R. Lee Smith's Blog, page 5

Starting The New Year Off Right!

So, we are twenty-five days into 2019. Let’s recap. I broke my promise to update my fanfic on the first Friday of the new year. I broke a tooth. And now I have the flu. There’s still a few days left in January…let’s see if I can break a leg or get bitten by a radioactive sloth, forcing me to take on all the powers of the sloth as I slowly, very slowly, transform into a sloth-human and use my new powers to either fight or instigate crime.

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Or, more likely, sit around the house watching crime documentaries between snacks.

However, I have dragged myself from my sickbed to post the next chapter of Everything Is All Right, Part IV: New Faces, Old Bones, and you can find it on fanfiction.net or archiveofourown.org. And I’ll be honest with y’all, I just sat here for a solid ten minutes trying to think of something else to say, and I could NOT. You ever read a comic where someone’s got that thought bubble over their head that’s just the three dots? Yeah. That’s me. My head is full of nothing but snot and ellipses, so I’ma just leave the weekly snippet and take my dog and my box of tissues and stagger back to bed. Goodnight!

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In retrospect, she should have known better. Nothing had ever gone right for Ana unless it was secretly going wrong. But she’d find that out soon enough.

For now, Ana drove up Canyon Road in blissful ignorance, smugly congratulating herself for buying a golden ticket to the Fazbear Workshop for the low, low price of six sticks of weed butter.

When she reached the gate, she called Faust. This was the one moment she couldn’t plan for. Enough time had passed that he might be second-guessing his decision to let Ana—an accomplice to a crime, but essentially still a stranger—wander unsupervised through his house. If he wanted to stay on the phone with her or even video-chat to make sure she was really just hitting the fridge and not, say, smoothing the path for a midnight basement robbery, her day was about to get a whole lot more complicated.

But he didn’t. In fact, he might have been talking to a doctor or something, because, although polite as ever, he seemed impatient to get off the line. When she reiterated that she would just be in and out and back before he knew it, he simply said, “Take your time, Miss Stark. I have nowhere else to be,” and hung up.

Too easy.

One of the keys on the Doctor-doll’s ring fit the front door. Ana withdrew it without turning it in the lock and tried the keys on her aunt’s set, the ones attached to the Monster-doll. As expected, one of them also fit the lock—Erik’s key to Freddy’s house. And if she took the Doctor’s keys with her up the mountain, she’d probably find one that unlocked Erik’s old house, the one he gave to Aunt Easter. She could figure out which one easily enough and remove it right now, but she didn’t. Not because Faust might notice she’d taken one of his keys, but just because…because she didn’t mind him having it. She wasn’t sure what that said about her, that she could feel fond enough of the old man to let him have a key to her house, but still be here right now, preparing the mansion so she could come back and rob him.

Serial Saturday Updates in the (Swollen) Face of Adversity!

Yes, I am updating again, despite the fact that I had a tooth extracted earlier and my head has that unique dentisty blend that is sort of numb, sort of throbbing and all prescription painkillers, baby.

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Timmy the Toothache says, “Codeine makes everything A-OK!”

I very nearly let tonight’s upload slide by, even though I super-promised not to forget again. And in fairness to me, I didn’t almost let it slide because I forgot, I just didn’t wanna do it. So I could sort of justify it to myself as I sprawled swollishly across the living room cough drooling down my shirt while I stared glazedly at the TV, but ultimately, I decided that I should really TRY to keep my promise, so here I am and here is my post, and here and here is the newest chapter of my Five Nights at Freddy’s fanfic, Everything Is All Right, Part IV: New Faces, Old Bones. It may not be the most polished chapter I’ve turned out, but by God it’s there, and I think we can all be a little proud of me for that.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to eat some pudding and finish this newspaper boat so I can sneak out to the neighbor’s koi pond and give my tooth a proper Viking funeral.

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It must be fun to live next door to me.

Still Alive

Hello again! And yes, I’m aware that the new year has started and I’ve failed to resume regular updates as promised. Nothing like starting off the year with a broken promise, or as I like to call them, an “R Lee Promise”.

Hmmm, my New Year’s Resolution was to have a more positive mental attitude, so let’s try that again with more positivity.

Thank you, dear readers, for letting me take a month off to enjoy the holidays. I had a great time, although it was weirdly stressful to NOT work in the beginning. Unfortunately, as often happens, Life made a few demands on me and I’ve been busy digging myself out from under them. I hope to be back on track by next week. Actually, I’d hoped to be back on track by this week, but whatever. The important thing is, I still have hope.

Serial Saturday…Does Not Update

The holidays are upon us, dear readers, and this year, just for the novelty of it, I think I’d like to enjoy them. You know, do some shopping…bake ninjabread men…decorate a tree…visit friends and be visited by family. And actually DO these things for a change, instead of be in the vicinity of these things while working on a book. I mean, I’ve got a brother flying in that I haven’t seen in ten years, and in our latest conversation, he laughingly said he wouldn’t recognize me if I wasn’t behind a laptop. Sure, it was a joke…but it was kind of hard to laugh at it.

I know I’ve missed some updates in recent months as I’ve been struggling with this stubborn case of the flu and I feel guilty taking more time off, but to be honest with you all, although I love the books I write and I love the world-building and the story-telling, I don’t have a lot of fond memories of me typing. I DO have fond memories of my family enjoying various holidays. So in the Great Book of Guilt, I have to imagine that missing out on spending time with my family is going to leave a blacker stain than missing a few updates. So with your permission, or if not that, your forgiveness, and if not that, at least your acknowledgement, I would like to suspend updates to Everything Is All Right. Yeah, I know, I left it at kind of a cliff-hanger, but most of the chapters are cliff-hangers from this point on. There’s a lot going on in this book. Five Nights At Springtrap’s is going to be a breeze by comparison.

