Paul Michael Anderson's Blog: The Dumping Ground, Part Deux, page 6

And, finally, a thank you…

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Over on Facebook, that On This Day thingie, for the past few days, has been all about the signing of the contracts and the announcement of Bones Are Made to be Broken, at that point to be released…at some point in 2016 (it wound up coming out on November 29th, barely two months ago, but it seems way longer to me).  Michael Bailey, with illustrator Pat R. Steiner, had been discussing this, that, and the other thing since October of 2015, but nothing was going to go public until everyone had signed their names on some dotted lines.

In the year since, the manuscript was built up, torn down, rearranged.  Pat did about a billion illustrations–almost two dozen or so for the cover alone, and some of them were goddamned awesome (so awesome that we used one for the TPB and eBook and another for the upcoming hardcover).  Michael and I finagled the layout and the wording and, over the summer, who might have time to read the book for a possible blurb, a list that resembled a Holy Grail of first-rate horror writers, with a result that was so close to the blue-sky prospects that they’re almost one and the same.

I wrote two versions of the title novella Bones Are Made to be Broken–one a novel-length version that was good but didn’t turn the screws.  I scrapped it, kept the structure in my head, and rewrote from scratch, never looking at the original version, adding scenes, and bringing the story home, for good, with room to spare in novella territory.  In the midst of all this, Justin Pierre, frontman of the unfortunately-defunct band Motion City Soundtrack, allowed me to use the chorus of a song he’d done by himself as the epigraph by the novella.

And then the book got wrapped up in Dark Region Press’s successful campaign for some Lovecraftian anthologies and pushed back until November, and Michael and I, working with DRP’s media guru, began sending out ARCs to reviewers.

And then reviews started coming in, and then book came out, and more reviews werwe coming in and, goddammit, everything was looking better than I could’ve hoped.  The reviews themselves were ridiculous, if only because people liked it way more than I had hopes for, landing on two best-of lists with barely a fuss (books that come out late in the year are notoriously ignored, if only because of the sheer volume of books that came out earlier in the year).

Now, it’s a year-in.  The book seems to be doing well (but in the murky world of who counts what sales, it’s hard to get a total day-to-day number and have your royalty statements to go on). We’re entering awards season–example: the recommendations for the Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Awards closed just two days ago–and my editor is feeling optimistic.  I’m not, but I’m naturally a pessimist.  Also, can I be honest?  Awards are nice, but awards aren’t the beginning nor the end of writing and publishing, so I tend to see them as interesting roadside attractions, minor distractions on your way to your destination (which is, of course, the next book).  I will say I don’t turn up my nose at awards, nor hold them as the be-all and end-all of fandom.  However, the stones that Shirley Jackson Award nominees get are fucking awesome.

The plates for the hardcover edition are being made as we speak.  Dear Christ, I just wrote that and it’s true.

But, with all that said, I thought it might be nice to, loudly and publicly, thank everyone who helped me get to this point.  Writing is lonely, but publishing isn’t, and no one does it alone, so, indulge me.

I’m taking this from the acknowledgements page of the book, but, because it was written over the summer, I have to add an addendum to it to include the legions of people who came after:

Thanks to Michael Bailey for being the capable steward of this ship.  Dude does so much shit, and so well, that we all kinda hate him a little bit, even as we cheer him on.  Still, he has placed himself beside me and that’s the place I want him most.

Thanks to Chris Morey and everyone at Dark Regions.

Thanks to Pat R. Steiner, for fucking around with public domain photos one day.

Thanks to the various editors who liked these stories, showed them to their readers.  Big ups to Max Booth III and Lori Michelle at Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing, as well as Anthony Rivera and Sharon Lawson at Grey Matter Press.  Often vilified, small press is made better by having these guys around.

Thanks to Damien Angelica Walters, writer and friend, for going to bat and writing a foreword to this book, even if she told me she’d never written one before.  I wasn’t worried.  A stellar storyteller in her own right—seriously, go pick up Paper Tigers and Sing Me Your Scars right now; you won’t regret it and this isn’t bullshit—she’s also a trusted beta-reader who knows when to call it, and how.  I don’t always listen to her advice, but when I don’t, I usually rue the day.

Thanks to two other beta-readers, Kristi DeMeester and Erinn Kemper.  They consistently challenge me to do better, both through their comments on my stories and their own writing.  I have more beta-readers, a whole battalion of them it sometimes seems, and these stories wouldn’t be any good without them.

Huge thanks to Justin Pierre for the permission to use a part of his song “Everything That Hurts” as the epigraph to “Bones”.  I began the second draft of that story with the chorus at the top of the page, as a guide, even as I told myself I’d have to take it out as the book marched towards publication.  To not have to, to be able to both share a good song and a bit of inspiration for the story, was more than I could ask for.  Thanks, Justin.  If the epigraph or me talking about the song piqued your interest, go to justincourtnerpierre.bandcamp.com.

Thanks to Joe Hill, for 20th Century Ghosts and “Pop Art”.  Thanks to Harlan Ellison for Shatterday and “All the Lies That Are My Life”.

Thanks to my wife, to whom this book is dedicated.  She hitched her wagon to my train sixteen years ago and, nine years ago, soldered the two ends on, making them inseparable.  She has been more than patient over the years, when I’ve had my head glued to a computer screen and earbuds jammed into my skull…but she’s never hesitated to tell me to get back in the game when I’m away for too long, that I’m missing that thing I’m supposed to be writing about: life.

