Patrick C. Greene's Blog: BEST BLOG EVER!, page 12
November 1, 2013
Culling Forth the Darkness (Again)
GUEST BLOG from Allison M. Dickson
This post coincides with the stare of National Novel Writing Month, the annual November marathon of creative abandon that will result (hopefully, for many) in a completed work of long fiction. I have done this every year since 2008, except I changed things up a little last year. In early October, I had this little book in mind called STRINGS, which was an extension of my short story “The Good Girls.” It was burning so hot in my brain and begging to be written that I decided I couldn’t wait for NaNoWriMo, so I was going to do TWO NaNoWriMos that year instead. Yes, that meant writing STRINGS in October and then start another book in November. MADNESS, I tell you! Especially for someone who is only moderately prolific. If I finish two books a year, I’m doing great for myself.
Well… it didn’t quite work out like I’d hoped. Writing STRINGS was a very dark and challenging thing. It was an obsession. It made me bleed. I had managed to write something like 65,000 words (13,000 additional words were comprised of the short story that I’d started with) in 26 days, and by the time I finished that first draft, I felt like I’d run a double marathon across a bed of hot coals. I didn’t have it in me to start anything again for a while after that, and to be honest it’s been a challenge to get another novel finished ever since then!
Now here I am about to do it again. I am diving back into the world of STRINGS, only this time I’m doing it properly and starting November 1st. I figure maybe my problems getting another book finished revolve around my need to delve back into this world. It’s a bit obsessive. It’s like touching a live wire but being titillated by the shock. Maybe just maybe I’ll have most of a completed first draft of THE MOON GONE DARK by November 30th. I’m very much looking forward to getting started on it. With the current buzz surrounding the book, and with the memory of my most recent STRINGS edit still fresh in my head, the energy just feels right. And I have many lofty ideas in my mind for how I want things to go for the current characters, as well as some new players I want to introduce. I want this story to be bigger than the original. Much bigger. Which is probably why I don’t anticipate finishing it IN November, but we’ll see what happens. If it’s anything at all like the first experience was, it will sink in its teeth like a crocodile and whip me back and forth until its had its fill, leaving me a busted up heap. I’ll likely be sleeping with my face in gravy on Thanksgiving. But that’s well worth it if it makes people react the way they seem to be reacting right now to the first book.
Even though I don’t foresee this being quite as visceral as STRINGS, I promise not to pull any punches. To get into the mood, I’m going to embrace the cloudy and rainy late fall weather we’ve been having lately. I’m going to be listening to a lot of dark and moody music and watching some gritty movies. I may even pick up HAUNTED by Chuck Palahniuk for a little more depraved literary inspiration. Either way, a shadow is getting ready to fall across my heart again. I’ll see you all again in the light on the other side.
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Bio: Allison M. Dickson lives in Dayton, Ohio with her husband and two kids, and she has been writing since she could hold pencil to paper. It’s only in recent years that she started treating the craft as a career. After earning a few small publishing credits, she started selling her short stories online, where she gained a decent following with short stories, including her bestselling titles “Dust” and “Vermin.” She soon caught the attention of author and visionary Vincent Hobbes, and her relationship with Hobbes End Publishing solidified with her two contributions to the second volume of The Endlands, and finally with the publication of her visceral thriller novel, STRINGS, in October of 2013. Additionally, Hobbes End will be releasing her dystopian science-fiction epic, THE LAST SUPPER, in spring of 2014. When she isn’t writing, she can be found every Thursday on the podcast Creative Commoners, a show she co-hosts with her partners in crime, Chris Armstrong and Corey Bishop.
Website: http://www.allisonmdickson.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/msallied
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authorallisonmdickson
Related articles
Gearing up for NaNoWriMo (ihogeek.com)
Best Horror Fiction of 2013: STRINGS (sekhmetpress.wordpress.com)
Meet Horror Novelist Allison M Dickson (examiner.com)
October 27, 2013
TRICK by Patrick C. Greene
CLICK IMAGE TO BUY
5 STARS ***** This is a great Halloween short, it has all the elements of a great, seasonal read… the spooky local Urban Legend, trick-or-treaters, ghosts, possible severed body parts, and TRICKS!! Read the full review TRICK by Patrick C. Greene.
