD. Mojo was getting old, and I wanted to retire him properly, so I needed a new dog to work. I hoped I had this in Ryder. I didn’t, but I benefited from it.

Ryder really hammered in that this work, meaning the act of finding lost people, is team work. A good dog and a bad handler might overcome some difficulties, and a paltry dog and a veteran trainer can get through others, but in order for search and rescue to really click, it requires a good dog and a good handler. There is no substitute for that combination.

Mojo was a paltry dog with a rookie handler capable of lots of human error. We learned a lot together, and we even got good enough to become a working dog-and-handler team. By the time I was training Princess, I had evolved into a respectable handler and she was a good dog. I’ve never been a great handler, but I was pretty decent in 2009-2010. Ryder was the bad dog with a good handler because there are some things you can’t fix.

Before a canine is accepted into a SAR team’s training program, the dog is evaluated to ensure there are no rooted personality issues. A dog with no drive will hate life as a working dog. An aggressive dog is a liability. Ryder aced her evaluation. Good drive, obedient, not really affected by being set out alone or picked up or anything. Basically, her test showed that she was a German Shepherd.

Ryder imprinted quickly and started working cones, which is where I set up a line of cones and hide human remains (a.k.a., “Fred”) under one cone. When she finds the cone with Fred in it, she is rewarded. Again, no problem here.

But what I was coming to understand, and what a fellow handler pointed out to me, was the obvious problem with this dog. Despite everything she had going for her, she lacked confidence. She was unsure of herself in new surroundings. She was evaluating threats when she should have been searching.

Around people, especially new people, she didn’t want to be petted. If people sat down in a circle and I was in the circle, she’d allow people to pet her (this is one of the parts of the dog evaluations the team does), but Ryder didn’t really go to them. This isn’t necessarily bad, but in her case, it pointed to that fear. As she has grown up, we’ve marveled at the moment when she finally accepts people and allows them to pet her. It usually takes about a week of living in our house, or a couple of months/years of visiting our house off and on.

The poor dog gets nervous outside of our house. As an older dog, there have been times this past year where we’ve talked about taking her to the beach or somewhere, and we decide it’s not worth it to put her through that kind of trauma. She’d be miserable and just wanting to go home. I spent months working with her on this when she was a puppy, taking her everywhere and slowly introducing her to new people and dogs. Do you remember the part in the Jim Carrey version of “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” when he is going through the phone book and says, “Hate-hate-hate, hate-hate-hate, double-hate, LOATHE ENTIRELY!”  Yeah, that’s her Yelp review of the whole experience.

One star – would not recommend.

But the main thing was confidence. When it comes to HR, the dog often works off lead and takes the initiative. You can’t find dead people for them. The dog must be willing to step forward in front of the handler and, once commanded, take charge of the scenario. When you think about it, the handler is in charge of their dog, but for the search, they are only guiding the dog. The dog has to detect the scent by going out in the world and hunting for odor. Ryder wasn’t willing to do this. She wanted to wait behind me while I made sure that nothing in the world was going to upset her. As long as I was ahead of her, she was willing to search, but a snapped twig or addition of another spectator, human or canine, would completely take her off task because she was skeptical to their threat level.

So within the first month of training, I came to the conclusion that the search life was not the life for her. She’d be hesitant, and I’d be frustrated, which would make everything worse. When my daughter took her out to train on HR with the team, I warned her about the ups and downs of Ryder and not to let Ryder’s inabilities get to Brina. The benefit of this training is the socialization side of it and getting her out of the backyard. Brina worked with her, and with a lot more patience. I’m not sure that Ryder ever graduated beyond cones, though.

There is a lot that can be learned from every dog ownership experience. Even the ones who don’t pan out have lessons to teach. As Ryder moves into the twilight of her life, I am happy for her. She is a good backyard dog, and she’s had a good life. To me, I don’t’ think it has been as rewarding as Mojo or Princess, but who am I to judge? Ryder would’ve been very unhappy in their lives. Running around in the outdoors, jumping in boats and onto the back of ATVs, she would’ve expected anything and everything to injure her or attack her. She likes her life in the backyard playing with Koda, eating sky raisins, and barking at neighbors. Who doesn’t want a life like that? (Except for the eating sky raisins part.)