And, finally, it’s cliché as fuck to thank the reader, but, really, thanks.

Now, the addendum:

To the writers who agreed to take a look at a book by a guy they kinda knew and liked it enough to say something, thank you: Jack Ketchum, Jonathan Maberry, Stephanie M. Wytovich, Marge Simon, Richard Thomas, Craig DiLouie, Mercedes Yardley, Gene O’Neill (as well as Kristi DeMeester and Erinn Kemper).

Thanks to all the (as of January 2017; apparently, more reviews are coming) reviewers who, oddly enough, didn’t torch my book (I fully expected you to): Adrian Shotbolt, Benoit Lelievre, Keith Rawson, Michelle Garza, Thomas Joyce, Shane D. Keene, Eddie Generous, George Ilett Anderson.

Thanks to Cyrus Wraith Walker, who does design work for DRP (sorry for the late-night messages!) and Caitlin Waite, who handles media for DRP.  These two are awesome.

And this one is cheesy as fuck, but thanks to the people who’ve messaged me about the book, or tagged me in photos of you with the book.  I hope you liked it (also, it’s nice to see the book out in the world).

Next is getting the hardcover ready to go for publication and the thing is massive and I can’t wait to show it off.

And then?  More writing.  Remember – this is just a roadside attraction, a minor distraction before the final destination: the next story, the next book.

You can pick up Bones are Made to be Broken here.

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Dispatches from the Goodreads Reading Challenge Wastelands: Jonathan Maberry’s PATIENT ZERO

(Quick note: Last year, 2016, I found myself struggling to get through a book as quickly or with as much enjoyment as I used to.  No shade thrown on those books, but my life had become busier and it was easier to read io9 or cruise my Facebook newsfeed than crack open a book.  I didn’t like that and the Goodreads Reading Challenge seemed like a nifty way to get my head back in the game.  Of course, after setting my challenge, I realized I had way overshot my count in comparison to others–some of them reviewers, for Christ’s sake–so this became what will hopefully be a fun, year-long experiment on crashing and burning.

(But, on a related note, I’ve always wanted to see how I read over the course of a year, what my tastes were depending on the time of year, the circumstances, etc.

(So, here’s Dispatches from the Goodreads Reading Challenge Wastelands.)

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For years, I avoided any series character. On a long enough timeline, all series characters become caricature, all writers (you can almost feel this happening) feeling like they have to deliver the fan-favorites from previous installments. Or, at the very least, they have to constantly remind new readers of certain things, a graph that pops up usually within the first thirty or fifty pages and breaks momentum down.  I love Stephen King, but the final three books of the Dark Tower saga feel always more lightweight than, say, the first and second, pulled down by the caricatures that had replaced Roland, Jake, Eddie, Savannah (also, King himself popping into the book always bugged me; a lazy way of explaining something).  The third book, The Wasteland, had enough cringe-worthy moments at the beginning that I almost died along with the giant bear.

And then I read a glowing FANGO review of Jonathan Maberry’s Patient Zero and thought, “What the hell.”

It was Maberry’s Joe Ledger character and F. Paul Wilson’s Repairman Jack that changed my view–somewhat (the stopping the action to explain a prior event lingers in the mid-series RJ books).

When I got two new Joe Ledger novels–Code Zero and Predator One–over the holidays, I decided to take the entire series out for a spin and get back into the world of the DMS.  (Another strike against series; I can’t read the latest installment without catching up with the prior books, something that becomes imperative if the lapse between reads is very long.)

Joe Ledger is a Baltimore cop who gets, essentially, shanghaied into the Department of Military Sciences (DMS), by Mr. Church, a mystery man who’s apparently immune to red tape or good taste (he chews vanilla wafers constantly, in a shocking denial of flavor).  Meanwhile, various factions–some corporate, some fundamentalist–are cooking up, basically, a zombie plague, and it’s up to Ledger, Church, Major Grace Courtland to stop it before it can be unleashed.

As a standalone novel, it’s pretty solid, but it’s in this thinking that some of the writing gets under a reader’s skin.  The post-climax is Maberry laying the series groundwork, a series of passages that could’ve been excised easily without the reader even noticing.

Moreover, at times, the structure is predictable–when Courtland is introduced, even though Maberry fleshes her out well, a reader knows that she’s going to be the love-interest for Ledger–and that makes some of the beats anticipated, which takes away from the flavor and reaction.

But, for those two things, Maberry writes with a propulsive, yank-you-forward style, the chapters and paragraphs short and punchy, producing a staccato rhythm that can pull you in like a really good drum solo.  Ledger is likable, and Maberry does a yeoman’s work to ensure that the supporting cast is as fleshed out as Ledger or Courtland; Gus Dietrich, another supporting cast member, is probably the only one who doesn’t evolve much beyond G.I. Joe action figure, leaving the most interesting thing about him to be his name.

The plot itself reads like the best action and horror popcorn movies–the ones you can enjoy without trying to overthink too much, but when Maberry goes deep on motivations or character, it doesn’t feel awkward or out-of-place.  Maberry’s capable of sharp, deep writing, but it feels clear that he’s resigned the Joe Ledger series to being “fun”.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that; not everything written has to about Something Very Deep to Make You Examine Your Life and Become Disappointed Yourself.  Reading, first and foremost, should be enjoyable and I can’t tolerate any form of snobbery that denies that fundamental (to me, anyway) right.

