Jonathan Janz's Blog, page 32
December 13, 2012
The Walking Dead
As you know by now, I’m always late to the party. Like Stephen King’s Roland Deschain, I’m a plodder. And I’m fine with that. I’ve never bloomed early for anything, so why start now?
So because the show is in its third season and many of my friends and acquaintances have been badgering me to join the party, I’ve finally started watching The Walking Dead.
And brothers and sisters, I can’t tell you how happy I am that I did.
Tearjerker
The above image is a bit of a spoiler, I guess, for the uninitiated, but for most of you who haven’t been living under a rock like I have for the past couple years, you’ll know why I chose this picture to share. I’ll also admit to watching the above scene about thirty or forty times and crying steadily the whole time I did. Yep, I’m a softie, but I can live with that.
I’m sure I’ll revisit this fine show on my blog at a later date. For now, I’ll just say…I’m into it now. Big time.
December 3, 2012
Musical Wisdom: “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night”
You know, despite the fact that this post is going to be brief (I’m adhering to my own non-epic creed!), I’ve been sitting on it for more than two weeks. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what to say—I did and I do. And it wasn’t completely about not having the time, though that’s always part of it for me.
So why, you might ask (or you might not—I wouldn’t, if I were you…this intro is way too wishy-washy and unengaging, and frankly, it’s only going downhill due to my parenthetical asides and my rampant em dashophilia), have I not blogged about it until tonight?
Because money don’t mat—
Sorry.
No, the reason is that I hated typing “2 Night” rather than “tonight.”
No, seriously. That’s what’s been holding me up. The thought of turning “you” into “u” and “because” or even “cause” into “cuz” makes me want to run shrieking into the night (2 Night).
But that’s how Prince (or whatever he calls himself these days…I think at the time of this particularly ditty he was demanding to be called a symbol, which he’d appropriated from some 17th century Burmese ornithology guide) wrote his lyrics, and who am I to change them? So without further ado, here’s the chorus:
“Money don’t matter 2 night (don’t matter)
It sure didn’t matter yesterday
Just when u think u’ve got more than enough
That’s when it all up and flies away
That’s when u find out that u’re better off
Makin’ sure your soul’s alright (soul’s alright)
Cuz money didn’t matter yesterday, (don’t matter)
and it sure don’t matter 2 night”
A Wise Man…and a Great Singer
And if you listen to the video linked below and peruse the above lyrics, you’ll probably say to yourself, what’s the point? That money can lead people astray? That we often place commerce over love? That more lives are destroyed because of greed than any other of the deadly sins?
To all this questions, I say…
Well…yeah.
I also say that we don’t say it enough. It’s the danger of living in a capitalist society (which I’m all for, by the way—this isn’t some anti-capitalist screed after all…Do you want money? Yeah, me 2.).
But what I’m talking about here isn’t just the big picture greed, the Bernie Madoff kind of greed, the I’ll throw away your life savings so I can own another jet and a small island and the people on it and proclaim myself the Almighty Bastard of Greed kind of greed. No, I’m talking more about the kind of greed that makes us all daydream about the stuff that we don’t have.
Notice all those italics? Yep, they were necessary as well as being hard on the eyes (2 for one!). See, here’s how greed works for me (maybe you can relate): I think of something I want (like an addition on my house, a car that’s not three sizes too small for my body, a new set of ballet slippers), and then I imagine having it, and then I realize I don’t have it, and then I get sad because I don’t have it, and…and…and…
AND ALL THE WHILE, LIFE IS HAPPENING RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!!!!!
Borrowed from the 1694 Burmese Bird Field Guide
In moments like these (the realization, not the fruitless and embarrassingly wistful imagining) I want to time travel back to five seconds ago, smack my slack face with a wet towel, and scream, “DON’T YOU GET IT? YOU HAVE EVERY SINGLE THING YOU NEED! YOU HAVE A FAMILY! YOU’RE HEALTHY! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW FREAKING LUCKY YOU ARE?!?!?
Whew. I’ve never used so many caps. I think I injured something. But you get the point. For me, greed is the thing that takes me out of the now, and the now is what’s happening now, and the now is what I need to appreciate. Every second I spend pining away about something I don’t really need is a second I’m not paying attention to my family or writing a book or perfecting my battement lent (only we ballet enthusiasts get that reference—wink!).