Did you feel that? It felt like famous last words…

Anyway, no update tonight, nor will there be next week or any week of December, but updates WILL resume before midnight of the first Saturday in January and hopefully be a bit more regular. Thank you all for your continued support and encouragement, and I hope you all enjoy your holiday season.

Serial Saturday Update

As some of you may have noticed, there was no update last week, because I decided to sit under a blanket all weekend with MST3K on the TV, hot tea in my hand, and my dog in my lap. Time well spent. I nearly gave this week’s upload a miss too, because it was our Thanksgiving. The Smith Family has a long tradition of doing whatever it takes to have a less stressful holiday, and we noticed a long time ago that just postponing it for a more convenient day or time makes a world of difference. Hence last Thursday’s MST3K marathon with Dobby. On Black Friday, my father decided he wanted to go to town and ‘just look’ at laptops. It was pretty late in the day and we figured the doorbusters were all gone and the mobs had moved on, so we dropped him off and went to the grocery store, where we bought a 25lb turkey for a little over six bucks.

Boy, you know you’re an old fart when you flex on the price of turkey.

After picking up my father (and his new laptop…his new 70″ TV and his new surround-sound system), we went home to begin our leisurely preparations for the Smith Family Thanksgiving. This included another Smith Family tradition: The Pink Stuff. This is basically an ambrosia fruit salad, although I loyally maintain it’s the best ambrosia in the world, and quite a few of our friends agree and have asked for the recipe, unaware that there is no ‘recipe’.

But there is now. Yes, friends, I wrote down the process of Pink Stuff’s creation and I will share it here with you, because I always leave blogging for the last minute and now that I’m all stuffed with food, my brain does not want to come up with anything interesting to talk about in this post.

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Understand that in all the years the Smiths have made Pink Stuff, we have never used a recipe, nor have we made the same Pink Stuff twice. Come to think of it, there might be a connection there…but whatever. Only by experimenting will you find the true form of the Pink Stuff you seek. There will be successes. There will be tasty failures. There will be fifty shades of pink in-between. So don’t sweat the sweet stuff. The fun comes from making it with your family. That way, even if you don’t manage to make Pink Stuff, you’ll still have the memories.

Okay, enough cheese! On with the recipe!

First, the fruits. Be aware that fruits with high acid contents are going to make it more difficult when it comes time to set the stuff. Not impossible! But definitely more difficult. So if you want to make things easier on yourself, avoid those fruits, especially oranges and pineapple.

This year’s Pink Stuff started with:

Three large bananas, sliced into wheels.
Seedless grapes, sliced in half (yes, grapes are pretty acidic, but we have always used them and always will. Note that our Pink Stuff doesn’t always set up either. Again, there might be a connection, but if soupy Stuff is the price we pay for that grapey goodness, so be it).
Maraschino cherries, sliced in half (reserve juice, if any)
One can of pears in syrup, drained (reserve syrup) and cut into bite-size chunks
One can of peaches in syrup, drained (reserve syrup) and cut into bite-size chunks
Strawberries, sliced

Could we  have used fresh pears and peaches instead of canned? Sure, but it’s off-season and it was hard to find fruit that tasted good, and we already had the cans, plus it gave us the gift of syrup, so what the hell.

We put all the chunked fruit into a bowl and set it aside in the fridge. Then we eyeballed our reserved syrup/fruit juice and decided we had about a pint. We wanted about a quart, so we poured an entire bottle of grenadine into the bowl and stirred it up. Now, if you’re not totally sold on the Pink Stuff idea, here is where you can just add a bottle of vodka, turn on The Hobbit trilogy and drink the disappointment away.


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Just kidding, kids. Always watch the Hobbit movies responsibly. By which I mean, don’t watch them. At all.

 

But let’s pretend you’d rather have Pink Stuff. Give your mixed syrup/fruit juice a taste. If it’s too sweet, you can cut that sweetness with a splash of juice. If it’s not sweet enough, don’t doctor the juice, but do add sugar later to the whipped cream. Either way, these are good things to know now. We decided our juice was just right. Time to thicken it.

Get out your box of unflavored gelatin and listen to Dad mutter uncharitably about why it’s in envelopes instead of in a can that he can measure out with a spoon. Then listen to his engaging lecture on “Cooking Is Chemistry”. Learn how to neutralize acids. Become distracted. Compare Bloodborne and Dark Souls. Become nostalgic about graphics from games when you were a kid. Feel old. Remember you are making Pink Stuff. Feel happy. If you were paying attention to Dad’s lecture, you know what to do. If not, surreptitiously read the instructions on the box of gelatin and learn that, generally speaking, you want one envelope of gelatin to every cup of liquid. Eyeball your reserved liquids and get four envelopes. Dip a large coffee cup into the liquid and dissolve your four envelopes of gelatin into it, stirring to hopefully prevent any lumps from forming, because once cooked, those lumps will be like little tasteless chunks of rubber.

Heat up the gelatin mixture. You CAN do this on the stove, sure you can. We used a microwave, because you can do that too. Either way you do it, you need to watch that stuff like a hawk. It will first bubble, then foam, then suddenly explode all over into a huge mess that is so impossible to clean up that once we just bought a new microwave. There were other reasons, of course…but that was definitely the last pink straw. Anyway, watch it close and when it is JUST beginning to boil, pull that puppy and pour it into the rest of your juice, stirring to mix (we strained ours through a fine sieve to remove the lumps that we couldn’t prevent), and then IMMEDIATELY wash the cup you boiled it in, because that stuff will turn into a pink rubbery skin so fast, you have no idea. With the liquid all gel-ified, it’s time to put that bad boy into the fridge, where it will set as it chills.

This is where it gets a little fussy, because you don’t want it to set up ALL the way. What you want to see is the gelatin mixture just beginning to stick to the sides of the bowl, but if you wiggle the bowl back and forth, the contents in the middle slosh around freely. If you drag a spoon through it, it will coat the spoon thickly and leave a ‘trail’, but not chunks. Basically, you want it to set up to a point right before you’d call it ‘set.’ This took us about two and a half hours, but your mileage may vary, so check on it every half hour or so.