October 25, 2013
Halloween Flash Fiction for FREE
Back to the Shadows by Patrick C. Greene
At six twenty-two p.m., Pooky yelped and leapt at the door, even before the doorbell rang.
Rising from her rocker and her scrapbook project, Mrs. Edith Tucker shushed the Pomeranian. Answering the door for the first gaggle of trick or treaters, she expressed suitable delight at the pirate, the football player, the home-made mummy, and the two identical suburban princesses from some reality program that she had never watched. Pooky seemed satisfied, for the nonce, that there was no threat, and pranced back to his post at the foot of the old armchair. READ MORE…Halloween Flash Fiction for FREE.
October 20, 2013
PROGENY – Celebrates One Year!
Hey everybody! It’s Jen! Patrick’s wife and biggest fan! Join us this week as we celebrate the one-year anniversary of the release of Patrick’s debut novel, PROGENY! There will be a lot going on, places to visit on the interwebs, interviews and blogs to read, excerpts from the new novel, and some freebies and giveaways you don’t want to miss! The first thing to do is join the Facebook PROGENY event here PROGENY CELEBRATES ONE YEAR! so you don’t miss out on any of the action!
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:
Monday
Oh my goodness – he’s everywhere!
What does the FOX say? Find out HERE,
Jen’s Pen Den review HERE,
and the Fiona Mcvie interview HERE
On Tuesday
you will find the first chapter HERE
and Patrick will be visiting with Armand Rosamilia, author of the Dying Days Zombie series.
On Wednesday
Patrick will be hanging out with VICIOUS author Bryan W. Alaspa.
And on Thursday
you can find him lurking in the darkness with author Allison M Dickson, who will be releasing her debut novel STRINGS on Saturday.
Friday
more Freebies and Giveaways, exciting announcements and another new release!
CLICK HERE FOR PROPER EVENT DANCE MOVES
October 19, 2013
A Chat with Debut Horror Novelist Allison M. Dickson
Reblogged from Sekhmet Press LLC:
REBLOG FROM
The Dark Phantom Review
Q: Congratulations on the release of your latest book, STRINGS. What was your inspiration for it?
A: The book originally began life as a short story I had out for awhile on Amazon called “The Good Girls,” where I told the story of a young and indebted prostitute assigned to visit a horrifying hermit as her final job.
September 6, 2013
The Haunting (and subsequent co-opting) of Hell House
HELL HOUSE is a documentary chronicling the efforts of a Texas church to put on a Christian-themed haunted attraction designed to bring its visitors to the arms of Jesus.
Let me say here: I have a lot of Christian friends.
I find that cliche’d qualifying statement necessary because, A, I tend to be vocal in my criticisms of certain Christian groups, and, B, these criticisms, coupled with my love of dark and subversive art forms, might easily create the impression that I’m anti-Christian.
My Christian friends are generally patient and tolerant with me, more often than not exemplifying the teachings of their namesake. I applaud and appreciate most of their beliefs, even if I don’t necessarily share them.
I recently watched two similarly themed documentaries more or less back-to-back, allowing me a good opportunity to compare and contrast their content.
The first, THE AMERICAN SCREAM, takes us to a neat middle class Massachusetts town, where a trio of home owners, including Victor Barriteau and family, devote their properties, as well as a large portion of their energies and finances, toward creating spectacular home/yard haunts.
The second, HELL HOUSE, chronicles the efforts of a Texas church to put on a Christian-themed haunted attraction designed to bring its visitors to the arms of Jesus.
Both are presented without external narration, more or less allowing the participants to tell their own stories via a combination of interviews and shadowing, as the respective haunts are built essentially from the ground up.
Being a self-professed Halloween enthusiast, who sometimes marvels at the intensity of my own infatuation, I didn’t like seeing Barriteau’s daughter and wife searching for diplomatic ways to relate their own experiences trying to live in the shadow of their patriarch’s obsession. Even less did I like seeing very young children being exposed to Hell House’s bludgeoning presentation of what they’ve more or less arbitrarily decided are the world’s ills.