So let’s resolve 2-gether, right now, to stop wasting time wanting what we don’t need. And to spend more time loving those who need our love.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Prince…
http://www.jukebo.com/prince/music-clip,money-don-t-matter-2-night,zkz50.html
A Rare Myanmar Bird (“The Little Red Corvette”)
November 25, 2012
Every Post Doesn’t Have to Be Epic
I just realized this.
I’ve been experiencing the urge to blog quite a bit lately, but I simply haven’t had the time. Working on three different novels in addition to everything else I normally do—
Okay, I’ll stop. But you get me, don’t you? I’m going to work on blogging more but maybe blogging shorter. I’d still like to blog well, but…well, I’m tired of using blog as a verb, and if I’m tired of it, you’re probably ready to slam your head into your monitor.
So to prevent you from doing that, I’ll leave you with this, the only aspect of the post that’s epic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERTT_sv8sV0
Oh, and the obligatory image of something else epic:
FREEDOM!!!!!!!
October 28, 2012
Born in Halloween (or One of the Many Reasons I Write Horror)
From time to time folks will ask me why I write horror. I seem very nice, they say, so the fact that such ghastly things would spring forth from my imagination perplexes them. This doesn’t explain everything…but it’s a start.
♦
“Boys and girls of every age
Wouldn’t you like to see something strange?”
I never had a chance. Or a choice.
When I was about two-years-old, my family (such as it was) moved to a tiny house on the edge of a tiny town. The house (such as it was) resembled a pair of dilapidated shanties connected by a makeshift breezeway. There was a basement of sorts, complete with a dank odor and a slanted floor that funneled toward a hole full of black water. Because I was such a brave youth, my nightmares concerning that brackish pit only haunted me infrequently (roughly six nights a week).
On one side of the house lay an ancient, sprawling graveyard; on the other side lived our only neighbors—a woman rumored to be insane and a man I rarely saw. A hoary, lightless forest lurked at the rim of our backyard, and my only recollection of the road in front of our house is the way a speeding car murdered my dog the day before I began kindergarten. To top it off, though I had an awesome mother and a very affectionate cat, my biological father (until the divorce occurred when I was four) enforced a no-talking rule in the house that tended to have a disadvantageous effect on my morale. After the divorce there came a seemingly endless assortment of peeping toms (my mom was young and pretty) and drunken, uninvited suitors. Many were the nights when I’d glance out my bedroom window and discover a leering, whiskered face hoping to catch a glimpse of my mother.
Hearing all of these facts, you might think I had an unpleasant childhood.
Actually, it was perfect.
The Neighbors
Because I was alone so often, I had a great deal of time to explore. This exploration was partially physical—I loved to wander through the graveyard and often dared myself to venture into the forest—but to an even greater degree, the exploration was psychological. I wondered about the bodies buried underfoot. I wondered about the lives they’d led, the deeds they’d done, and the manner in which their time on earth had ended. Sometimes I wondered what would happen if the ground under my sneakers would suddenly…shift. Or how terrifying it would be if a fleshless finger caressed my ankle.
My imagination couldn’t have found more fertile ground than those dreary woods and that decaying graveyard. And never were those places more evocative than on October 31st.
Dark Beauty
My most vivid Halloween memories—other than the Halloweens I’ve shared with my wife and young children—took place amongst the tombstones and the looming sycamores enshrouding my childhood home. When I was nine-years-old, a couple friends and I dared each other to enter the graveyard at dusk. We were yearning for a unique Halloween thrill, and though we weren’t pursued by shambling zombies or attacked by a machete-wielding maniac, we did eventually find ourselves in an alarmingly lonesome corner of the cemetery.
Two things happened in that deepening twilight (which had transformed from a brilliant orange to the hue of coagulating blood) that would later find their way into my books. The first event occurred when we peered into the woods and happened to spot the weed-strewn remains of an old house. The structure had evidently burned down decades before and was now a scorched, gaping scar in the earth. Within the cinderblock walls of the basement I discerned blackened boards, charred roof shingles, and what looked eerily like a little girl’s white dress. This summer I included those details in my work-in-progress, a novel I hope to have done in a few months.