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The Worst and Most Morbidly Funny Dog Story You’ll Ever Hear, by Gayne C. Young

I found this great story the other day by a fellow Severed Press author. The author is Gayne C. Young. I think you’re going to like it…

Gayne is the author of The Tunnel, Bug Hunt, and Teddy Roosevelt: Sasquatch Hunter. His latest book is Murder Hornets, which you know is dear to my heart. He’s also the Editor-at-Large for Field Ethos Journal and has writtten/edited for North American Hunter, North American Fisherman (both part of CBS Sports ), Outdoor Life, and Sporting Classics, as well as others. Of note, he’s also the first American outdoor writer to interview Russian Prime Minister, and former Russian President, Vladimir Putin. Crazy, right? Well, his blog is here, and he has all kinds of wild little stories in it.

But the story that grabbed my attention is this one, the most morbidly funny dog story ever. It is the story of how things don’t always go right when you select a new dog. It is funny, but it reminded me of some of the new dogs that we have brought home from animal controls and backyard breeders, which is why I reached out to Gayne and asked if I could post about it here. Please go check it out, and if you enjoy it as much as I think you will, pick up one of his insane books or read his blog!

Dominion Becomes a #1 International Best Seller, and I’m Done Before the Day’s Begun

Today the first book I ever published with Severed Press just made #1 with Amazon. It is the top-selling post apocalyptic book in the UK and the top-selling post-apocalyptic science fiction book in Australia. It is also #2 in Horror in Canada. It is 5:30 am in the morning here in Texas, and I am blown over and humbled by these rankings. Thank you to everyone who purchased a copy of Dominion. This book will always be special to me because Dominion is the first book I published with Severed Press. So for it to then become my first book with Amazon’s #1 Best Seller mark is pretty memorable.

My Recipe for Spicy Sky Raisins

Have you tried sky raisins before? According to many pooches of great panache, this recipe is both classy and instantly devourable, no matter what we humans think. I’ve seen many a dog leap for joy and turn into a flashing fury going after sky raisins.

It is an ancient meaty Musca delicacy, though if you are shooting for the spicy variety, a nice Apis or Vespid is preferred. The best part is, unlike baking your own dog cookies or mixing food for the dinner bowl, sky raisins take almost no preparation beyond a warm sunny day and a lack of air current. The less air, the better. If you prefer the spicy variety, I recommend planting some flowering bushes in your backyard. We have a veritable wall of Turk’s Cap and Duranta bushes on one side of our lawn, and then a groomed Lantana tree on the other. This is more than enough to collect enough sky raisins for the recipe.

Because sky raisins are eaten alive, the downside is the risk of injury. I recommend keeping some tweezers handy. Unless you know whether or not your doggos are allergic (mine are not), then there is always that risk of a reaction.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, my awesome wife and I were sitting outside enjoying the 70-degree weather (because: Houston) when Ryder suddenly lashed out at a sky raisin. She was relentless, and she wouldn’t give up, eventually running a few to ground. Since this was all under the Turk’s Cap, I knew these were the spicy variety. She snapped and snapped in the air, then bit at the ground until she had happily devoured the spicy sky raisins, then walked away triumphantly…only to charge back at the bush a minute later, greedily gorging on the sky raisins.

For the record, I talked her out of it once or twice, but like I said, RELENTLESS.

I realize many of you live in colder regions where the harvesting of sky raisins has probably stopped for the winter, so I thought you might enjoy this reminder of summer times. I hope the winter isn’t too long or too dark, and you and your dogs can emerge next spring to go hiking, play in the backyard, and maybe hunt some sky raisins*.

*All credit to my brother Keith who first told me about flies being called “sky raisins.”

[image error] Look at that concentration. Not bad for an 11-year old with bad hips!