I can still remember a time when churches put on a “regular” haunted house, where “secular” ghosts and ghouls jumped out at you, and dudes with neutered chainsaws chased you to the parking lot, or at least until they got winded. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but those particular churches at least, seemed more interested in bringing together the community and sprinkling in a little fun between Sundays, whereas these days, the urging of parishioners to vote anti-gay or bemoan their wide-spread imaginary persecution seems higher on the agenda.
There is no sense of fun whatsoever.
Hell House concerns itself with an annual event of the same name; an elaborate, if not particularly imaginative, spookhouse walkthrough consisting of a series of rooms in which scenarios depicting the consequences of various sins such as homosexuality, abortion, drugs, going to raves, etcetera are presented. My bias is already showing, I suppose.
They spend a little time with a good cross section of its cast, from proudly virginal teens, to a hulking-but-gentle family man in the position of raising a family on his own in the wake of a bitter divorce. It’s on this individual level that a viewer might find some angle with which to relate. We are given a glimpse of the auditions, set building, scene-writing, scenario brainstorming (during which the use of fear as a soul-saving tool is heavily emphasized,) proselytizing, and ultimately the event itself.
Apparently, this particular Hell House is the original; the model for thousands of similar “Bible-based” haunted houses staged throughout the country every fall in response to the more mainstream haunted attractions that have become an industry of their own, or a faith-based alternative to the demonic influences presented by your local neighborhood haunt in The American Scream.
See what I did there?
If I may conjecture based my own, admittedly limited research, and some of the banter in ‘House’, it seems that at some point around two decades ago, a faction of charlatans popped up claiming to have had harrowing experiences with “The O-cult,” and “Sat’nists,” that included child (and adult) sacrifice, orgies with demons, a shadow government of devil worshipers, a gay agenda to turn everybody else gay, legitimization of pedophilia (now there’s an irony), the blasphemous movement to treat women as people, ad nauseum.
Halloween was at the top of the list among the many “gateways” leading to devlitry, and ultimately, hell itself. With the introduction of this line of “reason,” churches gave up the traditional haunted house business–until, of course, the advent of Hell House, and the chance to exercise the age-old tradition of taking something deemed “secular” and re-inventing it as a Christian tradition, presumably to keep the youth interested, much like “MegaLife” T-shirts, or the Westboro Church singing their own version of Ozzy’s Crazy Train, or indeed–Halloween itself.
A few of the other obvious differences in the two documentaries:
Hell House charges its patrons Seven dollars a head (absolutely NO REFUNDS), while the home haunts of The American Scream are free of charge.
To the builders and set dressers of House, a Star of David is interchangeable with a so-called “Satanic” pentagram-as long as it’s red.
The behind-the-scenes crew of the Hell House sit in a large control room complete with video monitors of each sin scenario, where they issue commands to the overseers, much like God himself communicating to his angels. This directing team, including the pastor, are not above angrily barking orders at their ‘lieutenants.’
Meanwhile in Massachusetts, our trio of intrepid amateur haunters and their families are out among the masses, essaying good-natured “boos” and sharing smiles and fellowship, if I may use that word, with their community.
And in the end, Barriteau’s dedication seems to have paid off with poignant, karmic beauty that makes me proud of and for him. Meanwhile, the architects of Hell House seem likely to remain, ironically, in the hell of staging their own lurid live action torture porn show, for autumns eternal.
August 30, 2013
FREE ~ LABOR DAY WEEKEND!
***** CLICK IMAGE *****
– What people are saying about the author – “Patrick C. Greene is from the twilight zone, and I am just lucky to be along for the ride! Mr. Greene seems to be one of those authors that you seldom come across. His stories are different and well written. He kind of reminds me of a younger Clive Barker, and that’s a good thing. Yes, I recommend this story and every other bit of fiction he writes!”
