Scott Colbert's Blog, page 7

Fandom Weirdness Part the Third

After nursing a beer for hours, Karen is trapped in a decades old car on the way to somewhere. Seriously, that’s where we’re at (and only took about 3K words to get there).

        “Jesus I think I heard of this.  The author who nearly published Kane dropped him because he criticized gay horror.

That must be it, and not say, due to being a writer as bad as Nikita.

She was staring into the darkness at this point, and in her mind were bugbears that were dark, surreal and wandered within her emotions.

So which is it her mind or emotions where the bugbears were running amok. No wonder she was staring into the darkness.

 They became infamous for the bullying they would do to self released authors

What have they got against authors who self release? It’s a part of being human! For Nick, it’s the only sex life he has. What? Self publishing? Ohhhhhh, never mind.

The diner was named for a publisher of razorwire fiction named Misty Bobe,

What diner isn’t named after a publisher? None? I thought so.Some definite Oedipublisher issues.

.  It had a lot of stone gargoyles and the atmosphere was that of a Horace Wapole novel

More name dropping instead of description! Drink!

.   Misty Bobe opened the diner to finance her magazine.

So she named it after herself? Could have said that in the first place. Oh, I forget that would actually make sense.

        “We’re here. This is where I get my inspirations for Real Weird

I guess pulling in, parking, getting out of the car and going in wasn’t hint enough they were there.

         “It looks like it was decorated by R.L. Stine,” she added.

Here we go again. For fucks sake man, is it Horace Wapole or R.L. Stine? Pick one, would ya?

from writers who like to scare people in the vein of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare,” Michael laughed as they entered the diner.

You’re not even trying now. Lazy is as lazy does.

        “I will give you a booth. Will that be smoking or non-smoking?” the waitress greeted them.

Is this a door prize? I’d prefer a non smoking booth, it lessens the chance of my ass catching fire.

She kept thinking she was stepping into the works of A.J. Poe and Nicholas Kane of they were co-writing a story together

Nope, just the deluded mind of a short, fat, closeted troll.

where ghosts of abortions torment a doctor after he finds God.

Because ghosts keep up on things like that.

“This place, it reminds me of the imaginations of the bloody pulps,” she inquires to the waitress.

Yes we know, you’ve mentioned it enough in half a page. Get on with the story.

 Karen was whistling the theme from R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps because she was getting the creeps from the atmosphere of the diner.

Lazy, unimaginative fucker.

        “So you know the nightmares that are within different fandoms then,” Karen relates as she looks at the copy of the fanzine.

Where’d he pull the fanzine from? His butt, like the rest of this drek?

        “They would harass Evangelical Christian writers.  They created pages about them and accuse them of monstrous things.  Then would try to fuck them out of publications,” he added.

Literally fuck them out of publications? Were they fornicating on a stack of Playboy?

One blogger called him a retard and he challenged this blogger to a fist fight,” Michael added as he was explaining the things he considered for the fanzine.

Retard was being kind. Very, very kind.

        “I think I heard about that, some editor who rejected one of his short stories calling it a work of fan fiction when it was Lovecraftian Horror,”

He probably meant it was crap. Again, being kind.

The author sent some angry e-mails to him and suggested he died of AIDS,” Karen responded.

Pretty sure the death certificate would list cause of death. And why would you send a dead man an email telling him what he may have died from? What? typo? There are those top notch editing skills.

        “The industry has its horror stories then,” Karen replied.

Of which Pacione is only one, sadly.

 “I noticed you have a weird fiction fanzine.  Mind of I take a look at it?” the waitress asked as she offered the check.

The dialog is breathtaking. Please take my breath away so I don’t have to read any more.

 “He smashed an editor’s car with a sledgehammer charging $10 per hit,”

Can we just smash him for free? It would certainly improve the value of the neighborhood.

“He did even more notorious things.  He took a massive shit on a rival editor’s photograph and uploaded the aftermath.  S.E. Cox

leaked one of his rejected stories

I know I feel like I’m reading massive shit.

Though we leave the fair Karen in a diner, fear not her fate will be determined in tomorrow’s exciting (doubtful) conclusion!