[image error] Having forced the sky raisin to ground, she searches out the fallen snack. Ryder shall not fail!!!

Hey, thank you for reading and I hope you are enjoying my posts. I’m a writer from Texas who dreams of one day writing full-time. I write the Zombie Dog books, which you can find here both digitally and paperback. I also have a Patreon account here.

Why Murder Dog Terrifies Me

As many of my readers know, I write the Zombie Dog series about a dog named Murder and his handler, Angie Graves. I’ve written four books, and I am working on Book 5, Murder Dog. This book is taking longer than I’d hoped. (Translation: with the pandemic, I was sure I’d have the rough draft complete by the end of summer.)

There are a couple of reasons this book is taking longer. Many of them are familial. For much of April to June I was helping my parents move across the country where they would live next to my doctor brother and have better access to medical care.

My son started school in the fall, and after a month or so of hurricanes and evacuations, it became obvious that he was struggling. I want to define struggling here. My son is extremely bright and an excellent student. But the way that we do distance learning (at least in my son’s school district) puts an overabundance of responsibility and expects a much higher level of maturity than I think is fair to be expected. That is not to say the teachers aren’t doing everything they can to help. But schooling from home requires a student who is going to question his assignments and sometimes question the actions his teachers are taking, and I don’t think my son was ready for that. We tried to allow him some autonomy; after all, he’d always done well in school. He buried his head in the sand and didn’t ask for help. So for the past month I’ve been working two jobs – one at NASA and another as a teacher’s aide to my son. By the end of the day I am wiped and haven’t had the energy to write.

Helping out family hasn’t been a full-time job since March. And it’s not like every day I’m wiped. So there is another reason that I’m struggling with Murder Dog. Consider this the first of many warnings I will probably write in the lead-up to the book.

It’s terrifying.

I don’t use the word in a “monster in the closet” way, though there are monsters in this book. I mean terror the way Stephen King defines it: “when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute.”

What makes Stephen King books so terrifying are not the monsters but the next door neighbors: bullies, abusers, drug addicts. All the people who walk among us with evil in their hearts. These are King’s most terrifying monsters because of the very real damage they make. In Murder Dog, those very real monsters are alive and conducting their symphonies of disaster. Because Murder Dog is Murder’s origin story, and as I’ve hinted throughout the series, there is a lot of abuse in his story. I’ve struggled with writing it. I don’t like it. I don’t want to write it. I’d rather lock it up in my head, and believe me when I say I often debate whether or not this story is necessary. But ultimately, I think it is a story that has to be told. It is his story, and as arguably the main or second character in this series, I think the audience deserves to know what is going on inside his head.

What is the story of this mutt who tracks the undead? If you read his story, you will read the whole series differently. Sure, I could write a book about Murder running home from Colorado to Texas. I could make it very saccharine. He escapes a horde of zombies. He befriends somebody who is traveling across the States. And then he gets home.

But Murder’s stories have never been some rated G Snoopy Come Home/Benji thing. I’ve always challenged myself to write books that are “real” to working dogs but also to the human/pet bond. And those don’t always go like a Disney movie. Pets are run over when they get out of the gate, or they are stolen or they are poisoned by a neighbor who doesn’t like a barking dog. Working dogs are killed catching criminals or kicked in the head by an angry cow. And time and again animals are abused and neglected. Entire series on Animal Planet have been dedicated to abused and neglected pets and their recovery.

If I’m not honest about Murder, I’m not an honest writer, and as much as you, reader, have experienced, you should get his full story. No omitted chapters. Nothing left on the cutting room floor, as is said. Murder Dog is Murder’s story. Now I just need to finish it.

Halloween 2020 Top 5 and Bottom 3

Every October, I am all about Halloween entertainment. The same way some people go crazy for trying to watch every Christmas movie ever made starting December 1, I focus on Halloween-ish things. If I’m not reading it, I’m watching it, and I wanted to share with you five things I am enjoying this Halloween and three that didn’t really work for me. Everybody is doing top movies lists and top horror reads list, but you know what I say? Screw ’em. I’m universal. You can’t limit my Halloween joy!