August 23, 2013
Re-Blog ~ Review of PROGENY from Darkly Everafter
The book was smooth and super easy to read.
A man, Owen Sterling, buys land from the local Tsalagi tribe with the promise not to sell or exploit the land…
…To my surprise there was a much deeper story than I expected.
****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS****
August 13, 2013
All Aboard The Horror Train! Whoo-Whoo!
Reblogged from Descent Into Slushland:
I was reading a Wall St. Cheat Sheet article this weekend about how the Conjuring, filmed for $20 million dollars, has broken the $100 million dollar mark. Not only that, but it was number one at the box office its opening week. The article goes on to say why this is important to combat the idea that movie studios should concentrate on big budget, tent-pole films (and give readers a supernatural horror top ten list).
August 10, 2013
The Beginning…
“Bizarrely morose…” Amazon Review
An excerpt from the short story
BILL’s BECOMING
By Patrick C. Greene
Bill Travers looked with bitter eyes at his reflection. Since puberty, that time when humans learn to care about such things, Bill had been painfully aware that he was ugly.
His oft-inspected reflection offered no differing opinion, ever. Even in the soft light of the lamp on the bathroom counter, there was little reason for hope.
His face, like his physique, was pear shaped, with jowls that drooped around his neck. His brow was thick and pronounced, hooding his beady, unremarkable eyes and forming a trifurcated, bulgy wrinkle over the bridge of his flat nose. His short, thick neck dropped straight to narrow shoulders. His thick-jointed legs appeared too short for his oval torso. Now that he was hitting his mid-thirties, a potbelly was starting to take shape, and his dark brown and oily hair was beginning to thin and recede.
Over the years, Bill had made many attempts to offset the shortcomings with which nature had blighted him. Regular visits to the gym, a stricter-than-average diet, attention to posture, expensive haircuts by that swishy fella that owned the style shop, good hygiene and skin maintenance had been part of this plan, a plan that ultimately must be considered a failure.
Bill had talked to plastic surgeons, hair transplant experts, personal trainers, dieticians, all of whom were eager to accept his money, but less eager to make concrete promises about what could be done for him. Even then, his job as a forklift driver at the warehouse didn’t provide the cushion to make it viable. If only he didn’t have the house payments.
With no self-esteem and little reason to hope for a good life, Bill hadn’t had the tenacity, the temerity to dare dream of a great life, only an adequate one. No college for Bill, only an unceremonious entry into the blue collar world at the age of fifteen, and no looking back.
Bill had scrimped and saved and used the best elements of his less-than-persuasive personality to establish at least a nice home for himself, one that would help lure a practical wife who could then decorate and furnish it as she pleased.
“I don’t deserve Connie.” he said softly in his meek voice.
Nonetheless, Bill had a detailed plan to ask Connie out on a date, charm her beyond anything she had ever experienced, and be on his way to living a life of considerably less solitude. That plan was well into action.
Bill had been kind, but not overt in his dealings with her. Being that she worked up in the office, largely isolated from the activity in the warehouse, Bill had only a few brief moments a day when he could say hello and ask about her day or make some other innocuous inquiry. Today would be different. Today, Bill would make his move.
He added another spray of designer cologne to the heavy layer he had already applied, hoping it would cover the gas fumes he would accumulate while driving the forklift. Bill tried on his smile at its brightest and most sincere, then toned it down, disappointed as always that he was stuck with stubby teeth that were too far apart. Bill smoothed down the front of his new T-shirt and left for work.
As the morning progressed, Connie walked by several times en route to discussing deliveries with Randy the warehouse supervisor, always returning Bill’s smile and wave. From his perch on the forklift, Bill watched her go, admiring her form, swept up in her graceful movement. At 10:30, Randy signaled a break.
In the breakroom, Bill sat with Randy and senior loader Todd. He broke out an expensive energy bar and went to work on it, washing the tasteless paste down with apple juice.
“When you gonna give up that crap, Bill?” Randy asked.
“What crap?”
“Them health bars. They just give you high-dollar shit, ya know.”
“Maybe I like ‘em.”