When you have achieved the desired consistency, pour your fruit into the gelatin and stir to coat all the fruit, then put it back in the fridge while you whip the cream. Can you just use Cool Whip or some other kind of premade whipped topping? No. Why not? Because Dad said so and that’s good enough for me. Get out your hand mixer and whip the cream. We used a quart of cream. We probably didn’t have to use that much, and God knows our arteries begged us not to, but what are we going to do with three-quarters of a cup of cream? We’d never use it. We try to eat healthy in this house.


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We also lie a lot in this house, in between bites of delicious unhealthy food.

So we just dumped it all in there and whipped it up, adding a good dollop of vanilla extract halfway through the whip, and then another dollop, because Dad accused me of being stingy with the vanilla and just to prove I never stinged on the vanilla in my damn life, I put yet another dollop in there, plus a splash. We had the vanillaingest whipped cream you ever met. Beat that cream until it cries, or at least until it forms stiff peaks, but don’t let it become ‘mashed potatoes’ consistency. Fold the cream into the gelatin-fruit and stir just enough to achieve an even pink color. Add half a bag of mini marshmallows if you want (we wanted), and stir just enough to mix them in. Return the Pink Stuff to the fridge and let it finish setting. Probably only takes half an hour or so, but we left it two hours to watch TV. Garnish the top of your Pink Stuff with maraschino cherries or the prettiest strawberries or whatever you like. I was going to cover the entire top with cherries, but I’d been snacking on them during much of the process, so when we got to the garnishing stage, I only had enough to do kind of a starburst or an asterisk? I dunno. Nobody cares about garnishes.

Bear in mind that this made a monstrous amount of Pink Stuff. Like, we started with a big bowl, moved up to a bigger bowl, and ended up in a five-gallon canning pot. Pink Stuff for days!


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Followed by the other Smith Family Tradition, the New Year’s Get Fit Resolution

And oh, before I slip all the way into a food coma, yes, I do have a new chapter of my FNAF fanfiction, Everything Is All Right, Part IV: New Faces, Old Bones, uploaded to fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org, so if you’re reading along with those, click your preferred link and check it out. If you still aren’t decided whether or not you want to invest your time reading five MASSIVE books about an abandoned pizza parlor inhabited by animal-shaped robots with a very dark past and one young woman who is determined to uncover it, then perhaps this snippet will encourage you to give it a try! …or chase you off for good.

 

* * *

 

She drove up Coldslip Mountain to the castle of her childhood. The front door was unlocked. The air inside was muggy and stank of old sour food, old sour sweat, and old sour dreams. When she turned on the light, she saw a mess, as it was always a mess, no matter how much she cleaned. She shut the light off and climbed the stairs in the dark. When she reached the second floor, she turned and there was Plushtrap, sitting on his chair under the window at the far end of the hall, next to the attic stairs.

They looked at each other for a long time in silence.

“Who are you?” Ana asked.

Plushtrap heard, but did not answer. Dingy stuffing bled through the tears in his satin skin. His glass eyes gleamed. His metal teeth grinned.

“Come here,” said Ana.

Plushtrap mockingly did not move.

“Come here,” she said again, beckoning. “It’s okay. You can live here, I don’t care. You don’t have to hide it. Just…come here. We’ll watch a movie. I’ll let you pick. You can sleep in my room with me, if you want. You don’t have to be alone, just…stop trying to scare me. I’m not scared. I’m not scared, I’m…tired. I’m too tired for this. Come here.”

Plushtrap did nothing. Elsewhere in the house, boards creaked, drafts whispered, pipes knocked, but Plushtrap lied and did nothing.

Ana turned away and went to David’s room. She sat on his little-boy bed with the superhero sheets and Foxy’s sword hanging from the post of the headboard and looked at the toys strewn across the floor. For the first time, she thought about cleaning it and the thought was surprisingly painless. David was alive. Faust had told her so, and she hadn’t thought he’d lied, but she hadn’t really believed it. Now she did. Now she had to. David had been taken away after all, not by his father, Erik Metzger, who’d been dead by then anyway, but by CPS, who had found him a father who presumably didn’t kill people and a mother who didn’t take naked pictures of her son for the father’s private enjoyment. He’d grown up somewhere far away. He’d maybe gotten married, maybe had kids, maybe forgot all about Ana and maybe not, but wherever he was, he was alive.

Aunt Easter might be alive out there somewhere too, and maybe she’d even gotten some rehab and some self-respect and had made herself at least a shadow of the person Ana had once thought she was. Maybe not. But at least she wasn’t a question mark anymore, whatever else she was. And Ana was never going to find her crumpled and forgotten behind one of the boxes in the basement, not here and not at Freddy’s.

She thought she would sit awake all night, thinking about that, but what else was there to think about, really? It was over. There were no more mysteries left to solve. Ana lay down on David’s musty sheets and slept, and it was a good sleep, restful and dreamless and so deep, she never heard the door creak open.

The man in the purple uniform stood for a short while in the doorway of this forbidden place, watching her, but it was late and he was tired, too. He crept over to the bed, bent and pressed a Mama-kiss on Ana’s cheek, shyly whispering, “I love you.”

Ana, still sleeping, stirred and mumbled, “Love you too. G’night.”

The man smiled and kissed her again, a Daddy-kiss, right on the lips. Ana rolled over (grimacing without waking at the taste of his breath) and the man in the purple uniform left her and went yawning downstairs and through the clock to his own bed, taking Plushtrap with him.