Some Changes

Some of you may notice that I have some headers now. I decided to import all of the posts from my other blogs and roll them into this one.  Some are good, some aren’t and may get cut. With the reemergence of a certain troll, I wanted all of it in one place. Plus there are some cool pieces about things I have an interest in. While much is old news, I like to have it archived and will slowly go through it all and redo the tags. I hope some of it may be of interest to you.

Fandom Weirdness Critique Part Deux (deux deux more like it)

When last we left our noble heroine Karen Hintz,  she was being propositioned by a sexually confused Mary Sue. Let’s peek in and see what happens next! I’m sure it will be uber darkity dark!

        “I don’t mind having a beer.”

That’s pretty much a necessity for everyone. Drink up! I’ll wait.

 “Have you ever experienced Déjà vu?” Michael asked as he cracked the top of the beer bottle.

Every time I read Peaches work I do. And aren’t there better ways of opening a bottle than cracking it? Seems a bit…dangerous.

It was a few hours later when Michael finished his beer and smoked his last cigarette.

A few hours for one beer?!? Lightweight.

“I am going to a diner to get something to eat. You are welcomed to join me.”

First beer, now dinner. The phrase wine me, dine me, 69 me comes to mind. I wish it hadn’t.

   In her mind it was a dark surreal imagination of what she would do with an actor she worshipped thinking what kind of nightmare she could dream up – it was a surreal place that is fandom and the writers like A.J. Poe who would get pissed when he sees his characters into situations that are truly bastardized

I’ve read directions on how to assemble IKEA furniture that made more sense. I mean seriously, what does this mean? I wonder if he had a stroke (not THAT kind you naughty minded people) while writing this?

 They walked over to Michael’s 1980 Cutlass Supreme and drove somewhere to grab a bite.

I’ve been to somewhere, they make a great apple pie. Also, a damn fine cup of coffee.

Michael spoke that the world of fandom is a weird, dark place where stalkers would lift the concepts and plots of original horror writers and do unauthorized stories based on the storylines of the original tale.

Exactly what the closeted Pacione does, though he writes it so incoherently you would never guess everything he’s done has ripped off the best writers around.

“They actually put a curse on the original author because they caught them stealing his concepts and title for a story similar and making the character he created into something they are not,”

I would think having to read this is curse enough. Or enough to make you curse, one or the other.

“Jesus, I think I heard of this blogger.  He is part of the circle that would lift the author’s characters to pick on his work,” she responded

Even worse, part of that circle that repeats the same thoughts and phrases to pad a word count.

        “The horror community wanted to draw and quarter him because he wrote that one.  It caused shit storm among the horror circles, the mass market counterparts would edit his comments to make him look like a homosexual fan fiction writer of sit-com fandoms,” he continued as he drove.

Mary Sue has a far higher opinion of herself than anyone else does, including family.

        “They wanted to draw and quarter him with semi-trucks

Yeah, I saw The Hitcher too. Great movie. I should watch that instead.

        “The horror stories of the small press wander around all the time

Much like the Island of Lost Toys, these lonely, abandoned stories wandering around. At least they’re safe from Pacione’s greasy mitts there.

 “He was a writer who voiced a hard line view in the industry.  A writer of all male romance take on horror

Also Nick’s favorite subject, fancy that.

People on a site called Somethingawful.com would lift him and write fan fiction passing him off as a flaming homosexual,”

I think he does a pretty good job of that himself.

 

And now we leave our heroine stuck in a 33 year old car with a stroke victim who can’t close the deal as his homosexuality emerges. Maybe something exciting will happen in Part III. Something, anything. Please.

 

Fandom Weirdness by Nickolaus Pacione – A Critique Part 1

I also could have called this “Everything I’ve ignored in Strunk & White is in this bowel movement of a story” and be just as accurate. While the entire piece is 6200 words (but feels a good deal longer), I’m going to concentrate on the first page for now. There’s only so much I can take before I feel my will to live slowly leave.

Karen Hintz was noticed regularly on her blog

well, it’s her blog, I would hope she would be noticed. And yes, that’s how it starts.

        She didn’t know that she was about to step into nightmares imagined by author, Richard Matheson, and they were going to take her into dark emotional places.

She also didn’t know she would be the main character in a story so ineptly written, so devoid of anything resembling coherence, that even Richard Matheson couldn’t save it.