Which is awesome because Patient Zero, as well as the other novels in the Ledger series, is fun.

You can’t complain about that, now can you?

 

Getting personal with Paul Michael Anderson

Quick little interview I did over at Roadie Notes. Kind of a news flash: I like talking about writing (and myself). Go fuckin’ figure.

Enjoy your weekend, gang.

Roadie Notes

Paul Michael Anderson is a new friend and writer to me. I am enjoying getting to know him. He has a delightful sense of humor and makes me laugh. He is passionate about his writing and his life. He loves his wife and daughter and I loved to hear him talk about them. He tells me that he is boring but I doubt that to be the case. I haven’t read his stories yet but have added his book Bones Are Made To Be Broken to my to be read pile. If you haven’t met him you are missing out on a really great guy. Please check him and his books out and say hello. Please welcome Paul Michael Anderson to Roadie Notes……

1. How old were you when you first wrote your first story?

I have no idea, really; I’ve always written something. My first published piece, ever, was…

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2016: A Year and a Day Review

So 2016 was kind of a shitshow for all involved.  Icons died, morons voted (and, yes, they were cataclysmically stupid, for a variety of reasons) and the band Twenty-One Pilots had a number of hit singles.  There was very little for people to look at in 2016, nod in a satisfied way, and say, “That’ll do, pig.  That’ll do.”

Still, for others–like, um, me–2016 wasn’t…all that bad, actually.

Let’s break it down:

I had seven original pieces published:

“Passive” – 44 Lies by 22 Liars: A Flourish of Flash from the Fabulous Fibbers of Post Mortem Press, edited by Eric Beebe – Post Mortem Press (January 2016)
“Lead into Gold” – 44 Lies by 22 Liars: A Flourish of Flash from the Fabulous Fibbers of Post Mortem Press, edited by Eric Beebe – Post Mortem Press (January 2016)
“The Agonizing Guilt of Relief (Last Days of a Ready-Made Victim)” – Chiral Mad 3, edited by Michael Bailey – Written Backwards/Dark Regions Press (May 2016)
“All That You Leave Behind” – Lost Signals, edited by Max Booth III and Lori Michelle – Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing (August 2016)
“The Universe Is Dying” – You, Human, edited by Michael Bailey – Dark Regions Press (December 2016)
“Reflecting the Heart’s Desire” – Bones Are Made to be Broken – Dark Regions Press/Written Backwards (November 2016)
“Bones Are Made to be Broken” – Bones Are Made to be Broken – Dark Regions Press/Written Backwards (November 2016)

I also sold two other stories:

“How I Became a Cryptid Straight Out of a 1980s Horror Movie” to Space & Time Magazine.  You should be seeing that at some point in 2017.  My thanks to Hildy Silverman and Gerard Houarner for picking that piece up.
“I Can Give You Life” to an as-yet-untitled cosmic horror/noir anthology that I’ll give more details about when contracts are signed and what have you.  My thanks to Robert S. Wilson for falling in love with that one.

Oh, yeah, and I had my first book published – Bones Are Made to be Broken, which collected 14 of what I thought were my best works from the past five years.  Michael Bailey edited and kept me in line, Pat R. Steiner rocked the fuck out of the illustrations, and Damien Angelica Walters (one of my favorite writers and people I’m lucky enough to call friend) did me the solid of rocking out an epic foreword.

In the month that it’s been out (it only came out on the 29th, which feels much longer ago than it actually is), the book has gotten better reviews than I could’ve hoped for (even one this morning, hyperlinked in the word “for”) even landing on placement on some notable lists, which leaves me absolutely dumbstruck.  My editor has sent copies to the juries of various awards–the Bram Stokers and the Shirley Jackson Awards, among others–and that’s all cool (and it is, though I’m a pessimist enough not to be overly excited or confident on my little book’s chances), but, for me, it’s the oddity of old school friends messaging me to talk to me about the book, people who haven’t seen me in almost twenty years, knew me only when I went by my last name and was more than a little nihilistic (well, more nihilistic than I am now, anyway).  I hope people like it.  Fuck, I hope people buy it, so I can continue to justify doing this every night.

On that last note, go here.

So, what does 2017 have in store?

Well, I was invited to submit to three anthologies, one of which I need to get with another writer to talk about.

The hardcover to Bones will be released in standard Dark Regions Press fashion (signed by me, Pat, Damien, and Michael; leather-bound; color illustrations; a slipcase), but also expanded by me to include another story (“Grownups” from the tribute anthology Widowmakers) and story notes on everything.

“How I Became a Cryptid…” should see the light of day, which I’m excited about; it’s a weird left-turn for me and a fuck of a fun write, anyway.  I can’t wait for people to read it.

I also have two essays written for Richard Chizmar’s Stephen King read-a-thon, whenever he gets to those books (he’s been a little busy himself, recently).

I might be guest-editing something again, which is nice.

And whatever the hell else I happen to write and–hopefully–sell.  I have some shit percolating that might work out.  Hopefully.

And that’s that.

Thanks for stopping by.