My Playground
The other sight that transfixed me that evening was a huge, black, ornately carved headstone that had been half-swallowed by the encroaching forest. By this time it was nearly full dark, and my friends were antsy to return to my house. For most of the evening I had been the jumpiest member of our trio, my imagination and the sepulchral setting collaborating to send me into a perpetual state of breathless terror. But when my gaze happened upon that solitary black marker, all my childish worries faded away. I speculated about who was buried there. I wondered what the person had done to incur such wrath, for on the gravestone were spray-painted several obscenities (“Burn in hell” being the least offensive), and in several places someone had apparently assaulted the stone with a hammer and chisel.
That large black gravestone became one of the central images in my novel HOUSE OF SKIN. Paul Carver, my protagonist, wanders into a similar forest graveyard and becomes entranced by the ornate patterns and the terrible desecrations of a similar gravestone. Paul edges closer and lays a hand on the cold marker. And then…someone speaks to him.
Halloween can breathe life into us as well as reminding us of death. It can also give inspiration a child who has seen too many terrors at too young an age.
That nine-year-old is still inside me. He helped me write HOUSE OF SKIN.
And he wants you to lay your hand on that cold gravestone too.
October 22, 2012
Danish Love, The Library Journal, Poisonous Plants, and More
Here’s a review my novel HOUSE OF SKIN recently received from Trauma Magazine, the preeminent horror magazine in Denmark. It’s written in Danish. Can you read Danish? Because I sure as heckfire can’t.
So for the first time, I used Google Translator (apparently the rest of the world discovered this handy-dandy device about twelve years ago—my own grandma made fun of me for never having used it before, and she still uses a butter churn and a phonograph…okay, so maybe she doesn’t, but I figured it would sound slightly funnier if I said she did. I was wrong? Well, STEP OFF!) to decipher the ominous hieroglyphs I found at the above link. I still suspect that the O with a diagonal slashmark through it is some sort of Copenhagen gang symbol, but my wife insists I’m being paranoid.
(She’ll keep thinking that right up until some crazed Dane lobs a Carlsberg Molotov cocktail through our front window. If it happens, you guys are my witnesses. Track down the offending gangbanger and bring him to justice!)
Anywho, when I was finally able to decipher the weird messages that Google Translator vomited forth—one of which was “Eats toes groovy Crap! ours hemlock” (apparently the verb-direct object-adjective-interjection-possessive pronoun-poisonous plant sentence structure is wildly popular among Danish speakers)—I came up with the following snippets:
Hemlock
“Janz can write and I do not think it is any coincidence that Stephen King came repeatedly to mind along the way. First it was the depth and flow of 11/22/63 and then family drama and thrill of Rose Red.”
“It’s deep without being tedious and unnecessary and it has a great rhythm throughout. It develops gradually and becomes more and more intense and creepy page by page.”
“Beautiful!”
The above praise came courtesy of Mr. Daniel Henriksen, who was kind enough to find me on Facebook and share the link to the article. I’d post a picture of Daniel here, but I don’t want to involve him in the explosive Copenhagen gangland plot. So instead I’ll post a picture of Stephen King (because there’s never a bad time to pay homage to the greatest author of all time):
Author of The Wind through the Keyhole, which is making me wish there were eighty Dark Tower books rather than eight
In related news, The Library Journal reviewed HOUSE OF SKIN as well and had this to say…
“The author of The Sorrows revives one of horror’s most beloved motifs—the haunted house—to good effect in a tale of star-crossed lovers in thrall to a ruthless ghost. VERDICT: Reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, this should please readers who appreciate a good haunting.”
I’d link to the whole review, but apparently you have to be a librarian or a freemason to access it. Since I’m not a librarian and gave up my life of freemasonry months ago, I’m of little help. Trust me, though. It’s a very positive review. In fact, were I to choose two books for HOUSE OF SKIN to be compared to, I’d choose Ghost Story and The Haunting of Hill House. Okay, maybe Charlotte’s Web would be tied for second, but I’ll take the two mentioned in the review. There aren’t very many spiders in my novel. Or spiderweb art.