        When she stepped away from the word processor, outside of her door was a stranger with an invitation – it was a strange occurrence

Certainly much preferable to reading this story. I envy her.

.  But the stranger was one who could pass for a character in an Edgar Allan Poe short story.

And famous writer mention 2. When you have so little imagination or talent, you always have to mention far better writers. Then I have to wonder why I’m not reading them instead of this turd blossom.

. While racing her fingers across the keyboard she felt there was a darkness plaguing her, and e-mails from pissed off horror writers because she was doing fucked up things to their characters.

Not as fucked up as this I’m sure. I wonder if fictional characters can sue their creators for torture?

        “You took two of his characters and wrote them into an all male romance plot,”  the person commenting is named Hellen Willow, no relation to the ex-gay that a small press publisher published in the pages of his magazine.

Here begins the authors fascination with homosexuality and his trying to come out of the closet. I think, hard to tell what he means in all of that.

        “No you are dealing with a controversial born again Christian who writes with dark spiritual warfare themes,” Hellen typed to her in an instant message.

Not sure how she went to instant messaging from a comment as Pacione doesn’t say anything about that. As stated earlier, coherence and logic are not strong suit.

It was about an hour later when the door bell rang.

“Just a minute, I am coming down.”

Was she upstairs? Or was she coming off some sort of medication? Perhaps that explains her dark feelings.

“Are you interested in summing something that no one will fathom?” he had asked with some dark curiosity

Then he hands her a copy of this, a story as unfathomable as you can get.

        “Nicholas Kane, the author of the story Spectral Exile – a story about a nightclub that fucked up things happened in there.  It was compared to Hell House,” Michael replied.

Ahh Hell House, a fantastic read, wish I had that instead. Also -100 points Slytherin for gratuitous and subliminal mention of far better work.

        “The blogger lifted this story’s idea and made it sexual,” he added.

“Would you like to come in?”

Is that a pass she’s making? We’ll have to wait until part two!

The Porcine Predator Pacione Returns

Well he never really left, but since November of 2010, he’d pretty much ignored me. That was fine, as his homophobic vitriol, threats, and insults were a time sink that could be better served to being productive. However, despite my attempts to ignore him, he’s seen fit to pop up on my radar once again, so here I am, taking him to task.

He started with giving my novella Barbed Wire Kisses a one star review on GoodReads, along with a hate filled review in which he admitted he hadn’t read it. Rightfully, it was deleted by the admins and the unwashed heap of dung was banned. Again. He then one starred it with an equally homophobic review filled with personal attacks on Amazon. Unfortunately Amazon doesn’t seem to care and repeated requests to have it removed have been ignored. 

That’s fine, it hasn’t hurt my sales, and I had some very nice people defending me in the comments of his “review”. Scattered around this site are some comments from him that I edited for clarity, and today I received another missive on writerscafe, which states,

I don’t want the genre molested with the goddamned faggotry.  Shut up and let me do my anthologies in peace.  Your novel is a piece of shit.  I published better than that.

 

This is typical for Nikita. He attacks those who have a vastly superior talent to his. He’ll curse, threaten, stamp his feet, hold his breath and play victim all the while engaging in activity he accuses everyone else of. 

It would be amusing were it not for the fact he threatens to rape peoples wives while they watch, yell people to fuck the ashes of a dead relative, tries to lure underage girls to model, and is so deluded he thinks he can actually write and edit. This has gone on for years. My old blog, raingods.wordpress.com is chock full of posts concerning his behavior. 

He hates everything and everyone who doesn’t think he’s a genius (despite a low double digit IQ) but most of all he hates himself. And who can blame him for that? He has a history of violence, is not allowed to see his son, and yet expects to be treated like he is a peer.

He has absolutely no concept of how to write a story, and dialog is beyond his comprehension. The fact he thinks my novella is shit is a compliment, as it tells me I’ve done something right. 

He hates everyone who is better than him, and everyone is light years beyond his ability. Even Twilight is Shakespeare compared to his near illiterate tales. He cites many excellent authors as an inspiration but hasn’t displayed any of their exceptional gifts. 

Pacione is a fraud. He parades around as if he’s taken seriously, yet gets banned and kicked from literally every site he ever logged into. For anyone unfortunate enough to come into contact with him, run! Do not send him any of your stories, there are far more worthwhile and legitimate publishers who would gladly publish you.