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Serial Saturday Update

Yup, still sick. I almost gave this week’s upload a miss, but at the last minute, I mustered all my strength to check my bag of damns and found one left to give. It was small and fragile as a soap bubble, but it got me through the editing and formatting so that you all can have one more chapter of my FNAF Fanfiction, Everything Is All Right, Part IV: New Faces, Old Bones. It’s also over 10k words long, about twice the length of a normal person’s average chapter (I think my average runs about 7k), so I hope you all enjoy it, because I may sleep through the entirety of next week.

As further indication of just how sick I am, I only just yesterday realized that we are halfway through November, which is National Novel Writer’s Month, or NaNoWriMo, and although I have been diligently applying myself to the time-honored challenge of writing an entire novel, or 50k words on an existing one (can I just take a moment to say that’s cute that so many people think 50k is a novel’s worth of words?), I have completely forgotten to post my progress here on this blog. Having a place to post stuff like that was one of the reasons I even made a blog. So I apologize for that and I’ll get that progress bar up there changed as soon as I publish this post.

But while we’re on the subject, is anyone out there participating in NaNoWriMo this year? What are you working on? How’s your progress? Does having a communal goal like NaNoWriMo motivate you to write more or, like me, does it feel like a stressful deadline you will inevitably fail year after year after year after year? And if anyone out there has always wanted to turn that idea that’s been rattling around int he back of your head into a book, but you just need that one more push, allow me to issue a personal challenge! Since the month is half over, we’ll trim the goal down to just 25k words. That’s less than 2k words a day, which is less than half an average-length chapter. If you jump in, be sure to check back in and let me know how you did!

And in the meantime, keep reading along with EIAR p IV: NF,OB (for some reason, I thought an acronym would be easier than typing it all out again, but now that I’m looking at it, it’s just ridiculous) over at fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org, whichever platform you prefer. If you’re not reading this yet, either because you’re not sure what it’s about or you’re waiting for the whole thing to be complete before you start, I’ll just leave you with a teaser from the latest chapter, and I’ll see you all next week!

 

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The security camera followed her into the hall and went ahead of her into the dining room, lighting up the show stage where Bonnie sat playing his guitar. Her day pack was next to him. He picked it up before she even asked and showed her the tablet inside before zipping it up—she could feel the sound inside her goddamn sinuses—and holding it out. She went to get it and even though the camera was aimed right the hell at him and she had a hell of a long walk on a hot desert road ahead of her, she sat down beside him. Closing her eyes against the camera’s painful stare, she let the weight of the world push her into Bonnie until her aching head came to rest on his shoulder.

“Sorry about last night,” she whispered, because she had to say it. That was the one thing that could not wait.

He nodded, servos whining like mosquitoes in her skull, and did his best to match her whisper, not very successfully. “You okay?”

“Hangover. I deserve it. I’ll live. But listen…listen…” Intensely aware of Freddy looming just off to one side, Ana carefully said, “I’m sorry for what I did…but I’m not sorry I came. You were just what I needed. Thanks for being here.”

“I kind of have to be here. I can’t leave.” His arm twitched and eased around her. “But for once, I’m glad I was. You coming back tonight?”

She nodded, managing a dry smile. “I have an appointment for Freddy to yell at me.”

Freddy vented his cooling system.

“I can’t stay, but I’ll be back this weekend and we can catch a movie then,” she concluded and gave her pack, and the tablet within it, a pat. “Hopefully a better movie. How did It Follows end?”

“As far as I know, it’s still following.”

“Yeah, I figured. Sorry I fell asleep on you.”

“Hey, don’t be sorry. If I could have, I would have too.”

Her hangover faded enough to allow a small, soundless laugh. “I guess I don’t have to ask what you thought of it.”

Bonnie shrugged. “I’m not cerebral enough, I guess. What’d you think of it?”

“I only saw the first bit, so maybe I’m missing something…but that was a physical entity, right? Like, that was the whole deal, that it doesn’t walk through walls or teleport, it has to physically come after you?”

“Right, but it’s a demon, so I don’t think it can be killed.”

“Yeah, okay, but you don’t have to kill it,” said Ana. “Just stop it.”

“Wasn’t that the point? That even if you have sex with someone else, it’ll eventually get them and come back for you?” Bonnie must have caught a reaction from Freddy, because he glanced over and added, “Yeah, that was literally the movie. And it won awards.” To Ana, he asked, “How do you stop something that can’t die? Just lock it in the basement?”

Freddy grunted sharply.

“No,” said Ana. “That’s how you get sequels, Bon. Some doped-up dumbass always opens the door. So what you do is, you dig a hole, put an open oil drum at the bottom, cover it over with a towel or some shit, then stand there and be bait until the stupid thing walks over the top of it and falls in. You drop the lid on the oil drum, clamp it down, drill a few holes in the lid, and fill the thing with concrete. That shit will set up even underwater and it only gets stronger with age. At this point, you can bury it or you can drop it in a lake or whatever you want to do with it, and as long as no one sees you and gets curious about what you’re dumping, odds are good that thing is going to stay lost.”

“But the demon isn’t going to die.”

“It isn’t going to get out, either. By the time the barrel rusts out, that concrete will be set so hard, Superman with a jackhammer couldn’t break it apart. And even if he could, everyone alive when that demon was last moseying around will be dead. It’s got nobody to follow. It can sit down there until the end of time thinking about all the teenagers having sweaty teenaged sex without him. Problem fucking solved.”

The camera made a small noise, adjusting its focus.

Bonnie looked at it, then looked at Ana and said, “What if it doesn’t fit in an oil drum?”

Freddy grunted again, his most severe knock-it-off grunt.

“Everybody fits in an oil drum,” said Ana, climbing to her feet and dragging her pack onto her shoulder. “I could fit two people in an oil drum. Hell, I could fit you in an oil drum, if I’ve got the time and a few power tools handy.”