So without further ado, here is what I really got into this October:

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Halloween, the 1978 movie.

Let’s start with this fun little movie you’ve probably never heard of and had no clue that it had anything to do with the actual Halloween. Is it scary? No. But does it still have tense moments? Absolutely. When we watched it, we weren’t making snide comments or little jokes like we did when watching the original Friday the 13th or A Nightmare of Elm Street. So say what you will, but even after 40 years, this movie endures. I get why people are still wearing Michael Myers costumes and watching these movies.

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2. Survivor Song, by Paul Tremblay

I have three books on my Goodreads reading list this October, but as of October 28, I have only finished Survivor Song. Probably because it sucks you in so well, but also maybe because even though it was written in 2019, this “zombie apocalypse” story seems to be hitting every beat of the pandemic in 2020. And I haven’t even gotten to the interesting part, which is that the book follows a young pregnant mother, ready to give birth, who is bitten by a zombie! The entire book follows the rest of her day trying to get medical help while not being killed by zombies. This book absorbs you like an amoeba and spits you out the other side.

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3. Dr. Sleep

I don’t know many people who had Dr. Sleep high on their “must view” list, but the first hour or so of this is every bit as good as you would expect from Mike Flanagan, the director who gave us The Haunting of Hill House. Ewan MacGregor gets top billing, but Rebecca Ferguson is enchanting as Rose the Hat, and there is one scene that I think we can all officially dub “the greatest scene of astral projection” ever filmed. And I know. If you’re watching a Stephen King movie this weekend, it’s probably IT: Chapter Two or The Shining. First of all, IT: Chapter One is the one you should be watching, and second, Dr. Sleep is worth the viewing.

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4. Primal, “Plague of Madness”

This is not what most people would first think of when they’re considering Halloween entertainment. I mean, Primal is a cartoon about a caveman and a not-T. Rex who join forces to survive in a bizarre, savage world. But the episode called Plague of Madness – and I’m not making this up – might be the most thrilling thing I’ve seen in ages. Isn’t a little heart-thumping what we crave at Halloween anyways? Like all episodes of Primal, “Plague of Madness” is light on plot but big on action. Spear (the caveman) and Fang (the not-T. Rex) are chased by an undead, raging Apatosaurus. But Genndy Tartakovsky crams this thirty minutes with so much tension, and it all works, up to its final moments.

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5. Nosferatu

Come for the black and white movie, stay for the WTF-ery. Nosferatu is known as the old black and white movie with the creepy vampire with long fingers. You’ve probably seen him in a commercial or two. His visage is well known, but not enough people are watching this film. And here is the perfect way to watch it. Get about ten to twenty minutes into it, then pull up IMDB and start reading the movie’s trivia section, and find out just how bonkers this whole thing really is. The story behind Nosferatu is almost more interesting than the film itself, which doesn’t actually exist!!! When you watch Nosferatu, you’re not watching Nosferatu. What kind of devilry is this? I don’t want to give it away, but you have to check this one out. And when you’re done, Shadow of the Vampire is a great follow-up. Shadow of the Vampire is a movie about the making of Nosferatu, but with a twist: it assumes an old urban legend (that the actor playing Count Dracula, Max Shrek, really is a vampire) is true. The film is shot in the same locations, which makes the experience that much more insane.