All he will do is drag you down with him. 

 

Siberian Hellhole by Michael Mulvihill – A review

Writer Michael Mulvihill has concocted a tale of demons, vampires and apocalyptic terrors and wrapped it all in with a bow of religious and social commentary. In lesser hands it might devolve into a preachy mess, however Mulvihill manages to keep control and provides us with an intelligent horror novel.

Things haven’t gone well in the post-Perestroika years of Russia for Tobias. So much so, he takes a job as a guard in Siberia. The plot of land he’s charged with holds far more than the natural resources and that’s where the story takes off. Mulvihill paints a portrait of a point in time that is riveting and relevant. As Tobias and the residents of Vodka Valley come under attack, lives, faith and ultimately humanity is shaken.

While it may be too descriptive for some, I found it helped draw me into the very believable world Mulvhill has created. Even the appearance of the Devil himself fits in nicely. Siberian Hellhole is a great read and highly recommended.

Tracking the Idea

It’s not often you can track the germ of an idea. Many times, at least for me, it’s nothing more than a phrase, or what I think is a cool title. Story ideas are a very nebulous thing appearing and disappearing at their own whim. I suppose if there’s any magic to writing, it’s this part-getting the idea in the first place. 

Even with Barbed Wire Kisses, backtracking to where it originated from becomes hazy as time wears on. Even now, I’m not sure if that’s merely my memory being diluted with age or the story not wanting to see its messy birth. 

My current WIP (work in progress), Lonely Are the Dead stemmed from my wanting to revisit the ghosts of my past through the lens of a man haunted by ghosts real and imagined. Where and when I specifically came up with the idea I’m not sure but it’s humming along slowly but surely.

While rummaging through shorpy.com I let my mouse do the walking and clicked from place to place-from picture to picture. From one untold story of a forgotten life to the next. Somehow from Shorpy I ended up at http://mydaguerreotypeboyfriend.tumblr.com/.  It was on that site I found this striking picture http://mydaguerreotypeboyfriend.tumblr.com/post/24134330855/emile-nelligan-age-20-in-1899-first-published-at and knew there was a story. I read the brief note under the picture and felt a pang of sorrow for Emile. The author of 170 poems written between the ages of 16-19, he would suffer a psychotic break and spend the rest of his life in 2 different mental hospitals. 

He spent 40 years locked up, battling whatever demons that caused the episode in the first place. I’ve been crippled by depression at various points in my life-sometimes so bad I could walk around the block and never see the sun. Yet I always bounced back, a bit stronger if nothing else. Here was someone who ultimately lost the battle and never recovered. Little is know about what caused it-though consensus seems to be schizophrenia, or doubts about his sexuality (this was the very late 1800 after all). 

However, after reading up on him I knew this would be a story I would tell, and it will be the next wip after Loney Are the Dead is completed. There’s a fair amount of research to do, and as I did with the Harps Brothers in Barbed Wire Kisses, I’ll fictionalize the main character, but let there be no doubt, the inspiration for The Commitment of Eryle Harrigan is all from Emile and that picture. 

Win a signed, paperback copy of Barbed Wire Kisses!

In honor of my Mother’s birthday tomorrow, I’ll be making the ebook of BWK free but that’s not all!  To promote the upcoming paperback release, I’ll be holding a contest. Download BWK tomorrow (or if you can’t wait you can certainly buy it today), write a review on Amazon, Goodreads, your own blog -anywhere really-and just post a link to it here. On Sunday May 12(Mother’sDay of course) I’ll pick a winner at random who will receive a signed copy of the paperback version being released next week! This contest is open to anyone worldwide, so spread the word!

 

http://www.amazon.com/Barbed-Wire-Kisses-ebook/dp/B00BBMGXMK/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_1_WVCJ

BWK Free, Today only!

To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, my horror novella will be free so you can buy green beer! http://www.amazon.com/Barbed-Wire-Kisses-ebook/dp/B00BBMGXMK/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_3_DXHW

T.M. Wright Interview

In April of 2009, I conducted an interview with legendary writer T.M. Wright. It appeared on the Apex Online website, and though no longer available there, I’m posting it on my blog, so those who never had a chance to read it are now able to.

