Thomas R. Clark's Blog, page 5
October 4, 2024
September 30, 2024
August 12, 2024
who else likes some black sabbath?
‘Symptom of the Universe: A Horror Tribute to Black Sabbath,’ an Upcoming Anthology I Have a Short Story to be Published In
August 2, 2024
A REVIEW FROM AN ICON
Reviews, August 2024
July 25, 2024
TENTATIVE RE-RELEASE SCHEDULE OF MY BODY OF WORK
Learning experiences suck sometimes. And sometimes, they’ll send you to the next level. I wondered for years why my books where having trouble finding retailers… and then I discovered I was fucking up. I’ve made the same mistake so many of my peers made before me… and it’s hurt my ability to reach new readers.
So, going forward all of my books will have their own ISBNs and will be published through IngramSpark under my own imprint, NIGHTSWAN PRESS (My titles under the aegis of St. Rooster Books will remain as such, however they will be getting brand new ISBNs!). This will open my titles to all bookstores across the land… My next title to be graced as such will be the forthcoming WHIRLWIND, my velociraptor feeding frenzy book… Here’s a sneak peak at the cover.
The next thing coming with my name in it is the inaugural issue of MEMENTO MORI INK from Crystal Lake Publishing. I’m the senior columnist for the periodical. My column, ROOTS OF APATHY, was started a number of years ago in the HOUSE OF STITCHED magazine. It explores the origins of cosmic horror and how it relates to us today. The column features interviews with experts in the cosmic horror sub-genre. This time around we’re talking to Kristin Dearborn about he ALIEN franchise and its cosmic horror. Art is by James P. McCampbell… and this is the place holder. Wait until you see the art we used!
My Stitched Smile Publications titles will now be presented as a joint venture between SSP and NIGHTSWAN PRESS. I am keeping the SSP imprint on them for nostalgia, and a lasting thank you to Lisa and her press. GOOD BOY will be re-released for its 5th anniversary, as well, and will include a new introduction by Lisa Vasquez and a new dedication, to my late dog Diego, who was the model for the book’s art. It will be in MASS MARKET PAPERBACK SIZE! BELLA’S BOYS will follow and I expect to re-release this alongside the 31st anniversary of the storm it is set during. THE DEATH LIST will not only be re-released, it will have updated cover art and “remixed” with a new ending… setting up the currently untitled joint sequel to it and BELLA’S BOYS, already planned in my pipeline. Here’s a sneak peak at the new cover for THE DEATH LIST. You may notice it has a little designator on it…
Regarding my St. Rooster Books titles, I expressed my displeasure with my edit of A PRAYER FROM THE DEAD with Tim… and he’s allowing me to make a revision. The re-release of this will include an expanded narrative, delving more into the story’s villain, The Templar. This may or may not include more art from Stephanie Murr. THE GOD PROVIDES and SUMMERHOME will remain untouched, outside of getting new ISBNs.
Miguel and I are meeting next week to discuss volume 2 of CURSES. I can neither confirm or deny an indie comic distributor is interested in distributing this title.
What’s to come? Well, once I finish WHIRLWIND (cover by Matt Wildasin), I am finishing THE WITCH OF NOVEMBER (with a cover by Lynne Hansen!), the sequel/remake of THE GOD PROVIDES. After that I have a folk horror collection slated for release in 2025 (WE ARE 13 with a cover from Francois Vaillancourt!) and 2 novel length books planned, THE TELLING OF THE BEES (cover by Don Noble!) and a yet to be titled wild animals gone on a killing spree in the suburbs tale. And yes, I still plan to write GOOD GIRL, the sequel to GOOD BOY as it’s lingering at the back of my mind…
The rest of the year is busy for me at appearances. I’ll be at KILLERCON in Austin Texas… as a plebe. So, yeah, I’ll be there but not as one of the attractions. This will be followed by TBRCon in Knoxville, TN September 6-8, sharing a table with the one and only Chase Will. On the Fall equinox… Saturday 9/21/24… I will be at PAGAN PRIDE DAY with the Wandering Wordsmiths, the largest single day neo-pagan gathering on the east coast. Saturday 9/28/24 I will be appearing with a selection of other authors at the Richfield Springs Library, in Richfield Springs NY. 10/19 I will be at the Schenevus Shriek Show in Schenevus, NY. And the big one… 10/26 as CREEPY CUSE returns! Don’t forget that the weekend of November 1-3, you can see me and Miguel at Twin Tiers Comic Con in Horseheads, NY. Then a couple weeks later, The Wandering Wordsmiths and I will be part of the Small Business Saturday event at Lasnicki’s Landscaping in Hastings, NY.
Thanks to all of you who read my words and come to see me at events, I can’t tell you how grateful I am.