Must…not…cry. Must…not…
So what else? Oh, the novel (HOUSE OF SKIN—Have you noticed the repeated use of ALL CAPS for the title? That’s because I want you to feel like I’m shouting at you. And it’s also what we in the business call “branding.” Or maybe it’s called something else, like “being pretentious”) currently has six Amazon reviews, all of which are five stars; the book also has eight ratings on Goodreads, six of which are five stars, with a four-star and a three-star thrown in (apparently the bribe money didn’t arrive in time in the latter two cases). So I’ll leave you with this thought:
Read HOUSE OF SKIN. See what all the Danes are talking about. And the librarians.
October 20, 2012
My Top Seven Still-to-Be-Released Films of 2012 (okay, one is from 2013)
Yo. If you’ve ever visited here, you know I’m a cinephile—er, cineaste—I mean, I LIKE MOVIES, OKAY?!?!?
Actually, I love them. If they’re done well. Here are the five (okay, I cheated and put seven) that have me the most geeked.
7. Hitchcock
It’s fashionable to say that Anthony Hopkins is wrong for the role of the eponymous character. For my part, his performance in the trailer looks spot-on. The same for Helen Mirren, who might just garner an Oscar nom, and Scarlett Johansson whose casting as Janet Leigh appears inspired. Those who’ve read The Making of Psycho say it reads like a novel. Again, judging only from the trailer, I have to say they might be right.
♦
6. Les Miserables
What excites me about this movie is also what worries me. There is no spoken dialogue in this film. It’s all sung. That could be captivating, or it could be mind-numbing. Regardless of how well Tom Hooper’s (The King’s Speech) musical works, I’m looking forward to seeing how Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, and especially Russell Crowe (president of the People-Underrate-My-Acting-Ability-Because-of-My-Sometimes-Boorish-Behavior Club) perform.
♦
5. Skyfall
I loved Casino Royale. In it Daniel Craig gave a nuanced, wonderful performance. Many folks want to forget Quantum of Solace, but that’s easy for me to do. I never saw it. Hah!
Not only does Craig look to be in excellent form in Skyfall, but the casting of Javier Bardem as his nemesis has me very intrigued. I still have nightmares about Anton Chighur from No Country for Old Men. In fact, let’s move on now so I can sleep at night.
♦
4. Only God Forgives (*Actually to be released in March of 2013, but since I’d heard it was going to come out this year, I decided to include it. You know, because it’s always great to base a list on hearsay)
There were several great films in 2011 (The Artist, The Descendants, Midnight in Paris, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Moneyball), but the film I keep coming back to is Drive. In future years, I believe folks will shake their heads in disbelief that a decent film like Winter’s Bone was nominated for Best Picture while a sleek, visionary classic like Drive was almost totally ignored. Only God Forgives sounds even bloodier than Drive, so I’m sure it’ll be ignored, too, but I for one am very thankful we get to see Ryan Gosling work with Nicolas Wendig Refn again.
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Tarantino is either amazing (Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds, Reservoir Dogs), merely good (Death Proof), or somewhere in between (Kill Bill: Volume 1). Here’s betting on something just south of Pulp Fiction but still more than good enough to snag several Oscar noms. Not that that’s why Tarantino does what he does (and that’s probably why he does what he does so wonderfully). Jamie Foxx looks like he’s good in the title role, but it’s Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio that appear to be the scene-stealers.
♦
2. Lincoln
This gets my vote for the movie that will draw the most We’re-Hoping-This-Film-Will-Fail-Because-Everyone-Involved-with-It-Is-So-Talented-and-Reliable detractors. No one is consistently bashed the way that Spielberg is, and that just might be the surest sign that he’s the best director who ever lived. I’d put Hitchcock a close second, but when you look at body of work and the number of truly great films a director has made, I don’t think anyone surpasses Spielberg.
Then there’s Daniel Day-Lewis. Holy cow, does he look great in this. So does Tommy Lee Jones, who’ll be nominated for Best Supporting Actor and has a fighting chance to win. I don’t expect Lincoln to win Best Picture because, like Road to Perdition, people will only see the negative because they hate being told what horse to pull for. But I do expect this film to be outstanding and to stand the test of time.
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1. The Hobbit
My favorite movies are The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I’ve heard a lot of folks say that splitting The Hobbit into three films is one big money grab on the part of Peter Jackson and the studio. To that I say, “Grab away!” I’m all for awesome and creative people taking my money. It’s why I didn’t feel bad the other night spending thirteen bucks for a short Stephen King Dark Tower infix (titled The Wind through the Keyhole and thus far proving worth ten times the amount I spent on it). It’s why guys like Jackson, Tarantino, Spielberg, and Scorsese can have my money (such as it is) whenever they like.