Serial Saturday Update

I’m still sick, so it’s going to be another quick post, but I’d like to start with a big Thank You to everyone who wished me Happy Birthday and Get Well Soon and all that feel-good jazz last week. It helps, you know. Maybe not in any scientific, observable sense, but as the person who sits around feeling like the scum scraped off a cave troll’s teeth and wiped on the wall, only to be licked off by another cave troll because cave trolls are disgusting, it helps just to know that the whole damn world is not made up of how rotten you feel right now. So thank you. I want to think I’m over the worst of it, but I take a long, long time to recover from anything. My immune system likes to work out it self-esteem issues like one of Those People on Facebook who posts a check-in from the ER and then follows up with a dozen posts saying everything sucks and they don’t want to talk about it. Like, you’re sort of concerned but also sort of annoyed and the more they do it, the harder it is to take it seriously, but unlike actual people on Facebook, you can’t just block posts from your immune system or you’ll wake up one day with a massive bronchial infection.

But I digress. It’s Family Game Night here at the Smomestead and they let me pick the game!

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It was Withered Freddy with the Freddy Mask in Party Room 1, if you were curious.

It’s been a long time since I’ve even played the regular Clue and I have to admit that, even though I won, mostly the game just made me want to watch the movie, which if you’ve never seen it, is one of the funniest movies of all time. Admittedly, I have something of a soft spot for Tim Curry (I even liked Congo), so your mileage may vary. I vividly remember legit falling off the couch and lying insensible on the living room floor, just holding my stomach and laughing until I nearly wet ’em the first time I saw this movie. It maybe helps that I was 12, but it still gets some giggles out of me after all these years and hundreds of rewatches.

But I digress. The whole point of tonight’s post is to let everyone know that the latest chapter of my FNAF fanfiction, Everything Is All Right, Part IV: New Faces, Old Bones is up and ready to read over at fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org, so if you’re reading along, head on over and check it out. If you’re still undecided and think a excerpt might help you make up your mind about whether or not to invest your time in a five-book series based on Scott Cawthon’s horror-game breakout hit, Five Nights at Freddy’s, then you’re in luck!

See you next week!

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“What’s crawled up Bon’s tailpipe now, do ye reckon?” Foxy asked, when the silence got too heavy to hold.

“Someone Ana works with has been giving her trouble,” Freddy growled, moving over to peer into the spotlight in the East Hall. The camera there promptly shut off and didn’t come on again anywhere obvious.

“What kind o’ trouble?”

“Bad enough that she told me about it.” Freddy grunted, now heading for the West Hall door. “Not bad enough to do anything about it. Not then, anyway, but it would seem he has since stepped up his game…He’s in the Party Room. He’s watching her.”

“Ye surprised?” Foxy asked, overwhelmingly unconcerned. “Pretty girl, more’n half-insensible. Just his type.”

Freddy grunted.

“What do ye mean, ‘stepped up’?” Foxy asked, watching him from the corner of his so-casual eye. “Push n’ shove? Sticks n’ stones? Pitching a bloke in the quarry under cover o’ darkness?”

“One can only hope, but I doubt it. She’s afraid she’ll lose her job. Then again, she’s lost it before. Once she sobers up, she’ll take it in stride, but Bonnie will probably run hot the rest of the night, so no matter what he says when he comes back, you mind your manners and don’t make a bad situation worse.”

Foxy placed his good hand over the spot where humans kept their hearts, his eyes innocent-wide. “Ye wound me, man!”

“Don’t. It’s not funny.” Freddy shut the door and came back to the stage to pick up the bottle—Bon’s bottle. He grunted and carried it away to the kitchen, calling back, “Bonnie goes black too easily these days. With Ana out of the room, he won’t try as hard to control himself. He’s right on the edge already. Don’t push him.”

Foxy nodded like he was listening, although he couldn’t rightly see Ana being so tore up by losing her grass-cutting privileges as to come all the way out here to cry in her beer over it. Or cry on Bon’s shoulder. Not that she needed much of a reason to snuggle up on Bonnie in the past, but that was before the two of them had split, if they even had. Foxy had never been with a woman long enough to split from one, but even he knew that when one turns up after midnight to ‘watch a movie’ in a bloke’s lap, she was demonstrating a certain willingness to reconcile, if only for the night.

And what had he done about it, the long-eared git? Nothing, that’s what. Hell, if she’d boldly asked him for a screw, old Bon would have gone politely off to fetch one from her toolbox. Idiot.

“Foxy.”

“Mm?”

Freddy appeared sternly in the kitchen doorway. “I said don’t push him.”

“I heard ye. I’ll be on me best behavior, I promise.” Foxy walked over to the stage and picked up Ana’s tablet, still spitting colors and noise. He’d asked her that night, the night she may or may not remember, what might have been if only she’d met him before Bonnie. Well, doubtless there’d be many differences, but one thing was for damn sure: she wouldn’t have spent the night watching movies if she’d come knocking on Foxy’s cabin door.

Serial Saturday Update and Still Sick

This flu is kicking my ass. However, I didn’t let it stop me from voting in the early election and I won’t let it stop me from uploading the latest chapter of my Five Nights at Freddy’s fanfiction, Everything Is All Right, Part IV: New Faces, Old Bones. I WILL let it stop me from blogging, though. So in lieu of any actual content, please enjoy this picture of my furry assistant editor, Dobby, who sucks her thumb when she’s sleepy.

 

 

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She is freaking adorable, isn’t she?

Is that enough content? Probably not. Okay, here’s a painting I did, following The Art Sherpa’s excellent Beholder tutorial. If you paint, or if you’ve ever wanted to paint, I encourage you all to follow that link, grab some brushes and take a whack at it. Cinnamon has a way of breaking even the most intimidating projects down into manageable bites.

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I think he’s very handsome, but then, beauty IS in the eye of the Beholder.

That seems like enough content for a blog post. Okay, here is my snippet for the latest chapter, which you can find over at fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org. Enjoy, while I celebrate with a shot of Nyquil and go back to bed.