July 3, 2024
CURSES and Creating something different
As creators we’re always trying to push the envelope, to make something new that’s different and stands out. How does one accomplish this? Well, what I’ve discovered over the decades I’ve spent on this planet, is it’s not about being first with something. It’s about doing something the way YOU thought it should be done.
I’ve always loved the classic black and white comic magazines that hovered outside the comic’s code. Warren’s CREEPY, VAMPIRELLA, and EERIE stood out at the top. They’ve since evolved into SHUDDER and VAMPIRESS CARMILLA, published by Warrant and I love them, too.
Ritchie Blackmore, the famed guitarist of Deep Purple and Rainbow fame, once was asked about how he writes. In so many words, he replied that he often takes something else he’s heard, and makes it in his own image. And so do I. For example, my Splatterfolk world is heavily influenced by the World of Darkness RPG setting, which was in turn inspired by Nancy A. Collins’ Pretender World. I pay homage to them in my prose and by continuing the tradition of Urban and Rural fantasy with my stories.
A couple years ago I met Miguel Amaro at what we in the creative industry call a “Shindy Con” in Conklin, NY. For those in the dark, the term Shindy, or “Shitty Indy,” was born on the indy wrestling scene, and refers to a back yard wrestling promotion. By contrast, a Shindy Con is a pop culture convention that is fundamentally nothing more than half of a vendor room from a larger convention with the 4th Zombie from Episode 6 of a Canceled TV Show and an extra from a 70 year old Sci-Fi movie as your main draws. We became buddies super fast. Our politics lined up, as did your motivations and goals.
I told him and his partner about a story I had written, how proud I was of it. And a couple months later, I ran into him at another event. Miguel presented me with the first piece of fan art I’d ever gotten, a portrait of the Beaver Goddess from the story I’d told him about previously, LEAVING THE BEAVER. As you can see, it’s fucking gorgeous.
So we started talking about potential collaborations. This led to him and I sharing ideas with one another. It culminated in a flash piece we worked on together and sent to Warrant Publishing. As it sat with them for months. We both got frustrated, and knowing we had a planned convention appearance together, I decided to follow Ritchie Blackmore’s advice… and do something MY WAY.
I envisioned a digest, combining aspects of those old black and white zines with prose stories and accompanying inspirational art. I sent Miguel a script I had written for THE CURSE OF KATIE ELDER some years ago. He loved it… and drew it. Then I sent him a script for the opening chapter of the treatment he proposed to me, BLOOD HARVEST, now renamed THE HARROWING. Miguel had some pieces he’d done with his alter-ego, Marv the Minion, so we made Marv the mascot of the digest.
The title came next. I wanted to keep it in line with the aesthetic of those old zines, so a one word title was in order. Since I primarily write folk horror, giving it a folk-horrory name seemed like the right thing to do. And what’s at the heart of many folk horror stories? Curses.
It was a perfect title for this.
So we rushed and rushed and Miguel worked his fingers to the bone to get this done, I worked overtime getting the lettering and printing done in time. And we did, we got it done literally with days to spare.
And now you can enjoy the first volume in the comfort of your home through Godless in digital as a pdf. I have a limited number of the first run of hard copies available for $12.00 plus $3.00 for shipping. We only made 21 of them, so they will be VERY collectible. In August retailers nationwide will be able to obtain copies to sell!
𝗖𝗨𝗥𝗦𝗘𝗦… 𝗚𝗥𝗔𝗣𝗛𝗜𝗖… 𝗚𝗥𝗔𝗣𝗛𝗜𝗖 𝗖𝗨𝗥𝗦𝗘𝗦!
CURSES: VOLUME 1.
CURSES is a throwback horror digest, and this bad boy is JAM-PACKED with short stories. Prose and illustrated.
You hear that, suckas? Drawings and words. Words and drawings. The ARTS!
It contains…
The first chapters of The Curse of Katie Elder
The first chapters of The Harrowing
Flash art piece Down by the Sea
Flash art piece Transformation
The story Leaving the Beaver!
BEAVER!
Be sure and digest CURSES: VOLUME 1 today! Get it?
𝗚𝗘𝗧 𝗖𝗨𝗥𝗦𝗘𝗦 𝗡𝗢𝗪!
Curses (Volume 1) by Thomas R. Clark and Miguel Amaro𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗣 𝗧𝗛𝗢𝗠𝗔𝗦 𝗥. 𝗖𝗟𝗔𝗥𝗞
Thomas R Clark𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗣 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗗𝗥𝗢𝗣
The Drop: All New ReleasesCurses (Volume 1) by Thomas R. Clark and Miguel Amaro
CURSES – a carnographic digest hosted by Marv the Minion and Madame Nightswan… a call back to the classic black and white horror publications of the past! Featuring short stories in prose and art form, with stories by Thomas R Clark and art by Miguel Amaro. Volume 1 contains the first chapters of THE CURSE OF KATIE ELDER and THE HARROWING, as well as the flash art pieces DOWN BY THE SEA and TRANSFORMATION, and the written story, LEAVING THE BEAVER.