I also can’t wait to see Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins.
♦
And that’s a wrap! What a great year for film it has already been, and what a great group of movies there is still waiting to be seen. I didn’t mention the Robert Zemeckis/Denzel Washington collaboration Flight or half a dozen others because, well, I need to do other things. So on that rather lame note, I’ll conclude.
May the Precious be with you. (YES! I one-upped my previous lameness!)
October 14, 2012
In Defense of Richard Laymon
I could be wrong—in fact, the odds are for it—but I don’t believe I’ve written a blog post about Richard Laymon yet.
And that’s a crying shame. The guy was one of the best writers in horror history—yep, I said it—and he has been immeasurably influential in our genre. More, he’s been a huge influence on me and my writing. More than any other author whose work I repeatedly pick up for enjoyment and learning—yep, I said that too—Laymon eschews the pretty-sounding phrase and the flowery word in the hope that his reader will always remain firmly entrenched in the story.
What a concept.
That isn’t to say that a highbrow literary stylist can’t also totally immerse a reader and do so with eight syllable words and metaphors of depthless profundity—he or she can. And sometimes I want that as a reader. I detest the notion that a tale can’t be both literary and absorbing. I love Shakespeare, for instance. No, I’m not kidding. The Bard was a wordsmith of the highest order to be sure, but he was also a gripping teller of tales. So when I’m in the mood to be dazzled by words while I lose myself in a fictional world, I pick up Othello or The Tempest. Really. I do.
My Most Recent Beach Read
But sometimes I just want to hear a really fast-paced story penned by a guy who values pace and POV above all. That’s when I pick up Laymon.
The sad thing is, though, that folks who agree with the notion that high-falutin’ literature can be spellbinding are frequently the same snooty aesthetes who sniff at Laymon’s work the way a billionaire rolls his eyes at the idea of paying taxes: “Some might like that sort of thing, but frankly, it’s beneath me.”
See, I’m for any kind of story if done well. Okay, maybe there are a few exceptions. I have trouble reading about children in danger, and I don’t like rape scenes. But I also understand that Pet Sematary and are masterpieces, and that without the aforementioned elements, they wouldn’t be the same stories, would they?
“Under-rated!” *clap clap clap-clap-clap*
So I keep an open mind as a reader, and that’s why Laymon nearly always grabs me. He stays out of the way of his characters, he isn’t afraid to let them do things that would make a convict blush, and his novels rarely fail to hold me all the way through to the end. Sometimes, as in Island or The Cellar, I find myself gasping at the final line.
What makes me gasp is often the depravity of Laymon’s characters. This is one of the anti-Laymon crowd’s favorite talking points: because men frequently behave like beasts in Laymon’s books, Laymon himself had to be a misogynistic fiend. Because, you know, men never treat women badly in the real world. Nope, we’re all a bunch of sensitive knights errant galloping around trying to one-up each other in our neverending quest to treat the opposite gender kindly. Right.
Or perhaps Laymon understood what evil men are capable of and often wrote about it. Couldn’t be that, could it?
I guess the thing that really bothers me about this criticism is the notion that if Writer A’s characters eat human flesh, then Writer A must secretly harbor that desire, too. Call me crazy, but I’ve always thought that one could critique and even pan an author’s work without suggesting the author himself is a sex-crazed sociopath. But you’d never know it while reading some of the Laymon reviews. Never mind that everyone who ever came into contact with the man speaks endlessly about his kindness, his gentleness, his generosity, and his irreproachable character. Never mind that these are, after all, works of fiction, and not his secret diary.
My Favorite Laymon
Another criticism leveled at Laymon (and if you’re wondering about what critics I’m addressing, I guess it’s a faceless amalgam of some of the negative Goodreads and Amazon reviews I’ve read) is how action-heavy his novels are and how little character development there is. This is a legitimate criticism if your tastes run toward character-driven works. In Laymon stories we don’t often get fifteen-page flashbacks about formative childhood traumas, nor does he spend much time at all talking about how a character got to where he or she is.