 

 

When Stephen King calls you a rare and blazing talent, you know you’ve done something right. In a career that spans almost 50 years, T.M. Wright has proven to be one of the most enduring writers of speculative fiction. His work truly defies any easy categorization, yet it’s all easily identifiable as a T.M. Wright novel.

 

Born in Syracuse, NY in 1947 to a traveling salesman father and a secretary (later a teacher) mother, Terry is one of six children.; his twin brother, T. Lucien Wright, has published six novels in, more or less, the same genre–dark fantasy.

 

 

Q: Your first book, was The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Flying Saucers, published back in 1968, what was the impetus for this? And had you done any writing non fiction or otherwise, prior to its release?

 T.M. I actually believed–so long ago–that UFOs (aka “Flying Saucers”) were something…real, that intelligent life from some other star system had found its way to our star system.  So, with that…hope in mind, I decided to write a book that dealt with the subject in an “intelligent” way.  Yes, I knew that Asimov had a series of books with the title prefix “The Intelligent Man’s Guide to”… but that didn’t bother me (in fact, he threatened to sue me, after the book was published, but backed off when his lawyers told him that titles couldn’t be copyrighted.)  I made a whopping $300.00 on the book, although it sold about five thousand copies in hardcover, at $5.95.  The publisher, A.S. Barnes, NJ, contracted for another book–”The Complete Photographic History of Flying Saucers,” which, for various sad and laughable reasons, never saw print. 

 I’d been writing poetry and short science fiction for years, then: my first publication was, in fact, a poem, in The Newark (NY) Courier Gazette, in 1961, titled “Silver Branches,” about, of course, an ice storm. 

Q: Strange Seed came out 10 years after the flying saucer book. It was your first published novel—how was that different for you from having your nonfiction book published? 

TMW: Thankfully, it required far less research, though a lot more imagination.  I remember getting positive responses to my queries about the novel (which existed, then, only as a vague idea), and deciding that the response from Doubleday (and editor William G. Thompson, Stephen King’s first editor) was the most promising, and turning to my cat, Oily, and saying, “Now all I’ve got to do is write the damned thing.”  Two and half years later, the book was published by the now-defunct Everest House, which Bill Thompson and a couple of friends had founded after Bill left Doubleday.  The novel has been reprinted several times, by various publishing houses, and (pats himself on the back) you’ll find it on King’s list of the best of the genre in “Danse Macabre.”

 

Q:  Stephen King referred to you as a rare and blazing talent, in his blurb for one of your early novels, was there any pressure on you to live up to that? 

 

TMW: Not really, because I wasn’t sure what he meant by “a rare and blazing talent”–I had a feeling it was simply filler at the end of his complete blurb, though, as I think about it, and without checking, the quote itself may have been for my second novel, “The Woman Next Door” (Playboy Press, 1981): maybe a reader will check that for us. 

Q: A Manhattan Ghost Story is probably one of your best known novels, and has been in and out of development as a movie for years, where does that stand now? And can you talk a bit about the history of it being optioned ?

 TMW: The novel, first published in 1984, by TOR Books, was optioned by Robert Lawrence Productions, through my agent at the time, Howard Morhaim, in 1991.  That option was exercised by Lawrence in 1993 and the film was scheduled to begin production that year through Carolco Pictures (same studio that brought you the Terminator series, as well as the really awful pirate movie starring Geena Davis—Cutthroat Island—which, because it lost $100 million, spelled the studio’s doom, and, also, the doom for their plans for “A Manhattan Ghost Story”).  Back then, Julia Roberts and Richard Gere were attached to A Manhattan Ghost Story, though, after the property went to Disney, which bought the rights at the Carolco bankruptcy sale for 1.7 million, Sharon Stone was firmly attached, and a number of directors were tapped, then un-tapped, as the decade progressed.  Ron Bass (Rainman, Sleeping with The Enemy, What Dreams May Come, et cetera, et cetera) was paid what was, at the time, a record amount for adapting a novel to the screen ($2 million), and now, today, you will find, at Hollywood.com, that the movie is “announced,” whatever the hell that means, with Wayne Wang as the director and that it’s with Left Bank Productions, a studio owned by George Clooney.  Several people have made more than a few million on the project, though its “first day of principal photography” has come and gone numerous times.  The tale of the decade and a half I’ve waited for the movie to be made is very sad indeed–and my advice to others whose novels get optioned, and the options get exercised, is simply to enjoy the cash and hope for the best.