Here are a few things that just didn’t work for me…

The Haunting of Bly Manor. Like Dr. Sleep, this was done by Mike Flanagan, based on The Turning of the Screw. As good as this was in parts, most of it just didn’t have the same energy as The Haunting of Hill House (which you should go and watch if you haven’t seen it before.) I want to be careful not to discredit it too much. The bar is set pretty high in Hill House. But here it is almost Halloween, and it’s been a couple of weeks since I watched Bly House, and I had to go back and remember that I watched it. Silent Hill. This 2006 horror movie is one of those where the CGI doesn’t age well so the things that originally scared you look a little silly now. And the dark nurses, which were creepy as hell back then, come off as a choregraphed dance team now. (shrugs) The story is actually pretty good for a movie based on a video game, but as a “rewatch,” this one fell short.So, too, does the original Friday the 13th from 1980. I find it interesting that Halloween is still kind of intense, but Friday the 13th is mostly laughable. I recorded my family’s “interactions” while we watched the movie, and it was terrifying…not the movie, but what I learned about my family. Like, my son has a terrific repository for these movies THAT HE’S NEVER SEEN! He just starts pouting off trivia, like who Burlap Sack Jason is. Who the hell is Burlap Sack Jason and why do I care? The entire time, my beleaguered daughter just wants to go back to watching the movie, and I keep making Dad jokes like how “Ralph” looks like every Scooby Doo villain that was ever unmasked. Here is an excerpt of us watching a scene where the town’s resident spooky old man “Ralph” shows up to inspire fear and terror in the young camp counselors:

So there you have it. Five things you can watch/read this weekend, and 3 you can avoid. Is there something you watched this month that you really liked or didn’t like? Let me know in the comments!

Hey, thank you for reading and I hope you are enjoying my posts. I’m a writer from Texas who dreams of one day writing full-time. I write the Zombie Dog books, which you can find here both digitally and paperback. I also have a Patreon account here.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is The Final Girl We Deserve in Predator

One of the cool things about watching old 70s and 80s slasher flicks with my son is that we’re getting a bit of a “horror revue” from that time period. It’s giving me a lot to think about it. I initiated a discussion of Predator vs. Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street with my son and wife. I wanted to share some of our thoughts.

The first question is whether or not Predator is a horror movie. My wife and son were divided on this. Predator has gore (people are skinned alive) and jump scares as well as one ugly alien. Yet IMDB lists it as an Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi/Thriller. Predator is the story of an alien that is hunting large, muscled mercenaries through South American jungles. It is not listed as horror.

I think this leads to a bigger question of what is horror and what defines a horror movie. Webster defines horror as…no, I won’t go there. But as many others have done, I will quote H.P. Lovecraft, who said, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” If the driving connection of horror is to cause fear, then the same can be said for horror movies. They are movies that give you a physical, emotional, or psychological fear response.

Based on the connection between the genre and a fear response, then Predator qualifies as a horror. But if all you need is a fear response, then what does that mean for most movies? Does the jump scare and the hunt of the Black Riders for the hobbits make Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring a horror movie? I doubt many people would talk about Lord of the Rings in those terms, though clearly some parts of the story borrow from horror. And what of movies like Contagion, which are about fighting a pandemic? Does fear of the pandemic make the movie a horror. Again, I don’t think so. I think the difference between a horror movie and a not-horror movie is how much of the plot and tone are devoted to the fear response. Simply having a fear response to heighten a movie does not make it horrific, just like comic relief doesn’t turn Friday the 13th into a comedy. Intention, then, seems to be a big part of the equation.

Bringing this back to Predator, it’s easy to see why the movie is an Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi/Thriller. But it clearly uses the slasher formula, the tried and true of so many horror movies. In so many ways, the plots of Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Predator mirror each other.

Each movie starts by following a group of people, usually teens in the former movies and a group of mercs in the latter. In Halloween, Laurie goes to school, talks to friends, and goes home. She drives around with a girlfriend and then is dropped off at her babysitter gig. While she’s driving around, Michael Myers stalks her from a distance, usually just out of sight. Predator starts similarly, following Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his band of bad asses as they get their assignment, fly around the jungle, and attack an encampment of guerrillas. The predator alien stalks them from a distance, learning their language and reading their heat signatures.

In the second act of Friday the 13th, the stakes are raised as the kills add up. First it’s oversexed but probably still a virgin Ned, then Jack gets an arrow from behind through the windpipe (backwards!). Marcie takes an axe to the head. The shadow appears in the background behind her while she searches in the foreground. One by one the camp counselors are killed off.

In Predator, the oversexed but probably still a virgin Hawkins is dragged away into the jungle. Then Blain (Jesse Ventura) is shot from behind. Mac (Bill Duke) is shot through the head by the alien. One by one the world’s greatest soldiers are killed off.