But that’s because his stories are concerned with what’s happening now. Laymon stuffs us bodily into the point-of-view character’s flesh and refuses to let us grow complacent. He propels us forward to see what the character sees, to feel what the character feels, and to sense what the character senses. He takes us through the character’s logic, her fears, her rationalizations.
And he does what he does exceedingly well. There’s a scene near the end of Toy Story in which Woody lights a rocket that’s been strapped to Buzz Lightyear‘s back (reading some of the Goodreads reviews, you get the impression many readers envision Richard Laymon as Sid, the vicious miscreant responsible for the aforementioned rocket). When the rocket ignites, Woody is barely able to hang on.
That’s the kind of pace Richard Laymon created. Some don’t like that breakneck speed; some like to stroll along the sidewalk taking in the sights rather than blast down the middle of the street at a delirious speed. But it takes a skillful and talented writer to produce that kind of thrust, and whether you like his stuff or not, Laymon was indeed that writer. And I firmly believe that delivering that kind of pace requires as much expertise as does constructing a great plot or crafting an interesting antagonist.
Pay attention to the rocket, folks. Not the kid.
The problem is, you’re just going too fast to appreciate it.
So read a Laymon book soon. I recently finished Funland and plan to blog about it before year’s end. Or maybe it’ll be The Woods Are Dark, my very favorite Laymon novel.
And if you happen to check out either of my first two novels (The Sorrows or House of Skin), I sincerely hope you’ll sense a little of his influence in those stories. I’m as proud to be influenced by Laymon as I am to be influenced by M.R. James. Sure, James wrote in a completely different style than Laymon did, but the two men had something in common.
They were both studs. And awesome writers.
M.R. James: Rock Star
October 11, 2012
And now we focus on HOUSE OF SKIN…
I picked up a copy of HOUSE OF SKIN (available now in paperback AND ebook!) from one of my bookcases last night and read the prologue. It’s only two words long:
“She waited.”
The “she” in question is a very scary woman. She might be called a ghost. She might also be called a revenant or an undying creature of deepest evil. Her name is Annabel. I’ve always imagined her as a cross between Nicole Kidman at her iciest…
…and Gwyneth Paltrow at her most mysterious…
…but far more sinister and seductive than those two could ever hope to be.
I’ll be talking about her and more in the coming months. So I’m extending an invitation to all of you to visit my dark house. A place of terror. A place of desire. A place where Annabel reigns…
October 8, 2012
Keith Rommel Shows that Death Has No Mercy in His Second Novel The Lurking Man
Hello again. Keith Rommel has a new book coming out soon, and it has a great title: THE LURKING MAN.
I’ll let Keith take it away now and share with you some specifics about this brand-spanking-new novel!
♦
What happens after we die? Are we given choices based on how we lived our lives? It’s an age-old question pondered by just about everyone.
Author Keith Rommel dared to explore the answer by creating his newest novel The Lurking Man, a story of dark suspense that unmercifully reveals the life of a self-deluded, neglectful mother who caused irreparable damage to her family and ultimately struggles with death as much as life. It’s the second novel in his suspenseful and thrilling Thanatology series that began with the eerie, spine-tingling The Cursed Man.
“Imagine Death knowing your deepest, darkest secrets and all of your private pain,” said Rommel about The Lurking Man. “Now imagine it wants to use what it knows against you so that you bend to its will.”
In The Lurking Man, main character Cailean stands beneath a spotlight in a blinding snowstorm. She has no idea where she is or how she got there, but she senses something moving around her in the darkness outside the light.
When the ominous presence calling himself Sariel makes himself known, he declares that he is Death Incarnate and that Cailean has died. He has taken her to the Aperture, a place between the living and the dead, where he will force her to face the sins of her past in exchange for twenty-four hours of life to try and right her wrongs. But what she must do in return for this precious time is unthinkable.
Rommel’s series is titled due to Thanatology being a study that explores death and dying. Rommel has taken this science to a fictionalized, gothic-style horror level that may leave you breathless and unable to stop your mind from contemplating how you live your own life.
The books are grouped in the series due to the nature of the theme, but each book may be read independently. “Those who read in order will be able to catch glimpses from previous book(s), but it is not dependent upon each individual story,” Rommel said.