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“There’s this guy at work,” Ana began haltingly.

“Same guy from the other day or a different one?”

“Same guy. So you know we got into it a bit. And by ‘we’, I mean ‘he’, and by ‘got into it’, I mean ‘called me a whore’, and by ‘a bit’, I mean ‘a lot’. After I got called out, he stayed there alone and threw a snit. When Shelly and the crew got back, the front office was trashed. And here’s where things start to get confused. It’s literally all anyone is talking about, but damned if I can find two people who can agree on exactly what went down. But the sheriff told me some of it and I guess I can trust what he’s got to say, and Hageman’s sister’s cousin’s girlfriend typed up the coroner’s notes, so I guess we can trust that angle too, and when it comes right down to it, the rest is all flavor text.”

“You’re losing me, baby girl. Why don’t we forget about who did the talking and just focus on what they were saying? The guy left the office and…and you said ‘coroner’, so now he’s dead? Is that what you’re saying?”

She nodded.

“Okay,” said Bonnie after a puzzled moment. “Call me an asshole, but so what? He was a jerk. Why do you care?”

“I don’t care that he died, I care how he died.”

Bonnie couldn’t see how that made any difference unless she’d been the one to do it, and clearly she hadn’t, but he went along with it. “Don’t keep me in suspense, baby girl. How did he die?”

“He got his head bashed in. All the way in.” She looked at him, her eyes troubled and sunk in shadows. “I heard the words ‘bone pudding’ today. All my years of living with Rider, and I have never heard a thing like that before. Someone broke Big Paulie’s head down into bone pudding.”

Happy Birthday to Me!

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That’s right, it’s my birthday, and I leave it to you to decide whether that was a Treat on Fate’s part, or a Trick. I’m celebrating at home today with my family and a box of tissues, because Fate is funny but unimaginative and for the third freaking year in a row, I am sick on my birthday. I am presently snuggled up on the couch with my furry assistant editor, watching our daytime Halloween traditions of Nightmare Before Christmas (also a Christmas tradition, a New Year’s tradition, an Easter tradition and a National Talk Like A Pirate Day tradition), Coraline, and ParaNorman. I may do a little painting and then watch Creepy Caught on Camera videos on Youtube until it gets dark, when the fun really starts, as the fun so often does at the Smomestead.

So as another tallymark is invisibly carved on the wall of my life, let me extend a personal thanks to all of you. I write because I love to write, but YOU are the ones who make it possible for me to do what I love for a living, and it is no exaggeration to say that I am here today to enjoy spider cake because of your support. So Happy Birthday to Me, and many happy returns to each and every one of you.

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Have a slice of cake! 

Serial Saturday Update and Happy Halloween!

So as some of you may know, I was away from home last weekend, which is why there was no upload/blog post, but I’m back now and likely to remain firmly rooted to my home until after the holidays, because holiday travel sucks. The one great thing about chronic illness is that I always have that crutch to fall back on as an excuse why I can’t go see anyone, when the reality is, I’d just really, really rather stay home and drink cocoa and watch TV.

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Drats. My secret is out.

 

I have to admit, I feel a little bad for all the traveling I did, because even though I had a BLAST seeing my friends and getting up to shenanigans, I had plans for all the spooky blogging I was going to do this month and pretty much bailed on most of it. Still, I have one more chance, so let’s talk about my favorite Horror movies.

I was going to make this list about my favorite HALLOWEEN movies, which is a completely different thing from HORROR movies. Nightmare Before Christmas is not a scary movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it just wouldn’t be Halloween without it. Or Christmas. Or Easter. Oh hell, who am I kidding? I watch that movie at least once a week. And still wave my arms during the La-la-las. So don’t look at this list to plan your Halloween party, because you’re not going to find Ghostbusters or Sleepy Hollow. Also don’t look at this list to find critically acclaimed films like It Follows. In my unpopular opinion, a good horror movie isn’t supposed to make you think, it’s supposed to look behind you when you know damned well you’re alone in that long, dark, dimly lit hall. And again, there are ten items on this list for the simple reason that ten is a nice round number for a list, and they are not structured in any particular order.

Ringu/The Ring

I might as well start off with another unpopular opinion, just to let y’all know who you’re dealing with, and say that I do not prefer one over the other. To me, a movie is not inherently ‘better’ just because it came first, or because it’s in subtitles…or because it’s in English or because it may have more money thrown at production. Horror is built out of the harmonious juxtaposition of atmosphere, acting and a solid story. Both Ringu and The Ring score high on those fronts. They are NOT interchangeable, but they are both damned good movies. And the movie is freaking terrifying. It combines so many of my least favorite things: grotesque immortality, little kids, and technology. Plus, no spoilers, but the way the little boy asks his mother, “Why did you do that?” will NEVER not give me chills. It is the ultimate kick in the gut feeling, when you think you done right, but you really fucked up. Big time.

Ju-on/The Grudge

I swear this is not going to just be a list of Japanese horror films, although I probably could do one. Without even looking over at my DVD collection, certain flicks leap to mind: Audition, Suicide Club, the Guinea Pig series, Marebito, Dark Water, Kwaidan…but no. We are just going to focus on a few movies that fucked me up and left a lasting emotional scar, and man, this one was THE ONE. Although I saw The Grudge before I saw Ju-on, and technically it is the one that really got into my head, I have the feeling it’s only because I saw it first and not because it’s ‘better’. Really, as with the above entry, I do not favor one over the other…for the first film. Honestly, the American sequels are HOT GARBAGE, but I could binge-watch Ju-on movies all night and even if none of them have quite the same punch as the first one, they ALL bring something disturbing to the table.

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The guests that want to sit at the table are even more disturbing.