In both Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street, the final girls devise a plan to outwit and vanquish their killers. Nancy implements booby traps around her home to capture Krueger. Laurie opens a back door to make it look like she ran off, but then hides in the closet. Nancy’s booby traps work better than Laurie’s misdirection, and in both cases the killer doesn’t really die. They will be back for further franchise installments.

Dutch, who is teased for his “Boy Scout bullshit” earlier in the movie, rigs some booby traps (and constructs his own bow) to trap and kill the alien. He covers himself in mud to hide his location so that he can’t be seen. And after the big fight, the alien blows himself up and Dutch dives away, but we all know that Predator will be back, if not Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So, plot-wise, Predator follows the beats popularized in earlier slasher movies. Even the alien runs around with a two-bladed instrument that he uses to kill and skin his trophies.

But what I find really interesting here is that IF Predator is a slasher flick, then that makes Dutch the movie’s de facto final girl. Except, of course, the dude doesn’t fit the gender mold of the trope. It might be enough to say that this is where the horror genre ends and the action adventure genre begins. But I think by mixing the two genres together, Dutch fits in where the final girl would exist. The difference is that the creators give him tools and abilities that final girls must survive without. Dutch is a hyper-masculine character with a lot of guns and equipment and years of special ops training in his background. I’d like to see if the other slasher franchises ever try bestowing their final girls with the same resources Dutch receives. (As a reminder, I’ve only watched two or three Halloween movies, a couple from the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, and the first Friday the 13th movie.) Until then, Dutch is about as far from Laurie, Nancy and Alice as is possible. And I think that’s the point. He is not a damsel in distress. He isn’t “saved” by Sam Loomis shooting Michael or the police officers showing up at the last minute. It’s all Dutch all the time.

To prep for this post, I did a little research on the final girl trope. Final girls tend to be sexually unavailable or a virgin, they have a high moral compass, and a unisex name. While Dutch isn’t a unisex name, it does have that same vibe as Sydney or Laurie. (Just my opinion.) Dutch’s sexuality never comes into play in the movie, at least not overtly. Sure, he smokes a cigar, carries a big gun, and is covered with muscles, but I’ve also said that he is a hyper-masculine character. If a final girl is ambiguously sexual with a high moral compass, Dutch is a final boy who is unambiguously gendered with a high moral compass. He looks after his “men,” and won’t let anyone compromise their lives. But he still ends up like all final horror characters: alone with the psychological scars of dealing with a psychopath. Predator can be seen as a horror movie, and Dutch is a final girl. I can’t wait to see him at the sleepover with Nancy, Laurie, and Alice!

Flying with Pharoah, a Guest Post by Paul Handover

A couple of weeks ago I discovered the blog Learning From Dogs, which is run by Paul Handover. Paul is a salesman and entrepreneur by trade, and a Londoner who now lives in gorgeous Merlin, Oregon. I caught wind of his blog because of our shared love for four-legged friends. This post is about his German Shepherd Dog, Pharoah, who reminds me of my Mojo and of course, my two shepherds. I hope you enjoy reading about Pharoah’s life, and if you do, head over to Learning from Dogs. You can also purchase his book, Learning from Dogs, on the home page.

More On Pharaoh’s Life.

What a wonderful relationship it has been.

Years ago if I was ever to own a dog, it had to be one breed and one breed only: a German Shepherd Dog.

The reason for this was that back in 1955 my father and mother looked after a German Shepherd dog called Boy.  Boy belonged to a lovely couple, Maurice and Marie Davies.  They were in the process of taking over a new Public House (Pub); the Jack & Jill in Coulsdon, Surrey.  My father had been the architect of the Jack & Jill.

Jack & Jill, Longlands Avenue, Coulsdon, Surrey

As publicans have a tough time taking holidays, it was agreed that the move from their old pub to the Jack & Jill represented a brilliant opportunity to have that vacation.  My parents offered to look after Boy for the 6 weeks that Maurice and Marie were going to be away.