Q: Your work, and particularly your later novels have a surreal flavor to them, is that intentional when you start out, or does it sort of develop as you write?

TMW: Because I don’t believe in “evil” as a force in nature, I tend to peer very closely at my characters’ motivations within the context of a surreal universe. And I’m not really sure what I mean by “surreal” other than to say that my characters realize, at one point or another, that the universe, their universe, our universe, isn’t exactly what they thought it was, that it’s not really a predictable, ordered, or orderly place. But they‘ve got to find some comfort level in that whacked-out universe, so they adapt to it in various ways. For instance, Paul Griffin, one of the two main characters in Strange Seed, discovers, many  pages into the story, what he truly is, and it causes him to act in horrifically unpredictable ways. 

Then there’s Abner W. Cray, the lead male in “A Manhattan Ghost Story,” who discovers “true love” for the first time in his miserable existence, but then discovers that the object of his love is not one of the living: does he drop the relationship at once?  Of course not, he re-orders his world-view (in a way) and his expectations, too.  He becomes enamored of the idea of being in love, and making love to, a woman who—although, most of the time, she looks quite invitingly alive—is a murder victim.

As one of my characters once said, “Existence is dull without absurdities.”  Maybe that’s precisely what I’ve been writing about these last three decades.

Q: You wrote 2 novels under the pseudonym F.W. Armstrong, was there a specific reason for this?

TMW: Yes. My editor at the time, the mid eighties, wanted me to write a couple of novels that were “more graphic” and “blood curdling” than what I’d written to that point.  And because she didn’t want the novels to effect the way people looked at my TM Wright novels, she asked that I write them under a pseudonym.  Less money was involved, but there was far less time involved as well. Whereas I usually spent three to five months on a TM Wright novel, I only spent three to four weeks on the FW Armstrong’s, but was still paid about 75% of what I got for the TM Wright novels.  FW Armstrong, by the way, is a real person. He lives in Rochester, NY and runs an animation studio called Animatus. He and I have been friends for over forty years and we’re still, after thirty years, looking for someone to bankroll a low-budget film based on “Strange Seed,” for which I’ve completed one screenplay and started another. 

Q. You write novel, stories, and poems as well as paint: which gives you the greatest satisfaction?

TMW: I would like to say that writing fiction and poetry, and dabbling in art, all give me equal satisfaction, and that would be true if I were equally successful with each of those disciplines, but I can’t say that because what I do best, and I realize it only too well, is write fiction. If I create a painting that pleases me and pleases the subject of the painting, and a few others, I feel good about it. and that’s fine. But, if I write a novel that gets lots of praise from readers and reviewers, and as well, I think it’s a successful novel, then I feel very good about it.  I’ll tell you a secret though: I’d even more like to be remembered as a poet than as a novelist.  It’s the way I began my writing life—as a poet–nearly fifty years ago.  Somewhere in those decades, I guess I realized that poets had to struggle very, very hard simply to earn somewhere near half of minimum wage.  That didn’t appeal to me.

Q. You said you find yourself more drawn to poetry as you grow older, do you also find the things you want to write about have also changed?

 

TMW: No, probably not.  My first novel was pretty much concerned with a very troubled being’s internal torment; same with “The Eyes of the Carp” (CD, 2005) and “I Am the Bird” (PS Publishing, 2006), and “Cold House” (Catalyst Press, 2003).  I’m concerned, in my fiction, and, to some extent, in my poetry, with the…nasty stuff that percolates within us, and its effects as time passes.

Q. Who are some of your influences, and who do you enjoy reading?

TMW: Shirley Jackson, C.S. Lewis, Harlan Ellison, H.G. Wells, T.S. Eliot, Stephen King, Albert Camus (I did an essay about Camus’ “The Stranger” for the second edition of HORROR: THE 100 BEST BOOKS), Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Weldon Kees (a now all but forgotten poet and short story writer who took his own life in 1954; if you haven’t read him, you must), Carolyn Chute, for her groundbreaking and oddly lyrical first novel, “The Beans of Egypt, Maine” (1985), Ramsey Campbell, Charles L. Grant (who was, and remains, the king of “Quiet Horror”) and Isaac Asimov, who entertained me through most of my young teenage years.