𝗚𝗘𝗧 𝗖𝗨𝗥𝗦𝗘𝗦 𝗡𝗢𝗪!
Curses (Volume 1) by Thomas R. Clark and Miguel Amaro𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗣 𝗧𝗛𝗢𝗠𝗔𝗦 𝗥. 𝗖𝗟𝗔𝗥𝗞
Thomas R Clark𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗣 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗗𝗥𝗢𝗣
The Drop: All New Releases#godless #godlesshorrrors #horror #horrorbooks #indiehorror #extremehorror #hardcorehorror #horrobookstagram #thomasrclark #miguelamaro
July 1, 2024
May 11, 2024
March 25, 2024
ONCE UPON A TIME WITH SATAN
A live television broadcast in 1977 goes horribly wrong, unleashing evil into the nation’s living rooms. Johnny Carson rival Jack Delroy hosts a syndicated talk show ‘Night Owls’ that has long been a trusted companion to insomniacs around the country. However, ratings for the show have plummeted since the tragic death of Jack’s beloved wife. Desperate to turn his fortunes around, on October 31st, 1977, Jack plans a Halloween special like no other- unaware he is about to unleash evil into the living rooms of America.
Directed by: Colin Cairnes & Cameron Cairnes
Written by: Colin Cairnes & Cameron Cairnes
Starring:
David Dastmalchian
Laura Gordon
Ian Bliss
Fayssal Bazzi
Ingrid Torelli
Rhys Auteri
Georgina Haig
Josh Quong Tart
We’re at a weird flux in entertainment, both in how we consume it and how it’s manufactured. The wake of a writer’s and actor’s strike focused not only on residuals, but on the use of AI in film, is still impacting film and television production. Movies are now advertised as being only in cinemas, a result of the Covid pandemic. But now the turn around time between a theatrical release and a streaming window is four weeks or less. Which allows many people to just wait until they can enjoy it in the sanctity of their own homes. Streaming services are actually getting producer credits on some films they’ve earmarked for their platform. And Shudder is at the top of the list.
Shudder’s track record with exposing us to quality horror can’t be denied, in particular foreign films like Argentina’s WHEN EVIL LURKS, or the polarizing indie affair SKINAMARINK. Now, last year I started hearing rumblings of a new “found footage” horror film focused on the recently restored taping of a syndicated seventies talk show, wherein a live demonic possession was allegedly documented. It was called LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL, and the first trailer I saw for it hooked me immediately. And seeing Shudder’s name in the credits made me giddy.
I finally got the opportunity to see the anticipated film last week and contributed to its sixth place run at the weekend box office, $43 million behind the big budget love letter to Ivan Reitman in GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE. Still, with only $2.8 million it became IFC’s highest grossing theatrical debut and more than made back its less than $2 million budget. LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL was everything I’d hoped it would be, and more, I’m happy to say. On the surface, it’s mostly an expose on how to write horror, both good… and bad (we’ll touch on the bad stuff later!). The good? There is plenty of it. The acting, especially star David Dastmalchian, shines. Each guest and behind the scenes crew are believable in their archetypal roles, from slimy producer to the co-host announcer. It has frequent call backs to set ups in the dialogue or visuals. It’s paced well, like a good television show. Fundamentally, it’s the ninety-minute TV version of ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD.
How so, you ask? That movie was a month long and a little pretentious. I can’t argue either of those statements. But, more than anyone, Quentin Tarantino has long had his fingers on the pulse of Hollywood. His love letter to the history of the entertainment capital basking under the sunlight of California, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, was one of the most polarizing of his career, seamlessly blending history and fiction into a brilliant film that encapsulates everything there was to know about filmmaking during the era of the Seventies. It’s his love letter to this portion of pop culture. And Colin Cairnes & Cameron Cairnes have done the same thing for seventies TV with LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL. It’s not their love letter to the seventies, it’s for all of Gen-X.
You see, I’m a child of this era, the Seventies. Born in 1967, my first recollections are of 1970s television and I am a product of that era’s popular culture. HR Puffinstuff. Saturday morning cartoons with School House Rock. Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. The Night Stalker. The Six Million Dollar Man. Cryptids. It was the time of variety shows like Donnie & Marie, or Glen Camplbell, or Sonny & Cher. Oh, and the reign of talk shows from daytime, like Phil Donahue and Mike Douglas; to the night, when the likes of Dick Cavett, Merv Griffin, or the Tonight Show, with Johnny Carson battled for late night supremacy. I also vividly remember the Satanic Panic, which started around THE EXORCIST and AMITYVILLE HORROR. Or how about the frequent psychics and paranormal investigators who showed up on many of the talk shows, variety shows, and game shows of this era; from Uri Gellar’s spoon bending to Ed & Lorraine Warren’s bullshit.
LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL seamlessly weaves all of these aspects together in its world building. The late night talk show wars, the conspiracies of the Bohemian Grove, Anton LeVay and the Satanic Panic. They’re all here. Perhaps my most endearing memory from that era was one of the inspirations for this film? I mean could THE PAUL LYNDE HOLIDAY SPECIAL be something that spoke to the Cairnes Brothers? Afterall, it featured not one, but two Halloween witches (H&R Puffentstuff’s Witchy Poo and the Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West!), a gay leading man pretending to be straight, and.. well… KISS.
The film works… until it doesn’t, and its failures are causing some people to scratch their heads, but they can’t figure out why. I try to keep these spoiler free, but I can’t do so without revealing some of the plot. So, yeah, we’ve all heard there’s AI usage in this film. The problem we have with this movie isn’t its use of Generative AI (#TalkAboutThatLater). Many of my peers who are good writers are being vocal about something leaving them unsettled with the film’s climax. I’m here to explain what their subconscious is screaming about. It’s bad writing, and a trap new writers often fall into.
Our problem is… LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL is unfaithful. It cheats with its writing. You see, typically a movie cheats when it doesn’t foreshadow the twist in the opening. Cheating of this sort is glaring, and people will notice it. As a result they won’t be happy with the film. Now, I’m happy to say LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL does foreshadow its ending, and does it well. We’re experiencing a different type of narrative infidelity here. See, we’re supposed to be watching an unadulterated television taping with a documentary style opening, followed by the master tapes of the show itself.
And LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL is not always faithful to that framing.
Just like the sexual revolution of the seventies, this movie cheats like a swinger on a business trip. So why and how does it cheat? It mixes reality and fantasy at two points in the film, breaking the established narrative framing. In book terms, it jumps heads, and in two important scenes – the hypnosis scene and the climax. And though we see the actual footage of the early hypnotism scene play out (were we all “hypnotized?” and sharing a group hallucination – this can work in a movie but it will only work once!), we only see the outcome of the climax after a trip into host Jack’s head and how his mind interprets the events… only to show the end results of what the audience witnessed. And though we were ready for this ending, because the film does a wonderful job of setting it up in the documentary portion, in particular the ties between the Grove, the Cult of Abraxas, Lilly, and Jack; I think the climax might’ve worked better if we saw BOTH what was in his head and what the viewing audience may have witnessed. But I’m really nitpicking about this. The climax is a visual feast with some jaw dropping, head splitting, neck twisting moments.
#LetsTalkAboutThatNow… Within this film are a trio of images that are clearly AI. Why the Cairnes brothers would use this when they have all this wonderful imagery throughout the movie simply blows my mind. Yeah, I can understand experimenting with AI, same as you might want to experiment with your sexuality, but some things you should keep behind closed doors. And experimentation of this nature is one of those things you don’t want to do in public cos all it’s going to do is get people whispering about it. There was plenty of backlash for Disney+ using Generative AI to create the opening credits for SECRET INVASION, so they can’t say a precedent wasn’t set.
None of the placards even match the aesthetic established by the film. It was cheaply done (for free!) and done on the cheap and it did its best to take me out of the narrative… but I didn’t allow it to ruin the film for me. I think the greater issue at hand is my eyes are trained to see AI art, to catch those little uncanny valley nuances every piece of AI art has. The average American is not, and it’s not just consumers of entertainment, as exemplified by the number of professionals in the writing communities who can’t tell the difference. I hate to say it, but Generative AI art and writing are here to stay, no matter how much I and many of my peers adamantly fight against its use. I’ve since learned this addition was a post production, post SXSW screening edit, done by the directors, not the handy work of an overzealous editor as I had hoped. It was a bullshit move by the creators.
IS THIS GENERATIVE AI ART?
Should this ruin your enjoyment of the movie? I hope not. As I said before, though I noticed them and saw them for what they were, it didn’t soil the film for me. Hell, even the cheating didn’t ruin this movie for me. The performances are top notch and the film is made so well otherwise, I can forgive both, and so can you. Don’t wait for Shudder on this one, even though it hits the streamer on April 19th. If we want more movies like this, the only way we’re going to get them in theaters is if people go. Hell, it may have come in sixth place, but on Sunday it made a devilish $666,666.00… need I say more?