Jeepers Creepers

I’m going to take some flack for this, but whatever. It’s a fun horror movie, with one of the best modern movie monsters. I don’t know, there’s just something about that reveal of his House of Pain…the time it must have taken to do it…the artistry…the planning…The Creeper himself never speaks, so those scenes are all we get of his personality. I find that kind of atmospheric storytelling fascinating. Even the sequel is pretty good (although the third one is only just barely Meh). Also, this was the first movie I had seen in a long time (I saw it in 2001) to really effortlessly blend horror and humor. Prior to Jeepers Creepers, horror and humor were more along the Nightmare on Elm Street path, with a Bad Guy cracking wise in between slaughtering teens, and yeah, that was also pretty groundbreaking in its time, but it gets old fast when either the monster (or the joke writer) can’t pull it off. The Creeper never speaks at all, but he clearly has a sense of humor, one born of tremendous age and (over)confidence. That was fun. The protagonists also had some humorous moments (most memorably the line: “You know that part in the movie where the hero does something stupid and everyone hates them for it? THIS IS IT!”) but NOT to an unrealistic degree, where they end up cracking jokes where screams are more appropriate. I wouldn’t see that happen again with the same success until Cabin In the Woods.

The House on Haunted Hill (1999)

I have said before that on certain movies, when it comes to remakes, I don’t value one over the other. They may be very different movies, but they can both be very good. However, on certain OTHER movies…Okay, real talk here. A lot of older movies, classic movies, movies that are usually upheld as the gold standard to which all modern movies are held to and fall short of…these are terrible movies. I’m sorry, but they are. And the original The House on Haunted Hill is a prime example of a truly, TRULY terrible horror movie. Watch it without the nostalgia glasses and it’s got a solid zero, with not a single shiver of fear to be wrung from it, no matter how high you are. It’s just a bad movie. Now watch the 1999 remake. Still a bad movie, but bad in a glorious, fun, spooky way. There’s Geoffrey Rush, pretending to be Vincent Price, sniping away at Famke Janssen in some of the best bitchy love-to-hate-you dialogue ever put on screen. There’s GREAT atmosphere, a splash of gore and a smidge of humor. Plus Sweet Dreams, which was my introduction to Marilyn Manson, back in the day.

The Thing (1982)

For the longest time in the dark ages before internet, I thought I had imagined this movie. We used to rent movies almost every weekend, and it is no exaggeration to say that I saw every horror movie rented by every shop within 10 miles of my house. That’s probably not as impressive as it sounds, since we were rural, but still, I saw a LOT of horror movies and The Thing was SO different, SO intense and completely mind-blowing, that I seriously thought I had to have dreamed it. It wasn’t until the SyFy Channel’s….Was it the SyFy Channel?…I don’t know, but SOME basic cable channel released their version of the 100 best horror movies of all time and I watched that thing and wrote them all down, just in case there was one I missed (their taste was debatable; the original The House on Haunted Hill was on there, as was the original Haunting of Hill House, and both are extremely unscary), and The Thing was there. And it all came flooding back to me. By then, of course, the internet WAS a thing, and I immediately got a DVD and watched it again, and what do you know? That movie is STILL freaking terrifying. It’s probably even worse, now that I’m old enough to really appreciate the mounting paranoia as much as the jaw-dropping effects (and they still hold up. I don’t hate on CGI, as a rule, but when I watch The Thing’s prequel, there is really NO comparison).

Alien

Man, it’s hard to find a good horror alien movie. There are plenty of intense sci-fi movies with aliens, and plenty of soft sci-fantasy monster movies, but sitting here in my living room, staring at my massive DVD collection, I genuinely cannot think of another really good, scary horror movie with aliens. 10 Cloverfield Lane was amazing, but more of a psychological thriller, as the aliens were just tacked on at the end. The Fourth Kind was awesome, but doesn’t really hold up to repeated viewing. The Thing is obviously incredible, since it’s on this list, but it’s less an ‘alien’ movie and more of a ‘monster’ movie. Alien is one of a very, very few movies that solidly embraces both its sci-fi and horror elements equally. The result feels like a haunted house movie in space, and it’s freaking amazing, STILL, after all these years. It’s a slow burn, but once the alien bursts onto the scene (heh), it does not let up until the credits roll.

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Even this adorable little fella is still pretty awful. (And yes, I own one) 

Train to Busan

I only saw this movie a month or two ago, having heard about it for two years. I admit, I put off seeing it because of my disappointment with certain other overhyped STD PSAs masquerading as horror movies. And I want to be very clear about something right up front: I’m not a fan of zombie movies. I’d probably have trouble coming up with a list of even ten good ones. Just ten! Out of the hundreds, nay, thousands of zombie movies that exist. They’re the U-bend of the horror toilet, where the very worst crap collects. Alas, my problem is, I know that when they’re done right, they can be amazing, so I keep watching them and they keep being generally boring and unimaginative, and I have to sit and seethe my way through them, slowly building up scorn and frustration until I explode in a 600 page rant that somehow turns into my best-selling book. But seriously, Train to Busan is an awesome zombie movie, combining 28 Days Later and Snakes On A Plane into a genuinely scary and weirdly emotional movie.

The Fly (1986)

I know what I said about those nostalgia glasses, and I’m aware that much of my love for this movie comes from the fact that it was my introduction to my favorite horror movie genre–body horror–but even so, I can watch this movie again right this instant and still get the chills. Okay, the special effects are showing some age, but they’re not unwatchable. I’ve seen plenty of worse effects in way more recent movies (looking at you, The Mummy II). Also, the concept of the movie is still pretty terrifying to me. Brundle wasn’t ‘wrong’. He wasn’t even doing anything particularly hinky in his experiments. He wasn’t ‘asking for it’ and he didn’t ‘deserve’ it. A fly got in the pod. That’s it. That’s all. A fly got in. Do you know how many times a fly has gotten into my house and I didn’t know it? Like, a lot of times! And the only reason my face didn’t fall off is because I wasn’t testing teleportation pods at the time! There’s a big deal made out of the fact that Brundle wasn’t ready to test and didn’t have permission, or whatever, but honestly, this could have happened anywhere. Flies get in. That’s what they do.