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Suspense: Knock-Knock Jokes, Longevity, & a Condescending Willy Wonka

 

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Let’s just get the Wonka out of the way…

So, last week, I did a quickie-bit on suspense over at This Is Horror (with about a dozen other writers, so it, y’know, WASN’T ALL ABOUT ME–though, that’d be cool to do sometime [hint]).  Each of us was asked what we thought was most important in creating a sense of suspense of a story or a scene and we duly supplied our answers.  I’m not lying that it took me 20+ attempts to get the goddamned thing right; I didn’t write out my thing, just made a list of bullet points to cover, and let fly.  This works for me in the classroom, where I have students to bounce ideas off of and modify my presentation to fit the situation, but this style’s a lot fucking harder when I’m staring at a computer mic and pressing RECORD.  I’d get three-fourths of the way through my spiel, stumble like I’d suddenly put a sack of marbles in my mouth, and there went your ball game.  My wife came in at one point–I recorded in our guest bedroom, to escape any excess ambient noise (re: the dogs)–and asked, “Wasn’t it supposed to be only 5 minutes long?”

But, in the end, I got something in the can and Michael David Wilson didn’t hate it, and, hopefully, listeners didn’t, either.  I’ve listened to the entire broadcast a few times now and some people were much more prepared than I was.  It’s kinda amazing we all didn’t contradict each other–although John Skipp and I ran in similar directions for a moment–because there’s nothing more confusing than a methodology to writing.  The only truths that seem to exist for all people is, “You start a story, you finish the story.”  Everything else is dictated by the whims, needs, and talent-quotient of the individual writer.

(Also, it was a fun mental game to finally hear the voices of some people I’ve corresponded with–like Stephanie M. Wytovich, Kristi DeMeester, John Skipp–but had never spoken audibly to.  But that may just be me.)

Anyway, I wanted to pause and talk about suspense in a little more detail.  I had 5 minutes on TIH, which got the basic thrust of what I wanted to do across, but, after finishing, I realized that I really liked talking about it.

Apologies ahead of time.

So, suspense, if we can all get on the same page here, is the building of dread–of knowing that the worst is yet to come, that the other shoe is about to drop.  It’s the doctor holding the biopsy report when he comes into the room, but not immediately saying anything.  It’s the phone ringing late at night for a parent whose child is still not home.  It’s the walk down the hall to the boss’s office after being unexpectedly summoned.  It relies on a fairly negative view of the world–the biopsy is the Big C, the caller is the local police saying there’s been an accident, the unexpected summons is to discuss the consequences of dismal 4th Quarter profit projections–but humans, in our ability to see multiple outcomes, tend to go darker.

If you’re into horror, the possibility of “the worst is yet to come” becomes more of a probability–but not always.  That’s the dread, the gamble you take when you go to the next paragraph or the next page.

(Pause.  If you flip the negative view, you get anticipation, not suspense.  The Wedding Day.  The night before Christmas.  The labor process at the end of a really healthy pregnancy.  It may be tinged with fear [will she ditch me at the altar?  will Santa think I was bad?  will there be complications?], but when you see the end positively, there’s no sense of dread.  End pause.)

With that concept of suspense in mind, you branch off into two formats: what I call the literary equivalent of a knock-knock joke and more of a long-form strategy.

The knock-knock joke style of suspense is familiar to anyone, like me, who cut their teeth on the slasher films of the 1980s–I’m talking Friday the 13th, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Sleepaway Camp, etc.  For example, you have this group of horny, clueless teenagers traipsing around the abandoned summer camp that has a shady history, looking for a place to hump and listen on the soundtrack some song that sounds like a B-side to a bigger hit during the summer of ’87, and you hear the rustling of leaves out in the dark, the snapping of branches, the tumble of a small pile of rocks.  You, as an audience member, know the (supernatural?) killer is eventually going to stop fucking around and gut those teenagers like trout, and, when he/it does, that’s the punchline.  You then go back to our regularly scheduled program–which is, commonly, a survivor girl.

When you employ a long-game strategy, everything becomes suspenseful.  That plotmap you zoned through back in English class, the rising action prior to the climax, ratchets up, and you find yourself on the edge of your seat, or flipping pages in a blur, barely able to keep your eyes on the current line because, goddammit, you have to know what happens next to your protagonist and antagonist.

What’s the difference between the two?

Empathy.  The ability for the reader or viewer to identify or relate with the fictional character presented to them.

With knock-knock joke suspense, there’s little empathy.  The teens dawdling through the creepy woods are the equivalent of walking blood-bags, and you’re drumming your fingers, waiting for the killer to just open them up.  These characters were created to die, and so we build no connection to them.  (You can see it in each slasher series as the number next to the title grew–viewers found themselves rooting for the villain, which says all kinds of unseemly shit about the audience.) Sure, there can be a kind of visceral reaction, but that has more to do with the creator’s presentation of the event–short, sharp sentences, or, in the case with film, a lot of building cuts–and the punchline doesn’t linger.  It’s the equivalent of eating uncooked tofu–it can fill you up, but it has no taste to it.

With a long-game, all the work occurs before the suspenseful scene in question.  We’re talking fifty to a hundred pages, or, in a short story, the handful of paragraphs prior.  The writer has taken the time to make the character seem real, within the parameters of the story, to the audience.  Backstory, personality, related incidents–these are the rudiments of empathy.  Maybe the character has a personality quirk the reader shares–getting itchy when nervous, or popping one’s knuckles; maybe the character has been in situations (prior to the suspenseful one) that the reader has also found themselves in.  This is no easy bullseye; the writer has to be acutely aware of human commonality but also know that something that works for one reader may not work for another.