Boy was the most gentle loveable dog one could imagine and I quickly became devoted to him; I was 11 years old at the time.  So when years later it seemed the right time to have a dog, there was no question about the breed.  Boy’s memory lived on all those years, and, as this post reveals, still does!

Pharaoh was born June 3rd, 2003 at Jutone Kennels up at Bovey Tracy, Devon, on the edge of Dartmoor.  As the home page of the Jutone website pronounces,

The Kennel was established in 1964 and it has always been the aim to breed the best German Shepherd Dogs for type and temperament. To this end the very finest German bloodlines are used to continue a modern breeding programme.

Elsewhere on that website one learns:

Jutone was established by Tony Trant who was joined by Sandra Tucker in 1976. Sandra continues to run Jutone since Tony passed away in 2004. Both Tony and Sandra qualified as Championship Show judges and Sandra continues to judge regularly. Sandra is the Secretary and a Life Member of the German Shepherd Dog Club of Devon.

Tony Trant

Turning to Pharaoh, here are a few more pictures over the years.

Pharaoh, nine months old.

One year old: June 3rd 2004.

The next picture of Pharaoh requires a little background information.

For many years I was a private pilot and in later days had the pleasure, the huge pleasure, of flying a Piper Super Cub, a group-owned aircraft based at Watchford Farm in South Devon.  The aircraft, a Piper PA-18-135 Super Cub, was originally supplied to the Dutch Air Force in 1954 and was permitted by the British CAA to carry her original military markings including her Dutch military registration, R-151, although there was a British registration, G-BIYR, ‘underneath’ the Dutch R-151.  (I wrote more fully about the history of the aircraft on Learning from Dogs back in August 2009.)

Piper Cub R151

Anyway, every time I went to the airfield with Pharaoh he always tried to climb into the cockpit.  So one day, I decided to see if he would sit in the rear seat and be strapped in.  Absolutely no problem with that!

Come on Dad, let’s get this thing off the ground!

My idea had been to fly a gentle circuit in the aircraft.  First I did some taxying around the large grass airfield that is Watchford to see how Pharaoh reacted.  He was perfectly behaved.

Then I thought long and hard about taking Pharaoh for a flight.  In the Cub there is no autopilot so if Pharaoh struggled or worse it would have been almost impossible to fly the aircraft and cope with Pharaoh.  So, in the end, I abandoned taking him for a flight.  The chances are that it would have been fine.  But if something had gone wrong, the outcome just didn’t bear thinking about.

So we ended up motoring for 30 minutes all around the airfield which, as the next picture shows, met with doggie approval.  The date was July 2006.

That was fun!

What a dear dog he has been over all the years and, thankfully, still is!

As if to reinforce the fabulous dog he still is, yesterday it was almost as though he knew he had to show how youthful he still was.

Because, when I took his group of dogs out around 7.30am armed with my camera, Pharaoh was brimming over with energy.

First up was a swim in the pond.

Ah, an early birthday dip! Bliss!

Then in a way he has not done before, Pharaoh wanted to play ‘King of my Island’, which is in the middle of the pond.

Halt! Who goes there!

This is my island! So there!

Then a while later, when back on dry land, so to speak, it was time to dry off in the morning sunshine.

Actually, this isn’t a bad life!

Long may he have an enjoyable and comfortable life.

To read more of Paul Handover, visit Learning from Dogs.

That Time I Introduced My Son to Halloween Horror Movies, and It Turned Me Into a Hot Dad

Halloween is all about watching scary movies. I remember being 10 or 11 years old and my parents renting Poltergeist to watch on the large television sitting on our living room floor. We watched the movie in the middle of the afternoon. I think I had nightmares for at least a week. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why my face scrunches up when people tell me it isn’t a very scary movie. I remember being horrified.

This memory was blowing up in my noggin when my 13-year old said that this month for Halloween he wanted to watch scary movies. Last year Amazon Prime had a bunch of old 1920s and 1930s Universal Horror movies, so we watched Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man. And last Saturday afternoon we watched Nosferatu. But he had creepier movies in mind. Specifically, Slashers.