Who do I read now, primarily?  Weldon Kees, Mary Oliver (poet), Galway Kinnell (poet), Tom Piccirilli (novelist, short story writer, poet, and good friend), Pete Crowther, whose approach to literature is unique and beautiful, Rhys Hughes, and many others, many of then poets: as I…er…age (not very gracefully), I find myself being pulled back to poetry.  I’m not going to go on and on about “why,” but I will say that it (poetry) has more of life in it, for me, now, than fiction.  Which is probably why much of the fiction I read borders on the poetic.

 

Q. ) What’s the best advice you’ve ever received about writing and being a writer?

 

 

TMW: From William G. Thompson, my editor on “Strange Seed”: “Never lie to the reader.”  Also, in general–”Writing is rewriting.”  At least for me.

 

Q.  Did you grow up wanting to be a writer ?

 

TMW: Well, let me see, as of this date (April 7, 2009), I’ve been writing for about fifty years.  God I’m a geezer.  And, yes, I’ve known I wanted (needed) to write ever since I was a “pre-teen,” and I was convinced, even then, that I had what it took to publish what I wrote.  My first book was published about 9 or 10 years after the writing bug bit me and the swelling that bug created still hasn’t receded.  ).  My father, whos’s the impetus for the incredibly abusive father in “Cold House,” was, in big ways, responsible for my need to create a universe of my own in the stories I wrote.)

 

Q.  You were labeled as a horror writer almost from the get go, yet most of your work, while having some horrific elements, doesn’t neatly fit into the “horror” genre. how would you label your work?

TMW: Are you ready for this?  Existential horror, existential dark fantasy.  Stuff that looks inward and tries to figure out what we human beings are really all about.  It’s a futile effort, I know.  Blu Gilliand described my writing just about perfectly when he reviewed my CD collection “Bone Soup” in Dark Scribe Magazine (April, 2009): “rather, these stories are focused examinations of singular, defining moments, decisions and events in the characters’ lives.”

 

Q. For someone who has never read your work, where would you suggest they start?

 

TMW: Hard to say.  Maybe “Strange Seed,” my first novel, or, possibly, “Cold House” (a revised edition appears in “Bone Soup”) or, one of my own favorites, “Sleepeasy” (Leisure, 2003). 

 

Q:  What can you tell us about your upcoming novel Blue Canoe? Any word on when your collection, Bone Soup will be released?

“Blue Canoe” (PS Publications, UK, April, 2009) is a short novel written, according to the subtitle (A MEMOIR OF THE NEWLY NON-CORPOREAL), by a man who’s trying to look back and find out just what the hell his life was all about.  He tells us his name is “Happy Farmer” (which may or may not be true), and it’s clear from the beginning that he’s having trouble, of course (a man in his condition and all) recalling the best, and worst, moments of his life correctly: he thinks the love of his life was a woman named Epistobel (he tells us her mother named her “Epistobel” because she—the mother—thought it meant “flowing beauty,” which may or may not be true, as well), and his first-person narration waxes and wanes about Epistobel, about “the dog who would have been Bob had he been Bob” who inhabits the house Happy Farmer inhabits, about his—Happy Farmer’s—very, very strange family, and even stranger relatives, about Detective Fred Spoon, who appears later in the novel, whom Happy Farmer, under an assumed name, hires to find another love of his life who may or may not be Epistobel.  For a short novel (42,000 words), it’s got a hell of a lot going on and most of it is…surreal, at least.  Read Tom Piccirilli’s eye-opening introduction.  I’ll go out on a very long limb and say that, since finishing the novel four years ago, I’ve thought of it as my best, surreal and, so often, confusing though it is—but that’s all right (read below).

“Bone Soup,” a collection of art, poetry, short fiction and a slightly revised version of my 2003 novel “Cold House” (which received very minimal distribution upon its publication but has gotten some of the best reviews of my career), will be published some time this year by Cemetery Dance. 

 

 

Q. And finally, what do you hope people will bring away with them when they read your work?

TMW: I hope they bring away from their reading of my books what I brought to them—a sense that our universe (small, very small, large, very large, unfathomably large) is actually not the place of order and predictability and sanity that many of us believe and hope it is; because, after all, existence really is dull without absurdities.