I think of Horns, Joe Hill’s troubled second novel (troubled for him when he was creating it; a masterpiece to the rest of us).  Ig Perrish is at the bottom of the barrel, ostracized after his girlfriend is killed and his town blames him although there isn’t any proof.  Now, that’s not a situation a lot of people can identify with, nor the titular horns Ig gets that jumpstarts the novel, but Hill leans hard into the loneliness of Ig’s situation, the paranoia, the mourning.  Who hasn’t felt those things?

More, Ig is no superhero (although Hill has said, to me and elsewhere, that this can be seen as a superhero novel, just one where the Devil is a superhero)–he fucks up and fails plenty of times over the course of the novel.  Hell, Hill reveals the end of the mystery long before the climax of the story, but that’s just the beginning.  Watching Ig try and fail, try and fail, try and fail to overcome his failings–guilt, rage, etc–and his enemy reminds us of something we already know: we love superheroes, but we know we aren’t them in our day to day lives.  We fail everyday.  Ig’s constant failure not only makes his ultimate success that much sweeter (like when we finally triumph over something), but it humanizes him.  This makes each subsequent scene that much more suspenseful and make the resolution of those scenes linger much longer.  There’s a lot of blood and violence in Horns, but these aren’t walking blood bags.  Within the parameters of this story, the characters are real.

If I’m successful at all at this kind of lingering suspense, it’s because of empathy.  Building empathy between character and reader does all the heavy-lifting when it comes time to turn the suspense up.  In a story like “Crawling Back to You”, which kicks off Bones Are Made to be Broken, we have a relationship between (don’t laugh) a vampire and his familiar.  Not very relatable, but I wrote it deliberately from the perspective of toxic, abusive relationships, and I know most people can identify with that to some degree.  To me, Patty is the protagonist in that story, not the cop (you’ll have to read it), because she’s the most real to me.  Patty doesn’t know if she can physically or emotionally get out of the relationship she’s in, and the story chronicles her attempts.

A story like “Baby Grows a Conscience”, though, can be seen from the other style.  I cheerfully kicked all backstory to the curb and just went for it, seeing where each turn can lead to.  If the suspense rises above knock-knock joke levels, it’s because the confusion Richie feels is very easy to understand and relate to (who wouldn’t be confused as all hell in his situation?).

Empathy.  You build that connection and the heavy-lifting is done before you even get to a really suspenseful scene and, when you reach that scene, you can focus on your presentation–the POV, the word-choice, the sentence structure, the actual ebb-and-flow of the action between characters.  All the other stuff the other writers on the This Is Horror podcast.  They mentioned excellent, awesome things and often made me think, “Damn, why didn’t I think to talk about that?”

But, truthfully, I need to empathize.  And then I care.  And then, when the time comes, I become terrified.

And, hey, thanks for listening to the podcast and (maybe) reading this!  If you want to see how I handled suspense and empathy, you can pick up Bones Are Made to be Broken in trade paperback or eBook over at Amazon, or go for the deluxe, expanded (I’m told it’s gonna be almost 500 pages when it goes to print) hardcover over at Dark Regions Press.

The rise of the “alt-DIY”

(See what I did there?  Oh, aren’t you clever for noticing!  Also, be sure to read the Associated Press’s guidelines for writing about the “self-described alt-right”).

When last we joined our intrepid hero, the living room had finally lost its goddamn shot-to-shit renter’s carpet (two years after buying the house, but, y’know, lack of ability and time and money), after a long journey that also saw the re-doing of the stairs, the beginnings of the landing’s closet renewal, and reworking some 50+-year-old end tables.  All the furniture had been moved to the master bedroom, the kitchen, or the basement (mostly the kitchen, which was fun getting around).

Then, finally-finally-finally, we got to lay the hardwood laminate.

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Lucy (left) and Poots (right) eagerly await the moment the humans stop fucking with the house

My wife and I watched the videos.  We bought the materials.  We cursed DIY as only people who don’t DIY can.  We consulted friends.  We got ready for the big day, Saturday, anticipating a day-long slog with probable work left over for Sunday.

And then my neighbor and his brother came over and relegated us to the Olympic Standing-There team (where we gave gold medal performances, by the way).

Two of the people who we consulted were our neighbors, nice folks who had done the same thing to their living room.  We’re long-time friends (in essence, our neighbors are kinda our doppelgängers, if genders were reversed) and we asked if they could come over and help make sure we don’t do too badly.

And then, like I said, they kinda just did it for us.  In, like, four hours.  For people who kept saying, “We don’t have much experience”, they knocked that shit out, son, working efficiently at measuring, cutting, and laying (for those who haven’t partaken of this absolutely delightful experience, modern hardwood laminate is kinda like a jigsaw puzzle, especially to people who really hate jigsaw puzzles).  Oh, my wife and I made sure the pattern continued (we had two different styles), but they made it seem stupidly easy.

And we really appreciated it.  Like, totally.  We don’t know what the fuck we’re doing, so having someone knowledgeable come along and say, “I’ll help you–just buy me a beer, okay?” is like manna from heaven.

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The living room, now 75% completed and with 100% more Poots

We’re not done, yet, of course–I have to finish the doors to the end-tables, and we have to rehang the pictures, and my wife wants to do this thing with old drawers where you turn them into shelving–but the floor is done.  The big job is done and I relearned the valuable lesson of having awesome-fuck-tastic neighbors.

I also learned the valuable lesson that DIY’ing things is bullshit.  Yes, you made it yourself, but, by the end, you just wanna chuck the fucking thing into a wall.