“Nobody likes ‘em.” Randy sneered.
“Beats burgers.”
The three of them discussed the work to be done for a few minutes, then Randy excused himself to return to his duties, leaving Bill an opportunity to seek Todd’s advice.
“Hey Todd.”
“Hmm?”
“You know Connie, up in the office?”
“Yep.”
“What do you think?”
“About…?”
“I was thinking about asking her out. Think I should?”
“Hell…why not? You know, Dave went out with her.”
“Oh?”
“Didn’t get nowhere, he said.”
“Well, I just want to ask her out, that’s all. I don’t expect nothin’.”
Todd shrugged. “There you go.”
“So if she went out with Dave, she’ll probably go out with me, right?”
Todd seemed to be studying this for a moment, staring into space. A moment later, it became apparent his eyes were following another of the facility’s female staff members, Jolene, as she ambled past their table. Bill hoped he never seemed this obvious. Jolene certainly didn’t seem impressed.
“Connie, huh? Ask her. Who knows?” Todd finally answered. “Her face aint much, but she’s got a nice rack.”
Bill got up and left without another word. He was bothered that Todd thought of women in this way, yet seemed to have no trouble getting dates. Further, he saw Connie as nothing less than beauty queen material. Certainly, he would be proud to have her on his arm.
The hours between break and lunch passed quickly, thanks in part to the huge shipment that needed organizing, but mostly because Bill thought only of Connie, and their date. The conversation with Todd had been encouraging in an odd way.
Dave, one of the sales reps in the office, was no Brad Pitt himself, though he stood a few rungs above Bill in the looks department. There was reason to believe Connie valued personality over aesthetics.
The bell sounded. Bill hopped down from his lift, and checked his deodorant. Good working order. If he timed it right…
Bill caught Connie coming out of the office and essayed the practiced smile, despite his misgivings about it.
“Hey Connie. Going to lunch?”
“Yeah. Meeting some of the other girls.”
“That’s nice. Say, listen. I was wondering if you were doing anything this weekend?”
Connie took on a mildly panicked expression, darting her eyes away and back very quickly.
“I don’t know, I might be busy. Let me get back to you, okay?”
“Sure. We can go to the steakhouse, or anything you like.”
“Okay. Maybe.”
“Can I call you?”
“Well, I live with my Mom, and she’s not too well. Maybe you better not.”
“Okay, well, that’s fine. Just let me know something tomorrow or the next day.”
“I will. See you later.” With this, Connie made quick strides to the door and was gone.
Being a realist, Bill knew that it hadn’t gone ideally, yet he was hopeful. Somehow Dave had convinced her. Why couldn’t Bill? The rest of the day, he re-lived the encounter, picking out morsels of hope to sustain him until she gave her answer.
The next day, Wednesday, Bill waved and smiled to Connie as always, noticing less enthusiasm than before in her reciprocation. Bill knew the old brush-off when he saw it, yet somehow managed to remain optimistic. When she left early both for lunch and for day’s end, Bill started to get the picture.
On Thursday during break, Bill sat down to be by himself with his energy bar and apple juice, but was joined by Todd, despite his best efforts to be less than sociable.
“Hey man. Heard you asked Connie out.” said Todd while chewing a distressingly gummy-looking ham sandwich.
“Yeah,” responded Bill, turning away from the sight of Todd’s sloppy mastication.
“What’d she say?” asked Todd.
“She just said she’d let me know.”
“Did you say something bad to her?”
Bill searched his memory. “No, I think I was pretty nice”.
“Well, she sure was insulted when I asked her about it.”
“You asked her about it? Why?”
“I just wondered how it went. She practically spit at me.”
As Bill considered this, Todd continued.
“Dave said she was pissed about it on the phone last night, like you was bothering her.”
“On the phone? Dave calls her?” Bill heard his voice rising.
“I think she calls him sometimes.”
“Are they dating?” Bill asked.
“Nope. Dave says just friends.” Todd explained.
“And she was pissed…that I asked her out?”
“Yeah. I figured you musta said something rude, about her tits or something. But that aint like you. Just curious, that’s all.”