“Can we watch the original Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street?”

My first thought was a straight-up “hell, no.” I mean, I haven’t seen all of those movies, but the ones I saw I remember as being pretty gory, right?

Another thought came to me. A couple of nights before, we’d started watching the original Clash of the Titans. You know, the Ray Harryhausen one with the Creature of the Black Lagoon-Looking Kraken. And unlike the previous hundred times I watched Clash of the Titans as a kid, the thing that stood out to me as an adult…was how BAD the effects were. They were horrible! And I remember loving them as a kid. I knew they weren’t real because of the stop-motion animation, but the suspension of belief was there. This time, the movie opens with a flying seagull superimposed BADLY over high-altitude clips of what I assume is Greece. Sometimes, the screenshot appears over the seagull. It looked silly.

[image error] Photo by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels.com

I want to take a paragraph to discuss this photo because I’ve only just now learned I have a new photo resource via Pexels. This is EXACTLY what I imagine we looked like watching Clash of the Titans, except with more shock and less awe, and more dishevelment. And instead of a tiny Pomeranian, it was a couple of giant white shepherds. But other than that, perfection. In fact, when you think of me, I want you to picture I look like Winston Duke from Black Panther. Now back to the story.

And have you seen the original Dracula? More than Frankenstein or Wolfman, it really stands out in terms of bad special effects. There is one point where Dracula turns into a bat, and I kid you not when I say that the Muppets did better effects in the 70s. But that’s how technology goes. What once was believable transforms into merely recognizable as an effect and then ultimately becomes laughable because the technology has advanced so much.

Could this be true of the original Michael Myers movie from 1978? I thought so.

Since I’d never seen the original Halloween, I clicked over to IMDB’s Parents’ guide first. Moderate nudity, gore (shocking!), mild profanity and drug-use, but severe frightening and intense scenes. The gore and the frightening I wasn’t too concerned about, per the law of special effects wizardry. There is some nudity, two girls being killed half naked. I seemed to remember Clash of the Titans having nudity in it. That’s not to say there is anything good about gratuitous nudity, but I didn’t think it would ruin my son’s life either.

So we watched the movie, my wife, my son, and I. By the end, he wasn’t traumatized or running and hiding. (As a kid, I remember holding my hands over his eyes for “scary” parts in movies, just like the dad in the upper photo – by the way, there were two photos of said father and son. One in which the dad was horrified and one where he was pretty damn skippy. No self-respecting horror writer could be the scowling dad, so you got Mr. Gleeful!)

My son didn’t act at all like I thought he might. In fact, he was talkative. He was opening up to us and sharing what he knew of the Halloween film franchise.

Let me back up a bit.

Spring 2019, and my son and I are on a short backpacking trip with his Scouting troop at Lost Maples State Park. The trees have only just begun to blossom, but the temperature is rising. Our group stops for lunch at a lakeside with colorful red and tan cliff faces opposite us. We are all just talking, and my son starts bringing up all these facts about slasher movies that I’ve never heard. Some I didn’t even know. Who is this kid? I’m thinking. And also, how cool is he?

Remember: I write horror.

So we are talking about these movies and sharing stories, and some of the adult leaders are as perplexed as I am.

My son really digs horror movies. Apparently, I’m raising a slasher-loving boy. Not like the kids in the photos above, but better. More like this:

Nevermind. Apparently my kids aren’t as wholesome as the ones on Pexels because they actually enjoy scary movies and those over-edited ones are all scared of a little horror. I get it. My family is real. We have knocks and bumps and sometimes we get a little bloody. My daughter is old enough to remember owning an iPad with a bunch of Metallica on it because that’s what I listened to. My son likes horror movies. [Insert shrug emoji when I feel less lazy.] [Insert proud emoji because my kids are awesome and I love them exactly because they listen to Metallica (now KPop) and want to watch Halloween and Friday the 13th.]

Guess what we’re watching this Halloween season?