So!  To recap: neighbors are fucking awesome, DIY is fucking bullshit, and I’m slowly pulling my way through the stack of grading I’ve had to put off to get all this done (and with Christmas coming!).  Whee!

_ _ _

Make me and yourself feel better and pick up Bones Are Made to be Broken in either trade paperback, eBook, or deluxe hardcover–Michael Bailey and I are working on the bonus material now on that last bit.  You can also add Bones to your Goodreads Want to Read shelf here:

 

 

 

DIY punks fuck off!

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This is my living room as of Friday evening, December 2nd.  We’re removing the carpet and putting down some sweet hardwood laminate.  Oh yeah, baby.

…

Oh, you can fuck off with that notion.

Gather ’round, kids, and I’ll let you know, quickly, what’s up; about two years ago, my wife and I bought the house we’d been renting for two years (and the story about that is another thing entirely, but whatever).  First time I’ve ever lived anywhere without a landlord (I’m a renter’s kid, through and through), and, for two years, my wife and I coasted, blue-skying what we’d like to do…eventually.  When you’re renting, time for maintenance is more…fluid, for lack of a better term; you have a problem that’s not due to you being an asshole, you call the landlord.  That’s why you have a goddamned security deposit, man.

But, when you own the place?  Time is not fluid.  It’s ticking, motherfucker, and getting louder with each passing second.

First, the sliding door leading onto the patio.  Why the hell anyone would want a sliding glass door in the first place is beyond me.  I’ve never seen one that isn’t, in some part, fucked up and broken and–well, whaddaya know!–so was mine.

Replace that.

Problems with the patio itself to the extent that your wife freaks every time you’re leaning against the railing while you smoke a cigarette?

Fix that (and thank fuck for your father-in-law who showed you how).

Quickly the jobs piled up.  You learn on the go and plead to whatever god you happen to believe in at that moment that your savings account continues to exist afterwards.  Our realtor, an awesome woman named Charlotte (who, for the majority of her time with us, saw me in trashed jeans or shorts and stained tee-shirts and was absolutely–pleasantly–shocked when I walked into her office in a suit one day after I got off work, something I find hysterical), pointed out that the first rule of ownership was maintenance and my wife and I took her seriously, but I don’t think either of us really absorbed the depth of what she meant.

Which brings me to the carpet.

When the previous owners bought the house, they had plans on flipping it; they’d done this before (but, apparently, weren’t paying attention to the headwinds; they bought the damn place at an inflated cost just as the housing market was cratering). Now, if you’ve never watched one of those house-flipping shows that my sister-in-law is obsessed with, what most people miss is that all the “changes” flippers do to a house is–largely–cosmetic.  Any houses with serious structural or internal issues get a pass because it cuts into profit margin.

Cosmetic changes mean slapping a coat of renter’s paint–white, low-grade–on the walls that aren’t kitchen or bathroom; replacing any aged or stained carpet with new, clean, cheap, industrial grade carpet.  And that’s what our landlords did–a full four years before my family walked into their lives.

Another two years, with pets and a growing toddler, and that carpet was showing some serious wear, to the point that my wife and I were embarrassed to have people in the house.

So, we DIY’ed that motherfucker.

Except, we couldn’t.  Not at first.

First, we wanted to do the stairs leading to the 2nd floor, then the closet on the landing, and then we could do the carpet in the living room without all the other work fucking up the new floors.

So, my wife DIY’ed it, and got started…

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Our 2nd dog, Poots, supervises.

…and my wife, mid-tearing up the carpet, goes into one of her rare (but always hysterical) rants about DIY because, here’s the thing: most DIY pages are run by people who do this as more than a hobby.  They’re either flippers or extremely fucking motivated and aren’t just learning their way like the numbfucks who happen to click onto their site from a Google search.  Now, to be fair, they usually say this in their About pages, but who the hell’s clicking on that when all a person wants are simple, idiot-proof directions?

So, a job that, according to the various DIY-sites, takes, like, two days, took us about two weeks:

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(To be fair: I deserve almost zero-credit for this; I pulled some staples and laid down some primer paint.  My wife is a beast and I’m very much the hapless Igor that makes Marty Feldman in his iconic role look like Dr. Watson, if you’ll allow me to switch my references around.)

And now, nearly a month after we began, we’ve begun to work on the floor and I’m currently sitting on my red chair in the center of a room that either looks like the setting of a snuff-film or a house for hobos to frequent.

Oh, and we chose a laminate in the process of being discontinued.  We’ve mixed and matched color-styles a bit, and we have no idea what we’re doing, and this is our weekend.  Our dogs are confused.  Our daughter’s enjoying the sound difference between the living room and the kitchen (which is crammed with our furniture).

I miss renting.

Oh, and this is costing us a fortune, so go order Bones Are Made to be Broken from either Amazon or Dark Regions Press.

Cheers.  And (help).

Litreactor chimes in on BONES & Anderson begins the arduous process of changing his “website”

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So today, some awesome dropped into my lap, by way of Litreactor reviewer Keith Rawson, who did the Bookshots for Bones Are Made to be Broken.  It’s not a gushing review, but it’s a solidly positive one, and when Rawson dings me, he dings me fairly–the novella maybe faring as a standalone book, which was (for those looking for some inside-baseball) something editor Michael Bailey and I discussed when I turned in the full manuscript at the beginning of the summer of 2016.  The novella is a novella, in terms of length–though the first draft was very much a full-fledged novel (I, uh, overwrite)–but it’s an anchor for the book; if you don’t dig my stuff, it’s gonna be a drag, something to flip over, and there are a lot of pages to flip, y’know? Moreover, novellas as standalones are becoming more and more common (just take a look over at This Is Horror, which recently published Josh Malerman’s “The House at the Bottom of a Lake” and T.E. Grau’s “They Don’t Come Home Anymore”).