The Cursed Man and The Lurking Man are released by Sunbury Press. Book three in the Thanatology series is on schedule for a summer 2013 release. The Cursed Man is currently being considered as a feature film.
Keith Rommel is a native of Long Island, New York and currently lives with his family in Port Saint Lucie, Florida. Rommel is a retail manager and has enjoyed collecting comic books since he was a child (a hobby inspired by a teacher in grade school to help overcome a reading comprehension disability). He enjoys watching the New York Giants and writing how-to articles for other authors.
To learn more about Rommel and his books, please visit http://keithrommel.weebly.com.
BIO, Author Keith Rommel
Keith Rommel is a native of Long Island, New York and currently lives with his family in Port Saint Lucie, Florida. Rommel is a retail manager and has enjoyed collecting comic books since he was a child (a hobby inspired by a teacher in grade school to help overcome a reading comprehension disability).
Rommel is the author of two books in his Thanatology series entitled The Cursed Man and The Lurking Man. The Cursed Man is currently being considered as a feature film. He enjoys offering his experiences to other authors, writing several articles about writing and publishing, and is currently fast at work on the third novel in the Thanatology series which is scheduled for a summer 2013 release.
He also has several other novels in the works. Besides writing, he also enjoys watching the New York Giants, scary stories, and spending time with family.
For more information on Rommel, or his writing, go to http://keithrommel.weebly.com.
Hunter Shea Returns!!!
The blog has been on hiatus while I’ve worked on a billion important things—not that this blog isn’t important! It’s just not as important as taking care of small children with strep throat, grading papers, novel deadlines, and too many other things to count.
Did that sound whiney? Never mind. It did. So ignore it.
But today we have wonderful writer and awesome dude Hunter Shea talking about his latest release SWAMP MONSTER MASSACRE (Doesn’t it sound fun? And bloody?). Which means I’ll let Hunter take it away. Oh, and I’ll be back soon. I promise.
If I survive the Swamp Monster…
Beware…
Man Vs. Monster
By Hunter Shea
Growing up, I was a pretty lucky kid. We had a movie theater two blocks away – the kind that had a balcony and an all-you-can-eat popcorn machine – and a drive-in just a ten mile stroll up the parkway. I was a movie fanatic. Of course, my favorites were the horror movies. From the Jaws/Grizzly double feature to Dawn of the Dead and An American Werewolf in London, I couldn’t get enough.
If you walked into my room when I was about 14, you’d marvel at the collage of scantily clad women (Victoria Principal, Farrah Fawcett, Loni Anderson, etc) mixed with images of classic Universal monsters and gory stills ripped from the pages of Fangoria. It’s all about sex and scares, right?
Two particular movies entranced me to the point of obsession. I couldn’t get enough of them. First came the flick that taught me in space, no one can hear you scream : Alien. A few years later, John Carpenter gave us the best remake of all time, The Thing. I knew the characters of each of those movies as if they were my neighbors. How could I ever forget Dallas, Ash, Macready, Doc Blair, Nauls and Ripley?
With those movies, I fell in love with the concept of stranding a handful of characters in a strange, remote place and pitting them against a terrifying creature that picked them off like M&Ms. In a short amount of time, The Thing and Alien developed very distinct personalities, people you rooted for. It was man vs. monster and all prejudices were thrown out the window.
As a teen, I dreamed of being a filmmaker and making my own man vs. monster flick. OK, so film school never materialized. But I did become a writer. And I finally made my dream come true with my new novella, Swamp Monster Massacre. Here I put 9 unique people (Rooster the criminal, Mick the swarthy airboat captain, Liz & Maddie, the kick-ass sisters) into the Florida Everglades in the dead of summer. Shipwrecked in the deadly swamp, they discover they are very far from alone. A family of mythic creatures – skunk apes, or Bigfoot to most – are set on making sure they don’t make it out alive.
Man and woman vs. towering monsters. The creatures in Swamp Monster Massacre are filled with a terrifyingly human emotion—a merciless lust for vengeance that will paint the trees red with blood.
Care to place some bets on who wins?
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To purchase your copy of SWAMP MONSTER MASSACRE, you can go to one of the following places…
Samhain : http://store.samhainpublishing.com/swamp-monster-massacre-p-7109.html