Todd went back to the floor, leaving Bill stunned and simmering in a cold soup of humiliation. His worst image of Connie’s feelings for him were exceeded. Connie didn’t just dislike him, she was disgusted by him. Because he was repulsive.
Bill drove home at the pace of a geriatric Floridian, too distracted, too hurt for a quicker clip. Every niggling doubt he ever harbored about himself stampeded to the surface to stake its claim on the rightful territory he had tried to rob.
The formula fell together with wicked ease. Dave was in sales, a suit and tie guy, so that made up for his lack of good looks. Bill had never made it to sales, because his appearance and reserved personality held him back. Connie was appalled that Bill asked her out, probably because that made her feel like she was as unattractive as Bill himself. And God forbid, Bill had made it known to others in the warehouse that he was interested, embarrassing Connie among her peers.
Poor Connie, Bill thought. I’m so sorry I put you through that.
In the safety and privacy of his home, Bill’s reflection scowled miserably at him, enhancing his ugliness, mocking him with its earnestness. Bill gave himself to the pain he felt, the worthlessness he knew was his lot. To end it, to be finished with this shell that was his prison.
Not an option. He cursed his own cowardice in being unable to end his life.
He had heard from some smartass that if you stare at your own reflection long enough, you could go mad. That was damn sure preferable to the reality that tormented him. So Bill leaned forward and stared hard, though he was offended and nauseated by what he saw. He had an urge to smash the mirror, but realized that action was a trite cliche’ perpetuated by bad television.
There really was no option, but to be miserable, or to accept a life of loneliness, gauzy romantic fantasies and masturbation. Better yet, total freedom from emotion or desire. Wasn’t that Hinduism or some shit?
Bill hadn’t the guts to kill himself, nor the patience to drive himself mad. He simply submitted then and there, ready and willing to be fate’s blowing leaf.
The alarm clock scolded Bill for his dreams. He got up and went to the bathroom, avoiding the mirror. He considered skipping the shaving process this morning, as he no longer felt any need to be presentable for Connie.
Habit overruled self pity, and Bill soon found himself at the mirror with his razor, trying to avert his eyes from the big picture of his revolting features. Bill scraped the razor across his lathered cheek, his mind drifting to the events and the pain of the past week.
That pain demanded companionship. Bill felt pent-up frustration rise to the surface, taking over his razor hand. Gritting his teeth, grimacing at his grimace, Bill pressed the razor viciously into his cheekbone. A deep and alien sound arose from him as he felt the steel sliver penetrate.
Widening his eyes to behold the damage he was doing, he watched a thin rivulet of blood draw a line down his cheek to round his jowl. Bill was surprised there wasn’t more pain and blood, and withdrew the razor to assess the damage.
The tiny flap he had cut lay open just a centimeter or so, revealing the next layer, as Bill expected it would. But that layer was not a bloodier version of his epidermis, as his knowledge of the human body dictated it would be.
Instead, there was a slick blackness there, like eel-skin. Bill stared in wonder at this, picking it gingerly with his fingers. Alarmingly, the flap gave way rather easily, without the pain and pliability of flesh as he knew it. He began to peel the flap, revealing more of the shiny, smooth-textured…growth?
Suddenly alarmed by the ease with which his initial efforts had succeeded, Bill stopped and gazed at the anomaly for several seconds. In this time, he grew to admire it. Not only curious, he felt a kind of pride in its uniqueness. Bill took a long look at his features as they were, saying a less than tearful goodbye. He then dug in with his fingers and began pulling away the useless husk that had trapped him for so long.
Bill’s story continues and can be found alone as BILL’s BECOMING or in the collection DARK DESTINIES.
BUY BILL’s BECOMING for Kindle HERE www.tinyurl.com/pcgbillsbecoming
BUY DARK DESTINIES for Kindle HERE www.tinyurl.com/darkdestinies
BUY DARK DESTINIES Special Edition paperback HERE http://tinyurl.com/DDpaperback
Please visit the publisher Sekhmet Press LLC
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