For about a week, it was a serious discussion, but I held forth that I wanted the novella as part of the collection–the collection was why I had written the novella instead of letting the idea simmer in my head, inspired by Pat R. Steiner’s art and the title combined together.  Whether this turns out to be a good thing or a bad thing, that’s left for the reader to decide (he said, loftily).  I can’t argue if someone says the novella should’ve been a standalone, even if I’m still happy with the decision I made.

In other news, Bones is now on Goodreads (so go add it as “Want to Read”, okay?) and that’s kinda cool.  Completely irrelevant to anything else, it’s nice that, automatically, when a book is listed as Paul Michael Anderson, it gets added to me; before I began publishing by my full name, editors and publishers had to add something like twelve spaces between my first and last name for it to link to me directly (oh, the fun trivia of small-time publishing you learn by reading me, right?).  Also, those who pre-ordered the book as eBook or trade paperback–or backed the Dark Regions Press campaign earlier this fall and picked Bones as a perk–are starting to get their books, which is also kinda cool, although weird when family members gush because my immediate thought is, “Wait until you read this before gushing.”

Michael Bailey, editor extraordinaire, pointed out that, along with my book popping onto shelves, Other Music by Marc Levinthal, and The Eighth by Stephanie M. Wytovich, was also released.  I’ve only read a few pieces of Marc’s short fiction, but it’s left me intrigued at what he does with a full-length.  Stephanie, however, is my sister from another mister.  I’ve read oodles of her poetry, published her a few times when I’m in an editor’s chair somewhere, and I cannot wait to read this book.  Click the link and tumble down the rabbit hole.

Finally, I’ve finally begun updating this site to accommodate the book release: you can now peruse the blurbs, details, some of the art on the Bones Are Made to be Broken page, and as reviews and interviews role in, you can check them out on the Press page (after I’m done gushing over them in a blog post, of course).  Both are these are evolving as new info comes in (and I, uh, get better at doing this).

Now, this site is officially called “The Nothing-Space” and I like talking about my writing–uh, it’s why I have a site in the first place–but it’s not all I like to talk about.  My problem has always been, though, that, by the time I articulate my thoughts on something–usually politics, sometimes music or pop culture–the initial oomph to write about it leaves me.  It’s a change from my old journalism days, where my job was literally to write about whatever popped into my head (I once wrote a column about the music and organization of my funeral, for example).  I kinda miss that.  Might have to change that.  We’ll see.

In the mean time, feel free to pick up Bones Are Made to be Broken here or here.

My Desert Island, All-Time, Top Ten (novels)

Notes after the list, which is given in no particular order:

1. The Fog by James Herbert
2. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
3. The Talisman by Stephen King/Peter Straub
4. Neuromancer by William Gibson
5. Another Day in Paradise by Eddie Little
6. To Marry Medusa by Theodore Sturgeon
7. Shatterday by Harlan Ellison
8. Horns by Joe Hill
9. Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell
10. Red by Jack Ketchum

Okay, right off the bat, let's address the elephant in the room, shall we? Herbert's THE FOG is at the top of the list not because of his recent passing , but because a year of reading feels incomplete without delving into Herbert's earlier, pulpier works. Herbert was and is a massive influence on my own writing; he had the balls when it came to effect to not just tease the reader, or gently show the reader, but to unapologetically begin to scream in the reader's face with the horror. Would be writers--regardless of genre--would do well to keep that in mind. Ellison said at one point, "You must never be afraid to go there." Herbert wasn't. He's only at the top because I happened to be thinking of him today, but THE FOG would be on the list, regardless.

Next is Matheson. Do I need to explain this? No one who wants to write about vampires, or likes the vampire lore, should be allowed to escape I AM LEGEND. It's up there with Dracula in my view. Tangentially, I would consider, too, the 1970s film MARTIN, by George Romero, to be this book's kissing cousin, not because of plot, but in its enthusiasm in shaking up the lore. Be advised, no movie adaptation of this book has ever been very good (although THE LAST MAN ON EARTH comes close--scripted, in some form, by Matheson himself under his "Logan Swanson" pen name).

Then THE TALISMAN. This was my first introduction to King and, consequently, when I began to get into genre beyond comic books. It's fantasy, it's horror, it's coming of age. It's a mess, basically, and it was just the right thing to read at twelve-years-old. Like Matheson, I'm always quick to recommend it to people looking for something good to read.

I can't get into most science fiction--don't give me a goddam science lesson or show off your extrapolation skills, give me a friggin' STORY--but Gibson can't be beat. He ushered in the 1980s cyberpunk movement with this novel and the sheer breakneck pace of a hacking scheme is enough to drag in even the most reluctant of SF readers. Gibson's powers as a writer would never be matched in his later works.