Martyrs

I don’t have any other what I would consider ‘gore’ movies on this list, because for the most part, a gore movie doesn’t have anything else to carry it except that squick-factor. Braindead (Dead/Alive) is a GREAT movie and I love it (watched it last week, in fact, out of sentiment), but it only works on that level. It’s not a horror movie in the sense that I don’t feel horror at any point watching it, or terror or even suspense. I’m just giggly and grossed out. Great movie, again, I’m not bashing it, but it’s not a horror movie. There are, of course, fantastic thinking-man’s gore movies, like Drag Me to Hell, Cabin Fever, and Hostel. These are primarily there for the gross out, but also have a story to tell and tap into a very real fear (eating disorders, infection and abduction). Then you have movies like Saw, with the concept of torture used as an instrument of rehabilitation, or, more accurately, used by someone who genuinely believes that’s what they’re doing, and that is one hell of a difference. If, on the thinking-man’s gore spectrum, Hostel is a 1 and Saw is a 5, then Martyrs is a solid 10. The horror is there from the start, as a fairly standard abduction movie, and then comes the torture porn, but it’s the ending that really elevates this movie to an art.

Jaws

Man, there was a rousing debate here in the ol’ Smomestead tonight, trying to decide what was ‘horror’ as opposed to merely ‘suspense’ or ‘scary’, but the one film that everyone agreed should make this list was Jaws. In a lot of ways, it hits the same notes as The Fly. It’s not a monster. Its victims don’t ‘deserve’ to die. Ignoring the sequels, it’s not malicious or vengeful or even all that smart. It’s just a big, hungry shark. And it’s the reason my sister wouldn’t go into the ocean, lakes, creeks, public swimming pools or large mud puddles until she was 30. And as much as I tease her about that, I have to admit, that when that movie comes on, no matter where or how far into the film it is, I stop and watch it. It not only still holds up after all these years, but still GRIPS. And it’s one of the few movies where I can honestly say it’s better than the book.

 

Making this list has been a challenge, not to come up with ten horror movies I would recommend to all my readers, but to limit myself to ten and not to write a hundred pages’ review of each one. But there is another reason for this blog post and I suppose I should get to it. The latest chapter of my FNAF fanfic, Everything is All Right is up on fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org, and those of you who missed it last week will be happy to know that it’s an extra long chapter, like twice as long, like I should have cut it in half, but what the heck. I owe you. So head on over and check it out, and if you don’t have the time to read a whole double-sized chapter or if you’re a newcomer here and want to know what this whole fanfic thing is about, here’s a snippet to whet your appetite! Enjoy, and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

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The old man slept for hours and eventually, so did Ana. At some point in the night, one of the staff brought a blanket and covered her over against the chill of the air conditioning. She roused now and then, but never really woke. The sounds and smells of the hospital unearthed long-buried memories in which she was small and hurt, but safe. She slept easily, her breaths aligned to the rhythmic whirr of the IV pump, and dreamed she was a child with a broken shoulder and then a teenager with the pneumonia that had been her runner-up prize for surviving her mother’s attempt to murder her. Nurses came and went, often exchanging a few words with one another or with the patient, if he happened to be awake for their rounds. Ana slept through dozens of these exchanges before the sound of a voice softly speaking woke her, first into the pizzeria, because that she thought it was Freddy talking, and finally into reality.

Once she’d dragged her eyes open and convinced them to focus, she saw Mr. Faust sitting up in bed with the amenities menu open in his lap. He saw her, said, “That will be all, thank you,” to the phone in his other hand and set it aside. “Will you do me the honor of joining me for breakfast, Miss Stark?”

“Breakfast? You even allowed to eat? You were NPO last night.”

“As a precautionary measure, yes. I was cleared earlier this morning following a lengthy evaluation. You don’t recall?”

“I don’t think I woke up for it.”

“No? I thought you had,” he remarked, “especially as you distinctly said, quote, ‘If I’ve got to wake all the way up to tell you to shut your muzzle, I’m going to kick your plastic ass,’ as I was speaking with the doctor.” It was difficult to know for sure, since he was already wearing those damned dark glasses, but she thought he glanced at her, the kind of glance that feels as heavy as a touch. “Plastic?”

She shrugged. “Apparently, Sleep-Me thought you’d had one of those newfangled ass replacements we’ve all heard about. I don’t know, I was out of it. Sorry about that.”

He accepted that with a nod and perused the menu for several seconds before saying, “And muzzle?”

Ana was waiting for that and had her innocently quizzical face polished up and ready to go. “What, you don’t say that here? Shut your muzzle? Huh. I guess it’s a West Coast thing,” she said, making a point of checking her watch, only to see that it was a quarter to six already. “Sorry, I’m going to be late for work as it is. No, wait!” Pressing the heels of her hands over her eyes, she sorted back through the events of the previous day to the scene at the office when she’d received her unexpected promotion. “No, I guess I’m not. New hours. Barely any hours. What the hell am I going to do with myself all day?”

He raised the menu a little higher, as if in answer.

“Sure,” said Ana, getting up and stretching the stiffness out of her limbs. “Get me some coffee and something to take the taste of hospital coffee out of my mouth. But then I got to get going, seriously. I am not showing up to work in yesterday’s clothes. I get enough side-eye around here without giving people reasons to wonder where I’ve been all night.”

“Tell them the truth.”

“What, that I’ve been with you all night?” She had to laugh, unaware that she would soon be saying just that to Sheriff Zabrinsky and most of the rest of her co-workers, not only willingly but with a shell-shocked sort of gratitude that on the one night she needed it, she actually had an alibi. For now, the thought only gave her a good-humored flare of annoyance for the gossip mills of Mammon. “Yeah, I get enough of that, too.”