I love some crime writing. When it comes to tension and pacing, it's hard to beat. This was a hard entry; I love the work of Richard Stark, Jim Thompson, Elmore Leonard. But, I had to go with my first introduction to the genre: The drug-addled story of Bobby Prine--written, allegedly, when Little was in prison--is like a shot of speed. The writing is somewhat clumsy, particularly in the beginning (the sequel, STEEL TOES, is much cleaner), but this book is like that first true love. You never forget it. Supposedly, Little was working on a third book in the trilogy when he died of a heart-attack in his forties. Little's story was closely linked to his fictional hero in a lot of ways, giving it its authenticity, but it also struck a note of Little's bad end. If you like this, Google Little's work as a freelance writer for the LA. Weekly.

Sturgeon, after Lovecraft, was my introduction into weird, really. While Ellison is the master of genre-hopping, and I discovered Sturgeon after Ellison, Ellison writes to convey a specific point, which has sometimes been to his detriment. Sturgeon may have had point or theme, but it was always backseat to a good story. I ultimately went with TO MARRY MEDUSA for this factor, even though I paid homage to the book MORE THAN HUMAN in my short story "Baby Grows a Conscience" with my title character.

Speaking of Ellison. This collection doesn't include my all-time favorite Ellison story "Seeing" (reprinted in the Post Mortem Press anthology FEAR THE ABYSS and, originally, in STRANGE WINE), but the sum of this book's parts is more cohesive than others. Ellison's at the top of his form in stories like "How's the Night Life in Cissalda" and "All the Lies That Are My Life" (especially that story, which is a post mortem on a decades long friendship), all of them singing harmoniously.

Of my generation (namely, those children of Baby Boomers; I'm one, Hill is another), there is no greater writer of character than Hill, particularly in HORNS (the short story "Pop Art" is another example). HORNS, the story of a man who obtains the power to know the worst secrets of those he comes in contact with, is a wonderfully engrossing tale about what happens when we shift perspective and, also, how we pick up the pieces after unimaginable trauma happens. We should all be a little jealous of Hill. For writers, he's the guy you have to try to beat.

I discovered Sarah Vowell in college, in a collection of called THE PARTLY CLOUDY PATRIOT. Vowell's essays on everything from her father's gunsmithing, to trying to infiltrate the Goth subculture, are funny and entertaining and relatable. I had a bit of a writer crush on her for a few years. Fun trivia: she's the voice of the daughter in the film THE INCREDIBLES.

To readers of Ketchum's work, RED may seem like an odd choice. His first novel, OFF SEASON, was dismissed as "violent pornography" by the VILLAGE VOICE and his book THE GIRL NEXT DOOR became a cult hit when Stephen King raved about it. RED is an off-beat novel, almost a crime novel, about an old man seeking justice for the random shooting of his dog. Ketchum goes to great lengths to show us the great lengths a person will go for justice (at one point, the protagonist Avery, moans to himself, "Why can't I just let this go?") and it is gut-wrenching. We find it ridiculous and, alternately, true as we read. Like THE FOG, a year of reading is not complete without delving back into Ketchum. It's like putting on a pair of worn, welcoming slippers.

This was, actually, quite hard. Neil Gaiman's AMERICAN GODS isn't on the list, nor Lev Grossman's awe-inspiring THE MAGICIANS. Nor the fun popcorn-action of Jonathan Maberry's Joe Ledger series, or Edmund Morris's brilliant trilogy of biographies on Theodore Roosevelt. There are others. My criteria was simple to formulate, but difficult to execute: if I could only have ten books, what would they be? And, at the end, I realized that these are the books I come back to, again and again and again. I don't re-read novels nearly as much as I used to (too many of Stark's Parker novels still to read), but when I come back to re-read something it, more often than not, are these books.

What are your Desert Island books?

I Don't Trust Writer's Blogs

I tend to take the Alice Cooper view of things when it comes to this. He was talking about political rock stars. His advice? "Shut up and play". I get that. I don't go to concerts--or didn't; haven't been to one in three years--to hear political manifestos. Play "Mary Jane's Last Dance" and shut the fuck up.

When it comes to writers...all we have are words. The worlds we make up. Do I really care about the fights they pick online (I'm thinking of two writers in particular here)? No and, half the time, get mildly irritated at the idea.

But...

But I always liked reading the notes writers put with each short story in their collections. Stephen King once compared it to audience members finding out how the magician does his tricks. I like reading essays of process and style. I always kind of viewed it as a mechanic admiring the workmanship put into an engine block by a peer.

But I've always been a loud mouth. My first paid writing work (I've never NOT been paid and have never had much truck with "for the love" markets, even supposedly prestigious ones; even if it's only contrib copies, you pay me) was as an editorial columnist where I spent 500 words a week--I always argued for more--talking about whatever the fuck it was that came into my head fifteen minutes before my deadline. I was good at it. Good enough to garnish fans hundreds of miles away, receive hate/fan mail, get invitations to backwoodsy churches where my editors begged me not to go (I didn't; kinda regret it now), and, in one memorable instance, get out of a speeding ticket where the State Trooper had me dead-to-rights.

But I daily read Joe Hill's Tumblr website. I DO peruse writers' blogs (even the two that, more often than not, irritate the ever-loving shit out of me).

So where does that leave me?

Here. With you.

And I've often thought of writing a series of nonfiction articles--my friend and Derringer Award nominee Joseph Benedetto was, briefly, an editor-at-large for MENSA's national magazine, writing articles about writing. More of that mechanics-viewing. I wanted to do that, but often after the first burst of creation, where I'd write anything from a paragraph to eight manuscript pages, I often got bored.

So why not give it a test-drive here? If I get bored, all I have to do is delete.

God help us all.